Personnel realignment continues at county.
The Josephine County Commissioners made a slew of decisions concerning personnel and the structure of departments during their Friday, April 4 weekly business session, held at Anne G. Basker Auditorium in Grants Pass.
Proceedings kicked off with the proclamation of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week April 13-19.
“The safety of our police officers, firefighters and paramedics is dependent upon the quality and accuracy of information obtained from citizens who contact the Josephine County 911 Communication Center,” Commissioner Chris Barnett read. “Public safety telecommunicators are the single vital link for our police officers, firefighters and paramedics by monitoring their activities by radio, providing them information and ensuring their safety.”
Public Works Director Rob Brandes came to the podium to explain a $23,000 rebate of fees from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He said the rebate was triggered because JoCo was one of the nine most economically impacted counties in the state.
Brandes went on to detail what programs these funds can be allocated to:
“You can promote enhanced solid waste prevention, recycling, things like that. You could also manage household hazardous waste, and I’ll touch on that here in a moment, or any other activities that basically reduce environmental and human health impacts of solid waste.”
The board also approved a DEQ authorization form to direct funding for recycling programs to the county’s two solid waste franchises: Southern Oregon Sanitation and Republic Services. Brandes explained that the form is necessary because DEQ would otherwise direct the funds to the county, but he noted that the franchises are equipped to carry out the recycling programs on behalf of the county.
“We don’t want a piece of this because they already have all those processes in place to evaluate that to provide that to their customers,” said Brandes. “The county does not want to take any of those functions on.”
Next, the board voted 2-1 to replace the Illinois Valley News with The Daily Courier as the county’s paper of record. In 2023, commissioners John West and Herman Baertschiger voted to replace The Courier with the I.V. News after decades of publishing public notices in The Courier, in a move that opponents saw as retribution against The Courier for negative coverage. Commissioner Dan DeYoung at the time was opposed because The Courier prints editions more frequently and has significantly more subscribers.
On Friday, commissioners Barnett and Ron Smith took the same stance as former commissioner DeYoung as they outnumbered Board Chair Andreas Blech in reestablishing The Daily Courier as paper of record. “Going with a paper that publishes more often is a direction that we should go with publishing our legal notices,” Barnett remarked.
Other actions taken by the board April 4 included: appointing James Black director of the JoCo Planning Department, replacing Mark Stevenson; appointing Frank Wharregard JoCo building official; dissolving the JoCo Parks Advisory Board, as it is not a statutory requirement for the county to have it.
During requests and comments from citizens, Michael Weber took the microphone and reflected upon his unexpected termination the prior Tuesday, during which “I’m a little embarrassed to admit I shed more than one tear.”
“My frustration from last Tuesday, more than anything, was how it was handled – to have no notice, to have no public meeting, to have no opportunity really to say goodbye to so many people,” Weber said. “I’ve left a lot of roles in my life, and every one of them I’ve had the opportunity to say goodbye to the people that matter to me.”
Weber recounted that he had 93 phone calls on his last day on the job, with colleagues who expressed “the same notions of appreciation and sorrow and thanks and it was a rather overwhelming day.”
“For the dozens of people, coworkers, former coworkers, citizens, many citizens, at least five of whom I don’t think I’ve ever met, but still took the opportunity and put in the effort to find a way to reach out to me and to the so many community partners from businesses and nonprofits and other government entities that reached out. I got to do a lot of amazing things over these last 7 1/2 years and none of them were done alone. So although there are a lot of things that I would like to say, I think every one of those things would detract from the most important thing I need to say, which is thank you to so many people that I’ve gone to work with and thank you to more folks than I could possibly name in three minutes or even an hour.”