Cape County Commission approves placing a half-cent public-safety sales tax on April ballot

For only the fourth time since 1979, Cape Girardeau County voters will be asked later this year to approve a countywide sales tax.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission on Thursday unanimously approved a motion to put a half-cent public-safety sales tax on the April ballot. If approved by voters, funds generated by the tax will be used to help fund operating costs and salaries of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff’s Department and the county jail.

Appearing before the County Commission, Sheriff Ruth Ann Dickerson said the additional funding is necessary for rising salary and operating expenses in her department.

“We are not at the level of officers or equipment we need to operate as a first-class county,” she said. “And as we move forward with minimum wage standards, unless we address wages, we’ll possibly have some employees in our office who won’t be making minimum wage in about three years.”

The sheriff said her department’s starting salary for patrol deputies is significantly lower than the starting annual pay for patrol officers in Cape Girardeau and Jackson.

“Cape Girardeau’s starting salary is $38,000, in Jackson it’s $36,000 and we are at $32,219,” she said. “We’re lower and we’re losing people. We hire them, we train them, then we lose them to higher-paying agencies.”

Low wages, she said, has resulted in staffing shortages in the sheriff’s department.

“Basically, the very minimum shift coverage that’s recommended is five employees on a shift,” she said. “When you allow for hours of sick, vacation, comp and training time, we need at least 25 officers, but the staff we have today is only 20, so we’re short five officers.”

The sheriff told the commissioners her department handles more than 25,000 incidents a year.

“And that does not even include the civil matters, the calls for service, the courts and all the other duties our officers are assigned to,” she said.

“Many times, people want to know why the cities of Cape and Jackson should care about what the county deputies are doing,” Dickerson said. “Well, the sheriff has jurisdiction over the whole county. Our officers are in Cape and they’re in Jackson. We’re transporting inmates in and out of the cities for court, for doctor and dentist appointments, we serve civil papers, we serve criminal papers, we have garnishments we serve within the city limits and we assisted other agencies an average of 1,700 times (a year) over the last several years.”

As for the department’s fleet of patrol cars, the sheriff said several are long overdue for replacement. She said the fleet’s average age is 4.5 years with an average of more than 84,000 miles each; three patrol cars have eclipsed 200,000 miles. As the fleet ages, it’s costing more and more each year to keep it rolling. Currently, fuel and maintenance for the sheriff’s vehicles costs about $130,000 a year.

“The last thing we want to do when we have to answer a call is we don’t want to tell the victim we’re waiting for a wrecker to come and pick up our patrol car,” Dickerson said.

“And then you get to the jail side,” the sheriff continued. “The Cape Girardeau County Jail was built to house an estimated 220 inmates. Our average daily population over the last several years has ranged from 220 to 285 inmates.”

This week, the jail census is approximately 235.

“We feed them three meals a day, 365 days a year, at a cost of over $240,000,” the sheriff noted. “And we are, by law, required to provide inmates with medical care and we spend over $300,000 a year for that.”

Other expenses, such as utilities that cost more than $250,000 annually, push the yearly cost to operate the jail to more than $900,000.

“And that does not include salaries,” Dickerson said, and pointed out that annual maintenance and repair costs for the facility is growing every year.

Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy said the jail’s operating budget is further strained by the fact the state is behind on its reimbursement for the housing of state inmates.

“The state is supposed to reimburse us for their meals,” he said. “It probably costs us $40 a day (to feed them). According to statute, the state is supposed to pay us up to $37 and they’ve negotiated a rate with us of $22.58 per day per prisoner, and they’re not paying that, so right now they owe us around $600,000.”

The county, he said, has no choice but to absorb the cost of housing state prisoners.

“We can’t not feed these folks,” he said. “We have to run a bed-and-breakfast.”

The department, county jail and the county’s dispatch center have a combined 2020 budget in excess of $6 million.

According to Cape Girardeau County Treasurer Roger Hudson, the tax would generate more than $7.3 million and as much as 70% of it would be paid by non-county residents who purchase goods and services in the county.

Tracy said the April ballot issue will be only the fourth time in the last 41 years the county has put a sales tax before voters. The first time was in 1979, followed by Proposition 1 in 2006 and the county use tax in 2014.