County asks sheriff to cut budget
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Taxpayers of Santa Rosa County do not want law enforcement cut back during the county commission budget process for next year. That's what Commission Chairman Tom Stewart told his board that his personal flood of emails and phone calls is telling him.

But cutbacks in the sheriff department are what they are going to get, just to stay at the same budget level for that department as last year.

And that's not the budget the sheriff says he needs.

Santa Rosa County Sheriff Wendall Hall originally came to the county commission with a budget request for next year of just over $34 million. The county staff had made up their overall budget and left the sheriff at what his budget was for the last fiscal year, which was $30,948,238. So the sheriff went back to his sharp pencil, but says he honestly needs about half a million dollars more than that to operate next year, due to rising costs of factors he has no control over like insurance. He is asking for a budget of $31.5 million.

But commissioners still insist they do not have any more money than the $30 million plus budget of last year, so the sheriff will have to find a way to cut more. The sheriff instead is trying to find a way to raise more money.

"Because of what Tallahassee is doing to us this year, we have to cut over $2- million from our overall budget for the county," Chairman Tom Stewart explained. "And we have left you harmless, sheriff, by giving you exactly the same budget as last year and not asking you to cut any from that. We have asked some other county departments to cut as much as 10 percent. We just don't have the money to give you more."

Sheriff Hall reported that currently the sheriff's department employs 425 people, with 180 of those being sworn officers. He has 89 correction officers, and 15 court security as well as 141 support personnel.

To just get down to the almost $31 million that he is asking from his original request of $34 million-plus he said he has to cut 11 positions, and also cut out using all the students they had been using and paying in the past few years to help with clerical work.

"We have also dangerously cut our overtime this year," Sheriff Hall said. "Because of the work we do, there is overtime. We cannot be in the middle of a case and say 'sorry Mr. Jones, we cannot investigate your sexual assault anymore because I am into overtime.' But just to get down to the request I have before you, I am again cutting back dangerously on projections for overtime money."

There are also cuts in training, retirement buy out money, computer replacement, and vehicles.

"We usually replace a vehicle when it gets about 145,000 miles on them, but for next year we will not be able to do that," Hall said, adding he would cut 12 vehicles he had planned to purchase.

The budget he is asking for does not add a lot of material items to the department, but just keeps in place what he has in personnel and supply, he said. The culprit is fixed mandated costs, like built in Civil Service pay raises and rising insurance costs. Currently the sheriff department pays $263 per person a month for the employee only insurance and gives a family insurance subsidy of $433 per family per month, at an annual cost of just over $2.5 million a year to the department. And that cost is going up each year.

County Commissioner Gordon Goodin of Navarre said the commission may need to revisit the idea of offering the family insurance subsidy.

"The private sector is moving away from such subsidies too because it is just too costly," Goodin said.

Goodin also said there might be an area of savings if the sheriff department and the county combined dispatch services, since they both use separate dispatchers. The sheriff said he had thought that was a good idea when it was first raised months ago.

Sheriff Hall said if the county commission insists on his budget going back to last year's levels, there will need to lay off eight more civilian positions, and six more sworn officers. "There is nothing left in capital outlay to cut," he said.

The sheriff said if the Santa Rosa County School Board can pick up the entire cost of school resource officers for next school year, that will be a large chunk of money he can place back into his budget to bring him closer to his requested numbers. And he is working on a plan involving federal prisoner housing which would bring in over $350,000 which would be close to making up the difference if combined with the resource officer monies.