By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — County employees will have to wait and see about a proposed 4 percent pay raise budgeted for the coming year.
In the second day of budget hearings by the Marshall County Council, the subject was put off until final approval of the budget set for Sept. 9. At that point the council will make any final cuts to numbers submitted by department heads for the coming year’s operation.

“I hope you were making marks as we went along,” said Council President Matt Hassel before adjournment. “There are two budgets that I feel we can reduce by $100,000 each that I have marked to be cut.”
Hassel didn’t elaborate on just which budgets he had earmarked but told the Council that at their budget adoption meeting that they would go through the document “line item by line item” to make all the cuts they could and then discuss salaries.
Coming in the Council hoped to reduce the budget by at least $604,000. Budget requests came in at $11,144,242 while estimated revenue for 2009 is $10,539,409.
By the end of the second day of budget hearings, the Council had managed to cut $386,136 out of the general fund and another $200,000 out of the highway department.
Tuesday’s discussion items dealt mostly with personnel issues as Prosecutor David Holmes requested reclassification for his office manager to the status of paralegal and also sought to raise his deputy prosecutor’s wage to a more “reasonable” level given her responsibility and skill and in keeping with the wages of other deputy prosecutors.
Holmes is also seeking to hire an investigator that would act as an administrator for a drug task force.
Chief Probation officer Mary Jane Walsworth is also seeking another entry level adult probation officer for her office to help with the work load.
No final decisions were made in either department’s requests, although discussion centered on compromise possibilities including finding money in funds other than the general fund.
“There is just this box of money out there. If we grant these pay raises somebody is going to have to pay for it,” said Councilman Fred Lintner. “The tax payers are at their limit.”