The Butler County salary board Wednesday will vote on whether to eliminate nine part-time sheriff’s deputies while creating five new full-time deputies.

Five of the part-time positions paid $17.85 per hour with no benefits or retirement, and four of them paid $19.84 per hour with individual benefits and retirement. The full-time positions will pay $19.84 per hour with benefits and retirement.

If accepted, the changes will be effective Jan. 1.

Sheriff Mike Slupe said Monday at a county salary board meeting the move should save the county $38,000. He noted the salaries are not going up, but the full-time positions will include benefits such as holiday pay.

“Their salary does not increase; their time off does,” Slupe said.

Commissioner Jim Eckstein, who is on the salary board, said benefits are not a “soft” cost, and said to Slupe he cannot say he is saving money while adding benefits.

“I believe it’s disingenuous,” Eckstein said.

Slupe said the easiest way to cut costs would be for the department to stop providing services. However, he said more requests come in all the time, and said the department has paid about $80,000 in overtime this year.

He said this change would mean the department loses 450 man-hours, but it is a price he can live with. Slupe said part-time deputies are difficult to schedule because they generally have two or three other jobs. With full-time deputies, the department has more control of their schedule.

“We know they are going to be there,” Slupe said.

He noted he will have five full-time deputies leaving the department this year.

“We’re trying to do the best we can with what we have,” Slupe said.

Additionally, the board will vote on eliminating an internal auditor for the human services department, a full-time position paying $19.26 per hour, and creating an intellectual disabilities specialist, a full-time position paying $22.74 per hour.

Joyce Ainsworth, human services director, said the internal auditor retired this year. Over the years, she said the position moved more from fiscal analysis to data analysis, so she said it makes sense to have a person with an intellectual disabilities background in the job.

The board also is expected to vote on the elimination of one full-time judicial secretary at $18.29 per hour and creating one full-time stenographer at $18.48 per hour and one temporary stenographer at $18.48 per hour.

And the board will vote on the addition of a part-time second deputy for the Register of Wills at about $23 per hour. Register of Wills Judy Moser said the last deputy retired at the beginning of the year and the office has been struggling without someone in that position.