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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 7, 2017)
144TH YEAR, NO. 178 ONE DOLLAR DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2017 Aggressive panhandling sullies downtown core Passers-by, retailers gripe about loitering, public drunkenness By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian One restaurant owner said a homeless person asked his daughter to perform a sex act as she walked by. A young, female employee at a coffee shop said a group of homeless tried to offer her money and later banged on her car windows when she was returning from dinner. Horror stories abound among locals downtown, up in arms at what they say are more aggressive tactics and public drunk- enness by some homeless people hanging out in vacant storefronts, on Commercial Street, around the transit center and along the Astoria Riverwalk. Police Chief and Assistant City Man- ager Brad Johnston addressed a gather- ing of merchants with the Astoria Down- town Historic District Association Friday. He said police are limited in their ability to address the situation, with many interac- tions covered by free speech rights. He said fines are an ineffective deterrent for people with no ability to pay. “This isn’t vagrancy,” Johnston said. “We don’t make decisions based on peo- ple’s housing status. We’re talking about behaviors, and I think when we reframe the Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian See HOMELESS, Page 9A Some vacant shops along Commercial Street offer homeless a location to panhandle in downtown Astoria. The Daily Astorian/File Photo Astoria District Forester Dan Goody looks for a springboard notch in a Douglas Fir that Goody thinks was cut down in the 1940s. Waldorf gets new life as housing Forestry to relook at some fire fees Landowners submitted appeals of assessments By JACK HEFFERNAN The Daily Astorian Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian The Waldorf Hotel building adjacent to Astoria City Hall will likely become about 40 units of lower-income housing. Workforce roles targeted for units By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian T he former Waldorf Hotel on Duane Street in downtown Astoria will likely become about 40 units of lower-in- come housing in the next couple of years. A 90-day due diligence period began last week by Inno- vative Housing Inc., a Portland nonprofit that refurbishes old buildings into low-income housing. The nonprofit would then buy the building, also known as the Merwyn Hotel, from Groat Brothers Inc., a demolition and recycling com- pany in Woodland, Washington, that acquired the building in 2012 with the intent of tearing it down. Julie Garver, the housing development director for Inno- vative Housing, said the nonprofit is studying the geo- technical stability, roof and dry rot in the building, lodged Jeff Daly/Submitted Photo See WALDORF, Page 9A Many landowners whose proper- ties were recently classified as for- estlands will not need to pay an addi- tional fee for fire protection until next year, if ever. A committee that originally added 4,750 lots — owned by 2,300 resi- dents — as forestland will hold a pub- lic meeting sometime in April. At the meeting, the committee will recon- sider certain lots in Seaside, Warren- ton and Lewis and Clark. The considerations will be based largely on 29 appeals submitted by landowners in early February, and about five to 10 lots likely will be per- manently taken off the assessment roll, said Dan Goody, Astoria district forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry. The committee either will make its decisions at the meeting or schedule another one. “Going through a very large pro- cess throughout the county, we want to make sure each parcel of land is treated equally,” Goody said. “It’s very small percentage-wise, but it’s very important to do due diligence to get this right.” Soon after the appeals were sub- mitted, the Clatsop County Asses- sor’s Office told the Department of Forestry it would not be able to add all of the properties to this fall’s prop- erty tax mailing, citing the high vol- ume of properties that must be pro- cessed. As a result, a still unknown number of the newly classified prop- erties will not be added to the assess- ment roll until 2018, Goody said. The Department of Forestry pro- vides fire protection to forest and grazing lands through money from both the state general fund and fees it collects from forestland property owners. With the advice of the committee, the department had added the lands in July while also removing about 1,200 The Waldorf Hotel sign behind some railings inside the Merwyn Building. See FIRE FEES, Page 5A Astoria City Council adopts inclusivity resolution Document will not stop federal immigration enforcement By ERICK BENGEL The Daily Astorian Recognizing immigrants’ important contributions to Astoria, the City Council adopted a resolution Tuesday reaffirming the city’s policy of inclusivity. But council members acknowledged the resolution cannot stop U.S. Immigra- tion and Customs Enforce- ment from apprehending and deporting the community’s undocumented immigrants. The inclusivity resolution comes amid President Donald Trump’s nationwide crack- down on illegal immigration. Since Trump took office, ICE, a division of the U.S. Depart- ment of Homeland Security, has ramped up raids, detain- ments and deportation, efforts the president claims protects American citizens. Trump signed the second draft of an executive order Monday restricting citizens from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. An earlier version of the Astoria resolution, read at a previous council meeting, would have precluded the city from providing a copy of Municipal Court dockets to ICE, which requests the doc- uments electronically, City Manager Brett Estes said. The city must freely provide these public records by stat- ute, since to refuse would vio- late open records law. Jorge Gutierrez, the exec- utive director of the Lower Columbia Hispanic Council, helped City Attorney Blair Henningsgaard revise the document, which was initially drafted by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and Causa, an immi- grants’ rights advocacy group. Jorge Gutierrez The final version reads, “except as required by law, no city agency or employee shall use monies or equipment to detect or apprehend persons whose only violation involves a federal immigration law.” In addition, “except as required by federal or state law, no city services or benefits of any kind shall be conditioned upon a res- ident’s federal immigration status.” These clauses, like the rest of the resolution, reflect exist- ing city practice. The resolution does not make Astoria a “sanctuary city,” a general term describ- ing cities that seek to protect undocumented immigrants from federal immigration policies. See COUNCIL, Page 5A
