By Charles McNeilly, Mayor
The state of our city is strong. The state of our parking downtown during summer months, however, remains a test of faith.
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge and thank our city leadership and staff for showing up day in and day out, working on our behalf to build a stronger, more vibrant community. The Oregon Association of Municipal Recorders named our City Recorder Melissa Thompson Recorder of the year. This is a testament to the transformational energy and professionalism she brings to City Hall.
I want to acknowledge and thank our elected officials who work together to develop city policy and code; work collaboratively to move our city forward; and make tough decisions.
I want to acknowledge and thank those who served on commissions and committees during this past fiscal year. These commissions and committees are core to our community engagement and those who serve are a critical voice in our community.
I want to acknowledge and thank our business owners and their employees. Our thriving tourist economy contributes to a higher quality of life for our full-time residents by providing diverse amenities and services; and enabling lodging tax revenue.
And, most importantly, I want to thank our community for all that you do to make the City of Rockaway Beach a shining star on the Oregon coast that visitors flock to every year.
This past year has been a year of accomplishment and growth.
We have had at least ten new businesses open in town during the last 12 months; something I have not seen since becoming mayor.
The city launched a new City of Rockaway Beach website, now hosted by CivicPlus and purpose-built for municipal government needs. This modern platform provides innovative ways for our city to engage with the community, features advanced meeting management software to enhance collaboration and openness, and offers significantly improved site and document search capabilities. The website fully complies with the latest federal accessibility standards and will support future enhancements as our city continues to grow and our services expand. City Hall staff Lark Reifenstahl and City Recorder Melissa Thompson put a huge amount of time into this over the past year, and I would like to give them a special thank you for pushing this new site across the finish line.
City Council updated our short-term rental ordinance to add use of city-provided artwork for the required 24/7 hotline sign, the posting of the city’s fireworks notice inside rentals, and the establishment of an annual thirty rental day minimum requirement for short-term rental license renewal. All together this will support our need for tourist housing and help protect the quality and integrity of our neighborhoods.
The N Pacific Street Improvement Project consisted of the construction of a new water main, storm drain, sanitary sewer main, and a road asphalt overlay on N. Pacific St. between NW 3rd Ave. And NW 11th Ave., and on NW 11th Ave. between N. Pacific St. and Highway 101.
Scheduled to be completec later this summer, the Nedonna Beach water infrastructure project is set to become the city’s largest watermain improvement project in decades – targeting two miles of aging asbestos concrete watermains in the Nedonna Beach neighborhood, and replacing the current pipes with larger, modern utilities. The project will come in under budget with expanded scope thanks to the exceptional oversight provided by Superintendent Dan Emerson and Public Works staff.
The Sourcewater Protection Advisory Committee in collaboration with GSI Consultants delivered a Source Water Protection Plan and the Forest Stewardship Advisory Committee in consultation with Springboard Forestry delivered a Forest Stewardship Plan; both in support of our acquiring and managing the lower half of the Jetty Creek Watershed to support our growing need for clean, abundant water.
The Fire Department welcomed a new ladder truck, enhancing emergency response. We marked this milestone with a Push-In Ceremony in September, joined by residents and local dignitaries including Commissioner Erin Skaar and Representative Cyrus Javadi, in celebration of teamwork and readiness.
The Emergency Management Program continues to gain momentum, evolving steadily to enhance the resilience of our community. Captain Grace and Chief Hesse are actively advancing the initiative to improve assembly sites and evacuation route signage. Captain Grace received notification that Oregon’s Office of Resilience and Emergency Management (OREM) selected Rockaway Beach as a resilience hub receiving two 40-foot Conex boxes containing emergency supplies from OREM. The containers will come with food and medical supplies and communications equipment as well as a propane generator and solar array, allowing them to serve as an assembly point during emergency situations and support our communities’ needs for one to two months.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality awarded our city a Drinking Water Source Protection Award. We are proud to be one of only fifteen cities in the entire state that received this prestigious award. The city also holds the designation from Oregon Health Authority as an Outstanding Performer. Rockaway Beach is one of only six other cities in the state to receive both awards simultaneously. Learn more by reading Rockaway Beach’s 2025 Annual Drinking Water Quality Report which is available on our Facebook page and on the Public Works department page on our city’s website.
One of the defining characteristics of this past fiscal year has been the strength of our partnerships.
Simply put, the City of Rockaway Beach is not doing this work alone, and we should not. Our progress is the result of meaningful collaboration with local organizations, regional partners, state agencies, and nonprofits that share our commitment to this community.
This year, we partnered with the North County Recreation District and the Neah-Kah-Nie School District to bring back summer recreation programming for our youth.
Through this partnership, we are providing a free summer program for local kids, something that had been identified as a priority in our strategic plan. By combining resources, facilities, and funding, we were able to deliver a service that none of us could have provided alone.
We have also continued working with the Rockaway Beach Business Association to support our local business community through training, outreach, and shared initiatives. This includes collaborating on business safety training with our law enforcement partners to give local retailers practical tools to respond to issues they face day to day, as well as supporting community events like Movies in the Park, which brings residents and visitors together, increases foot traffic downtown, and supports our local businesses.
In addition, our partnerships extend to the many community organizations and volunteers who help make Rockaway Beach such a special place. We continue to work closely with the Lions Club, Go Rockaway, the Rockaway Beach Volunteers, David’s Chair and St. Mary by the Sea, who are helping expand accessibility and community support along our beachfront and throughout the city. Whether it provides greater beach access, supporting events, or serving residents in need, these partnerships reflect the heart of this community, neighbors working together to take care of one another.
