Page County sheriff proposes pay strategy, requests staffing and equipment funding

Sheriff Charles McCallum told the Board of Supervisors that his department is struggling to recruit and retain deputies and jail staff and asked the county to reallocate limited budget dollars to address pay and staffing shortfalls.

"We are willing ... to take a 0% increase this year and next year if we can get the people that work for us some type of extra type of money," Sheriff Charles McCallum said, describing a plan in which he and Chief Deputy Bridal would freeze their raises so line deputies could receive larger increases.

McCallum said deputies' pay is lagging compared with surrounding counties and that low pay increases hiring, training and overtime costs. He told supervisors the department is currently short two deputies and two jailers and that overtime is already a large line item: "we're set at 43% of our budget on overtime," he said. He also described the jail work as demanding and often involving inmates with mental-health and substance-use issues, arguing stronger pay would reduce churn and training costs.

The sheriff outlined specific budget items and estimates discussed in the meeting: academy training costs of about $13,000 per recruit; replacement ballistic vests at roughly $1,200 each, replaced every five years; a request to budget $35,000 to put two deputies through training and academy; and higher fuel and vehicle costs. McCallum said the department is considering replacing some pickup trucks with pursuit-rated Dodge Durango SUVs for pursuit safety and better performance; he gave an upfitted-per-vehicle estimate in the discussion (transcript figure reported by the sheriff's office representatives as approximately $65,680 per fully upfitted vehicle, and compared with pickup costs of roughly $39,000 plus upfitting).

McCallum also described local contracts and revenues: the county contracts to provide policing hours to the City of Essex, which currently provides roughly 10–15 patrol hours per week and proposed selling the county a 2018 Dodge Durango. The sheriff said the city’s monthly payments would likely cover the purchase price in under a year depending on the agreed trade/price.

On jail operations, McCallum asked the board to consider a $1-an-hour pay bump for jailers plus whatever cost-of-living percentage supervisors ultimately approve. He said the county recently lost a jailer to another county for pay reasons and stressed that jail staffing shortfalls increase overtime and operational strain.

Information-technology and backup were raised as an immediate operational risk for the sheriff's office. McCallum and Tony (IT staff who is assisting with the new jail project) said the sheriff's office currently lacks an off-site backup for records and recommended at least nightly off-site backups. Tony said he had worked on solutions and believed the county could implement a backup solution that could be absorbed in current budgets or be done for less than the initial $9,000 estimate mentioned in the discussion.

Supervisors and other board members pressed for comparables and asked staff to compile surrounding-county salary schedules and dispatch/jailer pay to inform final numbers. The board chair said she would contact the state auditor about whether the proposed approach (freezing elected officials' pay in order to give raises to deputies) would comply with state rules before final action.

Why it matters: The sheriff framed the request as a personnel and public-safety issue: persistent vacancies, heavy overtime, training costs and recruitment challenges are driving the department to seek near-term budget changes to stabilize staffing and lower long-term costs.

Next steps: Supervisors asked staff to gather pay and schedule comparables from neighboring counties, to track the Essex contract vehicle proposal, and to report back; the chair said she had emailed the state auditor to check legal constraints on redistributing raises.