The challenge for Lane County is now to not focus on the short term money that will come with the Federal Bailout, but rather to plan for when this money will run out.  Yes, there is money now, but it is not going to last forever.  If this county and area want to remain competitive there needs to be a change of heart from the entitlement mentality to one of self-sustainability.  Things that have gone wrong are monumental, but will not keep Lane County from being the shining star it was at the 2008 Pre-Olympic Trials.  The infighting between is similar to that we see on a national level, do you like that type of competition?  If you do, it makes great news, one city will get two hospitals, more development, better policing, or more state funding.  In the end though, we all lose.  Let me repeat that, we all lose.  Have you seen the political commercials paid for by Divided We Fail?  That's where we are headed if we count on these payments to fund our out of whack budgets.  Right now, our elected officials must be accountable for 4 years from now when this money will run out. 

Start planning instead of taking a deep breath and spending.  Let me repeat that one for them, Plan now for shortfalls.  Most of them will be out office and feel it's not important, but if you care about public safety, education, or quality of life you will pass this message on or respond with your thoughts so that others can join the discussion. 

What would you do as one of the leaders?  Would you look at keeping the status quo?  Would you look at taking the city of Eugene and Springfield in a new direction, one of cooperation? 

What about a METRO Public Safety Division, how would that save money, streamline management, and eliminate duplication of services while improving them at the same time?  As a customer, taxpayer, and citizen, wouldn't you want the best money could buy?  Of course the Cities and County will argue that it is too complex, costs too much, and you don't realize the structure.  (Ask yourself who has the most to lose.)  How many public safety are there down here anyhow?  Probably not even close to the size of Portland combined, somehow they manange.....

Just a quick note in the face of our wonderful windfall.....

I agree.

Most folks don't realize that the size of the Lane County shortfall has been increasing for more than a decade. EVEN WITH 100% of THE FEDERAL MONEY IN PLACE Lane County has been unable to fund basic essential services like public safety.

By 2004 Lane County had fallen to LAST in the United States in per-capita police officer staffing and the county jail, then fully operational, appeared porous because it was less than half the size it needed to be average for a jurisdiction of your size, and you have a MUCH higher then average crime rate. In fact, your crime rate was terrible then and it's still getting worse in most areas. At that time (2004) the DA pointed out that even if the commissioners gave public safety departments EVERY dollar in the county general fund, thereby eliminating Elections, Assessment and Taxation, and all the other county general fund departments, it STILL wouldn't be enough money to bring the Sheriff close to average staffing or jail capacity. That put it in perspective for me.

The recent renewal of federal money at only 90% of the former funding amounts to a revenue cut of "only" $4 million instead of the $40 million cut the county planned for. Still, in the context of a budget that's approximately $85 million short of what it would take to meet average law enforcement staffing, Lane County is in truly dire straights. It's going to take cooperation and coordination to handle its essential functions.

The renewal of the federal funding, half of which must be spent on roads, has a built-in annual revenue reduction of $6 million. Even if the commissioners gave ALL of this year's $18 million general fund 'windfall' to the public safety departments it wouldn't be enough to bridge the gap from pathetic to lousy, so you need to find a way of planning for the future. Somehow, some way, you're going to have to find a way to manage your worsening crime problems. It's simply inexcusable for Eugene to have one of the worst car theft and burglary problems in the United States, and it's absurd to have a DA's office that has lost 40% of it's staff while the population has increased by 60,000 and the crime rate has doubled. Problems like these are fixed only through coordination and agreement, not controversy.

We left Lane County after the first few drive-buy shootings. I recently read that you had another drive-by shooting/murder and those who were arrested were among THIRTY criminals who had been arrested on homicide charges in Lane County in the first 8 months of this year. You know, crime in other areas of Oregon is comparatively low and declining. The fact that it is increasing in Lane County is a discouraging and predictable result of failure to fund law enforcement. I'm glad we left, but I still have family and friends there. I wish you luck.

What are you doing? You decided to leave Lane Co, Why do you not take your opinion with you? Why do you feel that we need your input on this side of the mountain? I'm sure that you can do some good East of the cascades, or do they not have a blog that you can try to dominate over there? Like I said on the other blog, you should really check out the Crooked River Gorge. It is just out past Smith Rock, awesome hole in the ground, give us a break, JUMP !!!! 

The short answer is family and friends. My daughter and grandson are still stuck there, as are other family and friends, and I worry about them.

I'd participate in the same discussions here, except we don't have this problem. We have problems, like any community, but we haven't responded to crime by gutting the law enforcement system, as you have. Actually, as you'd know if you bothered to become informed, NO other county in the United States has this problem to the extent you do. You are LAST in the USA for police staffing. Thanks to the many fine thinkers like yourself, Lane County has secured the honor of most-backward underfunded public safety system in the United States. You've completely abandoned public safety in favor of such objectives as extending library hours and adding parks. And, also thanks to loons like yourself, it's one of the few places where crime is still getting worse in spite of demographic influences pushing the other direction.

Thanks for your thoughtful input.

Personally, I don't care where folks live if they have insight that can help lead to a solution in our community, but it would be nice if everybody would refrain from name-calling and other unkindness.

Halo, I appreciate the information and the links you have provided to law government/crime/law enforcement data in earlier threads. (I think it was you.) However, I don't appreciate your tone or the disparaging way you refer to most of the people who choose to live in Eugene. It's not constructive.

