03/28/2024
Despite the many many lies from CCTA - CENSORED, I am STILL suspended - and in fact they have permanently block me - THANK GOD - Now I don't have to read and respond to their many lies. The only unfortunate part is that CCTA is blocking people who hold them accountable. So, just STAY AWAY FROM THE PAGE.
But one person that has held them accountable is Scappoose City Councilor Kim Holmes. It is rare for an organization to be called out in such a clear, concise and accurate way. Please listen...
You can watch the video here at 1:39...
https://youtu.be/WNhoM1vnN08?si=bdtdn7pPkJaNp6Qy
At the 3/18 meeting she wrote:
Councilor Holmes explained she will take this opportunity to read some prepared comments
because she wants to make sure that they are concise and factual since that is at the heart of
the issue that she will be addressing tonight. She stated “I’d like to take the opportunity to
address a communication that was sent last evening by Mr. St. Pierre to the members of City
Council, our Police Department, the group that runs the Facebook Group Columbia County
Transparency & Accountability and that group’s administrator Jennifer Massey.
The letter is supposedly from an employee of the Columbia County Sheriff’s office regarding
this Council’s exploration of contracted public safety services with the Sheriff’s office. The letter
is filled with speculation, misinformation and veiled legal threats intended to intimidate
members of this Council. Mr. St. Pierre justifies his distribution of this information by saying,
“Generally we tend to do a FOIA request to substantiate information but in this case a FOIA
would not be able to substantiate anything.”
Mr. St. Pierre and the rest of the members of the FAFODDS, I would like to remind you there
are many other tools available to substantiate information and I’m going to take this
opportunity to walk you through them so you can employe these tools in the future.
I will first address the misinformation around the potential employment jeopardy of Scappoose
police staff under a potential contracting arrangement with CCSO. Any Scappoose employee
that would transfer over to the County would retain union protection and would be protected
under current and future CBA’s. Officers would be represented by the same Fraternal Order of
Police that they are currently represented under. In fact, the terms of the collective bargaining
agreement for CCSO employees can be found on the county’s website.
Substantiation strategy number one: View the publicly available collective bargaining
agreements to understand the extent of officer employment rights and causes for termination.
Given the admin’s close ties to policing services within the county I’m actually quite surprised
no one was able to easily offer information on the protections that are afforded to unionized
officers.
Substantiation strategy number two: I would encourage Mr. St. Pierre to go back and review
the council discussion of this topic on February 5th. The city attorney has already debunked this46
City Council meeting minutes March 18, 2024 14
notion that officers could easily be let go after one year. Second, it was extensively discussed
that the Level of Service being explored would be 24/7 on duty coverage. For the needs of
Scappoose that means 10 officers, 2 sergeants and a lieutenant. If the Sheriff doesn’t have the
sworn officers to fulfill the LOS, he doesn’t get paid. Putting all of the Scappoose police offers
on “graveyard jail shifts” would make it impossible for the sheriff to fulfill his contract. This
letter alleges the Sheriff “just wants the money that the city will give him” and has little interest
in keeping Scappoose officers. Common sense tells you, those two statements cannot both be
simultaneously true. CCSO cannot get paid if they don’t have officers available to perform the
requirements of the contract. A new officer takes 12-18 months to get field ready. The Sheriff
cannot start with a “clean slate” of officers. The members of FAFODDS should also be very
aware of this and should have been able to debunk that misinformation easily.
Another aspect of this letter I’d like to address are the personal attacks and veiled threats of
legal action made toward members of this council. It’s alleged that council president Miller is
the one “pushing for the CCSO takeover”, which is false. Both the Mayor and I made exploring
24/7 police coverage for this community a focus of our campaigns due to the feedback we
received from the community. It is no secret that our police department has struggled over the
years to reach this level of service. Given CCSOs new success achieving this level of service in
December, it made sense to consider this as one option to explore for achieving the 24/7
coverage – being responsive to the concerns raised by our constituents. Given his background
and history in law enforcement, Council president miller has been asked to share his thoughts
and questions for these phases of discovery. He has not organized meetings with the Sheriff or
staff on his own. He has not sent out inquiries on his own or gathered information directly for
this discovery process. This is actually one point you could substantiate through a FOIA request.
Please feel free to spend time and resources substantiating this point, but I guarantee you it will
be consistent with the information I’ve just provided you.
Further I’d like to remind FAFODDS, whomever wrote this letter and felt the need to single out
Council President Miller, that he has advocated for a position with the CC 911 Communication
District that is consistent with Scappoose City Council Resolution 23-04, and the position of the
cities of Vernonia and Columbia City and Columbia County Sheriff’s office. So, singling Council
President Miller out on his position amounts to nothing more than a personal attack which
devolved into name calling. I would like to remind Mr. St. Pierre and the admins of the CC
Transparency & Accountability that is in violation of their own site rules.
And I’ll lastly address the veiled legal threats promoted the author of this letter and
subsequently FAFODDS in its republication. The letter urges presumably the officers of the
Scappoose police department to “file suit against everyone and anyone personally and
professionally that had anything to with making this decision.” Every person on this council has
approached this inquiry with one primary research question, “what is the best way of achieving
24/7 police coverage for the tax payers of our city.” We have been incredibly transparent with
staff and the public. The members of this Council are doing the job that we’ve all been elected47
City Council meeting minutes March 18, 2024 15
to do, and I can assure you there is nothing illegal or improper happening. Our legal counsel has
been engaged in this process every step of the way. I want to make it clear, what is being
offered in this letter if frankly terrible advice, echoed by FAFODDS, that will only create undue
financial burden to the officers that this letter aims to protect.
So, in conclusion, what was sent to council and posted on the Columbia County Transparency &
Accountability page was nothing more than misinformation, threats, and frankly negligent
advice. This is an unfortunate pattern from this group. If I were the admins of the Columbia
County Transparency & Accountability group, I would be increasingly concerned about my own
credibility. However, if substantiating facts and information relating to this body remains a
challenge for you, I am happy to publicly help you fact checking in the future.
Please join us for a discussion of the Phase II discovery information relating to this inquiry on
4/1. It will be full of factual information. “ **end of Councilor Holmes comments**
