Improvement Commission - Regular Meeting

Call the Urban Renewal Agency Budget Committee meeting to order. June 3rd, 2026, first item of business, an election of a chair and a secretary. Do I have any nominations for chair?

I'll nominate Kathleen McDonald.

Is there any seconds?

No, Montero just seconded. Oh, okay.

Montero a nomination and Montero second.

Any further nominations?

Hearing none, I'll close nominations and we'll vote on the one choice. All those in favor, Kathleen McDonald being chair, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. It's all yours. You need to elect a secretary now. You.

I'm going to take over? Okay. So do we have any nominations for secretary? I'd like to nominate Rebecca Buck. Any second?

I second. Oh, yeah. There's a bunch of us that seconded her.

I second third. OK. All those in favor, or are there any other nominations? Hearing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Rebecca's our secretary. Has everybody had a chance to look at the Urban Renewable Agency budget meeting minutes from last year?

Move to approve.

We have a motion to approve. Second. And we have a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Budget meeting. Okay.

All right. So as many of you are aware, the Southeast Seaside Urban Renewal District exists to basically beautify and enhance the infrastructure economy of the South End Seaside. and it has been in place since 2017 if I remember 2018 I think is the first year that it was it was in place collecting taxes and we've recently switched from a mode where the taxes that were coming in weren't sufficient to do or make progress on any of the of the plans that the urban renewal plan had in place to a mode where we can start chipping away at some of that stuff. And so for those of you that were there, here's the boundaries of the district. Does everyone have a copy of the actual plan? Well, I'll tell you what, if you need one, get a hold of me and I can get it out to you. So here's the boundaries of the actual And for those of you that were here last year, the project that we decided to take on was the Wahana Pump Station right across from the ball fields there at the hospital. And so we anticipate, I talked to Paul about this recently, that we are going to put the RFP out for that shortly. So this is work that should happen in the early summer, assuming that we get a qualified bid that comes back. So I can update everyone as that project continues, but right now there hasn't been any spending on that, so there's nothing to really update anyone on. The next priority... that I would propose to this body is, and some folks will be very excited about this, is the beginnings of an update to Scrooge Drive. It's pretty well called out in the plan as not sufficient for the volume of traffic that was going to go up to the school. We knew that at that point and we finally have enough money to do something about that right and so uh given the emphasis on uh road projects around the city already um we felt that this was a good time to start the process of looking at that street specifically so with that i mean this is just a second but this budget overview is all of the agency budgets so there's four funds within the urban renewal budget two of them are debt funds two of them are construction funds two of them are from an urban renewal district that no longer uh actively takes part in any projects But we do need at some point in the future to take a look at those and see whether there are still projects in the old urban renewal fund that can be done. Otherwise, we've got to return the money to the county and they will dole out as it would have been as it would have been apportioned anyway. for each of the four funds. So you can see our beginning balance there. And then you can see that the vast, vast majority of expenses are in capital. And those two items are the Wahana Pump Station and the improvements to Spruce Drive. So throwing it back to about a year ago, the budget for the Wahana Pump Station was about a million and a half. I have a question slide next Kathy. I'll get to you just a second here And so that would leave two and a half million assuming that we didn't go under budget for the pump station for Improvements to spruce bed and it leaves us roughly six hundred thousand in the bank for future projects I don't I don't have any concept whether two and a half million is going to be enough for Spruce Drive. My instincts tell me probably not. So two and a half will at least get us a healthy start on our way to improving that. This is in your book as well, but this is just a breakdown. I know everyone's got good enough eyesight to see that.

Yes, I have a question about the funding for the street improvements and Spruce Drive because Spruce Drive is a route to school and it was called out in the Safe Routes to School improvement plans that were done a few years ago. Are there plans to apply for Safe Routes to School construction money which is not available available right now but will be supposedly available again next year.

I know that we've received Safe Routes to School funding before. I can't remember specifically what they were for.

That was for the... Before doing any of these big projects, the first group will be reaching out to see what state resources are available, sometimes for planning, sometimes for the construction, sometimes for low-interest loans. We will look at all options before we plow into it, I guess.

I am aware, Kathy, of the safe routes to school option and I know that we've received funding for some of that before but I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what but I but it's it's one of the items that will go the entire funding package for this yeah is there you're bringing up Kathy

There she goes. So she reconnects. Is there any chance for a partnership with the school district on the repairs of Spruce Drive, considering the traffic that is on that street is primarily driven by the school district being up there now?

