Hoping to fill major staffing gaps at Silverdale Detention Center, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office will boost the starting salary for corrections officers to $50,000 a year, funding the increase within the current budget by freezing up to 55 open positions.
"We have an immediate need in that jail," Sheriff Austin Garrett told county commissioners during their regular meeting Wednesday. "I've got a constitutional obligation to staff that jail, to protect those inmates and to also protect the men and women who work there doing an incredibly difficult job. You have to incentivize that both for recruitment and retention."
Garrett and Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp presented the plan to the County Commission during its regular meeting Wednesday. Because the Sheriff's Office is staying in its allocated budget for salaries, the action won't require a commission vote.
Wamp said one of his immediate concerns coming into office was safety at the facility. The pay increase will be one of the largest in the history of the sheriff's office, he said.
"What it will allow immediately, I think, is adequate hiring at the jail that ought to stabilize it," Wamp said. "You have mandatory overtime that is really cutting into the quality of life of many of our deputies, and my hope is that this will signal that the constitutional law enforcement agency here in this county is respected."
Wamp added that the financial outlook for the county "is not great."
"There's tough decisions ahead," he said. "We decided to move forward here because this is certainly a priority area of county government."
Garrett explained the plan and its rationale to the mayor and commissioners in a letter sent Monday, noting that an examination of comparative salaries in the area and across the state found that the office's starting pay for corrections and patrol deputies were lagging behind peer agencies.
Base salaries for sworn personnel will increase approximately 16%, with pay levels depending on whether they have been to the law enforcement academy and have peace officer standards and training certification. The starting salary for sworn corrections employees will increase to $50,000 -- or $24.04 an hour -- and the salary for sworn and certified employees will increase to $51,500 or $24.76 an hour. That will begin on Oct. 5.
According to a news release from the Sheriff's Office, all existing sworn and sworn-certified employees will be adjusted based on their years of service as defined in the office's pay matrix.
"I am aware that the increase in salaries for our sworn and certified sworn personnel will create additional pressures on the county's budget for FY 2024 and forward," Garrett wrote in his letter. "We will work with the mayor and the county commissioners in developing the FY 2024 budget to ensure that the growth in the Sheriff's Office's spending will remain within acceptable limits commensurate with projected growth in the county's available funds."
Garrett said Wednesday that his office would work with county leaders to fill those frozen positions over the next two to three budget cycles. Those vacancies are across the agency and include an open chief deputy position, a public information officer and some of the empty correctional officer positions.
There are currently about 110 vacancies out of the office's 540 budgeted positions, and Garrett has said he's specifically down about 70 people at the jail.
Garrett said the sheriff's office is returning millions of dollars to the commission in unused salary money every year, which should be redirected for retention and recruitment. He's constantly losing employees at Silverdale, where officers are regularly running 12-hour shifts, and he wants to treat the positions there as a profession rather than an entry level job.
"They do a tremendous job," he told the Times Free Press. "It's nerve wracking, they have families to go home to and they need that downtime and, right now, they're not getting it. And when that happens and they're stressed, it affects their health, their longevity."
In the current budget, Garrett said, the base salary for corrections officers is $43,000. Garrett estimated that the increase would place the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office at No. 2 across the state for starting salaries, behind Nashville's Davidson County.
County commissioners Wednesday applauded the change. Commissioner Greg Beck, D-North Brainerd, said he spent 10 years at the sheriff's department in corrections, where employees at the time made $16,000 a year.
"We had to come over here before the County Commission and fill this room up ... and ask for an increase in salary," Beck said. "We got an increase to $20,000. I don't think anybody up here understands what it is to have to babysit the worst of the worst. ... For many, many years those officers down there have had to endure that plus go out somewhere and get a part-time job to maintain their income levels."
Commissioner David Sharpe, D-Red Bank, thanked leaders at the Sheriff's Office for bringing the issue forward, noting that it was a conversation that came up during the previous budget planning process.
"We've been talking about this for quite some time," Sharpe said Wednesday. "We have, as you mentioned sheriff, 110 vacant positions. It seemed logical, I believe, that we would use that revenue to help enhance the pay package to better improve the lives of our sheriff's deputies and our ability help recruit and retain talent."
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6249. Follow him on Twitter @flavid_doyd.