LIBERTY – Concern about whether the public understood the need for the Clay County law enforcement tax disappeared in a landslide of support Tuesday.

Residents approved the tax 7,919 to 2,307, or 77.44% to 22.56%, based on preliminary results.

Before the election, the Sheriff’s Office had little time to inform the public about the renewal. Sheriff Will Akin, who took office in January, did not learn about the tax issue until August. The tax had not come up for renewal in 12 years and his office heard about the Nov. 2 voting deadline from the auditor, sheriff’s spokeswoman Sarah Boyd said Friday.

The tax raises about $5 million annually for the law enforcement services the office provides countywide, Boyd said. Losing the income would have caused a severe blow to county law enforcement, she said.

“That would be catastrophic,” Boyd said.

Representing about 25% of the $20 million law enforcement budget, the income loss would have slashed services and personnel.

“This tax is a critical source of funding for everything our office does to ensure public safety in Clay County,” Sheriff Will Akin stated before the election.

The office had to consider before the election what to do to minimize the income loss, Boyd said.

“Definitely a reduction in services,” she said, and in staff. “(Cutting) the staff, I know, the sheriff would try to do by attrition, if possible.”

Attrition means not replacing people who retire and not filling vacancies that might arise, though if required financially, staffing cuts could have gone deeper than attrition.

Sheriffs under Missouri law must serve civil papers and provide jail services and court security.

“Anything else would be up for elimination,” Boyd said.

“Anything else” included road patrols, which are not required by law, but Akin would have been unlikely to cut patrols entirely in any case.

“That is something I think we would try to keep for sure,” Boyd said.

Whether patrols could have remained at the same level would have been subject to the iffy proposition of having money to cover the cost.

The specter of fewer people trying to do the same amount of work came at a time when Akin’s office had taken over policing duties for the communities of Holt, Mosby, Birmingham and Randolph.

“That’s additional people we needed to cover those areas and we took over county parks in March,” Boyd said.

In addition to renewing the tax, the public agreed to remove the 12-year extension requirement, which ends the need for voters to renew the tax and the risk of having a future sheriff blindsided by learning too late, perhaps after the fact, that the tax needed renewal.

Moreover, placing the tax renewal on the ballot cost about $100,000. Tuesday’s vote ended the need to spend money on a future renewal election.

The original tax, dating to 1997 under Sheriff Bob Boydston, last received a public renewal vote in 2009, also under Boydston.