We can always ask. Is that something we can explore?

We can explore and ask, but there is no requirement from them. We can pursue it and reach out. That's their task.

And they might have access to also other kinds of funding that is available for school districts.

And I would say it's in their best interest to have that repaired and fixed and beautiful. So I think they could be a partner in that.

Yeah, I agree.

So given the urban growth boundaries,

looking at spruce how far up will these improvements go on that road i don't have an answer i do it turns into a private road yes it turns into the school's road which is not private but basically right when you get to kind of where the asphalt begins right before the elementary school that's all school property where that gate was I don't remember a gate. But basically from Wahana to just before you can turn to go to the high school, that's probably the area. It might be just short of that as well. It looks like it's almost the intersection to Alder here.

It's at Alder. It's just above Alder. You can see the pavement changes substantially at that intersection, and that's where the break is. Yes.

Okay, that's kind of what my question is.

so technically does that mean that the school district is responsible for the road from that point east yeah that's their their land their road okay because they were really hesitant about doing any work on spruce zach could you go back to the numbers slide please

You want this one or the next one? This one. This one here?

Yes, please. So if we have 3.6 now, but it's going to cost $4 million, how do we end up with $600,000 in the bank?

That's a wonderful question. So on here. OK. I think it has to do, I'm pretty sure it has to do with this $1.5 million transfer here. So that inflates that number. So if you look, I think our, so I didn't have, I didn't put revenues in here, but I would suspect that revenues are in the, well, they'll get in your book, in the realm of probably a million dollars.

Yeah.

So if you look at 3.6 plus another million minus the expenses that come off of that, that gives you 600. Without doing the math and looking at it right in front of me, I can't 100% answer that.

You're counting the additional transfers that will come in during the course of this next year.

I don't know why it was set up like this. I don't have the context there, but there is a debt fund and I suspect that it's in case that the urban renewal agency ever took on bond debt. But there's two funds, right? There's a collections fund and expense fund. money comes into one fund gets transferred over here to spend yes and i don't understand why but that is the the system that we have and so that's that's what we do and we know that that transfer isn't creating um us counting the money twice okay and what is counted as an expense what is the total requirements number what is that what is total requirements So that's that's every all the expenses. So requirements. So in Oregon you've got two items. You've got resources, which is your beginning fund balance revenues. Any debt proceeds or anything like that. So that's your resources, money available. OK. And then your requirements or expenses or things that are counted as expenses, right? So your traditional personnel, materials and services, capital. transfers out, contingency, debt payments, things like that. So that whole bucket of expenses is required in Oregon. Okay, last question.

Do we have a quote on how much the lift station work is going to cost out of the $4 million?

It's not really a quote. It's got to be designed first, and that's what we're working on right now.

You've got two projects on the lift station. You've got the design and the You've got the construction. And for a lift station of that size, I think you're looking at anywhere between $1 million to $1.2 million for everything. It might be a little bit less than it kind of depends. It's a nice space because it's got plenty of space to work in. So I've worked in other places that were a lot more confined. And that drives the cost up. Plus, it's not as deep. as some of the other ones in depth, cost goes up exponentially. So we may actually be a good place for that one because it's a shallow station.

Just be careful not to overpromise. Right, but I'm hearing some good news. Deliver.

Let me give you an example. Bay City put in a pump station that was 25 feet deep, and they put in a 500-foot horizontal bore underneath a swamp to it. That cost them about $850,000. So this is substantially less of a scope of work based upon what I've seen. But it's still engineering and permitting will be a chunk of money, but not as much as construction.

So with the design work plus the construction work, we're anticipating this summer on that? Is that what I heard?

And then? I think we can get design concluded by the end of the summer. Then DEQ has to review and permit it. Sometimes they're slow. Sometimes they're fast. We could construct this technically at any time. It's a lot messier in the winter. It really depends on how fast we can get it designed and through DEQ.

Also, sometimes when you're bidding it out, if you give much more flexibility on timing for the contractors and they can build it into their slow time, you can get a better bid than if you're trying to into a certain window, and they may or may not be busy.

Does anything prevent us from starting the design of the Spruce Drive project while these are happening?

No, I think there's a commission of funds that we can be doing both. We need to know where the final pricing will be at the pump station before we construct the road, but there's certainly enough funds to start with the design.

