[0:00] [Upbeat intro jingle]
NARRATOR: Jackson County Today:
[0:03] Hot topics, relevant stories, and news
[0:06] developments that affect our community.
[0:10] [Upbeat orchestral music]
NARRATOR: How does the Jackson County
[0:12] budget get decided each year? Each county
department develops its own recommended
[0:16] budget. In public meetings held in late
March, department heads meet with the
[0:20] administrator, commissioners, and budget
committee members to discuss their
[0:24] proposed fiscal year budgets. Then, in
mid-April, departments present their
[0:29] recommended budgets to the budget
committee at public hearings held in the
[0:32] Jackson County Courthouse Auditorium. The
2026 to '27 public hearings provided
[0:38] detailed insight into and understanding of
the services being provided to the
[0:43] citizens of Jackson County.
[0:46] DEPUTY FINANCE DIRECTOR MICHELLE WICKHAM:
The finance department has three programs.
[0:48] It's made up of the taxation office,
[0:50] accounting, and treasury. The taxation
office is mainly responsible for the
[0:56] collection and the distribution of
property taxes. The accounting program
[1:01] provides financial reporting, general
ledger, accounts payable, and payroll
[1:05] services to county departments, and the
treasury program manages the cash and
[1:11] investments of the county as well as
distributing the revenues for our taxes to
[1:15] the taxing districts and ensuring on-time
payment of our debt service payments.
[1:20] The finance department continues to have
strong performance indicators. Our payroll
[1:25] has a very high accuracy rate. We
continue to receive clean and unmodified
[1:29] opinions on our audits,
[1:31] and we are increasing our electronic tax
payments and our availability of online
[1:37] statements, which will improve more of our
efficiency and reduce our costs.
[1:42] COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR DANNY JORDAN:
Can I just add one thing? It kind of got
[1:44] glossed over real quickly that we're a
[1:46] Triple Crown winner. There are literally
only 2.5% of all local governments in the
[1:51] entire United States. The last that they
published in '23, there were only, uh, 11
[1:58] local governments in the, in the state of
Oregon and only two counties, and none
[2:02] that have won it consecutively as often as
our county. So I just want you all to know,
[2:07] and Shannon and her staff deserve the
praise for that.
[2:11] SENIOR DEPUTY ADNIMISTRATOR SHANNON BELL:
So you can see that our portfolio is well
[2:14] diversified with the majority of it being
[2:16] in agency papers, paper of the United
States. Our total portfolio is just over
[2:22] $400 million.
[2:24] And then we also carry a high, um, quality
credit. Um, most of our paper is AAA or AA+.
[2:32] COUNTY ASSESSOR ANGELA STUHR:
I'm gonna give first a brief overview of
[2:34] the duties of my office. So generally, we
[2:37] place the real market value and the
maximum assessed value for all property in
[2:41] the county. That's over 101,000 property
accounts.
[2:45] We maintain the ownership boundary map and
acreage data for all of those properties.
[2:52] That's all in the effort to properly levy,
uh, taxes on behalf of 41 tax districts.
[2:59] You'll notice on the graph that there was
a large jump, uh, in the 2025 tax year,
[3:04] and that represented reappraisal projects
that we took on. Um, we also, as a part of
[3:10] that, um, reappraisal project, we
identified quite a bit of omitted property
[3:16] throughout the county, and that's just
based on very few inspections. So I expect
[3:19] that if we can maintain a reappraisal
pro- uh, program like this, we will be
[3:25] able to clean up, um, and, and collect on
behalf of the districts that we serve.
[3:30] There were taxable changes that are, uh,
that I expect for the 2026 year. House
[3:35] Bill 3940 passed in the 2025 legislative
session, and it requires a change in the
[3:41] number of acres being collected on behalf
of the rural fire protection districts.
[3:46] We have to allocate value to each of the
acres, and then, uh, the maximum assessed
[3:51] value or specially assessed value for
those acres then is collected f- on behalf
[3:55] of those districts. The net result is
that I expect that 8,000 property,
[4:01] uh, accounts will receive an increase on
their tax statements this year.
[4:05] COUNTY CLERK CHRIS WALKER:
The County Clerk's office is anticipating
[4:08] revenue in the amount of
[4:09] $1,868,920
[4:13] and expending $1,918,044,
[4:19] uh, to meet our budget target,
[4:21] uh, during the 2026,
[4:23] uh, '27 budget year on behalf of the
clerk's Administrative Elections Recording
[4:28] and Property Values Appeals Board
program.
[4:32] The majority of clerk's office revenues
are obtained through recording fees,
[4:37] marriage licensing fees, document sales,
and special election reimbursements.
[4:43] We do not get reimbursed for primary and
general elections.
[4:47] We completed a risk and vulnerability
assessment of the elections program
[4:52] through the Oregon Titan Fusion Center and
the Oregon Department of Justice with
[4:56] support from the Secretary of State. We
had our protective security advisors that
[5:01] were assigned to our area and the State of
Oregon come in and help us, um, determine
[5:05] some of the vulnerabilities, um, and then
we went on a, um,
[5:11] process to try and correct some of those
vun- vulnerabilities.
[5:15] BUDGET COMMITTEE CHAIR CRAIG MORRIS:
The president issued an executive order
[5:18] eliminating mail-in ballots.
[5:21] Um, I know the State of Oregon has filed a
lawsuit
[5:24] to overturn that. Um, where, where are
[5:28] you at, um, in terms of the potential
that this may go into effect, and do we
[5:35] have any sense of, um, the impact it's
going to have on your organization if we
[5:41] do have to eliminate mail-in ballots and
the cost of that?
[5:44] WALKER: From my understanding,
the Constitution of
[5:46] the United States gives the states sole
[5:49] authority over time, place, and manner of
elections. That being said,
[5:54] um, we are working very closely with the
Secretary of State's office as well as to
[5:59] our Oregon Association of County Clerks.
[6:02] At this point, we have no changes to our
process, so I want to pass that on to our
[6:06] voters that we are continuing as we always
have for the May 2026 primary election.
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