The Marshall County Council unanimously approved the additional appropriation request of the Probation Department during their meeting Monday.
New Probation Director James Bend and James Pheibush asked the council for $50,000 additional in the line item Care of Patients and Inmates.
Bend said, “We’ve had an inordinate number of bed days that juveniles have been detained for which is beyond our control to a point.” He asked for the $50,000 to cover the line item until the end of this year.
Most juveniles are housed at the Saint Joseph Juvenile Detention Center. So far this year there have been a total of 26 juveniles detained for various amounts of time.
Council president Judy Stone commented that the request is the first in a number of years from the probation department.
Bend explained the request saying his department is short about $4,000 on a bill they recently received from the Saint Joseph Juvenile detention Center in the amount of $35,763. He said, “We’ve had a couple of bad cases.”
When asked by Councilwoman Penny Lukenbill if they anticipated an increase for 2018 Bend said they weren’t and stated they only budgeted $100,000 next year, the same amount as this year for Care of Patients and Inmates.
