All too often, our local elected officials attempt to discuss cutting budgets, decreases or increases to personnel counts in department budgets, or attempt to brag about taxpayer funds that have been saved through their decisions. But the impact on “Level of Service” (LOS) all too often goes overlooked during these discussions.
The LOS for Grants Pass Fire Rescue and other local fire agencies became a critical factor last week for many residents on the east side of Grants Pass. On the afternoon of Monday June 15th, I had to evacuate my family from my home due to the Jones Creek Fire. This was the first time in 20 years living in Grants Pass that a Level 3 Go Now alert reached my house. Thankfully, local fire agencies knocked this fire down quickly and kept it to only about 17 acres. But that’s largely thanks to the LOS that was established long before the day of the fire.
I was extremely thankful to the fire agencies for getting helicopters on top of this fire quickly and the quick response from all the local fire agencies. But it really hit me when the Grants Pass Fire Rescue Chief in a City Council meeting last week said the six new Fire Rescue staff that the City Council agreed to hire last year were key to a smooth fire response by the City. Grants Pass Fire Rescue was able to respond to this fire while maintaining response to other City incidents due to having the proper LOS and proper staffing levels.
I was personally one of several City Public Safety Advisory Committee members that advocated last year that both Grants Pass Police and Grants Pass Fire add additional staff to their budgets in order to maintain the high LOS that City residents have traditionally come to expect from local public safety departments over the last 20+ years. Having the GP Fire Rescue Chief saying last week that the smooth response to the Jones Creek Fire was due in part to the additional staff that Grants Pass Fire had added to their budget in recent months was a good feeling.
And it was a great feeling to be able to go back home just a couple hours after the first Level 3 Go Now alert went out.
And then in one of the Grants Pass City Council meetings last week, a City Council member said they wanted a list of all the staff vacancies the City has at present to see if there are any cost savings opportunities present. This question was odd timing given the City just wrapped up the annual budget process a few weeks ago, and the City Manager rightly said the discussion that needs to be held is about level of services, not about staffing levels or specific cost savings.
Local municipalities with as many staff as the City of Grants Pass or Josephine County will always have staff turnover and temporary vacancies throughout the year as people come and go, retirements happen, and sometimes when budgeted staffing levels change. Pending this week’s Josephine County Budget Adoption hearing, the Sheriff has several vacancies to fill over the next couple years as the Budget Committee and Board of Commissioners finally approved a staffing / LOS close to what was promised when voters approved the new Law Enforcement Service District in November 2023. Recruiting, hiring, and training police officers is a long process that can take at least 12-18 months for newer officers.
In 2025, the Josephine County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) practically wrote the book of what NOT to do when you’re making staffing or major budget changes. Last year the Josephine County BCC offered a voluntary resignation program which seemed modeled after the Federal DOGE staffing cuts without even discussing the potential impact on costs or LOS. Last year the BCC Chair, under temporary authority granted by the BCC, also fired all the staff dedicated to code enforcement, fired or restructured several department director positions, combined two departments, and attempted various other personnel actions. The LOS impact was almost never discussed in all of last year’s controversial personnel actions.
A year later, citizens are showing up regularly at Josephine County BCC meetings asking why they can’t get help when they submit code enforcement complaints. And it’s rumored that there are now over 800 pending code enforcement complaints.
Back in 2012/2013 when Josephine County’s Law Enforcement and Justice programs had to be cut back significantly due to losses of federal funding, citizens would show up at Grants Pass City Council meetings regularly with urgent appeals that City Police do a better job with vandals and nuisance type crimes being committed in the downtown and business areas. If memory serves, there was nearly a standing room only type crowd at some of these City Council meetings back then. The problem was the LOS at the Josephine County adult jail was cut back so much that the GP police officers could not arrest anyone and take them to jail when they committed a crime.
Enter the first of its kind in Oregon, a City Jail Services Utility Fee on City of Grants Pass utility bills so the City could rent beds in the County jail (increase the LOS at the jail) and actually take people to jail when they broke the law. This fee was later removed from City utility bills around 2017 when voters throughout the city and county approved the first County Jail/Juvenile Justice local option levy. This levy coincidentally needs to be reauthorized by voters again this November because there is only one more year left in the voter-approved term of the jail levy.
The political current underneath all the local government discussions of budget cuts and staffing changes tends to be the traditional right versus left. Right-leaning elected officials tend to want smaller government and lower costs. Left-leaning elected officials tend to want larger government or higher “LOS” from our local government agencies.
But again, all too often we have the discussion of “we have a budget gap of $X to fill” or “we need to reduce the budget by X percent in order to balance the budget” without pairing the discussion with a LOS impact analysis. It’s fine to say you want to cut the budget by X percent or seek cost savings initiatives. But without narrowing the discussion down to LOS considerations, this turns into a very challenging or even controversial discussion.
At some level, every major department of local municipalities like Grants Pass and Josephine County should be looked at like an independent business that provides certain services. Staffing changes have a different impact to each one of these unique “businesses.” If you cut staffing in the Public Works or Streets department, there will likely be less maintenance of our local streets. If you cut staffing in the City Water Utility department, you might risk eventually being out of compliance with water utility regulations and may have less maintenance on critical water utility equipment or infrastructure. If you cut staff in planning or community development, permits or land use applications might not be processed in a timely manner.
Every major budget or personnel change has a LOS impact. And that LOS impact should always be part of the discussion.
Rather than embarking on a politically popular cost-cutting initiative, our local government officials leading the charge on such an initiative need to be able to answer the question, what service is government providing today that we don’t want them to provide in the future? What specifically can we do away with or do less often than we do today? Or in some cases, are there any process changes that can be made to keep our LOS but also reduce costs?
And then involve the citizens in any major LOS change being proposed and let the citizens weigh in on that impact before final decisions are made. Because there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of east Grants Pass area citizens that are feeling more safe today because the Grants Pass City Council voted last year to hire more police and fire staff in order to maintain the historical LOS that we’ve grown accustomed to over several decades.