BLOUNT COUNTY, Tenn. (WVLT) -- With a month and a half left in their fiscal year, two East Tennessee law enforcement agencies are out of gas money. In fact, the Blount County Sheriff's Office and Maryville Police Department have been out since April.
They have to deal with it much the same way most other organizations do.
When they run out of money to fund something they need like gas, they just have to cut other projects short for awhile.
The same is true in Blount County and Maryville.
For law enforcement, figuring out how much gas they need -- and what price it will be -- for a yearly budget is now a nightmare.
Maryville Police Chief Tony Crisp says, "Who knows where the gas is going to end up going at the end of the day?"
Blount County Sheriff James Berrong says, "As fate would have it, gasoline prices have soared and so we're not even close in that area."
Blount County banked on $400,000 this year, and need a lot more.
Berrong says, "We've basically depleted our gas funds. What we have done now is requested a transfer for $132,000 out of one of our salary line items to make up the difference."
Chief Crisp says Maryville's gas budget was $80,000, but he says he will need an extra $35,000.
So both agencies are having to pull from other areas of their budgets to make it to July 1st.
Crisp says, "Being conservative on our use of overtime pay, froze a part-time position of an office assistant. We didn't fill it right off."
For Sheriff James Berrong, he says the low pay compared to area departments has created a lot of turnover, and turnover means no one is being paid.
Berrong says, "What that has done is in effect created some surplus in the salary line items so we're going to take out of that money and transfer into the gasoline."
Crisp hopes his numbers for his new budget will be good enough for next year. But the sheriff isn't feeling the same way. He says he increased his budget by $88,000 for next year....
Berrong says, "But even if we got that, we would still be deficient based on current gasoline prices."
Sheriff Berrong says the budget is not yet passed, and he plans to appeal to the commission next month to add more money to his gas budget.
He says if they don't, he fully expects to be in the same situation next year.
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