By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Juvenile Services Director Marissa Woodmansee will be getting her miles in soon. Tuesday morning, she went before the Barton County Commission to seek approval to submit her fiscal year 2025 budget to the Kansas Department of Corrections. The 20th Judicial District also covers Russell, Rice, Stafford, and Ellsworth counties, and she will also go before those commissions for approval on the $839,854.94 budget.
"This is specific to our programs with intake and assessment, diversion, intensive supervised probation, and community supervision," she said. "There's a very small percent that goes to the juvenile correctional facility so this is where we operate the core of our programs."
Just a small percentage of the budget - $33,000 - goes toward prevention. The bulk of the money goes to personnel wages with a little going toward overhead costs.
"We are flat-funded again this year, so we did not get any additional funds from the Kansas Department of Corrections, but we can still operate within the budget they've given us," Woodmansee said. "It will just be a little tighter this year."
Programs like Youth Crew are federally funded through the Drug-Free Communities grant and will see no impact from the approved fiscal year budget.