7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2018
County: Sheriff’s
office has responded
to more than 30 calls
at the property
Continued from Page 1A
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Three waterfront bridges in downtown Astoria will close on Friday.
Bridges: ‘This has been a roller coaster’
Continued from Page 1A
In addition to the fear that
the bridges might have to be
closed immediately or undergo
expensive repairs right before
being replaced, the project
hit another snag this summer
when bids for the replacement
work came in over budget.
Now, Cindy Moore, assistant
city engineer, says she is “95
percent sure” construction will
go ahead as planned, but she
won’t know until she meets
with the contractor next week
to determine the schedule.
It has been a balancing act
to keep the bridges open —
and at a load limit that could
still accommodate vehicles
— with temporary fixes until
the structures could be perma-
nently replaced, Moore told
the City Council in July.
After receiving inspection
reports from the state, city
staff recommended closing
the Sixth Street bridge, located
near a Chevron gas station and
city viewing platform over
the Columbia River, this year.
They also recommended clos-
ing the Seventh Street bridge
near Buoy Beer Co., since
Eighth Street provides alterna-
tive access to the business.
The 11th Street bridge they
hoped to keep open up to the
date of construction, but were
prepared to close it to all but
pedestrians as early as Sept. 1.
The city added extra flagging
and signs to keep all motor
traffic except passenger vehi-
cles from crossing over the
bridge, which operates under a
load limit.
The early closures aside,
a number of business own-
ers have been worried about
what the bridge replacement
work will mean for their busi-
nesses. The city also has sev-
eral agreements in place with
property owners for use of
their land during construction.
Moore met with many of
the stakeholders Wednesday
morning to see what the city
could do to help them weather
the project.
“I think, hopefully, we got
some of the rumors contained,
some of the anxiety con-
tained,” reported David Reid,
executive director of the Asto-
ria-Warrenton Area Chamber
of Commerce.
The chamber plans to aid
business owners with market-
ing and advertising to let cus-
tomers know the businesses
are still open during the bridge
replacement work.
“This has been a roller
coaster, frankly, over the past
couple months,” City Manager
Brett Estes said. He praised
city staff’s ability to be nim-
ble and respond to sudden
changes. Meanwhile, part-
nerships with groups like the
chamber provide “more robust
community outreach.”
“This is the best outcome
we could have foreseen,” Estes
said.
Ward 1: Housing is one of the top issues
Continued from Page 1A
Since he moved to the
city in his mid-20s, Drafall
has watched Astoria change.
Over the years, as money and
resources went to the slice of
town between Seventh Street
and 17th Street — the historic
downtown district — and
tourism became the dominant
industry, he believes Union-
town and many of the peo-
ple who long called Astoria
home were left behind. Asto-
ria is not just the downtown
core. The city stretches from
Tongue Point to Smith Point,
he said.
“There’s a whole city here
and we’ve got to love it all or
it will go away,” he said.
“When I moved to Astoria,
I exhaled,” he added. “Now
I’m concerned about what
we’re going to hand off to
our great-great grandchildren.
Astoria is at a turning point.”
For him, and for Rocka,
that turning point includes the
increasing number of hote-
liers and developers with
their eyes on the waterfront.
Rocka was part of the group
that helped create the Asto-
ria Riverwalk and organize
one of the first big riverfront
cleanup events. He has long
been involved in discussions
about development along the
waterfront.
Future development
Neither Drafall nor Rocka
says they are against develop-
ment or tourism. Rocka spent
years promoting the area for
those very uses. They are
looking for balance.
Drafall wants to make sure
development is “smart and
usable.”
“There’s got to be some-
thing different than hotels and
drinking and pot stores,” he
said.
Rocka, who is married to
Astoria Planning Commis-
sioner Jan Mitchell, thinks
Astoria could become a hub
for web and computer-re-
lated enterprises — what he
refers to as the “next century”
economy.
“The pat answer you usu-
ally get from people is they
want family wage jobs and
they think in terms of what
we used to have here,” Rocka
said.
Both men say the top pri-
ority is setting an appropriate
stage with zoning that reflects
local people’s wishes.
Drafall can speak from
experience. The Holiday Inn
Express, built in the early
2000s, cut off his own view of
the Columbia River.
