County finds $1.05M omission for sheriff retiree medical; staff to propose budget amendment

During the June 1 strategic planning meeting, county budget staff reported a $1.05 million discrepancy in the sheriff's operating expense totals caused by a formula error when data moved from the adaptive planning system into the final adopted figures. The omitted line item covers retiree medical and dental supplements.

Budget staff said they discovered the issue while reconciling detailed operating sheets and noted the adopted budget on the right side of the report was $66.2 million versus an accumulated total of about $67.3 million when all sheets were summed. Staff presented a line-by-line review that flagged the two missing entries (medical retirees totaling $1.05 million) and said formulas did not bring those rows through to the final total.

Commissioners asked whether the $1.05 million would necessarily be spent next year or whether current-year actuals could be lower; staff reported about $370,000 had been spent through May and projected the full-year trend to roughly $900,000, and recommended adjusting the budget to reflect more realistic actuals. "Let us look... we may not have to do the full budget," a commissioner said, referring to the projection.

Next steps: staff will calculate final actuals through additional reconciliation, present a budget amendment to reflect the updated liability, and incorporate the change into upcoming 11-month reporting so the 2027 target budget work reflects corrected numbers.