With 95% of the precincts reporting in at 4:00am, Jackson county is on track to lose a millage proposal for jail operations.
Voters had defeated a larger request in the August primary election, and another in 2022.
Sheriff Gary Schuette lobbied for the measure, calling it "extraordinarily serious for public safety in this county."
"I will have to cut $1 million from my budget. What that equates to is 12 full time deputy positions, and I don't use this term loosely, that would be catastrophic for us", Schutte said in an election night interview with WKAR. "It could mean shutting down an entire road patrol division. It could mean shutting down an entire barracks in our jail, which will definitely have an impact on public safety."
Schutte said he tried to convey the need for new funding to the people of Jackson county, "The proposal was put on there with very little time for us to actually prepare and run a campaign to make sure that everyone understood specifically that this is about deputy positions and not about the jail. And in fact, today I was out and about and I had a person say, nicely, that they had voted in favor of this proposal and tell me. 'you need a new jail, and I voted for that because you need a new jail', and I didn't have a heart to tell them that we're not getting a new jail with this. This is Deputy positions, so that just tells me I didn't reach the people I needed to reach."
A Jackson county web page says the millage would have cost a family with a $200,000 home approximately $25 per year more in property taxes. It would not have paid for any jail improvements, and instead would have only covered jail operational expenses.