Martha believes public safety begins before a crisis reaches a patrol car, dispatcher, clinic, or emergency room. Her proposal makes a direct—and contested—budget choice to expand locally controlled county health services while reducing sheriff capacity.
Every figure below is an annual amount at full implementation.
The transfer
The current sheriff operating budget is $18.4 million. Martha would reject the sheriff’s separate $1.8 million expansion request and reduce the current baseline by another $1.8 million, resulting in a $16.6 million sheriff budget.
The reduction is:
- $900,000 less overtime;
- $660,000 from removing six budgeted deputy positions through vacancies and attrition, at $110,000 in annual loaded cost for each position; and
- $240,000 from slowing vehicle and equipment replacement.
The current locally controlled county health-services budget is $12.6 million. Martha would add the same $1.8 million, producing a $14.4 million health budget.
The addition is:
- $900,000 for community-clinic hours and staffing;
- $600,000 for mobile behavioral-health and outreach; and
- $300,000 for homelessness and housing-rehabilitation coordination.
The recurring reduction and recurring increase balance exactly. The plan does not use reserves or assume a future outside grant.
What Martha is asking residents to accept
Martha says $16.6 million preserves emergency response, dispatch, and core investigations. She also accepts that fewer budgeted positions and less overtime would mean fewer deputy shifts, less overtime flexibility, slower lower-priority response, less proactive patrol, and slower replacement of vehicles and equipment.
Those are real service losses. Supporters of the sheriff budget argue they would weaken response capacity and that added health services may not produce enough offsetting safety benefit.
Martha’s forecast is that longer clinic availability, mobile behavioral-health and outreach, and stronger housing coordination can address more needs early enough to prevent some crises. That forecast is disputed; it should be tested in public rather than treated as a guarantee.
Measure both sides
Before implementation, Martha would establish baselines for clinic access, outreach contacts, housing coordination, sheriff shifts, overtime, lower-priority response, and proactive patrol. The county should then report the service added on one side and the capacity reduced on the other.
Martha is not claiming that this choice has no cost. She is arguing that county health access is part of the county’s safety system—and that District 2 should debate the complete tradeoff in the open.