ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

ST. LOUIS — The city sheriff’s office went before aldermen this week to make its case for a bigger budget in the upcoming fiscal year. Most of it was standard: the office asked for more money. Aldermen listened politely to the pleas.

Then the golf carts came up.

Alderman Matt Devoti, of the Hill, seized on Sheriff Alfred Montgomery’s request to boost his office’s fleet budget to $97,000 next year from $3,500 this year. He said he’d heard that some of the money was meant for golf carts.

And he didn’t understand why: Much of the sheriff’s business occurs at two downtown courthouses that sit across the street from each other, and a jail that sits just south of them. The office has SUVs and vans to drive elsewhere.

“I don’t mean to be dense,� Devoti said Tuesday at the budget hearing, “but why would a golf cart be necessary to cross Market Street?�

Blake Lawrence, a top aide to Montgomery, said deputies have responsibilities at the juvenile courts building on Vandeventer Avenue a few miles west, at hospitals where detainees go for treatment, and elsewhere downtown.

“The Sheriff’s department, like many departments, is a logistically intensive department,� Lawrence said.

Devoti pressed on: Wouldn't those runs, he asked, be handled with the office’s other vehicles?

“I’m assuming that no one is driving a golf cart from the central downtown district to Vandeventer, right?� said Devoti, an attorney by trade. “We’re going to Midtown in a golf cart?�

At that point, Tyshon Sykes, a chief deputy in the sheriff's office, said the carts would mostly help with the office’s presence elsewhere downtown, where deputies help provide security on Washington Avenue during the summer months.

Devoti said that didn't make much sense, either.

In ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, the sheriff’s main job is providing courthouse security, transporting prisoners and serving legal papers. It does not run the jail, nor does it perform general law enforcement.

“I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around why the sheriff’s office is doing these kinds of things beyond that,� Devoti said.

Neither Lawrence nor Montgomery could be reached for further comment.

It was only the latest turn in Montgomery's nascent tenure. Since taking office in January, he has made headlines for having a top jail official arrested, telling a deputy to roll golden dice for his job and having a .