RUSSELLVILLE – The Logan County Detention Center will soon hire three more employees, but that will require reshuffling the jail’s budget for the coming fiscal year.

Jailer Phil Gregory told Logan Fiscal Court on Tuesday he needs three new employees at the jail, which needs more staffing to supervise inmates in the side dedicated to holding county inmates.

Gregory said 7,154 bookings took place at the jail between Jan. 1, 2016, and last week.

“And we’re doing that with two people on the county side. Two guards on the county side,” he said. “That’s where I need my help, over there on the county side.”

Gregory said he wants more deputy jailers and an additional full-time employee in the jail’s office to help with booking and other needs.

Gregory said there are four people working as deputy jailers at the jail at any given time, and finding people to fill in when somebody calls in sick or is on vacation can be difficult.

“Rarely do I ever come up here and ask for this much help, but it’s to the point where we’re sitting on a powder keg there on the county side,” he said.

Gregory spoke at length about the jail’s staffing needs at the two previous fiscal court meetings as well.

During the meeting March 26, Gregory requested funding to hire five new employees in the jail budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. At that meeting, fiscal court voted to hire two additional full-time employees who would work full time as deputy jailers.

On Tuesday, Gregory asked fiscal court to approve the hiring of the three remaining full-time employees he wants, one of whom would work in the jail’s office while the other two would work as deputy jailers.

After District 5 Magistrate Robert Chyle made a motion to hire the personnel Gregory requested, fiscal court discussed how to pay for the three new employees’ salaries and benefits, which are expected to run $140,000 to $180,000 a year.

District 6 Magistrate Thomas Bouldin asked if it would be possible to bring in more state inmates, which the state pays the jail $31.34 a day per inmate for the jail to hold, to help cover the cost.

In March, Gregory arranged for 67 state inmates to be sent to other facilities to get the jail’s population below a level that would be considered overpopulated.

“If I can get the staff, I can probably justify getting the numbers up on the state side,” Gregory said.

The motion to hire the three new employees passed unanimously.

District 1 Magistrate Tyler Davenport was originally skeptical of Gregory’s need for an additional employee in the front office because two part-time employees there were reclassified as full-time employees at the last fiscal court meeting, but he voted in favor of the motion.

“I was on the fence with the front office staff a little bit just because we just made the two part-time people that are in the front office to full time so really they had more time to do the work, but he says it’s still not enough,” he said.

Davenport said he trusts Gregory’s analysis of the jail’s needs.

“I’m not the jailer, I don’t run the jail and if Phil says he needs the people on the floor, I’m with that,” he said.

Logan County Judge-Executive Logan Chick said the budget needs to be reworked, though it’s unclear how much income the jail could get by taking more state inmates or what cuts might need to be made to pay the new employees.

“I’m planning on sitting down with the jailer and look(ing) at this, look at income vs. expenditures and see where it puts the county as far as what the county’s actual contribution is to the jail,” he said.

In another matter, fiscal court voted to contribute $7,500 to the upcoming Logan County Fair, an increase from the $5,000 it provided last year.

Davenport made the motion to contribute $7,500.

“I think it’s, you know, a quality-of-life thing and it brings families out and lets them have a good time and, you know, I mean, I’d be OK with, you need a little bit more, I’d be OK with upping it to a little more than $5,000,” he said.

The fair will be June 24-29.

Dee Dee Brown, executive director of the Logan County Tourist and Convention Commission, said admission to the fair will be $15 on the last two days but $10 on the first three.

Fiscal court also received news that the state Department of Rural and Municipal Aid chose Logan County to receive $535,292 in discretionary funds.

Mark Welch, a field representative for the department, said the funds will go toward resurfacing work on roughly nine miles of Highland Lick Road and nearly one mile of Taylor Barrow Road, both of which are state-maintained roads.

“These resurfacing repairs address existing surface cracks, potholes … and base failures,” he said.