To: Board of Supervisors
From: Sheriff
Agenda Section: Consent
Vote Requirement: Majority
SUBJECT:
title
Approval of an Exception to the Hiring Freeze to Hire 5.0 Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) for the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office (HCSO)
end
RECOMMENDATION(S):
Recommendation
That the Board of Supervisors:
1. Approve an exception to the hiring freeze to hire 5.0 FTEs in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023-24 for the following HCSO classifications:
a. 3.0 FTEs Correctional Deputy I/II (Class 0424)
b. 1.0 FTE Sheriff Deputy I/II (Class 0416)
c. 1.0 FTE Emergency Communications Dispatcher (Class 0128)
Body
SOURCE OF FUNDING:
General Fund and Measure Z
(1100-243, 1100-297)
DISCUSSION:
For the last four fiscal years, HCSO has had a gap in funding to fully staff its operations and has had to submit Additional Requests for General Fund Allocation (ARGFA) to avoid laying off essential staff, closing outstations, and/or cutting programs. The gap in funding is primarily due to the rising costs of insurance, worker's compensation, other county internal service fund charges, and inflation of services and supplies costs. HCSO also utilized staff vacancy savings to help cover the rising costs since on-going general fund allocation increases were not available.
In 2021, the Board of Supervisors approved substantial salary increases for all county staff. Departments were provided on-going general fund allocations to cover the increases, less a 10% cut to the salaries/benefits allocation. The logic was that on average departments had 10% salary savings that could be used to help fund the salary increases. However, for HCSO, the 10% salary savings had already been utilized to fund the above-mentioned cost increases. The 10% cut to the salaries/benefits allocation was a direct cut to HCSO's operational budget and substantially increased its on-going budget gap.
For FY2023-24 HCSO was faced with an $8.2M budget gap. In order to reduce its ARGFA request as much as pos...
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