Crook County discusses sheriff staffing levels, courthouse security and an interactive budget tool

Good afternoon, Crook County commissioners met in a special public session Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, to continue a follow-up discussion on core services for the sheriff's office, including patrol, the jail, courthouse security and probation staffing. Will Van Vactor, Crook County manager, and staff reviewed tables that map full-time-equivalent (FTE) counts and personnel costs across “ideal,” “current,” “critical” and statutory minimum service levels and demonstrated an Excel tool that models how different mixes would fit the county budget.

The conversation matters because commissioners must balance a fixed county budget against state-mandated duties and volatile state funding for probation. The sheriff's office provided recent operational counts — including highway responses and court-security staffing — that officials said will be used to argue for more state support and to inform the county's upcoming budget choices.

County manager Will Van Vactor framed the session as a technical follow-up to a Sept. 29 special meeting and emphasized the tool's purpose. "This is truly just a tool. It isn't meant to say you have to be at this level or you're the county's only funding things at this level for next year," he said, adding that the spreadsheet lets commissioners see how FTE and cost mixes affect the overall budget.

Sheriff John (last name not specified in the meeting record) and sheriff's staff supplied usage data the board requested. The sheriff's office reported it responded to incidents on state highways 685 times between Jan. 1 and Oct. 10, 2025; of those, 53 were crashes. The office also recorded 297 instances from Jan. 1 to Oct. 10 when an additional deputy was required for courthouse security. Sheriff John said those figures understate some large events: a recent high-profile trial required five deputies for two days, and that deployment was not reflected in the regular counts.

Sheriff John emphasized the county's operational responsibilities on state roadways. "We have to respond to those calls because those are also our citizens on the highway that, expect us to be there when they need us," he told the board, arguing that local response obligations persist even where state agencies also have jurisdiction.

Commissioners pressed staff on details and options. Commissioner Barney and others suggested the county track additional metrics (for example, CAD/CFS entries) and keep the statistics updated for use when seeking state reimbursements. Commissioners discussed hybrid staffing options between the named service levels rather than only selecting the pre-set categories shown in the spreadsheet.

Staff and the sheriff's office also discussed probation funding uncertainty. County staff noted recent policy changes have affected caseloads: decriminalization previously reduced supervision numbers, and increases tied to recriminalization are raising supervision counts again. Commissioners asked whether the state intends to repurpose probation funding for housing or other services; county staff said they had not heard of such a change.

Crystal Hughes, who helped assemble the spreadsheet, demonstrated that the model pulls FTE counts and salary data from the county budget and lets users toggle divisions between ideal, current, critical and statutory-minimum settings. Van Vactor and staff said the county will use the same core-services approach for other departments over the coming months and expects to return a consolidated package to the board in early 2026.

The meeting concluded without policy votes on staffing levels. A procedural motion to adjourn was made, seconded and approved. No formal allocations, ordinance changes or staffing decisions were made at the session; staff were directed to continue core-services work and to incorporate commissioner feedback into the budget-tooling and future presentations.

Looking ahead, staff flagged next steps: continue updating and refining the spreadsheet with more granular options (to allow adjustments between the preset categories), roll the core-services review through other county departments, and compile a final package for the board in early 2026. Commissioners also asked that the sheriff's office and county staff maintain the incident and courthouse-security statistics for use in state-level discussions about mandate funding.