Polk County, 740 square miles on the west side of Salem, has become the latest local government in Oregon to announce it can no longer respond to 9-11 calls 24 hours a day. Sheriff Bob Wolfe says due to budget cuts, his officers will only be patrolling the county for 20 hours, seven days a week, and in most cases will not respond to emergencies in their off-duty hours.

Wolfe said the reduction in patrols is due to the loss of $2.4 million dollars in federal O&C timber payments since 2008 and county voters’ decision not to replace the lost federal funds with a public safety levy last November. The tax rate in Polk County is $1.71 per $1,000 of property value. Wolfe said he’s expecting one final federal payment this year. “We’re going to get an extension of some money, roughly $700,000. We haven’t got that money yet, but we’ve budged for it. If that money doesn’t come, the cuts will be even deeper. I truly believe congress has made it final that O&C money is gone,” he said.

Wolfe says an unfortunate twist is that he hadn’t planned to lay any of his officers off until July, but three are quitting and taking jobs elsewhere.

“Cuts will occur this year, and again next year. There is no stable funding right now based on our tax rate; due to that, employees are going where there’s more stability,” Wolfe said.

Due to the short staffing, sometimes the sheriff himself responds when the officer on duty calls and requests back up. Wolfe says effective on March 1, no one will be scheduled to provide patrol for four hours every day, and he will only authorize overtime during those hours in response to 911 calls involving an assault with a documented injury.

“If there is a traffic crash that is blocking the highway, we’re not responding. If there is a theft in progress, we’re not responding. I cannot pay deputies to come out of bed in the middle of the night to respond to calls when I don’t have the funding,” Wolf says.

The sheriff says he’s asked the Oregon State Police offices in Salem and McMinnville to provide assistance when they can.

Columbia County is also considering deep cuts to public safety this year, and has just four officers assigned to patrol shifts. Last November, voters there rejected a public safety levy to fund staff and operations at the county jail. The jail operations are currently funded from the county’s general fund and by renting beds for federal inmates. The Columbia County commissioners have proposed a new levy, which would increase property taxes to raise roughly 2.5 million dollars a year for the jail. Voters will decide that measure on May 20th.

Lt. Tony Weaver, with the Columbia County sheriff’s office, says if the measure fails, the sheriff will be unable to maintain minimum staffing levels at the jail and it will close in 2014.

“It looks ugly. If the jail closes, we will rent ten beds from an outside county. So our ten worst offenders, at any given time, will be housed in those beds. Everyone else will be released,” he says.

At present, 24 county inmates are housed in the jail. The county rents out roughly 110 beds to house federal inmates. Weaver says in the past, the jail housed up to 150 county inmates. Critics of the sheriff have said he is using scare tactics to build support for the levy. They say the county built the 255-bed jail without a realistic plan for paying for its operating costs.

This story originally appeared on Oregon Public Broadcasting.