Lane County looks for direction on public safety levy

Presenter: The Lane County sheriff says we are among the lowest of the low, the least-patrolled counties in the United States. Aug. 19, discussing the Public Safety Funding Task Force, Lane County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky: 

Steve Mokrohisky (Lane County, administrator): We talk a lot in our annual budget process about how the big, thorny, intractable issue in Lane County is the artificially low permanent property tax rate that we have. 

And that is the reason—it’s a pretty simple reason, it’s been very difficult to solve for—why our public safety system in Lane County is underfunded. $1.28 is our permanent rate. That’s one of the lowest of all counties in the state of Oregon. When you stack up the various levies and districts that exist among our comparables, we are by far the lowest.

And so the Board (of Commissioners) in 2023 authorized the creation of a task force led by 11 residents in Lane County, geographically diverse, different backgrounds and experiences. And you asked these 11 individuals to try to tackle this issue and help us try to find a path towards a solution.

Presenter: Lane County Sheriff Carl Wilkerson:

Carl Wilkerson (Lane County, sheriff): I’m going to take you back in time a little bit to what I presented to the Public Safety Funding Task Force a couple of years ago, kind of say where we were in 2024.  We have 0.2 deputies per 1,000 in Lane County. 

See our comparable counties. Marion County at 0.25 has considerably more deputies than us. Interestingly about Marion County, they’re just an hour north of us, but they only have about a third of the geographic area that we have to cover, and they’re not a timber county.

Where we have a huge county, 54% federal lands, and we have more population, more county, more geography to cover. But just to kind of show you where our comparables are at in 2024, we are at the bottom of them. 

In fact, I have said to this body before that Lane County quite literally is one of the least patrolled counties in the United States because Oregon is at the bottom of the list of officers per 1,000. And we as a county are at the bottom of the list of officers per 1,000 for counties.

So quite literally, we just don’t have patrol staffing that the rest of the entire country has.

What our community really wants and desires is to have more people out as resident deputies who have that direct connection to the community who are doing that community policing model, quite literally. That is something that came as a popular term in the 2010s. 

But it quite literally is just what good policing has always been, is serving, directly serving the community, getting to know your neighbors, getting to know the players, getting to know the whos, the whys, the wheres, the hows, and having that community relationship where when something happens, they know who they’re going to call. They have that relationship already and they trust them.

And honestly, that is how problems are solved and crimes are solved. I said to the task force at that time, I wasn’t overly concerned about startup costs because the reality is you can’t ramp up that quickly. There’s no way you can hire that many people.

And much like when we did the jail levy, we assessed at that time the local property tax and started collecting, and we couldn’t get to the point where we needed to be, quite as fast as we wanted to.

So that would be the same as in this case, is that I don’t think that we really need to worry about the startup costs, because we just would never, if we were to get that 157 number, we’d never be able to staff it that quickly. So it would be a ramp-up period.

And through hearing presentations from everybody associated with the system, they ultimately said, ‘Look, the things that have the most need—the things that need to be shored up the most—are rural patrol and the district attorney’s office and to stabilize funding for corrections.

They said these are the parts of the system that we really need to focus on. Is that fair?

Christopher Parosa (Lane County, district attorney): That’s correct. Yes.

Carl Wilkerson (Lane County, sheriff): Okay. And so looking at that, they said, well, we probably need to get at least another $5 million for the DA’s Office, another $22 million for the rural patrol.

Again, that is to get us not to ‘good,’ not to ‘above average,’ to get us to our comparable county average. We see that $22 million dollars.

They also talked about if they could, is there a way to stabilize the local option levy for the jail—the corrections. And is there a way to incorporate that so that it’s all one thing and that part of the system is stirred up, and we’re not depending on the local option levy for every five years just to keep the jail running.

Just to give you a little bit of background, before the jail levy passed, if you recall, we were CBR (or doing capacity-based release) on folks with many, many felony charges—to include people who were in custody for manslaughter and other very significant charges. 

We were literally kicking them out the door with no conditions, saying, ‘Hey, you’ll have a court date downrange. Please show up.’

If you also recall during that time, because there was no off-ramp, no way to interject into their lives to help them make it to court and to maintain some level of accountability, they continue to rack up more charges.

And ultimately, by the time they held the custody long enough to go to court, they were usually looking at, like 10 or more felony charges and then spending significant amount of time in prison, versus just us dealing with the original case—and maybe trying to provide them services to get them into a different lifestyle at that time. And Chris (Parosa), is that fair?

Christopher Parosa (Lane County, district attorney): That’s fair. Yeah.

Carl Wilkerson (Lane County, sheriff): Yeah. So what the task force said is, ‘Look, we need to come up with $27 million for the DA’s office and patrol to get us to the average, $55 million would get us to roll into the jail. 

And then $95 million basically, is that number of saying: What all do you spend for Sheriff’s Office and DA’s Office?

So the reason why that number is impactful is, if somehow we, you know, found enough pennies in the couch or we won the lottery and we got that $95 million, that would take the Sheriff’s Office and the DA’s Office out of the general fund, which would open up those dollars to then serve and fund other county priorities. 

And really we said, hey, it’s probably unlikely during this time and space to say, ‘Hey voters, how are we going to come up with $95 million?’ 

