Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame appeared before the board of commissioners on Tuesday to thank them for the financial support that allows sheriff’s office employees to give much-needed support at the detention center and to ask for an extension of that support through the end of the year.
In the past five months, County Manager C. Renee Perry said the county has paid more than $483,000. And that is an unsustainable amount, Perry told commissioners at their Tuesday meeting.
Brame contends that much of the money comes from lapsed salaries – money budgeted for positions that haven’t been filled.
“It’s still a lot of money,” Perry told commissioners. “Five hundred thousand is excessive in my opinion.”
Perry estimated that the county has paid for roughly 9,671 hours – at $50/hour to sheriff’s office employees to fill in at the jail. She suggested that the agreement be revised to exclude exempt staff. “We’ve got to get this cost down – we have to,” Perry stated.
Brame said he expects that six of the 12 new jail hires can be certified by Dec. 1.
He said it takes time for employees to be trained, much less certified, for the positions they’ve been hired for.
“Right now, we need it,” Brame told commissioners. The ongoing staffing shortage, coupled with corrective action plans in place by the state spell big challenges for the sheriff, who oversees the detention center.
The state mandated the jail be depopulated, dispersing detainees to other facilities from Cherokee County in the mountains to Brunswick County on the coast.
On any given day, up to four transport teams are traveling to fetch detainees from where they’re being housed to court here in Vance County or to medical appointments. All the while, these teams are on the clock, racking up hours in vehicles, as well as lodging and other associated costs.
The Vance County jail has between 45 and 50 detainees as of Wednesday, but that number can swell temporarily as individuals come in for court appearances and other matters related to due process. Brame said there are about 150 detainees housed in facilities across the state at this time.
Perry said there will come a time when she will have to come before the commissioners to ask them for more money for the jail situation.
“At some point, we won’t have enough money to do a jail,” she said.
Commissioner Dan Brummitt said he would like commissioners to take some time to review the current plan, “probably make some revisions to it to try to tighten the belt a little bit.”
A motion by Commissioner Tommy Hester, seconded by Brummitt, passed unanimously to table a decision until the commissioners’ work session in a couple of weeks.
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