Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Friday, Aug. 2 @ 3:57 p.m.
Curry County Sheriff Presents Service District Idea to Commissioners, Acknowledging Heavy Lift to Get Voters to Agree
Previously:
Lt. Jeremy Krohn dipped into Scripture to describe what the Curry County Sheriff’s Office should strive for to be sustainable.
A special district is the “kingdom on the hill we want to work toward,” he said, and a service district will help the community reach the summit.
But 15 days after Krohn’s boss was forced to ax most of his patrol deputies, the Board of Commissioners, members of a potential citizens advisory group and the sheriff himself had few answers.
One certainty, however, is that it’s too late to place a measure creating a service district on the November ballot. It will take everyone working together to educate voters enough so the sheriff’s office will come out on top in a May 2025 election, Krohn said. But he painted a bleak picture of what things will look like until then.
“The new reality we are all living with is, today, there are two corrections deputies working in the jail,” Krohn told commissioners during a workshop on Wednesday. “There are two patrol deputies working patrol and there [are] one or two dispatchers during the daytime hours. There are two dispatchers because they’re covering the jail to help do our doors and [monitor] all the cameras.”
Two correctional officers in the jail puts Curry County at risk of violating state regulations regarding staffing, Krohn said.
“We are required to have two staff there regardless of how many people are in there,” he said. “In the past we’ve been able to rely on our patrol deputies to help cover that if someone had to go to the hospital or something. Now we have to find someone to come in, which requires someone to answer their phones, which no one’s answering their phones.”
At Wednesday’s workshop, Krohn and Sheriff John Ward said their goal is to build patrol force back up so it’s operating seven-days a week for at least 15 to 18 hours a day. He estimated that it would cost about $6.4 million to accomplish that.
Ward said he took inspiration from Josephine County, where voters approved a law enforcement service district for sheriff’s patrol and dispatch in November 2023. But he pointed out that Josephine County has a population base Curry County lacks.
He also noted that it took a lot of work, including public hearings and literature, to educate the public before the proposed service district went before Josephine County voters.
“Everybody’s going to have to work on getting something passed,” he said. “It’s not something that can just be thrown on a ballot.”
However, a service district is different than a special district, Commissioner Jay Trost noted. A service district like the one Josephine County voters approved for sheriff’s patrol and dispatch has its own tax and revenue stream that’s apart from the general fund. However, the Board of Commissioners would still oversee it, according to Trost.
A special district would be its own entity independent of the county, he said.
According to Krohn, the $6.4 million the sheriff’s office is asking for would pay for 15 criminal and civil deputy positions, 18 positions in the jail including nurses and nine communications staff. That would include an additional seven patrol deputies than the office currently has, Krohn said.
The proposed tax rate is $1.82 per $1,000 of assessed property value, Krohn said.
In May 2024, more than 71 percent of Curry County voters rejected a proposed five-year property tax of $2.23 per $1,000 of assessed value for a 24-7 sheriff’s office.
On Wednesday, Trost, who stated that the county’s property tax rate is 59 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, said the Board of Commissioners would oversee those dollars, including how they are disbursed.
He noted that the proposal Krohn and Ward gave described a “genuine sheriff service district” that includes jail, dispatch and patrol positions.
In addition to doing a lot of information gathering and disseminating in an effort to get voters to approve a service district in May, Trost urged his colleagues to consider coming up with a “long-term strategic plan” if it fails.
In the meantime, the sheriff’s office still has to figure out how to work within its current constraints, Krohn said.
“The sheriff has said he’s out taking calls all the time. I’m covering the jail and we need to maintain the services that we have today,” he said. “We want to be good partners with everyone and work toward a solution, but we can’t if we continue to lose.”
Currently, sheriff’s deputies are working 10 hours a day, five days a week, Ward said.
Ward also introduced commissioners to his citizens advisory board. Its members include former commissioner Chris Paasch, former county treasurer Dave Barnes, Gold Beach resident Joe Wilson, business owner Larry Prestininzi, retired law enforcement captain Bruce Cockerham and his wife, author Georgia Cockerham, who is also a volunteer with the sheriff’s office.
Though their suggestions differed, Wilson, Paasch and Barnes agreed that the status quo is dangerous. Claiming that the “cartels … moved into Cave Junction when they didn’t have law enforcement,” Wilson said an advisory vote is necessary to find out what people will support and what they won’t support.
Wilson argued that even residents living with in the jurisdiction of the Brookings, Gold Beach or Port Orford police departments should support the sheriff’s office.
“It’s not right that we don’t have rural law enforcement,” he said, referring to the unincorporated areas of Curry County. “You can bet the bad people in this world, the cartels… they’re looking at us right now. They’re paying attention.”
Paasch, asking if the county really needs five library districts, said the community should consider consolidating some of the special districts in Curry County. At 42, Curry County has more special districts than any other county but one in Oregon, Paasch said.
As a member of the Wedderburn Fire District Board, Paasch said he organized a meeting with the 13 other fire protection districts in the county to consider consolidating them into one district.
“How that would run, how that would all happen, it was to be determined,” he said. “But there was so much negative things from different people in the county, that kind of threw a wrench into things.”
People argued over who would run the one special district and whether there would be one fire chief, Paasch said, that it “just created a mess.”
“But I really believe that if we sit together as human beings and talk to each other, [we] can find a way to let the public know that you’re not going to have a police officer in the rural county come and help you because his shift is over and there’s nobody to cover them,” Paasch said. “We’ve had some shootings now in the county. We’ve had cartel in the county. We had two big marijuana busts in the county in the last couple of years. I just hope we don’t have a tragedy in Curry County before we can fix this problem.”
According to Trost, however, Curry County’s special districts, which also include sanitary and water districts, bring in roughly $4.6 million in revenue. His colleague, Board of Commissioners Chairman Brad Alcorn who worked for the Fresno Police Department before moving to Curry County, said it’s important to take action, but they don’t want to throw something in front of voters that would be destined to fail.
Barnes said he, former commissioner Sue Gold and other budget committee members had researched instituting a consumption tax.
While you can’t institute a tax that specifically targets tourists, Barnes said Josephine County officials had proposed a sales tax that would go into effect from May to October. This would have a minimal impact on residents — if you needed something, don’t buy it until October. 1, Barnes said.
Barnes said he researched other potential taxing mechanisms for raising revenue, including a sales tax, fuel taxes and increasing the transient lodging tax rate. He argued that Curry County’s Road Department reserves could be used while officials try to establish a permanent funding solution.
“I don’t believe we should go broke, but I also don’t think we should starve to death while we have bushels of seed corn sitting in the shop,” Barnes said. “That $20 million in our road fund, I see that as being our seed corn.”
There is currently about $17 million in the county’s Road Department reserves, according to Finance Director Keina Wolf.
On Monday, Ted Fitzgerald, the county’s director of operations adn county counsel, said there’s about $6.9 million in the general fund currently with the sheriff’s office requiring about $3.4 million.
Left with a $3.8 million general fund deficit after the tax levy failed, Curry County transferred $1.18 million in interest revenue from the Road Department reserves to present a balanced budget before commissioners in June.
Seventeen people lost their jobs, according to Alcorn, and several other positions outside the sheriff’s office were eliminated.
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