By Nathan Clark
mlive.com
JACKSON COUNTY, Mich. — The time it takes the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to respond to calls for police service will slow in the foreseeable future as budget cuts eliminate six deputy positions.
The sheriff’s office has cut four positions from road patrol and two from corrections and several projects to balance its 2025 budget after losing $615,000 from the county’s general fund, Jackson County Sheriff Gary Schutte said.
The cut positions are unfilled. No actively serving deputy lost a job, Schuette said.
New vehicle spending and maintenance, uniforms and training costs are among additional reductions.
“We typically buy five patrol cars a year so that will be reduced to four. I think that’s appropriate considering we’re going to have less deputies out on the road.” Schuette said. “With a reduction in staff, it is certainly going to cause for a decreased ability to answer calls in a timely fashion. I would just ask the public to be patient with us.”
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The Jackson County Board of Commissioners approved the sizeable cut at its Tuesday, Dec. 17 meeting.
Board members also approved cutting $50,000 from the county administrator’s budget, $100,000 from the drain commissioner’s budget, $135,000 from facilities and information technology and $300,000 from the county courts after a projected deficit of $1.25 million in the 2025 county budget.
The sheriff’s office, unable to pass a millage to cover a shortfall created by the expiration of a prior millage, was hit hardest.
District 1 Commissioner Tony Bair attempted to amend the budget prior to the vote, requesting to take funds out of the public improvement and building fund to cover the sheriff’s office budget shortfall, but fellow board members did not support the amendment. Blair was the only member to vote against approving the 2025 budget.
“Not one commissioner here wants to defund any police department or any of that,” District 7 Commissioner John Willis said. “So to promote that, or to give you that idea, that is not what we are trying to do.”
Multiple Jackson County residents shared their opposition to the sheriff’s office the cut.
“There are a lot of us who believe public safety should be the top priority. To defund the sheriff’s budget is unacceptable,” Fred Traxler of Summit Township said. “When voters turned down the jail operating millage, they did not understand the unintended consequences.”
The county has about $10 million in reserve funds, which it has been using to keep the operations going while it waited for the millage vote. Commissioners briefly considered continuing to draw from the reserve during prior meetings but determined this would not be a viable long-term solution.
With the exception of grants and paid contracts, the sheriff’s office will receive about $14 million from the general fund, or about 28% of the general fund budget.
County general fund expenditures were projected to hit $53 million in 2025 while revenue was expected to be just under $52 million, according to a budget presentation.
In the November general election, the county was asking voters to approve a tax of 0.25 mills levied on properties for 10 years to fund public safety services, including county jail and other sheriff’s operations. It was called a jail services millage.
One mill is equal to $1 paid in property tax per every $1,000 of a property’s taxable value, roughly half of market value. As an example, a Jackson County resident who owns a $200,000 home would have paid about $25 a year for the millage.
It failed but had it passed, the millage was expected to raise about $1,516,970 per year.
Voters in 2002 approved a 20-year public safety tax of 0.5 mills to fund police services and construct the Chanter Road jail facility, which houses lower-security male inmates. That millage, however, expired in 2022.
With the failure of the latest millage, the sheriff’s office must operate on a substantially lower budget while continuing to maintain and operate the aging downtown jail at 212 W. Wesley St.
The sheriff’s office began using the Wesley Street Jail in 1953. Additions were made in 1978 and 2002.
District 3 Commissioner Corey Kennedy said it would be in the county’s best interest to start planning ahead for a solution to address the aging, crumbling jail issue.
“The jail problems are not going to go away and the community has been clear on multiple occasions that they are not going to fund it,” Kennedy said. “We don’t have the money to do it all at once but I think if we can do a project every year it would be forward thinking and something we should look into.”
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