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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2018
Astoria: ‘It’s imperative to have Claims: Separate investigation ongoing
the right person, the right fit’
Continued from Page 1A
Continued from Page 1A
interesting planning activity
going on,” she said. “It seems
like it would be very attractive
both from a quality of life per-
spective but, especially for an
urban planner, being able to
work in a smaller urban area
and see the benefits of your
efforts, of your work.”
The state doesn’t help
jurisdictions recruit for these
jobs, but Phipps ends up hear-
ing a lot from city and county
leaders about their struggle to
find people. In the past year,
Astoria, Warrenton and Can-
non Beach have all had a hard
time finding someone to head
their planning departments.
Cronin, Astoria’s for-
mer community development
director, served as Warren-
ton’s interim planning direc-
tor while City Manager Linda
Engbretson worked with a
recruitment agency to find
candidates for the job. In the
end, the city decided to hire
Cronin.
Management
experience
A planning or community
development director is not an
entry-level position, Barnes
noted. Ideal candidates need
both planning and manage-
ment experience.
In her talks with regional
groups, Phipps has come to
realize there is a pool of young
planners and, at the other end,
a pool of older planners who
are looking at retirement. As
for people with years of expe-
rience and many more years
left in their career? “That mid-
dle group seems to be pretty
small,” she said.
But, she added, in the end
you never know what’s going
on in people’s lives when you
post a job.
“Maybe the person you
end up with wasn’t ready at
that time, but when you go
out for that second or third
recruitment, they’re in a dif-
ferent place.”
Astoria has gone through
several rounds already.
Estes, who now serves as
interim community develop-
ment director as well as city
manager, brought two candi-
dates in for interviews earlier
this year, but decided to repost
the job. He was prepared to
interview more people last
month, but several candi-
dates removed their names at
the last minute for a variety of
reasons. The city posted the
job again this week.
“If you look at the City
Council goals and how many
of those goals are community
development-focused — even
the discussions of where we
are headed (as a city) — it’s
imperative to have the right
person, the right fit,” Estes
explained.
In the meantime, the Com-
munity Development Depart-
ment has had to figure out
how to operate shorthanded in
an even busier landscape than
usual.
Permit numbers are up
slightly, said Nancy Fer-
ber, Astoria’s city planner.
And there have been some
very big, complex projects
that came in around the same
time, swallowing staff time
and resources — the proposal
for a new Astoria Co-op Gro-
cery in the Mill Pond neigh-
borhood and plans for a new
hotel, the Fairfield Inn and
Suites, along the Columbia
River.
Both projects required
multiple meetings with mul-
tiple boards. Both resulted in
appeals to the City Council.
A new design for the hotel is
scheduled to go back to the
Design Review Committee
for consideration at a meeting
tonight.
“And Fairfield isn’t done
by any means,” Ferber said.
“It could be appealed again.”
But even small permits can
be time-consuming, requiring
multiple meetings between
staff and the applicants to get
a proposal to a point where
its ready for presentation at
a meeting. Permits also come
Hands, a nonprofit that works
with the homeless, misman-
aged public funds.
The summary argues that
many of Sims’ claims do not
match up with emails and other
records available, nor do they
square with other people’s rec-
ollections or records regarding
the events, behaviors or deci-
sions she references.
“I think the report speaks
for itself,” said Scott Lee,
the chairman of the housing
authority board and the Clat-
sop County Board of Com-
missioners. “There was no
with timelines for turnaround
that staff can’t just ignore no
matter how many projects
they have going.
In January, the City Coun-
cil came up with eight goals,
most of them requiring work
by Community Development
Department staff. At recent
meetings, Estes commented
that both he and the depart-
ment have no capacity to take
on more projects.
Consultants
City Council goals, like
developing a process for peo-
ple to provide homestay lodg-
ing, didn’t stop when the
department lost its director —
but work on these requests has
definitely slowed.
The city has supplemented
with consultants like for-
mer Astoria planner Rose-
mary Johnson, or former
interim community develop-
ment director Mike Morgan,
to work on specific projects.
These are not long-term solu-
tions, Estes said. He is look-
ing to hire an interim planner
just to help handle day-to-day
needs, but the workload isn’t
likely to lighten anytime soon.
