Halo has to be a big time liberal socialist.....anyway, it looks like the smart move was to vote against the taxes.....the county continues to use scare tactics, just like the schools do.....we'll see how much they really cut...

Lance, like the vast majority of people on the internet, I choose to keep my identity private. I don't want death threats, crank phone calls, or any of the other abuse that goes along with expressing political views in this community. If you choose to believe I'm "Spanky", or Santa Clause, it makes no difference to me. I'll just keep expressing my concerns on the issues and invite people to measure my credibility and the value of my contribution by the content and the extent to which my responses are supported by documentation or other reliable corroboration.

Lance, if you review my posts you'll see that I unequivocally predicted the failure of the income tax. I never thought it would be a close call. If the context of my quote wasn't clear to you, and it should have been, my prediction of failure made it patently obvious that my reference to Mr. Pooler being "in the minority" had nothing to do with his views on the income tax. The question, for me, is whether Mr. Pooler's apathy towards the consequences will be shared by the majority. Our unwillingness to pay for what the rest of our country considers essential services will have consequences we'll see over the next few years, especially given the numbers in that report that has been referenced here.  I just don't see how a complete absence of a law enforcement response can do anything but increase crime, especially if they are right about the gangs coming here.

You believe there are "three commissioners trying to shove this tax down our throats", and once they're removed there we'll be free from more tax proposals. I hope you're right, as I've grown weary of this process and the extent to which it amplifies all of our weaknesses. (I see it as loudly ringing the dinner bell for the criminals who are not already feeding at our trough.) But your belief is unsupported by history and logic:

First, this is, I think, the 14th failed tax proposal designed to revive Lane County government since the late 80s, when NONE of the present commissioners were on the board. The proposals fail, service drops down a notch, something bad happens, people are outraged, and the cycle renews. I'm sure there were plenty of folks who felt like we'd be done after the 10th or 11th effort, but the pathetic service level continues to revive interest in a tax to support something like a normal law enforcement system. The Eugene compromise process inevitably converts the support for "beds & badges" (jail beds, cops, DAs and POs), into a broader package of services that people like commissioner Sorenson will support. (Sorrenson voted FOR the income tax a few months ago, by the way, and every other tax measure the board has proposed in recent memory. This time he says he voted against it because it was a "flat tax". I think he was just being responsive to the political winds, because it was a "flat tax last fall too.)

The tax impetus doesn't reside with these "three commissioners". When it comes to taxation, Green and Stewart are MUCH more reliably opposed than Sorenson. They went out on a limb in this case because they were unprepared to accept the consequences of the cuts if the federal money went away without "trying to do the right thing". Commissioner Sorenson has never been concerned about funding police services, and he views the most recent vote as a "clear communication that the public believes we don't need more law enforcement". When the cuts come he's advocating taking even more from the DA and Sheriff to supplement things he considers "prevention" programs. (See last weeks "Eugene Weekly"... Sorenson is the only politician in Lane County, including all the other city councils, who doesn't recognize the public safety problem, and it's not just because he doesn't go to work or read the budget and summary materials either.)

My crystal ball isn't any better than the next guys, but here's my prediction: Congress will play games until the last possible moment, wasting time by submitting bills the president has promised to veto, and then they'll finally submit one he can swallow (or one that has sufficient support to be "veto-proof), and the federal money will be renewed for at least one year. If that happens the county will only have to implement about $5 million in cuts. (It was less, but the Sheriff announced that he's losing another $1 million in state support as the legislature is taking more money away to apply to enhancing support for schools.) That would mean more cuts for an already dysfunctional system, but it will not mean 200+ lay-offs and the closure of all but 26 jail beds for county use. The DA is scheduled to lose another 10% of his prosecutors, and that would mean more crimes he can't prosecute. It would continue to be awful, but the "doomsday scenario" would be put off another year. (This is what the DA described as "the death of 1,000 cuts". The public would be outraged by the idea of cutting the staff by 50% and tripling the caseload if if was done in one year, but they will tolerate that change if it, and the inevitable consequences, are implemented over fifteen or twenty years. He said, we're like the frog that will not get out of the warm water as the temperature is gradually increased to boiling.")

There will be cuts. Law enforcement supporters will say cops & DAs are being cut to "twist our arms". Parks supporters will say the same about cuts to parks. Those who favor mental health support, or WIC, veterans, or the elderly will say the same about cuts to their services. And none will rise to the 10,000 foot view to realize that HUGE cuts have been imposed everywhere.

Nothing more will happen until a burglary goes bad and a prominent citizen is killed, or we have another school shooting, or a little girl is raped in her home, or the gang predictions develop, and then we'll start the cycle all over again. It's sad, but I see this as inevitable. I know you guys consider discussion of such things "scare tactics" but I tend to take the DA and the Sheriff at their word. They've been very accurate with their predictions so far.

I actually hope you guys are right -- that it's all hype, there isn't a real crime problem, and we're really okay having a small fraction of the recommended jail space and the lowest police/DA numbers in the country. I'd MUCH rather be safe without paying an extra few hundred bucks in taxes.

