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r <br />SER <br />I <br />Bou <br />i 7 rA";E <br />it is going up again, and where is <br />it going to stop! <br />Mr. <br />Banek <br />again emphasized that he is depending on the Board to try to stop <br />this and asked if anyone checks on the Sheriff's budget and <br />compares it to other counties because this raise in taxes has got <br />to stop. <br />Commissioner Bird informed Mr. Banek that, for one thing, <br />there isn't a penny in the budget for the golf course; the County <br />golf course is self-supporting and always has been. <br />Commissioner Scurlock advised that he has done quite a bit <br />of research regarding the Sheriff's budget. He personally tried <br />to do an analysis and compare Indian River County's Sheriff's <br />budget with the other 67 counties. First of al.l, he found out it <br />was very difficult to get information on what really exists in <br />those other counties, but he did get statistics and tried to make <br />a -comparison. Then another problem is that there are many, many <br />different ways to compare a sheriff in our county versus the <br />other 67 counties - you can do it based on personnel per capita - <br />on sworn personnel per capita - or total dollars per capita <br />spent on law enforcement, etc. Commissioner Scurlock continued <br />that what he did identify quite consistently with the figures <br />supplied him is that in just about every category we rank pretty <br />high. He believed the Sheriff's Department in this county is <br />within the top 15 or 20 of the 67 counties, and felt it is fair <br />to say that he is in the top half at least. He pointed out, <br />however, that this was based on last year's numbers, and most of <br />the sheriffs in the state asked for significant increases this <br />year. <br />Commissioner Scurlock further informed Mr. Banek that the <br />Sheriff initially asked for over a 50% increase in his budget, <br />but we quickly got that down to a 25/26% increase. Then we had a <br />workshop that was neither pleasant nor polite to try to cut that <br />increase even more, and in fact, when we got the increase down to <br />around 18%, there was even a question as to whether or not the <br />Sheriff would appeal his budget to the Governor, which is his <br />10 <br />