Williamson County Sheriff's Office holding press conference
GEORGETOWN, Texas - The Williamson County Sheriff's Office is holding a press conference this afternoon to talk about the funding of The Williamson County Sheriff's Office Law Enforcement Services.
The press conference is scheduled to begin around 2 p.m. FOX 7 Austin will carry a live stream of it here on our website and news app, as well as on our Youtube page.
WATCH THE PRESS CONFERENCE HERE:
Williamson County Sheriff Mike Gleason released the following letter as a press release:
August 11, 2021
To the Citizens of Williamson County,
As the newly-elected Sheriff of Williamson County, I have been feverishly working on assessing the organization, implementing critically needed change, and creating a vision for the future of a professional Williamson County Sheriff's Office. Society has dealt us a heavy blow over the last couple of years; we continue to see COVID-19 strains on our first responder networks, crime surges, workforce challenges, and the law enforcement profession is facing unprecedented scrutiny. The potential of underfunding the Sheriff's Office can have long-term negative impacts to our community and these decisions should be made cautiously.
During my campaign for office, I spent nearly a year walking neighborhoods, meeting with citizens and stakeholders across this county to understand the community's expectations for its Sheriff's Office. I believe the citizens spoke loud and clear regarding their desire for change, a higher level of accountability, professionalism, and a service-driven approach to public safety. My staff and I have been working very hard to accomplish much of this in short order, however, we have much more to accomplish.
One of the most obvious challenges identified early on is the ability to hire, train and retain competent staff due to a significant compensation disparity between us and local agencies. This included being the lowest-paid corrections officers in the area and the lowest-paid law enforcement agency among agencies within the county. We are extremely appreciative for the recent actions taken by the Commissioners Court to address the glaring pay disparity we were facing in the Corrections Bureau. This prevented our agency from dropping below the state-mandated
48:1 ratio for staffing our jail which would have resulted in the need to ship inmates out of our county greatly increasing our costs and liabilities. The actions by the court were extraordinary and have since created an excellent opportunity for us to recruit, train and retain qualified staff within our jail.
This solved one-half of the current challenges; however, we still the other half who provides law enforcement services throughout this county, and we have not yet resolved their significant pay disparities. As an agency, we are facing critical challenges hiring and retaining qualified personnel to serve as Williamson County Deputies and not be reliant on the need to hire the officer that could not get employed elsewhere.
The failure to consider the compensation package of 1% over median of the policing agencies in Williamson County as presented, resulting in what was approved by the Commissioner Court, has created significant concern among our law enforcement personnel. The continued existence of such a significant pay disparity creates further challenges for us to hire, train and retain qualified officers. The Williamson County Sheriff's Office is the 3rd largest law enforcement agency in Central Texas, the 12th largest in the State of Texas, and a member of the Major Counties Sheriffs of America representing 111 of the largest counties in American serving over 125 million citizens. Our
employees provide policing services in what is now a large metropolitan environment and over 50% of the population of Williamson County serving a geographic area of 1,100 square miles.
As the community expectations of law enforcement continue to increase, we must rise to meet the expectations. As the Sheriff of Williamson County, I cannot do that without the support of the Commissioners Court to provide adequate funding. We have received very consistent feedback from the community which is to place Public Safety as the top priority for funding in this county. I am also completely aware that the Commissioners Court has a difficult job in managing the budget with many competing interests. There also continues to be many other hard-working county employees who come to work every day with reasonable expectations of appropriate compensation, and we support their efforts.
I am asking for continued community feedback as to what level of policing services is expected of our agency and what level of budgetary impact is acceptable. I am seeking a commitment from the Commissioners Court to continue to collaborate with us in listening and acting on community feedback and priorities while attempting to rectify the remaining compensation disparities for law enforcement services in a fiscally responsible manner. The methodologies used in the past for compensation are outdated and not sufficient to meet public safety expectations in this community.
We must continue to collaboratively work on the following:
- Appropriate Agencies Comparisons within WILCO (like compensation for like services)
- Annual Compensation Analysis processes allowing for actionable data
- Competitive salaries across the entire employee base Entry Level Supervisory Level Executive Leadership
- Entry Level
- Supervisory Level
- Executive Leadership
- Incentive Pay Bilingual Pay Education Pay
- Bilingual Pay
- Education Pay
- Stipends Medical Certifications (Advanced and Paramedic) Detective
- Medical Certifications (Advanced and Paramedic)
- Detective
As your Sheriff, I believe each of these areas are critical for us to meet community expectations. My continued commitment is to be transparent and communicate with this community, so you are fully aware of what our vision is for policing. We will strongly consider your feedback as we re-build the Williamson County Sheriffs Office. We have recently begun to schedule ongoing community meetings to ensure we maintain consistent community engagement and feedback. These will be ongoing and recurring during my tenure as Sheriff. We look forward to working with the Commissioners Court and are appreciative of their efforts to seek resolutions to these budgetary challenges in providing adequate public safety for all Williamson County residents.
Respectfully,
Sheriff Mike Gleason
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