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Sheriff urges higher pay and warns staffing, training and equipment cuts could slow response
Summary
Sheriff Williams asked commissioners to raise starting pay and restore equipment and operational funds, saying current pay lags neighboring counties and some line items were cut in the draft budget.
Sheriff Williams told the commission the sheriff's office needs higher starting salaries and restored operational funding to retain deputies and jailers and maintain response levels. Williams said deputies currently start at roughly $43,000 and jailers at about $40,000; he urged moving deputies toward a $50,000 starting salary and jailers toward $45,000 to better match neighboring jurisdictions such as Richmond and Columbia counties.
Williams outlined multiple operational line-item decreases in the draft recommendation shown against his request. He said equipment, repair and maintenance, supplies, uniforms, software and training lines were cut or reduced and warned those reductions could affect investigative capacity and response times. "If we're just not given the amount of money that we need ... we're effectively being told what we can and cannot do," he told commissioners.
He also pointed to specific technology and recurring needs: body-camera storage and licensing, investigative software subscriptions, docking stations and air-conditioning for some CID areas and a gun and drug vault. He supplied overall numbers for the sheriff’s office and detention center budgets and asked the board to give the office flexibility to retain salary funding in place.
The board agreed to provide sheriff’s staff a consolidated one-page comparison of requested versus recommended budget items. Commissioners did not take immediate action to change the recommended totals; further committee review and an updated spreadsheet were promised by county staff.
