by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
With three months left to go in the current fiscal year, the King George County Board of Supervisors has exceeded its budget for office supplies by at least $10,000, largely due to purchases made in December and January of this year, after the November election ushered in new Board leadership.
While spending on this line item has exceeded the budgeted amount, new Board Chair T.C. Collins has asked other county departments to justify their spending.
Voters in November elected three new members to the Board of Supervisors – Kenneth Stroud, David Sullins, and William Davis – and the Board in January elected returning James Monroe District representative Collins as Chair.
In December, according to invoices received by the Advance through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, the county purchased three new Microsoft Surface Studio 2 laptops for the new board members, each costing $2,670.85 plus a four-year business protection plan of $399.
The county also purchased a Lenovo Thinkbook for $1,861 and a four-year protection plan for $254 that month.
In January, the county purchased three HP laserjet printers, at $241 each, for board members, and then another printer in February for Norm Risavi, who was hired as a part-time senior assistant to the Board.
The invoices for the printers and the laptops date from January 11 and December 6, respectively, yet as of January 16, Collins and Stroud were still asking that Jaci Fish, the administrative assistant to the board, provide them with printed rather than emailed agenda packages.
The purchases of the laptops and printers total $12,292. The total amount approved to be spent on office supplies for the Board of Supervisors in fiscal year 2024 is $1,500, according to budget documents.
Since becoming Chair, Collins has asked other county departments for detailed information regarding spending and county-owned assets, stating that he is “looking for savings.”
In January, according to emails the Advance received through a FOIA request, he directed the finance department to provide him with a list of all county-owned vehicles, excepting ambulances, police cars and fire trucks, and then asked David Moody, the county’s fire and rescue chief, to have his chief officers provide written justification for having take-home vehicles.
In his response to this request, Moody wrote that the department is small and that each battalion chief has additional duties, such as leading the training division or technical rescue team or serving as deputy fire marshal.
“If they just had to fill the duties as a 24-hour Battalion Chief and no other collateral duties, than they would not be issued a take home vehicle,” Moody wrote in a February 10 email to board members.
He said that if the battalion chiefs did not take on these extra duties, the county would need to hire three new employees at a cost of $375,000 to $400,000 per year.
Also, in January, Collins directed Fish to remove from the agenda for an upcoming meeting a request from Sheriff Chris Giles for funds to purchase a generator for the animal control building.
Collins told Fish in an January 10 email that he informed Giles that “at the old school facility there was a working generator that building and grounds have been servicing though it was not being used.”
Collins said he spoke with school division superintendent Jesse Boyd about repurposing the generator for animal control and that Boyd stated “if we would like to have it, we may.”
“I told Chris that we will make sure it will meet the specification needed and that would be a better plan” than purchasing a new generator, Collins wrote.
The Sheriff’s Office did end up purchasing a new generator for the Animal Control building using federal pandemic relief funds provided under the American Rescue Plan Act, which must be spent by September of this year.
On February 5, Collins asked finance director Donna Hahn, who has since resigned, to provide him with “[1] All overtime for all employees for this calendar year, and last calendar year; [2] All overtime for each Department for this calendar year, and last calendar year; [3] All overtime for salaried employees for this calendar year, and last calendar year; [4] Total overtime paid to all employees.”
This story has been updated to include information about the purchase of a new generator.
