LANE COUNTY – Lane County Commissioner Chair David Loveall delivered the 2025 State of the County address on Monday, discussing some of the County’s top accomplishments and what to expect in the upcoming year.
According to Loveall, three pillars of the county require immediate attention: public safety, economic development, and support for the unhoused and others in need.
“Public safety is our highest priority … but it’s also our biggest challenge in the years to come. We’ve got to find a way to fund it adequately so people feel safe when they pick up the phone,” Loveall said.
Carl Wilkerson, appointed Lane County Sheriff in 2025, stated in the video presentation that people have the right to expect timely assistance when they call 911, rather than hearing that “they are the sixth person on the list” and “we’ll get to you soon.”
Wilkerson said that it is daunting for LCSO to provide coverage from the Cascades to the Coast with three patrol deputies and a patrol sergeant. Lane County has an estimated population of about 383,000 and covers 4,722 square miles.
“Put that in perspective, to cross the county – which happens on a regular basis – the deputy may drive two hours to respond to a single call,” Wilkerson said.
Lane County “is literally one of the least patrolled counties in the United States. If you look at the averages of deputies per 1,000 – and we do that in an incredibly vast geographic area – it’s incredibly difficult,” especially when adding in the work that comes after a call is handled, Wilkerson said.
Deputies are “writing reports and watching the evidence, and they have almost zero unallocated time, which means that they have no proactive patrolling. They have no ability to do community engagement, to solve crimes, to make connections with the community … with little county resources, it’s time to devise a plan and give us the resources,” Wilkerson said.
Chris Parosa, Lane County District Attorney, outlined some of the critical government services it offers that lack funding, including criminal prosecution, child support enforcement, and medical, legal, and death investigations. He argued in the video presentation that, “without the District Attorney’s Office, the people that harm others in our community – who the police so diligently go out and investigate and arrest – are not held to account in a court of law.”
Parosa said that these services have been “under-resourced for decades compared to other district attorneys’ offices in the state of Oregon. My deputy district attorneys carry far greater case loads and greater demands on their time than other deputy district attorneys,” adding that the prosecutors are overworked and “do not have the time to go through the evidence as adequately as they should.”
“That can lead to unjust outcomes really quickly,” he said. “To provide the very best service to our community, to our victims, and to the criminally accused, we need more resources to be able to have more prosecutors to handle cases that come through our office.”
On the bright side
“I believe wholeheartedly all of us rise up to make someone’s life better every time that alarm clock goes off,” Loveall said. “After a particularly rough year in the books, I asked our beloved public information officer for some help gathering the County department’s sum total of 2025 accomplishments. … What I didn’t expect was a 20-page volume of great things departments reported.”
Loveall, who represents Springfield, said he was delighted with the city’s heading, noting that economic development visions are being met with the Glenwood project and a handful of grand developments in the downtown core. He said Masaka Properties LLC – of which Loveall is the managing partner – has brought 30 housing units, a dozen commercial spaces, and nearly 200 jobs to downtown.
The annual Springfield Block Party was another success that made the charts, attracting roughly 15,000 people, and there were no incidents or arrests reported the whole night, according to Loveall.
He gave a shoutout to the County’s technology department for their many accomplishments, like thwarting computer issues and intercepting hackers. He also mentioned the progress the Lane Events Center master plan and the Stabilization Center have made, although work on both projects continues.
Looking ahead
Loveall said the County needs to move forward and do the best it can with what it has in 2026.
He quoted Kevin Dahlgren, an independent journalist in Portland, saying that local governments cannot fix every issue and that ordinary citizens can make a bigger difference.
“To improve a life, we must stop making excuses, blame no one, and do something ourselves,” Loveall said. “When we see another as someone worth risking our very selves for to make their life better, this is the only way the ‘We improve lives’ mission statement works. So, we all need to be on the same page, same team, heading in the same direction for 2026.”
He mentioned that fear should not be used as a navigator, that it steals courage, and “has no place in Lane County.”
