Teton County officials and city leaders spent a meeting-length discussion weighing how to pay for additional law-enforcement staffing and related services, with no formal vote taken.

The discussion focused on a staffing request for the sheriff’s office — participants said the office is seeking nine additional deputies — and a range of possible revenue options, including a local-option lodging/food tax, impact fees on new development, changes to property-tax levies and lobbying at the state level for a revised 911 fee. City leaders pressed for data showing where stops and arrests occur and warned against “double taxing” small city residents to cover countywide sheriff costs.

Why it matters: the debate affects how Teton County’s public-safety budget is shared across small resort cities and unincorporated areas, and could change whether city property owners or visitors bear more of the cost for deputies, dispatch and related services.

Officials said the sheriff’s department has documented coverage and overtime issues tied to current call volumes and service demands across the valley’s cities and county roads. Participants compared budgets from other jurisdictions during the discussion: one participant referenced an $84.5 million budget for a larger jurisdiction and another cited a $2.2 million police department budget for a small city elsewhere, to illustrate scale differences. Participants also referenced a previously proposed change to 911 funding that had been discussed in the state legislature and was identified in the transcript as tied to roughly $507,000 in potential funding depending on legislative outcomes.

City leaders raised equity concerns. The mayor of Driggs (unnamed in the transcript) urged collaboration and said residents of small cities should not be asked to shoulder disproportionate increases in property tax because many incidents occur in commercial areas or transit corridors that attract nonresidents and visitors. City officials discussed using a local-option tax — which must be approved by voters and would apply only inside a given city — to raise money for services, but they noted state law and the stance of resort-city coalitions could limit eligibility and political viability.

Several participants described options under consideration, without formal action: (1) seek voter approval in cities for local-option tax measures to direct revenue toward public safety and related county services; (2) collect impact fees on new development to mitigate growth-related service demands, with cities collecting on behalf of the county in some proposals; (3) lobby the state during the legislative session for revised fee or levy authority such as changes to the 911 fee; and (4) create non-deputy options to handle lower-risk tasks now consuming deputy overtime (for example, separate transit or animal-control staffing), though participants said those workarounds are limited when the sheriff’s office is short-staffed.

No formal decisions or ordinances were adopted during the meeting. Instead, one participant proposed next steps: present data and requests at upcoming city budget sessions, and convene an advisory task force or joint committee of county and city representatives to refine options and collect cost and coverage data for use before any ballot measures or budgetary decisions.

Meeting participants repeatedly asked for clearer data on where incidents occur (within city limits versus county roads or highways), how many additional deputies are required to provide dedicated city coverage, and revenue estimates tied to each funding option. Those data requests were identified as prerequisites for any ballot language or intergovernmental agreement.

The discussion concluded with agreement to continue coordinated work: officials will schedule presentations at upcoming budget sessions, collect and present incident-location and cost data, and develop a proposed advisory task force to return recommendations to city councils and the county commission. No timetable for formal proposals or ballot measures was set in the transcript.