An official goodbye
LISA HOBBS - News Editor
The county’s Policy and Personnel Committee met on Tuesday and, among items of business, bid farewell to District 6 Commissioner Donna Smith.
“This will be her last meeting,” said Chairman Tommy Savage. “Donna, we appreciate you and everything you do.”
Smith, who decided against seeking another term, modestly denied that she had provided much to the group, except the occasional comments geared towards entertainment.
“You have brought a lot of the other side of things, because you’ve worked here and you’ve been a department head,” Savage stated. “You look at most things a little different than most of us do and we appreciate that.”
Smith replied, “When the big cheese over there [nodding in the direction of County Executive Terry Bell] called and asked me if I wanted to be on this committee, I said, ‘I sure do.’ I felt like I understood a little better than some how the employees felt and still feel. All I ask of this committee and of commissioners is to do right by the employees.”
Savage commented that Smith deserved a round of applause. Those in attendance provided it.
Prior to that official goodbye, commissioners received July’s report about Judicial Commissioners, as well as Building and Environmental Codes.
Judicial Commissioner David Williams stated there were 146 warrants in July, as well as four domestic assaults, one sexual assault, 12 OP’s, one GPS, four interlock devices, seven criminal summons, five blood search warrants, and four juvenile petitions. He added that 30 calls were answered in the office, 122 mittimus, and Families in Crisis was called about 16 times.
Williams then provided a fiscal year report, from June 2025 through June 2026. There were 1,432 warrants, 115 domestic assaults, 37 sexual assaults, 176 orders of protections, 53 GPS, 16 interlock devices, 47 criminal summons, 37 blood search warrants, 178 juvenile petitions, 382 information calls, 1,422 mittimus, and Families in Crisis was called out 95 times.
He provided a comparison between fiscal year’s 2024-25 to 2025-26, which showed promising downward trends in most categories.
“Warrants dropped by 28, domestic assaults dropped by 27, sexual assaults dropped by 12,” Williams stated. “Now, orders of protections jumped by 73. I don’t know if that’s just the courthouse sending more of them out to us and saying, ‘Here you go, fill them out.’ GPS was down 53.”
Interlocks increased by three from one year to the next, but everything else declined: criminal summons dropped by 22, blood search warrants dropped 25, juvenile petitions dropped by 44, calls received at the office dropped by 193, and mittimus dropped by 53.
No yearly comparison was available for Families in Crisis responses, because those records weren’t noted in monthly report during the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Cole Miller, director of the county’s Building and Environmental Codes Department, stated that building permits are up.
“We’ve caught a little bit of wind in Warren County. It’s not what it was two years ago, but it’s more than it has been all summer so far,” Miller stated.
During the month of July, 36 permits were issued: 18 new single-family residences, seven new commercials, three commercial remodels, two pools, two decks, two cellular co-locations, one accessory structure, and one commercial addition.
Fees for those permits total $35,800. Of that amount, there is an outstanding balance of $4,600.
Miller says permits not paid within 30 days of issuance will be voided. However, he did say that a few contractors tend to pay their permit fee within the last week of that four-week period.
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he stated, of the outstanding balance. “Most people pay the day they pull it, but some of these bigger contractors who pull four or five at a time, they have a different way of doing things. So, I typically always have an outstanding balance.”
Policy and Personnel Committee members unanimously accepted both July reports.