_{Thumbnail photo by Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License}

Curry County commissioners took the advice of their director of operations Wednesday and finalized an agreement with the Rogue Valley Council of Governments, which will provide third-party oversight to their finances.

Ted Fitzgerald compared the services RVCOG can offer Curry County to the services it received when it worked with the Lane Council of Governments following a ransomware attack in 2023. The county did just hire a new employee in its finance department and the department is getting stronger, Fitzgerald said, but he still wanted professional oversight “to make sure we’re doing things right.”

“The different specialties that exist within the Rogue Valley Council of Governments will be able to help us on a variety of levels,” he told commissioners. “I think it’s going to be a thing [where] we learn how much we need them as we go along, but I want to be sure that we really give it a good chance because every time we have reached out for help from outside entities we’ve gotten it.”

Two days after they adopted the county’s 2025-26 budget, Curry County commissioners wanted to get started on finalizing job descriptions and finding people to fill those positions.

New positions include a public works director, an investigator in the District Attorney’s Office, a community resource officer in the Sheriff’s Office and a part-time civil processor and animal control officer, according to Board Chairman Jay Trost. 

Added on as a last-minute agenda item on Wednesday, Trost said he wanted to get a consensus from his colleagues to allow human resources to create those job descriptions and bring them back to the Board by its next meeting in July for approval.

_{Thumbnail photo by Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License}

Though tensions continued on Tuesday with Curry County’s newest commissioner telling John Ward that his constituents have been fearful for the past year, both sides were able to compromise on staffing for the sheriff’s office.

Both sides agreed to staff a lieutenant in the patrol division who would oversee four deputies, a forest deputy, a marine deputy and a community resource officer. There would also be a part-time civil service deputy working for the sheriff’s office as well as two sergeants working under jail commander Lt. Jeremy Krohn. 

The part-time civil service deputy would also handle animal control cases for the Board of Commissioners, according to Director of Operations Ted Fitzgerald.