Breonica Clark is a 35-year-old mother of two who recently made a big life change.
After years of working in customer service and education, she recently began training at the Sedgwick County’s detention academy to become a jail deputy. Her daughter is a little nervous for her, but Clark is excited.
“I've always had an interest in law enforcement, but I always was kind of unsure if it was a field that I could go into,” Clark said. “And then one day, I just decided, ‘Let's make it happen. What am I waiting for?’ ”
One reason she made the leap now?
“At my previous job, which I was there for quite a while, I had actually maxed out at pay there, and it still wasn't near the starting pay here,” Clark said. “… Being the sole provider for the two children, I knew it was a good financial move for me, so that would give us more financial stability.”
From 2019 to 2024, the starting annual pay for Sedgwick County Sheriff’s deputies increased by 66%, from about $35,300 to more than $58,000 a year.
Sedgwick County says it’s raised pay in many departments in recent years, adding almost $64 million in staff compensation in its past four budgets. Commissioners zeroed in on competitive wages to combat vacancy rates that grew post-pandemic, many in public safety departments.
The concerted effort to increase pay helped return the county to more stable staffing levels, county officials say.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, the adjustments that we've made and the attention that we've made to our workforce the last few years has benefited the county,” said County Commissioner Ryan Baty. “… Some of these departments are almost at full staffing. The outputs are better.”
But the pay raises presented commissioners with a different set of challenges: namely, balancing the budget. Unwilling to raise the mill levy, commissioners faced a $4.9 million operating deficit in 2025 before the county manager recommended a set of cuts. That included a $1 million funding reduction to arts, culture and recreation activities, such as the Sedgwick County Zoo and Exploration Place.
“What I would hate to see is a precedent that’s started or a continuation of a cycle where these organizations are viewed as less important or of less value than the compensation packages for the Sheriff's Office, the fire office, the 911 operators,” said Matthew Broderick, president of the Wichita Arts Council, a local arts and culture advocacy group.
Pre-pandemic norms challenged by COVID
Compensation challenges at Sedgwick County date back to at least 2013, when a study found staff were paid, on average, below market wages.
But because of the fallout of the Great Recession, the commission couldn’t fully fund the raises necessary to fix the problem, said Lindsay Poe Rousseau, the county’s chief financial officer.
Then the pandemic hit. Departments that already struggled with competitive pay were now working through a public health crisis. Competing government entities, like the state’s corrections department, began aggressively raising wages. And many employees were also unhappy with Sedgwick County’s leadership, according to a survey of staff who chose to leave between 2018 and 2021.
Employees started leaving, and by 2022, vacancy rates in several departments outpaced historical levels of 15%.
About one in four positions in the department that handles 911 calls sat open in early 2022. The corrections department, which oversees juvenile detention services and the adult work release program, experienced the same. COMCARE, the county’s mental health agency, reached an almost 40% vacancy rate.
Sheriff Jeff Easter said commissioned deputies – higher-ranking officers, including himself – worked overtime at the jail to ensure sufficient staffing from 2021 to 2023.
“We were already short, and now people were working in here longer,” Easter said. “Morale was not good. Pay wasn't that great. And, you know, we had people leaving here to go make more money at Lowe's and Menards.”
County commission takes action
In 2019, the county undertook another employee compensation study. Sheena Schmutz, the county’s chief human resources officer, said it laid out a long-term plan to get pay back on track.
But as vacancies grew and inflation began to eat up paychecks post-pandemic, it became a short-term plan.
“All of a sudden, we had to just take compensation and go, ‘This is a top priority,’” Schmutz said.
In the summer of 2022, commissioners passed a 2023 budget that made a variety of drastic commitments to compensation: targeted pay raises in high-vacancy areas like mental health care workers and 911 dispatchers, guaranteed annual pay raises in EMS and the Fire Department for employees’ first 15 years, and an 8% pay bump for the rest of employees.
