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Broadwater County coroner presents sheriff's office budget and mill-levy impact
Summary
Nick Rausser, Broadwater Countye2s elected coroner, presented a sheriff's office budget overview at a public meeting and described how a proposed mill levy supports dispatch, detention, deputies and coroner services. He outlined recent service volumes, staffing and costs, and scheduled additional public presentations.
Nick Rausser, the elected coroner, told a small public meeting in Townsend that Broadwater County's sheriff's office relies on a mill levy to fund dispatch, deputies, the detention center and coroner services and urged residents to review a fact sheet and videos the office is sharing.
Rausser said the sheriff's office answered 17,357 calls for service last year and described rising case numbers and the cost of holding inmates in-county versus paying other counties to house them. He also walked the audience through the sheriff's offices personnel and operating budgets, recent incident videos, K-9 deployments and the county coroner's workload.
The presentation was billed as an informational overview ahead of a mill-levy question. Rausser said the current mill levy request could reach as high as 39.93 mills but that he planned to reduce the requested milling by 20% next year and explained what the levy would pay for if approved.
Rausser gave several data points about the offices workload and budget. He said calls for service totaled 17,357 last year and that the office handled about 613 cases (he compared that to roughly 480 two years earlier). The office recorded 79 DUIs last year and 34 domestic-violence calls, which Rausser characterized as among the most dangerous calls for law enforcement. He said the county jail typically holds about 31 inmates, a figure that fluctuates daily, and that seven to eight years ago the jail often held one or two inmates or sometimes none.
On costs, Rausser said housing 15 inmates in another county could run about $120 per inmate per day, which he estimated would be roughly $1,800 a day for 15 inmates, about $56,000 a month and roughly $670,000 a year. He said that sum would exceed the current detention budget and argued that closing the jail and paying outside beds would not be economical.
Rausser presented budget figures the office provided: total personnel costs of about $2.5 million and a total operating budget he described as about $3,255,000, leaving roughly $748,000 for nonwage operating expenses such as training, equipment, fuel and building maintenance. He identified detention wages at about $586,000 and dispatch/control costs at about $411,000. He said the records-management system costs about $40,000 a year and that the jail uses a paid system called Guardian that logs inmate checks and photos.
"If I lose the mill levy... I can't cut $748,000. So that means you gotta start going into, usually personnel," Rausser said, describing the trade-offs if the levy is not renewed. He provided an affordability example from the fact sheet: on the 39.93-mill figure, a $100,000 home would pay about $54 a year (about $0.15 a day); a $300,000 home about $161.72 a year (about $0.44 a day); a $600,000 home about $323.43 a year (about $0.89 a day).
Rausser described work done by dispatchers, detention staff and deputies using edited video clips from recent incidents, including a multiagency traffic fatality response, an active domestic call, DUI stops and vehicle pursuits. He noted the county has two certified drug- and patrol-trained K-9snamed Makai and Z0 in his presentationand showed examples of contraband recovered during traffic stops (methamphetamine, used syringes, a marijuana pipe and mushrooms, according to the presentation).
On coroner duties, Rausser said his office responds to deaths outside hospitals and investigates cause and manner of death (homicide, accident, suicide, natural). He said Broadwater County had 19 deaths last year; he reported five deaths so far this month and noted autopsies require transport to Billings and cost about $1,500 each.
Rausser said the mill levy helps pay for dispatchers (12-hour shifts handling emergency and nonemergency calls, paging fire and EMS and managing jail radio traffic), deputies, detention officers and coroner work. He scheduled additional public presentations and said the fact sheet and presentation material are available online and by request.
The meeting was informational; no formal vote or county action was recorded during the presentation. Rausser closed by inviting residents to upcoming sessions in Townsend and at Headwaters Livestock near Three Forks and offering to email the fact sheet to interested residents.
