CRG: What do you believe are the most relevant issues currently facing the county and the state right now? What would be your six-month plan to tackle these issues?

Matt – I’ll focus mostly on the county because that’s the commissioner’s duty. The primary issues I see facing the county are that we have multiple lawsuits, employment lawsuits against the county. We have a mining lawsuit that is potentially in the 10s of millions of dollars. Those are very troublesome. So that’s number one.

Number 2 is our lack of economic development. I think that we were depending greatly on the Flying Lark and previous to that the Dutch Bros Complex here on G Street in Grants Pass to kind of kickstart the economy here again. And both of those fell through. And subsequently, the way the county handled the Flying Lark property by selling it to a nonprofit and taking it off the tax rolls forever was perhaps not in the county’s best interest.

 I also see we have a history of rejecting funds from the state of Oregon. For example, in 2023, when John West and the board decided to not declare a homeless state of emergency, we lost around $4 million. Jackson County got $8.8 million in that same bill.

Let’s see, #3, the housing crisis. So in 2019, Forbes put us on the list of, we were #3 of the least affordable cities in the entire United States here in Grants Pass. And I understand the county is much bigger than just Grants Pass, but as the county seat goes, so goes the rest of the county. We have a massive housing shortage here, and I think that that’s something that the commissioners need to look at very seriously. And The property that I have my sights on is the Dimmick property, the old hospital, to turn that into a mixed-use commercial and residential center with a co-op, market co-op to anchor that and to have several residential sites there as well. I think that we could accommodate around 80 to 100 unit total, mostly 2 bedrooms and one bedrooms to try to figure, or to try to fill that missing middle of housing. I think we wanted three, correct? I think it’s where we are.

 But if I didn’t get a third one, I would say our PERS liability is one of the biggest things facing the county. We were at $45 million last year, according to the fiscal report of unfunded liability. And I think that we need to look into PERS side accounts, which is something that is used in all of the counties that are in the red, or in the black. across the state. And these side accounts will pay down our liability. They will pay down our interest rate. And they also are in the market. And historically, PERS has returned 6.9%. And yes, I think that’s something that we need to look at investing in with our reserve funds.