A move to freeze positions in his office to increase salaries and retain deputies has been effective.
But now that a compensation study and structural analysis of all positions in the county is completed, Del Norte County Sheriff Garrett Scott said he’ll be asking the Board of Supervisors to reverse that decision, probably around March.
“My goal is to ask for the funding to unfreeze those positions so I can put more than just two deputies per shift out there and I can start working on more narcotic enforcement and search warrants, things like that,” the sheriff told Redwood Voice Community News on Friday. “The public, Del Norte County, deserves to have more than two deputies on a shift. I know we’re not a rich county and that ask is not just a simple fix, but I think our Board does want that.”
Scott said there were about 23 vacancies out of a total of 69 positions when he first proposed restructuring his department in September 2024.
At the time, the Board of Supervisors were in the middle of a 14-day public hearing ahead of adopting the county’s annual budget. They were also waiting on the outcome of a compensation and structural analysis that wouldn’t be completed for another year.
Appearing before county supervisors, Scott argued that waiting for the compensation analysis to be finished would push pay issues down the road about five to six months and it could take him about a year to hire new staff.
In October 2024, the Board of Supervisors agreed to Scott’s proposal with modifications from County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez and Auditor-Controller Clinton Schaad. As a result, three patrol deputy positions and one corrections deputy were frozen. A second corrections deputy position as well as a corrections technician position were eliminated.
Also in 2024, the Board of Supervisors gave Scott the ability to hire at a level higher than Step A but no higher than Step C on the salary schedule.
At the time, the sheriff said he was concerned about staff morale, especially if someone starts at a higher salary than a colleague who had been on the job for about a year or two. But, he said, that ability was useful for a more experienced recruit.
On Monday, Scott said freezing the patrol and corrections positions allowed for salary increases of about 15% for remaining staff. Staffing levels were also increased to about 75 to 80%, he said.
“And I’ve retained nearly all those employees,” he told Redwood Voice.
In September 2025, about a year after Scott went to county supervisors with his staffing proposal, they heard from Kari Mercer and Georg Krammer, representatives of Gallagher, who delivered the results of a compensation study and structural analysis.
According to their study, Del Norte County’s overall base salary was 10% below the market median, while its overall compensation package was 2.1% above the market median.
At that same Sept. 9 meeting, Kerri Vue, the county’s human resources director, said there were 121 staff vacancies out of a total of 482 positions.
At their Dec. 10 meeting, supervisors ratified side letter agreements with the three unions representing most county employees, including the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Employees’ Association. Those side letters implemented a new salary structure Del Norte County administration devised as a result of the compensation analysis.
According to a side letter agreement between Del Norte County and the Sheriff’s Employees’ Association, under an MOU in March 2024, sworn patrol and dispatch personnel received a 7% base salary increase and a 4% base salary increase effective the first full pay-period in January 2025. As of Dec. 19, the first full pay-period after the new salary structure was approved, sworn patrol and dispatch personnel received an additional 4% base salary increase.
As for miscellaneous personnel, after the ratification of the March 2024 MOU, their base salary increased by 5%. Effective the first full pay-period in January 2025, their base salary increased again by 2.5%. Finally, effective the pay-period starting De. 19, 2025, miscellaneous personnel’s base salary increased again by 2.5%.
“With the Board of Supervisors doing their (comp) study and coming up with a somewhat of a pretty comparable salary for staff, it’s going to help that much more for retention and hiring,” Scott told Redwood Voice. “Still, there’s always going to be competition with Pelican Bay (State Prison) because they get state wages and that’s hard to compete with.”
Even with the increase in staff, Scott said there are still only two deputies working each shift. He said he’s been using retired annuitants and “a lot of overtime” to focus on things like law enforcement in the homeless encampments near Waldo Street east of Crescent City.
A few months ago, Scott said there were an estimated 100 people camping in that area. Now, he said, there are about 30 people there.
“It’s a dramatic decrease because of the presence of law enforcement and the arrests taking place in that particular area,” the sheriff said.
In addition to being able to staff more than two deputies per shift, being able to recruit for those frozen positions would allow Scott to stand up a major crimes investigation team.
That team would consist of three deputies, Scott said. The Yurok Tribal Police Department has offered to assign an officer to be a fourth member on that team who would focus on Klamath. The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation has also considered providing the funding for a fifth investigator to work major crimes in Smith River.
“That would all hinge upon that team being established by the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office first,” he said.
When asked her thoughts on Scott potentially recruiting for the frozen positions in his office, District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said she wanted to see statistics before going along with that proposal.
“How many arrests, investigations, etc. have been done?” Starkey asked rhetorically. “I agree we need to provide the sheriff with the tools to be successful, but I want some outcomes of response times, etc. before we move forward.”
