Cochise County supervisors consider reversing Sierra Vista facility swap to cover $667,000 jail funding gap

Miss Gilman, a county staff member presenting jail district budget details to the Cochise County Board of Supervisors on May 23, said the jail district faces an additional funding need of $667,242 for the coming fiscal year.

The shortfall reflects a maintenance-of-effort (MOE) transfer the county is statutorily required to make plus other revenues. "Bottom line, we need additional funding, in order to meet these funding requests of $667,242," Miss Gilman said during the work session. She told supervisors the MOE line is currently $6,700,000, other revenue sources total about $351,000, and total revenues were about $7,000,000 against expenses of about $7,400,000 before the discretionary funding requests.

The sheriff's office submitted a set of discretionary requests that the county summarized as about $288,000, including a salary adjustment request of roughly $213,000 to cover wage increases for detention and jail staff, a $40,000 increase for part-time detention officers to reduce overtime, and operational increases in jail medical…