CHENANGO COUNTY – Bigger government or less government? County supervisors will play tight rope with that question throughout the fall as department heads present their budgets for 2007.

So far, four new jobs within the county’s Social Services Department, four in Mental Hygiene Services and one in the County Attorney’s Office have been requested within committee.

The Probation Department is on the agenda for the Safety & Rules Committee, scheduled Sept. 20, and indications are that additional staff is needed. Director Laureen J. Clarke said she would be asking for more staff while making her 2005 annual activities report before the Board of Supervisors last winter.

Sheriff Thomas J. Loughren will most likely present his tentative budgets to Safety & Rules later in the fall. Twenty-eight corrections officers, a cook, two nurses and a maintenance worker for the new Public Safety Building were added to the Sheriff’s Department and Corrections’ staff over the last two years.

Social Services Commissioner Bette Osborne’s request for caseworkers and social welfare examiners was approved within Personnel and could come before the Finance at the end of the month. Mental Hygiene Director Mary Ann Spryn’s proposal for three counselors and one secretary, however, drew questions and sharp criticism from town supervisors in two committees and was stalled in Personnel in August. “We ran out of time to hear about it,” Committee Chairperson Wayne C. Outwater said.