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Stay active with fall community events Pgs 4-5, 9 October 31st Halloween trick or treating in downtown Tillamook. File photo
Wheel Class Clinic at Hoffman Center for the Arts
Touch base with the arts this fall through our local non-profit art organizations
Music is ‘live’ at Kitty’s Food & Spirits in Tillamook
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Pg 10 The Joel Baker Band performs at Kitty’s Food and Spirits as couples dance to live music recently. Photo by Joe Warren
Headlight Herald Pgs 6-9
Headlight Herald
Citizen North Coast
Tuesday, September 24 | Vol. 136, Issue 39
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www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com
Public safety committee briefed on deflection programs WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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system would also be less impacted by literal noise caused by loose wires and wind at the towers than the analog system. The proposed system upgrade also includes plans to add a secondary network of weak repeaters that buttress the towers to the system’s microwave network, which would further increase signal strength across the county. A report commissioned by the county and released in 2020 recommended the county’s analog system be upgraded to digital. The
illamook County’s Local Public Safety Coordinating Committee met on September 16, with a professor giving a presentation about the state’s new deflection program system for individuals in possession of hard drugs. Counties across the state has either already established or, like Tillamook County, is in the process of establishing their own deflection program to steer those with substance use disorders into treatment rather than the criminal justice system, after hard drugs’ recriminalization, which took effect September 1. Dan Hoover, a member of the addiction medicine faculty at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), discussed the program’s underlying philosophy and the practical implementation methods that other counties across the state are employing. Hoover began by discussing the difference between deflection programs and diversion programs that have existed for the past several decades. In diversion programs, people contacted by law enforcement are
See COUNTY, Page A4
See PUBLIC, Page A4
WILL CHAPPELL / COUNTRY MEDIA, INC.
The tower on top of Cape Meares that hosts transmitters for the county’s emergency radio system, as well as a plethora of other broadcast, cellular and amateur and professional radio equipment. In addition to sometimes competing for frequencies, the large number of loose cables left by past users cause literal noise on radios as they move in the wind.
WILL CHAPPELL / COUNTRY MEDIA, INC.
The view from the tower on top of Cape Meares to the south.
County seeks $24 million for emergency radio upgrades WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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illamook County is asking voters to approve a $24.4-million bond to support a major upgrade to the county’s emergency radio system on the November ballot. Communications systems administrator Ruben Descloux recently took the Headlight Herald on a tour of two of the system’s towers and discussed the current system’s limitations and the benefits of a new system. Built between 2001 and 2003,
the current system relies on 12 tower sites across the county that house VHF repeaters to coordinate communications among first responders. The analog system relies on relays to pass messages between distant areas of the county, while a new digital system would be able to facilitate countywide communications directly. The current system also only allows one person to talk at a time, whereas the digital system would support talk groups for various agencies, each of which would be able to carry on conversations independently and simultaneously.
A large challenge facing the current system is the relative weakness of its signal compared to those transmitted by other organizations with newer equipment, causing interference and sometimes completely blocking the county’s signal. Using the same technology that allows for different talk groups, the new system would also be able to select the frequencies least impacted by other transmissions and assign the county’s communications to those. Descloux said that in addition to cutting down on the noise caused by competing signals, the digital
Garibaldi council eyes acquisition of Coast Guard buildings WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
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COURTESY PHOTO
Patence Winningham from the Oregon Department of Emergency Preparedness addresses the Tillamook County emergency preparedness summit on September 13.
aribaldi’s city council approved a letter of intent to acquire a disused station house and officer’s quarters in the city from the United States Coast Guard at their September 16 meeting. While nonbinding, the letter marks a step toward the city taking control of the building that the Coast Guard plans to declare surplus. The two buildings stand above Highway 101 at the West End of Acacia Avenue on Coast Guard property. The station house was the second housing built for members of the guard in the county, opening in 1943, and replacing the origi-
nal station in Barview, which had opened in 1907. Located directly across Highway 101 from the guard’s historic boathouse, the location was active until the current station opened in 1981. Garibaldi City Manager Jake Boone said that the Coast Guard had contacted the city about the possibility of taking control of the buildings and that he and Mayor Katie Findling and members of the fire department had done a walkthrough of the property recently. That walkthrough revealed that the building appeared to be in good shape structurally and asbestos had apparently been remediated, though aesthetically there were many issues.