Great, thank you.

And I'm really glad that these two are here because I would have said, I'll get back to you.

With the pump station project, number one, we can anticipate that that's going to really affect the traffic on Niawana when that gets going. And number two, I'm asking that.

That's a question, not a statement. We mean Wahana. Wahana. Wahana. Sorry.

It should be able to use it all. There's plenty of staging area. That was going to be my next question. I don't think that it's going to be a major traffic issue. They're going to have equipment there, but they're going to be off-road. They'll have their area worked out. Okay, and you don't anticipate needing the ball field parking lot for staging Possibly it kind of depends on you know, the more room you give them the The more room they'll take, they like having a space. It would be nice to have that. I don't think it's absolutely necessary. There's also a bit of a history of it. There is. Right, and we just fixed that. That's right. Yeah, we don't really want to go there. Try not to. I think there's enough space there now to do it. It'll be a little bit tight for them, but I've seen them do it in tighter spots.

Okay. Thank you.

There's an additional project I'd like to put on our radar, at least for consideration in the future. When this district was originally set up, we talked about potentially fixing the area with sewer and maybe cleaning up some of the dilapidated houses. north of Avenue U to Bell Bowie on the Mechanicum. And that's something that has been on our radar for a long time. And maybe this district could be a participant in that. And Sadie is here. Chair McDonald, could we allow a comment from the audience on this? Do you want to speak on this a little bit, Sadie?

I certainly can. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very, very early on in the works for that goal for the chamber. But since that is our First impression that we give our guests that are coming from the south We feel like we need to prove that for the whole community As I came here as a visitor first back in 2012 We drove straight through town without turning without knowing what was on the west side of one the impression was that it was a rundown town and we kept on going and And it wasn't until we had the excuse to come and stay overnight looking at a property that we discovered with joy and a tremendous community that is Seaside. But if we had not had that opportunity to go back and view it like that, we wouldn't have come back. We don't want that for other folks coming through our community. We want them to see the positives from the moment that they drive through. And so ultimately, the chamber would like to contribute to the efforts there of beautification north of Avenue U. And that is one of our goals with our community enrichment committee.

Can I add a little context? I don't think we want to go to it necessarily in this meeting.

Jeff's here, but at a future council meeting, I think you could have a discussion of the developability of that area.

So when I first got here, Mayor Barber, that was one of his first priorities was getting sewer in there so they can develop. and what we discovered is based on the land use it's unlikely it's either impossible or going to be very difficult for anyone to have any building permits along there because of the proximity to the river and so there's there's several issues there and so that's something we should give you an update on that it may be in a better interest in the long term for the urban renewal agency to have a plan to purchase properties along there when they become available and then create a park trail system along there rather than a lot of house but i don't think there's a really viable way to have businesses along there um for a number of reasons but we can go into later but i think the goal is the same but it's maybe a different approach i don't actually have a similar vision to what

Yeah, so the idea is Sadie and I have been discussing would be actually the opposite of development actually Kind of wilding it and making it more visually pleasing as opposed to fixing up houses But it's gonna definitely take probably more than just this the southeast seaside urban real district and the chamber So I'm trying to get some different groups together all partner and try to get this done So I just want to put it on our radar and maybe we can contribute something to that effort. I Yeah, so there is a property for sale there and I'm sure others could be.

There's stories behind that property.

I think there's also an issue where when people start to discover that you can't really build or expand your house or anything on there, that the value goes down.

Any other discussion about that?

Kathy, we lost you. Were you finished with your question?

Yes, I was. Thank you.

Zach, what about Avenue S?

that is one of the future projects but it's a major major project right so um i can't i can't tell you timing at this point uh but avenue s is is high on the priorities list for this i think it would be a high candidate for the next project after spruce but i think we'll have more funds and more projects available so at that point we'll be more in a position of lots of options and we'll have the urban renewal agency start

for public comments. Are there any public comments about this budget or the projects contained within that budget? Hearing none, we'll close the public comments. Now we can have a discussion about that. did you all as a body determine that so do we have any more discussion about this before we move to motions does anybody want to make a motion i'll make a motion

I make the motion to recommend approval of the fiscal year 2026-2027 Seaside Urban Renewal Agency budget in the amount of $6,127,027 to the Seaside Improvement Commission.

