RALEIGH, N.C. — Several North Carolina counties are adopting budgets for fiscal year 2024-2025. Priorities include education funding, infrastructure and public safety.

What You Need To Know

  •  Wake County commissioners voted to adopt a more than $2.08 billion budget

  •  The Wake County Sheriff's Office will be getting funding from that budget

  •  The sheriff's office will using the funds to hire more people and get additional equipment

  • The resources will be a plus as they are seeing more calls for service over the years

In Wake County, the Board of Commissioners voted to adopt a more than $2.08 billion budget. The Wake County Sheriff’s Office will be getting funding to help address challenges it’s seeing. The money will help them provide more resources to their patrol division and their courthouse operations.

The sheriff's office will be hiring 16 patrol deputies, 13 courthouse deputies and two courthouse sergeants, among other positions. Specifically, for these purposes and including new equipment, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office will be getting over $6 million.

Wake County Deputy Sheriff Beckley Vaughan, with the Governor's Highway Safety Program, feels this is a step in the right direction.

“We put a big emphasis on being able to provide resources where we need them, and we need the manpower to be able to do that,” Vaughan said. “So, I have high hopes that with this sheriff and the elected officials here now, feel the same thing that I feel that there is a need, and that they will be able to provide the resources.”

The additional staff is a plus as the office said it’s receiving more and more calls each year. Last year, the agency responded to over 113,000 calls for service. The year before that the number was more than 110,000 calls for service. In 2021, it was over 109,000 calls.

As calls have trended up, so have major crimes.

“We can do our job better when we have enough people working to ensure that we are safe, and that you’re safe as well," Vaughan, said. "Because it’s kind of bad feeling when you go to a domestic call that maybe starts off with two people and now you have a big family involved and you have one deputy.”

Other counties around the state are adding additional funding to their sheriff’s office in their budgets. Durham County is giving $845,000 to its sheriff’s office for operational needs. Forsyth County’s proposed budget has an increase of $4.6 million for its sheriff’s office. Mecklenburg County is giving its Justice and Public Safety Services over $196 million.