I don't know why the public safety story is not told in a way that gets better "penetration" in the community, but I do believe people here would act responsively and decisively, even in today's economic crisis, if they really understood the crime problem and what has been done to our ability to police and protect our community.

One more thing. I don't think this problem is as much the "anti-police" attitude as it is "pro-education" and "anti-corrections". Many Eugene residents, including those who are most likely to support taxes, don't understand the difference between "jail" and "prison". When the Register Guard article pointed out that we spend more on prison than education most of us assumed that was because we had HUGE a number of people in prison. I assumed we were imprisoning more than everybody else. Now I know that Oregon is in the bottom third for incarceration rate and the reason Oregons incarceration cost exceeds the education cost is because we spend too little on education. That's the wrong place to be in my opinion and the opinion of many others. Simply put, I think we're last in the USA in law enforcement spending because the only alternative is to drop even farther in education spending, and none of us is prepared for that. At least I'm not.

I would happily support more law enforcement funding, even the doubling or tripling it would take to get Oregon near national averages in police and justice officials per population, IF it didn't come at the expense of improving our education system. The only way that happens is if we adopt a tax structure that looks something like that found in other states, including a sales tax. I know, I know, nobody here wants a sales tax, but it's the only equitable way to generate the amount of money needed while recovering a fair share from tourists, out-of-state students, and others who don't pay Oregons income tax. I'd vote for a sales tax in an instant if there was some relief for the elderly on fixed income and other low-income people. As others have suggested, the legislature could exempt take-home food and medication and add an earned-income tax credit to further assist the lowest income people. There could also be some property tax relief, or whatever other assistance is needed to fairly balance the tax equation so the poor are not disproportionately harmed. Obviously, with the rapidly increasing population and the rapidly declining timber support, Oregon needs to do something differently.

A more diversified tax structure would provide some stability so the state budget wouldn't swing so wildly.

I've also heard several people suggest that the Oregon State Patrol should return to dedicated funding, like a 3 cent tax on every gallon of gas sold. That makes perfect sense, as the revenue would go up as the traffic increased and more troopers were required to meet the increased demand. One things for sure, as long as public safety is forced to compete with kids, the kids will win. I think that, and not the hatred for police, is what has caused this collapse in law enforcement.

I'm sorry our legislature hasn't been more proactive. From my perspective they're primarily a responsive body. These days they spend their time responding to ballot measures, typically those drafted by members of the extreme right, a real waste of everybodys time. I guess that's a topic for another day.

Maybe you're right, Hope.

I know the anti-police bias is very strong there. I have always assumed that bias, and the south-Eugene-only bias in city politics, had killed the law enforcement system. It's as if they're the only ones who show up at county budget meetings. I suppose it's a blessing I can't watch those on TV anymore. Still, everything you said made sense.

I still feel that people shouldn't have to choose between educating our kids and being safe in our community. Now that we've added a couple million more people and shut down the woods we'll be needing SOME type of solution to fund government.

Maybe the "Oregon Health Plan" is what's killing the budget at the state level? I don't know.

In any event, no harm intended on my part. I just get frustrated, because that community was always a comfortable and safe home for me. It wasn't so different from "Mayberry" when I was little, and the change since the state of California moved in has been terrible. People forget, but back in the days of Tom McCall Eugene was just a normal town, not so different from Roseburg, Milwaukee, or Colorado Springs. It changed sharply during the late 60s, as the whole country did, but most places bounced back while Eugene just kept getting more strange until all the regular folks were pretty much excised from local politics and replaced by transplants from the Twilight Zone. I could learn to live with that, I suppose, if it were not for the risks to my daughter and grandson. He's a great kid and I hate to see him having to put up with the crap they suffer in Eugene. Friday the front tire on his bike was stolen because he forgot to run the lock cable through the front wheel too... Now he's now afraid to ride his bike to the library because some mall-rat threatened to beat him up and steal his bike... He's almost fifteen now, but he doesn't feel safe in downtown Eugene, because there are a bunch of stapled, tattooed 18 and twenty-somethings that just hang around to peddle dope. He says they get arrested but they're right back out in front of the library and the bus station the next day. This kind of stuff makes my heart ache. It makes me want to drive over there with a baseball bat and clean the darn place up, but I'm too old, and too smart, I guess.

I understand the whole education point, but I don't understand why the rest of the community isn't more outraged by the mess, graffiti, crime and pan-handling. I know other people are having these bad experiences, because I hear from them. It's like our windows getting broken out on the McKenzie boat ramps. It hadn't happened to me in over thirty years and then we had it happen twice in one summer. After that we tried to leave a rig packed at the Leaburg store, but it made the whole shuttle process a HUGE pain in the butt. We shouldn't have to alter our lives so much just because the scum-of-the-earth is allowed to roam all over the place without restraint. This kind of stuff just sucks the joy out of life...

The question, I think, is how the essential information can be gotten to the public when the local paper and the community attack the county for any expenditures related to information-sharing.

Oregon DHS (Department of Human Services) can and does sponsor sporting events and promotional commercials. The City of Eugene spends in excess of $1.5 million annually on advertising, but when Lane County spent $250,000 to increase citizen awareness of county services, less than 20% of the city's annual PR budget, it was vilified in the paper for almost a month. For whatever reason, Lane County is held to a different standard, and that's going to make it very difficult to get the information to the people who need it to make an informed decision.