About 2% of Kosciusko County is on probation, and each of the county probation officers have over 100 people on their caseload.
Thursday, the Kosciusko County Probation Department sought approval from the County Council for an additional appropriation of $189,293.80 for 2025 to cover the increase of wages for each probation officer for this year.
Human Resource Director Cathy Reed said the request will be covered by user fees.
“They used to cover all of their wages with user fees, but back in 2018 the auditor said this wasn’t sustainable anymore and they needed to move it partly onto the county to pay for it and then they supplemented with some of the user fees as well,” she said. “They’ve been able to build back up over the years, so they have the money to be able to do that this year.”
Reed said they’re using POPAI (Probation Officers Professional Association of Indiana) that has put together a recommendation for wages for probation officers and that’s the recommendation the probation department wants to go with. Currently, the county uses the state minimum requirements and has for a number of years.
Kara Shively, juvenile probation officer, said it was a consulting firm that got them the recommendation.
“A market rate analysis was done to come up with a fair rate for probation officers. The reason that was done was because there were concerns about retention ... keeping people in their positions and also then being able to hire new officers,” she said.
At the minimum mandated wage, she said it’s just not a fair wage and it’s “just impossible” to bring new officers in, especially because a college degree is required.
According to in.gov, the 2025 minimum probation officer base annual salary is $42,311 if the officer has zero years of experience. With one year of experience, that’s $45,548; two years, $50,669; 10 years, $64,321; and 20 years or more, $77,828.
“So POPAI partnered with the consulting firm. It was not POPAI that came up with the wages themselves,” Shively explained.
Tammy Johnston, chief probation officer, said the mandatory minimum wage for probation officers started in 2005.
“At that point, it was discussed and user fees were going to pay the difference between the 2005 budget for all probation officers. They would pay any additional that was mandatory minimum,” she said. “So from 2005 to 2018, probation user fees paid enough to get us up to the mandatory minimum to the tune of over $2 million out of probation user fees for 2005 to 2018.”
In 2018, that could no longer be sustained so “we were able to pay $100,000 and then more recently $105,000 toward our salaries from the user fee account to get us to the minimum,” Johnston said.
As of Thursday, she said they had 1,682 people on probation. Last year, they had 356 juvenile referrals. With the probation department, they have over 180 years of experience. Currently, there are three juvenile officers and nine adult officers.
“There have been people who have been here a long time, but we’re starting to leave,” Johnston stated. “This year alone we have been short-staffed two people for a couple months. We’re still short-staffed. We just can not hire people at the existing wages. We have somebody in now, our most recent probation officer, that makes almost $1,000, maybe $1,500 more a year than our support staff.”
Now is college graduation season and she said she’s not had one college graduate apply for a probation job.
The county’s judges attended Thursday’s meeting in support of the probation department request.
Superior Court II Judge Torrey Bauer said, “We know first hand the importance of having quality probation officers and being able to retain them and keep them, and when they leave being competitive in the marketplace to be able to go out and get others.”
He said the courts utilize probation extensively to keep from putting people in the county jail.
“If our probation department is not adequately staffed, or if the probation officers that we have do not inspire the confidence of the judges - and there have been some - that affects our decision-making and we may choose not to put people on probation, which means they go sit in the county jail, which means you have overcrowding issues,” Bauer explained. “There’s only two options for us realistically - we have Community Corrections, but - it’s either probation or they go sit in jail. And the reason that we’re here tonight is that we fully support probation officers’ request. We don’t think that the ultimate price to increase their salaries to the amounts that have been recommended by the consulting firm is ridiculous. We think it’s very adequately presented.”
He compared the state mandatory minimum to a minimum wage at McDonald’s.
“That was put into place to ensure they would be paid the minimum salary, but this minimum salary across the state, not every location has the same living expense. If you go down to Scott County, Orange County, they’re under that same state mandatory minimum. They live a lot better than our probation officers do on that mandatory minimum, and I don’t think we ought to have college graduates who have been working in the probation department for years looking at the prospect of having to take second jobs because they can’t be adequately compensated,” he said.
Along with the judges support the pay raise for the probation officers, Bauer said the prosecutor’s office also supports it.
“All these raises are covered completely by user fees. It’s not going to cost the county anything for 2025. Their user fees, which they collect, which is part of being on probation, is what’s covering the raise for 2025,” he said.
For 2026, the raises will ultimately cost the county only an additional $159,000 “to put people in a position that they want to stay and be rewarded,” Bauer stated, though that could be less if more user fees are able to be collected.
Council President Tony Ciriello said that for 2026, “We don’t know exactly where we’re going to be in 2026. So, will we have an extra $159,000? We might, we might not. At this point in time, until we get all the actual numbers in the budget session. We know we’re taking a hit, we just don’t know how much for sure yet, we have a pretty good idea. So future casting for 2026 is kind of tough to do. Put it in the budget and we’ll see what happens. There’s no guarantees on 2026 that there will be any increases for anybody. We’re hoping to give increases, but we won’t know for a few more weeks yet exactly how much money we’ll have to cut out of budgets, if any, or how much we’ll be able to increase wages next year.”
After some discussion on percentages versus dollar amounts, Councilwoman Rachael Rhoades made a motion to approve the request as presented.
“I think that their request is fair,” she said.
Ciriello said Rhoades motion was “to go with the recommended POPAI schedule for 2025, retroactive to Jan. 1.” Councilwoman Kimberly Cates seconded the motion and it passed 7-0.