At a Saginaw County Board of Commissioners meeting, county officials discussed problems recruiting and integrating new deputies because criminal justice academy schedules and limited local staffing capacity make long lead times costly.

County leaders said candidates who need to wait months for academy classes remain on payroll while shadowing and receiving one-on-one mentoring; commissioners and the sheriff warned that long waits hurt patrol capacity and can increase overtime. Officials also described a trade-off between hiring a promising candidate who will wait for an academy seat and keeping sufficient active officers on patrol.

Meeting participants reported that the state academy operates only two session cycles a year and can enroll roughly 80 students per class, while applicant pools often exceed that number. Commissioners said that delayed academy entry can leave a newly hired officer at the back of a waiting list, in some cases extending the time before the county gets a fully certified officer by many months. The group noted the county must sometimes reimburse sending agencies when an officer leaves within five years of graduating another agency's academy.

Officials described existing strategies to reduce the delay's impact. The sheriff's office has hired lateral transfers and candidates with prior training where possible; the county also reported use of electronic monitoring for certain detainees and increased use of a program supervised by a newly named programs deputy to reduce jail population pressures. Commissioners said recruiting remains difficult because state and other agencies at times offer higher pay and different academy schedules.

Commissioners asked the sheriff and staff to continue searching for candidates with prior training, to weigh short-term operational impacts against long-term staffing gains, and to report back if additional budgetary pressures from overtime or mentoring requirements materialize.

Ending: Commissioners did not take a formal vote on new hiring policy at the meeting; they requested ongoing updates from the sheriff's office on candidate pipelines, reimbursement outcomes and academy scheduling effects.