Benny Westcott
In addition to its Tuesday, Oct. 25, agenda, the Sweet Home City Council heard a story of life-saving heroism involving the staff of the Sweet Home Police Department.
It all happened Wednesday, Oct. 12, when Communications Commander Penny Leland’s heart stopped.
“I was sitting in my office, and I heard one of my dispatchers yell for Sgt. Ryan Cummings,” Interim Police Chief Jason Ogden recalled. “So I go running up to the dispatch area, and I look into Penny’s office. She’s down on the ground and unresponsive.”
At that point, he continued, Cummings and Officer Geoff Hamlin began attending to her and performing CPR. Extra help then arrived in the form of Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District personnel.
“The medics responded, and they worked on Penny for what seemed like forever to get her stabilized prior to transport, and they took her to the hospital,” Ogden said.
Leland has since recovered, resuming occasional shifts at the department.
“We are so thankful that she is doing well,” Ogden said. “I’m just super thankful that a lot of our officers and the people that were there were quick to respond to the situation. We’re the ones that receive the 911 calls and go out and handle those, but it’s the first time in 25 years that I’ve been here that we’ve actually had to call 911.”
As a result, Ogden nominated Hamlin and Cummings for the department’s Life Saving Award.
Mayor Greg Mahler and councilor Dave Trask, both longtime Sweet Home Fire & Ambulance District volunteer firefighters, voiced their admiration.
“We are so blessed to have such great officers in this community,” Mahler said, adding that the city would formally recognize Hamlin and Cummings at a later date.
Trask recalled his own experiences in such circumstances.
“I’ve been on a lot of cardiac-arrest calls, and the number that you save is very minimal,” he said. “They probably saved her life. It’s just that simple. Because they started it right away. And if you don’t do that, it doesn’t work.”
“You have about three to five minutes, and that’s about it,” Mahler added.
Rabbit Problems
In more hare-raising news, Sweet Home resident Lorie Turner brought up the proliferation of feral rabbits around town, an issue Sweet Home and the surrounding area have tackled since late last year.
“I wanted to just let you know that I believe there’s a problem here, and I believe that it needs to be managed humanely, and we need to figure out how to do that,” she said. “I’ve proposed a basic process, because you should know that there is not a process in place for managing it at all today.”
She distributed a handout outlining what happens when citizens complain to the city about the infestation.
“The current approach is that as calls come, the caller is asked to contact the code enforcement officer, who in turn tells the caller there is nothing he can do,” Turner wrote.
She recommended a more data-driven approach.
“My one and only ask from the City Council is that we begin to collect the data as to where these rabbits are, what’s the quantity and whether or not they’re babies,” she said.
She said she called Linn County Animal Control, which informed her that the rabbits were “absolutely a city problem.”
Trask asked about the number of complaints the city received.
“In my time here in the city the past three years, this past week has been the first time that I’m aware of,” Community and Economic Development Director Blair Larsen replied.
Turner discussed a plan.
“We need to identify where these animals are, we need to get them captured and then we need to figure out how to dispose of them,” she said.
“I think the first two steps are pretty easy. But getting rid of them is not going to be so easy. There are no shelters that can take them, and they cannot be butchered for food. It would be nice to just have a rabbit hunt and resolve the problem. I’m for that. Whatever it takes. But it needs to be done humanely. Don’t just go bop them on the head. It needs to be with respect.”
“Obviously, we need to address this from the city level,” Mahler said. “We don’t have Animal Control here at the city level, but we can see what we can do to look into this.”
“I think us trying to look at it soon would be good,” City Manager Kelcey Young added. “There may be as easy a solution as adoption for some of the rabbits. There are different rescues and things around in the area that I’ve reached out to. We’ll have to come back once we’re getting more of a response from them and come up with a better plan.”
“Please do not release your rabbits,” she continued. “It is unlawful to do so. It is considered unlawful both to release the rabbits, or even to let them roam free.”
Young noted that unvaccinated rabbits can carry rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, which does not hurt other mammals but is very harmful to rabbits.
