Letter: Drew Farmer wants to set the record straight

This is Drew Farmer writing to address a misunderstanding regarding a recent article on Coos Bay’s Declaration of Emergency. It should not be construed, at all, that the declaration is an alternative to the Public Safety Levee.

The Declaration of Emergency is a push for temporary state support. This would require the sheriff’s office to request aid first from neighboring jurisdictions, which won’t have the ability, then to the state. The state will indicate wanting repayment; however, I maintain the belief that we can make the state whole through a legislative request. We’ve seen in the past where the legislature allocates funds for a special project in our district and I see no reason we couldn’t push for a similar situation in this case.

By contrast, the five-year Public Safety Levee is necessary if we want to keep our current level of service from the Sheriff’s office and DA’s office and will expand that capacity. If it fails, we can expect to see a decline in what services we still have. It would be far harder to replace that loss than it is to pass the levee now and remove it when future long-term funding opportunities are secured.

I want to encourage folks to support the Public Safety Levee. In this moment I do not see an alternative at the commissioner’s disposal if we want to expand our jail capacity and the DA’s staff to catch up on their backlog of cases. Certainly, we will lose more of what little we still have if the levee fails.

Drew Farmer