Welcoming Remarks: Cows And Creeks Workshop

Welcoming Remarks At the Cows and Creeks Workshop
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Feb. 27, 2004, Meadow Lakes Restaurant, Prineville, Oregon

Crook County, 2952 square miles. You could fit the state of Rhode Island within our borders with a little room to spare.

Our county makes up the largest portion of the Crooked River Watershed, which also reaches into portions of Deschutes, Jefferson, Harney, Lake, Wasco, and Wheeler as well.

In total there are 9,548 miles of streams within the Crooked River watershed. To frame that number, the number of stream miles within the Crooked River watershed’s borders is just over 4 times the length of the entire Mississippi River mainstem.

It will come as a surprise to many, I’m sure, that according to our own Watershed Council, a whopping 95 percent of the water use within the basin comes not from wells below us but from surface water.

Of the total water usage in the basin, 99 percent is devoted to agriculture. In Crook County that is extremely important because Crook County’s dependence agriculture as a source of income is double that proportion found statewide, making the link between water availability and agriculture not only important but vital to the community’s economic well being.

The remaining 1 percent of water used for non-agricultural purposes—including domestic, industrial and recreational activity--support daily life and jobs for just over 32,000 people living in Prineville, Post, Paulina, Powell Butte, O’Neil, portions of Redmond, and Crooked River Ranch, Brothers, Culver, Hampton, Millican and all points in between.

The watershed is essential to the survival of some 315 species—316 if you count human beings. These include include 29 species of fish, 16 reptiles, 10 amphibians, 78 mammals and 182 birds. To put some perspective around the numbers 82 percent of the bird species found in Oregon can be found within the Crooked River watershed, and 57 percent of the mammals founding Oregon depend on those same waters.

The point of all these numbers is that that they make one thing clear: water is the thing that connects us all.

This playground we call Central Oregon flourishes only to the degree that the waters of the region are preserved and protected. Any I would submit that we are doing pretty well at that. Just a few more statistics before I go.

Out of our 9,548 miles of streams, only 401.8 are listed as water-quality limited by the EPA and DEQ—just over 4 percent.

Of the 315 species found within the watershed, only 42 are listed as threatened or endangered—just over 13 percent.

Despite widespread concern about groundwater, less than 5 percent of our water utilization is withdrawn from the acquifer of unknown capacity beneath us, a balance that should sustain us well into the future.

So over all, my view is that things are not as bad as you might think from reading hysterical media reports written and reported by people who, let’s face, don’t get much attention if when their lead stories and headlines are “All Is Well.”

Still, the point is that just because things aren’t as bad as they might be presented sometimes, we still need to be watchful to ensure that our Paradise Found doesn’t become Paradise Lost. And that’s the point of this workshop today: to talk about proactive ways to preserve the waters of our community and balance our physical and economic needs with the fundamental requirement that we all have—a bountiful, continuous supply of clean, fresh water.

As we being, I want to thank the Crook County Natural Resources Planning Committee which put this event together. This is the essence of what that group was created to do: to bring people together in a non-confrontational way to learn think together about ways we can mesh our many needs and co-exist peaceably in our community.

Thanks too to Coldwell Banker for stepping up to the plate with a sponsorship for this event. This is above and beyond your normal real estate seminar, and I appreciate you guys going the extra mile.

Finally, I want to thank the panel. I’ve had the pleasure at different times of listing to and talking with Gail Achterman, Wayne Elmore and Janice Staats, and I can tell you that there is an amazing amount of brainpower in this room right now. You’ve absolutely got some of the brightest bulbs in the business in this room right, and you’re in for a fascinating day.

So welcome one and all. Thank you for letting me talk to you, and let’s get on with the conference.

A Matter of Priorities

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
published in the Central Oregonian, February 2004
http://www.centraloregonian.com

Funding public safety is an obvious priority, but we what happens when our priorities outstrip our resources?

The commencement of the annual county budget process has turned talk around the Courthouse this month to a question of priorities. More than once, I’ve heard the statement, “We just need to set our priorities and stick with them.”

In principle, I think that’s a very good idea. The problem is, consensus of opinion seems to be limited to the fact that we ought to have priorities, not what they ought to be. Therein lies one of the trickiest questions facing local government at the moment.

