Curry County’s finance director used a scatalogical expletive to describe the knot she and the county treasurer had to untangle to answer a federal inquiry about unaccounted for COVID relief dollars.
Keina Wolf told commissioners Wednesday she and Curry County Treasurer Nick Vicino spent the final hours of 2024 addressing an email from the US Department of Treasury stating that out of a total of about $4.4 million in American Rescue Plan money, only $1.734 million had been accounted for.
Wolf, who became Curry County’s finance director in February 2024, had taken exception to a public commenter who asked how she could have missed the un-accounted for balance of about $2.7 million.
Pistol River in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. | Photo courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service
A proposed resolution stating that Curry County aims to “invoke policing powers of the state” to “clear and thin undergrowth and to remove fire-damaged trees” on federal lands is not a takeover, according to its newest member.
Facing 17 north county residents who opposed the resolution on Wednesday, Patrick Hollinger said he and his colleagues hope to be stewards for lands currently managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and other state and federal agencies. The proposed emergency declaration seeks to hold them accountable, though the Board of Commissioners said Wednesday they weren’t yet ready to approve it.
“We are the closest elected officials to the people with special authority under environmental and jurisdictional law to see these matters through to success,” Hollinger said. “We’re working right now on completely overhauling our land-use plan for the county, our comprehensive plan and our Wildland Urban Interface plans. The state and federal agencies, by law, are supposed to be consulting with the county on an annual basis in order for them to move forward with their plans. That’s not happening. That hasn’t happened in forever. We’re going to implement that going forward.”
Thumbnail: Curry County Sheriff’s seal. Right: Curry County’s seal.
Curry County commissioners are seeking help from a judge to reopen communications with Sheriff John Ward.
The Board of Commissioners filed a declaratory judgment suit against the sheriff in Curry County Circuit Court on Jan. 13, the county announced Wednesday. Officials say they hope to “resolve long-standing disagreements” with the sheriff about their roles and responsibilities.
“Filing suit was an option of last resort that was taken after the Board and county legal counsel made multiple requests for cooperation, information and records from the sheriff’s office that were not satisfactorily fulfilled,” the county stated in its press release.
Curry County Board of Commissioners Meeting from Dec. 19.Thumbnail: Keina Wolf, the county’s finance and human resources director, sits at the far left on the dais. | Screenshot
(Update at 2:51 p.m. Dec. 30. Curry County commissioners delayed renewing an employment contract with Finance and Human Resources Director Keina Wolf at their Dec. 19 meeting.)
Curry County commissioners declined to renew delayed renewing an employment contract with their finance and human resources director, Kiena Wolf, at last week’s meeting.
Wolf, who was in attendance at that meeting, found herself on the defensive against critics arguing that the county couldn’t afford the expense.
One critic, Michele Martin, a member of a Facebook group called Citizens For Curry Justice, criticized Wolf’s proposed salary of $130,000 per year and said the $15,000 professional development allowance it calls for is more than the training budget at the Curry County Sheriff’s Office.
Rod Palmquist, a representative for Teamsters Local 223, which represents sheriff’s office employees, repeated the statement regarding the training budget for Wolf’s department, comparing it with that of the sheriff’s office. He told commissioners that the proposed employment agreement prioritized bureaucracy “over the very safety of the community you were elected to serve.”
A third critic was County Assessor and Tax Collector Kylie Wagner, who said that Wolf, who does much of her work from her home in Lane County, “should be here in the trenches with the rest of us.”
In the face of more public criticism over budget cuts at the sheriff’s office, Curry County commissioners agreed to place another law enforcement tax levy before voters next May.
But they took umbrage at some of the statements citizens lobbed at them on Thursday, including accusations from local Teamsters representatives that they abandoned the sheriff’s office.
That statement came from Rod Palmquist, labor representative of Local Teamsters 223, which represents Curry County Sheriff’s Office employees. Palmquist criticized a proposed employment contract between the county and Finance and Human Resources Director Keina Wolf, charging commissioners of prioritizing bureaucracy over public safety. He mentioned a potential consideration to consolidate jail services between Curry and Coos counties — an issue that’s in the early stages of exploration at this point, according to Commissioner Jay Trost.
