Olivia P. Tucker
Times Reporter
Facing the threat of repossession of three sheriff’s vehicles, the Scott County Council voted to pay for vehicles by transferring money from Local Income Tax (LIT) Special Purpose to pay the jailer’s salary and the jailer’s salary to be moved to LIT Public Safety. The vote was 5-1 with Eric Gillespie voting no.
LIT Special Purpose is money that goes to the jail from local income taxes while LIT Public safety is funds that can be used for the Sheriff’s Department, EMS and EMA.
On April 11, Scott County Sheriff Jerry Goodin posted to Facebook informing the citizens of Scott County of possible repossession of three Ford trucks that the county was late on their payment. The payment was due March 9 in total of $33,788.80 with a late fee of $608.20.
The 5-year lease from Ford Motor Company was signed during the February 15, 2023, Scott County Board of Commissioners meeting by Randy Julian and Greg Prince. Commissioner Mike Jones was not present.
Scott County Council held their regular meeting last week on April 16, to discuss on what to do about the payment on the three trucks.
Newly appointed Council President JR Ward explained the county’s budget process and approval.
“Here’s the thing,” said Goodin, “I don’t care where you come up with the money. The ladies in the Auditor’s office have come up with a plan to hopefully fix it. We have some money from the general fund LIT special purpose and paying off the trucks payments. I’m fine with that, it doesn’t matter to me what you guys decide to do but remember this, and I’ll say it this time. So if you don’t pay them off, remember now this time next year we’re going to owe them a payment of $33,000.”
Goodin also explained to the council that a late fee was added on by Ford Motor Credit. “The taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay the late fee,” he said. He felt that due to the council’s mistake that the council should pay the late fee out of their salary.
“Well we disagree with you,” said Ward, “because you’ve never sat in front of us and asked for these trucks.”
Goodin said that he had but Ward stopped him saying, “Hold on, hold on, this is our meeting.”
“You’re going to give me a chance to respond because of the lies and the miscalculations are not going to be told without a chance to respond like it was the last time,” said the sheriff.
Council Member Eric Gillespie shaking his head as he said, “I don’t want to be called a liar.”
“Well, I don’t either,” said Goodin.
“I didn’t call anyone a liar,” said Gillespie, “and I don’t want to be called a liar, so stop the liar stuff.”
Goodin and Gillespie continued to bicker back and forth with Ward silencing them hitting his hand against the table like a gavel.
“I’m going to call the meeting back to order because it’s ultimately the county council’s meeting and it’s supposed to maintain the order of it,” said Ward. “So we are going to talk about this, but we got to do it respectfully toward each other.”
Goodin said as long as the truth was told with Ward following up, “We can disagree with the facts, that’s not wrong to disagree. The fact of the matter is, yes there was money on a line item in a budget workshop, but there was not a line set for a debt service to Ford Motor Credit which is what would have been done had we all talked about these trucks.”
Ward said that he spoke to Ford the day of the meeting and was told that they weren’t going to reprocess the trucks. Ford just wants the money paid and something worked out from the county, he said.
He said that there were options to be able to pay for the trucks and the council decided what is the best
course of action to take.
The options go as follows, not paying for the trucks which leads to repossession of them and have a bad reflection on the county.
The second option to secure a loan at a 3.99% interest through a local bank, paying the full amount of $111,050 out of the County Rainy Day fund.
The third, take money out of the Local Income Tax and make transfers.
The forth option to ask Goodin to make the payment from the sheriff’s auction proceed and commissary account. However, Goodin said those funds were already depleted due to the cuts the council already made to the budget.
Deputy Auditor Deandra Burton said of the third option, “The proposal is to the jailers salaries that are currently LIT public safety which is all public safety, transfer that appropriation to LIT special purpose which is only for the jail. Currently LIT special purpose we take out all out of the already appropriated money and you put back the money that we would be getting through LIT distribution throughout the year has a cash value of $1.3 million. So taking the $4,382.52 which is the remainder of the appropriation for the jailer’s salaries and appropriating it there would give you a cash balance at the end of 2024 of $939,435.92. In addition, by taking it out of the LIT public safety, you’re actually putting money back in that can be appropriated for other things and that is the sum of $280,000.”
Burton said that this would allow the trucks to be paid off and allow the county to avoid paying $15,000 in interest.
“Transferring salary that is jail salary to the only be used to only jail funds actually frees up money in the LIT public safety that can be used for other things like EMS or EMA,” said the Deputy Auditor.
Goodin told the council, “I don’t care where you get the money, we just have to pay the truck payment. Because not paying is just going to destroy the credit rating of the county.”
“We all understand that Jerry,” Councilman Jonathan White said “But the first we knew about paying this truck payment was last Friday on Facebook.”
(However, the county’s video of the commissioners’ Feb. 15, 2023 meeting (available on YouTube) shows former council president Lyndi Hughbanks. Jonathan White and John Miller in attendance.)
Goodin asked why nothing was said when the budget was being approved, why it wasn’t questioned about the debt service listed adding that he understood if it was something that was simply overlooked.
The council voted 4-1 to accept a bank loan. Gillespie voting no. However, when it was later learned that the council could not, according to statute, take out a loan, the council met in a special meeting this past Friday afternoon, April 19
At the Friday meeting Ward said, “As everybody knows we have been talking about different options on vehicle funding for the sheriff vehicles. On Tuesday we held a meeting and we had spoken on one option that we were going to explore and that option isn’t going to work out.”
He said that he spoke to the Vice President of Ford Motor Credit and the late fee is being waived so long as a payment or payoff was made on the vehicles.
Council Attorney Heather Peters said that Tuesday was the first she heard of the plans to take out the loan and wanted to check if the Council was able to do so. “However, any investment of public funds is up to the County Treasurer, which the council can’t order the Treasurer to do,” said Peters.
“In the future, instead of a capital outlay line, we will have a debt service line so that way when the council is in workshop during the budgets from here forward, they will always know that there is a debt owed that is a payment that must be funded because it is a debt service,” said Peters.