News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Calls for sheriff's deputies outside Sisters may go mostly unheeded this summer, as patrols are cut way back due to lack of funds.
But the failure of the continued sheriff's operating levy won't affect patrols inside the City of Sisters, because the city is paying for those patrols under contract with the sheriff's department.
According to Sheriff Greg Brown, all the Sisters deputies will stay on the job at least until a new levy can be put to voters on September 15.
Permanent layoffs loom if a new levy fails.
Brown promised the city when the contract was enacted last year that, in the event of a loss of funding, all the Sisters Police Department officers that signed on with the county would be kept on.
"It was important to give those city employees some sense of security, since they'd been bounced around a lot in the past year," Brown said. "The officers that are working in the city will continue to work in the city."
But those deputies, assigned to protect Sisters, will only venture outside the city limits for life threatening incidents. Deputies just won't be able to respond on crimes short of physical violence and accidents that don't involve injuries, Brown said.
In addition to patrol cut-backs, Brown said about 100 inmates will be released from jail. And those arrested after July 31 are unlikely to see much time behind bars.
"If someone commits murder, they'll go to jail, but beyond that, the jail won't be taking any new inmates," Brown said.
Brown believes that "negative activists" have criticized his department unfairly for growth that has, in many cases, come through contracts such as that with the City of Sisters.
"It's pretty dangerous to make statements about growth in budgets without fairly explaining the reason for that growth," Brown said.
Brown also believes the levy's cause was hurt by the public's perception that the department had received money from an apparent tax overcharge last year.
That overcharge occurred when expiring sheriff's levies in Deschutes and Linn counties were mistakenly left on the books when new tax roll-back legislation was crafted.
The extra tax money has been distributed - but the sheriff's department didn't get it.
"People still think we got the money from the overcharge, which we did not," Brown said. "And I think that was a critical factor" in the levy's failure.
Many deputies have reported that citizens seemed not to realize that the levy's failure means the sheriff's department will have no money and that deputies will be laid off.
Layoffs will be put off until the last possible moment - July 31 - to shorten the potential layoff time to 45 days.
"The shorter the layoff period for our employees, the better chance we have of retaining them," Brown said.
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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