The spokesperson for a Curry County citizens’ group behind a proposed law enforcement levy broke the numbers down for elected officials on Monday, stating if voters approve the measure, $1.2 million could go back into the general fund.
But commissioners were no closer to supporting a levy than they were at last Thursday’s regular meeting when they said they were uncertain about how many patrol deputies it would fund.
On Monday, commissioners, staff and the few residents who showed up to the workshop had more questions for Georgia Cockerham, who spoke along with Sheriff’s Lt. Jeremy Krohn, in favor of the levy. They asked if they would consider using the levy to fund correctional deputies or if they thought about paying for a detective who could follow up on cases patrol deputies initially respond to.
Right after the Curry County Board of Commissioners heard a proposal to send another law enforcement tax levy before voters, a North Bank Chetco River Road resident said “unsavory people” frequenting Social Security Bar were destroying his property.
The property owner, whose name is Rob, said those “unsavory people” are known to Oregon State Police and are drug addicts. They have cut down his trees and left their refuse, including needles, behind. He asked commissioners on Thursday if they planned to install gates, recruit hosts or institute “any of that campground stuff” for the gravel bar that’s on the Chetco River four miles from U.S. 101 near Brookings.
“I’m at the point now, when it dries up, I’m going to import some riprap and I’m going to block the lower section of Social Security Bar to vehicle access,” Rob said, adding that the sheriff’s office doesn’t pick up his calls. “I’m at my wits’ end and I was wondering if there’s anything in the works.”
Crescent City Mayor Blake Inscore supported a partnership with South Coast Community Aquatics in Brookings to give Del Norters a place to swim while the Fred Endert Municipal Pool undergoes renovations starting next month.
But he said he was apprehensive about committing $35,000 toward the arrangement without having a better sense of how many people would actually be willing to swim in an outdoor swimming pool from December through February.
“When we talked about this initially with the extended closure we talked about how we were going to do some cost adjustments whether that is to not renew people’s passes or give them that extra period of time that we’re closed — are we still going to do that?” Inscore asked city staff Monday. “What if a person goes up and goes for a couple of times and realizes it’s not warm enough [or] it’s too far? How are we going to track that for a person who tries this and it doesn’t work for them and other people are now getting a three-month, four-month bump on their annual pass?”
Former elected official Christopher Paasch appeared before the Curry County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday to make a formal pitch to ask voters to create a service district in an effort to rebuild the sheriff’s office.
Paasch, who retired from the Board following the 2022 election, brought Sheriff John Ward with him, and urged commissioners on Wednesday to declare their intention to form a Curry County Law Enforcement Service District and schedule the first of two public hearings Oregon statute requires to place the measure before voters next May.
The proposed service district would be funded through a property tax of $1.12 per $1,000 of assessed valued property and would generate roughly $4.2 million annually, Paasch said. The revenue would pay for eight patrol deputies, a civil deputy, an administrative assistant, two sergeants, one lieutenant and the sheriff.
Curry County commissioners last week proceeded with a proposed partnership with Gold Beach to create a school resource and community resource officer (SRO/CRO) position using opioid settlement dollars.
But state procurement laws and the lack of a proposed contract is keeping the Board from moving forward on a request from jail commander Lt. Jeremy Krohn to provide addiction treatment services to inmates using those same settlement dollars.
The county would have to send out a request for proposals to service providers before it moves forward with telehealth opioid abuse disorder treatment at the jail, Finance Director Keina Wolf told commissioners at a special meeting Friday.
“More than likely there is more than one place that can provide us with telehealth capabilities and we need to give equal opportunity for people to apply for those contracts,” she said. “I know [Krohn] did say he reached out and had spoken with different individuals, but there’s not a contract attached so we don’t know what the not-to-exceed number would be and we don’t know what services exactly are going to be provided.”
