Twelve Oakland County communities that contract with the sheriff’s office for law enforcement services are scrambling to figure out how they’ll cover a roughly 33% rate increase over three years, saying they’ll have to cut spending elsewhere, raise taxes or eliminate deputy positions.
Several communities have already made adjustments for the first year of the contracts, which started Jan. 1. Three scrapped plans to expand their substations and add deputies. Addison Township in northern Oakland County will lay off one deputy starting April 1, the start of its fiscal year.
But multiple officials, one of whom called the rate increases “astronomical,” said they’re still figuring out how they’ll handle the second and third years of the three-year contracts that the Democratic-controlled Oakland County Board of Commissioners approved in November. The board raised contract prices by an average of 15% in 2025 and around 9% each in 2026 and 2027. Several communities have property tax millages specifically for police services that they can’t increase yet.
For Rochester Hills, the contract increase amounts to about $4.5 million more over three years. For Independence Township, it’s $1.8 million.
“After 2025, we have to look at it (police service costs) very strongly because the rates go up again in 2026,” Oxford Supervisor Jack Curtis said. “… I have to look at every ounce of overtime, I have to look at every expenditure and say, ‘How is this going to affect us in ’26?'”
But county officials said the new contract better reflects the actual cost of police services.
Dave Woodward, chairman of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners, said the county had been effectively subsidizing the costs of police services in these communities for years and these are the first contracts that accurately reflect the price of the services.
“The issues about the pricing of these services being out of sync with what they really cost came to light three years ago when we approved those (contracts), but we were so close there was no time to make adjustments at that time,” said Woodward, a Royal Oak Democrat. “Oakland County’s fiscal office, led by our CFO in the county, working with the sheriff’s office, compiled all the costs that are associated with individual officers, and that became the framework of these agreements.”
The average contract increases in 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 were 2.8%, 2.7%, 1.3%, and 2.9%, respectively.
Still, many aren’t happy with how the increase was handled or its timing. The Deputy Sheriff’s Association of Oakland County, a union that represents sheriff’s deputies, posted a letter on social media in late December to residents, detailing the contract’s potential impact. It was signed by leaders of 11 of the 12 contracted communities. Only Pontiac Mayor Tim Greimel didn’t sign the letter.
“Imagine waiting longer for help to arrive during a crisis or seeing vital community programs disappear due to budget shortfalls,” the letter states.
The Deputy Sheriff’s Association didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Local officials balk
The sheriff’s office has contracts with 12 communities that don’t have their own police departments, including Commerce Township, Independence Township, Highland Township, Lyon Township, Pontiac, Rochester Hills and Springfield Township. Eight of the 10 townships in northern Oakland County all contract with the sheriff’s office for police services.
Contracts are priced by officer, with different rates for positions such as deputies, captains and sergeants, Woodward said. Everything from wage increases under labor union contracts, health care and retirement contributions to vehicle and liability costs go into determining the price per officer, he said. All of these have been growing, Woodward said.
All of the indirect costs associated with providing law enforcement services, including human resources support, payroll support, accounting and legal support, were included in the cost per officer, Woodward said.
Still, many officials said they were caught off guard by the size of the increases.
In Rochester Hills, which has a $185 million budget for its 2025 fiscal year, the contract increases 17% in the first year. Mayor Bryan Barnett said while the city budgeted for some price hikes, the new rates will force residents and officials to consider the level of service they want to maintain.
“When something goes up 35% in three years, you have to make some tough choices,” Barnett said. “Either … we have to ask residents to pay more, or we’re going to have to redeploy resources in a way that’s going to cause significant cuts in other parts of what we do as a community.”
Independence Township faces a similar 15% increase in 2025, followed by 9% increases each in 2026, and 2027, amounting to roughly $1.8 million. The township has a $9.4 million general fund budget for the 2025 fiscal year.
“The resulting pressure will lead to cuts in essential services, delays to critical projects like the new substation, or tax and fee increases that cannot take effect until 2027,” Township Supervisor Chuck Phyle said in a statement.
Some leaders especially questioned the timing of the new contract, approved in November, after the general election. By that point, most townships and cities had finished their 2025 budget processes, and it was too late to raise taxes.
“We all had an election this year, that’s when we are allowed to ask for tax increases or millages. We would have unequivocally in Orion Township … put a ballot question on our ballots in either August or November,” Supervisor Chris Barnett said. “Unequivocally, we will be asking our residents for a tax increase in 2026, probably August 2026.”
Woodward said the contracts were approved by the commission at the exact same time, almost to the day, as they were approved three years ago and local officials should not have been surprised.
“Every supervisor knew that the costs were going to have to go up,” Woodward said. “Many of these communities also contract for dispatch services. … Those prices were adjusted in the very same way we’re talking about here and there was an increase, the cost associated with delivering the services were increased there as well.”
Oxford Township has a millage that supports the sheriff’s substation and finalizes its annual budget by September, said Curtis, the supervisor. When the commission sent the new contracts in December, it was “well beyond a budget amendment process that we do, or trying to find funds,” he said.
“Fortunately, I anticipated some costs going up, so I budgeted for some of those costs, but impactfully a 15% raise in the rate is astronomical,” Curtis said. “We’re wrestling through it all, we’re allocating funds from future years, we’re allocating funds away from some building costs that we were doing. We are not going to lay anybody off at this time because quite frankly, three years ago, when we had this (Oxford High School) shooting, we are still experiencing large numbers of overtime hours.”
Sheriff’s response
While the county administration has historically worked with the contracted communities and the sheriff’s department to agree on contract rates, that was not necessarily the case this year, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.
