May 16, 2022
By: Dwayne Page
Should the county budget funding for a full-time technician position with the DeKalb County Soil Conservation District?
Richard Hanson, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) district conservationist for DeKalb and Cannon Counties, addressed the county budget committee with this request last Thursday, May 12.
Hanson said the technician position is needed to help the district provide more services to local farmers and landowners and the good news is that the county would be partnering with federal and state agencies to fund it.
“The district has been presented with an opportunity to develop a cost shared District Technician position that would administer state and federal conservation cost share programs. The way the cost share positions usually work is that the county would create an employee position and provide at least $9,000 annually toward it. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture would give the county $9,000 annually toward the position and the NRCS would provide $12,000 annually. Additionally, the NRCS would provide the county employee daily supervision, office space, a computer, IT support, training, access to a vehicle and access to all the necessary online NRCS tools to complete state and federally funded conservation projects,” said Hanson.
“The Soil Conservation Service works with farmers and landowners to preserve the natural resources of the county through a partnership between the USDA, Tennessee Department of Agriculture, and the DeKalb Soil & Water Conservation District,” said Hanson. “The district and these partners administer funds that are allocated to them from the USDA, Tennessee Department of Agriculture, US Fish and Wildlife, and other agencies but we need people to do the work. This grant opportunity will provide the state with more technicians to deal with the intensifying needs of agriculture and soil erosion that we have noticed across the state and southeast in general. We need more technicians on the ground because our work is becoming more intense and harder to do,” said Hanson. “Currently DeKalb County has one district employee that is our secretary/office administrator. Through USDA and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, we would be able to receive grant money toward adding a Soil Conservation Technician in the local office,” Hanson continued.
Hanson said Soil & Water Conservation projects already bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars to the county and adding this position would help generate even more revenue to the local economy. Hanson provided the following data for the last five years: 2017: $263,000; 2018: $309,473; 2019: $148,057; 2020: $529,115.00; and 2021: $371,422 totaling (over five years): $1,621,067.00.
“Our office brings money into the county through Tennessee Department of Agriculture, USDA, and US Fish and Wildlife grants, among other sources and all of that money brought in is spent locally and used in the community on local farms, forestry, cattle grazing, and row cropping operations among others,” said Hanson. “For 2022 the office in DeKalb County alone is to bring in $525,000 in conservation assistance programs and that is using me (Hanson) and one other person. We could be doing a lot more work for the county and our customers by adding a technician. As of right now my primary focus is USDA programs which means we leave a lot of money on the table with TDA programs. The primary goal of the technician position is to help us increase our spending through TDA programs to get more money going into the local economy by assisting more farmers and landowners. We only spend about $30-40 thousand dollars right now of TDA money. We could spend probably $150-200 thousand dollars easily if we had a technician,” said Hanson.
“We work with farmers on natural resource conservation. A lot of the work is geared toward water and soil quality improvements. We look at the health of the watershed and allocate funds to projects that might help water and soil health and agricultural operations in the water shed such as fencing cattle out of creeks, providing alternative water sources like hooking farmers up to a city water tap or drilling a well and providing them watering facilities for their animals. We also do cover cropping and offer forest help in this area. We have a degrading hardwood health problem in the state, so we work to help people with invasive species eradication, forest management plans, and anything related to natural resource protection,” said Hanson.
If the county decides to fund the technician position, that person would be considered a county employee but serve under the direction of the DeKalb County Soil Conservation District Board of Directors.
The budget committee has not yet acted on the request.
Meanwhile Charlie Parker, the county’s emergency management agency director, has asked that the budget committee consider adding $4,600 in funding to purchase a RadarOmega system to provide high quality NEXRAD/TDWR radar data to keep the community alert to rapidly changing weather conditions. With this system, Parker said two sites in the county could initially be set up with a camera that “we could control to pan or tilt to monitor weather locally. It allows us very good radar coverage at the site we set up and with a camera you could go to a you tube video link to access the site or download it to your phone on an app. The system measures sustained wind speed, wind gusts, dew points and all kinds of other weather information,” he said.
Parker has also requested $8,000 in funding for an interoperability radio box to allow public safety personnel to better communicate by radio with users from other agencies or departments especially during times of emergencies.
“Our radio frequency as far as emergency services is good in our county, but when we have other agencies come in we are very limited in communication,” said Parker.
The budget committee has not yet acted on the request.
The three judicial commissioners are seeking another pay raise.
The request was made during Thursday night’s county budget committee meeting by Judicial Commissioner David Gash.
The pay for each of the three Judicial Commissioners, Gash, Tammy Ashburn, and Joy Whitman is currently $13,900 per year. It was raised by $1,000 each for this current budget year 2021-22 . In September, 2020 the county commission adopted a budget amendment to increase the pay of the judicial commissioners at that time by $75 each per month.
Gash said this is the final installment of the judicial commissioners’ overall three year pay raise request.
Judicial Commissioners are subject to call at all hours of the day and night when on duty. Only one judicial commissioner works at a time during a one week period on call for 168 hours. They rotate their weeks one week on duty and two weeks off.
Duties of the office have increased over the years, according to Gash and each commissioner, who is on duty, must be available at a moment’s notice when needed.
“When we are on call we have to be at home or in close proximity to the jail for a solid week, 24 hours a day,” said Gash. When a police officer calls or someone wants an order of protection, they need us then. We have to be close so there are things we have to give up. We can’t decide to go out to eat in McMinnville or celebrate something outside the county with a family member if we are on call. We cannot leave the county because every second we delay keeps the officer needing us off the street or someone incarcerated longer than maybe they should be. These are time sensitive things,” said Gash.
Duties of the Judicial commissioners include processing the following:
*Criminal summons for the general public
*Orders of protections
*Signing all arrest warrants for the Smithville, Alexandria, and DeKalb County Sheriff’s Departments, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Edgar Evins State Park Rangers, and TWRA Officers.
*Signing search warrants and search warrants for blood draws
*Signing Mittimus, setting bonds
*Speaking with every person who has been arrested
*Answering any and all calls from the public
*Attending certification classes three days each year with no pay for hours attended.
The budget committee has not yet acted on the request.