Sharp County Quorum Court hears positive update regarding Sharp County Jail

Following the acceptance of the minutes, the court moved on to department reports with Treasurer Wanda Girtman stating the payments on the jail were ahead of schedule.

“Right now, we owe $2,235,000 down from $10,340,000. We’ve made 10 payments and taken five years we’ve paid $8,105,000 in those five years,” Girtman said. “We saved $30,000 worth of interest in this last round alone. Not only are we getting it paid down, but we’re saving quite a bit of interest.”

Girtman also said resolution had been found regarding the ongoing issue of missing funds the state owed the county and jail for housing state inmates.

“Between me and the sheriff and making calls to Little Rock, we’ve figured out where our housing money is (money for housing state inmates) the lady is going to have us caught up by the end of this week,” Girtman said.

Collector Michelle Daggett stated the sales of property at the recent land auction had been noteworthy and her office’s activities were running smoothly.

Sheriff Shane Russell then took the floor to provide updates on income and grants.

“Our monthly run down, to break it down. Total NCIC (communications) $2,409.30; nicotine sales $5,442.29; ADC housing $29,560; inmate reimbursement $560.87; Commissary $1,393.50 and total revenue for the month of August was $39,366.16,” Russell said.

He also noted inmate reimbursement was up from this time last year.

“For month to date for the inmate reimbursements $6,344.56 a year ago the total was $5,857.39.”

Switching topics, Russell said his department had received a grant from the state in the amount of $44,000 to help offset some of the costs associated with operations.

“That should mailed out today and we should be hearing back about some other grants which should put us up another $27,000. The cleaning maintenance and supplies I’ve been talking about, we finally got the majority of that in. $46,000 in cleaning supplies we got through a grant,” Russell said.

Under new business, the court heard a presentation from the Sharp County Conservation District (SCCD).

Brain Neal with the SCCD presented the court with a packet showing programs, and activities performed thusfar.

After giving a brief rundown of activities, Neal said the organization was present to request $15,000 in funds for the 2025 budget year.

“This allows us to receive max funding from the state and without allocations from the county we could not have had a successful 2024,” Neal said.

Through the efforts of the SCCD and NRCS, Neal said over $3,000,000 had been brought in to Sharp County.

No action was taken regarding the request during the meeting but is expected to be discussed later this year.

Members of the court expressed their appreciation to county employees who had been performing work on the courthouse property and the improvements to the grounds.

The Sharp County Quorum Court meets the second Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Sharp County Courthouse.