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.
On the dispatch side of things, the service district would be able to fund a lieutenant, a sergeant and eight dispatchers, Paasch told commissioners.
“This will help rebuild the confidence of the citizens of Curry County as well as help protect our first responders countywide,” he said. “We know past ballot measures that tax the Curry County citizens haven’t been well received. But we believe if the work is put in and we have a promise from the Board of Commissioners to help see this through, this will have a strong chance of being successful.”
The proposal to create a service district comes after Curry County voters in the May 2024 primary defeated a proposed tax levy that would have funded 24/7 law enforcement. After the levy failed, commissioners approved a budget that included cutting 15 patrol deputies.
As a result, Ward stated that his deputies would only be available to respond to crimes-in-progress from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday. He also implemented a self-report form to handle other calls for service.
On Wednesday Paasch and Gold Beach resident Joe Wilson, who are on an advisory committee the sheriff created in August to pursue a service district, said if commissioners place the matter before voters in May 2025, it wouldn’t have to compete with other issues.
Plus, the proposed tax that goes along with the service district option is about half the $2.23 per $1,000 of assessed value the May 2024 tax levy had called for, Wilson said.
“This is a bare bones levy to give the rural community law enforcement,” he said.
The group spearheading the service district proposal in Curry County is similar to the service district for the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office that voters approved last November, Paasch said. Unlike a special district, which has its own governing Board and is in charge of its own budget, a service district would be under the jurisdiction of the Curry County Board of Commissioners.
Paasch also asked county commissioners to promise not to remove general fund dollars from the Curry County Sheriff’s Office if voters approve a service district.
“That would be counterproductive to the promises we all made to fund the sheriff’s department and protect the public,” he said.
Paasch said he felt the residents in Curry County’s unincorporated areas would support the proposed service district and hoped police departments in Brookings, Gold Beach and Port Orford would follow suit.
There’s also the possibility that the service district would sunset, Paasch said. If the sheriff’s office received an injection of federal dollars or other funding, the Board of Commissioners could reduce the service district tax or pause it for a year or two.
Commissioners could also continue the tax without having to put it before county voters again for their approval, Paasch said.
This year’s failed property tax levy had a sunset date for 2029. At that point, commissioners had hoped that commercial logging on O&C lands within Curry County could resume, according to Board Chairman Brad Alcorn.
Known as the Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands, O&C lands are scattered across 18 Western Oregon counties, contain 2.4 million acres of forest and are primarily managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
On Wednesday, following President-elect Donald Trump’s win, Alcorn’s colleague Jay Trost said the O&C committee he’s involved with would step up lobbying lawmakers in Washington DC to allow logging to resume.
“Should that happen, we would basically be in a much stronger financial position,” Trost said.
Trost, Alcorn and Commissioner John Herzog were thinking about the proposed Curry County Law Enforcement Service District when they approved having lobbyist Ray Bucheger on retainer for $5,000 a month. Those dollars would come from transient lodging tax revenue, which, according to Finance Director Keina Wolf, is in good shape.
Trost said he heard Bucheger give a presentation to the Coos County Board of Commissioners about two weeks ago and learned that the lobbyist had secured $600,000 to allow the sheriff’s and district attorney’s offices to digitize their records. Bucheger also helped Coos County secure $4 million in infrastructure improvement dollars, according to Trost.
The Curry County commissioner said he sees retaining Bucheger as an initial investment toward obtaining more funding for the community.
“This is in the same category in terms of long-term investments,” Trost said. “With the changing administration, his lobbying up there is going to be much more favorable for rural America at this time.”
Despite their willingness to work on the service district proposal, commissioners faced roughly 40 minutes of criticism from the public over an ongoing conflict between the Board and the sheriff’s office.
That conflict stems from the Board’s unwillingness to use Road Department reserves to prevent some of the staffing cuts at the Curry County Sheriff’s Office. In addition to laying off staff and eliminating positions, the Board used $1.18 million in interest revenue from the Road Department reserve to pass a balanced budget on June 20, but they declined to dip into the reserve further to allocate more funding to the sheriff’s office.
The Board of Commissioners and their director of operations Ted Fitzgerald have also criticized the sheriff regarding the K9 program. In late July commissioners rejected Ward’s proposal to sell a K9 vehicle to the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office and to have one of their canine officers fostered in Josephine County.
Ward had described the dog, named D’Arvit, as a “dirty dog” because it didn’t have enough training.
In September, Ward told the Wild Rivers Outpost that he wouldn’t attend Board of Commissioners’ meetings because he felt attacked over his decisions. On Sept. 4, Ward filed a state bar complaint against Fitzgerald, saying Fitzgerald had accused him of wrongdoing without providing specifics.
The Board of Commissioners later decided to retire D’Arvit after the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office informed them they could no longer foster the dog.
On Wednesday, Brookings resident Andre Bay lambasted the Board, saying they were undermining the sheriff. He accused Fitzgerald of bullying and contributing to a communications breakdown between Ward and the Board of Commissioners.
Bay also pointed out that Ward had reached his 10 year mark as sheriff and presented him with a certificate of appreciation.
“His unwavering commitment to the Constitution and the safety of Curry County is steady,” Bay said. “Unlike the Board of Commissioners.”
Georgia Cockerham, another Brookings resident, said that the sheriff and his lieutenant, jail commander Jeremy Krohn, tried to explain to commissioners how the budget cuts would “destroy safety in our county.” Cockerham said a phrase Alcorn used to justify the budget cuts — “span of control” — was erroneous since it’s a police term used to define the ratio of supervisors to officers in medium sized and large law enforcement organizations.
“ It’s less useful in smaller organizations and least relevant in the smallest organizations like that of our Curry County Sheriff’s Office,” Cockerham said. “This is because supervisors in a small agency such as our sheriff’s office have multiple duties in addition to supervising…. Anyone with training in strategic thinking would have wanted a better understanding of sheriff’s office operations before making cuts.”
Before they launched into the public comment period, the Board of Commissioners agreed to tentatively set a workshop on to explore the service district proposal for 4 p.m. next Wednesday.
Commissioners also decided to hold off on making a decision whether or not to sell a K9 vehicle to the Coos County Sheriff’s Office until Fitzgerald received more information as to what they were willing to pay. Fitzgerald brought up a proposal from the sheriff in July to sell a vehicle to Josephine County — a proposal the Board of Commissioners had rejected.
“I’d like to actually charge a fair amount for the vehicle [to Coos County] so we could actually replace it within a timely manner if and when that service district passes,” Fitzgerald told commissioners. “If they’re not willing to pay that kind of competitive price, we’re probably better off keeping it.”