The 2024 and 2025 budgets continued the trend. The minimum county pay now sits at $15 dollars an hour. First-year paramedics in EMS make nearly 30% more in 2024 than they did in 2019; the starting wages of emergency dispatchers at 911 and corrections workers grew by about 40% in the same time period.
Commissioners say the investment is paying off, pointing to vacancy rates that have rebounded to more acceptable levels. Emergency communications vacancy rates shrunk from nearly 30% in January 2023 to 15% in January 2024. By May 2024, that shrunk to 7%, according to Elora Forshee, the director of Emergency Communications, at a budget hearing.
“Compensation has played a big part in several of these departments being able to attract a more robust applicant pool and bring in better employees that they are able to retain better,” said assistant county manager Rusty Leeds, who oversees public safety departments, at a budget hearing in May.
A county staff survey shared with commissioners in May showed that 58% of employees felt they were paid fairly to the local market. About 77% felt the County Commission was committed to continuing to improve compensation.
Easter said his jail lacks only 35 deputies now, down from more than 100 in 2023. He said retention is also improving: so far this year, he’s hired about twice as many than he’s lost.
“Overall, it's going much, much better,” Easter said. “... When an 18-year-old kid (by) the age of 28 can be making $80,000 a year, that's pretty good pay. And they also deserve it for what they do for this community.”
The county gives annual raises to Sheriff's deputies for the first ten years of employment. It recently increased the ten-year figure to about $91,000 a year.
How many raises can the county sustain?
In January, the county increased pay for the sheriff’s department by 8.7% to keep it competitive with Wichita police officers, who had just received a 13% pay bump.
Baty, the commissioner, said the decision was necessary, but financially difficult, tipping the county’s 2025 budget into a deficit.
“One meeting, one vote,” Baty said. “We gave the sheriff's department an 8.7% raise, and that was what was responsible for the $4.9 million deficit that we saw. One decision with one department.
“But we had to do it in order to maintain competitiveness and to make sure that the sheriff had the staff he needs to run his jail and to have commissioned deputies.”
The pay increases meant the county wasn’t bringing in enough revenue to pay for its operating expenses. As a result, the 2025 budget reduced funding to arts, culture and recreation organizations like the Sedgwick County Zoo and Exploration Place by about 10%. The county warned that the cuts may not be the last.
The move frustrated arts, culture and recreation advocates. At a budget hearing in early August, executive directors, board members, volunteers and residents shared their concerns.
Amy Seerey, a local pediatrician who serves on Exploration Place’s board, said the county’s funding has helped make the museum accessible to low-income families.
“Please, don’t hamper EP’s ability to serve those in our community who don’t have the right zip code or right connections,” Seerey said.
County Commissioner David Dennis asked the commenters: If these organizations didn’t face budget cuts, who should?
Broderick, the Wichita Arts Council president, said he supports the county’s efforts to pay its employees competitive wages. But he doesn’t want it to come at the expense of arts and culture organizations, which bring in millions of dollars in economic activity each year.
Accomplishing both, though, may mean asking a different question than Dennis.
“It might also mean instead of property tax reductions, looking at … how do we make that property tax increase?” Broderick said.
Most Sedgwick County Commissioners, though, want to move in the opposite direction. The 2025 budget included a small mill levy reduction, an attempt to alleviate rising property taxes commissioners say are a source of many complaints.
Several of the county’s leaders are currently considering a new sales tax that would offset property taxes – and potentially be used to pay for arts, culture and recreational investments.
“We feel at Sedgwick County that property tax dollars should be reserved for our core services, things like public safety and public health,” Baty said. “… We need to find another stream of revenue for cultural arts funding.”
But Broderick said sales tax collection depends on the economy’s well-being, making it a potentially risky answer to the county’s budget woes.
“The last thing I want to do is tie funding to sales tax, and then have there be another pandemic, or another 2008,” he said. "And because of those services being tied to a sales tax, these organizations are laying people off.”
