GLASGOW — The Barren County Detention Center has its eyes set on employee raises as it begins working on a budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

At a meeting to discuss next fiscal year’s jail budget held Thursday, Jailer Matt Mutter said he’d like to implement employee raises.

Tracy Bellamy, who will become Barren County Jailer when Mutter retires Feb. 28, said the jail needs more competitive wages.

He said that before the meeting, he was discussing salary with a man he intended to hire onto the jail’s staff who ultimately decided against the job because the starting salary, $9.25 an hour, wasn’t high enough for him.

“He said, ‘I can make at McDonald’s what you’re offering me to start out’ so I lost him,” he said. “We’re losing opportunities at good people.”

The jail needs to offer a more competitive wage because it isn’t in a position to lose a lot of employees and train new ones and because jail staff has more to deal with since it started housing Monroe County inmates in September.

“It does apply pressure to the jail, the jail staff, because, obviously, they’re handling on average 30 to 40 more inmates per day,” he said.

The jail has no plans to increase its staffing, he said.

Mutter said he thinks the extra revenue the jail is getting from housing Monroe County inmates will make a raise possible.

The jail charges other counties $36 a day to house their inmates, he said.

So far, inmates from Monroe County have brought in roughly $30,000 in additional revenue a month, Mutter said, though he added that it’s too early to determine how much net income this will amount to.

“We’re still in the preliminary stages but I’m thinking that the extra money we’re going to bring in from Monroe County is going to take a pretty good chunk out of the debt service,” he said.

The detention center’s debt service for next fiscal year will be about $76,000, which it still owes on the former jail property on Ford Drive and roughly $576,000 on the current jail on Samson Street, according to treasurer Denise Riddle.

This is the last payment the jail needs to make on the Ford Drive property, she said. The jail owes $11,426,000 on the new property, which is expected to be paid off by 2040, she said.

Mutter said he expects income from the jail, with a boost from Monroe County payments, to be able to cover $200,000 to $300,000 of next fiscal year’s debt service.

The portion of the debt service the jail can’t cover on its own would be covered by money set aside for it in the general fund, Riddle said.

If for instance, the jail brought in less money than it needs to pay its scheduled expenses, the general fund is obligated to make up the difference and to pay for certain surprise expenses like repairs for vehicles, Riddle said.

“Every penny that the jail can bring in … decreases the obligation of the general fund to provide dollars to them,” she said. “It frees up general fund dollars.”

State statute requires the jail to submit a proposed budget to the fiscal court by April 1 and the entire county budget must be approved on second fiscal court reading and implemented by Jul. 1.

— Follow reporter Jackson French on Twitter at twitter.com/Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.