“As soon as it happened,
we went, ‘No!’” he said. “But
it’s going to happen more and
more.”
Both Rocka and Dra-
fall hope to address city
zoning that, in some areas,
allows hotels as an outright
use and means the projects,
potentially, receive no pub-
lic review at all if the con-
struction doesn’t trigger other
types of scrutiny through the
presence of historic land-
marks or overlay zones.
Drafall believes Union-
town is where the bulk of
Astoria’s future develop-
ment could occur. Much of
the city’s urban renewal funds
are poised to go to the neigh-
borhoods on either end of
Astoria. Meanwhile, Asto-
ria Warehousing is closing in
Uniontown.
“That’s a lot of acreage,”
Drafall said.
Both men are concerned
about the state of the major
roads running through Astoria
and the aging chairwall sys-
tems that support roads in por-
tions of downtown.
Drafall believes more
could be done to enforce
speeding violations and the
use of compression brakes by
large trucks. But Rocka is the
only one proposing another
look at a bypass to address
Astoria’s summer traffic. A
bypass could help the city deal
with traffic now and avoid fur-
ther traffic-related complica-
tions in the future, he said.
City and county leaders
pushed for a bypass in the
1990s, and even paid for an
environmental impact study.
The project was included on
the state’s construction sched-
ule but was later dropped.
Debate about the project
revived in the early 2000s, but
funding and regulatory hur-
dles remained — and remain
today.
Housing dilemma
One of the top issues for
all of the candidates running
in Astoria is housing.
Drafall has watched neigh-
borhoods disappear as people
buy homes and turn them into
vacation rental, Airbnb-type
operations. He and Rocka
say enforcement of city rules
forbidding this kind of use is
crucial, especially as hous-
ing for workers and lower-in-
come residents appears to be
dwindling.
Astoria allows homestay
lodging, where rooms may be
rented on a short-term basis,
but the property owner must
live in the home, too. Vaca-
tion rentals — where entire
houses are rented out to tour-
ists and the owner is absent —
are illegal. Many of these ille-
gal operations are not paying
business license fees or taxes,
but the Community Devel-
opment Department does not
have the staff to go out and
enforce city laws consistently.
“Why can’t we have some-
one whose work is covered
by the fees and fines they col-
lect?” Rocka asked.
To Rocka, vacation rentals,
tourism, housing and home-
lessness are all linked, each
influencing the other. Creative
use of tax dollars could help
alleviate some of the pres-
sure, while enforcement of
city code could bring housing
back to long-term renters, he
said.
Rocka pushed for the early
version of the state’s lodging
tax program in 2003, which
provides funding to tourist-re-
lated projects. Astoria already
uses some of this money for
maintenance of city parks, and
recently raised the tax to help
fund parks operations, arguing
that tourists, not just locals,
contribute to wear and tear.
Rocka would like to see
those dollars acquire even
more flexibility. Much of the
city’s growing expenses are
related to tourism, he said.
Ultimately, neither man
has a solution for the housing
issues or increased levels of
homelessness. Like Astoria’s
three mayoral candidates, the
two men believe the issues
require creative solutions.
It’s a bigger problem than
Astoria, they both say.
“We give them food, we
give them shelter, but we
don’t have the social services
to help them,” Drafall said of
the homeless.
“I wish I had an answer,”
Rocka said. “I don’t.”
He does think the city
could do more to work with
people who own vacant build-
ings and ask: What would it
take for you to put this prop-
erty on the market for work-
force
housing?
Union-
town has a number of larger,
older buildings — some that
escaped Astoria’s infamous
fires. This is important, but
complicated, infrastructure,
Rocka and Drafall said.
“Somehow, with older dis-
tricts, we need to find a way to
be more flexible,” Rocka said.
For Drafall, it comes back
to zoning. Could the city open
up existing properties for
higher-density housing?
“The homes that were built
here, yeah, they need a lot
of work, but they were well-
built,” he said. “They’re still
standing.”
The county has not been
able to contact Scott Wood.
He is ill and was not able to
attend Wednesday’s hear-
ing, said Tyler Morehouse, a
friend.
Recently, a number of peo-
ple have inhabited a three-bed-
room house and a host of rec-
reational vehicles on the nearly
1,400-square-foot lot. More-
house said the majority of the
people living there were squat-
ters who have recently left.