Boone said that the facility could serve as a replacement for Garibaldi’s city hall, with staff having outgrown the current space shared with the fire department and library. The station house is currently laid out with a lot of bedrooms that Boone said could be converted to offices and there would probably be excess space on the building’s second floor that the city could use for archives or lease out. Garibaldi’s letter of intent will serve as notice to the Coast Guard that the city is serious about the acquisition and request more information about the building and access for further inspections. It will also allow city staff to put further time into exploring the possible acquisition.
Budget work group discusses possible funding fixes WILL CHAPPELL Headlight Editor
In their third monthly meeting on September 11, members of the Tillamook County budget work group began to flesh out ideas to cover the county’s budget shortfall in coming years. A possible hiring freeze emerged as a possible solution to this year’s $400,000-plus gap while the group identified a handful of other proposals to explore further going forward. Tillamook County Commissioner Doug Olson led the meeting and kicked things off by asking the assembled county department heads if they had identified any non-mandated services that their departments were providing. Sheriff Josh Brown said that operating a patrol fleet on county roads was not mandated by state or federal law but noted that he did not think that cutting the service would be prudent or popular with county residents. Tillamook County Clerk
Christy Nyseth volunteered that her office could stop processing passport applications but said that the program was popular with county residents and mostly covered its own costs. Olson then moved the discussion on to a list of potential revenue-generating and cost-cutting ideas that smaller groups had investigated and discussed in the previous month. He first reviewed the budgetary situation, saying that the group needed to find about $400,000 this fiscal year, $3.1 million next year and $4 and $6 million the following two years. Cost Cutting The first group to present had reviewed possible changes to labor costs and Tillamook County Human Resources Director Jodi Wilson discussed those ideas. Wilson said that cutting employees’ work week to four days would save the county around $2.2 million annually, while reducing workdays to seven hours would
IN THIS ISSUE News Opinion Sports Obituaries Classifieds
A2-4 A5-6 A6,8 A7 A9-14
generate a $1.3-million savings and cutting them to six would yield $6.2 million. However, Wilson cautioned that the group had agreed that taking any of these steps should be a last resort for the county, as they would come at the direct expense of its employees. A more palatable option the group discussed was a temporary freeze on filling new positions. Foster estimated that given average recruitment times the county was likely to save around $411,000 this year on salaries for positions that are currently unfilled and noted that this figure would cover the projected budget shortfall. This possibility had the added benefit of dovetailing with the natural recruitment and hiring process, which Foster said took around three months on average for county employees and closer to six months for sheriff’s deputies given extra screening requirements. Foster said that the group had also discussed the possibility of a more formal hiring freeze and said that leaving the cur-
rently vacant positions open for six months would generate more than $900,000 in savings. However, Foster said this approach would require leaving some departments short-staffed and deciding which positions to freeze would be difficult. Other possibilities discussed by the group included restructuring employees’ benefits, which Foster said was a top priority, and restricting or restructuring employee travel, which Foster said was a lower priority as the county wanted to support its staff. Short-term Revenue Discussion then moved on to the group that had discussed possible means of boosting revenue that could be achieved by county action alone. Tillamook County Chief of Staff Rachel Hagerty spoke on behalf of this group and started by mentioning the ongoing plans to seek an increase to the county’s transient lodging tax next year.
The tax levied on overnight lodging stays is currently 10% and county leaders plan to ask voters to increase it to 15% in May 2025, which would generate an additional $1 million in revenue annually. Preliminary plans call for those funds to go to the sheriff’s office and Brown said that he hoped that if the increase were approved the funds would supplement his current budget, not be used to replace its current funding sources. Another possibility for monetizing visitors to the county that the group discussed was increasing fees in county parks. Hagerty said that this could be done with a board of commissioners’ order and that the group had mostly discussed overnight camping fees and had also begun investigating the possibility of different fees for out-of-county residents. Hagerty said that the group had also considered the possibility of asking lodging operators to collect an optional public safety donation See BUDGET, Page A4
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