Season 2, Episode 11 -- Interview with Commissioner Richardson Josephine County Oregon

In this interview, I sit down with Josephine County Commissioner Gary Richardson to talk about his background, what led him to step into the role, and what he plans to do for the community. We cover his experience, priorities, and his perspective on where Josephine County is headed. This is a straightforward introduction to one of your county commissioners.

I’ll also be interviewing Commissioner Martin soon so you can hear from both sides of the current board, and for those who missed Dr. Frank’s recent appearance in Grants Pass, I’ll have a recap coming breaking down what he discussed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Just being county republican, and it is March the twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. We've got our Patriots conference coming up in four days this Saturday. So if you haven't bought tickets for that, please go to www.joco republicans.org. Scroll down a little bit, click the donate button. All the tickets are for sale there. A lot of great speakers. So anyway, without further ado, we've got our newly appointed Commissioner Gary Richardson. So I did an interview with him today after uh he was done with work and he came over and he met me. And uh let's get into it, ladies and gentlemen. I have with me uh Commissioner Richardson. Gary Richardson, thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Um I just had some questions. Uh what made you step up and and decide to serve as a commissioner?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Well, there's been a lot of um turmoil in the county. Um I've been familiar with public governance for 21 years on the District 7 school board. Um I had quite a bit of experience in my professional life dealing with large groups um across time zones and stuff like that. So I thought I'd be able to step in and make things a little bit calmer. Cool. And how long were you on the school board for? 21 years. And you're still on the school board? Yes, through 2029. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

At least. Okay, great. Um, so you know that was really going into my second question about telling me uh uh a little bit about your background. So that's and you you did that.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, yeah, but what about my natural gas compressors compressor controls? Okay, I think we got those on like 80% of the upstream natural gas compressors in the United States, and that's been a really successful product, and we got um worldwide certs on that, which is means you get the um uh North American certs, and then there's the European Union, which is uh ATEX uh cert, and then you go into they call it rest of the world, which is IEXEX certs. Those are for hazardous locations, and I mean you should read the regulations that the EU has. Wow, the documentation is crazy. So yeah, I was confident that stepping into a role of commissioner that it wouldn't be any more complicated than that. Cool. So uh what are your top priorities for for the county right now? Uh well, besides just serving well and um, you know, following the law. Really, laws and policies are the social contract that we have with each other. It's how we say we're gonna behave and interact, and you know, you get outside those norms and then bad things happen. So uh try to follow those. Uh it reduces friction among the citizens, and so I'm just hoping to by following those laws and policies and things to get things a little bit uh calmer.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Cool, excellent. And so how do you plan to stay connected uh with and listen to the community like throughout this? Uh so you're running until you're you're here until November, it's a temporary position, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, actually till I think like December 31st.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Okay, technically, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

You know, maybe till January 2nd, I'm not quite sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So as far as like outreach and people that come want to come in and talk to you, they just kind of have to go in and and ask to speak to you.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Call me or email me. Right. I answer my phone. I'm not one of those people that just I get all sorts of weird phone calls, you know. Yeah, yeah. No.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Um so hopefully what you know by the end of your term, what what would success look like to you?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Well, actually, there's a number of things that are not um in good order, I would say. And currently we because of the conflict, we can't seem to just get to solving some of those. Like the county charter has some pieces in it that are illegal. Courts have said that's a no-go. Wow, we should take those out. Yeah, just housekeeping, right? We know they're not legal, we gotta take them out. Um I'd like to try just that simple piece so that nobody has to be mad. Everybody knows it's illegal. Let's just take that piece out. Okay. Kind of get the community into realizing there's a path forward to get this thing where we want it to be. Um one that's a little more controversial is the 4-H Extension Service uh taxing district. I'm actually going into that now, trying to see how it was formed. What's the language? How does that work? Um there's some issues with what happened with that. I kind of agree with uh what the previous commissioners did there. Um I'd like to see if we can't change that language so that that money could go toward the things people seem to think it should go toward instead of the actual language, right? Okay. So cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Well, I think that's all I have, unless you had anything you wanted to add. Oh, I have so much more.

