COEUR d'ALENE - The Kootenai County Sheriff's Office has lost eight patrol deputies to better-paying law enforcement jobs in Spokane since August 2013.

Kootenai County commissioners met with sheriff's office leadership on Thursday to discuss the need for salary increases as a means to retain patrol and jail deputies working for the county.

Commissioner David Stewart said for every deputy who leaves to go to another agency, the county loses a minimum of $30,000 in training costs.

"This has gone on for many years and it's something that's going to take time to fix; it's not something that's going to happen overnight," Stewart said. "But you have to start somewhere. We need to figure out how we can correct this problem and stop Spokane and other jurisdictions from using us as a training grounds for their departments."

Four sheriff's office deputies - two who work patrol and two who work in the jail - attended the meeting and the commissioners asked for their input on the issue. Stewart said he was interested in hearing from the deputies who work at the jail, who after previous meetings asked to be included in the discussion of a salary increase.

Sheriff Ben Wolfinger told the commissioners deputies at the jail rarely leave the county for another jail. They too, he said, often leave for higher paying patrol jobs in Spokane.

After the meeting concluded, Undersheriff Dan Mattos told The Press that the pay for deputies is so off-track from the rest of the market that county officials have to attempt to close the gap.

He added that a consequence of deputies leaving for better-paying positions is a lack of personnel in intermediate leadership roles at the sheriff's office.

"We're beginning to see a significant lack of depth in the organization," Mattos said. "We've lost so many senior people that there's a void now between those who have a lot of experience and those who have very little."

Commissioner Dan Green told The Press that county officials will begin researching exactly how much increasing deputies' salaries would affect the budget.

"The challenge will be for the board to look at all of the resources in the county and then distribute them as we see fit," Green said.

Mattos praised the efforts of the board of commissioners for its willingness to tackle the issue and its inclusion of the sheriff's office in the discussion.

"The reason we're at where we are at right now is because we haven't chased those other (higher paying) agencies and we are not maintaining our salaries," Mattos said. "We've just fallen so far behind that it's going to take a long time to catch up."