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NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wolf
Budget
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sharply increased from 31
in 2020 to 49 last year, a
58% increase. Additionally,
ODFW conducted 90 dep-
redation investigations last
year, which was an increase
from 73 in the previous year.
is 3.5%, which comes out
to $66,000 out of the coun-
ty’s general fund. She said the
Road Department’s union con-
tract requires a 3.5% increase
while the contract for union-
ized Sheriff’s Office employ-
ees calls for a 3% hike. For
morale purposes, Ellison said,
the county proposed a 3.5%
increase.
After the meeting, Myers
said he would, as an elected
official, give up his cost-of-
living increase if it would help
the general fund.
Grant County increase
Grant County has at least
two wolfpacks.
Ryan Torland, a district
biologist with ODFW, said
what was known as the East
Murderers Creek Pack has
been renamed the Logan
Valley Pack. The confirmed
count of wolves in that pack
at the end of 2021, he said,
was five.
A pack, he said, is defined
as more than four wolves
traveling together in winter.
Additionally,
accord-
ing to the report, the Logan
Valley Pack met the crite-
ria of having a breeding pair.
A breeding pair is an adult
male and an adult female
with at least two pups that
survived to Dec. 31 in the
year of their birth.
The Desolation Pack,
which also has a breeding
pair, increased from five
wolves to nine this year.
Two other wolves have
been identified in the West
Murderers Creek Wildlife
Management Unit.
Meanwhile, Torland said,
the department could not
locate the three wolves that
had previously been pres-
ent in the Northside Wildlife
Management Unit. Last year,
Northside had been deemed
an area of known wolf activ-
ity by ODFW and those
wolves had been included in
last year’s census.
While the Northside
wolves are not in this year’s
report, Torland said there is a
good chance the animals are
still in the area. The depart-
ment has just not been able to
locate them.
He stated that ODFW
confirms an area of known
wolf activity through trail
camera sightings, tracks and
other evidence.
Torland said there are
likely more wolves in the
county and statewide. He
said the annual count rep-
resents the minimum num-
ber of wolves in Oregon at
the end of the year.
This year’s countywide
increase in wolves did not
come as a surprise, Torland
added.
“They’re doing what I
would have expected them to
do and what will continue to
happen,” he said. “They are
going to fill into more areas
throughout the state, not just
Grant County.”
Law enforcement
funding
Grant County Sheriff Todd
McKinley told the budget
committee that the John Day
City Council officially dis-
solved its police department
on May 10.
McKinley said the city
claimed it had funding set
aside for the Sheriff’s Office,
but he was not holding out any
hope that the county would
see any of it.
Since the John Day Police
Department was suspended
in October, enforcing the law
within the city limits has fallen
to the Grant County Sheriff’s
Office, with four patrol depu-
ties covering the entire county.
McKinley has repeatedly told
both the City Council and the
County Court that he needs
additional deputies to provide
adequate coverage.
John Day’s city coun-
cil offered to pay the county
$300,000 a year to hire three
sheriff’s deputies to provide
law enforcement services in
the city limits. The proposal
also called on the county to
give the city $300,000 a year
from its road fund to pay for
street improvements to serve
new housing developments in
John Day, on the theory that
housing starts in the city would
broaden the tax base for the
entire county.
While the County Court
never formally deliberated on
Greenhouse
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Library land swap
In a separate vote, the
council approved the previ-
ously tabled land swap agree-
ment between the city and
the library foundation. The
city will purchase a 1-acre
parcel near the Kam Wah
Chung State Heritage Site
with the intention of using
the land as future parking for
visitors to John Day’s down-
town. The purchase price of
the parcel is $125,000.
The library foundation
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
the city’s proposal, court mem-
bers made it clear that the idea
of linking county road fund
money to police services was a
nonstarter.
In January, through its attor-
ney, the county made a coun-
teroffer that called for the city
to pay $371,000 a year for the
county to hire three deputies
to patrol the city. (The offer
included a lower annual rate
if the city was able to transfer
its three-year, $375,000 Com-
munity Oriented Policing Ser-
vices grant to the county in par-
tial payment.)
In March, John Day rejected
Grant County’s fee-for-service
proposal for law enforcement
funding, saying it wants to see
a more broad-based approach
to increasing the Sheriff’s
Office budget and calling on
the County Court to develop a
plan for doing so.
Nonetheless, Grant Coun-
ty’s draft budget included a
$300,000 contribution from
John Day. One way or the
other, McKinley said, the Sher-
iff’s Office needs the staff.
