The county’s Detention Center is just one of the county’s many departments that prove that high budgets without a plan go unspent and do not enhance productivity. Those high budget departments have too often followed an unproductive pattern of a huge budget without being given a plan, followed by significant underspending and underperformance, followed by another large budget given without an accompanying plan, followed by the same underspending and underperformance.
The new county administration obviously and correctly realized that repeating that aforementioned unsound cycle was not working since it was not improving efficiency and was not helping with staffing issues. That realization surely triggered the recent strategic staff raises for the Detention Center, coupled with the department’s reorganization plan to make it more efficient and effective. In the end, the targeted raises will provide a reliable staff working in a more organized framework, keeping the center safe, humane, effective, and efficient without increasing the budget further.
Of course, the Animal Control Center’s recent reorganization is another example of this administration working to break the ineffective budget-without-a-plan cycle.
Unfortunately, this administration’s focus on improving efficiencies and breaking that cycle of just throwing unplanned big expense budgets at problems still has many targets to hit. The hole is deep, and we won’t climb out overnight, but we are glad the new administrative team has started the climb.
Two samples of the many misbudgeting issues from the county’s financial reports:
Detention Center Expense Totals:
2024 Actual Spent: $2,274,985.94
2025 Budget: $2,720,794.00
2025 Actual Spent: $2,054,223.64
2026 Budget: $2,656,525
Animal Control Expense Totals
2024 Budget: $718,703
2024 Actual Spent: $614,115
2025 Budget:737,372
2025 Actual Spent: $568,994
2026 Budget: $924,247
2026 Budget: $924,247
Randy Bright
Ridgeway