News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Deschutes County Sheriff Greg Brown has won the endorsement of the Sisters City Council for a proposed one-year $6.9 million levy to maintain sheriff's services
The council unanimously approved a resolution in support of the levy at their April 10 meeting.
Brown noted that the proposed levy is split so that Sisters residents, who have their own police force, pay a lower rate than those living outside city limits.
"This is not a new tax," Brown emphasized. "You're already paying for sheriff's services. This is merely a continuation."
Brown told the council that funds to open the county's new juvenile jail and to add adult jail beds have been stripped out of the current levy. A $9.4 million three-year lev
y that included funds for the jail was shot down at the polls in March.
The current levy would maintain the current level of sheriff's services for a year, Brown indicated.
Councilor Gordon Petrie asked Brown whether the levy included any provisions that would allow shifting funds into the general fund for "unspecified purposes," a practice that Petrie characterized as "gamesmanship."
"These are games that political entities play all the time and I think it's very deceitful," Petrie said.
Brown assured the council that the funds were only for sheriff's services.
"This is strictly a sheriff's levy; there are no hidden things in it," Brown said.
If the levy fails, Brown said the sheriff's department will be reduced to operating on 25 percent of its current budget. Jail space would be reduced, resulting in the release o
f some criminals, and there would be only two deputies at a time on patrol in the county.
Brown said that if the levy passes, the county will ask voters later for funds to open and operate the juvenile jail.
In other business, the city council gave the go-ahead to allow the police department to create a policy for conducting inventory searches of anyone arerested and transported to Sisters Police Department or to Deschutes County Jail.
According to Sisters Police Chief David Haynes, the policy is necessary to ensure that an arrested person's constitutional rights are protected. He noted that Sisters Police rarely do full-blown searches now because the deaprtment has no holding cells, but the city should have a policy in place to meet future needs
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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