We should revisit the predictions in this thread in a year or so and see if Lane County seems "safe" and reletively crime free. After all, we've got few of the influences that tend to drive up crime in many areas of the country, so if the absence of law enforcement capacity isn't the problem, we ought to start getting better compared to others soon. We'd all be winners then - and I'd be delighted to buy Ben a beer, shake his hand, and admit I was wrong.

   I really do not think that it has to do with them not caring about public safety. Its more that lane county just cant budget their money right. They spend it on things that aren't really needed. I voted no because I am a 20 year old single women who works very hard for my money and when they take out things like social security and its not even going to be around by the time im old enough to use it. Or here is one how about when cost of living goes up every year and i dont get a rais to compensate for the difference and even if i did you still have a hard time making it. I know that at one point they were more than able to budget their money, what happend? Im not to into the fact that they are useing things like public safety to get people in an uproare over this because Lane county uses our tax dollers for none essential services which take priorty over our essentials like puplic safety. All lane county wants to do is spend our hard earned money on petty things instead of things that we really need.

   You know something is funny to me why is crime up? when 20 yrs ago it was not nearly half it is today, well here is why i think that is because lane county has to have the nicest roades and the best buildings, they spend 2.1million or so dollers on property that was appraised at 400,000 give or take. Things that are totally dumb. So the question should be why doesnt lane county care about our safety?

It is hard to make it these days, especially as a young person starting out. There's no way around that with the extremely high property values.

And I completely agree with your concern and frustration with respect to the social security system. I'm a baby-boomer and the way the "trust account" has been abused by congress, it's unlikely to see me through retirement either.

On Lane County: Somebody has given you a bunch of incorrect information. The real numbers are included in the discussions on this thread and the two others discussing the income tax, so I will not rehash all of it here, but I'll try to answer your questions succinctly

You asked "What happened?" Several things:
1) The property tax rate was limited by Ballot Measures 5, 47 and 50, and these severely limited government's ability to increase the property tax rate AND adjust property values to reflect real market value, AND
2) The federal government substantially limited logging in federal forests, and that logging used to generate HUGE money for the Oregon counties that had large tracts of "O & C Railroad land" within their borders. By the time that income went away the county was unable to adjust it's property tax rate up to the state average, so Lane County has a small fraction of the per-citizen revenue of most Oregon counties.

Many people believe the public safety is being cut unnecessarily. Others think parks are being cut unnecessarily. Others think that the public health programs are being cut unnecessarily. They're all wrong. All of the services have been cut back, year after year, for the last 26 years. Every year it's explained at length, and every year the citizens think it's all being made up. In fact, the county has lost positions (employees) in 13 of the last 16 years. It has 230 fewer employees than it had in 1981 when there were 60,000 fewer citizens in Lane County.

It seems like the county has more money than it does because special program money is funneled through the county by the federal and state governments, but the general fund -- the fund that supports things like the jail, cops and DAs, hasn't had enough money to provide average staffing levels in almost 30 years. If you want to see what has happened to Lane County Public safety follow the link on the neighboring thread and read the linked document. I've watched the crime problem grow as our citizens deny reality. They keep saying the county doesn't need the money and, every other year or so, more cops and DAs are let go. Some folks don't listen or take the time to learn what's going on, but I think others just keep repeating what they hear because they don't want to help pay for the solution...they just pretend the problem doesn't exist. That works just fine until somebody you care about becomes a crime victim, I suppose.

Well, it's been a year and I'm checking in with the latest data I can find.

Many staff reductions developed as promised, but the short term renewal of the federal money reduced the size of the cuts. Still, the Sheriff, DA and county juvenile departments all lost positions, again.

The crime report is a mixed bag. Some property crime, like identity theft, is actually down, but our robbery rate and other violent crime is WAY up in Lane County. We're still near the worst in the country for home burglary and car theft, and the Lane County jail is more porous than ever.

There is no discussion of full renewal of federal funding for next year. The "Wyden Plan", a best-case-scenario which has yet to be funded, calls for a 10% reduction in federal money next year (about $4.5 million cut for Lane County), another 10% cut in each of the two years after that, a 40% cut in the next year, and then ZERO support after that. The idea is to give the locals time to arrange to carry their own water. I don't think Wyden and Smith realize that our locals are not willing to carry their own water for public safety or other services, so we could well see our dead-last public safety status mature into "forty percent below dead last". This will be interesting to watch.

Meanwhile, the Lane County commissioners made a further mid-year correction by cutting another 1% from all of the county departments. (Commissioners are requiring every department to return a total of 3% of their alloted budget at the end of this year, again, though costs continue to rise. As a result all of the department heads will continue eliminating positions as they become vacant, as there is no other way to make up the money. That makes this the 13th of the last 16 years in which Lane County has lost positions. Public Safety departments are approaching staffing levels 40% to 50% below levels of 1981.)

I think we're going to make national news, again, before this plays out.