The Southern Oregon Government Watch Weekly
Three weeks ago, I attended a weekly business session of the Josephine County Commissioners to use my three minutes of public time to express my concern over an issue that is very important to future Josephine County law enforcement budgets. One of the citizens that used his three minutes before me said thank you to the commissioners for making these meetings boring again.
I couldn’t help but say to the commissioners, “I agree…thank you for making these meetings boring again.”
That is to say, thanks to the commissioners for getting back to business and running the County the right way for a change. For almost three years straight, the majority of the three-member commission has been jumping from one controversy to another almost nonstop. Watching commissioner meetings since the two new commissioners were appointed has been a breath of fresh air, compared to the last couple of years.
2025 also brought a significant number of concerned spectators and public participants to Grants Pass City Council meetings. However, the 2025 season of the Josephine County commissioners often stole the spotlight in the news cycle.
Looking back at the more prominent city and county controversies in the last two years, they share common threads. They were caused by elected officials not following the law, not following standard policies and procedures in place, or by not having policies or procedures in place where they should exist.
Initial attacks on the library district…not following the law and the county charter.
Crony hiring or contracting processes…not following standard hiring or purchasing policies.
Several multimillion lawsuits from former employees in process…not following the law and not following personnel policies.
Multimillion lawsuit from a mineral development company…not following the law and county code.
Approving a costly voluntary employee resignation program…not doing a financial analysis before making a major new policy decision.
Changing homeless/resting site regulations against the advice of the City attorney in early 2025 resulting in an eventual lawsuit that went against the City….not following State law.
The list goes on and on.
For some more prime examples of where politics seem to take precedence over policy and procedures can be found in economic development grant awards at the county level and tourism grant awards by the City of Grants Pass. Tourism and economic development are a few of several ways that Grants Pass and Josephine County can work together, since the stakeholders are similar and each organization has unique resources to bring to the table.
Close to ten years ago, Grants Pass and Josephine County did start working more closely together in these areas. A joint economic development strategic plan was developed.
During the planning process, one of the outside consultants that helped put together the plan had been a part of billions of dollars of economic development projects in different jurisdictions. She mentioned that one of the more important things that companies look for when they consider building or expanding their business to a particular jurisdiction is positive cooperation among the government agencies that represent that jurisdiction. The City/County Collaborate Economic Development Committee (CEDC), having representatives appointed by both the City and County, was born.
Moving forward to January 2025, the newly elected members of the Grants Pass City Council shut down the CEDC in the first meeting of the year without any discussions as to why.
The Tragedy of the County Economic Development Grants Program
Of the hundreds of millions of dollars that get sucked up by the Oregon Lottery each year, a small percentage of that is sent back to each county across the state to be used for economic development purposes. Many counties use all or parts of these funds for economic development grant programs. Josephine County receives over $500,000 per year that can be used for this purpose.
In recent years, the economic development grant program that Josephine County uses to distribute these lottery funds has been a hectic program, to say the least. From the outside looking in, commissioners have appeared to change the grant program processes and priorities on a whim based on what they personally wanted to see. In some years, they’ve even heavily used these funds to provide for certain internal county operational needs. Funds have been used in some recent years to help cover county costs such as court security. While perhaps a legal use of the funds, some of these internal uses don’t have much to do with economic development.
Many years ago, I inquired about a grant application and program parameters. At the time, it wasn’t even clear if private sector companies could apply as the old grant application only mentioned government and nonprofit eligibility. And the former finance director Sandy Novak didn’t even respond to email questions about the program.
In 2025, economic grant application decisions seem to have been made almost entirely on political measures. Whoever was able to most successfully lobby the commissioners got the green light. In public meetings of the commissioners, there were little to no discussions of measurable objectives such as jobs expected to be created or other measurable objectives.
Towards the end of 2025, two major economic development grants were awarded and then quickly cancelled. Local junk removal operator and nonprofit organizer Konnor Kirkpatrick received a grant for a new truck and Patriot Solutions (owned by County Commissioner candidate Chad Hansen and Treasurer candidate Simon Hare) requested a grant of $125,000 to serve as the County’s economic development coordinator and was awarded a grant of $62,500 for a six-month trial period. Both of these awards were quickly cancelled after the commissioners’ award decision because of important facts that were withheld when making the grant applications and presentation.
The economic development grant check sent to Konnor Kirkpatrick had to be cancelled because it was revealed that he had been banned from all waste transfer stations in southern Oregon. Then a big dispute ensued among the County, Konnor, and Evergreen Bank. A local citizen even took out an anonymous ad in the April Grants Pass Sneak Preview monthly newspaper, trying to make the case that the Treasurer is causing a lawsuit by putting a stop payment on the check (trying to make the case during election season that our current treasurer isn’t doing a good job). Treasurer candidate Simon Hare even dissed the current treasurer about this situation in a video interview recorded for his campaign this week.
