Mail Tribune News - Raymond confirms Young inquiry

Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)

2000-09-16

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Raymond confirms Young inquiry Jackson County Administrator Burke Raymond on Thursday confirmed a report that some juvenile department employees had sent him a letter expressing no confidence in department director Alan Young. "I didn't release the letter, and I'm not going to release it," Raymond said. "It's an inquiry and a personnel matter." Raymond said his office received the letter on Oct. 27 while he was out of the state, and he did not see it until Nov. 4, when he returned to the office. He contacted one of the signers and told him that it would be taken seriously but that Raymond could not take up the matter until after Thanksgiving because of the press of other county business. "I'm disappointed that someone has chosen to go public with this because the last sentence of that letter said, `we view this as an internal matter,"' Raymond said. Since a report of the letter appeared in the Ashland Daily Tidings this week, Raymond said he had received many other letters of support for Young from former and current department employees. Young declined comment, saying, "It's in Burke's hands right now." Asked about the impact of public dissension within a department struggling to replace a 41-year-old juvenile detention center, Raymond didn't mince words. "It certainly doesn't help," he said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out." Mail Tribune Copyright �  The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA