By Rupert Howell

Oops.

It appears that there is approximately $331,000 due for principal and interest on the new addition to the Panola County Jail that wasn’t included in the county’s budget.

“I didn’t work on that part. I didn’t have nothing to do with that,” Sheriff Shot Bright told supervisors at their first monthly meeting held Monday in Sardis.

Apparently former County Administrator David Chandler didn’t mention it during budget time and current administrator Kelly Magee is scrambling to find a way for the county to meet the payment, most likely through a budget amendment passed Monday.

The payment toward the principal of the debt that built the 100 prisoner addition is $165,000 while the interest is $188,601.

Some of that amount will be recouped as the county charges municipalities $20 per day per inmate and the State of Mississippi pays a fee for each day a state inmate is held in the local facility.

However, Bright explained that Panola County is only certified to hold a certain number of state inmates and the state is turning them out “as quick as possible.”

Bright then alluded to a previous conversation with Magee where they discussed the possibility of putting more emphasis on Justice Court arrest warrants with the additional jail space now available.

Available jail space often results in the payment of past due fines when those offenders suddenly find money to pay fines rather than going to jail.

Bright ask supervisors to plan to inspect the jail addition next week for final approval.

In other business Monday, Supervisors gave the county administrator permission to cancel a third party jail inmate insurance administrator. Magee explained that the hospital, ambulance service and drug stores had agreed to work with the county to lessen the cost by more than the current third party administrator was doing.

Also on Monday supervisors agreed to keep Whitten Insurance Agency as the county’s property insurance carrier and accepted the next low bid of Zurich for $435,395, approximately $15,000 higher than the lower bid of Travelers but almost $45,000 cheaper than the former year’s insurance from the same company.

David Woods representing Whitten recommended staying with the current company as the deductible was not as high on some coverages and cited other advantages including longevity of coverage through “thick and thin”.