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