The city just kicked off a
long-term public process to
draft policies for development
in the city’s Urban Core, the
last piece of an overarching
Riverfront Vision Plan that
guides development along the
waterfront. Other potentially
time-consuming projects are
on the way, including a sub-
division proposal in the North
Tongue Point area and a grant
program for facade improve-
ments, as well as the rede-
velopment of a caved-in lot
at Heritage Square. Devel-
opers have floated the idea
of building a 90-plus hotel
next to Youngs Bay on land
zoned general commercial,
where lodgings are permitted
outright.
Even though some projects
won’t trigger review by city
boards, they will still take a
lot of review at the staff level,
Ferber said.
case of any negligence on
(the part) of executive direc-
tor Johnston or the other staff
so the board has confirmed our
support of them.”
Alan Evans, director of
Helping Hands, attended the
meeting last week to hear
whether investigators believed
there was any merit to Sims’
allegations about his organiza-
tion and the alleged misuse of
public funds.
“At the end of the day I
wanted to make sure we could
publicly clear our name of that
accusation,” he said. “That
was basically it.”
Helping Hands works hard
to be transparent and claims
like the ones Sims made can
hurt credibility, he added. Still,
the nonprofit did not feel a
need to defend itself against
Sims’ claims earlier.
“We never gave any energy
to that,” Evans said. “We were
more concerned about rumor
when stuff like that happens.”
A separate investigation
by an outside firm into com-
plaints lodged against Sims
by housing authority staff is
ongoing. Johnston would not
provide details about the com-
plaints against Sims, but he
characterized the allegations
as “pretty serious.”
Camping: ‘We get blamed for a lot of stuff’
Continued from Page 1A
The city prohibits camping
on a variety of public lands,
including parking lots and
parks, but city-owned forest-
land is not included, an omis-
sion city councilors believe
was simply an oversight when
the rule was written.
This summer, police
received numerous complaints
about camping and suspicious
activity in wooded areas on the
east side of Astoria and near
Columbia Memorial Hospi-
tal. Police later located around
a dozen camps, some of them
abandoned or filled with trash
and others that were well-orga-
nized and tidy.
Neither LaMear nor Spal-
ding want to begin moving
people from the camps imme-
diately. LaMear feels the city
shouldn’t move people “until
we have something permanent
to provide for them.”
“We need to look at each
one of these homeless as indi-
viduals and see if they would
respond to services,” the mayor
said. “There’s the thought that
some of them really want to
live in the woods and not par-
take of any kind of social
services.”
Jack Fisher is one of the
latter. A veteran who suffers
from post-traumatic stress dis-
order, he grew up in Astoria
and has been homeless off and
on throughout his life. He has
been homeless for the past five
years by choice. He told the
task force Monday that he is
not interested in the trappings
of settled life: a house, cars,
bills.
“A job is alright, but if
you’re paying to live, it’s just
not something that I really per-
sonally want to do,” he said.
Then there are others,
like Kim Hayward. She has
a job downtown and is trying
to save money to move into
housing. The upfront move-in
costs many landlords and
rental agencies require, such as
first and last month’s rent with
a security deposit, have been a
big barrier.
Even if the City Council
passes the updated ordinance
at the next council meeting on
Monday, Spalding said it is
unlikely police will ask any-
one to move this winter. He is
primarily concerned about how
difficult it would be to get into
the woods if there were an emer-
gency or criminal issue at the
camps, as well as the health and
safety hazards due to a buildup
of trash and human waste.
“There’s just no easy way to
get up there,” he said.
People who live in the
neighborhood near the
wooded areas say camping
has escalated in the past three
years. Those who attended
the task force meeting said
they were sympathetic to the
plight of the homeless, but
police have had to respond
to numerous complaints this
summer. Some property that
neighbors reported stolen,
they later found in the woods.
Bill Van Nostran, pastor at
the First Presbyterian Church,
said he was frustrated the task
force spent two hours discuss-
ing the issue and not coming up
with solutions. He added that
he attended the meeting ready
to share two solutions, though
he did not go into further detail.
Others suggested placing
dumpsters and portable toi-
lets near the woods to help cut
down on the trash and human
waste left at camps. But Ver-
non Hall, who has camped in
the woods for several years
and is an advocate on behalf
of other homeless people, said
this is not a solution.
“They’ll get abused,” he
said.
A number of people living
in the woods are trying to make
a difference in their lives, he
added. “Then there’s other ele-
ments up there. Like you said,
a lot of criminal activity going
on,” he said.
Still, Hayward noted, any-
one can leave behind trash in
the woods or be a bad neighbor.
“We get blamed for a lot
of stuff, a lot of stuff,” she
said. “It’s easy to blame the
homeless.”
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