Cameron County Commissioners Court will hold a special meeting Wednesday to continue discussions on the 2022-2023 fiscal budget, plus the possibility of unfreezing some positions at the county’s sheriff’s department.
The meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Historic Dancy Building, 1100 E. Monroe St.
For the past several weeks, Commissioners Court has been discussing how to address a $5 million budget deficit that is due to a drop in revenue from the courts, rising fuel costs, insurance costs, and the loss of funding from non-county inmates who had been housed in the county jail.
Because of the revenue loss, Commissioners Court in March approved freezing more than 50 jailer slots with the sheriff’s department.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the department will ask Commissioners Court to unfreeze 20 jailer positions, two captain positions and five deputy patrol slots.
The sheriff’s department has undergone scrutiny after Commissioners Court learned that about $1 million in overtime pay has been handed out by the department, in addition to a $1.9 million plan to feed the inmates in the county’s jail system.
The sheriff’s department said the overtime pay is attributed to not having enough jailers since more than 50 slots were frozen in March. The $1.9 million plan to feed the inmates is due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and trustees in the jail system not being able to assist with the distribution of meals to the inmates.
Prior to the pandemic, the trustees were able to help distribute the meals, the sheriff’s department said. But once the pandemic hit, the trustees were no longer allowed to do this, so the company providing the meals also had to provide manpower to distribute the food.
During last week’s Commissioners Court meeting, Cmdr. Andre Delgado said the working hours for jailers manning the downtown detention centers would be four days on and three days off, which would bring them to 48 hours and no overtime.
Delgado said lieutenants and sergeants within the jail system have agreed to go down to 8.5 hours so that overtime hours will decrease.
Delgado also said the sheriff’s department has also come up with an incentive care package from the commissary that will be provided to the trustees to entice them to assist working in the kitchen, as commissioners court recommended.
Chief Deputy Silver Cisneros asked Commissioners Court if it could unfreeze the captains and deputy positions within the department. He cited an Aug. 16 incident at one of the Brownsville Independent School District’s high school campuses.
“I don’t know if you heard but this morning there was a critical incident that happened at one of the schools here in Brownsville. There are schools out in the county, and we would be the nearest backup to them, and we would like to be fully staffed, if possible,” Cisneros said.
BISD has at several schools out in the county that include Ben Brite, Palm Grove, and Villa Nueva elementary schools, plus Lopez Early College High School.
The Los Fresnos Consolidated Independent School District has four elementary schools in the county that include Las Yescas , Dora Romero , Palmer- Laakso and Laureles elementary schools.
The Santa Maria Independent School District’s three schools are also located in the county off on Old Military Highway.
