- October 2, 2024
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Flagler County’s Supervisor of Elections Office has asked the County Commission for a 52.4% budget increase for the next fiscal year. The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is seeking a 14% budget hike.
The Flagler County Commission heard budget proposals from constitutional officers, including the sheriff and the elections supervisor, on June 12.
All of them asked for an increase. The proposed increases in part reflect a 5.3% cost-of-living adjustment and rising county health insurance costs.
Flagler County Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart told the commission that the budget increase would help fund the two elections in 2024: the presidential preference primary in March and the primary election in August.
The office’s overall proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 is $2.7 million. For the 2022-2023 year, the accepted budget was $1.8 million, not including a one-time enhancement from the county to cover additional costs.
With the enhancement, the previous budget was $2.1 million — still 29.6% less than the new proposed budget.
“People are registering to vote in record numbers in our county,” Lenhart said.
The county has added more than 5,000 registered voters since the 2022-2023 fiscal year budget was submitted in May 2022, according to commission meeting documents. There were 98,252 registered voters in the county as of June 2023.
“We are looking at having over 100,000 voters coming up soon,” Lenhart said.
Lenhart said her office hopes to add one full-time position, and there are also costs associated with forms and equipment required by new election-related laws recently passed in the state and federal legislatures. Lenhart said the office should have a firmer idea of costs associated with the new laws in July.
“[The state is] still in the process of rulemaking,” she said. “So, for us, we’re in-between; we’re stuck in the middle.”
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is asking for a 14.4% budget increase to keep its salaries competitive with other counties.
The FCSO’s proposed budget is $41.9 million, up from $36.6 million. The increase would raise the starting pay for deputies to $52,000, Sheriff Rick Staly said.
“We made a great step last year,” Staly said. “Unfortunately, we’ve been trumped by the other counties significantly.”
Personnel services accounts for $4.1 million of the increase, including the 5.3% COLA increase. Another $713,000 would cover the cost of adding five new corrections deputies.
Flagler County is one of the fastest growing in the country, Staly said, and needs more deputies to support that growth. The jail is averaging 300 inmates a night, he said.
“Three hundred inmates a night is really stressing the abilities of the current employees,” Staly said.
Staly said the budget includes the cost of technical contracts the county previously paid for but that now would come directly from the FCSO, totaling $1.1 million.
The budget also includes revenue the Sheriff’s Office receives from grants and its contracts with the city of Palm Coast, the School Board and Imagine School at Town Center.