One of the most exciting partnerships this year has been our work with Becoming rentABLE. Together, we launched a first-of-its-kind effort to position Rockaway Beach as a leader in accessible tourism. This partnership has already resulted in a destination-wide accessibility audit of our short-term rentals and a coordinated effort to connect travelers with disabilities to lodging that meets their needs. This is not just the right thing to do; it is also a smart economic strategy that expands our visitor base and strengthens our tourism economy.
Our watershed acquisition project is another excellent example of what strong partnerships can accomplish. This effort brings together a wide coalition of partners, including the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the Department of Environmental Quality, the North Coast Land Conservancy, Sustainable Northwest, Nuveen Natural Capital, the Oregon Health Authority, and others. Together, we are working to secure a long-term, sustainable water source for Rockaway Beach, one that will benefit this community for generations. This is a complex, multi-partner project, and it simply would not be possible without that collaboration.
We are also strengthening our coordination with partner agencies to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing our city.
We have been working with Tillamook County, the Department of Land Conservation and Development, and consulting partners like Cascadia Partners to ensure our planning efforts align with state housing laws and support long-term housing solutions.
At the same time, we are collaborating with the Port of Tillamook Bay, State Parks, and the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad to explore opportunities for downtown parking and infrastructure improvements.
These partnerships are essential. Many of the issues we face, housing, infrastructure, economic development, do not stop at city boundaries, and neither can the solutions.
We also have expanded partnerships that directly support our residents. Through our work with Community Action Resource Enterprises (CARE), we launched a utility assistance program to help households experiencing financial hardship.
And we are continuing to collaborate with Tillamook County on initiatives that reduce barriers to housing, including efforts to support accessory dwelling units and affordability.
These partnerships allow us to extend our resources further and deliver focused assistance where it is needed most.
Public safety remains a shared responsibility, and our partnerships in this area are critical. Our city partners with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department on public safety. Our Fire Department collaborates closely with many partner agencies including the Coast Guard, Sheriff’s Office, Nehalem Fire, Adventist Health, and Tillamook 911 to provide coordinated emergency response across the region. This level of coordination ensures that when emergencies happen, our community benefits from a unified, professional response.
As we look to the future, one thing is clear: Partnerships will continue to play a vital role in how we move Rockaway Beach forward. They allow us to leverage resources, expand our capacity, and take on projects that would otherwise be out of reach.
But more than that, they reflect who we are as a community, collaborative, resilient, and committed to working together to achieve something greater than any one organization could accomplish alone.
As we reflect on where Rockaway Beach stands today, there is both encouraging news and an important reality for which we must prepare.
The good news is that the City’s current financial position is strong. Based on our most recent projections, we have sufficient revenue to sustain our current level of General Fund services such as public safety and roads & streets for the next five years. This is the result of years of disciplined fiscal management, thoughtful planning, and strong collaboration between City Council, staff, and our community. It means we can continue providing the services our residents rely on today while maintaining the stability we have worked hard to build.
However, that same projection brings with it a clear message: now is the time to begin planning for what comes next.
While our revenues can sustain existing services in the near term, they do not provide capacity for expansion beyond what we currently deliver. At the same time, service demands, particularly for emergency response, continue to grow. We are experiencing increased call volumes, greater complexity in incidents, and rising expectations for timely, reliable service.
And we need to be honest about what that means on the ground. Our first responders are tired. They continue to show up, perform at an elevated level, and serve this community with dedication and professionalism, but they are doing so under increasing strain.
We know there are important needs within our community that remain unmet. This includes increasing our capacity for emergency response through additional firefighters and first responders, as well as planning for critical infrastructure like a new fire station located outside of the tsunami inundation zone. These are not just enhancements; they are long-term investments in the safety and resilience of Rockaway Beach.
At this point in time, we simply do not yet have the sustainable revenue needed to support these expansions. This creates an important moment for Rockaway Beach. It is a time for us to come together to make thoughtful decisions and come out the other side of this transition stronger.
Our focus now must be on engaging the community in a thoughtful and transparent conversation about service levels, priorities, and how we want to fund the future of this City. Sustaining what we have built is just as important, and often more challenging than achieving it in the first place. If we want to maintain and eventually expand services, we will need to explore new revenue options, consider adjustments to service delivery, and align our resources with community expectations.
This work is already underway. As we update our Five-Year Strategic Plan this fall, the Fire Department is also developing a comprehensive Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis that will directly inform that update. Together, these efforts will provide a clearer understanding of our current capabilities, future service demands, and long-term emergency service needs. Through this process, we will be asking important questions as a community: What level of service do we expect? How much are we willing to fund to achieve it? And how do we ensure Rockaway Beach remains safe, resilient, and well-managed not just today, but for the decades ahead?
The path forward will require collaboration, transparency, and shared understanding. But if the past few years have shown us anything, it is that Rockaway Beach is well-equipped to meet these challenges with the same thoughtful, deliberate approach that has brought us to where we are today.
In the coming fiscal year, you will see safe and accessible public facilities at Lake Lytle, a new code enforcement program, enhancements to our Emergency Management Program, investment in additional parking along Highway 101, efforts and programs to facilitate new home construction, and more; all guided by our Five-Year Strategic Plan. I encourage you to read City Manager Shepard’s budget message on pages 6 – 12 of this fiscal year’s budget to understand the full scope of budgeted activity for 2026-2027 fiscal year.
The strength of our city lies in the hands of you, its people. The state of our city is strong – and with your continued passion, commitment, and engagement, it will only grow stronger. In this spirit watch for and participate in opportunities to engage in the refresh of our Strategic Plan this fall.
It is a distinct pleasure being the Mayor of the City of Rockaway Beach. Thank you for the opportunity to serve and buckle up because it is going to be another exciting year for Rockaway Beach.
Thank you for your time and attention!
