Commissioners take public's letters in hand.

Byline: County Beat by Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

GOT A QUESTION about county government? Hit a dead end when you called this bureaucrat or that functionary?

Try writing to the Board of Commissioners.

Bill Dwyer, this year's chairman, has instituted a new heading called "Correspondence to the Board" on the commissioners' weekly meeting agenda. The idea is to provide some satisfaction to those who have gotten none in their initial dealings with the county.

"We're not going to just read letters that ramble on," Dwyer says. "They need to address something specific that (the writers) want to have done, and they haven't gotten answers to. In other words, you don't start by asking us. But we want to know what their grievances are."

Next week's agenda includes discussion of two letters.

One is from a sailor and longtime moorage holder at Fern Ridge Reservoir's Richardson Park who is frustrated that boat owners were forced to pay slip rental fees last summer, even though the lake had too little water in which to sail. Those who didn't rent last summer lost their seniority for this year's round of slip assignments.

"Hey, if I go to the grocery store to buy a tomato and the grocer has none, he does not make me pay for one anyway, and then put me on a waiting list," the sailor maintained in his letter.

The second letter - from the Horse, Animal & Livestock Association of Lane County - complains that the group submitted a pair of petitions to the commissioners and to the Lane County Fair Board in November, but still has received no response. One petition, with 2,533 signatures, asked that the fairgrounds be reopened to animal and livestock events year-around; the other, with 1,968 signatures, asked that the Lane Event and Sport Center revert to its former name - the Lane County Fairgrounds.

"HALA's question is what impact have these petitions had, and how does HALA explain to the petitioners what appears to be a total disregard by the Fair Board of these adult voter requests?" the letter says.

Dwyer says he can't guarantee that letter-writers such as those on next week's agenda will be happy with the commissioners' responses. But they should at least get some comfort from the fact that their issues have risen to the top of the county's heap.

"It will be open for discussion and direction," Dwyer says. "But we hire people and pay them good money to run these departments and make good decisions. I don't think we're going to take their recommendations lightly."

Hold the line

Yes, budget season approaches, as evidenced by a meeting Tuesday of the county's leadership team - the five commissioners and all department heads - to discuss "budget direction" for the coming year.

But no, commissioners aren't expecting the kind of cutbacks that have been annual rituals for much of the past decade - at least for programs derived from the county's general fund.

The general fund - which pays for most public safety programs, along with administration and other departments central to government operation - has been stabilized by steady property tax receipts and last year's congressional funding plan through 2006 for counties that have historically depended on timber revenue from federal land within their borders.

"I expect that will probably be a hold-the-line thing," Dwyer says. "We don't have a lot (of new variables) to deal with."

But programs that rely on state funding - mostly human services, along with some elements of corrections - are much more in doubt. Commissioners are tentatively expecting total reductions of $8.6 million in money passed down from the state.

"I know it affects some contracts, and some cost-of-living allowances," Dwyer says.

Lane County reporter Joe Mosley can be reached at 338-2384.