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Though they commended Lt. Jeremy Krohn for being proactive, Curry County commissioners withheld their approval to hire more staff than the jail is currently budgeted for.

Instead they urged the jail commander to consider other options, such as partnering with the Southwestern Oregon Workforce Investment Board. SOWIB will often pay for the first 12 weeks of an individual’s employment to allow them to get through the training phase of a new job, Commissioner Jay Trost told Krohn.

“[This] would essentially provide us with the window that you’re looking for to maybe bring someone on, but not have to incur all the costs of the training portion,” Trost said Thursday. “I would say let’s explore that because they’ve been good partners in the past.”

Krohn’s request to over hire at the jail comes about two weeks after he informed commissioners that more people applied to fill vacant positions “than we’ve had in a long time.” However, on Wednesday, he said only two people showed up for the testing portion of the hiring process.

The Curry County Sheriff's Office has begun background checks for those two, but the overall hiring process will take six to eight weeks, Krohn told commissioners.

Meanwhile, Krohn said he anticipated that a corrections deputy will return to the patrol division in the sheriff’s office, leaving the jail with two vacant positions.

“I”m asking to be able to over hire for these positions because we have the anticipation still that we’re going to have four people leaving in the next two to four months,” he said, adding that they were looking to leave Curry County. “With an eight-week potential background process, we can’t hire and train people quick enough to get them into the academy. The next academy that we can get somebody into, if we get them hired today… is for Jan. 13 and there are nine open positions for that.”

According to Krohn, the State of Oregon offers the academy on a first-come first-served basis and those fill up quickly.

“I just want to be able to train people so we’re not running short-staffed,” he said. “I’m not asking for five additional deputies to fill what I think we’re going to need. It’s just to be able to keep up with people leaving and to have people trained up and potentially get people back on the patrol side.”

On Sept. 6, at a special Board of Commissioners meeting that also included law enforcement personnel and elected officials from Brookings and Gold Beach, Krohn said the Curry County Sheriff's Office is required to staff the jail.

Between people out sick, on pre-approved vacation, on leave or deployed with the National Guard, there were only five people staffing the jail that week, according to Krohn.

He said he expected some of those folks to return to work, but with the deputy deployed to the National Guard and another on a leave of absence, there were only nine working. The sheriff’s office had also instituted 12-hour shifts at the jail as of Sept. 6, according to Krohn.

The jail’s current budget is about $2.3 million, Krohn said at that special meeting. Running the jail would require a property tax rate of 58 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value and Curry County’s tax rate for the general fund is 59 cents per $1,000, he said.


“It is the responsibility of the sheriff to run the jail. It is the responsibility of the Board of Commissioners and the budget committee to fund the jail,” he said. “It’s a general fund obligation. [And] the entirety of the general fund is what it would take to run the jail. That’s the elephant in the room.”

On Thursday, Alcorn acknowledged Krohn’s request, saying it made sense, but he asked how the county would pay for it.

According to Finance Director Keina Wolf, the jail is already running at budget because of the amount of overtime the county is paying staff to cover the shortage.

“If we were to bring two potential people on board that will definitely put us over budget,” she said. “The best-case scenario would be to bring additional staff on and not have everybody work full time in order to have extra people.”

Wolf acknowledged that the best-case scenario would require negotiations with the union that represents sheriff’s office employees. She also mentioned the deputy that’s deployed through the National Guard.

While the county isn’t paying that deputy’s salary there are more expenses due to the amount of overtime it’s paying staff overall, Wolf said.

“Even though we have less personnel we have more expenses,” she said. “Overtime increases your PERS rate, it increases everything, so the cost is astronomically higher.”

After Krohn informed commissioners that none of the new applicants have law enforcement experience, Trost said a pre-requisite to partnering with SOWIB is the employee they’re sponsoring have no prior training in the job they’re applying for.

The county hired a staff member in the IT department with help from SOWIB, he said.

Krohn said he also spoke with Sheriff John Ward about ways to alleviate the staffing shortage at the jail. One idea was putting people through the hiring process without hiring them until those spots are available.

“My concern with that is the background and psych evaluation one, costs money, but two, it’s very intensive for law enforcement,” Krohn said. “If you put me through that and then put me on a waiting list, I’m not going to stick around.”

At that Sept. 6 special meeting, Alcorn proposed using the county’s opioid settlement money, which is roughly $525,000 currently and is recurring revenue to fund a community resource officer position and a school resource officer position.

Alcorn asked city officials to consider filling in “some of those gaps,” adding that he, Trost and their third colleague, John Herzog, had been receiving complaints about the new electronic reporting system the sheriff’s office has deployed since Ward cut much of his staff July 15.

The opioid settlement money is a financial resource that hasn’t been used, Alcorn said.

“We all need each other,” he said. “You can count up every police officer in every jurisdiction right now, we don’t have the number of officers to provide the level of safety we need.”

On Monday Curry County Director of Operations Ted Fitzgerald told the Outpost that he met with the Gold Beach Police Department and told them the opioid money was available and discussed partnering to fund a potential community resource officer and school resource officer position.

He said he thinks the hesitation revolves around creating a position that’s not sustainable in the long term.

“At the same time we have pressing needs for law enforcement and the money is there,” Fitzgerald said.

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