Here is what John West and others have listed:

1. Takes out 2^nd Amendment protection, Josephine County will no longer be a 2^nd Amendment safe zoneRemoves protecting freedom of speech and religion
2. Allows strip clubs to be located near churches, parks schools and your home
3. Does away with county support for Animal Control. County buildings and maintenance will no longer be supplied
4. The library will no longer be supported. Support for library buildings and county maintenance has been removed.

Really?

1. What does this even mean? The Second Amendment is in the Constitution and doesn’t need Josephine County to protect it. This “protection” and “safe zone” is unenforceable because counties cannot override state and federal law. Safe zones in charters are put there to appease special interests and have no teeth.
2. Again, freedom of speech and religion are spelled out in the First Amendment and do not need Josephine County’s protection. This “protection” claim is nonsense. Again, some special interest group that didn’t know how charters work got this in but it has nothing to do with the structure of the county government, which is all a charter is.
3. Measure 17-116 has nothing to do with strip club zoning and this “protection” is useless in a charter. Strip club zoning can be accomplished by county ordinance. It seems people too lazy to go through the ordinance process got this in the charter but again, it is unenforceable in a charter and doesn’t belong there.
4. The county is, by state statute, obligated to support an animal shelter. However, our shelter is supported by a taxing district, not the county. County Commissioners decide whether or not to provide maintenance and that has a history of being bare minimum in Josephine County. The shelter is suffering from years of deferred maintenance now, which proves that is not controlled by the charter.
5. The library is no longer supported by the county. The county shut it down. A group of citizens got together and put a levy on the ballot that now supports the Josephine County Library District (it is no longer the Josephine County Library) and its branches.  I don’t know where West, who is trying to undermine the library by voting to let people opt out of the district, gets this claim. Baertschiger mocked the current charter’s mandate to support the library anyway by saying if they said “we support the library” that was enough to meet the charter requirement. The library is located in a county building now but I don’t know who supplies the maintenance. The library district is planning on building a new building downtown and will be providing its own maintenance.