McKinley said John Day’s
COPS grant, which the city
had offered as partial pay-
ment, was, in fact, not trans-
ferable. McKinley added he
had questions surrounding the
city’s intentions and the way it
applied for the grant.
After talking to grant offi-
cials with the U.S. Department
of Justice, McKinley said that
the city applied for the COPS
grant in June to rehire three
laid-off positions, which, at the
time, the city did not have.
However, after a proposed
law enforcement levy was
voted down in August, the city
laid off those positions in Octo-
ber, he said.
The way the grant was
awarded, according to McKin-
ley, it could be used to hire
back those three officers and
fund those positions partially
at about $41,000 a year. After
the fourth year, he said, the
city would have been obligated
to pay for all three of those
positions.
John Day City Manager
Nick Green said he doubted if
McKinley had seen the grant
application.
“The grant was submit-
ted appropriately and was
reviewed and awarded on its
merits,” he said. “We were
very clear in our application
that the police department
staff were going to be laid off
if the local option levy did not
pass. It didn’t pass, and about a
month later the council passed
a resolution suspending opera-
tions of the department.”
John Day received the max-
imum award, Green said, and it
was based on the lowest direct
compensation of the staff
which was required by DOJ.
Green said because there is
no agreement for law enforce-
ment services between John
Day and Grant County, there is
not a specific amount of money
set aside.
The city could move money
during the fiscal year through
a supplemental budget resolu-
tion if an agreement is reached,
he said, but there’s no line item
related to county law enforce-
ment in the city’s budget.
John Day and the COPS
grant aside, McKinley was
candid with the budget com-
mittee about the position his
department is in.
“We’re running ragged,”
McKinley said, “and I don’t
know what the county is going
to do.”
McKinley said he did not
know if finding revenue was
within his purview, but maybe
it was.
He said he had been staying
out of the politics surrounding
the bond levy for the aquatic
center, which is on the May 17
ballot.
However, he said he had
concerns that the supporters of
the bond measure were putting
“play in front of public safety.”
County
Commissioner
Jim Hamsher said while it
would be a temporary fix, the
county should allocate roughly
$700,000 in ARPA dollars to
bring on the three patrol dep-
uties. Additionally, Ham-
sher, who is also Prairie City’s
mayor, told the committee that
he would be proposing to the
town’s budget committee a
$40,000 policing contract next
month. He said he was pretty
confident the contract would
get approved.
Kreger concurred with
Hamsher on allocating the
ARPA dollars to hire more
deputies.
In the meantime, she said,
it was time for the court to see
about putting a bond levy out
to the public. If possible, she
said, the court should try to get
it on the ballot in November.
McKinley asked Kreger
if she knew how much his
property taxes would go up if
both a law enforcement and
a pool levy were to pass. She
responded that she owns mul-
tiple pieces of property in the
will take possession of a 2.1-
acre parcel of city land along
the planned Seventh Street
extension at the base of Davis
Creek with plans to construct
a new library at the site.
The council had tabled
voting on the land swap res-
olution at an earlier meeting
over concerns that all parties
affected by the deal hadn’t
been in communication
with one another. Library
Foundation Secretary Ash-
ley Armichardy spoke to
those concerns at the May
10 meeting after hearing the
council’s previous concerns
from Elliot Sky. Armichardy
stated the foundation has had
conversations with some of
the entities involved and that
the library staff is “fully on
board” with the land swap.
The council voted to pass
the resolution unanimously.
The deal allows the library
board to use the acquired
land as a financial match
when it applies for a block
grant to help fund construc-
tion of the new library. If
all goes according to plan,
the land swap will end the
library foundation’s 10-year
struggle to raise the funds to
build a new library.
John Day PD dissolved
The John Day Police
Department is officially a
thing of the past. The coun-
cil, which voted to suspend
the department’s operations
in October, voted to formally
dissolve the department at the
May 10 meeting.
Grant County Sheriff Todd
McKinley called the event
a “sad day,” stating that the
decision to defund the police
has put tremendous strain on
the Sheriff’s Office.
When asked if there was
anything the council could do
to creatively fund the depart-
ment, Holland said it has been
a decades-long struggle.
“We’ve tried that for
over 30 years,” he said.
