The Coos County District Attorney and Sheriff have scaled back the law enforcement tax levy they would like to put before voters in November.

“When we started looking and crunching numbers, ... frankly we went too high,” Coos County District Attorney R. Paul Frasier said.

They will present the new version Coos County Board of Commissioners for approval at its Wednesday morning meeting.

The initial concept would have included the cost of funding the jail, the part of the District Attorney’s Office, juvenile department and the South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team. The cost to taxpayers would have been around $6 million.

“It wouldn’t pass,” Frasier said.

With the scaled-down $4.35 million levy, taxpayers would pay 99 cents per $1,000 of assessed value on properties. Frasier said agencies thought it best to keep the figure below $1 per thousand.

“We thought we had to keep it as low as possible,” he said.

The more expensive proposal would have fully restored staff and services at the DA’s office and the Juvenile Department and provide a full staff in the county jail and SCINT.

Instead the new proposal would fully fund the jail only and a small part of SCINT. About $4.2 million would go to the jail and about $150,000 would go to SCINT. Frasier said SCINT was included because the Byrne Grant Funding Program, which funds crime prevention, including drug enforcement teams, may not be allocating as much money to the South Coast’s team in the next year. SCINT has depended on the funds for much of its operations, he said.

 The tax levy stemmed from concern over the health of the Coos County budget and the possibly of more layoffs, such as the about 100 jobs lost in 2007 after federal timber payments expired. County managers fear they will eventually run down reserves without more cuts.  

“My approach, and the Sheriff (Andy Jackson) agreed with me, is that we needed to come up with something that would avoid these cuts in the future,” Frasier said.