3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
Cannon Beach Planning Commission
cool to workforce housing amendments
Recommends
council reject
the changes
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
CANNON BEACH —
Members of the Cannon
Beach Planning Commission
recognize the city needs work-
force housing. But zoning
amendments brought before
them Thursday night are not
the way to do it, they decided.
The commission recom-
mended the City Council
reject the changes intended
to reduce barriers for private
developers seeking to build
affordable housing.
The amendments were
intended to meet housing
needs by reducing construc-
tion costs and subsequently
reducing rental costs to ten-
ants, wrote Martin North Vice
President of Operations Dave
Norstedt in January.
Mike Clark, owner of
Coaster Properties, with for-
mer city planner Rainmar
Bartl, proposed to amend
parts of the code.
Amendments focused on
reducing parking require-
Cannon Beach
Housing stock in Cannon Beach as presented by the Can-
non Beach Affordable Housing Task Force.
ments to maximize the num-
ber of units on a property
and increasing height restric-
tions in the R3 zone, which
is designated for multifamily
housing.
By raising the roof-line
limit from 28 feet to 32 feet,
developers could build three
stories to include more units,
intended to drive down rents
for tenants.
Reduced landscaping area
requirements and changes
to condominium conver-
sion rules for multifamily
dwellings were also among
proposals.
“To me there’s nothing
in this that would assure this
would be affordable housing,”
Commissioner Lisa Kerr said.
“The proponents are all people
involved in development and
commercial endeavors. That’s
fine — but the way it’s writ-
ten here is a disaster waiting to
happen. I don’t think how any
of this could lead to affordable
housing.”
Commissioner
Darryl
Johnson objected to proposed
roof-height changes. “Moving
the height to 32 feet reminds
me of going to Seaside,” he
said. “We have a different feel
in the city.”
Parking changes could
make spaces harder to find, he
added. “Lowering the parking
in the units downtown where
there’s already a premium for
parking, lowering those stan-
dards doesn’t make any sense.”
Commission
Chairman
Bob Lundy said statutes
should stand as written, with
variances to create workforce
housing considered on a case-
by-case basis.
The commissioners recom-
mended rejection of all amend-
ments by a 7-0 vote.
“We’re looking for another
alternative to this,” Kerr said
after the meeting. “It’s not just
a blanket ‘no way.’ I just don’t
see any outside controls on
this. Outside developers com-
ing in and charging $1,600
for an apartment — that’s not
affordable housing anymore.”
Interior boss alters overhaul after pushback
By MATTHEW BROWN
and DAN ELLIOTT
Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — U.S.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke
is revamping a planned sweep-
ing overhaul of his department
with a new organizational
map that more closely follows
state lines instead of the natu-
ral boundaries he initially pro-
posed, he told The Associated
Press in an exclusive interview.
The changes follow com-
plaints from a bipartisan group
of Western state governors that
Zinke did not consult them
before unveiling his original
plan last month. The agency
oversees vast public lands, pri-
marily in the U.S. West, rang-
ing from protected national
parks and wildlife refuges to
areas where coal mining and
energy exploration dominate
the landscape.
Zinke told AP that his goal
remains unchanged: decentral-
izing the Interior Department’s
bureaucracy and creating 13
regional headquarters.
“At present we are mis-
managing and squandering
our assets through a layered
bureaucracy that reflects a very
old department that really has
not reorganized since the turn
of the last century,” he said.
“We will be moving assets
to the front lines and moving
authority to make decisions
and, I would argue, better deci-
sions to the front lines.”
The redrawn map shows
that states such as Colo-
rado, New Mexico and Wyo-
ming would fall within a sin-
gle region instead of being split
among multiple regions. Other
states remain divided, includ-
ing California, Nevada, Mon-
tana and Oregon.
Aspects of the original
map — which was first made
public by AP — remain, with
some regions labeled accord-
ing to river systems, such as
the Upper Colorado Basin and
the Missouri Basin. But the
new lines tend to cut across
geographic features and follow
state lines, not boundaries of
rivers and ecosystems.
The new proposal resulted
from discussions with gov-
ernors, members of Con-
gress and senior leaders at the
agency, Interior Department
officials said. Zinke spokes-
woman Heather Swift said the
original proposal had been a
“discussion draft” rather than
a finished document and was
now being refined through a
collaborative process.
