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The requested budget doesn’t look exactly how Cumberland County Sheriff Darrell Hodges expected. Dues at the police academy have increased, so it costs more to train recruits. Mental illness calls have increased, so transport, food and time spent by deputies at the hospital keep climbing. And there’s a $25,000 bill from the school district that he hadn’t planned on. 

This was all outlined on Feb. 25, during the latest budget workshop for Cumberland County. The adopted sheriff’s office budget this year came in at $1.263 million. He’s asking for a budget of $1.314 million, but the increase isn’t for new items. It’s just to maintain what’s already taking place. 

“We have increased dramatically the number of ECOs and TCOs, which are mental transports that we do,” Hodges told the board. “Most of the time what happens is we’re stuck at the hospital for up to seven days right now, 24 hours. We have to keep an officer with that person the whole time, so our food costs and things have gone up.”  

ECO stands for emergency custody order. These are used by law enforcement to transport people for mental health evaluations when they are unwilling or unable to agree to go willingly. 

TCO stands for temporary custody order. That’s when a person is believed to present a substantial risk of serious harm to themselves or others and is either unable or unwilling to volunteer for hospitalization or treatment. That order requires the officer to take the person into custody and transport them to the nearest medical facility where they can be evaluated. And until that person is released or assigned to a mental health facility, officers have to be there. 

Cumberland Supervisors Vice Chair John Newman asked Hodges if the sheriff’s office could charge for those transports, but he was told no. That’s not allowed in Virginia. 

A surprise given from schools 

As a way to save money, the Cumberland School District bus garage has been working on vehicles from the sheriff’s office as well over these last few years. But while previously that was done for free, Hodges said he got a bill for the first time this year. 

“The school bus shop has started charging us for maintenance. I wasn’t expecting that. That has hit us like a ton of bricks,” Hodges said. “My transmission went out in my truck and there was a $3,000 bill that I wasn’t anticipating. Between now and June, it’s probably going to be another $25,000 that I wasn’t anticipating.” 

Newman asked if Hodges had been told beforehand that the garage would be billing him. 

 “No, that came to me in a bill form and they said maintenance was charging them for grass cutting, so they’re charging us for maintenance,” Hodges said.  

Cumberland Administrator Derek Stamey explained that three years ago, the county was subsidizing all the maintenance at the school. Then they switched course. 

“We started monitoring what their actual costs were associated with that maintenance and we would bill for it and now I think they’ve taken the same approach when it comes to our vehicles.” 

The Herald reached out to Cumberland Schools Superintendent Chip Jones, who said that as he understood it, this was the structure for the current partnership between the county and school district.  

“The county, which handles our maintenance requests, charges the school division for general maintenance which includes labor and materials needed,” Jones said. “In return, the school division performs maintenance on county vehicles at our transportation and we bill the county for labor and materials needed.” 

Other county departments have stopped taking their vehicles to the bus garage, supervisors were told, because NAPA or driving to a shop in Farmville is cheaper. Hodges said he couldn’t do that because of time involved. 

“The biggest thing now is most maintenance shops have a wait time and if we have a police car that’s down, we have to have it immediately,” Hodges said. “So that’s pretty much the only reason we’re doing it. And they’re still great. The maintenance shop is still great to work with.” 

Newman pointed out that county departments going to other shops doesn’t guarantee they’re saving money. Since the school district and sheriff’s office are both funded by the county, it’s basically cross charging, moving money from one department to another. However, no money actually goes out and no money comes in.  

“Here’s where it can be a little tricky budgeting. You don’t want to encourage a group to go say hey I can go to an outside source and get a rebuilt transmission and get it for $2500 and look how much I’ve saved the county,” Newman said. “Because you didn’t save the county anything. You went outside to get it as opposed to the cross charging.”  

Stamey suggested that there are times it’s better to go to an outside source. 

“I think you need to pick your spots,” Stamey said. “I just think we have to weigh the pros and cons with both.” 

Cumberland County costs rising for academy

Dues for the police academy are also increasing, contributing to the request for more money. This one’s an immediate need, as the sheriff’s office have a couple who have retired and a couple deputies who will be retiring in the coming months. 

“We are training new officers,” Hodges said. “So we have to hire new officers, new uniforms, new equipment, the whole gambit is a lot more right now.” 

The other challenge is, despite the increase this past year to a $50,000 starting salary, there haven’t been as many applicants as Hodges would have liked. And that’s because salaries have climbed in neighboring counties as well. 

“We have a juggernaut next door, on a couple sides of us that we can’t touch. Goughland, Powhatan and even Fluvanna now has gotten up there, Chesterfield and Henrico,” Hodges said. “Powhatan and Goochland right now are about $11,000 more than we are starting.”