No one was happy when the John Day City Council decided to suspend the operations of the city’s police force in mid-October. But we have watched with growing dismay as the weeks have passed with no visible progress on the question of how to pay for law enforcement services in the city limits.

So we were gratified to be able to report that, at long last, city and county officials have begun to talk to each other about how to do just that. As you can read in this week’s Eagle, City Councilor Gregg Haberly and County Commissioner Sam Palmer, in consultation with Sheriff Todd McKinley, have initiated discussions about what it would take for the Grant County Sheriff’s Office to fill the void left by the suspension of the John Day Police Department — and who’s going to pay for it.

It’s hard to dispute the unanimous judgment of the City Council that John Day is just too small to support a professional police force any longer. The department’s budget exceeded the city’s general fund revenues by at least 50%. After low voter turnout doomed an operating levy in August, the department’s fate was effectively sealed.

But McKinley’s office has been unfairly forced to shoulder the burden of providing law enforcement coverage for John Day residents since the Police Department shut down – a heavy load for an agency that has just four patrol deputies to police Oregon’s seventh-largest county. It is only reasonable to expect that the city should provide some funding to help the Sheriff’s Office hire more deputies.

The City Council has expressed support for the idea of transferring a three-year, $375,000 federal grant to the county for that purpose, although it’s not yet clear if the grant rules will allow that. That’s not enough to pay for the three extra deputies McKinley says he needs, at a minimum, to provide adequate law enforcement protection.

The city has already proposed giving the county $300,000 a year from its general fund — 100% of John Day’s annual property tax revenues — for law enforcement. But that offer came with a catch: in exchange, the city wants an equal amount from the county road fund for street improvements in John Day.

That offer appears to be a nonstarter. As Palmer put it, “The policing and roads that (City Manager Nick Green) asked for are two different things, and we’re going to keep them two different things.”

All of these things are matters for negotiation. The important point here is that, after a two-month standoff, the city and county are talking about a matter of vital importance not only to the citizens of John Day but all Grant County residents. We commend Gregg Haberly and Sam Palmer for their leadership in getting these long-delayed talks started.