{"id":24930,"date":"2024-11-06T03:11:09","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T10:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ballot-issue-1a-would-help-montezuma-county-sheriffs-office-drug-task-force-after-defunding\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:04:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:04:56","slug":"ballot-issue-1a-would-help-montezuma-county-sheriffs-office-drug-task-force-after-defunding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ballot-issue-1a-would-help-montezuma-county-sheriffs-office-drug-task-force-after-defunding\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballot Issue 1A would help Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Drug Task Force after defunding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma
Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Ballot Issue 1A, which was proposed to help provide funding to the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Drug Task Force and Montezuma County Jail, did not pass, according to unofficial results on Nov. 9.<\/p>\n

In the county, 42.91% of voters were in favor of the tax, whereas 57.09% voted against it, according to unofficial results.<\/p>\n

According to the ballot language, the issue, if passed, would have raised sales tax in the county by $8,123,002 in 2025, as well as a 1% sales tax increase. The money obtained from the sales tax will then be used to fund capital expenditures and operating costs for these organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt cannot be used for anything else,\u201d according to Undersheriff Tyson Cox. \u201cIt can only go to the Sheriff\u2019s Office for patrol operations, jail operation and the drug task force.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the reasons that the sales tax was proposed over any other kind of tax was for tourists to be able to pitch in on funding the sheriff\u2019s office, as emergency calls increase by a substantial amount during tourist season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s multiple times a year that we\u2019re out looking for lost hikers or hunters, and we expend a lot of resources and capital and overtime,\u201d Cox said. \u201cAnd another big problem is that we\u2019re seeing huge swings in our crime rate. The narcotics problem here is fueling increases in property crime and person\u2019s crime. We\u2019re also seeing auto theft and huge raises across the board in our calls for service, and we\u2019re having to do it with less people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, the office that can only staff about three officers per shift dealt with around 20,000 calls last year. These calls, Cox said, are becoming \u201cfar more aggressive and violent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compared with neighboring counties, including Montrose, the pay is alarmingly lower.<\/p>\n

Montrose starts pay around $88,000, Cox said, while Montezuma County starts officers at $52,000 per year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the lowest-paid agency in the Four Corners, and I\u2019m talking basically about Farmington to Montrose and everything in between,\u201d Cox said. \u201cUntil we become competitive, it\u2019s going to be extremely difficult to sustain what we have going on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox added that the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners said they may have a second consecutive year of budget cuts in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe county is not generating the revenue that it traditionally did, and we have to seek another source of revenue,\u201d Cox said. \u201cAnd what the commissioners have said is, \u2018Unfortunately, if this tax does not pass, there will be more cuts next year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The tax will also help combat the rising drug trafficking crime seen in the county.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had two large, federal drug trafficking investigations originate out of Montezuma County, and that means the drug traffickers are getting a strong foothold in our community,\u201d Cox said. \u201cWe just need to have the resources to combine that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheriff Steve Nowlin also spoke with The Journal<\/em> about the cuts earlier this year, saying that the 2024 Montezuma County budget for the Sheriff\u2019s Office is $1,884,747, a 20.91% decrease from $2,383,250 in 2023 and a 27.3% decrease from $2,593,868 in 2022.<\/p>\n

A 2024 budget of $57,869,814 was approved, compared with a 2023 budget of $58,677,923, a decrease of 1.377%.<\/p>\n

Pre trial spending was also halted, among other cuts and changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

has seen significant budget cuts and the preliminary results say it might fail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[266,28,52,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-law-enforcement","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78732,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24930\/revisions\/78732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24930"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}