By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Will the city of Waldport end its contract to have Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies stationed in town?
Will a disagreement between Waldport and Lincoln County derail an experiment by Yachats to pay for a deputy in the city?
Or, are county officials correct in saying that a Waldport-Yachats proposal for three deputies would have other county taxpayers unfairly subsidizing their presence in the two cities.
It all depends who you ask, of course.
But a three-way dispute between Waldport, the sheriff and county officials could result in changes to regular law enforcement patrols in Waldport and scuttle an idea to add a full-time deputy in Yachats.
While there are still six weeks to settle issues before the start of a new budget year, each side is critical of the other over who should absorb costs, poor communication, and an unwillingness to have county commissioners take up the issue.
The issue bubbled to the surface in March when Sheriff Curtis Landers gave the city of Waldport a $400,000 estimate for its 2024-25 contract to station two deputies in the city. Waldport currently pays the county $367,000 for two deputies to work a total of 80 hours a week – although an estimated 25 percent of their time is spent away from the city responding to other emergencies, in training, in court, or simply ill or on vacation.
Waldport began contracting for deputies in 1997 after disbanding its police force. But rising costs – the sheriff’s contract consumes about half of the city’s property taxes – has city manager Dann Cutter looking to lower the impact.
At the same time, some folks in Yachats began pressing the city to increase law enforcement presence in that community, mostly in response to homeless and nuisance issues and U.S. Highway 101 speeders.
Cutter approached Landers and Yachats city manager Bobbi Price in April about sharing a contract, adding a third deputy to help work both cities but paying 75 percent of their overall cost to account for time spent elsewhere.
Cutter tried to bolster his argument by saying residents of both cities already pay property taxes to the county. The sheriff’s $17 million yearly operating budget consumes 34 percent of the county’s $50 million general fund.
Landers worked up the numbers – first agreeing to ask that the county absorb 25 percent of the cost – and came up with a $450,000 plan that had Waldport paying $300,000 and Yachats paying $150,000 for coverage seven days week by three deputies. The county would contribute $72,000.
The budget committees of both cities approved the idea, although Yachats Mayor Craig Berdie said last week that the city only had enough money for one year and would likely seek a special levy next year to see if voters wanted the service to continue.
And then the whole idea stalled.
The sheriff’s proposal
On April 22 Landers outlined the Waldport-Yachats three-deputy proposal in a memo to county commissioners and administrator Tim Johnson and asked for the issue to be placed on the commission’s May 1 agenda.
“I saw this as a win, win, win …” Landers told YachatsNews. “It was going to provide a lot of good coverage to that area at not much cost to the county.”
But his agenda request was denied – a first, Landers said, in his seven years as sheriff.
Landers now worries that Waldport will cut back its contract to one deputy or even walk away from it.
“But if Waldport doesn’t have a deputy, I’m still required to come in and enforce the law,” he said, although not nearly at the current level of service.
Landers said he was able to meet with Johnson to work on costs and what the county was willing to do – all within the context of the county’s soon-to-start budget process that asks all departments to trim their proposed 2024-25 budgets.
The result, Landers said in a May 8 email to Cutter, was that Johnson said there would be no county help on a Waldport-Yachats partnership and that the cities would need to pay the full cost of a deputy – $182,809 each.
Landers then told Cutter that Waldport’s options would be to keep the two deputies at its current rate of $365,000; pay $548,500 for three with the help of Yachats; go to one deputy in Waldport; have one deputy in each city; eliminate the contract altogether; or “something else we haven’t thought of.”
Waldport’s pushback
The Waldport city council held its regularly scheduled monthly meeting the day after Lander’s May 8 memo and neither it nor Cutter were pleased.
As much as they like having deputies stationed in the city, Cutter and some council members are frustrated that they don’t do more speed patrols of city streets, write citations, and deal with homeless complaints or code enforcement – all areas that sheriff’s deputies would not normally touch without a contract.
In one email to Landers, Cutter said the city may re-direct some of the money spent on the sheriff’s contract to hiring its own code enforcement officer.
“Since the Covid pandemic, we’ve seen a deteriorating amount of activity on our investment,” Cutter told YachatsNews. “There’s frustration at the council level. I do not know right now what the council will do. There may be a couple of council members who might like to take that $300,000 and put it toward civic improvements.”
At the end of its meeting Thursday, the council approved releasing a statement that blasted the county for not helping fund the three-deputy proposal. If Waldport ends the contract, Cutter reiterated, sheriff’s deputies will still have to respond to some calls for service in the city.
“We are surprised by this response from county administration,” Mayor Greg Holland said in the council’s statement. “Lincoln County’s administration has failed to increase patrol deputies along with population growth in several decades yet is willing to spend over $150/night per person on a (homeless) warming shelter. We don’t begrudge those seeking a warm bed, but at what point do we see them protect the actual taxpayers.”
The county’s response
Lincoln County officials responded to Waldport’s accusations by saying in a statement Tuesday that Landers’ proposal asks that residents in other areas of the county subsidize the city’s contracts – which Depoe Bay, for example, does not do.
The statement also said that the decision not to put Landers’ proposal on the May 1 commission agenda was a decision by Johnson, chair Casey Miller and county counsel Kristin Yuille.
“Commissioners still have questions regarding the proposal, among them equity with other jurisdictions who contract with the county for various services, including deputy patrols,” the county statement said.
In the statement, Miller also said he was surprised to see Landers’ proposal after county department heads were asked to reduce their 2024-25 spending requests “due to increased budget pressures.”
The statement said Johnson asked Landers “to provide information on how this proposal could fit within the confines of the current budget – that is, what source of revenue will provide these additional funds, or what department’s budget would he ask to be reduced to supplement this contract.”