Zinke, a former Republi-
can congressman from Mon-
tana, already has imposed
major changes at the
70,000-employee
Interior
Department. He has rolled back
regulations considered burden-
some to the oil and gas indus-
try and reassigned dozens of
senior officials who were hold-
overs from President Barack
Obama’s administration.
Tainted wells on North Coast
Associated Press
SALEM — A survey of
groundwater wells by the state
Department of Environmental
Quality along the North Coast
has found nearly 40 contami-
nants in residential and irri-
gation wells, a newspaper
reported.
Contaminants identified in
Clatsop and Tillamook coun-
ties include nitrates, pesti-
cides, metals and bacteria, The
Statesman Journal reported.
Many were within federal
guidelines but some were not,
including two wells that tested
above the limit for arsenic.
The survey of 69 residential
and irrigation wells included
wells serving a fish hatchery
and a public soccer field in the
two counties and is part of an
effort to compile groundwater
aquifer data statewide that was
authorized by state lawmakers
in 2013.
Ten different pesticide-re-
lated chemicals were detected.
All were at levels below health
standards. But the state noted
that little research has been
done on the effect of multiple
chemicals on human health.
The results were expected,
said Paige Evans, who coordi-
nates the groundwater project
for the Department of Envi-
ronmental Quality
“I would say nothing in this
report is alarming,” she said.
“The North Coast has shallow,
sandy … geology that make
the aquifers vulnerable. It’s a
very distinct area of the state.”
The vision of retooling
the department’s bureaucracy
plays into longstanding calls
from politicians in the West
to shift more decisions about
nearly 700,000 square miles
of public lands under Interior
oversight to officials in the
region.
Some Democrats have
speculated that Zinke’s true
motivation for the overhaul is
to gut the department, noting
that more than 90 percent of its
employees already work out-
side Washington, D.C.
Zinke contends that he’s
trying to streamline the Interior
Department’s management of
public lands by requiring all of
the agencies within the depart-
ment to use common regional
boundaries, including the
Bureau of Land Management,
National Park Service and Fish
and Wildlife Service.
Congress has the final word
on the proposal.
Brown wants to hire 185
more child welfare workers
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
SALEM — Gov. Kate
Brown says she wants to
hire 185 more child welfare
workers at the state Depart-
ment of Human Services, to
the tune of $14.5 million.
That’s in addition to 184
budgeted field positions that
remain unfilled.
The governor announced
her plan three weeks after
state auditors found the
state’s child welfare pro-
gram was chronically under-
staffed, among other per-
sistent problems.
On any given day, about
7,600 kids are in Oregon’s
foster care system.
The secretary of state’s
audit found that case-
loads are three to four times
“higher than what is opti-
mal, contributing to staff
burnout, increased turnover
and difficulty recruiting new
workers.”
Due in part to high turn-
over, the state’s caseworkers
are also fairly inexperienced.
About one-third of case-
workers have started within
the past 18 months, accord-
ing to the audit.
Brown wants to hire
75 social workers, 75 case
workers, 25 office support
staff and 10 managers. The
move would require legisla-
tive approval.
“I urge our elected repre-
sentatives to take advantage
of this session to make sure
that more Oregonian chil-
dren have access to a brighter
future,” Brown said in a
statement Thursday.
The boost would go part
of the way to what audi-
tors say is a dire shortage
of workers. In order to ade-
quately meet the needs of the
thousands of kids in its care,
the state would need to hire
about 769 more field staff,
auditors said.
Although the Depart-
ment of Human Services
already has the money to
hire 184 field positions —
that’s the difference between
the number of field positions
the department has bud-
geted for in the biennium
and the actual staffing aver-
age as reported by state audi-
tors — the governor’s plan
would call for 185 separate
positions, according to the
department.
It’s not yet clear what
exactly the agency will do dif-
ferently to onboard employ-
ees expediently, though.
A spokeswoman for the
governor said that Brown has
been working with Depart-
ment of Human Services
Director Fariborz Pakseresht
and Child Welfare Direc-
tor Marilyn Jones “to under-
stand which changes would
bring the most tangible
impact most quickly.”
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