Our County by Lynda Hopkins 5th District Supervisor - June 2017
It’s budget time at the County of Sonoma. Each year, our
Recently, our office was briefed on the Sheriff’s expenditure reductions in order to meet the increased staffing costs for his department. To be clear, the Sheriff’s Office is not receiving a cut in funding, but is experiencing an increase in costs due to higher salaries and benefits. In order to address this situation, the Sheriff’s office is recommending cuts to many essential services that the community relies on. The total proposed reduction in services amounts to $6.5 million.
In the same budget, the Sheriff’s Office has a line item for over $15 million in overtime pay for deputies and administrative staff. A lot of attention has been paid to the high overtime costs and resultant salaries for deputies. The highest paid employee last year was not the County Administrator, District Attorney, or the Sheriff – but rather a patrol deputy who clocked more than 44 hours per week, 52 weeks of the year in overtime. Think about that. Every week of every year working double shifts. That seems inhumane at the very least, but if you factor in that this deputy has to make life and death decisions and carries a firearm…well, you get my point. Providing a second staff position for this area would not only make sense, but it could also reduce costs.
$15 million dollars for overtime is 12.5% of payroll expenses. It is also 2.5 times the amount of increased expenses for the department. We are told that overtime is a necessary element of law enforcement, and that all agencies have overtime expenses. But is 12.5% of salaries normal? A survey of overtime expenses conducted by the San Diego Union-Tribune found that Riverside, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties averaged between 4.1 and 4.7% of payroll in overtime.
If staffing has been increased, as we have been told, a 50% reduction in overtime expense should be a goal. That would more than cover the increased costs in this budget, and would still be a very generous 6.25% of salaries.
Instead, the budget proposal recommends eliminating critical programs such as the Graffiti Abatement program (crucial to gang afflicted areas); Community Oriented Policing (which we all agree has a serious impact on street crime); closing report writing rooms in Roseland, Amarosa, and Mark West; reducing staffing for Sonoma Valley and the River area (which has had a petition drive to ask for MORE deputies to deal with the very real impacts of transients and drug abuse; reducing Mental Health staffing at the jail; reducing the Narcotics unit at a time when an opioid epidemic is sweeping the nation; eliminating the Gang Crimes Unit; and cutting the budget to the Chaplaincy program, which is run by volunteers. These are all reductions which will hurt the community that we serve – and they may well be avoidable through better staffing and reducing overtime costs.
As elected officials, both the Sheriff and the Board are servants of the community. We hope for a better working relationship and an honest conversation about the best way to reduce the impacts of increased salary expenses. This is essential if the community is to be served to the level that it deserves.
Budget hearings begin June 12. I invite you to attend and be part of the discussion as we make difficult decisions about balancing the budget while meeting community needs. Funding for the final phase of Andy’s Unity Park will be part of the discussions. How to best allocate the revenues from TOT (Transit Occupancy Tax) will be something of vital import to the Fifth District. Our district generates 44% of the total TOT tax, and some of this funding should go back to address community impacts along the coast and in the lower river. Roads, public safety, emergency services and water quality improvement are all areas which can benefit from TOT funding.
