ALFRED — The proposed York County budget for the year that begins July 1 is up by about 1.88 percent from the current year.

Following a meeting marked by lengthy discussion over a proposed drug dog for use by sheriff’s deputies, the York County Budget Committee on Wednesday agreed to send a proposed $20 million budget to a public hearing.

That means those who attend the hearing, set for 6:30 p.m. June 13 at the York County government building (former jail) on Route 4 will hear and may comment on a $20,102,210 county budget. Of that total, $16,920,010, or 84.17 percent comes from taxation to the county’s 29 municipalities.

The fiscal year 2019 budget proposal contains $500,000 for the Layman Way Recovery Center, part of a commitment to ramp-up funding for the residential drug treatment facility that opened a month ago on the grounds of York County Jail. The facility is funded entirely by the county; the county put $200,000 from a reserve account into the program last year, earmarked $250,000 in the current year budget and added $280,000 from surplus funds at the end of the last fiscal year.

The county proposes to add a full time position at the York County Emergency Management Agency and to increase a vacant half-time executive administrative assistant in the York County District Attorney’s Office to full time. A new position is proposed at the York County Registry of Deeds, along with a $10,000 stipend for a deputy county manager — the latter to be added to a current employee’s roster of duties.

The budget includes money to lease video cameras for rural patrol cruisers.

It does not include funds for a drug dog at the sheriff’s office. Budget committee members reasoned that because county commissioners hadn’t included funds for the program in their recommendations — therefore not endorsing the proposal — that there was no point in including money in the budget and taxing the municipalities for funds that would likely be unspent.

Budget Committee Vice Chairman David James said that several years ago, the budget committee had included money for social service agencies but county commissioners had agreed not to fund them, and so the money was raised, but went unspent.

While the York County Budget Committee adopts the final budget according to statute, county commissioners set policy.

The dog issue surfaced Wednesday as the budget panel discussed a memo written by committee Chairman John Sylvester regarding the process as it relates to how they review requests. In the memo, Sylvester said there were items raised by the sheriff in his presentation that were not part of the budget review process of the county commissioners. In the memo, he proposed a motion that no proposed budget items that had not been part of the commissioners proposed budget be considered, “unless they had been considered and voted by the commissioners and forwarded to the budget committee for its review and discussion.”

The motion never came to a vote, but there was disagreement over what constituted review.

“I was under the understanding it had not been discussed by the commissioners,” said Sylvester. “That is why I sent the memo.”

Budget Committee member Cliff Emery said the committee should only vote on budget items that had a monetary value attached.

“If it doesn’t, it means the commissioners didn’t discuss it,” Emery said.

“The drug dog was not a topic of discussion,” said County Manger Greg Zinser.

However a video, along with minutes of the April 14 commissioners meeting, show that Sheriff William King told commissioners he had included funds in his budget as a reserve to begin saving for a canine. He did not elaborate, and commissioners remained mum on the subject. Money for a drug dog was not included in the budget  commissioners sent on to the budget panel.

The Budget Committee in an earlier meeting had taken a preliminary vote that earmarked $14,000 for a dog, rather than the $28,000 King had requested, but  that was removed on Wednesday.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.