Thumbnail photo courtesy of the Del Norte Probation Department Though his department has an overall vacancy rate of 33%, Lonnie Reyman said Del Norte County probation will be screening more than 20 potential new recruits. The county’s probation chief offered this ray of optimism as part of an otherwise complex budget report to the Board of Supervisors on Monday. Probation and Re-entry Services, which includes the Youth Opportunity Center and detention services, is also expecting an uptick in the number of juvenile offenders that are in custody and are expecting the cost to house them to increase, he said. But District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey observed that while the Probation Department and Re-entry Services have an average of $3.3 million in total expenditures over the past four years, the proposed budget for those departments is $5.6 million. “At what point do we kind of balance this out,” she asked. “I don’t expect anybody to have an answer, but I think it’s something worth noting that as we go through these budgets to kind of look at other departments that are wanting a $20,000 system that we can’t give, we got this department that might have some wiggle room since it’s general fund money.” Reyman began his hour-long presentation to Starkey and her colleagues by offering a breakdown of the budgets for both Probation and Re-entry Services, noting that they’re expected to have about $7.358 million in expenditures for the 2025-26 fiscal year and generate about $4.512 million in revenue. Overall, the net cost to the county’s general fund for both those departments is $2.846 million, he said. The Del Norte County Probation Department covers core probation and pre-trial services for adults and juveniles. The re-entry services budget includes expenses related to the Youth Opportunity Center as well as juvenile detentions. Del Norte County has had contracts with Humboldt, Mendocino and Shasta counties to house youthful offenders at their juvenile halls after shuttering its own about two years ago. According to Reyman, in addition to increased detention costs, his department is preparing to relocate juvenile services to make way for adult inmates needing to be housed while the Del Norte County Jail is being renovated. “We’re going to have to maintain, try to maintain, continuity as uninterrupted as we can in juvenile probation as well as try and keep the programs and case loads on the Youth Opportunity Center side going as consistently and without interruption as we can,” he said. “This is going to be a significant project for us.” Other significant projects include creating a mobile unit to visit Smith River and Fort Dick as well as Klamath once a month. Answering a question from District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short, the chief probation officer said his department was outfitting the biggest tallest Ford transit van into a mobile office that would allow offenders to attend court hearings, meet with their probation officer and drug test. Short had pointed out that the Probation Department was budgeting $14,850 for office supplies when it had for the past three years only spent $64. Reyman said that money will pay for computers, printers, a television, camera and other pieces that will be part of the new mobile unit. “The company we finally secured to do that is building out two work stations,” he said. “There will be some seating in there for an offender with the TV [where] they can do court and a bathroom in the back so we can collect tests, so we can literally drive to some place and set up an office.” Probation is using $75,000 in Measure R funding to purchase the transit van, according to Auditor-Controller Clinton Schaad. Consisting of a mix of general fund and non-general fund dollars, the budgets Reyman oversees are among the county’s more complex, Schaad told supervisors. In addition to receiving general fund dollars, probation is funded through a myriad of state programs. Those programs include funding to offset travel expenses for officers visiting juveniles detained in the Humboldt or Shasta county facilities as well as pre-trial services. Probation is also using funding from Proposition 64, the voter-approved initiative that legalized recreational cannabis, though the bulk is going to the Del Norte County Office of Education. In the probation department, total expenditures for 2025-26 are anticipated to be $5.573 million with offsetting revenue coming in at $3.978 million. The net cost to Del Norte County from probation is about $1.6 million. For Re-entry Services, total expenditures for 2025-26 are projected to be about $1.785 million and offsetting revenue is at a projected $533,742 for a net cost to the county of $1.251 million. In both budgets, salaries and benefits make up the bulk of the costs with services and supplies coming in second and intrafund transfers coming in third, according to Reyman. According to the probation chief, vacancy is typically the biggest impact on his budget every year. “We have to plan for a full staff and when we have vacant positions, which we have had fairly significantly, that leaves unspent funds across the board for us and so you’ll see that in our budget on a regular basis,” he said. In response to Starkey, about whether or not his budgets have wiggle room, Reyman said as a service-based department, probation operates and spends money based on the number of people it has to do the work. Because of the number of vacant positions, he said, work isn’t getting done. If county supervisors wanted to reduce the amount of general fund dollars probation spends, they might begin by looking at salaries and benefits, the Probation Department’s largest expense. However, Reyman said, many of those positions are paid for through state program dollars as well. “You could definitely look at ‘OK, we’re going to reduce [the funding], that puts us into a position where we might bump into we can’t recruit and hire for these positions because they’re not funded,” he said. “That’s a decision we have to make — the budget team [and the] Board — ultimately, how do we want to approach that if we’ve got these vacancies which we’ve always struggled with.” Reyman said that if the county budget team and the Board of Supervisors choose not to fund certain positions, as a department head he then wonders if he’ll ever get those positions back. “There’s plenty of work for them to do if I had them,” he said. “I know the struggle we’re in. I know that there’s not enough money to go around. For my department to do what we need to do, I need that level of funding to get that level of staffing to provide that level of service. If I cut the funding because I don’t anticipate the staff, am I going to get it [back when I can get the people?” Short asked if it would be more accurate to differentiate between the general fund and state funds in Probation and Re-entry Services’ budgets as he and his colleagues evaluate their expenses. Schaad said it’s because of the myriad sources of funding Probation and Re-entry Services relies on that makes Reyman’s budgets among the more complex in the county. He said he could return to the Board with a breakdown of expenditures and revenues that differentiates between the two sources. Reyman’s budget drew concern from two members of the public. PJ Estlund, who was the director of finance for Curry General Hospital, which is a taxing district in Oregon, said she felt the Probation Department’s budget was grossly padded. She said she noted an overall increase of $1.1 million in the department’s expenses compared to the average for two years. Estlund also mentioned the closure of Del Norte’s juvenile detention facility, which took place about two years ago. “We closed juvenile hall to save money,” she said, speaking to the Re-entry Services budget, which includes the Youth Opportunity Center and detention services. “Total expenses are $366,000 greater than year-to-date. For expenses, you have year-to-date $1.4 million [and] you’re budgeting $1.8 million.” Norma Williams, president of the Del Norte County Employees Association SEIU 1021, touched on the vacancy rate. Though the overall vacancy rate is 33% for both Probation and Re-entry Services, Reyman had said that the vacancy rate in adult probation services is 45% and in juveile and support services the vacancy rate is 50%. “When you’re looking at vacancy rates at anywhere from 45 to 50% that should be alarming to you given the fact that they do provide vital services to this community,” Williams told the Board of Supervisors, wishing Reyman luck on his recruitment efforts. “It goes to your recruitment and retention problem which is something you need to address.” The Board of Supervisors adopted Del Norte County’s 2025-26 recommended budget in June, giving county officials spending authority into the new fiscal year. The recommended budget is $219.367 million with a general fund budget of about $45.29 million, according to a June 24 staff report from Schaad and County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez. After holding public workshops and a public hearing, the Board of Supervisors must adopt the 2025-26 final budget no later than Oct. 2.