CLARKESVILLE — Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says he simply can’t compete with surrounding agencies to attract and retain enough quality officers to perform the duties demanded of his office by the residents of Habersham County.
“Habersham County is the lowest paid in Northeast Georgia,” Terrell said at last week’s budget meeting with the county commission. “White County just got a $2 on the hour raise, which put them $3 on the hour above us. Stephens County starts at $1 more an hour.”
Terrell understands that tax money comes from the pockets of taxpayers, and he realizes balancing a limited budget can be a challenge for county commissioners.
“Budgeting can be a stressful time — even at home it can be a stressful time — because you have to live on a budget,” Terrell said.
That doesn’t change the reality that Terrell and his command staff are facing, including difficulty filling positions.
“The way we’re losing officers, and not just losing the young officers, we’re losing the seasoned officers — 10-year or 15-year veterans, 20-year veterans,” Terrell said. “We’re losing them to go other places and make more money. It’s hard to compete. I can’t go to another agency and bring those folks in for what we pay.”
Starting pay at the White County Sheriff’s Office, after the $2-per-hour raise approved recently is at $17 per hour, Sheriff Neal Walden said recently.
Habersham County Commissioners have pointed out the county commissioned a wage and salary survey for all positions, but Terrell said that doesn’t address the problems the county has with filling public safety positions and keeping those individuals once trained.
“I know the county just did a pay survey,” Terrell said. “We’re thankful for that. That did bring the pay up some, but it just shows how far behind the curve we actually are. Habersham County has got to look at public safety for raises, not everybody. And that’s something that they’ve never really done is just looked at public safety to give. When I say that, not only the sheriff’s office but the fire department, because those guys are grossly underpaid also, compared to other counties and even other cities.”
Sheriff: ‘We have to build a jail!’
Another area of extreme concern for Terrell is the growing detention demands on his office.
“The other big-ticket item that we’re talking about is the jail,” Terrell said. “We have to house out so many inmates. I don’t think a lot of folks really realize we’re going to spend probably a half-million dollars this year just in housing out inmates. And that’s money that we didn’t have budgeted, so it’s got to be budgeted for this next year and it’s got to be come up with from someplace to pay that.”
At the time of last week’s budget meeting, 43 inmates were boarded out at jails across North Georgia because Habersham County couldn’t house all those charged in the county.
Habersham County pays $40 per day per inmate to neighboring jurisdictions for housing inmates that exceed the county jail’s bed capacity. That off-site housing cost adds up quickly.
“All that means is we have to build a jail!” Terrell said. “We’ve talked about that for several years is that we’ve got to build a jail. We have the property. We’ve been working toward that. We’re working with the county commission. We’re getting some folks to look and go ahead and do some preliminary stuff behind the scenes so that when the time comes, SPLOST comes around in the next couple of years, we can just pull the trigger and get this done. Until then, we’re going to be spending a lot of money.”
Construction of a new jail has been suggested as a top-level project on the county’s next 1-cent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.
Terrell said the current jail was inadequate when it was built in the 1990s, and barely was a step up from the third-floor jail at the old downtown courthouse because it wasn’t built with enough housing capacity.
The end result is that Habersham County taxpayers are literally and figuratively paying for the decisions made when the current facility was designed.
“When you’re talking about the jail and overpopulation, you’re talking about your medical contract going up, your food contract going up,” Terrell said. “Then you’re talking about more overtime, and we’re actually asking to add another person just to move inmates around when we have them housed in Lumpkin County and White County and Jackson County, even in Oglethorpe County. Look that one up and see where Oglethorpe [County] is. We have them housed that far away, and so we have to go get them and we have to bring them to court and we have to take them back. Then, it makes it hard on Momma and Daddy and Nanny and loved ones when folks are housed in Oglethorpe County because they can’t always get down there to see them, so we try and switch the jail population out, so that’s just more running around that we have to do.”
Since January, the average daily population of inmates has been 198, Terrell and his command staff told commissioners. The highest daily population was 229.
A vast majority of the Habersham County Detention Center’s 2018 population is based on felony charges.
In fact, 95 percent of the jail population is being held on felony charges, Terrell told commissioners.
Additionally, 65 to 70 percent of the inmate population involves a probation violation combined with other charges, while Terrell estimates 40 to 45 percent of the jail population is there for probation violations or probation holds only.
