Linn supervisors approve 'one-year' funding for sheriff's rescue unit

Repeating their insistence it be a one-year-only solution, Linn County supervisors approved funding the sheriff's rescue division with revenues raised through the jail and other fees collected by the sheriff's office.

“This is not sustainable,” said District 4 Supervisor Brent Oleson, Republican from Marion.

“This is not something I would be in favor of at all, doing this on an ongoing basis,” agreed District 2 Supervisor Linda Langston, Democrat from Cedar Rapids. “This is just a one-year solution.”

Supervisors approved the draft of a resolution to restore the service's $300,000 operating budget for the year starting July 1 with revenue from the jail and other fees. The resolution will be up for formal adoption at Wednesday's meeting.

Funding for the service was left out of the sheriff's office budget in the supervisors' “budgeting for outcomes” process, used for the first time this year. Under that approach, supervisors instructed department heads to cut 1.5 percent from the previous year's budget while absorbing scheduled salary increases, a requirement that meant 4 percent cuts for most departments.

To meet that target, Sheriff Brian Gardner cut services that aren't state-mandated or revenue-generating, leaving Rescue 57's budget off his department's $16 million annual budget.

Still, the sheriff's office received half the $1.8 million supervisors allotted for discretionary spending under budgeting for outcomes, and supervisors approved 5 percent raises for Gardner and his command staff. Oleson noted it added up to a 5-percent budget increase during a year supervisors were emphasizing austerity.

Oleson said the situation calls for “a little review, globally, of the sheriff's budget and how it evolved. It was a big winner in the budget process.”

Gardner expects the return of federal prisoners to the county jail to fuel a revenue increase of $1.2 million in fiscal 2012, to about $5 million. The federal government's use of the jail, reduced after the June 2008 flood damaged both the jail and the former federal courthouse, is returning to pre-flood levels.

The county bills prisoners a little over $60 a day for their jail stays. Other revenues are raised by the aggressive collection of fines and fees owed the county.

Supervisors want to return jail and and other revenue raised through the sheriff's office back to the county's general fund.