June 1, 2023
By: Dwayne Page
DeKalb County Clerk James L. (Jimmy) Poss wants to add another full-time employee in his office.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, Poss addressed the county budget committee asking that the county fund part of the position. Restricted earmarked fees for his office generated from noting of liens and titling transactions would be used to fund the rest of the salary.
The county clerk’s office currently has four full time employees and one of them doubles as a deputy clerk and bookkeeper. Poss said his goal is to have this employee become a full-time bookkeeper and to hire a new deputy clerk. The starting pay for a first-year county employee is currently $32,134 plus benefits but is scheduled to increase to $33,819 plus benefits with the 2023-24 fiscal year.
According to Poss, an amended law which passed last year by the Tennessee General Assembly provided the means for his office to collect sufficient fees through a restricted earmarked account to help pay for this position. Poss said the state last year upped fees for title transactions by $3.00 per title to provide more funds to clerks for doing work the state had previously done. The extra fees generated go into a restricted earmarked account for clerks to use for specific purposes including adding a clerical employee to handle the extra workload.
“Effective last July 1, 2022, the state legislature amended one of our (county clerk office) restricted fees after the state vehicles services department stopped completing the noting of liens at the state level and pushed them all back to county clerk’s offices across the state,” said County Clerk Poss. “Even before the change in the law, the state started reimbursing us and since then we have waited to see what kind of money this would generate. We are still two months away from having a full year in but from what we have received already we should finish out this fiscal year at between $18,000 and $20,000 in that revenue account,” said Poss.
“I need a new person to train on the front line and keep the lady who has been doing my book work for eight years. She knows the books well and has done a great job. Having her as a full-time bookkeeper is what I would like to do. I don’t know of any county our size that does not have a full-time bookkeeper. Nowadays there are so many vital procedures and it’s getting harder to function without a full-time bookkeeper whose duties include scanning multiple records, printing titles, completing mail in transactions, creating County Commission minutes, performing end of month reconciliations, printing and reviewing various reports, mailing annual renewal notices, reviewing, editing, and processing transactions prior to printing, among others,” said County Clerk Poss.
The budget committee has not yet acted on County Clerk Poss’ request.