“We don’t want noth-
ing to do with these people
out there,” Morehouse said.
“They’re running over Scott.”
People on the property
have allegedly stolen about
20,000 gallons of water from
the Lewis and Clark Water
District after cutting a lock off
a meter. James Niekes, a next-
door neighbor, reported that
they had tapped into his elec-
trical system. Niekes also said
items have been stolen from
his property.
The squatters, who haven’t
had sewer services for about 1
1/2 years, also allegedly have
been using a nearby ditch
to dump buckets of human
waste. Niekes said he built a
concrete structure to prevent
sewage from running onto
his land. Rats, garbage and
abandoned vehicles have also
accumulated.
The Clatsop County Sher-
iff’s Office has responded
to more than 30 calls at the
property since it was fore-
closed, including six warrant
arrests, six emergency medi-
cal responses and one assault.
Drugs have also been recov-
ered, Chief Deputy Paul Wil-
liams said.
“We’ve seen the number of
calls dramatically increase as
time moves along,” Williams
said.
When a county Public
Health Department employee
approached the property with
three sheriff’s deputies in July,
one person fled and was even-
tually arrested on a warrant.
After the chase, a deputy —
covered to his waist in human
waste — reported he had
“found the ditch.”
The Lewis and Clark Vol-
unteer Fire Department has
responded to three fires at the
property this year, all of which
appeared to be intentionally
started, Chief Jeff Golightly
said. One involved a woman
setting fire to a bath tub, while
another featured burned gar-
bage that caused two-story
flames.
“When it is the Woods’
house, generally law enforce-
ment is on the way to meet us
there,” said Brandin Smith, a
volunteer firefighter.
The county posted public
health hazard signs in August.
“I just know that it was
a very unsanitary property
that, honestly, nobody should
have been living at that time,”
County Environmental Health
Specialist Nancy Mendoza
said.
Commissioner
Lianne
Thompson asked Williams to
advise the county on how to
better manage similar issues if
they arise in the future.
“I think this is an example
of the county doing just that,”
Williams said. “I also am
hopeful that we can actually
revise the code so that it has
some teeth so that we don’t
have to wait around for the
person to pass away or to sell
the property for the county to
actually do something about it
without incurring a significant
cost on the county’s part.”
Commissioners
are
expected to adopt an official
order to take possession of the
property later this month. The
county would seek to claim
the deed within 30 days.
2018-19 | 29TH SEASON
COLUMBIAFORUM
September 18, 2018 • 6 p.m.
The Blob, El Niño
and Climate Change:
Looking for a Hot Time in the Pacif ic Northwest?
Much of the oceanic and atmospheric conditions that have occurred in the
Pacific Northwest recently have been quite warm. Speaker Nick Bond’s talk will
address those events considered in the long-term context of the past and future
climate of the region. Some effects will also be discussed, with examples ranging
from the marine ecosystem to human health, including efforts to improve
predictions of climate variations and their impacts.
Nick Bond
University of Washington College
of Atmospheric Sciences
Nick Bond is a principal research scientist
with the Joint Institute for the Study of
the Atmosphere and Ocean of the
University of Washington and affiliated
with NOAA. A Climatologist for Washington
since 2010, Nick’s research focuses on
the weather and climate of the Pacific
Northwest and it’s link between the climate
and marine ecosystems of the North Pacific.
Columbia Forum Sponsors:
• The Daily Astorian
• OSU Seafood Laboratory
• Cannery Pier Hotel & Spa
• Craft 3
• KMUN-FM
COLUMBIAFORUM 2018-19
Next: The Blob, El Niño and Climate Change: Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. • RSVP by: Sept. 14
For reservations, to become a
member or be added to contact list:
Contact Holly Larkins
at 503-325-3211x227
or forum@dailyastorian.com
Forum to be held at
(new location):
Chef Chris Holen’s
NEKST EVENT
175 14th St., Ste 100,
Astoria
Foot of 12th St.
Use back-in parking
To Attend:
Members: Dinner & Lecture $25 each; Lecture only free.
Non-Members: Dinner & Lecture $35 each; Lecture only $15 each
Appetizers available at 6pm. Dinner will be served at 6:30pm. Lecture will begin after dinner.