Benny Westcott
At the July 6 planning commission meeting at City Hall, Community and Economic Development Director Blair Larsen said that the day before, Fitzpatrick Painting committed to providing a four-man painting crew in Sweet Home for 10 weeks at no cost to the city to help with the city’s upcoming “Paint the Town” project.
Miller Paint is providing paint to update the look of businesses in downtown Sweet Home, specifically Main and Long streets.
Of the pledge from Fitzpatrick, Larsen said “It’s very generous and we are very excited about that development, because trying to arrange volunteers for this many properties and trying to make sure we do a professional job is a Herculean task.”
He noted that the city will still be having volunteers paint buildings, but said he’s glad that Fitzpatrick will be doing “the lion’s share” of the work.
Larsen said that 36 properties have signed up to be painted.
The city designed a color palette with Miller Paint, “specifically colors that are designed to work well together with a main and trim color, but also colors that will look good next to each other, but not too similar,” Larsen said.
Businesses are being asked their top three choices for a body color and trim color alike. “We’re not guaranteeing that they will be able to have that color,” Larsen noted. “What we are telling people is we will do our best to honor your wishes. However, we are trying to coordinate all of these properties, and we want to make sure that we spread these colors around and we want to make sure that we don’t have carbon copies of different buildings.
“It may be a little bit paternalistic to say we’re going to pick the colors,” Larsen admitted. “But you know what? It’s a free paint job.”
Also at the meeting, the planning commission:
n Granted the city a variance to allow an eight foot security fence for site security at the city’s water treatment plant, and to match the already existing fence. According to the city’s application, the variance is necessary to provide adequate site security for the plant.
“The Water Treatment Plant is a critical infrastructure facility and is also an attractive target for vandalism and malicious acts,” the application said. “The existing fence is of robust construction (7-foot cyclone and 1-foot barbed wire for a total of 8 feet) but only protects a small portion of the site.
Extension of the fence to protect the property & facility entrances has been identified as a needed security improvement in the Risk and Resiliency Assessment, which the city’s engineer of record West Yost Associates developed in accordance with the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018.
The immediate project city staff are planning is to install fencing along the southern property line of the plant to protect the entrance. In the future staff intend to install additional fencing to protect the northern portion of the property.
n Heard from 13th Avenue resident Jenny Savage, who argued against the city ordinance that requires a carport or garage for a single dwelling unit.
She said that she and her husband have “a very open household and people that live in and out of our house as we help them heal, and we would like to create a living space in our garage.
“But we are unable to at this time because of the codes where you have to have a carport,” she continued, noting that if she were to convert her garage into a living space, she would have to then build another garage or carport to comply with code, which she doesn’t have space for or desire to do.
“It does rain a lot here in the valley, but having a carport or garage should not be a mandatory thing in my opinion – that should be a preference thing.”
Noting that homelessness is an issue in town, Savage said “This is a way we can have more people opening up their homes, or it’s an available thing to rent out a piece of your property that’s already there to provide housing for people who need it.”
Chairman Jeffrey Parker said the benefit of the ordinance is eliminating open storage and avoiding a scenario in which “As people drive past a house, there’s just stuff stacked outside all over the place.” He said that part of the code comes from the state, not just Sweet Home.
Commissioner Henry Wolthuis added that “It had just been a long established building standard.”
Savage countered that “If you’ve been around anyone who hoards, it doesn’t matter how much storage space they have – it’s going to look ridiculous.”
In closing, Parker said “This can continue to be a discussion amongst the planning commission in the days and weeks to come. I appreciate what you want to do with the space, and hopefully something somehow can be solved to help you do so.”