“This time, the communities were not part of the discussion, and the sheriff’s office input was received but not necessarily agreed to,” said Bouchard, a Republican who has held the sheriff’s position for more than two decades. “We think there are a number of things that went into the process for determining the rates that made them higher than we think they should have been.”
The sheriff agreed that the communities should pay their fair share of the cost to the county but certain support positions in the sheriff’s office, such as human resources, that exist regardless of the contracts should not be factored into the rates.
“A portion of the contracts include positions that would be there anyway, with or without the contracts,” Bouchard said. “We would like to see actual documentation to what the so-called costs are as it relates to actual costs that would exist with or without the contracts.”
Bouchard said the sheriff’s office already runs “lean” and is concerned about the increased rates reducing positions. Commerce Township decreased the number of positions at its substation by two. Rochester Hills, Pontiac and Orion Township all axed plans to expand their substations and add positions this year.
Still, all of the contracts were signed at the new rate in time to start the new year, Woodward said.
‘Unfair’ subsidies
Woodward maintained that the county undercharged communities for sheriff’s office services for too long, adding up to tens of millions of dollars of unfair subsidies.
“The entire county was subsidizing the difference, and that’s fundamentally unfair,” Woodward said. “We have 12 communities we contract with, but the other 50 have their own police departments.”
Woodward blamed previous county administrations for not charging communities the full price of law enforcement services in previous contracts.
Some officials, like Phyle of Independence Township, still have concerns about transparency and the accuracy of the county’s calculations.
“Independence Township deserves better than unanticipated financial burdens that jeopardize public safety and trust,” Phyle said. “The $1.8 million increase is unacceptable without collaboration and transparency from the county.”
But Woodward said the county has made its entire fiscal services team available to the communities to answer their questions, and the contracts represent the price of “exceptional law enforcement services.”
“I get that people wish the prices were lower. I wish the prices were lower,” Woodward said, adding: “The price is the price.”
Forming their own police departments
Even with the price increases, the communities that contract with the sheriff’s office for public safety services are a “captive audience,” Orion Township’s Barnett said. The contracts began at the start of the new year, leaving roughly a month for local governments to consider and plan.
“If you were going to form your own department, you’re probably four or five years away from forming a department,” said Joseph Merucci, Oakland Township supervisor. “I understand the rates got to go up, because just inflation is going to go up, but it’s the timing that really stinks.”
The cost of contracting with the sheriff is also still less than the cost of starting and operating a local police department, Highland Township Supervisor Rick Hamill said.
“There’s no way that we could have our own police department for anywhere near, near the price that we pay for Oakland County’s program, and their program is stellar,” Hamill said. “The commission’s approach to covering those or those costs was a bit defective, and I think, ironically, it was more politically biased than anything.”
The Oakland County Deputy Sheriff’s Association letter, posted to the organization’s Facebook page last month, linked the increased rates to delayed response times and the potential loss of community programs.
“Dave Woodward intentionally pushed this agenda item to defund the police under the guise of ‘indirect costs,'” the letter said. “Every delayed response time, every underfunded program, and every officer stretched too thin impacts the safety of our community.”
Woodward said the argument that the rate increase is part of an effort to defund the police is “completely false” and called it dangerous to suggest the public is less safe than before the contracts were approved.
“Every one of these communities that signed this letter have money in their police millages to pay for these contracts,” Woodward said. “To grab one’s pearls and act in shock and awe is, it’s just juvenile.”
The Sheriff’s Department consistently receives one of the largest portions of money from the county’s general fund each year, Woodward explained. In 2025 the Sheriff’s Department’s budget is $218 million.
“Oakland County has never invested more in our law enforcement than we do today. It was Oakland County, led by Democrats, that paid for body cams to lead to not only greater transparency but … also to defend our officers of false claims,” Woodward said. “We just entered into a multimillion-dollar contract to get our officers the best equipment, brand new state-of-the-art tasers to reduce the need for a use of a gun to de-escalate situations. We are buying new vehicles.”
Greimel, Pontiac’s mayor, said he didn’t sign the union’s letter because he didn’t agree with its aggressive tone. Pontiac faced an immediate increase of about $2 million in 2025 and a total increase of roughly $5 million over the next three years, which Greimel called a “shock” to the system.
“We understand the county’s motivation, and we want to work with the county, but we’re hoping that we can get some assistance and flexibility from the county over the next couple of years so that it’s not as big of an increase all at once,” Greimel said. “The magnitude of the increase in price to the city of Pontiac is concerning, and I’ve certainly expressed those concerns directly to county commissioners.”
Communities have the option to distribute the contract increase more evenly over three years, Woodward said.
Rate increase in years two and three
The contracts will increase by 9% in 2026 and 2027, the result of the estimated consumer price index, a measure of inflation experienced by consumers, plus 6% in both years. Bouchard is concerned that the 6% increase is more of a guess and would like to see a specific accounting for what costs it covers.
“We would like to see year two and year three, the percentage of increase CPI and actual direct, documentable increase in cost, not a percentage based on best guess,” Bouchard said.
But Woodward said it’s difficult to predict future cost increases in things such as health care, equipment, liability insurance, and wages, especially with deputy and command union contracts up for re-negotiation in the next three years, Woodward said.
“This wasn’t made in a vacuum. It is looking at what is our experienced growth in these categories: wages, health care, liability, equipment, etc., and forecasting what those costs are, and that’s what the projected increase for years two and years three are,” Woodward said.
Initially, the county’s fiscal services department proposed contract increases of the CPI plus 2%, but commissioners on the public health and safety committee voted to increase it.
The county is also not allowed to charge communities more than the price of the service provided and is hiring personnel to track prices over the life of the contract, Woodward said.
“Let’s say wage increases for the sheriff deputies is lower than what we’re planning… then we will immediately, in the next month, credit the community for that service,” Woodward said.