By Randy Kugler
At the June Council meeting, our Council put us on a path for a ribbon cutting of our new City Hall sometime in 2025 by approving a construction loan option rather than allowing citizens the opportunity to vote for a Bond. In 2025 during the ceremonies acknowledging the long path to get to this day, I am sure that our number one ranking will not be mentioned so I want to start the celebration of our unique status early.
Other than the Mayor who attempted to give us the opportunity to vote on this important project, the remaining four Council members had no interest in considering a new construction modular option that would have cost millions of dollars less nor putting the financing matter before voters. While resident voters were the losers on this night, the project team consultants breathed easier knowing that checks for more than $430,000 would again resume for their efforts to get us to ribbon cutting day.
So why does this Council loan decision matter? For the past almost 20 years, the City has not been able to adequately maintain our water, street and storm drain infrastructure. Increased water rates, new utility fees, and possible proposed property tax Bond measures to remedy these problems will fill upcoming Council Agendas. So when these funding solution discussions come up, the City will no doubt attempt to convince us that money saved on a less costly City Hall build could not have instead been used to address this past neglect and mitigate the need to make these new revenue requests.
The City Manager in her City Hall Project Update released to citizens on March 27th claimed that visitors currently pay for pretty much of all of our infrastructure. The percentage of Transient Lodging Tax revenue in the proposed Budget that gets transferred to support our infrastructure projects is the following: water – 0% Street – 7.6% Storm Drain – 2% . Contrary to these published declarations, visitors through TLT revenue are not obviously paying for any significant support of our infrastructure needs.
The newly approved loan to pay the debt for our City Hall ensures that even less funding will now be available through TLT revenue in the General Fund to finance City infrastructure projects.
The Council President described the City’s outreach process since the 2019 Bond failure and expressed complete confidence they had gotten it right this time and were delivering what a majority of citizens wanted. What went unsaid was we made the same claims in 2019 and we are not going to have a repeat of that outcome this time.
In the months ahead as costs for our City Hall become clearer, the big question is just how much will this project end up costing. No final information on the details of the loan that is being requested has been presented to the public yet so that debt cost is unknown. The City Manager also indicated that including a solar option is still possible and will be presented in upcoming designs.
Most cities that achieve a number one ranking are eager to let their citizens know of the effort that it took to attain such recognition. Any other citizens out there ready to start the celebration?
*Oregon is a state of small cities. 317 of these cities are like Manzanita and have a population of 5,000 or less. The June 7th City Council decision ensures our place of recognition as having the most expensive City Hall construction project for a City within this category that I am confident will never be broken.