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A New Year with New Challenges; New Opportunities
The mission of the Sheriff's Office is to conserve the peace in Columbia County. We do that by partnering with our community and other public safety agencies to provide the best possible safety net in our county no matter where you live. Those who live in the cities pay extra taxes to add an additional layer of law enforcement beyond what the sheriff can provide. We work together with those agencies to conserve the peace in the wide variety of methods assigned to the office of sheriff by the state Constitution and state law.
I have sought to make the most of our dwindling resources by planning strategically to address what should be expected decreases in county revenues over the next several years. We have designed a peace conservation program that we believe takes our limited resources and maximizes the potential for each of the separate divisions (enforcement, corrections and support services) without reducing any of the services down to a point where they can no longer function. What this has meant for us are reductions in jail beds to keep costs from overwhelming our ability to provide a jail at all, reduced staffing on the uniformed patrol side, but increased our ability to focus on the most serious of crimes, and redoubled our effort to maximize the use of volunteers, in expanding our mandated Search and Rescue services. Mandated services to the courts have been filled with retired law enforcement officers who have come back to this sheriff's office to provide their considerable expertise and understanding of the profession and their knowledge of the community they serve. We have reached out to the community to provide a call in line -- (503) 366-4698 -- to assist you in giving access to the sheriff's office 24/7. It is a recorded line designed to give you an opportunity to leave messages for our law enforcement division members regarding cases or criminal concerns for which you would like follow-up investigation. We are seeing an increase in the number of cases requiring follow-up from our staff, and we are excited to see fewer calls dropping between the cracks. In the past, when a caller would call Columbia 9-1-1 dispatch, if we had no deputy available, we didn't have a good system for tracking those calls. Now, every call is documented and followed up with a call from a deputy or a supervisor when necessary. We continue to strive to bring in revenue from outside sources in order to keep the lights on. Our staff continues to work very hard at improving our services, even in these difficult economic times. We focus on quality more than quantity, but we believe the services we can provide are getting better as we hone in on the most important activities in which we can engage. I will endeavor to keep everyone informed and updated as we approach this next budget year. It promises to be a very difficult season for us all, but here, we will continue to strive to do the best we can with the resources we have. It remains the greatest honor and privilege to serve as your sheriff.
Sincerely,
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