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Committee reviews sheriff’s staffing, recruitment spending and overtime accounting
Summary
Committee members and sheriff’s office representatives discussed jail staffing levels, recruitment efforts including a proposed $30,000 training/advertising match, use of billboards via Lamar, and a discrepancy between budgeted and available overtime funds in the LIT account.
Vanderburgh County’s Personnel Finance Committee spent part of its meeting examining staffing and recruitment for the sheriff’s office, recruitment and training proposals, and a discrepancy in overtime budgeting for the jail.
Mister Sugarman, answering for the sheriff’s office, reported staffing and hiring details for the jail and deputies. He said the jail had 15 open positions and that the department had sent two hires to merit deputy positions; the department had eight conditional offers outstanding for open jail positions. Sugarman said he anticipated several upcoming retirements among deputies. The committee praised recent progress in reducing vacancy counts from earlier years.
The sheriff’s office requested a $30,000 allocation for recruitment and training; Sugarman said that amount would be matched with $30,000 from the sheriff's commissary account. Sugarman described a recruitment model that uses billboard advertising and said the sheriff’s office has been working with Lamar; he identified John Mutrell as a contact at the billboard vendor. "We've had that big push for the CEOs with the billboards campaign, and it's made a tremendous difference," Sugarman said, adding the department planned a similar push for deputy recruitment.
Committee members asked for a more complete compensation comparison that includes pay and benefits so commissioners could evaluate recruiting competitiveness against state police and other local agencies. Sugarman said the county uses a local police academy (Southwest Academy, through the Evansville Police Department) that runs 16 weeks; the county had previously sent recruits to Plainfield.
The committee also addressed a budget discrepancy in the Local Income Tax (LIT) account for jail overtime. Committee members noted the adopted budget included approximately $66,000 for overtime but the current account showed $10,000. Sugarman explained that overtime had accumulated in part because infrastructure upgrades (door and camera systems) required extra staffing while systems were being upgraded; those staffing adjustments raised overtime temporarily. The committee asked legal and finance staff (Regan) to reconcile the adopted budget, the requested amount and the current LIT account balance before the next council meeting.
Other routine items included cleaning up salary lines for reclassified clerk positions after the budget adoption; staff described those as adjustments to make lines reflect reclassification decisions.
Votes at a glance: the only recorded committee motion in the transcript was a procedural motion to adjourn, which was moved and seconded and carried (no formal roll-call vote transcripted). The committee also reminded members of the county council meeting scheduled for April 2 at 3 p.m.
The committee directed sheriff’s staff and finance to provide a full compensation and benefits comparison and to reconcile overtime/LIT account figures before further appropriation requests are considered.
