Cameron County Commissioners Court Tuesday was able to balance the 2022-2023 fiscal year budget without having to raise taxes but raises department heads sought for their employees and new positions were not included in the budget.
The $103,150,485 budget does include cost of living increases for county employees. Employees making less than $70,000 will get a 3% increase, those making between $70,000 and $100,00 will get a 2% increase, and those making more than $100,000 will get a 1% increase. The minimum wage the county pays its employees will increase to $11 per hour, up from the $10 that was previously offered.
Also included in the budget is the addition of two positions, one an assistant veteran’s service officer and the other a custodian position for building maintenance.
“We moved the numbers around to make it work,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. said Wednesday.
Not included was the unfreezing of jailer positions, deputy positions and two captain positions within the Cameron Sheriff’s Department, but the jailer positions are budgeted for the upcoming year, Trevino said, because the commander and major of the jail system had come up with plans on how to deal with the issues within the department.
“They gave us a couple of ideas on how they were going to address issues such as overtime, the meal issue with regards to the commissary and so we felt they were working with us, so we needed to try to work with them because they were trying to address the issues we raised,” Trevino said.
The captain and deputy positions will main frozen because neither Sheriff Eric Garza nor his staff provided Commissioners Court with options of how to fund those positions, Trevino said. “Until either we get an idea that there’s a change with regards to the federal inmate status this is what we had to do. Our hands were tied.”
Commissioners Court said the county lost about $2.6 million in federal funding when the federal inmates were removed from county jails.
For weeks, Commissioners Court held budget workshops to figure out how to balance the budget while dealing with a $5.2 million deficit. The deficit was attributed to a drop in revenue from the courts, rise in gas costs, insurance costs, and the loss of funding from non-county inmates who had been housed in the county jail.
Several department heads pleaded with Commissioners Court that raises be given to their staff citing many were leaving the county for other high paying jobs.
Trevino Jr. said because of the loss of funding the county experienced from not being able to house federal inmates and $1 million in overtime the county had to pay sheriff’s department employees, the county was not able to give the raises the department heads sought.
“Unfortunately this year it just wasn’t possible, it wasn’t doable and we told everybody from the beginning that obviously we were in a tough situation with regards to our entire budget…I think if we hadn’t had these issues with the loss of federal inmates, the overtime and commissary issues, I think we would have been looking at a very, very different budget process,” Trevino said.
Meanwhile a grievance hearing will be held Thursday for two elected officials requesting their salaries be increased by about $5,000 each. The grievances were filed by justices of the peace Sallie Gonzalez and Juan Mendoza.
In their letters to Trevino Jr., both cite their long service to the county, with Gonzalez stating she has 47 years of service while Mendoza cites his 39-plus years of service.
Trevino said if the grievance committee votes in favor on the salary increases, the county will have to add that to the budget.
