PARIS – Oxford County’s department heads have submitted their budgets for the coming fiscal year, and the total comes to $4.9 million.

The preliminary budget is up nearly 13 percent from last year’s approved total of $4.3 million. It will likely be whittled down as the county’s budget process begins Wednesday.

Residents then will have a chance to comment on the budget requests at a public hearing before the Oxford County commissioners and the Oxford County Budget Committee.

One request that is expected to raise a few eyebrows is the Oxford County Sheriff Department’s call for $186,500 to hire three new deputies.

“The sheriff originally had planned to try to hire one (deputy) a year for three years, starting last year,” Chief Deputy Jim Davis said. Because last year’s request for a new deputy was denied, he said, Sheriff Skip Herrick has decided to ask that all three positions be filled in 2005.

“People just expect more from law enforcement than they used to,” Davis said, explaining that with nine patrol deputies in the department, only three are on duty at any one time.

Because the Sheriff’s Department covers the county from Wilsons Mills to Porter, he said having the deputies so spread out can be dangerous, especially when there’s need for backup.

“The biggest issue for us is the safety of our citizens and the people who work for us – for the sheriff,” Davis said.

Davis said a department budget request of $953,000 – an increase of 28 percent over the current $742,000 budget – is largely due to the request for more deputies.

Other significant increases are requested in the areas of emergency management (31 percent), county buildings (30 percent), group insurance (21 percent) and workers compensation (30 percent).

For emergency management, a jump from $51,000 to $67,000 would primarily cover salaries and wages.

The county buildings request, up to $202,000 from $155,000 last year, would cover increases in fuel oil prices, liability insurance and also the replacement of a 10-year-old county maintenance truck.

Both registers of deeds also have requested departmental budget increases this year. In the east office, the 10 percent increase to $181,00 would include a raise for Register of Deeds Jane Rich.

Rich in August approached the county commissioners and said she’d be asking for a raise. She said her workload has increased greatly since she began working as register in 1990, and she is paid less then many registers in other counties.

Rich said she is hopeful but not overly optimistic about her $3,000 request, which would move her salary from $27,000 to nearly $30,000.

“There are other departments that are asking for increases by as much as 30 percent,” Rich said. “It may turn everybody off because they’re going to say, well, we’re going to put a lid on this now.”