Marion County Sheriff Jerry Devore says he's found a way to keep the canine unit while still allowing the 84-hundred dollar cost to be removed from next year's county budget. 

Devore told the county board's finance committee that he will reduce the work day of the deputy handling the dog from eight to seven hours to allow him to care for the dog without an overtime expense.  The county board's finance committee had earlier voted to drop the overtime expenditure from the budget, but had received some feedback from those who felt the canine unit was important to law enforcement. 

The committee cut another 22-thousand dollars from the sheriff's budget and two-thousand dollars more from the correction's budget at Monday night's meeting.  Six-thousand dollars was trimmed from the 70-thousand dollar overtime budget in the sheriff's department.  Five-thousand dollar cuts were made to computer and radio repairs.  The committee will also investigate cutting out seven cell phones for the sheriff's department command staff if it is not costly to get out of the contract.  Two-thousand dollars was cut from the corrections overtime budget. The sheriff was told three new squad cars he wanted had already been cut from the budget due to the county's budget woes.

After the latest cuts, the county's budget still has an estimated deficit of 407-thousand dollars with 250-thousand dollars included for contingencies.  However, that is only seven to eight-thousand dollars more than the deficit budget eventually approved by the county board for the current fiscal year.  More talk on the budget is expected at the finance committee meeting at eight Friday morning in the county board room at the courthouse.