Are you going to be safer with a $30.2 million cut to the King County Sheriff’s Office that’s proposed in this next county budget?

The sheriff was able to speak at a recent King County Council meeting on her concerns with the proposed $30.2 million cut to her budget. She characterized this as devastating. One comment was that we cannot continue to do more with less as now we will have to do less with less.

What does that translate for you? It means that there will be fewer officers in this area on a regular basis. Half of the officers will be transferred to contract cities. Contract cities are cities that pay directly for the services they want, so they get a high level of service that meets the needs of their city. These cities include Sammamish, Woodinville, Shoreline, Kenmore, Covington, Maple Valley, Burien, Seatac and also some agencies such as Metro and Sound Transit. With this transfer of officers, these cities will be fully staffed. But not the rural areas.

The rural areas did not have a staffing level determined like every other community. So one of our county employees worked on a staffing level study for his PhD project. It was quite extensive and when we took it to the county budget director, he said he would use it as the first foundation on making these decisions.

There was great pushback to using population per officer and/or number of miles to cover rather than just crime data, as rural areas do not have as high a crime level. But having visible officers is one of the reasons that crime is curtailed. But we were able to add officers even while Seattle was losing officers. The data for comparison is there.

However with the huge vacancy rate in Seattle now, the numbers are not up to date. But that does not mean that citizens living in rural areas should be protected far less than their nearby contract cities. We should demand to see this report updated and that there be a reasonable correlation between staffing levels.

So it is vital that you have strong representation and that your voice is heard by all King County Councilmembers over this conflict. Seattle representatives may not be as interested in hearing from rural residents, but you deserve to be heard. If you know a friend or family member in other districts, ask them to advocate for your needs too. The most important service or priority to most of us is the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff, Patti Cole-Tindall, is an appointed sheriff. (Citizens changed from an elected sheriff a few years ago by a vote.) She works for the county executive who appoints the position. That was done by Dow Constantine. But as of this month we have a new county interim executive, Shannon Braddock, who has worked closely with rural areas, which may be helpful. But as an appointed sheriff, Patti Cole-Tindall is under direction of the executive on how she can advocate for her department. Most sheriffs in the state are elected, so they can go to the people as often as they want and are under no real or perceived boundaries on what they can say they need.

In order to help with better coverage of officers, the strategic location of the sheriff substation was moved years ago to be closer to the center of the county to help reduce response times. But much of this is in jeopardy with the proposed drastic cuts. We have a plan in the county for backup from other local sheriff departments/police officers. Even though the uniform in a contract city may say for instance, Woodinville Police, they are actually a sheriff deputy assigned there.

Usually backup requests are pretty fair as crime happens across city lines, and by being on the same dispatch system, the officers can coordinate. However if the number of officers for the rural area is so low, that will not be a good balance and could cause some conflict with other city areas.

One “game” that you have to be aware of is the ratio of officers as in actual bodies you can see at any particular time to the number of officers assigned to the area – FTE, or full time equivalents. What that means is that it takes 5 FTEs to cover one officer as that accounts for 24 hour shifts, sick time, days off, holidays, etc. So be careful when you are given numbers to be sure you know what the true number of available officers will be at any particular time.

The sheriff said risks will go up, response times will go down, coverage will go down, and employees who do research and policy direction to be up to date on safety and policing issues will not be afforded. Eighty (80) positions will be vacant as of Jan. 1, 2026. Response times will be delayed, including in-process crimes like burglary and domestic violence and other violence cases. Response to non-life-threatening crimes will be even more delayed or no response at all (like is happening in Seattle).

Is this the picture you want for your area?

So how do we change this? Let the sheriff know you support her budget request, and let the executive and every council member know that this cut is not acceptable. This is discrimination of treatment for rural citizens. Demand they show you a staffing level comparison of officers per citizen and with some additional consideration for the miles needed to travel from the coverage area of Skykomish to rural North Bend areas, for instance.

Then they need to “sharpen their pencils” and present a budget that shows the rural needs as a priority, not a second thought. There was such a budget at one point and it had lots of errors because they had never done it before and had items that were regional for the rural area to pay for. But there has been more than plenty of time to work that out. Does that exist now? Rural land is always to be under the council oversight. Urban unincorporated areas are to someday be transferred to a city. So the area that is solely forever to be under the jurisdiction of the county should not be treated with such lack of care and representation and with such extremely lower service levels in this budget.

Kathy Lambert is a former King County Councilmember who represented District 3, which includes the Snoqualmie Valley.