Sheriff Kerry Forestal Asking City Leaders For More Money In 2025
Source: WISH-TV / other
INDIANAPOLIS — The Marion County sheriff is asking for a lot more money to operate within the next fiscal year.
Sheriff Kerry Forestal and his team went before the city-county council’s budget committee on Wednesday to ask for $141 million for their next operating budget. That’s $11 million more than what the Marion County Sheriff’s Department operates with this year.
Forestal said their requested increase is justified by simply looking at the numbers.
“One of the important things, we used a study,” he said. “We didn’t want to just pick numbers out of the air. We had (the budget) analyzed.”
Forestal said between providing law enforcement, jail staffing and management, and security for the city’s government buildings, the department has had to hire more deputies and with that needs more money to pay them.
The sheriff’s office also manages the county’s sex offender registry, serves court warrants, operates the county’s 911 center, and enforces local election laws. Forestal told the council even in hiring more deputies this year, the department is still understaffed and has had to pay overtime to make sure the deputies they have are covering what needs to be done.
“If you have 45 deputies taking 150 people to 70 courts, and you need 99, it’s not surprising when something may happen,” Forestal said. “Our deputies work long and hard but they can only be in so many places in a short period of time.”
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He and his department’s CFO Kallan Carr said that because of the amount of time (and overtime) it takes to run the show, the sheriff’s department is operating at a $6 million deficit.
“That $6 million has to be reflected in the 2025 budget. It will be caught up in 2024, but we have an increase in staff that has contributed to that $6 million,” Carr said. “So, to fund the agency at current operations, that $6 million also needs to be in the 2025 budget.”
In order to address the short staffing issues, Forestal is asking for more money in order to pay his deputies at least $60,000 a year. Starting pay is currently around $40,000, which is much less than what neighboring counties are offering.