But we also want to say, ‘Hey, voters, if you want to give us something, we want to assure you that we can improve services that you’re going to see, you’re going to see an improvement in services, not just maybe five seconds quicker on a call response.’

So we really sat down and said, What can we do? What is the minimum level that we can bring to the table and say, you, your community, whether you live in the city of Eugene or live on the outskirts of Lane County, you will see an improved level of service.

Presenter: Commissioner Pat Farr:

Commissioner Pat Farr: You know, I think back in, when I lived in Lane County, the names like Snake Brooks. Anybody here remember Snake Brooks?

Of course you don’t, because the DA doesn’t get to do things like that anymore. Snake Brooks killed a sheriff’s deputy, also an investigator. And everybody knew Snake Brooks because they were being investigated.

The DA’s department was at the forefront. Those days are gone. We need to get that to the point where people who are committing the crimes in the community are recognized as criminals in the community, and the things that they do have an impact on everybody in the room. 

Who investigated Diane Downs? You know, how many people remember Diane Downs? You know, the things that you do are a part of our everyday life. But it’s become such a shadow of the past. We need to be able to reinvigorate that. 

I’m not very eloquent at saying what I’m trying to say right now. Let’s just get the ball rolling, is what I’m trying to say.

If I may state one thing that happened to me personally at Richardson. You know, we had a car theft, and I’m not going to go into detail on that, but the residential deputy from Veneta came to Richardson and helped us within 12 hours, got the car back, and it’s because the sheriff’s department was involved.

But then we couldn’t investigate who stole it because there just wasn’t time for the investigators to investigate who stole it. 

Got the car back, didn’t get any resolution on who stole it. So it’s, the followthrough is so important. And being able to articulate that to people far better than I just did.

Presenter: Commissioner David Loveall:

Commissioner David Loveall: Great presentation as well. I think coming back with a minimum for the constituents and the public to peruse that would make a difference, I think is the right approach. I think I want to commend you guys for doing that.

There’s basically seven words that the two of you said together that I think the public needs to hear. 

And Sheriff Wilkerson, you said that you’ll ‘feel a difference.’ You know, people want to feel the difference in their community. And like I’ve said before from this dais, is that if we don’t have a safe community, we don’t have a community. We all agreed on that.

And if we’re going to feel the difference that our community is safer, that’s going to make our community, just as business goes, more economically feasible, more attractive, all the things that benefit a community that feels the difference—that’s a better community. They become better.

And then, (DA) Parosa, you said that, ‘You’ll get better justice.’ And that word is something that even like when Commissioner Farr was talking about his vehicle being stolen. He got his car back, but did he get better justice? The answer would be no. He didn’t feel the difference that this would have made.

The increases that we’re talking about, we have a very popular, very worthy publicly acceptable option levy. And I want to ask, just the option levy of the jail would stay in place. And this new minimum local option levy that you described is in addition to that.

So I think the levy is, what, $0.52 right now, the jail levy, what is it? ($0.55) Fifty-five cents? (Yeah.) So the $0.55. And then we would add another $0.35 to that, giving ourselves $0.90. 

So are we going to do these in two separate, or are we just going to say the new option levy going forward would be $0.90? Would that be our marketing ploy for the public or would there be two separate things? is my first question.

Steve Mokrohisky (Lane County, administrator): I think that we’ve contemplated them as being two separate things.

Commissioner David Loveall: I’m just put right out there: I’m not a fan of the payroll tax. I think payroll tax is a business person’s—just a nail in the coffin about attracting new business to our area. So I’m not a fan of that at all. 

But if we were to take the local option levy approach, and you’re saying that the average value for that would increase the average property owner about $63.58 a year.

But we have to also consider, as we’re talking about this, is the commercial property owners, the people that own businesses, the people that own apartment complexes, those things that are valued at $1 million, plus those particular individuals are going to be on the burden for what I figured just roughly right now, about $320 more a year.

So that all rolls downhill as well, economically speaking, when you look at rents and leases and those kinds of things too. So I think, you know, cautiously going forward, it’s not just as simple as, ‘Oh, it doesn’t increase this that much.’

Because it does increase as much, especially when we’re adding other things like waste management services and all the other things that affect commercial property owners as well. That’s a big part of the puzzle.

Now, is it the least painful part of the puzzle? Maybe, but we do have to at least think about that as well. 

So you know, we have to do something. And the options are not great either. We, you know, start cutting timber and get back to the 1980s timber. Don’t see that happening the next couple of years. I see that improving a little bit in the next couple of years, but I don’t see it taking over what we need to do here.

So I would get behind more discussions about this local option levy, just to make sure that we entertain input both from local property owners and commercial property owners in this process. I think that would help. 

Like I said before, I’m not a fan of the payroll tax, and that’s where I’m at.

Presenter: Commissioner Ryan Ceniga:

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: I think there’s a real hunger for public safety in Lane County, and now’s the right time to go after it and go after it aggressively. I mean, you’ve got a board that’s 5-0 all on the same track to get something passed that’s going to move the needle here in Lane County. And I’m ready to go for it.

Presenter: Lane County wants to move towards community policing, and they’re asking the community to choose a service level:

• $27 million for the bare minimum / core services 
• $55 million to stabilize jail funding and for other unfunded needs, or
• $95 million, which would move the county into a new era of DA investigations, such as those two high-profile murder trials—when Diane Downs was found guilty, and Snake Brooks was acquitted. 

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