The Cole County Commission on Tuesday approved adding four additional employees for the Sheriff's Department after spiking a similar request in December.
The department will hire three jailers in the county jail and one detective in the patrol division.
In December, Presiding Commissioner Sam Bushman made the motion to approve the request, but it died for lack of a second. When Bushman tried again Tuesday, Eastern District Commissioner Jeff Hoelscher and Western District Commissioner Kris Scheperle gave their approval.
"I think you've given us the proof that you need these folks," Hoelscher said.
Sheriff Greg White did not give a timeline for how soon the new employees would start. "We will be as lean and mean as we can be," he told commissioners.
The cost for the detective would be $48,931, while each jailer would cost $42,131. The money for the positions will come out of the law enforcement contingency fund.
In December, White noted with additional staff they hoped to cut down on overtime expenses to guard prisoners taken to local hospitals for treatment, a chief cause of overtime in 2015.
On Tuesday, White said the time spent with prisoners at hospitals has not gone down and probably has increased.
"That's why we came back to you with this proposal," he told the commissioners.
White said they have had as many as three inmates at a time in hospitals, requiring someone to guard them 24 hours a day. The sheriff and his staff told commissioners in December by just operating with the minimum staff they had caused them to have overtime automatically.
"People don't want overtime because they're already maxed out on overtime," White said Tuesday.
There are 35 staff at the jail, up from the 18 that were working at the old jail. Even with the positions approved, the jail staff is still five short of the eight additional jailers proposed by an independent consultant prior to the jail opening in 2011.
Currently there are five detectives, including two supervisors.
In December, White and his staff talked about the main reason for the request for an additional detective was the increase they we're seeing in cyber-crimes and crimes involving child pornography. Many times they had to go out of the county to follow leads and information.
White said that hasn't changed, but they were now down one detective who was injured during an investigation and would be out an undetermined amount of time.
Some more good news in White's presentation to the commission was the number of federal prisoners the jail handles will likely stay at a steady stream.
"The federal marshals said there are no plans to reduce those prisoners coming here," White said.
In 2015, Cole County housed an average of 40 inmates per day.
That translates to $113,490 a month coming into the county and more than $1 million a year.
That money goes into the law enforcement fund to operate the sheriff's department.