Carbon County officials want to take a hard look at the staffing numbers at the county prison.

On Wednesday, the county prison board discussed the high overtime hours that corrections officers worked as a result of inmate hospital stays, vacations, sickness and other off time.For the time period between Aug. 18 and Wednesday, the 37 full-time corrections officers worked 1,174.75 hours in overtime to provide 24-hour coverage at the facility, which houses approximately 222 inmates. The prison also has 17 part-time corrections officers on staff.Out of the overtime figure, the county is required to provide round-the-clock coverage at a hospital if an inmate requires hospitalization. Last month, due to a few hospital stays, that coverage added up to 720 hours.The overtime cost the county $39,611 in August.President Judge Roger Nanovic asked why, if there was that much overtime, isn’t the county adding additional full-time corrections officers.Commissioner Wayne Nothstein said that there had been some discussion in the past but no action had ever been taken.Commissioner William O’Gurek said that it was an unusual month due to the hospitalizations and said that the county needs to watch it moving forward.Robert Crampsie, county controller, pointed out that there is a budget transfer of $85,000 coming from the county to cover overtime at the prison. “That is telling me we are here in September and we just about used up our overtime line item for the year,” he said. “So whether this is a unique month or not, this is an ongoing issue that has to be addressed.”The board agreed.O’Gurek said the county budgeted $225,000 for overtime in 2016. With the last pay, overtime has totaled $190,602 so far this year.He said that the county needs to weigh the cost of the overtime versus adding a few additional full-time corrections officers.No formal action was taken at this time, but the board instructed Warden Timothy Fritz to compile figures to show the analysis between the current overtime costs and the costs of hiring additional staff to cover additional shifts.