County commission may drop fee

By Daniel Pepper
Staff Writer

Allegan County is considering a plan to do away with the administrative fee it charges to townships that contract with the sheriff department for deputies.

Commissioners discussed the proposal from county administrator Rob Sarro to do away with the $10,707 fee for 2009 and work with the townships to come up with a new arrangement.

“After discussing the matter with the sheriff and discussing it with the local units who’ve been part of it, I’ve prepared a recommendation, possibly as a starting point,” Sarro said.

Doing away with the fee for a year, he said, would give the county time to sit down with the local units and come up with a new way to split the costs of contracting deputies to a local unit. The plan would be to then include whatever new formula is agreed to in the 2010 budget.

“I look at this as part of a strategy for this year to get with our partners and figure out a funding model that we can all live with,” he said.

Local units currently contract for nine deputies. Laketown and Lee townships have two each, Fillmore and Gun Plain townships have one each, the city of Fennville has one, and two are shared between Salem, Leighton and Dorr townships.

The county pegs the cost of one deputy at $106,293 per year, including salary, benefits, a police car, equipment and overtime.

Laketown Township manager Al Meshkin said the change would have an effect in his township.

“We had two deputies and it used to be three,” Meshkin said. “We had to drop one. Without the administrative fee, we’ll be able to keep two longer.”

Salem Township supervisor Jim Pitsch said he hoped forgiving the fee would make the program more attractive.

“Hopefully, we can get other governments to add more police officers under this program,” Pitsch said.

Sarro said that the current way of charging an administrative fee was difficult for the local units to understand.

“We found that, historically, the indirect manner the administrative fee has been allocated is legitimate, but that it was poorly explained,” Sarro said. “The current model is very hard to get out minds around.”

Sarro used the example of Lt. Frank Baker, a supervisor at the department, to illustrate why the administrative costs were difficult to show. He said the sheriff department could define it better by defining what its minimum level of road patrol service is.

“Without defining the base level of service the county will maintain, it becomes an issue of marginal costs,” Sarro said. “What is the additional cost of Frank’s time to oversee one officer? We didn’t add him to oversee that one officer.”

Commissioner Jon Campbell said he supported the idea.

“There are contracts in jeopardy.” Campbell said. “If we bring these individuals to the table and help them work on it, then they can go defend it to their constituents and we can defend it to ours.”

Commission Max Thiele continued to question Sarro about the original fee.

“The question all along has been what’s the justification for the administrative fee,” Thiele said. “If it is real, how can you just take it out, when it’s $125,000 (out of the total budget)?”

Thiele said that if the fee was legitimate, the county costs it was covering weren’t going away.

“Why are we not quantifying it and maintaining a justifiable portion of that fee for these contracts during 2009 while you come up with another program?” he said.

Sarro said the fee could be substantiated through normal government accounting, involving calculating a percentage of the county’s costs for things that support the deputies, such as supervisors, evidence collection and administrative support.

Sarro said he has come to believe that the costs the sheriff’s department will incur with or without an additional deputy, should be part of the contracts.

“Here’s where the rubber meets the road,” he said. “In my mind, I don’t believe we should put our fixed costs into these contracts. I think we should be putting our costs in that we can directly attribute to putting a car out on the road. It is legitimate, but I don’t think we should include our fixed costs into a variable cost contract.”

Board chair Steve McNeal said he might not support the plan.

“I do like the idea, but I need to see how it’ll be paid for and when,” McNeal said.

The board voted unanimously to direct Sarro to move ahead. Board members will have at least another opportunity to vote before the plan goes into effect.

Dan Pepper can be reached at dpepper@allegannews.com or at (269) 673-5534 or (269) 685-5985.