Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello on Deputy Shortage, New Sales Tax

We’re not the only community in America facing a significant behavioral health crisis. But … we’re taking it seriously and trying to do the most good we can with the dollars that we have.”

The Key Peninsula Community Council hosted Pierce County Executive Ryan N. Mello (D) at its monthly meeting March 12.

A recurring theme in his remarks was the high costs Pierce County faces in providing services, primarily public safety, and how to pay for them.

Referring to four stabbing murders in Wauna Feb. 24, and two other recent acts of violence resulting in multiple fatalities, Mello said, “Whether we knew the individuals who we lost from those stabbings and other violent incidents, it shook our community, and continues to shake our community. This particular part of our county is incredibly special in how tight-knit it is.”

He described a meeting between Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank, Prosecutor Mary Robnett, and himself, where they discussed the latest incident.

“And in that meeting with the sheriff, he said something quite illuminating — not easy to hear — but quite illuminating,” Mello said. “We were reflecting on it, and the sheriff said, you could never staff for events like that, these kinds of events, as happens sometimes with shootings elsewhere in America. It really stuck with me. It really shook me.”

Answering questions about hiring more deputies, Mello acknowledged the department is understaffed: 37 fully funded deputy positions in Pierce County are currently vacant, as are another 40 in corrections.

County Councilmember Robyn Denson (D-7th), also in attendance, added that the sheriff assigns deputies to areas with the greatest needs, and he needs more deputies.

“When he has a more robustly filled force, he will be able to deploy more people to the rural areas,” Denson said. “Right now, he puts the most people in our Central Detachment, which is where we have the most violent crimes. He’s making the decision based on the data … but he’s got to have more officers so that he can give us more.”

The county began negotiating a new contract with the Deputy Sheriffs Independent Guild in January 2025. The union rejected the county’s offer of a 10% raise over 10 years last June by a vote of 290-1. The parties went into binding arbitration in March of this year; a resolution is not expected until August.

The county plans to spend $26 million on the Sheriff’s Office over the next two years. It will amend the budget to match the final contract. As it stands, 77% of the budget is spent on public safety, and 40% of that goes to the Sheriff’s Office.

Pierce County is competing with much wealthier areas for the same recruits or lateral hires, even while keeping pace with neighboring counties, Mello said, though there are exceptions.

“King County, the city of Tacoma, the places where we compete for labor, they have much bigger budgets than we do, and they have these cash incentives for folks to join their force — $50,000 signing bonuses. … The silver tsunami is real across a lot of sectors, including law enforcement (and) people are not going into law enforcement. It’s a hard job. … So, we’re not unique in our recruitment needs or personnel approach.”

On paying for it, Mello said, “We use COVID relief dollars, pandemic money that we got from the federal government. One of the many things we did with that was to create a recruitment incentive and retention incentive for our officers (from $5,000 to $25,000). That money runs out at the end of June. So there’s the money in the justice fund.”

Mello described a new 0.1% sales tax the Pierce County Council approved March 3, known as the justice fund, that will begin July 1. The new tax will collect one cent per $10, or one dime per $100, to generate approximately $27 million annually for law enforcement salaries, medical treatment for inmates — including recovery and reentry programs — renovating the 1960s era county jail, and replacing Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center in Tacoma, which opened in 1954.

There is also an unfunded mandate from the state of Washington to double the number of attorneys in the public defender’s office.

“To be exact, 97% of the bill; the state legislature pays 3% of the bill for public defense,” Mello said. “It’s another $25 million to find over the next decade, and we have to start by this year. We have to come up with the money, and we don’t have it.”

About $6.5 million has also been earmarked for IT hires and improvements across the county criminal justice system.

“Our prosecutors, our public defenders, the Sheriff ’s Office, the judiciary, spend a lot of time doing a lot of manual stuff, and they need new technology,” Mello said. “(They) unanimously agreed on investments that will make their lives easier and more efficient.”

Mello also said the county gets sued “all the time” for endangering jail inmates and the officers who guard them, often due to jail conditions.

“Let me give you another sense of the scale of the challenges that we’re facing,” he said. “We have 141 claims of sex abuse allegations from the 1980s and ’90s (at Remann Hall) totaling $340 million. The county does not have $340 million in insurance or in a savings account for these payouts. It is very serious. There’s a lot on my mind every day.”

Of the 141 claims, 14 were settled and five withdrawn in January, resulting in $9 million in settlements so far.

Mello returned to the recent fatal violence on the Key Peninsula, saying, “We’re not the only community in America facing a significant behavioral health crisis. But … we’re taking it seriously and trying to do the most good we can with the dollars that we have.”