Despite being allocated an additional $60,000 by Williamson County Commissioners Court on Tuesday, leadership at the county sheriff’s office was unsure if the office had enough funding to cover staff overtime hours for the rest of the county's fiscal year, which ends in September.
During a commissioners meeting last week, the sheriff’s office asked for $211,000 to cover overtime worked by law enforcement officers through September. Sheriff's office representatives said there was no significant change in the overtime hours allotted this year compared to previous years.
On Tuesday, Chief Deputy Tim Ryle told commissioners the sheriff’s office re-examined its budget after last week's meeting and concluded that $140,000 was “a more appropriate number” to cover the overtime hours.
However, when Precinct Three Commissioner Valerie Covey made a spreadsheet of her own, she came to the conclusion that $60,000 should be more than enough.
“It should be more than ample to accommodate our overtime for the next two-and-a-half months,” Covey said. “I can’t really support more than that. As we all live on a budget, we all have to live within that budget. We appreciate you and your guys working on that.”
Covey said that even with an additional $60,000, the sheriff’s office spending would be over its annual budget by $55,000. Covey added that last year the office was $80,000 dollars in the red.
“I’m encouraging law enforcement, and everybody, to stay within the budget you’re given,” she said. “That’s what causes us concern. It can get out of control pretty quickly. The monitoring and managing is what we ask of every department.”
Ryle said he was not confident $60,000 would be enough to sustain the sheriff's office's overtime costs for the rest of the fiscal year.
“It’s clearly a balance,” Ryle said. “It must be budgeted correctly in the first place, and then us managing it. It obviously wasn’t budgeted correctly [to begin with]."
Ultimately, commissioners voted, 3-0, to allocate the $60,000 to the sheriff’s department for overtime hours. Precinct One Commissioner Terry Cook and Precinct Two Commissioner Cynthia Long were not present at Tuesday's meeting.
If the sheriff’s department is not able to stretch the money allotted to them for the next two and a half months, they will have to come back to commissioners court to ask for more, Judge Dan Gattis said.