Although numbers show the sheriff's office was nearly $700,000 over budget for the last fiscal year, Humboldt County Sheriff Ed Kilgore says the sheriff's office was actually under budget by approximately $122,000 if savings and adjustments made for salary negotiations are taken into account.
Kilgore said at last week's County Commission meeting he felt the subject needed attention because of discussion on local forums that indicated the sheriff's office was "an inordinate amount of funding over in the last fiscal year's budget."
Kilgore cited negotiations that came to an end after the budget was submitted to the state as the reason behind the seeming overrun.
"Most years we can augment before filing with the state," he said. "This year it didn't happen."
He said the sheriff's office aims to be as accurate as possible but it's not always possible to predict salary increases in time to adjust the budget. Had contracts been finalized prior to or during budget building, those increases would have been factored into the budget, he said.
When salary increases do occur, however, they have to be accounted for somewhere, Kilgore said. This past fiscal year negotiations ended in June, he said, which was past the deadline for budget submission to the state.
"It was a negotiation process, not simply a fiscal mismanagement through this office," he said.
Kilgore broke down the budget augmentations for the previous fiscal year by department:
• The sheriff's office salary budget was increased by $215,000 and the benefits budget by $120,000 (there was also an additional $40,000 added to the budget that will be reimbursed through a grant).
• The detention center salary budget was increased by $92,000 and the benefits budget by $85,000.
• The task force salary budget was increased by $3,000 and the benefits budget by $2,000.
The total increase in the budget as a result of negotiations was $557,000, Kilgore said. There were unexpected savings totaling $236,500 in the dispatch area of the budget. Kilgore attributed that to the being understaffed and technical issues with the enhanced 911 system that led to a lapse in billing.
Although numbers show the sheriff's office budget was increased by $671,481, taking into account the salary adjustments and dispatch savings puts the office over $100,000 under budget, according to Kilgore.
Commissioner Jim French said he thinks its important to clarify those discrepancies and explain the budget because just reporting numbers doesn't always tell the whole story.
"It's important that we are very clear as to where monies came from, are going and the justification," he said.
Nobody has the ability to look through a crystal ball, he said, and corrections do have to happen sometimes.
Kilgore said although this adjustment wasn't typical, it wasn't through any fault of his office.
"All of our departments as a whole in this county are pretty responsible," Kilgore said.[[In-content Ad]]
