Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : COUNTY : Supervisors Grant Sheriff 101 More Employees to Staff Jails
Although the Orange County Sheriff’s Department got permission to hire 101 more employees, it also got a warning: Its “non-essential” programs might have to go to help pay the costs.
Sheriff Brad Gates told the Board of Supervisors that he needs 90 permanent positions and 11 temporary slots, at an estimated cost of $2.8 million a year, for the main men’s jail in Santa Ana and the branch jails in Orange and El Toro.
The branch jails have been expanded in the past 14 months to house inmates transferred from the main jail after U.S. District Judge William P. Gray found the county in contempt for not meeting his 1978 order to reduce overcrowding in the Santa Ana facility.
At the time of Gray’s March, 1985, ruling, there were about 2,000 inmates in the men’s jail. There are now fewer than 1,400 on weekdays.
But to offset the pricey new hiring spree, Supervisor Harriett Wieder said, “We may have to cut out some non-essential programs. . . . For example, it might appear consideration might have to be given to such programs as maintaining our helicopter fleet,” two aircraft that cost $1 million a year to operate.
The county administrative office is studying what programs will have to go.
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