Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The city of Sweet Home hosted two candidates for state representative and an elected state senator on Thursday, Oct. 19, during City Hall Day.
The League of Oregon Cities organized City Hall days across the state to give residents and city officials the opportunity to meet and talk to state legislators, who can tackle a variety of issues important to municipalities.
Officials from Stayton, Lebanon, Scio and Sublimity joined Sweet Home officials in describing city concerns with House District 17 candidates Dan Thackaberry of Lebanon and Fred Girod of Stayton and District 9 Sen. Roger Beyer.
The meeting was a form of discussion, not a debate, Sweet Home Mayor Craig Fentiman said, adding that it was an exchange of ideas and a chance to let legislators know what cities are looking for in the 2007 legislative session.
Lebanon City Manager John Hitt described how Lebanon was able to convince Lowe’s to build a distribution center in Lebanon by using an urban renewal district. Cities need to remove uncertainty when businesses are looking at communities, resolving issues about permits, transportation, infrastructure and funding before the businesses come to a particular area.
The expansion of Highway 34 to four lanes from Interstate 5 was important to Lowe’s and other businesses looking at Lebanon, Hitt said. The I-5 interchange at Highway 34 is a good exit with little traffic and easy entrance and egress to the freeway.
Without funding for infrastructure, a community cannot have a large development, Hitt said. That’s where Lebanon’s urban renewal district came in. Urban renewal districts freeze tax revenues, and as property values increase, the additional tax revenues are used to pay for infrastructure improvements.
“Lowe’s would have been impossible without our URD in place,” Hitt said. While urban renewal districts are not popular with other taxing districts, the property would not add revenues anyway without such districts.
“Local governments have got to remember every time you take money from other districts, the other districts are going to suffer,” Beyer said. Urban renewal districts have a few problems, but rather than take those issues to the Legislature, he thinks it’s best those decisions are made at the local level.
With a limit of 3 percent per year on property value growth, special district budgets are squeezed, and “almost every town has a fire levy up, a policy levy, maybe a library district.”
He suggested that cities use such tools in conjunction with partners. Cities cannot be viable without police and fire services.
“Very fortunately, we had a URD to lure Lowe’s into Lebanon,” said Thackaberry, an eight-year veteran of Lebanon’s City Council. “It took almost eight years. We hired John Hitt, and we brought in a good team. It has paid off.”
While it affected special districts some, “we had a large open field that would still be a large open field,” he said, but special districts will probably gain from the construction of satellite businesses.
If it’s used by local communities, “and it creates jobs, I think it’s a darn good thing,” Girod said.
Stayton City Administrator Chris Childs described challenges with obtaining additional water rights. Traditionally, there have been three primary users of water rights, farm irrigators, municipalities and industry. In 2003, the state required those seeking additional water rights must prove they’ll use that capacity, constructing the infrastructure, within the next five years.
“That puts a huge burden on cities to build a system they might not need for 35 years,” Childs said. “Cities may be penniless to do the infrastructure for five years or even 20 years.”
The Legislature fixed the problem, but the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has written a legal opinion on extending water rights that “holds municipalities to a higher standard than what’s required under the federal Endangered Species Act,” he said. Municipalities are required not only to hold rivers harmless but to improve them, he said. “That tends to put a fairly onerous burden on cities.”
That needs a fix in the 2007 session, he said. “If this thing stays on the books, we may be out doing who-knows-what to save the fisheries.”
“Water is going to be a huge issue in this state probably for the rest of our lives,” Beyer said. It’s an extremely wet state that turns extraordinarily dry for three or four months. “We need to figure out a way to store that water when it comes in abundance and save it. If we don’t start in 2007, we’ll never catch up.”
Right now, Oregon uses less than a half percent of the water in the Columbia River while Washington uses about 5 percent, Beyer said. He thinks Oregon should tap the Columbia for more water. Even then, it would leave 90 percent of the water flowing into the ocean.
Last session, the Legislature dedicated $100 million in lottery bonds for rails and airports, he said. He would like to do the same in water projects in the next session.
China is probably behind the United States in everything except water, he said. “There isn’t a drop of water that falls on China that doesn’t get used, probably a dozen times before it hits the ocean.”
“We don’t have a water shortage,” Thackaberry said. “We have a water storage shortage.”
“I can’t agree more,” Girod said. “The state has always been negligent in long-term fixes.”
“I know that we all share some of the same problems in varying degrees,” Sweet Home Councilman Tim McQueary said.
Sweet Home has massive inflow and infiltration problems, estimated at $25 million to $30 million to fix them.
Inflow and infiltration is water that leaks into pipes through cracks and cross connections to storm systems, and it can overload the wastewater treatment plant.
Most of the problems can be attributed to early construction techniques and materials, McQueary said, and drinking water standards changed in the late 1990s placing many cities out of compliance with federal standards.
“This was done with the stroke of a pen in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “It’s hard to convince the public that something buried is wearing out and needs to be repaired.”
Choices include bonds, which will not get much support, he said. Cities can also try to get congressional appropriations, but those are drying up for small communities.
The third option is interest-bearing government loans, which require rate increases, about $1 per month for each $1 million borrowed.
Over the five regular sessions and six special sessions he has served in the Legislature, the same issue has come up: “how can we help cities?” Beyer said. “The response has pretty much been the same: It’s your problem.”
If the state were to allocate money to deal with these infrastructure problems, the biggest problem is a $17 billion problem, and it’s downstream from almost everyone in the state, Portland. That’s where the majority of the money would go.
His solution, if a city wants to build another sewer treatment plant, is “go for it, but don’t expect any help from me,” he said.
If a city thinks outside the box and has something new to show him, he would be more inclined to support the project. He pointed to Prineville, which is watering a golf course, and Silverton, which has the Oregon Garden.
“Well, Roger, our city is going to come talk to you,” Thackaberry said, because Lebanon has been working outside the box. He referred to a project where the council purchased land with plans to set it up as a wetland filter for its wastewater.
“Funding it is kind of tough, but Roger’s going to help,” Thackaberry said.
Girod said he has already visited managers and public works directors and asked them for a wish list.
“I tend to be real conservative, so I tend to be against everything,” Girod said, but “infrastructure, for me, is actually very important.”
It is the backbone of building trades, and it is the backbone of the economy, he said. “I empathize with what you say. I really think I can be some help. When it comes to divvying up the pie, I’ll be right in there trying to get it for you.”
Sweet Home Finance Director Pat Gray talked about the difficulties in funding operations, such as the Police Department and library, under the existing “double majority” requirement and property tax caps, especially when business properties decreased in value about three years ago.
Voters are registered, but they don’t vote, she said, and that means levies fail when they don’t meet the double majority requirement, a 50 percent voter turnout in all but general elections.
“We have to live under the laws we have,” Beyer said. The problems in Sweet Home, Bend and Linn County were created by the people of Oregon. The Legislature tried to correct the problem twice, but it was turned down on the statewide ballot.
“We have to live with what we have, and good luck,” the senator said.
Thackaberry said his City Council gives staff the leeway to think outside the box, “because there isn’t going to be help coming from the state level.”
Girod said something can always be done better, and that traps politicians into spending more on that something, driving up spending.
“I’m actually one of those people that really thinks government needs to be responsive and needs to be smaller,” he said, allowing that there may be a case that there is too much restraint on revenues right now, but until voters feel the crunch, it probably won’t change, he said.