Wasatch County’s draft budget for 2026 includes an estimated $129 million in expenses. Of that, nearly $19 million is earmarked for the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office.
At a county council meeting Wednesday, assistant county manager Heber Lefgren said Sheriff Jared Rigby wants an additional $2.2 million in funding for 2026.
The request follows a rocky year for the office, which included two investigations into allegations of retaliation and mismanagement.
About half of Rigby’s request would be used to hire a professional standards director, two dispatchers, two patrol deputies, one school resource officer (SRO), two bailiffs and one part-time emergency coordinator.
“We are consuming a lot of overtime budget within the dispatch fund, and so by adding two positions, it does a better job of right-sizing the staff so that we’re not utilizing some of the overtime budget,” Lefgren said.
The two patrol positions are in response to resident requests for more enforcement of speeding and other traffic violations.
Another SRO is needed to staff Deer Creek High School, which will open in fall 2026 – and to provide more flexibility when officers are on vacation or out sick.
“The sheriff actually requested two,” Lefgren said. “I could not figure out a way to work out two.”
Bailiffs are assigned to the courthouse, which is being expanded to add more courtrooms.
The sheriff asked for another $1 million to make safety improvements to the jail.
“The way that it was initially constructed does not create a good line of sight, and there’s been a lot of concerns,” Lefgren said.
He said the county could use some sales tax revenue and reallocation of money elsewhere in the budget to pay for the sheriff’s requests. He said the county could also ask the state and the school district to help cover the salaries of the bailiffs and the SRO.
County finance director Randy Bates said some of the money could come from lower-than-expected salary costs this year.
“Because of everything that’s happened this year with the sheriff’s office, we’ve had a lot of personnel savings,” he said. “Not necessarily a good thing, but it’s the reality. So, what we proposed to do was to move those savings into next year to help offset the cost of those renovations.”
The department lost some personnel during the third-party investigation of the sheriff's office earlier this year.
Some councilmembers said they were hesitant about such a large request and so much hiring.
However, Bates said what the council saw Wednesday was already less than what the sheriff wanted.
“If you said yes to all these positions, expect he’s coming back next year for three or four more, because he wanted four patrol officers, two or three resource officers – we pared it back,” he said. “This is not the total request, so it will come back next year, regardless of what you agree to this year.”
The council debated whether hiring new staff or paying for overtime would be more financially sustainable.
Councilmember Erik Rowland said after a troubled year for the sheriff’s office, he needed more information to gauge whether the $2.2 million funding request was reasonable.
“Personally, I’m not qualified to make that kind of assessment about an entire department without the department head coming in and telling us why he’s justifying this budget,” he said.
County manager Dustin Grabau said he would work with Rigby before the Nov. 19 council meeting to get more information about each request and set benchmarks to ensure the money is well spent.
The public hearing to adopt the 2026 budget will be Dec. 3.