“There’s actually a bit of an epidemic going on throughout the state of Oregon regarding this particular virus,” she said. “If you do have a domestic rabbit that you’re keeping as a pet, please don’t let it get exposed to some of these feral rabbits, because it could lead to its death. And hopefully, it’s vaccinated.”
She added that Sweet Home wasn’t alone in its rabbit problem.
“It’s happening in a few other cities, and cities are reacting to it in different ways,” she said.
“Some of them are embracing their rabbit population and actually using it almost as a tourist type of attraction. Others, like Las Vegas, are seeing such a large population of rabbits that now they’re trying to figure out how to eradicate the rabbits, and it’s a multimillion-dollar issue for them.
“The positive thing is that it’s very rare for rabbits to spread any type of contagious disease to humans or other mammals. And if you don’t want them in your yard, keeping your grass and weeds and things low will kind of help deter them, as well as having fences. And if you feed rabbits, there are probably going to be more rabbits in the neighborhood.
“So I would be very cautious about feeding the rabbits.”
On a lighter note, she added, “Most of the rabbits do seem to be thriving here.”
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Larsen discussed the newly completed sidewalk on the north side of Highway 20 from 55th to 60th avenues and explained why it ended abruptly at one portion rather than continuing under an Albany & Eastern Railroad Company trestle.
When the project “finally got moving in 2020 with the engineering designs that were started,” he explained, “ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) came to us about the area underneath the railroad trestle to determine how that was going to work out.”
According to Larsen, ODOT then examined the railroad trestle and determined that it could not build a sidewalk underneath it in compliance with regulations.
“That’s not to say that you can’t build a sidewalk there,” Larsen said. “It’s just that ODOT can’t build a sidewalk there, because ODOT is not able to take on that liability for putting the sidewalk under a trestle that is not usable.
“At the same time, the railroad – and from a business sense, I think rightfully – is not willing to abandon that right of way and trestle, because they don’t know if they’re ever going to get it back. They’d rather repair it, but they don’t have the funding to repair it yet, and ODOT wasn’t putting forward the funding.”
He said the situation left the city at an impasse: ODOT couldn’t complete the sidewalk unless the trestle was removed, which the railroad wasn’t willing to do.
“Ultimately,” he explained, “what ODOT decided was ‘We will build it up to where we can build it,’ and then it would be put upon the city to either complete that sidewalk underneath the railroad trestle, or simply wait until the railroad trestle is either taken down or repaired, and then the sidewalk would continue at that time. It was a rather frustrating process for the city, because we are the ones with the least amount of power in the situation. That’s not the solution anybody wanted, but it was, unfortunately, the cards we were dealt.”
He said the city would assemble a proposal for Albany & Eastern that would involve a temporary asphalt path that would still be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“We’re hoping that we can work with the railroad to see that done, and then at some point when that trestle is either repaired or removed, there would be a more permanent link made,” he said.
In the meantime, ODOT has placed barriers at the ends of the sidewalks.
“If we are looking at a longer period of time without a connection between the two, there will be a more permanent barrier put in place to signal to users that this is not an authorized path,” Larsen said.
Mahler expressed appreciation for what had already been completed.
“This has been 10 years of frustration just to get the sidewalk in, so I’m just glad to see that,” he said.
City Auditing
Trask expressed frustration with the city’s tardiness in completing its audits multiple times in recent years.
Audits for Oregon cities are due Dec. 30 annually. The city received an extension for its 2018 audit, when it was put off until Feb. 19, 2019. Another extension was requested for the 2019 audit, and 2021’s wasn’t completed until August of this year.
“We could have gotten nailed for that,” he said. “The state of Oregon could have nailed us for that. They could have held back money. We could have been in deep trouble here. And that really bothers me. It just baffles me that we got to this position. It really does. I’m really, really frustrated.”
Interim Finance Director Matt Brown explained his theories regarding the problems.
“I believe the previous finance director and your previous city manager did not have the proper checks and balances for items like bank reconciliations, updates to audits, and those kinds of things,” he said. “When we go through the bank reconciliation, we see a lot of entries that should be there but are not.”
