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Colville, Washington |
Monday, January 5, 2009 |
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Sheriff’s department cautious about budget cuts |
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Wednesday, 22 October 2008 |
Meeting commissioner’s 10 percent budget reduction
could cause problems in the future, say department heads
By JAMIE HENNEMAN
S-E Staff Reporter
Nearly a month ago in an at¬tempt to shore up a $900,000 financial chasm in the 2009 county budget, the Stevens County Commis¬sioners made a request to all of the county de¬partment heads to reduce their 2009 budget projections by 10 per¬cent. Over the last few weeks, a further decline in reve¬nue has pushed that defi¬cit fig¬ure up to $1.2 million.
All of the county depart¬ments have had to make con¬siderable reductions in order to meet the 10 percent re¬quest, including cutting staff and redistributing work tasks among employees.
…‘the real cost may be higher than we want to pay…’
One department that has been particularly challenged is the Sheriff’s department that Sheriff Craig Thayer said has been “doing more with less on a shoestring budget” for some time.
“If we were to make a 10 per¬cent cut, we would lose eight to nine of our commis¬sioned offi¬cers, or essentially reduce the staff by one-third of its present level,” said Sheriff Thayer, not¬ing there is currently one sher¬iff’s dep¬uty per 1,209 people in Ste¬vens County.
“Although it seems a 10 per¬cent reduction in our de¬part¬ment could do a lot to balance the budget, the real cost to that may be a higher than we want to pay,” Sher¬iff Thayer warned.
The law enforcement de¬part¬ments of Stevens County make up around 70 percent of the budget on an annual ba¬sis, said Sheriff Thayer. Law enforcement includes the sheriff’s depart¬ment, superior court, district court and the county jail. The projected 2009 budget for the Sheriff’s department is $3.2 million.
Sheriff Thayer said that as one of the counties with the largest number of square miles in the state (2,481 miles), his department is al¬ready stretched to respond to the 11,956 calls for service that the emergency call center has received so far this year.
Times have changed
“Times have changed and the demographics of this county are changing. We used to be a strong natural re¬source-based economy with farms, forestry and mining. Those occupations helped to spread out the popu¬lation and seemed to make peo¬ple more likely to work out their dif¬ferences with their neigh¬bors,” said Sheriff Thayer. “But now we have what are closely developed communi¬ties with people living close together in areas like North¬port, Echo Val¬ley, Suncrest and Marble Valley. This means we have more calls related to people living closely together.”
For instance, the sheriff’s de¬partment has had 634 ani¬mal related calls in 2008, 361 of those pertaining to dog com¬plaints alone. These calls are some of the less severe that the department responds to, but Sheriff Thayer noted that these small situations can escalate into assaults, de¬struction of property and more severe crimes if they are ignored.
“If you don’t take care of the smaller items, the situa¬tion can escalate over time to major crimes,” he said. “That’s why making drastic cuts this year could only cause bigger prob¬lems in the future. Right now I get peo¬ple who call and would like us to do routine patrols in their area to help keep crime from happening in the first place. Often the comment I hear is that they only see a Sheriff’s car when it has its lights and si¬ren on and is headed to an emergency. That routine patrol, as well as responding to calls is what helps keep crimes under con¬trol.”
Some of the more serious crimes the department has re¬sponded to include domestic violence, child physical and sexual abuse, drug related in¬vestigations and homicides. In 2008 there have been 729 cases processed through the sheriff’s department, includ¬ing four homicides.
There are also 141 sex of¬fend¬ers living in the county, includ¬ing 110 level 1 offend¬ers and two level 3 offenders. However, Sheriff Thayer said these num¬bers are deceptive because Spo¬kane has become a “dumping ground” for sex offenders due to the fact many of the services related to their crimes are ac¬cessible there.
Tracking issues
“The problem is that those of¬fenders don’t stop and turn around at the Stevens County line--they are constantly moving around the area and that re¬quires a certain level of watch¬fulness and tracking,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Department tried to address these con¬cerns about sex offenders last year by way of a grant that allotted $84,935 to a desig¬nated sex-offender dep¬uty who could work specifically on tracking and updating regis¬trations on sex offend¬ers. But due to increased de¬mands and declining funding for the sher¬iff’s department, those grant dollars (which were somewhat fluid) had to go instead to keep a regular officer on staff.
“I understand we are in some hard times, but I have given up positions in the past that I have not recovered, which has in¬creased the over¬all workload,” said Thayer, noting that a few years ago he cancelled a cap¬tain’s position due to budget is¬sues that could have helped with ad¬ministrative and over¬sight work.
“At this point, the real gem that keeps us going is our vol¬unteers in the EMT and Team Rescue departments,” said Sheriff Thayer. “We cannot ex¬press how much we appreciate the people who volunteer their time in those areas and allow us to respond to a variety of emer¬gency situations.”
Undersheriff LaVonne Webb said that she feels this is really a time for the county and the public to “circle the wagons” and determine what the core services of the county are. “Al¬though as a county government we have done things in the past that are helpful to the commu¬nity, the county and the public really needs to decide what things need emphasized as es¬sentials,” she said.
Commissioners vary in opinion on law en¬forcement cuts
Stevens County Commis¬sioner Tony Delgado said he didn’t feel that the “10 per¬cent” request was meant to be followed all the way across the board.
“There are some depart¬ments where you might not be able to cut much, but there are other areas where you could cut more than 10 per¬cent,” said Delgado. “We are just trying to use com¬mon sense and to be fair to the public.”
Delgado said he also has con¬cerns about the safety of the community if the current num¬ber of deputies was cut.
“We already have a lot fewer people than we really need in law enforcement and if we cut officers during this hard eco¬nomic time, it could be a catas¬trophe because this is the situation where crime can go up,” he added.
County Commissioner Merrill Ott said that he was hoping for more con¬ciliatory moves from the Sheriff’s de¬partment that he feels is tak¬ing a “hardline” stance on the budget issue.
“We have made cuts in the rest of the courthouse, in¬cluding superior court, dis¬trict court and the prosecu¬tor’s office. Around 10-12 people have been laid off so far and when we are looking at a $1.2 million dollar short¬fall, no department can be exempt,” said Ott.
Ott said that even if there was a public desire for a “deputy on every doorstep,” t the county simply can’t pro¬vide that level of service.
“We can’t approve money we don’t have for a depart¬ment to spend. We are con¬tinuing to work on this issue, but we need to hear from the public what they think the priorities are,” he said.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 29 October 2008 )
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