Commissioners approve budget of $255 million

With little fanfare, Spokane County commissioners passed a $255.8 million budget Monday after an hourlong hearing.

Of that total, $122.2 million will go to the sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices, parks, and other general fund departments. The remaining money will be spent on other funds like county roads and utilities.

Only a handful of people testified, and in the end, commissioners unanimously decided not to make any changes to the proposed budget.

At the urging of Ozzie Knezovich, president of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputies Association, commissioners considered hiring two additional patrol deputies with some of the money anticipated from the newly approved sales tax increase for criminal justice and public safety.

Spokane County is expecting to raise $3.2 million from that tax next year, and though commissioners had dedicated the bulk of the money to other projects, enough remained to fund two entry-level deputies.

“It’s very difficult for them to keep up with calls. It’s very difficult for them to get time off,” Knezovich said of patrol deputies, adding, “We are at a crossroads here. We are at a breaking point.”

The new sales tax revenue will be used to a fund a number of different capital projects and positions, including a new criminal justice administrator, guard shacks at the courthouse, a district court commissioner, a court clerk, three corrections officers, juvenile jail staffing, three probation officers, two new prosecuting attorneys and two attorneys in the public defender’s office.

“I think the public intended that be used for positions they see,” said Commissioner Todd Mielke, who proposed funding two patrol deputies as well. “I don’t think you can get any more direct than putting two more officers on the street.”

But Mielke withdrew his motion after Commissioners Phil Harris and Kate McCaslin indicated they would vote it down.

Harris and McCaslin took issue with the fact that the request was coming from the deputies’ union rather than Sheriff Mark Sterk.

McCaslin also said that after years of adding deputies, it’s now time to invest in the other parts of the county’s criminal justice system.

“We also need to make sure that as we’re feeding everything into the top of the funnel, it doesn’t get jammed up part-way through it. And that’s what’s been happening,” McCaslin said.

She pointed out that since 2000, 34 deputies have been added compared with 7.5 positions in the prosecutor’s office, Superior Court, Probation Services and public defender’s office combined.

Much of the tax money will still go to the sheriff’s department to start rebuilding its communications system infrastructure, a project that will require funding over the entire life of the tax. It’s scheduled to sunset in five years unless reapproved by voters.

The Spokane County Health District was denied a request for additional funds.

David Faire, the district’s finance director, asked commissioners to give the district its full request of $2.5 million, but commissioners decided to maintain the district’s $2.4 million 2004 funding level as it had with most other outside agencies’ requests for funding.