County finally bills city $102,550 for monthly jail fees

Last Tuesday, the city of Cairo received a bill from Grady County for seven months of jail fees for the housing of city prisoners at the Grady County Detention Center.
The last time the city had received a bill up until last week was in August 2011.
The total of the seven months of charges, covering September 2011 through March 2012, was $102,550, according to Cairo City Manager Chris Addleton.
“We’ve paid September, and we will pay off each of the other monthly charges as we can,” the city manager said this week.
Grady County Administrator Rusty Moye said up until this point there had not been a formal billing process.
According to Moye, the city police department submitted a list of city prisoners to Janice Lashley at the Grady County Detention Center for verification. After reviewing the list, Lashley would return the list to the city police and it would be submitted to the city’s accounts payable department for payment.
Moye described the billing and payment of jail fees as “sporadic at best.” He said the county received payment for August 2011 fees in October 2011.
The county has not received an April 2012 roster.
Moye said the new procedure will be that County Finance Director Mary Mayer will be sent a prisoner roster from the Detention Center on a monthly basis and she will then create an invoice to be forwarded to the city for payment.
The billing issue was not discovered until April when Cairo Finance Director Miriam Faircloth presented the city council’s finance committee with the financial report for the month ending March 2012.
“Hopefully, this issue has been resolved,” County Administrator Moye said last week.