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Lincoln County trims sheriff request, reruns levy after levy-sheet error
Summary
County officials cut $556,000 from the sheriff's proposed budget, identified an erroneous levy entry in county financial software and agreed to rerun levy calculations; the changes reduce the projected mills and narrow a multi-million-dollar deficit, officials said.
Lincoln County commissioners and staff agreed on targeted reductions to the sheriff's proposed budget and corrected a levy-sheet error on Tuesday as they try to close a roughly $2 million shortfall in the general fund.
At a work session, county and sheriff's office representatives said they would remove $556,000 from the sheriff's submission by dropping a $300,000 vehicles request and a $256,000 radios line. "We got to do some crunching, gentlemen. We are way way over on our liability here," said the sheriff's office representative during the discussion. The office also acknowledged a 1% detention pay adjustment applied to employees who later moved to patrol, a cost the department had not previously budgeted.
Officials said they will absorb some unanticipated detention-pay costs in the current year and rely on vacancy savings and other offsets while re-evaluating next year's requests. The sheriff's representative noted that the state has begun covering some mental-health detainee costs: "Yes. Yep. So actually uh October one I think is when that started." That revenue shift is expected to modestly improve detention projections but staff cautioned that grant and task-force funding remain uncertain.
Finance staff discovered that new levy numbers had not been entered into the county's Black Mountain financial system and identified an earlier, incorrect levy figure; correcting that input and applying the sheriff and library changes will materially lower the county's mills. County staff said corrections so far have reduced the projected levy rate from about 11.06 mills to roughly 10.37 mills after the adjustments and that they would run an updated levy sheet later the same day.
Commissioners pressed the sheriff's office on staffing and retention. The sheriff's team said the department remains short one detention officer and flagged two upcoming retirements that will affect costs. Officials also discussed possible revenue from a planned van program and federal appropriations for equipment such as body scanners. Statewide changes to the radio/console system were raised as another potential cost-saving avenue if the new state operator assumes console responsibilities.
The work session concluded with staff estimating that, after the agreed changes and investment interest earmarked for wages, the county's remaining general-fund shortfall would be about $1.47 million. County staff said they will rerun the levy sheet with the updated numbers and return with final figures to guide further decisions.
What happens next: Finance staff will enter the agreed changes into Black Mountain, rerun the levy calculations and report back with updated deficit and mill-rate figures.
