The loss of $1.2 million in anticipated revenue from jail bed boarding fees will force the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office to cut 14 positions, including 10 patrol deputy positions.

Sheriff Jeff Dickerson said his agency now is “in a crisis mode.”

In addition to the 10 patrol positions, the agency will cut four positions in the jail and eliminate three part-time positions, its marine patrol program, a school resource officer and a contract person with the state fish and wildlife department to provide law enforcement on Sauvie Island.

“We will be forced to prioritize our responses. Only the most serious of crimes will generally be investigated. Our ability to respond to emergencies as they happen has been fatally compromised.”

The shortfall is due to a decision by the U.S. Marshal in Portland to divert a large portion of the current bed usage in Columbia County to Multnomah County, Dickerson said.

“The combination of a 17 percent cut in general fund spending from last year and the anticipated reduction in federal prisoners’ boarding fees spells disaster for our Enforcement Division,” Dickerson said in a prepared statement Thursday.

“We will place a greater burden on our corrections deputies,” Dickerson said, “to cover for the loss of the technicians who currently run our control room in the jail. But the skeleton crew we will have left to patrol our county will not be able to handle the call load.”

Fourteen sheriff’s office employees received notice Thursday of the pending layoffs, which are set to take effect Aug. 1. Sheriff Dickerson said the layoffs are one of the hardest things he has ever had to do.

“I believe citizens expect their sheriff to provide the public safety services I have had to cut today,” he said. “State law requires that I staff the jail, attend to the directions of the courts, process civil papers and provide search and rescue capabilities in the county. With all the cuts from the county and the federal government, the only real place I could cut was in the very services many constituents expect me to deliver first,” according to Dickerson.

“I will continue to look to the future and a possible funding source to provide dedicated funding to the sheriff’s office. In these economic times, that solution still seems out there a ways. For now, these are very dark days for our county.”

For more on this story, see Saturday's edition of The Daily News.