Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home City Council voted last week to move forward with renewal of the Sweet Home Enterprise Zone and to maintain its existing boundaries.
The council voted 5-2. Voting yes were Bob Briana, Susan Coleman, Mayor Greg Mahler, Dave Trask and Diane Gerson. Voting no were James Goble and Lisa Gourley.
The city created the zone in 1986 and renewed it in 1996 and 2007. It has expanded the zone to include property outside the city’s urban growth boundary several times, including when it added property west of the city limits along Highway 20 in 1999; two mill properties outside of Halsey in 2002; and a 43-acre property west of Sweet Home along Highway 20 in 2005. It also had been expanded to include a property near Brownsville.
Enterprise zones provide tax breaks to companies that add new buildings and equipment while creating new jobs, said Community and Economic Development Director Jerry Sorte, citing information provided by Business Oregon. The additions receive 100-percent property tax abatement if the expansion creates at least one job or increases the number of jobs by 10 percent, whichever is higher. The exemption lasts for three years and may be extended up to five years if wages and compensation meet certain criteria relative to average county wages.
City Manager Ray Towry said that one party inquired about the benefit in the past year but was not eligible.
Sorte asked the council during its regular meeting on April 24 whether it would like to renew the enterprise zone and whether it wanted to continue to include properties outside the city limits.
Goble asked whether including those properties provided a benefit to Sweet Home.
“No potential benefit from my perspective,” Sorte said. “If I were to speculate, the rules for enterprise zones have changed over time, and there’s this requirement that the properties within the enterprise zone be within a specific number of miles, with a maximum square mile coverage. So if I were to speculate, those were just added and Sweet Home was convenient at the time to include them with an enterprise zone.
“My thought is we don’t issue their building permits, we don’t issue their planning permits, so there’s not a great benefit for having that connection with the city for those properties. It may make sense for those properties near Halsey and Brownsville to be included within a rural Linn County enterprise zone (which is in the process of creation).”
Sorte said officials representing the new rural zone just wanted to know what the city’s preference was regarding those properties and planned to add those properties if Sweet Home did not continue to include them.
Trask noted that it doesn’t hurt anything to include them and many who work there live in Sweet Home.
Sorte said that applications require staff time but anticipated it would be “negligible.”
“Should we be involved, shall we call it, the bureaucracy this entails for another community?” Towry said. “That’s really the question. Should we have anything to do with what goes on what is essentially for Halsey?”
“There was a reason we were asked to do this in the first place,” Gourley said, adding that she was curious why.
During the expansions John Pascone of the Albany-Millersburg Economic Development Corporation, told the council in 2005 and 2002 that Sweet Home had sufficient space to accommodate those properties and that AMEDC would handle applications involving the new properties. Enterprise zones were capped at 12 square miles.
Former City Manager Craig Martin said in a 2002 meeting between county and city officials that expanding an existing zone was more cost-effective than a new zone and expansions on the Halsey properties would provide job opportunities for Sweet Home residents.
Sorte told the council last week that he had no preference how the council wanted to do it.
“My personal opinion is let’s just make everything an enterprise zone, the whole county, the whole city and let’s call it good,” Sorte said. “This seems excessively bureaucratic to me. I think it probably makes sense to have some connection along Highway 20 because those are pretty close.
“The people who work there probably really identify with Sweet Home, but you could make the same argument with anywhere, so again, it’s like where do you send your application? A part of me thinks it makes sense for us to just have our own city limits within the enterprise zone because anybody outside of that, we have to say, ‘You might need building permits, go talk to the county, you might need planning permits, go talk to the county.’ There’s still that need for that connection to the county.”
Gourley said she could see a benefit “if somebody is wanting to put a business in any proximity to us so that we would know what’s going on, so that we would be as conducive as we can to help people to move here and bring their money here.”
Goble said he voted no because it did not benefit Sweet Home, and he didn’t think the community would support spending city resources to benefit another town.
During the meeting, Gourley later told The New Era, she understood the motion to limit the zone to the city limits; and she actually supports the decision because it did include the properties outside of town. She did not want to see them fall through the cracks and not be inside an enterprise zone.
In other business:
– The council received its 31st USA Tree City Award.
“On behalf of the Arbor Day Foundation and the Oregon State Forester Peter Daugherty, I am pleased to present you with the Tree City USA Award for 31 years,” said Lena Tucker, private forest division chief with the Oregon Department of Forestry. She oversees statewide urban and community forestry.
Sweet Home is one of 63 Oregon cities earning the award for 2017, Tucker said. Sweet Home is one of only nine cities to have exceeded 30 years winning the award.
Sweet Home was among 11 cities that performed above and beyond the four basic standards and received a Growth Award.
“That Growth Award recognizes environmental improvement and a higher level of tree care for our community. This was evidenced by additions or improvements to our program here,” Tucker said. “I would like to give a shout out to the Public Works Department. Their implementation of a computerized system known as PubWorks is what really qualified us as a city for this additional recognition.
“This system has allowed the city to computerize, track various tasks, such as tree management, within the city. It’s great for identifying tree management maintenance, removal, planting, tracks the date, the ID of the tree location, the time put in to complete the work. Really a great system, much appreciated as well as all of your staff who helped us in the past year.”
Sweet Home also received a 2018 Oregon Arbor Week Booster Grant for $500, Tucker said. “This helps us purchase trees and some additional supplies and goodies for the winning schools in our annual Arbor Day Poster Contest.”
To celebrate, trees will be planted at Oak Heights, Hawthorne and Foster elementary schools, Tucker said. She also provided flags, decals and plaques for use at the schools.
“The city should be very proud of the extra urban forestry efforts it has made,” Tucker said. “We all know that healthy trees contribute to the livability of every city but especially Sweet Home.”
– Mahler proclaimed May as Mental Health Month.