County candidates face off on key issues

• What are the three biggest issues facing Wasco County today?

Kramer: In no particular order—communication, openness and honestly. Those are the three biggest issues I see, between all players, between all contingences, all stakeholders, all agencies, all of us that make up this community. I find that’s lacking right now.

My private cell phone is published. And I have not heard from any of you. So I’m really either doing a really good job or you’re so pissed off at me that you don’t want to talk to me. I’m here. I’m open. I think that’s one of our biggest issues right now.

If we could all just communicate, we could get to the bottom of it and we could move on. We could move forward. It’s everywhere. It’s all around. I don’t know how to offer myself more.

We’re redesigning the website to get more information out so it sparks more questions so that we hear from more folks. We want to hear from the constituents. We want to know what everyone’s thinking because that’s how we move forward. We’re representing you. We’re not representing ourselves. We need your input for us to move forward with making those decisions.

Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that we don’t get all the information. We try to find it all but then we hear from a few after the fact when it’s too late.

I’ve encouraged it and that’s been my big thing throughout my three and half years at the AOC (Associated of Oregon Counties) level, the management has asked what are the greatest issues that I’ve come across? That I don’t have constituents calling and letting me know what’s on their mind.

Nichols: There’s an external set of issues and an internal set of issues.

From the county perspective, I think first about the reduction in the dependence on the natural resource economy that’s been going south the last 15 years, and that has provided for many years the revenue to operate roads and partially the schools in Wasco County. And while we can do some things about it, we can’t do a lot about that.

We can work certainly with our representatives and try to get a more stable forest policy.

Internally, I think there’s some problems with transparency. I think there’s some problems with a commission that currently seems to be more interested in confrontation than collaboration.

It seems to be pulling away from multi-county agencies and I find that disturbing.

The funding choices that have been made by the commission in the last year in particular have been troubling to me.

The fact that they spent nearly $100,000 or more for legal services, at the same time cutting $64,000 out of the North Central Public Health budget which has required the district to close [its walk-in clinic] four days a week in The Dalles. Those aren’t choices I would make.

• How will you go about growing the local economy and making the county’s tax base stronger?

Kramer: Growing the tax base is a tough challenge, a tough call.

It can’t be done by any one person. It has to be done by a team. We at Wasco County are putting together that team. We are moving forward with a highly motivated, educated and intelligent individuals.

At the end of the day, we want to make sure that if you have a issue, concern, project, opportunity, at the end of the day whoever you’ve met with, they’ve done all they could to help you move forward.

I see that as one piece to grow the tax base. That keeps us all moving forward.

Maybe dropping some of the barriers, some of the hurdles so that our citizens, our friends and neighbors can move forward with their projects and find an easier basis.

We sit in a very tough situation here. We’ve got this scenic gorge and it takes time and effort to get through those hurdles. But I feel that our team is developing the partnerships that are needed throughout the agencies.

That’s one of the pieces how I feel that we can do that.

I’m working with South Wasco Alliance, a group that’s formed in southern Wasco County that has a vision of 10 years, 10 businesses with 10 employees.

They’re working really diligently to make those things happen.

We have our first new business in town, there’s three employees plus the owners and then there’s some side employment going on. It’s happening.

Broadband is another big piece.

I feel with the Q-life and Lightspeed and Gorge Net coming together, working a partnership in Maupin, is only going to increase the economics of the south end, which in turn are going to increase for the north end. When we all do good, we all do good.

Nichols: I want to make it stronger and I also want to reduce it in terms of the load on the people. The commission has done nothing as far as I can see to reduce tax burdens.

I think they’ve given Google, so far, enormous, enormous advantages. In the most recent agreement there was a positive and a negative.

The positive was that describing the payment as based on cubic feet was I think, a master stroke.

Because one of the things we knew in advance was they applied for an exemption to go up to 120 feet tall.

On the other hand, I really disapprove of giving us one week as people, to decide what our thoughts and responses were.

The proposed agreement was announced at a The Dalles City Council meeting and we were given one week from that night to the night they had the public meeting.

At that public meeting, we knew that the city was going to vote on it the next day, and the county was going to vote on it the day after that.

And so I asked this question in the meeting, I said, have you made an appointment with Google to arrange to talk with them before your vote tomorrow? No was the answer.

So the only conclusion I can draw from that is that absolutely nothing we say tonight is going to change your mind.

So this is really more of a show thing than anything else.

Enterprise zones are not bad; giving three 15-year agreements to the same company, which is, by the way, the world’s largest and most profitable company — really?

Do they need that kind of charity?

On the other side, people will say, well they wouldn’t come here if they didn’t.

Maybe, at some point, you don’t want to give up the farm for that.

There’s also a problem with concentrating 20 acres in one business that’s going to employ 50 people.

A bond to develop the port created a whole bunch of different jobs: 25, 50, 30, here and there.

I believe they said something like 1,500 jobs have been created as a result of that.

So, in many ways, it makes for a much more stable economy because you’re not depending on a single source.

• Where do you think resources should be shifted to better serve county residents and why?

Kramer: I don’t feel that at this point we need to shift resources.

I feel that our team is working diligently to live within their means and provide the best services and we are doing that within the means that we have.

When we have a department that has an unexpected surplus, that surplus gets discussed with the management team and then those surpluses are moved to the department that most needs it.

That’s where that communication piece comes, we’re having that with our management group through all our departments to better take and serve the community with the resources that we do have.

We’re in the budget process right now. The team is working with their initial requests and from what we’ve seen over the last year, so as that becomes more concrete we’ll know exactly where those shifts are going to take place but right now, I think that we’re doing well. We can always use more.

We know that there’s not so we deal with what we have.

Nichols: Well, I don’t like spending tax dollars on lawyers, for one thing. And that includes the $40,000 they spent fighting with their own district attorney this last year.

And $30,000 nearly on the lawsuit that was brought against them for the illegal move that they made at the Dec. 17, 2014, hearing, to leave the regional health district, which was rescinded by them.

So, I would like to see them spend more money on the health district than on lawyers.

When they decided they were going to get their own lawyer, they made two phone calls.

They called this guy in Portland, who would charge you with the meter running in the car every time they come east, as a starter, and they called Brad Timmons.

When Teri Thalhofer at the North Central Public Health District wanted to get a lawyer, the Wasco County representative on the board insisted she check with every lawyer in the gorge, so it’s kind of do as I say, not as I do. We spent $178,000 in attorney’s fees last year. That’s calendar 2015.

• What do you think the weak areas of the county governance are and how would you improve them?

Kramer: There again, it is communication. We don’t communicate as often as we should. I think it’s because some of us, we don’t like to pat ourselves on the back so we just kind of go with the flow.

I liken it to Google. Google doesn’t like to expound on what they do in the community. Let’s just go get it done. We need to make a change with that. I think we need to toot our horn once in a while.

Nichols: This last year, the parole and probation/community corrections division was left short-handed for a year and the caseload of each employee went up to about 150 clients, when the average is about 50.

The fact that position wasn’t filled right away, they made other economic choices. I think that’s a weakness, not of the people working there who are stretched thin, but the result of being weakened.

Also Sheriff Rick Eiesland said in the 24 years he’s been here, Wasco County has only had 24-hour protection one six-month period.

Sherman County, with its three officers, I can understand why they don’t have 24-hour coverage, but we should have that.