By John Estridge
At least three Brookville Town Council members, especially the council president, disparaged a county employee and the Franklin County Commissioners in an open meeting without asking questions or seeking their input but just relying on an analysis of timecard information.
This occurred near the end of the Brookville Town County July 13 meeting.
Commissioners were seeking help paying for the Small Animal Control Officer when he is answering calls in incorporated towns within the county, especially when the calls constitute overtime. BTC President Curtis Ward said county attorney Grant Reeves broached the subject to him. After that, BTC member Brooke Leffingwell and her sister, Paige, did an analysis of the SAC officer’s timecards.
“It’s pretty enlightening,” BTC President Curtis Ward said.
Ward said the commissioners are saying overtime hours are coming from SAC’s actions in Brookville. Ward said he was looking at the time cards from Jan. 1 to present. Ward said there were but two hours of overtime and 10.5 hours in all in Brookville.
“What I did find enlightening was most of his time spent non-call related time in cleaning up the pound or picking up the food,” Ward said. “He had 56 hours compared to our 10.5 hours: 27.5 hours picking up food, driving to Wal-Mart, driving to Tractor Supply. And I would not be bringing this up were it not for the commissioners cited that.”
Bridget Hayes, who is the Observer reporter, said the county does not buy or provide food at the animal shelter, but that is done by residents. She said the county does not allocate any money for animal food.
“I think there’s another issue,” Ward said. “All the time sheets say ‘I went to Wal-Mart; I went to Tractor Supply; I went to Rural King.’ We wouldn’t have looked into the timecards except for the fact they alleged Brookville was utilizing all his overtime. So I looked into it wanting to make sure we were paying for our fair share of it. That guy works 40 hours a week and his out-of-office hours are roughly 13.5. So, out of his 40-hour weeks, he is roughly doing work … he is leaving the office 13.5 hours cleaning the pound plus getting food for the animals.”
Ward said he went to the July 13 commissioners’ meeting, but commission president Tom Linkel was not there so it was not discussed. He asked and received the support and a motion from the other BTC members to go to the commissioners and confront them with the data and to tell them Brookville residents are county residents and already pay for the SAC with their county tax money.
After the vote, member Chuck Campbell suggested Ward talk to the commissioners about their spending habits, which resulted in laughter from those present at the meeting.
https://global.remax.com/en/agents/usa/brookville/dennis-e-kolb/1025272004
It was front page news recently that the commissioners said that the Town of Brookville was costing the County a lot of money using the SAC officer. It was mentioned that the Town of Brookville might be forced to hire their own SAC officer. I looked at the time sheets, which are available for public viewing. There were very few calls listed for Town of Brookville residents. I don’t know what the County commissioners are referring to.