Izard County (Arkansas) Veteran Service Office

What it is. An Arkansas county veterans service officer is employed by the county judge and paid from the Quorum Court's budget, trained and accredited through the Department of Veterans Affairs, and partly reimbursed by the State under section 20-81-106: one dollar for every two the county spends, up to $3,600 a year, or $4,800 in a county with more than 2,500 veterans, plus $500 a quarter each for VA accreditation and for access to VA's benefits system; see the Arkansas entry on the Department and county service officers. Help with a claim is free. Izard County's page: the officer "performs administrative work in advising Armed Forces Veterans and dependents of benefits available under federal, state, and local laws", helps complete and submit forms and gather documents and medical records, connects veterans with local help such as SSI, the housing authority, nursing homes and food pantries, and "When possible, visits Veterans and/or their surviving spouses in their homes or institutions, for claim assistance, when they are unable to visit the office in person." Who and when. The county's page names Joshua Morrison at 80 East Main (mail P.O. Box 327, Melbourne, AR 72556), 870-368-4717 or 870-793-8812, [email protected]: at the Izard County Courthouse on Tuesdays, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and at the Batesville office Monday and Wednesday to Friday. The Department of Veterans Affairs' county finder (last updated August 19, 2026) lists him at 80 E. Main St., Melbourne, (870) 368-4717, Tuesday 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. He is also Independence County's officer (192 E. Main Street, Batesville, 870-793-8812), so a veteran who cannot wait for a Tuesday can call or go there. Izard is in the Department's District 3, whose District Veterans Service Officer is Ric Bolton in Salem, (870) 253-9767. The County Judge, Eric Smith, is on 870-368-4328. The budget. Izard's 2026 operating budget gives the Veterans Service Office (1000-800) $15,235.00, almost all of it part-time salary ($14,000.00), the same as 2025, and books $7,600.00 of State reimbursement (line 1000-8709), the State's maximum for a county of Izard's size. The office's cost is the county's own, not a share of Independence's. The veterans court. The Sixteenth Judicial Circuit's administrative plan for 2020-21 said a Veterans Treatment Court, "an exceptional sub-set of the existing 16th Judicial Circuit Drug Court", had run since the Supreme Court approved it in October 2014, on the dates and at the places of the circuit's four drug courts. Its plan effective January 1, 2026 lists the Independence, Cleburne, Stone and Izard/Fulton drug courts and the juvenile drug courts but no veterans court, and the Judiciary's 2022 map does not shade the circuit; ask the drug court whether veterans are still taken as a separate track. The Izard/Fulton drug court sits every other Monday afternoon at the Izard County District Courtroom, 300 Circle Drive, Melbourne.