The Cole County Commission has until the end of January to finish the county's budget for 2015 and is looking at possibly funding additional personnel in some departments.
Commissioners on Monday heard from Prosecutor Mark Richardson, who said he would like to add an assistant prosecutor to handle the growing criminal caseload.
"The past few years our judges have brought in judges from other jurisdictions to handle our growth in cases," he said. "We've gotten to a point where four judges can't handle the increase and I think there's justification to ask the Legislature to add another judge. With that, we need another prosecutor to join the five we currently have handling criminal cases."
The salary would be around $42,000.
Richardson noted that in 2013 there were 548 criminal cases in the circuit courts, 788 in the associate circuit level and 2,844 misdemeanor criminal cases.
"We're in competition with the attorney general and other law offices for lawyers," he said. "They pay better than what we can offer. It's hard to keep lawyers in the prosecutor's office for, say, six years. I don't think it serves the public well when we train someone for two years and they can leave for a higher-paying position after three years."
To avoid this, Richardson said this was the reason supplemental funds were established by the Legislature. They give statutory authority for some county officeholders to spend money as they see fit within expenditure guidelines set out in the statutes.
The funds were brought up earlier in Monday's meeting during a conversation with County Clerk-elect Steve Korsmeyer. He is asking the commission to fund two clerk positions. They would fill the spots of two clerks let go after Korsmeyer came into office.
Korsmeyer said he was asking for around $30,000 for both positions and was using what outgoing Clerk Marvin Register had put in for the salaries of those positions.
In past years, the commission has done memorandums of understanding (MOU) with some of the offices that have supplemental funds. They were initially started to help those offices hire more help, but county officials said they eventually helped to pay for particular employees' salaries up and above what the county was paying for them.
Commissioners have said these funds have become ways to give raises, and have led to hurt feelings among others in county offices where no such funds are available.
A raise for employees is being considered in this year's budget.
In the county auditor's proposed budget, there is a salary increase of 2 percent for all county employees, given as a cost-of-living adjustment, along with a pool in each county department for possible merit raises. The county also would continue coverage of health and dental insurance. Last year the commission did not give employees a raise, but picked up the cost of an insurance premium increase.
As of now, the commission has four MOUs, with the prosecutor, clerk and recorder's offices, along with child support services, to help with the salaries of nine employees in those departments, totaling $32,000.
Both Western District Commissioner Kris Scheperle and Eastern District Commissioner Jeff Hoelscher said they'd like to do away with MOUs, and that with new officeholders coming into some of these positions, it may be the right time. They also said they'd discuss absorbing the salaries of those employees benefiting from the MOU money into the budgets of those offices.
The commission is also looking at a request to add more than $75,000 in salary and overtime expenditures for a second mobile ambulance supervisor in the county. The supervisor can determine whether immediate ambulance responses are needed.
Ambulance Director Mike Shirts said the current mobile supervisor is on four days a week, working 10 hours a day. With two supervisors the plan is to have them out 12 hours a day for seven days a week, concentrating on their ambulance service peak time of 11 a.m. to midnight.