Elbert BOC Says No to Sheriff’s Department Raises

By David Stephens, WSGC Radio, Elberton

The Elbert County Board of Commissioners will not be considering a change to the budget of the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office.

Elbert County Sheriff Melvin Andrews and Attorney Keith Whitaker had asked the commissioners to reconsider the budget for the Sheriff’s Office and Detention Center to allow for a raise for employees at the Sheriff’s Department and Detention Center.

However, at last week’s board of commissioners’ meeting County Administrator Bob Thomas said the county does not have the money for a budget increase for any departments.

“When we adopted our budget back in June, we feel like since revenue is down its really going to be a tight budget we adopted, and at this point with the revenues down we will continue to monitor it, and if anything changes we will bring it back to you, but at this time I just don’t think that we have the money to make any increases in the budget we adopted”, said Thomas.

No commissioner made a motion on the issue, and the request died for lack of a motion.  Sheriff Thomas did not comment afterwards.