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Gold Hill says it wants a police chief after all By PETER WONG GOLD HILL -- Two new City Council members who took office Monday night voted with two members who are targeted for recall later this month to keep a city police department. The 4-2 vote, which the council took without discussion, apparently ends the latest effort to abolish the city department and substitute a contract with the Jackson County Sheriff's Department for law enforcement. Later, the council spent an hour in closed session to screen applicants for police chief. "I'm very disappointed," Councilwoman Donna Silva said afterward. "It seems as if the voters have no voice here. They (council majority) have all gone in here with an agenda -- and they are going to stick to it." Her reference was to a non-binding vote last year, when voters decided 252-141 that they preferred a contract with the sheriff to a separate city department. Silva was joined by Councilwoman Betsy Hettum, who moved Sept. 13 to abolish the department and appeared then to have succeeded on a 2-1 vote. But because the police department was established by a city ordinance in 1982, its abolition required another council vote to repeal the ordinance. Voting against abolition were councilwomen Lisa Alexander and Bernardine Howard, who are targets of a recall election Oct. 26, and new councilmen Scott Eilefson and Gus Wolf. Howard voted against abolition Sept. 13; Alexander left before the vote. Eilefson was elected to the vacant Position 4 seat Sept. 21 over Christine Alford and two other candidates. Wolf, a former mayor and council member, was chosen Monday over Alford and Joyce Wagner for the Position 2 seat vacated Sept. 10 by the resignation of Hy Klaus. Both men, who took office Monday, said they saw nothing wrong with the police department that the right person as chief cannot cure. "I hope we can get ourselves together enough so that we can ensure it does not happen again," Wolf said after the vote. "This was like watching a car wreck. You could see everything happening -- and there was nothing you could do about it. I felt it was just a matter of bad circumstances -- the wrong person at the right time. So we will do our best to get the right person on board." His reference was to former Chief David Crawford, who was convicted June 3 on three misdemeanor charges in Jackson County Circuit Court. They stemmed from threats against an elderly couple during an off-duty traffic dispute and an assault on a dirt biker after a chase. Crawford had been chief since the fall of 1997 and the city's only police officer. "I do not see this as a problem with administration as I do the person," Eilefson said after the vote. "You look at police departments around the country and these kind of things happen. There is no way we can control them." Mayor Tim Roddam and the council saved most of their comments for an hourlong closed-door session, during which they selected four police-chief applicants for interviews scheduled Oct. 12. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA