WARREN — Trumbull County commissioners are expected today to pass contracts with nine area school districts that use the sheriff’s office to provide school resource officers to them at a combined cost of $497,857.02.

Five of the districts — Joseph Badger in Kinsman, Mathews in Vienna, Southington, Bloomfield-Mesopotamia and Trumbull Career & Technical Center in Champion — are paying a base pay per officer of $79,657.12 plus a 5% administrative fee of $3,982.86.

Four school districts — Bristol, Champion, Newton Falls Exempted Village and John F. Kennedy — are paying the deputy base pay of $79,675.12, but not the administrative fee.

Mark Manning, the sheriff’s office chief financial officer, said the four districts paying only the base pay have been allowed to do so this year because the resource officers’ pay agreement was completed so late in the school year budgeting process that it would have been difficult for the districts to come up with the increased amount of money.

“Some of the school districts already had the amount for SROs defined in their budgets,” Manning said. “If they found they could not pay for the SROs and the administrative fees, we allowed them to pay only for the SROs this year. However, going forward, they will have to budget for both.”

School resource officers are in the school districts for 70% of their work time, so that is what is being charged to the school districts. The administrative fees address vehicle and other costs associated with having deputies in the school districts.

Manning noted that under previous contracts, some school districts were paying different amounts to hire school resource officers.

Under new Trumbull County Sheriff Mike Wilson, all of the school districts are being charged the same amount to contract for the officers.

In the 2024-25 school year, all of the districts with SRO contracts — except TCTC and Mathews — paid the sheriff’s department less for their contracts, according to sheriff’s office records.

Bloomfield-Mespo, Champion, Newton Falls and JFK each paid $63,578.58. Badger, Bristol and Southington paid $70,377.84. TCTC paid $127,157.16 and Mathews paid $140,755.68.

Combined, the districts paid the sheriff’s office $733,360.68 under their SRO contracts.

Manning noted there will be two fewer deputies working in the school districts this school year than last year.

Also, under the previous contracts, school districts were able to use SROs for sporting and other events under the contracted price set at the beginning of the year.

“We would have to eat whatever the overtime costs paid to the SROs because they worked after hours,” Manning said. “The school districts now have to pay for all of the deputies’ hours and costs.”

Wilson noted his office has been working to reduce its spending so it will be able to live with the approximately $19 million provided in this year’s budget.

It has reduced its overtime spending so far this year by $79,500.

“It has been a lot of work,” Wilson said. “We have been making moves to eliminate overtime.

The office has renegotiated previous contracts.

“We raised contract amounts just to cover our costs,” he said. “We would have been in arrears by $784,000 if we had kept the previous contracts.”

The sheriff’s office also found that some departments, including job and family services and child support enforcement, were not being billed for services provided over a three-year period.

“We were able to recover $250,000,” Wilson noted. “This has helped to supplement our budget.”

Commissioner Tony Bernard emphasized that every dollar the sheriff saves helps the county’s bottom-line budget.