Open mouth, and insert foot, as county officials confirmed last week it was legal counsel Wally Hicks that recommended the check to Konnor Kirkpatrick be stopped. The County’s current treasurer, Dustin Calvo, was merely doing his job and following the recommendation of legal counsel. And newly appointed County Commissioner Colene Martin has worked to resolve the check issue so that Mr. Kirkpatrick is now in compliance with grant requirements and this is no longer an issue today.
Ironically, the local citizen who placed the ad in the Sneak Preview could theoretically get in some trouble for that ad in this month’s newspaper as they did a political ad without naming the “paid for by” disclosure, for making false statements in an election process, and potentially for not reporting the campaign expenditure. And Simon Hare, competing against our current treasurer in this year’s elections, clearly hasn’t done his homework and is just playing dirty politics as he regularly has done in the past.
And then there’s the cancelled grant award that was originally given to Patriot Solutions LLC, owned by County Commissioner candidate Chad Hansen and Treasurer candidate Simon Hare. County officials have confirmed that the Patriot Solutions grant award was cancelled but have not officially provided the reason for the cancellation. The grant to Patriot Solutions appears to have been cancelled because Chad Hansen didn’t disclose that Simon Hare was a member of Patriot Solutions. And the current county commissioners have recently disclosed that they believe Simon Hare should pay back part of the $25,000 he received in the spring of 2025 because he didn’t fulfill his full contract to serve as budget officer in last year’s budget process.
Thankfully, the current commissioners and current county finance director have begun the process of revamping the economic development grant program. They recently had a discussion about modernizing the program, application process, and review process. Kudos for taking on this necessary task so early in the term of the newly appointed commissioners.
The Tragedy of the Grants Pass Tourism Promotion Grant Program
Close to three years ago, the Grants Pass City Council approved a Tourism Promotion Grant program. Grants range from $2,500 to $5,000 each to a business or nonprofit located in the City to promote events and services that attract tourists (generally meaning bringing people into Grants Pass that live more than 50 miles away from Grants Pass).
The grant program has an extensive application, and a subcommittee of six that uses an extensive scoring methodology to rank grant applications. In the most recent biannual application and award process, the subcommittee of six (three staff members, two members of the tourism committee, and one member of the City’s contract Destination Marketing Organization) recommended giving a $5,000 grant to the top four scoring applications since the remaining budget for this program was $20,000 this fiscal year.
Then came the City Council decision on March 18th which yielded a very different result. Instead of relying on the objectives as expressed in the grant application, the City Council appeared to play politics with the grant awards. The hard work of the subcommittee’s scoring of the 12 applications seemed to mean very little in the eyes of certain Council members, as certain Council members started recommending moving funds around among grant applicants based on reasons that had little to do with the objective measures in the grant scoring methodology.
In the end, the top scoring grant applicant received zero grant dollars. The second and third highest scoring grant applicants only received half the amount recommended by the subcommittee. Two applicants that were in the lower half of numerical ranked scores among the 12 applicants ended up receiving some grant funding. And the Grants Pass Active Club, despite receiving other money from the City to help advertise Boatnik, received $5,000 additional dollars from this grant program when the subcommittee only ranked this application as the 6th best.
City staff said several times during deliberations that an additional $10,000 of tourism-restricted lodging tax revenues could be allocated to this tourism grant program in the current fiscal year and that additional dollars could be provided to the grant program in future fiscal years. The Council could have funded all the top scoring applicants as scored by the subcommittee, plus it could have funded all the other applicants that ended up receiving funding. But they declined to add any more money to this grant program.
In the eyes of certain Council members, it was as if they were intentionally refusing to fund the top scoring applicant for some unknown political reason. This is my opinion after watching the nearly one hour of Council meeting Q&A and deliberations on this topic. I’m saying it, because the top scoring applicant that received no grant award probably won’t say it in order to preserve the ability to apply again in future application processes.
The top scoring applicant was also proposing to use the funds to help bring tourists to town to see national touring music artists. This is something that Grants Pass could definitely use more of, in my opinion. I regularly travel more than 50 miles away from Grants Pass to be able to see national touring bands, as we don’t get many of them in Grants Pass.
The City Council didn’t necessarily break any rules or laws by changing around the grant awards away from what was recommended by the subcommittee. But something is broken when the top scoring grant applicant doesn’t receive a grant award. The City Council should take up the city staff’s offer of allocating an additional $10,000 of tourism-restricted lodging tax revenues to this grant program this fiscal year to make whole the top scoring grant applicants in this recent round of grant applications. And given the increasingly competitive nature of these grant applications, more tourism-restricted lodging tax revenues should also be allocated to this grant program in next year’s budget.
All the tourism promotion grant applicants that ended up receiving funds are all certainly worthy applicants. But perhaps the Council should expand the total funds available to this program both now and in future years. This program is funded by restricted tourism lodging tax revenues that can’t be used by City operations other than tourism promotion. And according to staff, extra tourism dollars are available to be allocated to this grant program.