Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a special series of articles about Curry County’s pending fiscal crisis.

“We’ve got to replace $3 million,” says Curry County Commission Chair George Rhodes. 

Federal timber harvests have stopped. Federal support payments are going away. Savings have been used up.  Spending has been cut to “bare bones.” Voters soundly rejected new property taxes.

That leaves a $3 million hole in the county’s annual general fund budget of $5 million for fiscal year 2012-13 – most of it spent on public safety.

“And we’re faced with the tremendous burden of having to repair and replace infrastructure,” adds Rhodes. The annual budget doesn’t have money for paint, roofing funds, protection against a lawsuit claim, or plans to move county facilities out of danger from a tsunami.

With all the traditional sources of general fund income gone, going away or limited, where can the county turn for revenue?

One of the planned topics for today’s Curry County’s Citizens’ Committee meeting in Gold Beach is to “compare notes with other counties,” according to Greg Wolf, the governor’s director for intergovernmental affairs. 

Mike McArthur, executive director of the Oregon Association of Counties, has been tapped to lead the discussion.

“I really don’t think there is a silver bullet,” says Wolf, who chairs the governor’s work group on the county funding topic. “It’s going to require a lot of different things to make everything work.”

Over the past year, Rhodes was on the forefront of a proposal that he believes would have brought $2 million a year to the county: leasing park lands at Floras Lake for a world-class golf resort. Public opposition and state rejection of a proposed land swap have tabled the idea.

Earlier in the year, county officials tried to get the legislature to free up access to county road funds for general fund use. The road fund has built up a surplus from federal payments.

“The legislature needs to create some opportunities to do what’s in the best interest of the counties,” says Rhodes.

State laws already allow some larger counties to access road funds for general use, but Curry’s request met with public and legislative opposition. “We even ran into opposition to fund a deputy,” he recalls.

Rhodes admits it was a “rob Peter to pay Paul” situation, but it illustrated how state laws hold counties back in raising funds.

“When you start looking at the differences in ORS (state statutes), laws have been amended to where they benefit more heavily populated areas,” Rhodes notes, “where there are more votes.”

There are not other “local option taxes” where counties can go to raise funds under Oregon law.

“We have prohibited the counties from imposing different types of taxes,” says State Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, who also opposed any infusion from the road funds. 

Counties and cities get some revenue sharing from state cigarette and alcohol taxes, motel taxes and some other fees, but otherwise, says Krieger, “they don’t have a lot of options where they can go.”

Nor are there surplus state funds to help out Curry or other cash-strapped counties, says Krieger. “Because the state is strapped,” he says.

Rhodes and other county officials have also been out trying to find grants that might help balance the county budget, but those opportunities are scarce, very competitive and tend to provide funds for just a year or two.

“The idea of finding someone to fund county expenses is almost impossible,” says Kathy Bryon, executive director of the Gordon Elwood Foundation and a board member of Philanthropy Northwest. “Philanthropy is not big enough to fill up what government can and should do.”

That said, non-profits are discussing how to partner with the troubled counties of Southwestern Oregon, she said, but they want to help in some way that is sustainable without relying on their ongoing donations. 

Non-profits might help fund the costs of a discussion, a government reorganization, or a demonstration grant to try some innovative solution, Bryon said. Grants were available, for example, to help volunteers re-open the libraries in Josephine County when the county’s general fund could no longer afford them.

On the other hand, news of Curry County’s looming fiscal crisis could be hurting the county’s grant opportunities. Bryon said she heard a discussion of helping the Oregon Health Plan develop a new program, and Curry County was dismissed as “not a good place to begin.”

Bryon notes there are also traditional places for private donations in government – library books, fire trucks and scholarships, for example. Curry County needs funding for road deputies, district attorneys and juvenile probation. 

Curry County has already moved out many of those kind of services that can earn grants and donations on their own as non-profit independent agencies. The most recent was the home health and hospice agency; animal control and health services might be next, Rhodes said.

Can the county charge fees for the public safety services left in the general fund, such as room and board for jail inmates or search fees for those lost and injured in the forest? They could try, Rhodes says, but collecting them would be unlikely.

By cutting the public safety budgets, Rhodes says property owners are going to pay some of the price in higher insurance rates, lower property values and less economic growth.

“What is the cost (to property owners) of us not approving a sustainable county government?” he asks. “If we reduce much more, we’re going to see a hit on insurance rates and property values.”

There are four American Indian tribes that consider Curry County part of their service area: The Tolowa Band of the Smith River Reservation, the Coquille Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw, and the Siletz Tribe.

Only recently, Rhodes said, have any of them talked to the county about an ongoing relationship, and that was in hopes of gaining some of the federal forest lands for timber management.

Does the county have any lands to sell? Any proceeds from the sale of county park lands, the bulk of the county’s holdings, says Rhodes, are required by state law to go back into parks. They would also be one-time revenues. “We have to look for a longer term solution,” he says.

He has wondered, however, if the county could trade some of the Floras Lake property to the federal Bureau of Land Management in exchange for productive forest lands, where timber could be harvested for revenue.

Next: Can timber harvests resume on federal lands?