Wasco County Commissioners met Wednesday and covered several important issues. Among them was a report from Al Barton of the Center For Living, about an ambitious project to construct a drug and alcohol treatment facility in conjunction with a crisis resolution center. The facility would have 16 secure beds and 16 non-secure beds. The secure beds would be for those in danger of causing harm to themselves or others.
“Right now we don’t have any way of diversion. When someone’s in a behavioral health crisis, if a law enforcement person detains, or interacts with that person, they have very few options. They can take that person to jail if they’ve committed a crime; they can take that person to a hospital if they think they’re at risk or call us at the Center for Living. What we’d like to do is develop that resolution center option. which is a 23-hour diversion that law enforcement, individuals families could drop someone off.”
Barton said they had raised $18 million of the $50 million needed for the whole project, and could start enginineering design.
One item on the agenda was an unusual vote to repeal an ordinance enacted just last year. The reason is a good one. Each year the county adjusts fees for services provided. The problem with doing so by ordinance is that there is a six-month waiting period before it can take effect. Since annual increases are based on the consumer price index at the time of adoption, they are six months old by the time the ordinance takes effect, and might have changed up or down since that time. For the future, fee changes will be done by resolution, which does not have a six-month waiting period. To start, though, they needed to repeal last year’s resolution.
Local residents have been upset since the state posted a fire risk map that assigned a risk level to every single property in the state. The first effort painted with such a broad brush that designers were forced to withdraw it and create a second version. Each tax lot is labeled low, moderate or high risk. Some local residents find it only marginally better. Dan Van Vactor and Stephen Griffith, President and Vice President of the Badger Creek Irrigation District came up with examples of tax lots that were grossly misclassified. Griffith suggested several glaring examples, including this one:
“This is actually for a tax lot that is Pine Hollow Reservoir. There’s a rating in the upper right hand corner there rating water as moderate, as opposed I think everyone would expect it to be low.”
Another lot that he pointed out as metal buildings on a gravel parking lot was rated high risk. Residents are afraid that the erroneous ratings will eventually result in higher insurance costs and or enactment of new stringent regulations.
The map was developed by the Oregon Department of Forestry and Oregon State University as directed by a bill that was passed by the state legislature in recent years.