Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Tuesday, Sept. 24 @ 4:08 p.m.
Del Norte's Sheriff Spells Out Restructuring Proposal For Supervisors, Says The Effort Will Allow For More Competitive Salaries
Del Norte County Sheriff Garrett Scott on Tuesday proposed eliminating positions in his office in an effort to boost salaries and recruit more staff. | Screenshot
Previously:
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Noting that two years ago they pledged to support their then-new sheriff any way they could, Del Norte County supervisors Valerie Starkey and Darrin Short urged their colleagues to consider his proposal to freeze vacant positions in an effort to make salaries more competitive.
Short, who represents District 1, rattled off a list of counties that have taken similar steps. He acknowledged his colleagues’ decision give sheriff’s deputies raises back in 2020, but, he said, “we can see now that is not near enough.”
“Jack Garamendi from Calaveras County said they did basically the same thing [to] significantly raise wages and they are fully staffed right now. They’re about 36 percent higher than Del Norte County currently,” Short told his colleagues Tuesday. “Daron McDaniel from Merced said they have raised wages and they’re not fully staffed, but they’re not seeing the people leave like they used to. And Supervisor Bradford from Yuba County also said they raised wages and are fully staffed, and they are 31 percent higher than we are. I wanted to illustrate the point there are other counties that are doing this and they’re finding successes.”
Del Norte County supervisors unanimously directed County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez and Auditor-Controller Clinton Schaad to work with Scott and bring a recommendation back to to the Board.
Lopez told supervisors that he had met with the sheriff and had been developing a plan since the ad-hoc committee heard Scott’s proposal back in January. Lopez said the two plans aren’t drastically different. The CAO said he’s worried about salary compaction, but that would be an issue regardless of whether the sheriff agrees with the plan.
“The main decision is do we eliminate [positions] or do we freeze them and at what point do we look at re-filling them,” he said. “I’m not on either side of the fence. It really is up to the Board.”
The Board’s direction a departure from their meeting two weeks ago where Chairman Dean Wilson and his District 3 colleague, Chris Howard, said they wanted to wait until the outcome of a compensation study before approving the restructuring of the sheriff’s office.
On Tuesday, Howard said Scott must have agreed with an ad-hoc committee and the county budget team earlier in the year to not move forward with the proposed restructuring. The District 3 Supervisor asked Scott what had changed since then.
Sheriff Scott's presentation included the number of vacant deputy positions his office is currently dealing with. | Screenshot
Scott said he agreed to wait on bringing his proposal to freeze and eliminate salaries in an effort to increase pay for the rest of the staff until negotiations with the Sheriff’s Employees Association over salaries were concluded. He said he didn’t agree to wait on the outcome of the compensation study.
Scott noted that evolving nature of law enforcement, particularly with salaries in other communities, often puts Del Norte County behind. He also reiterated for District 4 Supervisor Joey Borges, who asked the question a second time, that hiring a new recruit at a higher salary step, Step C, would tank morale for other employees he hired at a lower salary step.
“If I hired someone right out of the academy at Step C and I have 16 [Step] Bs that have worked at my office for two years, what kind of morale effect will you have there?” Scott asked Borges. “So I will not use it because it’s not effective.”
Hiring at a higher step on the salary schedule is effective for recruiting more experienced deputies, Scott said, but they’re not applying for positions.
According to Scott’s presentation, there are 10 vacancies out of a total of 33 positions in the patrol division, which includes dispatchers. In the jail, nine positions are vacant out of a total of 30 and in the courthouse there are three vacancies out of a total of four bailiff positions.
The hiring process can take about a year and a half before “boots are on the ground,” Scott said. This process includes written examinations and oral interviews, which take about two to three weeks to schedule. California Peace Officer Standards and Training-certified background checks are conducted. These take investigators about 40 hours to complete, Scott said.
The sheriff proposes freezing three deputy positions in the patrol division. This will enable him to boost the starting salary for a Deputy 1 position from $26.61 per hour to $30.81 per hour. The starting salary for a patrol sergeant would increase from $34.82 per hour to $40.30.
According to Scott, freezing those positions would save the county about $38,452. Eliminating them instead of freezing them would save Del Norte County $115,542, according to the sheriff.
Lopez said the additional savings from eliminating positions is due to the county not having to pay for health insurance and other benefits.
In his presentation, Scott noted that Del Norte’s neighboring counties all paid a higher starting wage for Deputy 1 positions with Humboldt County coming in at $28.19 per hour. A patrol sergeant’s starting salary in Humboldt County is $35.99, according to Scott’s presentation.
There are a number of vacancies in the jail and at the courthouse as well, Scott said. | Screenshot
On the jail side, Scott proposed freezing one corrections officer position and eliminating another. He also proposed eliminating a vacant corrections tech position. Doing this would increase the starting salary for a corrections deputy from $22.72 per hour to $25.04 per hour. Corrections sergeants in Del Norte County would start at $31.20 instead of the current $28.29, according to Scott’s proposal.
Freezing and eliminating those positions would be an increase to the Del Norte County budget of about $3,540, Scott said.
Scott said he worries that the loss in staff and the difficulty in recruiting more will hinder his office’s ability to respond to public safety concerns. He mentioned concerns regarding a growing homeless population and said he can’t offer much help to move them along.
Meanwhile, the sheriff’s office is Constitutionally mandated to operate the jail and to provide court bailiffs and civil services.
“You got constituents that want help and they don’t feel safe and when they don’t feel safe it becomes an emergency,” he said. “And I don’t mean that we’re going to fix this and be able to respond to everyone in the whole world. But for emergency situations when I’ve got two deputies on, or one, which is quite often, how do we get to these major incidents?”
The sheriff said if his jail staff dwindles further, he’ll have to reduce the inmate population. Freezing or eliminating those positions would put “boots on the ground,” Scott said.
He added that if the Board of Supervisors doesn’t support his proposal, they can use Measure R tax revenue to try to boost staff.
“I think there’s money to do this without freezing [positions],” Scott said. “This is my offer because I see it as that important.”
According to Starkey, who said she attended a Measure R Oversight Committee meeting, there is a fund balance in Measure R of $4 million.
Voters in 2020 approved the 1 percent sales tax measure with the understanding that those dollars would be used to boost public safety, road maintenance and pothole repair and to address blight, public nuisances and to maintain infrastructure.
The tax measure survived a repeal attempt in 2022.
Starkey urged her colleagues to take the sheriff’s proposal seriously and to live up to the promise they made when they appointed him to the position in May 2022.
“He’s not coming with his hand out,” she said. “He’s saying, ‘hey, this will be a zero exchange here. I’ll save you $115,000 on the patrol side.’ It’ll cost you $3,500 on the jail side, but when we appointed Sheriff Scott, this board sat here and said, ‘We would do everything we can to support you.’ I believe the time is now.”
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