“The cost of business is going up for us unfortunately, and it’s just something we have to do to keep our court system going,” Terrell said. “We’re really fortunate, and blessed even, that our jail population had stayed low for so long. Looking at surrounding counties, their jail population was climbing, where ours had stayed kind of static at somewhere around 118 to 120. Now, since last year about this time, it’s started climbing. Right now, we’re averaging about 196 inmates a day. Unfortunately, when our jail was built, it was only built to house 130. At the time, we had anywhere from 85 to 90 inmates in jail. [County leaders at the time] built a jail with 130 beds, so it was really too small when it was opened. We cannot build onto it. It’s not a pod-style jail. It’s an old-school style, linear style jail and we cannot add on to it. So, we have to build another facility. We’re several years behind where we probably should have already built one, because our [jail] population is going up and we’re spending a lot of money to these other counties.”
Average daily populations for the Habersham County Detention Center, cited by Terrell and his staff, are as follows:
- 2013 – 118;
- 2014 – 113;
- 2015 – 109;
- 2016 – 115; and
- 2017 – 164.
Following the lengthy budget meetings, Commissioner Ed Nichols said he understands the opioid crisis is hitting Habersham County agencies hard, especially the sheriff’s office, jail, and Department of Family and Children Services.
“When you start talking about the budget, you’re seeing tremendous need for space in the jail,” Nichols said. “We’ve got 190 prisoners, and we’ve got a whole bunch of them in other jails and we’re paying $40 a day. Overcrowding is costing us probably half a million [dollars] a year.”
Budget cuts at new courthouse coming back to haunt leaders
Terrell said the same planning issues are true of the new Habersham County Courthouse, though on a smaller scale.
Budget cuts during the construction of that facility, dedicated in late 2013, are creating headaches for those charged with keeping the building and grounds safe.
“You’ve got a budget to work in and stuff has to be cut,” Terrell said. “When we built the new courthouse, they [commissioners] had to trim a lot of money off the budget to get into that. It was $17 million we paid for that building – our camera system paid for it, the security system paid for it, the sallyport paid for it. There’s a lot of things that paid the price on that security wise that were cut that really shouldn’t have been cut that we’re having to deal with now.”
One of those issues was the recent discovery that a panic alert button in courtrooms doesn’t go directly to the deputies charged with keeping the facility safe.
“If the panic button is mashed in the courtroom, it sets it off in the basement in the maintenance office” rather than at the courthouse security desk. “To move that panel where we have access to it and we get the panic is going to cost upwards of $10,000 to get that done. And we didn’t even talk about that in this year’s budget. I didn’t get those numbers in in time to even talk about it, so I don’t know how we’re going to handle that.”
Sheriff’s office, commissioners not at odds
Terrell pointed out he is not against the county commission, but rather has been charged by the residents of the county with doing a job and must have the resources to carry out his office’s duties.
Still, county commissioners currently are working with a finite amount of tax revenue.
“If this were my business that I own, run and I am completely responsible for, I can make a change quick if I have to do it to make an adjustment, because it’s my money or my business’ dollars,” Commission Chairman Victor Anderson said. “Unfortunately, it’s tax dollars that we’re talking about here. I understand. I see exactly what you’re saying.”
Terrell said the public needs to decide the complex issues rather than leaving five commissioners solely responsible for decisions that won’t be popular with everyone.
“The monkey can be taken off the commissioners’ back by putting it on the people to say, ‘this is what we’ve got to do for our public safety’, and let the people decide,” Terrell said. “Because by golly the people stood up and said they want to keep their swimming pool, and guess what? We kept the swimming pool. That’s why you see the news media in here.”
Terrell said commissioners need to understand he’s hearing concerns from many people throughout the county who are concerned about Habersham losing qualified law enforcement and emergency personnel to other jurisdictions who pay more.
“It’s not the sheriff needs more money,” Terrell said. “The people can say ‘let’s retain our people and pay them what they’re worth’ to take that monkey off everybody’s back. That’s what I would like to do. This is not the sheriff’s office against the commissioners. We can’t ever be that way. We’re all together in this. I’m a taxpayer. I don’t want to see my taxes go up, but if they’re going to go up I know where I want the money to go.”
Nichols said he understands Terrell’s concerns.
“Your point is well taken,” Nichols told Terrell. “It’s nationwide right now because of the opioid crisis and all this other stuff. It’s at the forefront of everybody’s mind.”
Terrell said the county is fortunate his office has a good working relationship with the cities, because their police departments are called on frequently to answer calls for service in the county.
“We do have things that go on in our county, but you don’t see a high murder rate, you don’t see a high home invasion rate,” Terrell said. “You don’t see that stuff because of where we live, and I believe that our men and women in law enforcement do a tremendous job.”
But the sheriff’s office, with four people on a full shift, can’t keep up with the call volume.
“If it was not for the cities, we could not cover the county with what we have, because the cities answer, I dare say, 20 to 30 percent of the calls in the county for us because we can’t get there to answer them,” Terrell told commissioners. “But that’s because we have a great working relationship with our cities. We’ve all got to work together. This is our county and we’ve got to protect it.”