“We have robbed other
departments and creatively
funded tying to keep the
police department for 30
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
Grant County Commissioner Sam Palmer, left, and County Judge
Scott Myers during the county’s budget committee meeting
Wednesday, May 11, 2022. The county’s treasurer, Julie Ellison,
found an accounting error in her proposed 2022-23 budget, leav-
ing the county with just $20,000 in its contingency fund.
20th Annual
Grant County Quilt Show
Presented by the Grant County Piecemakers Quilting Guild
Friday and Saturday May 20th and 21th, 2022
Grant County Fairgrounds Trowbridge Pavilion, John Day, OR
$7.00 for both days – Fri. 9am to 6pm, Sat. 9am to 4pm
Master Quilter
and Teacher
Sharon Holliday
Mitchell
will be our
Featured Quilter
and Teaching the
Sunday Workshop
county and she is willing to pay
for both.
Kreger said that, just
like with the 20-year hospi-
tal bond that Blue Mountain
Hospital paid off last year, the
county has to advertise the law
enforcement bond correctly
and the campaign has to be
about educating people.
The hospital bond was not
popular, she said, but in the
end, it passed.
For his part, McKinley
said he was not against a law
enforcement bond levy.
John Rowell, a John Day
resident and candidate for
county commissioner, said in
the long run, the county would
have to go out for a bond levy
if residents want to have rea-
sonable public safety.
Myers said he would have
County Commissioner Sam
Palmer, the liaison to the
County Clerk’s Office, see if a
law enforcement levy could be
put on the ballot for the general
election in November.
years that I’m aware of.”
Holland added that the
council put the issue to a vote
with a bond levy and the peo-
ple said “no.”
“We gave people the
option,” he said. “The only
other option is to pull more
money out of the water fund
and increase people’s sewage
bills by $4 or $5 each. That’s
basically a backdoor tax, and
we didn’t want to do that
anymore.”
Justice Court
The budget committee
voted unanimously to cut a
half-time position from Justice
Court. The position, which had
been advertised on the coun-
ty’s website since March, had
received a couple of applicants.
The position would have cost
the county roughly $19,000 a
year, plus benefits.
More cuts on the
horizon?
Quinton and Kreger told the
County Court members it was
their responsibility to come to
the budget committee with rec-
ommendations on how to trim
the budget. With that, Quin-
ton asked the court members
to study the budget and come
back with ideas about where
the county could make cuts.
Myers said every depart-
ment the county has serves a
purpose, whether it is man-
dated or not. Given that, he
said, if the county has to cut
somewhere, he is leaning
toward an across-the-board cut
to hours to make it as fair as
possible.
Innovation Gateway
The council approved
the sale of 2.8 acres of city
land in the Innovation Gate-
way development to Shannon
Adair, a member of the coun-
cil, for $122,840. The vote
was 3-1, with Adair recusing
herself and Councilor Chris
Labhart voting no.
The vote formalized a let-
ter of intent Adair signed
with the city after a previous
City Council discussion in
December.
Adair, who owns 1188
Brewing in John Day, plans
to build a brewery, distillery,
restaurant and hotel on the
site.
Grocery store proposed
Sunday May 22nd
Workshop
“Knot Today”
by It’s Sew Emma
10am to 4pm $25.00
Vendors, Food, Door prizes, Demonstrations
and special awards too.
Pick up a packet for our special quilt challenge
for next year.
Our guild will be selling
raffle tickets for this year’s
fundraiser quilt. The winner’s
name will be draw at this year’s
Quilt of Valor BBQ and quilt
giveaway August 20th
For info send email to gcpiecemakers@gmail.com or call
(541) 620-4475 (Ersela Dehiya’s Cell) or The Shiny Thimble
(541) 932-4111 (store) or (541) 620-0120 (Karen Hinton’s Cell).
Drop off your quilts on Thursday 7am to 6pm for show.
A new grocery store is
looking to call John Day
home. Green said there are
few details at this time but
the proposed site for the store
is across from the Nazarene
Church on East Main Street.
The size of the new store is
slated to be 1,400 square feet.
The plans were announced
at the end of the May 10
meeting by Green. The coun-
cil was presented with a
request for the city to remove
fill material from the pro-
posed build site by the pro-
spective developers. Green
stated that the need to remove
the fill material was the one
roadblock preventing the pro-
spective buyers from moving
forward with an agreement to
purchase the site.
The City Council voted
to remove the fill material,
which will bring the build
site down to highway grade
and allow development of the
site. The prospective devel-
oper will still need to come
to a purchase agreement with
the city and obtain a devel-
opment permit to begin con-
struction of the new grocery
store.