Nowhere does the question play out more vividly than over the issue of what ought to be done about funding for public safety.

I think most people would agree this ought to be a key priority for any government. After all, public safety is a key reason governments were formed in the first place. We all want the certainty that bad guys will be locked up and that our persons and possessions are secure. Thus, we are willing to see a significant portion of our tax dollars invested in jail beds and law enforcement functions of the county.

Recognizing this fact, Crook County invests the lion’s share of its discretionary resources in law enforcement. Just over 80 percent of the county property tax dollars are spent on patrol, prosecution and incarceration. The sheriff’s office, the jail, the juvenile department and the district attorney’s office depend heavily on property taxes.

And that dependence has been growing. In the last three years the number of jail beds available to courts and law enforcement has increased from 24 to 41, with a corresponding increase in the budget of more than 75 percent. Likewise, the budget for the sheriff’s office and jail operations, have grown 45.1 percent and 68.5 percent respectively during the same time period. In large measure this has been because the current county government is committed to maintaining an effective law enforcement presence even as federal and state governments have scaled back on revenue sharing . In addition, Crook County, unlike many other counties of the state, has not yielded to the temptation to “go easy” on crime, particularly in regard to its willingness to prosecute aggressively and sanction parole and probation offenders with additional jail time.

Still, even while we have scrambled to make sure that citizens are receiving an adequate level of protection, we are fast reaching the point where costs are going to outrun the ability of the county to pay. The double-digit increases of the past few years in law-enforcement costs stand in stark contrast to the 4-5 percent annual growth the county experiences in its general fund. One statistic puts it in perspective very well: Since 2000, Crook County has added almost $1 million ($994,754) in costs associated with operating the offices of the sheriff, jail, juvenile dept. and district attorney’s office. During the same time period, revenue from property tax increased about $840,0561, leaving the county $150,000 behind where it was four three year ago before, and that’s before figuring in the cost of increased wages and salaries, retirement and benefits for all other General Fund departments.

How have we managed to do this? In part, the county has cannibalized the rest of its budget in order to sustain an effective level of public safety. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that the county workforce has shrunk by 8 percent fewer (16 people) in just one year. The county has also used some assets, particularly through elimination of its 10-year backlog of foreclosed properties, to fund operations. Fees have also helped generate revenues as have creative solutions such as instituting a program to capture administrative fees from grants and creatively thinking about ways to use federal and state revenue sources to pay for certain programs. These measures have ensured the ability of the county to offer stable and continuous services to all its residents in a very difficult economic period.

So far, this has been an effective financial strategy, but frankly, we are running out of options, and the county and its citizen may have to make some very difficult choices it the coming fiscal year. Last year, the City of Prineville advised the County that it intends to cancel the county’s longstanding lease of eight of the jail beds city hall in order to make room for its police station remodel. For citizens of both Prineville and Crook County, the cost of replacing these beds in Jefferson County is an estimated $134,000. To put that in perspective, the county expects its property tax collections to grow by about 4 percent next year or $151,000. So if the jail beds are replaced, that leaves $17,000 in new money which has to pay for everything from employees raises, health and property insurance premium hikes, more books at library, support for the fairgrounds, services to veterans and other programs important to various constituencies within the county.

Considering that a modest cost of living adjustment of 3 percent for county employees would cost $157,000, that’s not much. Making things worse, traditional sources of state and federal support continue to decline, even while statutory mandates, court orders, and union contracts limit the county’s flexibility.

In the months ahead, the County Court and county budget committee are going to have to make some very difficult choices. Here are some of the hypothetical questions the county faces: Should we make do with less jail beds in order to keep buying books for the library? Is it more important to keep the fairgrounds open year-round or to incarcerate more juvenile offenders? Should we ask a deputy to drive a sheriff’s vehicle with over 200,000 miles on it or keep rates down at the landfill?

These are tough calls. And my own survey of the community says that there are as many opinions as there are options. As your elected representatives, we the Court have no choice but to make many of these decisions, difficult though they may be. As always, we will be listening carefully to your thoughts as we go along. And there is always the possibility we may ask you to help us by referring some of these questions to you, the voters.
One thing is certain. All of us are entitled only to the level of government we’re willing to pay for. The question is, how much do you want to buy today?