Paychecks for Carroll County employees will get a little bigger next year under the county’s proposed 2023 budget.
District 1 Justice of the Peace Jack Deaton, who chairs the Carroll County Quorum Court’s joint budget and finance committee, told his fellow JPs at the quorum court’s regular meeting on Nov. 21 that the proposed 2023 budget includes raises of $1.25 an hour for all county employees, with larger raises for some library employees.
“We were fortunate to be able to give all the employees about a dollar and a quarter raise,” Deaton said. “Some of the library personnel got a little bit higher than that because they kind of slipped through the cracks on us in prior years. We’ve pretty much got everybody in line.”
Deaton said Wednesday, Nov. 23, that the total proposed budget is between $16 million and $17 million. He noted that most of that money is earmarked for specific purposes, saying the budget committee had about $7 million to allocate at its own discretion.
“We only had so much to spend, and we spent it a lot of it on the employees,” Deaton said.
The quorum court is expected to vote on the proposed budget at its December meeting, scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 19, at Southern Heights Baptist Church in Berryville.
VACANCY DECLARED
In other business at the November meeting, the quorum voted to declare a vacancy effective Jan. 1, 2023, in the seat currently held by District 8 JPDon McNeely.
McNeely was elected mayor of Green Forest in the November general election. No one ran for the District 8 seat, which will now be filled by gubernatorial appointment.
TORNADO UPDATE
JPs also heard a report from Mike McKelvey, director of the county’s Office of Emergency Management, regarding the tornado that struck the Green Forest area on Nov. 3.
“With every disaster, it’s a great learning tool,” McKelvey said. “So that’s what we’re going with from this point forward. What do we do as a county to protect ourselves and our citizens way better than what we are right now. A big issue is that everybody’s storm sirens are different in the county. We’re working on getting the leaders of the towns together to get that established as one guideline.”
McKelvey praised local emergency responders, including law enforcement, fire departments and emergency medical services, for their response to the tornado.
“They all seemed to be working pretty well together,” he said.
CYBERSECURITY BREACH
County clerk Connie Doss gave JPs an update on a recent cybersecurity breach that hit Little Rock-based Apprentice Information Systems, which provides both hardware and software to counties across the state, including Carroll.
Doss said a Russian group was behind the breach.
“It was what they call an encryption bomb,” Doss said. “Less than 5 percent of their servers were hit. There was no indication of a compromise in their systems.”
Doss said the county did not lose any information as a result of the breach.
ELECTION SECURITY
Doss also discussed a recent report prepared by Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency regarding the county’s election system.
One issue raised in the report is the fact that the county’s election equipment is stored in two separate locations, which Doss said makes properly securing the equipment more difficult.
“And the storage site where we do a majority of our work is not optimal because of the security risk that’s there,” Doss said.
Space for setting up equipment to train election workers is also an issue, Doss said, although she said there is ample space in the county’s six vote centers.
McNeely said he had contacted the state Secretary of State’s office to ask if election officials verify that individuals registering to vote are legal citizens.
“They said, no, they don’t do that,” Mc-Neely said. “If they sign it, they take their word for it.”
District 9 JP Roger Hall also expressed concerns about voter identity.
“They tried to get through the photo ID and the Democrats knocked it down and everything,” Hall said. “I’ve known Hispanics that come in in Green Forest, they have about six Social Security cards and they have six driver’s licenses. They get a Social Security card on all their cousins from Mexico and they go out and get a driver’s license. And they can beat it. They can fake a different person because they don’t have to prove who they are to get a driver’s license. … For $10, you can get a birth certificate in Mexico. I mean, you can go down there and get 17 of them if you want to, in Mexico.”
“When someone comes in, they have to show photo ID,” Doss said. “It has to be a state-issued photo ID. So, they have to present that. The photo has to match the person that is presented to us. And then they have to be able to give their name and their address and their date of birth. And we check that in the system to make sure that it matches. If something doesn’t match, then we’re asking questions.”
