Sheriff Kacey Bates says her budget recommendations are based on requests from her command staff, who began identifying their needs last summer.
“I bring the lieutenants in, I bring the captains in, and it's a long process,” Bates said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour,” Nov. 9. “When I ask them to bring budget needs to me, it's needs, not wants. It's what do we need in our sheriff's office to, like I said, be effective and efficient, and we go through these things. And these eight positions that we asked for are positions that every lieutenant and captain came to me and said, "If we want to be more efficient, if we want to be more effective, these are what we need."
Bates says the requests reflect both unfunded state mandates and an increase in the office’s workload.
“We had close to 500 cases in 2025,” she said. “Projected, we'll have 600 in 2026. It doesn't look like those numbers are going to go down. Those are only those cases that go to our investigations. They're not our total cases. We're looking at 14,000 cases (calls for service) that we respond to in a year.”
Bates says the office currently has just one detective handling all juvenile cases. That employee has even been called back to work during scheduled vacations and paid time off.
Her request included two detectives – one dedicated to juvenile cases and another to adult investigations – along with a canine sergeant and an additional school resource officer (SRO) .
“The SRO position is a cost share position, which benefits both parties involved, and it also allows us when school is out to reassign those people to different areas,” she said. “So, it's really beneficial to everybody.”
The Summit County Council is scheduled to adopt its 2027 budget at its final meeting of the year, Dec. 9.