The county said Landers has not provided that information, “so commissioners are unable to meaningfully consider the proposal.”
Given that lack of information, Miller said in the statement there seems to be three options for Waldport — pay the county’s full cost for contract deputies, reduce the service to a level the city can afford, or, if they wish, re-establish their police department.
“Requiring residents of the unincorporated areas to subsidize a contract with cities would set a dangerous precedent and constitute a misuse of taxpayer funds,” Miller said in the county statement.
The Yachats situation
As the new kid on the block when it comes to sheriff’s deputies, the city of Yachats feels a little like it’s caught in the middle of an argument by two bigger and older siblings.
The city manager and council want to respond to some sentiment in the community for a more visible law enforcement presence. But it’s not sure what that might look like and it only has an allocation of $150,000 for a deputy in a proposed 2024-25 budget that got its first examination last week.
More importantly, the current feeling is that Yachats will need to ask voters to approve a special law enforcement levy in 2025 should the council and residents feel satisfied after the first year.
Price has not had time to bring the county’s new “take it or leave it” deputy price of $182,809 to the budget committee, which meets again May 23.
In the meantime, Landers has told Price there may be an alternative that does not involve a full-time deputy – a sporadic presence of a deputy being paid overtime to work in Yachats. It was something that Depoe Bay did for a while before opting to go to a full-time contracted deputy this year.
But Price still hopes something can be worked out.
“Our ideal would be to work to enhance service in south county between the two cities and the county,” she told YachatsNews on Tuesday. “But we’re not in the fighting stage … Yachats is open to all kinds of possibilities for deputy service in the city.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
Claire Hall, Casey Miller and Kaety Jacobsen are wrong on this issue. They should support Sheriff Lander’s proposal to keep the contract for 2 deputies for Waldport and adding one for Yachats at the 75% costs proposed. If this coverage is lost, Lincoln County risks losing the coverage for the rest of the county that these deputies cover in emergencies. The residents of Waldport and Yachats are willing to pay for 75% of these services, so it becomes a win-win for the County and Waldport and Yachats. Sheriff Landers has been a good steward of all the County funds he is given to manage the safety and security of the County. We need more deputies, not fewer. Wake up and smell the coffee, Hall et all. Support Sheriff Landers in this proposal to improve the safety and security of your constituents in these cities and the rest of the county.
I agree with you, Anne. The proposal is a win win win for all involved. The cities are willing to supplement the cost of three deputies to payroll the southern part of the county with the county picking up only 25% of those costs. Without this extra money the county is left paying the entire cost of funding for less coverage in south Lincoln County. I think the commissioners need to turn their binoculars around and look through the other end so they can see this is beneficial to all. I do, however, have concerns with the unnecessary and irrelevant remarks about the costs of sheltering the homeless. That is false equivalency.
What an absolute jerky thing said by the mayor of Waldport. Not only is it insensitive and abrasive toward the people in the county who are struggling with homelessness, but it is a ridiculous notion altogether. You let your prejudice show, Greg Holland.
I think the city of Waldport shouldn’t expect favoritism from the county government then have a hissy fit when told it isn’t gonna happen. No other city in the county is subsidized in this way. Put on your big boy pants, Cutter and Holland, stop whining, and figure it out like other Lincoln County citiies have done. Don’t blame your failure to manage your budget and lead effectively on those leading the county. And take a lesson from Yachats and show some respect for the board of commissioners and county manager.
I’m confused. If we already pay property taxes to the county that funds the police, and those funds get police coverage to other areas for no additional costs, then why should some have to pay more to get police coverage? Maybe those other areas should not be paying for police coverage they aren’t really receiving and those areas taxes should go towards their own police forces instead of paying for coverage they don’t really get. What are we getting for our tax dollars we already paid towards the police coverage?
I agree with Greg Holland. The taxpayers are getting the shaft at every juncture. Billons have been spent on the drug addiction and homeless industrial complex here in Oregon with no true sustainable results, The county commissioners riderough shod over the taxpayers and only push their agendas. The tax payers deserve better, It’s the agenda of the County commissioners and other politicians here in Oregon that has resulted in higher homelessness , drug addiction, drug over doses, crime and the need for more law enforcement presence.
You already pay for it. If you pay for a deputy, you should get a “resident deputy”, otherwise I would not support a law enforcement levy, I already pay for to the County.
Wait…are you telling me that yachats couldn’t hire two full time patrol officers for $90,000 in salary each?
Simple solution is to have our own police force or in conjunction with Waldport.
Let’s try thinking outside the box.
Whatever the base salary is, there are additional costs that must be paid for benefits, such as health care, PERS pension, employer FICA tax, etc. which can add up to tens of thousands of dollars per employee per year. It’s necessary to add salary plus benefits to get a realistic picture of the cost of hiring a full time patrol officer. Not that hiring an officer shouldn’t be considered, but it may not be as easy a solution as we’d all like it to be.
I stopped by the sub station earlier this week to speak to the deputy on duty and was told he was off that day. I was given his name and I called the office in Newport and left a message on his phone and ask him to return my call. It has been four
days and no follow up. As a citizen, I had hope for a phone call.
If there is no assistance available, I am in a quandary what exactly are taxes are paying for?
Like Robin says above, I’m wondering why Waldport and Yachats need a separate contract for a service they are already paying for through county taxes. Would someone please explain this?
My understanding is that when you form an incorporated city you have to provide your own police service or pay for it. Cities need more concentrated service than unincorporated and more rural areas.
Consider this: contract services with Oregon State Police instead, kind of like when they decided to move 9-1-1 services out of the county. I’m quite sure it saved money and the county got the services deserved.