A meeting last week between the Linn County Board of Commissioners and the Sweet Home City Council focused on economic development and Linn Shuttle.
The commissioners and the City of Sweet Home may cooperate to extend Sweet Home’s enterprise zone to include Pope and Talbot and Georgia Pacific near Halsey.
The mills will take advantage of the zone to create new jobs. The zone provides tax incentives to businesses that create family wage jobs.
A significant number of Sweet Home residents work at the mills, City Manager Craig Martin said during a meeting between the City Council and commissioners last week on Tuesday. Expansion of those businesses would provide additional job opportunities for Sweet Home residents.
Under the proposal, an enterprise zone would be drawn around the mills separate from Sweet Home’s, as a kind of island. Sweet Home’s enterprise zone includes everything inside the urban growth boundary and extends west a couple of miles along Highway 20.
Albany-Millersburg Economic Development Group staff would administer the additional zone area.
Expanding Sweet Home’s enterprise zone is more cost effective than creating a new one, Martin said.
Linn Shuttle
Councilmen asked the board about funding Linn Shuttle, which provides transportation to developmentally disabled persons to and from workshops, like Sunshine Industries, in Sweet Home, Lebanon and Albany. The shuttle service is operated by the Sweet Home Senior Center.
Director Jean McKinney requested $147,500 from the Special Transportation Fund, which uses tobacco money for transportation programs. It is distributed by the county after an advisory committee makes a recommendation to the Board of Commissioners.
This year, the board granted Linn Shuttle $113,575 for both the transportation for the disabled and the public service. Of that total, $90,090 will be combined with some $8,000 from other sources to operate the service.
Linn Shuttle will not be able to provide transportation for the disabled next year with that amount of money, McKinney said. She had asked for $117,000 for the disabled service.
Linn Shuttle got to that point because it has been heavily funded by the Special Transportation Fund, tobacco dollars, Commissioner Roger Nyquist said. “Barring no opinion from the surgeon general, that revenue will continue to decline.”
In the area, the services that are successful in securing their funding do so through alternate sources, Nyquist said.
McKinney disagrees about the tobacco money. Six years ago, Linn County had $130,000 in the Special Transportation Fund, and Linn Shuttle received $125,000 of it, she said. This year, it had $196,789, and Linn Shuttle will receive $113,575 of it.
The money is being divided between more services now, including local routes in Lebanon and Albany, McKinney said, when it was originally intended for inter-city service, like Linn Shuttle.
The fund also will provide $14,014 to Sweet Home’s local Dial-A-Bus program, which will respond as far as 10 miles outside of the city limits.
Nyquist said the county identified five alternate sources where Linn Shuttle could seek funding. If Linn Shuttle were to apply to those sources for funding and were unable to fill the funding gap that way, the county would look at its disability funding this year.
“Linn Shuttle needs to apply at these five places for funding,” Nyquist said. They include a couple of Oregon Department of Transportation sources and a Medicaid source. If Linn Shuttle were more aggressive in pursuing these other grants, the problem would take care of itself.
McKinney has not applied for any of those grants yet, she said. She doesn’t think anyone will be able to find an alternate source of funding that will fill the fiscal gap.
McKinney’s concern, Councilman Dick Hill said, is that Lebanon, which provides routes inside its city limits like Sweet Home Dial-A-Bus, received “a big chunk of money” while Linn Shuttle operates more efficiently, with more riders.
In comparison, Lebanon provides 20,900 rides per year. Linn Shuttle provides 25,000 rides for disabled persons and 15,000 on its public routes, according to information provided by McKinney. Lebanon received $30,800 of a $40,000 request for funding this year and operates at $7.54 per mile and $12.17 per ride. Linn Shuttle operates at $1.25 per mile and $5 per ride for the disabled patrons and $1.13 per mile and $6.80 per ride on public routes.
There’s certainly not enough money allocated to the fund to provide money to cover transportation costs, Nyquist said. “If it continues to be an area of concern for the council and the Senior Center, certainly getting out of the (disabled transportation) business is an option.”
Before they consider that, though, Nyquist said, they need to think about what related funding streams would go down with it.