Sean C. Morgan
Linn Library League members are trying to figure out how they can form a countywide library district without impacting law enforcement funding.
Linn County Sheriff Dave Burright and Sweet Home Police Chief Bob Burford were invited to attend a Library League meeting on Nov. 16 to talk about the impacts a new district would have on their operating levies.
Also present from Sweet Home were Library Director Leona McCann, City Manager Craig Martin, Finance Director Pat Gray and Mayor Tim McQueary.
The Library League plans to ask for a permanent property tax rate of 60 cents to 70 cents per $1,000 of valuation. The City of Sweet Home operates its library on a local option levy of 63 cents per $1,000. The district proposal would go before voters in November 2006.
The numbers do not include the reduction of the library levy in Sweet Home, but the creation of a special district would put the law enforcement levy at a lower priority for compression.
Under that scenario, Linn County law enforcement would lose between $483,000 and $574,000 more in compression on a budget of around $16 million. Sweet Home would lose another $132,000 to $163,000 on a $2 million budget. That represents eight to nine deputies and two to three local officers.
“This is a taxing district,” May Garland of the Library League said. “We are not unaware that people aren’t necessarily inclined to give more of their money to anything,” but the league members want to leave behind something, like library services, to the people of the county.
“We also are aware that 18-letter word ‘compression’ would also play a role,” Garland said. The Library League asked Linn County Assessor Mark Noakes to run projections of the compression the district would create on other taxing districts and levies within the county.
Sheriff Burright outlined the history of law enforcement funding and taxes in Linn County for the league and invited guests, including city and county officials.
When Sheriff Burright started working at Linn Sheriff’s Office some 28 years ago, the county’s property taxes were low. The county relied on timber tax revenue, primarily from the O&C land. When timber revenues declined in the 1980s, “the county found itself in a real dilemma.”
The county tried a number of options to generate revenue, including a kind of menu for different county services, Sheriff Burright said. The county didn’t have much success with it then asked voters if they would fund law enforcement on a serial levy. The voters approved it, “a slippery slope … that is impossible to get out of.”
Those levies were one year at a time then later three and now four years.
“We’ve been on this slide since 1982,” Sheriff Burright said. In 1990, Measure Five capped the overall tax rate for general government at $10 per $1,000. “It also created a pecking order if you will … for when that cap is reached.”
Special levies, called local option levies now, are at the bottom of the pecking order. When Measure Five caps are reached, local option levies on each property are reduced proportionately until they reach zero, then other taxing districts, like the proposed library district, are reduced until the tax is at the cap.
“Measure Five had little effect at first,” Sheriff Burright said. “We are now seeing the huge effect from that.”
In 1996, voters passed Measure 47 and then a companion measure, Measure 50, to fix problems with Measure 47 in 1998. Those measures made each taxing district’s rate permanent and placed them in the state constitution, but it had two unexpected effects in Linn and Deschutes counties and Sweet Home.
Around the state, serial levies, now called local option levies, were made permanent and added to taxing districts’ permanent rates. The only exceptions were levies that expired and were renewed that year.
Those levies were instead shared among all of the taxing districts in the geographical area, and the new levies remained temporary and under the requirements of the new double majority except at general elections in even-numbered years.
In effect, Linn County’s and Sweet Home’s permanent rates are artificially lower because of the flaw in the measure.
Initially taxpayers were double-billed. Sen. Mae Yih’s Senate Bill 123 solved the double-billing error, but to include the temporary levies in the permanent rate required a constitutional amendment and a statewide vote.
Only two or three counties, including Linn, supported the measure, Sheriff Burright said. Linn County is about 40 percent funded by its local option levy.
Sweet Home Police Department was funded 100 percent by its local option levy until this year when the city made cuts to the general fund to cover a revenue shortfall. The shortfall arose when declining property values increased compression on local option levies in Sweet Home.
The only way out is to create a special district for law enforcement, Sheriff Burright said. If that can’t be done, then local option levies are the only way to fund law enforcement.
The county has more than $900,000 in compression already, and Sweet Home police have more than $250,000 plus an anticipated $190,000 shortfall next year to cover increasing retirement costs.
“With any other levies, or worse yet, any other special districts are created, that gets worse,” Sheriff Burright said. “I want to make something clear. I’ve been dreading tonight since I first heard about the Linn Library League. I want you to know I fully support the libraries.”
Libraries were important to his family growing up and to his family now, Sheriff Burright said, but “we are trains on the same track coming together at the same speed, and I don’t know what to do about it. Do I keep police officers on the street or do I open up a library. That’s why I didn’t want to be here tonight.”
If a new district is approved, the money will come from somewhere else, Commissioner Roger Nyquist said. Under the existing tax structure, revenues are zero sum.
The bottom line is Linn County needs more value on its property rolls to provide the services, Nyquist said. .
“I already can’t fill police officer positions,” Chief Burford said. “I cannot buy new patrol cars,” while demand for service is increasing.
Like Sheriff Burright, Chief Burford supports libraries, and his family has used them constantly, but “public safety’s got to come first.”
Lebanon’s city manager said the cities could reduce their levies or give the money for libraries to the new library district, but it would only help marginally because the county has no library services to transfer.
“This whole topic is not new to us,” Garland said. “We are aware it’s going to affect everybody in the county.”
Garland and the Library League want to find out if there are strategies they can pursue to fund police and libraries both. She asked law enforcement, county and city officials to be a part of the discussion and finding strategies to do it.
“I think you’ve got to be part of the very fabric of Linn County,” Garland said. “That holds hostage any other idea that comes across.”