Franklin BOC Agrees to Purchase of Body Cooler

Franklin County Coroner David Pressley will get his new body cooler, but the money will come from his own budget.

Franklin County Commissioners plan to vote to approve the purchase at their regular meeting on October 7th.

At their work session Tuesday evening, the board of commissioners agreed the county is in need of a cooler, but said the $6,080 needed to purchase it should come from the Coroner’s FY14 budget.

At their regular meeting earlier this month,  the board heard from Franklin County Deputy Coroner Kenny Smith.   Smith said  Franklin County has no place to store bodies and purchasing a cooler is a dire necessity.

“In the last six months it’s happened five times where we’ve had nowhere to put them (bodies),” Smith said. “In my 20 years it has never happened to me that we’ve had every single place we’ve had access to filled. The (GBI) Crime lab was absolutely filled this last time with bodies.”

Currently, when the county needs to store a body until it can be transported for autopsy, they are taken to the Hartwell Chapel of Strickland Funeral Home, which has the nearest available cooler.

Smith said the county then pays Strickland a $75 a day storage fee.  Smith told the board that he found a three-drawer body cooler for just over $6,000 in Florida.

“That’s a great deal and we need to move on it as soon as possible,” he said.

Commissioner David Strickland noted Tuesday, however, there should be money in the Coroner’s budget that’s already being used for body storage.

“If they were paying $75 for rental then I’m thinking it might be a little bit less that we would actually have to come up with instead of the $6,000 or whatever the total was,” he said.

Commissioner Jeff Jacques agreed and said the county should move forward with the purchase.

“It’s obvious there’s money in their budget since that is a re-occuring activity,” he said. “So I have no problem supporting the purchase of the cooler with the funds requested, minus the monies that remain in the budget that they normally would have to utilize for transport and storage.”

Jacques noted there could also be other monies available from savings the county has realized on the cost of utilities.

The Coroner’s budget for FY14 is $31,548.  Commissioner Clint Harper asked for the exact figures regarding what the Coronor pays per year for body storage.  He asked to see thosse figures at their regular meeting next month.

The new body cooler will be located at Ty Cobb Regional Medical Center in Lavonia.  Hospital CEO Greg Hearn has offered space for the cooler rent-free.