Palm Beach County's new fiscal year begins next Wednesday, October 1st and the new Sheriff's Office budget will top $1 billion. It's a $116 million year-over-year increase and is a record amount...a term that Sheriff Ric Bradshaw thinks is overused.
"When it was $900,000 it was a record. When it was $980,000 it was another record."
And he says records will continue to be broken because everything costs more.
In fact, 80 percent of the PBSO budget goes to personnel.
"When they get a COLA, which they get every year and there's more healthcare costs, and there's more pension costs that you have to pay for FRS, it's going up. There's nothing I can do about it."
But he says the job of the Sheriff's Office is an essential one.
"Even the County Commissioners that passed the budget unanimously said the same thing, 'The job of the county and the cities are to provide protection for the people that live in the city.' That's fire and police to start with. That's the most important things."
Continuing to point out how inflation affects his agency, Bradshaw says new patrol cars are needed to replace those with as much as 175,000 miles on them. And he says vehicles cost more money too.
The sheriff says the money isn't being spent on lavish things and that the job PBSO does is working.
"You know, we had a 17 percent reduction in crime last year. That's a lot. That's pretty good. I don't think anybody in the state had much higher than that. But, it costs money to do that."
The sheriff also says that $290 million dollars of his budget is actually the county's responsibility. The county runs the jail, courthouse security, the crime lab and the salaries of school crossing guards.
"They put all of that into my budget and said 'Would you run it?' and I said 'Yeah.' They said 'Good, we'll give you the money.' So it's a little bit disingenuous to say 'Oh jeez, the Sheriff's budget's so big!' when almost $290 million of it I could take out of it tomorrow (and) give it back to the county."
The new budget was approved on September 16.