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Though the budget process is nearly finished, Del Norte County’s sheriff is expected to bring a proposed restructure of his department to the Board of Supervisors for consideration.

Before Board Chairman Dean Wilson opened the 14-day public hearing process ahead of adopting the 2024-25 budget, District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short asked about the sheriff’s proposal, which was presented to an ad-hoc committee in January.

Wilson, who represents District 5, and his District 3 colleague Chris Howard urged the rest of the Board to wait on the outcome of a compensation and structural analysis before deciding whether the sheriff’s office should be restructured. But Sheriff Garrett Scott pushed back on their assertion that he and his staff could wait for the study to be finished.

“We don’t have deputies on the street,” the sheriff told county supervisors on Tuesday. “And if we push the pay issues down the road five [or] six months and it takes me another year to hire, the community continues to suffer. I have so many people from every one of your districts calling me, mad at me because we don’t have any deputies.”

In a conversation with the Wild Rivers Outpost on Thursday, Scott said he proposed eliminating positions from both the field operations side and the corrections side of his office and using the savings to increase salaries in an effort to fill the remaining positions.

The field operations side of the sheriff’s office consists of court bailiffs and patrol deputies who also function as deputy coroners. Scott said his patrol deputies respond to roughly 325-330 deaths in Del Norte each year.

According to the sheriff, if three positions were eliminated from the field operations side and three were cut from the corrections side, he could boost salaries by 15 percent. If the Board of Supervisors agreed to eliminating two from each side, he said could boost salaries by 10 percent.

“They’re currently vacant staff positions that have not been filled in years,” Scott said. “The conversations kind of went towards that the county was in negotiations with the Sheriffs Employee Association and we really should wait for the outcome of that. And so I did wait for the outcome of that. I think there was effort from a county standpoint, but the reality … what was negotiated in my opinion, it’s not going to make enough of a difference to match what’s going on with the current industry standard in salaries of law enforcement.”

Out of 77 total positions in his office, there are roughly 22 vacancies. According to Scott, those vacancies include two vacant captain positions, seven patrol deputies, six correctional deputies, three corrections technicians and four court bailiffs.

One patrol deputy is still in the academy and two are in the DNSO's field training program, Scott told the Outpost.

“As far as boots on the ground, we’re eight down now,” he said.

Scott has made an effort to recruit locals to his office since he was appointed sheriff in 2022. Morale was low at the time. Former sheriff Erik Apperson had left abruptly a year prior and his successor, Randy Waltz, resigned after pleading no contest to election fraud charges. Some employees retired and others decided they needed to move on, Scott said.

After getting settled into his new position, Scott said he used the salary savings from the vacant positions in his office to sponsor local recruits through the police academy.

But Del Norte County is currently competing with other communities who are offering higher pay for new recruits. For example, in Tehama County, a deputy 1 at Step A makes $33.43 per hour, Scott said. In Mendocino, the same position is paid $40.54 per hour, according to the sheriff.

In Del Norte County, a deputy fresh out of the academy starts at $26.61 per hour, Scott said.

Meanwhile, starting salary for a corrections deputy in Del Norte County is $22.72. Compare that with Tehama where corrections officers start at $27.43, Mendocino where the starting salary is $27.95 and Siskiyou County, which is about $24 per hour, according to Scott.

Scott also pointed out that his colleagues in other counties are having the same conversation with their Board of Supervisors that he is having.

The idea he pitched to the ad-hoc committee in January to cut a handful of vacant positions in an effort to increase salaries overall is something that the Lake County sheriff had proposed about a year and a half ago, Scott said.

“I talked to one of their staff members yesterday and they are near full staff now,” the sheriff told the Outpost on Thursday.

At Tuesday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting, District 4 representative Joey Borges asked Scott about a recent Board action to allow the sheriff to recruit at a higher step on the salary scale — a Step C rather than a Step A.

Scott referred to that action as a tool that helps him to hire more experienced deputies without having to go to the Board of Supervisors for approval. But it doesn’t help him hire new recruits.

“If I hire someone that just got out of the police academy at a Step C and there’s someone that has [put in] the amount of time to make the Step C, that’s where you start your morale problems,” he said. “And so I can’t do that. How do I hire somebody right out of the academy at a Step C when I have Bs and new Cs in my department already that have earned that?”

According to District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey, Scott presented his proposal to restructure the sheriff’s office to the ad-hoc committee on Jan. 12. That committee consisted of her, Wilson, County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez and Auditor-Controller Clinton Schaad.

The ad-hoc committee met again for about two hours on Jan. 16, however after hitting a crossroads had not met since then, Starkey said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Starkey told Short she was in favor of the sheriff’s proposal. But she asked Wilson to speak to why the proposal wasn’t brought before the full Board.

Wilson, who was sheriff for about 12 years until Apperson defeated him in 2014, said the sheriff’s proposal was still under consideration, as is other ways of addressing hiring and retention in the sheriff’s office. But, “a lot of that is going to be re-looked at especially in light of the comp study that is coming up,” Wilson said.

Before Scott addressed the Board, Wilson said the sheriff was in favor of waiting on the compensation analysis.

“Those have been ongoing discussions that we’ve had and the timing is the only difference between whether we bring these things at this point or later,” Wilson said. “It’s not a matter of not doing it. It’s just a matter of doing it when we have the information.”

According to Lopez, however, the sheriff’s proposal wasn’t brought before the full Board of Supervisors because the ad-hoc committee hadn’t met for six months.

“We all agreed in the ad-hoc committee to keep things as status quo, which is why it wasn’t brought forward to the whole board,” he said. “I wasn’t aware we were actually still in the middle of discussing these things. We discussed other things with the sheriff, which you’ll see there are several changes to his staffing in the recommended budget, which was discussed during the budget process. But I’m open to [having these] conversations again.”

Lopez also noted that changes to salaries and wages will be subject to negotiation since “we’re talking about a represented bargaining group, the Sheriff’s Employees Association.”

The sheriff can bring his plan forward, Lopez said, but the Board can’t change wages without those negotiations taking place.

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