Commissioners reluctantly OK jail overtime pay
Bexar County commissioners reluctantly approved spending nearly $2.5 million for more than 60,000 hours of overtime at the jail, as staff projected the total could grow beyond $12 million this year, about 25 percent over budget.
“We can’t continue to spend money like this,” newly elected Precinct 3 County Commissioner Trish Deberry said at her first meeting. “It’s unacceptable, and it’s broken.”
Deberry, who succeeded Kevin Wolff as the only Republican on the court, was the lone vote against the expenditure.
But the entire court demanded Sheriff Javier Salazar provide more details when he makes future requests to pay overtime.
“We don’t understand how you’re burning through that many overtime hours,” said County Manager David Smith, who requested the overtime hours be broken down “post by post, shift by shift.”
Salazar’s request for the 61,500 hours of past and future overtime at Bexar County Jail covers Dec. 4 to Feb. 12.
Deberry said she believes Salazar is doing everything he can to address the jail’s manpower woes, but is facing “a crisis in morale” among detention officers.
In making his presentation to the court, Salazar outlined his efforts to close the detention personnel gap at the jail, which has been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the Sheriff ’s Office to space out and isolate groups of inmates while maintaining staterequired detention staffing levels.
The sheriff supports better pay for deputies and creation of a new work week of four days of 12 hours each followed by three days off to help reduce turnover at the jail.
He also has proposed converting part of a new wing at the jail complex into a treatment facility for mental health patients as a means of diversion from the main jail to help reduce the jail population, now at about 3,750.
County officials have begun discussing a plan to hire a consultant to study the feasibility of staffing the proposed new mental health inpatient wing through a partnership with University Health.
While county leaders think the idea is worth pursuing, they said short-term solutions also are needed as well as better metrics to explain how the facility is racking up so much overtime.
“We’ve got to get to the root of this,” Deberry said.
The county’s budget department had recommended commissioners only approve about onefourth of the overtime, at a cost of just under $600,000.
However, commissioners said they wanted the funds in place to pay deputies for overtime work, and would continue working on the jail problem that Salazar said has lingered for 12 years.
According to the budget department, overtime costs at the jail will run about $12.3 million by the end of the fiscal year if the current rate of spending continues.
The current budget for jail overtime is $8.89 million.
Mandatory overtime and working conditions at the jail have been key topics in ongoing discussions on a new collective bargaining agreement between the county and Deputy Sheriff ’s Association of Bexar County.
Anna Bradford, mother of a former jail detention officer, Scott Bradford Jr., said her son took his own life in October, four months after resigning from his job as a detention officer at the jail, where he had worked for about five years.
She urged commissioners to improve morale at the detention facility.
“It’s too late for my son. My plea is for his fellow brothers and sister deputies who deserve so much more,” Bradford said. “Please don’t let this happen to another deputy and their family.”
Also attending her first meeting Tuesday was newly elected Commissioner Rebeca Clay-flores, representing Precinct 1.
Clay-flores is a Democrat whose precinct encompasses the South and Southwest sides. She introduced her six-member staff, led by Chief of Staff Frankie GonzalesWolfe, who she said will help connect with county residents who traditionally have been underserved.
“I present to you the team that will be serving alongside me to fight for justice in our community and do a lot of things that (in) my community has been overlooked for so long,” Clay-flores said.
Deberry, elected to represent the North Side precinct, proclaimed Tuesday “a new day on Commissioners Court” and vowed to be a fiscally conservative “budget hawk” in Bexar County government.
The addition of Clay-flores and Deberry marks the first time in more than 25 years, and only the second time in Bexar County history, that two women have served at the same time on the court, which is composed of a county judge and four precinct commissioners.
County Judge Cyndi Taylor Krier and Precinct 4 Commissioner Helen Dutmer served on the court together in the early 1990s.