Hello Mayor and Council members. Spring is finally here and we’ve had an unusually warm couple of months for our area. Personally, I love the sunshine and warmer temperatures but with that, comes talk of droughts and an early start to the wildfire season. On that note, we continue to work on the update of our Emergency Operations Manual and hope to have that finished in early fall at which time we will present to council for approval. With that said, we have an existing Emergency Operations Manual that is in use. Most of the updates that you will see at a later date are minor, ie updated names, agencies and contact information. The work is tedious at best but important. Lt. Sean Lundry and myself are doing the work on this project. Most cities in our county now have an Emergency Operations Manager at the very least. This is becoming more and more beneficial as time passes. As we’ve seen firsthand now with the wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic how fast things evolve in emergency situations. The need for an emergency operations manager is clear.

Our two new officers that were recently sworn in are doing very well. Officer Santos has begun his sixteen weeks of academy training and will be in Salem for all of the summer. He will begin his field training that will last anywhere from fourteen to sixteen weeks upon his return. Officer Sabella has completed the onboarding process and is now in field training. Officer Sabella had previously graduated from police academy therefore does not need to attend again. This is very beneficial to us as she will have completed training much sooner than if she had to attend the academy.

We had one last open position and the candidate as of last week was in the background investigation portion of the process. That candidate has failed a portion of the background investigation that prevents him from being employed here. This is disappointing but not unusual. I am in the process of rescinding his offer and we will move on to the next candidate from our hiring list.

The budget process has been completed. I wanted to thank all of you as well as all of the folks who volunteered their time for the budget committee. Many hours of meetings and some very good conversation and ideas were brought forward. Thanks to all of you for your service to our community.

Lastly, I am looking forward to our first in person council meeting. I excited to see things get back to more normal and hopefully we can continue to move forward to an end of this pandemic.

Thank you and I will see all of you soon. Chief Roberts