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.”
Though Rob hadn’t referred to the presentation Sheriff’s Lt. Jeremy Krohn and Brookings resident Georgia Cockerham gave a few minutes earlier regarding the proposed levy, Curry County Director of Operations Ted Fitzgerald tied the property owner’s concerns to a lack of county law enforcement.
Fitzgerald urged Rob to continue to call the Curry County Sheriff’s Office for a response even though, due to budget cuts, Sheriff John Ward has said that his deputies would only be available to respond to crimes-in-progress from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“There’s major destruction,” Fitzgerald said of Rob’s property. “But I don’t have any police power myself. All I can do is show up and look hostile and that did work a little bit. I ran a few people off doing that, but we need participation from law enforcement to get this done.”
Cockerham appeared before the Board of Commissioners with Krohn after they participated in a workshop on Nov. 12 to discuss a proposal to ask voters to approve a service district for the sheriff’s office. She said she was speaking for former county commissioner Christopher Paasch, who had proposed the idea at the Board’s Nov. 7 meeting.
At the Nov. 12 workshop commissioners had recommended pursuing a property tax levy instead of a service district to reduce costs associated with bringing the measure to the May 2025 ballot, Cockerham said. If approved, the tax would be $1.12 per $1,000 of assessed property value, which is estimated to raise about $4.28 million for the sheriff’s office annually, Cockerham said.
The levy would last from July 2025 through 2032 and would include a five-member oversight committee to monitor how those dollars are being spent, according to Cockerham.
But there was confusion as to how many deputies the proposed levy would pay for. Cockerham said it would fund eight more patrol deputies and two additional dispatchers. This would make a total of 14 employees in the criminal and civil patrol division and 10 in the communications division, she said.
However, according to Krohn, who oversees the Curry County Jail, the tax levy would pay for five more patrol deputies, two sergeants and a lieutenant.
The sheriff’s office currently employs three patrol deputies as well as a marine deputy whose salary comes from the Oregon State Marine Board, Krohn said. There’s also a sergeant that oversees the office’s search and rescue division, he said.
According to Krohn, if the levy is approved, it would sustain the sheriff’s office instead of the county’s general fund.
Still confused over what the proposed levy would pay for, commissioners Brad Alcorn and Jay Trost said they wanted to see the measure’s exact language and get the county clerk’s stamp of approval.
Alcorn said he’d also like county Finance Director Keina Wolf to “check the math” to try to reduce the amount the tax levy would ask voters to approve.
“If we can get that number down under $1 it would have a really big impact,” Alcorn said.
In May 2024, more than 71 percent of Curry County voters rejected a county proposal to set a five-year property tax levy of $2.23 per $1,000 of assessed property value to fund a 24-7 sheriff’s office. Some residents said they felt the county was asking for too much.
At a Board of Commissioners meeting in June, Gold Beach resident Mark Nast told commissioners that the levy would have been too big a hit on his property taxes.
On Thursday, Alcorn said he also wanted a county representative to be involved in the proposed property tax measure, saying it seems like Paasch, Cockerham, Krohn and others are pursuing it independently.
Fitzgerald also offered to help fine tune the language for the ballot measure so that it is acceptable to Shelley Denney, the county clerk.
Cockerham rebutted Alcorn’s assertion about her, Paasch, Krohn and others working on the proposed tax levy independent of the county. She noted that her group were the ones that called for the Nov. 12 workshop and that they agreed to pursue a tax levy instead of a service district on the advice of both Fitzgerald and the Board.
“Part of the reason your levy didn’t pass in May is you didn’t have many people out there knocking on doors and talking about it,” she said. “We have a large number of people who are willing to go out and knock on doors, but we need time. We don’t want to run the clock down.”
As for Social Security Bar near Brookings, Fitzgerald said Curry County has a lease agreement with the Oregon Department of State Lands, which owns the gravel bar. Fishermen use the gravel bar to access the Chetco, he said, so they don’t want it gated. If law enforcement was available, Fitzgerald said he’d install security cameras to monitor the area.
“But if it’s just me looking at the cameras from the house, that’s not going to do much good, so we’re going to need law enforcement to respond,” he said.