unknown 6:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Uh economic development. I have my one of the things that really struck me as I first started the job is people would come up and we're the poorest county in the state. I'm not proud of that. It's a thing, and I'm I will acknowledge it, but let's not be the thing we're proud of. So I'd like to change that. Excellent. Uh, grants pass by virtue of being right here on I-5 and also right at the edge of Josephine County, gets a lot of economic activity with uh the Medford urban area. I think we send 5,500 to 6,000 people a day to Medford for work. Really? Brings that money back into Grants Pass. But the rest of our county doesn't have that kind of advantage. So, in particular, I would like to see the Illinois Valley and Cave Junction to get their level of economic activity up. Of course, if you want economic activity, you gotta have good law enforcement. So for that, um, I'm always talking about the three-legged stool. You gotta have the jail, you gotta have the district attorney, you gotta have the sheriff. Um, so it's not just all about the sheriff's patrols. We gotta get the district attorney's office, it needs to be funded. There's some issues there related to pay. And that's always a sticky point when you're a poor community. You're gonna look at we're paying these people and these jobs way above what most of us make. Well, okay, but if you want attorneys, they're gonna cost you more than our average that we have. And if we don't have those attorneys, then we don't get things prosecuted. The things that really annoy us. Um there was a constituent talking to me about a homeless person, did some vaping, took off all their clothes, took forever to, you know, the current way the rules work, you gotta give them a bunch of time and stuff. They finally arrested him, took him away. Comes back from the district attorney, don't have enough resources to prosecute. Yeah, we're reading about that online too. Yeah. So, you know, getting the sheriff up there to 24-7 patrols and stuff, that's great, but we also have to keep that district attorney up there also. Um the other thing is we need to stop bleeding sheriff's deputies. Um it takes almost a year to train someone. Yep. And Sheriff Daniel has a good training program, and it's almost like um you get to go to college, get paid to go to college, and as soon as you're done with college, then you go get a job somewhere else. Yeah, yeah. We we gotta stop doing that. Right. So unfortunately, that means we're um one of the keys to that was getting the stability of the law enforcement service district, but the other piece of that is we're probably gonna need to raise our deputy pay so they stop leaving.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yeah, and and you know, I'm on the city's public safety committee, right? And we had um spoken with the the DA, he came in and talked to us, and he said, you know, it's trying to have attorneys that you know they pay so much more up in Portland than we do down here, and trying to have them be enticed enough to stay down here. Um, and that's exactly what you're talking about, you know, because it's like the pay scale for an attorney is it's way up there, but you know, trying to keep them just have them stay here that's even harder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Now we don't need to pay as much as they pay in Portland. Um, and oftentimes I've said this comes for my school board stuff, our biggest export is our kids. Yeah, a lot of our really great kids, they leave the area because they can work in these much more economically rewarding jobs, and we don't have those jobs here. So if we can start building up our economic activity here, we'll keep more of those good kids around here. But back to the district attorney, some of those kids are attorneys. They will work here for less than Portland pay because they're familiar with the area. It will still be good pay. I'm not saying it has to be so low that they're going, yeah, I can't stay here, I gotta go to Portland. But if you can get it close, um, it doesn't have to be equivalent to Portland.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Okay. And you know, another thing he said is you would love to have three more guys, you know. So to make things happen, DA's office having three more staff, he said that would be the number.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Well, he has positions, but he can't fill them, so I think that goes back to the pay. Gotcha. Cool. So we're coming up on budget season. Um, so I'll be working on that, um, trying to focus on um some actual goals for the budget, and those goals are gonna go back to what can we do to make the Illinois Valley and Cape Junction stand up better. I mean, Cave Junction, they're only large enough that I think they can budget for 40 hours a week of a sheriff's deputy. But you have to have two if you have uh a serious thing going on, then you need backup. Yeah, yeah. Well, so realistically, some kind of way through the budget process, I'm trying to figure out how we can make sure that we have two out there so that serious issues can be dealt with in fairly short response time.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

I mean, and that's a major pipeline to the coast, too. I mean, there's I don't know what the statistics were as far as travelers to that go through Cave Junction, like 6,000 uh a week or something to that effect, or maybe it was more than that, but I it's a huge part of our community.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

And um, you know, it'd just be nice for Cave Junction as you have more in law enforcement, then you get more business activity, and you know, I as a goal, I would really like to improve uh 199 from the Oregon border to I-5. For Josephine County, if you look at it, I-5 cuts through just kind of the eastern piece of Josephine County. 199 essentially goes through the heart of the rest of the usable land in Josephine County. We all know we got 70% in federal land. Right, and there's kind of a reason. It's like it goes like this and it goes like that. Yeah. So um getting that 199 corridor as um I forget the right term, but essentially a business type corridor and make it safer because it is a very dangerous road the way it is now, um, that would certainly be a goal. That's gonna have to be somebody after my time. Yeah, that's a big goal. But if you don't start, yes, you can't get there.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

That's right. Oh, cool. Um, did you have anything else that you wanted to talk about? Or that's it. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate the interview, and I will put this out on the podcast uh probably in the next day or two. Okay. Thank you very much. Gary Richardson, everybody.