All those in favor say aye. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

The second one in there, I'm not 100% sure the budget committee needs to do, but I thought it better safe than sorry. It's the mechanism to fund through the county, so it's not going to hurt us to do an extra one.

When we mentioned when we talk about the ad valorem, don't we have to include the percent rate in there?

So that's what this is. This takes the place of the ad valorem taxes.

It's a different thing. It's not ad valorem.

Anyone want to make a motion?

I make a motion to recommend the Seaside Improvement Commission certify the Southeast Seaside Urban Renewal District under ORS 457.4451 Part 4. Other reduced rate plans that request 100% of the division of tax.

I'll second.

I have a motion. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none, motion passes. And we can adjourn the meeting.

Thank you all for coming. Are you adjourning one and starting another? Yep.

So we're adjourning the budget committee meeting. For those of you on the improvement commission, please hang on. Matt, thank you for rushing out here.

Yeah.

sorry thank you everyone for taking taking some time yeah

Thank you.

Call the Improvement Commission meeting to order for June 3rd, 2026. We are going to amend the agenda to add election of officers immediately following when I stop talking. I have me.

Yeah, I move that we amend the agenda to add the election of officers. As item number 2.

I'll second we gotta move in motion in a second. Montero vinegar. All those in favor say aye aye. Any opposed motion carries. Okay. I have a nomination for chair of the Improvement Commission.

Okay, just a minute. Yeah. Kathy's .

I'm sorry. This is for the Improvement Commission. And Kathy, you are part of the Urban Renewal Agency, but not the Improvement Commission.

Great. Thank you. I was hoping for a roll call so I could tell whether I was or not. I appreciate that.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that.

So, nominations please.

Carrie Lambert.

We got a nomination for Carrie Lambert. I'll second.

That was Morrissey and Binnicker. Any further nominations? Okay, we'll close nominations and vote for the one candidate. All those in favor of Carrie Lambert being Chair of Improvement Commission, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. It's all yours, Carrie. Your next step is to select a secretary. Nominate.

I'll nominate Kathleen McDonald. I second.

All right.

So we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Good to continue again?

Yes.

Okay. So are we going now to vacancy of urban renewal budget committee? Yes. Okay, vacancy of urban renewal budget committee. There's some vacancies. So who appoints them? Are we going to recruit?

Go ahead. Basically, the counselors need to recruit whoever, and that's partially why we have vacancies, because we're also short counselors.

So right now, Counselor Ansborough is the only person in position to appoint, correct? Correct. Do you have an appointee?

He probably just found out about it.

Just saying. I'm working on it.

We'll circle back on it.

Okay. And then given whatever the council ends up doing with the appointees for the next meeting. It'll be at the next meeting. Okay. All right.

Move to number three.

Move in? Okay. So approval of minutes from November 5th, 2025. Has everyone had a chance to read those?

Move to approve minutes in November 5th, 2025. Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, hearing none. Can I just cruise on to number four, public hearing, resolution IC134, resolution adopting and appropriating the 2026-2027 Seaside Urban Renewal Agency budget.

Turn it over to Zach.

There is, so this is the resolution that legally appropriates the funds. There is one amendment that you all need to know about. It says Sadie's name on the bottom of that. And we have since updated that and we'll update it again. And so it will say your name, Carrie, once that's formally approved.

So we don't need to amend it and just uh public hearing public comments is that what we're doing right now yeah open public hearing anyone have anything to say about it okay hearing none we're closing public uh comments commission comments let's get it approved okay do we have a motion for approval Oh, I guess do we have to go to options?

Yeah, so if you're ready, if this body's ready to put this forward for vote, those two optional motions there are essentially the same as in the budget committee, except they recommended and you guys approve.

I move to approve the Seaside Urban Renewal Agency budget for fiscal year 2027 in the amount of $6,127,000. $0.27. I'll second. Perfect.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Hearing none, can we do the motion to adopt? Excellent. Anyone want to make a motion to adopt?

No, that wasn't. That's not supposed to be on there. We just do those.

The second one has to be made too. I move that the Southeast Seaside Urban Renewal District select part four, other reduced rate plans and request 100% from the division of tax reference ORS 457.445 parens one. I'll second.

All in favor?

Aye. Any opposed?

Thank you all. Good job. Adjourn us.

Adjourn. OK, we are adjourned for I think a 7 o'clock meeting, right?

All right. Good job, Carrie.