Linn County Commissioner Sherrie Sprenger presented a “State of the County” talk during a forum lunch on April 25.
In it, Sprenger highlighted code enforcement, the park system and ARPA funding affecting county, Albany, Lebanon and Sweet Home residents.
ARPA funds
The American Rescue Plan Act signed in 2021 provided federal funds for governments to address the economic and health impacts of COVID. Linn County received $25,202,222 of that money.
According to Sprenger, the commissioners saw many governments using the funds to create new programs requiring continued funding over the years, something Linn County wasn’t keen on doing itself.
“One of the biggest decisions I think government had was not what to spend it on, but to carefully consider the longevity of that spending,” she said.
Instead, they considered how they could address packed offices while also preparing for any potential future pandemics or threats.
“We for years have had a space issue, huge space issue,” Sprenger said. “The stats as of last payroll, we have 765 employees. That takes a lot of space to house those, and they’re all over the county.”
The county, she added, wants its employees to work in environments they like coming to and feel safe in. During COVID, shower curtains were used to separate desks in the tiny district attorney’s office at the county courthouse.
The courthouse has been a topic of concern for some years due to its age and potential safety issues. Some courthouses are “literally falling down, but nobody wants to part with their courthouse, and I don’t want to part with ours,” she said.
Linn County at one point had an opportunity to receive a matching $16 million for a courthouse, but stipulations to that funding included the fact it would have to be used on a completely new building that could only be used for court-related work. That meant losing the “cool” historical courthouse and still not gaining any extra space for all the other county employees.
By taking the lack-of-space problem and using the shower curtain solution to a health pandemic as a colorful example, the commissioners were able to design an ARPA request that would successfully pull in some of that funding. They called it an “employee density reduction plan” – a fancy name that Sprenger said the federal government would likely appreciate.
The commissioners are using their $25.2 million ARPA monies to purchase the 25,000 square foot Wheelhouse building for the county’s environmental and public health departments, purchase and renovate a building across from Samaritan Albany General Hospital for mental health crisis services, expand the female section at Linn County Jail with an additional 22 beds, and rent space for Linn County Veterans Services (a move, Sprenger said, that has since increased the number of veterans the county has been able to serve).
Parks and accessibility
Linn County operates 55 different recreational sites, has more than 1,000 campsites available, and sees more than half a million visitors throughout the year. The county also recently started managing 25 U.S. Forest Service campgrounds.
By managing these recreational facilities, Linn County brings more money into the economy and uses park revenues for continued park improvements.
“This is the coolest thing, I think, about our park system,” she said. “We take all the money we get (from park fees) and improve the parks and support the parks.”
During the past two years, she said, the county has been focusing on making as much of the park system as accessible as possible.
Since buying Clear Lake Park for $100,000 in 2007, the county has been making improvements, including the addition of yurts, an ADA-accessible cabin. Yurts have also recently been added to River Bend Park.
Sprenger also highlighted Linn County’s improvements at Cascadia State Park since taking ownership three years ago, noting the removal of some dangerous trees and using the wood to build tables for the parks.
Most recently, Linn County built an RV dump station in Sweet Home to serve park users as well as provide the needed service to other recreationists passing through.
“That is a big plus because it takes the stress off of the (park) infrastructure, but it also supports others coming through, and I fully expect that to bring dollars into the community,” Sprenger said.
Code enforcement
Code enforcement on Linn County property is driven solely on a complaint system, Sprenger said. One location the county had been receiving complaints about for quite some time was located within Lebanon. After years of working through legal hurdles, the problem was recently resolved.
Within the city of Lebanon is a neighborhood still attached to Linn County, as opposed to being a part of the city itself. In 2019, the county received a complaint about an abandoned house on Mill Street in that neighborhood. Since the property owner had died and no one claimed rights to it, the home turned into a homeless encampment that saw an increase in trash, fires and rats.
“I’m all about personal property rights, but this is also about protecting property rights around certain properties, and I think that is equally important,” Sprenger said about code enforcement.
According to her, the fire department had received 27 calls to the Mill Street property in five years.
“I would say as a taxpayer that’s more money than I want to spend when they’re not able to remedy the situation,” she said.
While the people camping on the property didn’t have a legal right to be there, the county likewise had no legal right to it. While going through the process to resolve the problem, the county’s code enforcement officer worked with the people living there, trying to transition them to housing services. Eventually, a judge issued an abatement order, which fell to the county’s responsibility.
Today, the property is completely cleared of all structures and the county was able to put it back into private hands.
“This, to me, is an amazing story of how things can work well,” Sprenger said. “Not fast, but work well.”