A few months ago, the Sheriff’s Office adopted a new $464 million budget for the current year.
It wasn’t an
easy process.
As you know,
ongoing economic problems have hurt local tax revenues and forced all county
agencies, including the Sheriff’s Office, to reduce costs. At the same time,
demand for public safety services has gone up because of population growth in
Palm Beach County over the past decade.
Making matters
even harder, county administrators had asked my agency to make even deeper cuts
in our staffing and programs because we’re perceived as being a major expense
to the county’s operating budget.
That’s not the
case.
The Sheriff’s
Office budget includes services that we aren’t required to administer. Those
services are: running the county’s jails, securing the courthouses, operating
the crime lab, and managing school crossing guards. The costs to run them: $151
million this year. The county is responsible for providing them, not the Sheriff’s
Office. We’ve managed these services for decades simply because they are
natural functions of my agency. In fact, we’ve managed them at a bargain price
compared to what it would cost the county to run them separately as county
departments.
My agency is
an independent organization under the law, and I’m mainly responsible for law
enforcement, making sure our county is secure. I know there’s a lot of pressure
in government to reduce spending, but I’m not going to make detrimental cuts to
law enforcement based on wrong assumptions about my agency’s core
responsibilities.
Rest assured, your
safety is my top priority.
Despite the
cuts, we have kept in place all of our key resources to respond to emergency
calls and fight major crime. Our specialized investigators are working to lock
up gang leaders and end their destructive crime sprees. Other detectives are closing open-air drug
markets near rogue pain clinics and investigating doctors, nurses and
pharmacists who enable doctor shopping and other unlawful acts.
As we’ve made
our county safer, I have directed my staff to insure that fiscal responsibility
is integral to all operational decisions. In recent years, we have held off on
buying new vehicles to replace old ones. We have slashed overtime pay. We’ve
also become more aggressive in pursuing state and federal grant dollars.
In addition,
with 4,000 employees, including 2,200 deputies, our staffing levels have not
changed significantly since 2007, and I have directed my staff to insure we
hold that line. I am also continuing to reduce our upper management staff,
which is at the lowest level in more than 10 years, saving the agency millions
in personnel costs.
For as long as
the economic problems continue, my staff will be evaluating programs and paring
down costs. But I’m not going to accept orders to trim expenses because of
wrong perceptions about my agency. I won’t let anything stand in the way of us providing
the highest level of law enforcement for the safety of our citizens.