He said there were entries entered several months later for things that should have happened in the past, even in previous fiscal years.
“It’s a matter of checks and balances,” he reiterated. “The great thing moving forward is that you have a city manager that is already familiar with being a finance director, so she will know what to look for and check for on a more regular basis when we get back up to that point and you hire another finance director.”
He added that he had been working over the last several months on a clean-up process regarding the previous several years of accounting, adding that the city has brought in an extra consultant to handle its main bank reconciliations.
“I had advised about bringing in a second consultant because I do not have the time to do the necessary work to do the bank reconciliations at the level that I think is needed to clean up Sweet Home,” he said.
Looking forward, he said, “Our hope is that by the end of December, we have a brand-new fund structure and a new budget to go through with you, that we believe will be a lot easier for you and the community and staff to understand and follow.”
Communications Manager
The council unanimously approved the creation of a city communications manager position, which would deal with both city communications and IT support, in addition to the IT service the city currently contracts out.
Young believed the move would save money.
“This would be a cost savings because we’re not going to have a second IT position and a communications position,” she said.
Young hoped that the role would provide more boots-on-the-ground assistance, as the city receives only about 34 hours of service per month from its current IT provider at about $7,000 a month.
“We currently have an IT contract that we’re continuing to review to see if that’s the best fit moving forward,” she explained. “But we’re thinking about shifting the way that we’re doing this a little bit by having somebody that is on the ground here, so they can really be assessing our needs as far as IT is concerned.”
“We’re looking at a way to shift that so that part of that would be taken in-house, and then potentially lower those hours with our actual overall service,” she said.
The salary for the communications manager would be $4,653 to $5,444 monthly, or $55,836 to $66,328 annually. This person would be responsible for all aspects of citywide communication, much like the current communications specialist, but would also provide meeting and technical support to employees regarding the use of computers, networks, hardware and software.
A request for council action submitted by Administrative Services Manager Julie Fischer noted that due to decision-making responsibilities and confidential information, the position will be exempt and non-represented, serving as part of the executive team reporting to the city manager.
“The communications manager will play an important role during emergency response and be the direct contact and spokesperson for external communication,” she said.
Bracing for Disaster
The council voted unanimously to authorize the city manager to sign a contract for disaster preparedness planning services with WSP USA Solutions, Inc.
The contracted services are estimated to cost approximately $35,000 but will be shared between the cities of Sweet Home, Lebanon and Brownsville and their fire districts. Two of those agencies will pay $6,000 while budget restraints will limit Brownsville to $2,000.
Larsen’s request for council action noted that in June 2019, the city, after seeing the need for local and regional cooperation during emergencies, entered into an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) for regional emergency management consultant work with the other agencies.
The agreement’s intent was to hire a consultant to help these organizations develop an emergency operation plan and training program for use in coordinating mutual emergency and disaster response efforts in their jurisdictions. The IGA named Sweet Home as the project’s fiduciary agency.
The ensuing request for proposal was started last winter and finalized this summer. All partner organization representatives selected WSP USA Solutions to complete the work. WSP has tentatively agreed to a contract.
“It’s something we should have done a long, long time ago,” Trask said.
In other action:
— Young discussed a Tuesday, Oct. 18, incident, when a construction machine struck and broke a Main Street gas line at around 1:38 p.m., resulting in two hours of traffic shutdown.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District units responded, and all Main Street lanes were closed while Northwest Natural Gas worked to repair the pipe. According to Ogden, area residents were evacuated.
“The fire and police departments and public works were all amazing and were out there very quickly directing traffic, and the school district had the school right there shut down,” Young said. “What could have been a very dangerous situation actually ended up just being a little bit of a nuisance for people, with having to deal with traffic.”
— The council voted unanimously to authorize the city manager to sign an application for a conditional use permit to combine the five tax lots that currently make up Northside Park into one.
According to Associate Planner Angela Clegg’s request for council action, the property line adjustments would allow the city to correct inaccurate deed descriptions, apply for permits and make improvements to the park.
Larsen said the city has funding allocated for Northside improvements, particularly for a dog park.