6/10/09 Bend

by Ariel Wesler

Culver has been without a police department after the city council eliminated it in January for budget reasons.

The Jefferson County Sheriff's office has since been on-call, but their resources are also wearing thin. Wednesday night, the Culver City Council discussed possible options for the future of public safety in the town of thirteen hundred people.

Jefferson County Sheriff Jack Jones told the council with recent cuts--his office is running low on resources to properly respond to culver residents.

Culver only has $80,000 thousand dollars to spend on public safety for next year. The cost for a single deputy?---around $114,000.

Another option is contracting with Bend Patrol--a private security company. They would focus on code enforcement and domestic complaints, but can't write tickets and would likely have to call Jefferson County to make arrests. The council hope some type of patrol presence would act as a crime deterrent and some residents agree.

"When people see a police officer driving around the city it does help and then not knowing when does help as well," said Charles Fowler of Culver, who's in favor of the private patrol idea.

"We are getting a call load that's high enough that sometime we may have to make decisions about what kind of calls can we respond to that are priority," Jones said.

Bend patrol currently provides services for st. Charles medical center in Bend and Redmond--also, some of the major resorts throughout Central Oregon. Culver would be the company's first contract with a city.