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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANuARY 4, 2019
Myers: Known for his
Apartments: Several large development
applications in Warrenton have languished ‘Blueprint for Success’
plan in Portland
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“The biggest challenge
in general right now in the
industry ... is getting help,”
Barnes said.
Barnes finished an almost
identical project to the 5th
Street Flats in Lincoln City
in 2016. The costs for the
Astoria project have gone
up 34 percent by compari-
son, he said, in part because
of a shortage of workers and
more expensive materials.
He also pointed to the Fed-
eral Reserve’s recent deci-
sion to increase interest rates
for borrowers as a damper on
investment in new housing.
Kevin Cronin, the com-
munity development direc-
tor in Warrenton, said the
slow progress on large mul-
tifamily projects is partially
because of the lack of local
contractors big enough to
move such developments
forward.
“It’s labor shortage and
the bandwidth of the local
contracting
community,”
Cronin said. “That’s the big-
gest stumbling block to our
housing crisis.”
Jared Rickenbach, a local
contractor and board mem-
ber with the North Coast
Building Industry Associa-
tion, said that of the approx-
imately 500 general con-
tractors on the North Coast,
maybe one or two are big
enough to take on large
apartment complexes.
“There is a significant
shortage of construction
laborers, carpenters and
foremen in the local labor
pool,” he said. “It would be
challenging if not impossi-
ble to hire locally enough
labor to perform those larger
multifamily projects.”
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Residents recently started moving into the first 34 units of the Pacific Rim Apartments in
Warrenton.
Cronin’s office has sev-
eral applications for large
developments around War-
renton that have so far
languished.
Growth in Warrenton
Local contractor Jason
Palmberg received condi-
tional use approval in March
for a 66-unit complex across
U.S. Highway 101 from
Ocean Crest Chevrolet, but
has yet to begin groundwork.
The delay is largely because
he’s already been busy help-
ing to build Barnes’ apart-
ments, Palmberg said.
He hopes to begin con-
struction on his complex
in the spring, with plans
to bring the apartments
online in 2020, hopefully as
other complexes fill up and
demand stays high.
“You don’t want to have
all that stuff come online at
the same,” he said.
Fort Pointe, the largest
potential multifamily proj-
ect in Clatsop County, has
been been trudging along in
starts and stops since Tex-
as-based builder 210 Devel-
opment Group purchased
the property in 2006. The
project promises about 300
housing units, including 130
apartments, 50 single-fam-
ily homes and more than
100 smaller-lot homes in a
higher-density new urban-
ist model similar to the
Mill Pond neighborhood in
Astoria.
“We try to sensitively
design a project and set
aside a tremendous amount
of open space,” said Mark
Tolley, a principal in 210
Development Group. “That
type of master planning takes
time.”
Labor and materials have
gone up because of short-
ages, he said, but the demand
for multifamily housing on
the North Coast remains
strong, and people should
expect some fairly substan-
tial announcements regard-
ing Fort Pointe in the near
future, Tolley said.
Strong demand
Local hotelier and devel-
oper Antoine Simmons
scrapped his plans for the
37-unit Skipanon River
Apartments near downtown
Warrenton more than a year
ago, citing construction costs.
But the property recently
changed hands, and local
developer Randy Stemper
said he is pursuing the same
project, meeting with the new
owners in the coming weeks
on how to proceed.
Builders Cary and Stan
Johnson
were
recently
approved for a 120-unit mul-
tifamily complex on 22
lots near Tongue Point Job
Corps Center. The project
is expected to be built out in
2020.
Developers said they see
plenty of opportunity for
more multifamily housing
in the region, albeit with the
usual challenges of working
through permitting and find-
ing workers.
After hiring consultants
for a housing needs analy-
sis, Krueger said, there are
at least two more possibili-
ties for multifamily projects.
“There’s definitely more
opportunities for growth in
Warrenton,” he said.
“Those were some of
the best times of my career.
I like working with com-
munity members ... writ-
ing consequence plans,”
he said in an interview. “I
think I can really help the
community of Cannon
Beach.”
While Myers saw the
job in Cannon Beach
when it was first posted
six months ago, it “didn’t
feel like the right time” to
apply, he said. After being
enamored with the beauty
of the Oregon Coast, he
and his wife decided a cou-
ple of months ago to buy a
home in Gearhart. A few
weeks later, he checked to
see if the position was still
open, found that it was, and
submitted an application.
He was offered the job
earlier this week.
Myers said
Cannon
Beach, like many coastal
towns, faces “sizable chal-
lenges related to potential
natural disasters. I’m look-
ing forward to helping the
community build resilient
and sustainable plans to
protect residents and visi-
tors alike.”
The timing, however,
raised some eyebrows in
Portland. Myers announced
his resignation the day
after his new boss, Com-
missioner Jo Ann Hardesty,
was sworn into office.
Myers said the move
has nothing to do with
Hardesty, and the timing
was a coincidence.
“It has nothing to do
with her. She’s going to be
awesome for the bureau,”
he said. “It’s all about life-
style change. It’s such a
unique opportunity. There
are not a lot of emergency
management opportunities
on the coast.”
Myers was known for
his “Blueprint for Success”
plan in Portland, which
aimed to equip the city’s
firefighters with more skills
to respond effectively to
health emergencies like
overdoses and mental
health crises — calls that
have become increasingly
more common.
He was also recognized
for hiring the department’s
first equity manager and
for doing a complete revi-
sion to the employee disci-
pline process.
Cannon Beach cre-
ated the full-time emer-
gency manager position
to restructure the way the
city approaches emergency
planning. The city had pre-
viously contracted with
consultant Stacy Burr for
emergency planning.
“He’s extremely quali-
fied and he’s excited about
what we’re trying to do,
and that’s to develop an
emergency management
program that involves
everyone in the city,” City
Manager Bruce St. Denis
said.
His first day will be Feb.
1.
“I think Cannon Beach
needs a comprehensive
plan, and that starts with
me meeting with the com-
munity and seeing what
the needs are,” Myers said.
“My ultimate goal is for
Cannon Beach to be the
gold standard for coastal
community resiliency. I
think we can do that.”
Capitol: Report said leaders should have seen how women were vulnerable
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law when it came to harassment
of those working in the Capitol
for
legislators
and
their
committees.
The detailed allegations will
cast a political pall as the 2019 Leg-
islature convenes in less than two
weeks, with leaders still in place
who Avakian’s agency said were
responsible for the culture investi-
gators found.
“Our hope is that the report
would be the genesis for the
development of a harassment-free
workplace and that meaning-
ful sanctions for future harass-
ment cases can be put into place,”
House Republicans said Thursday
night in a statement.
During the interim, the Legisla-
ture employs about 350. That dou-
bles during the session, and nearly
every class of employee had vic-
tims of what the report described
as a hostile workplace.
Avakian’s staff had to fight its
way through the investigation as
legislative leaders tried to erect
legal roadblocks to information.
They relented and produced inter-
nal records when ordered to do so
by a state court.
Investigators encountered a
history of silence by victims.
One legislative employee
signed a declaration in Novem-
ber that other workers “have dis-
closed to me that they have been
subjected to sexually harassing
conduct at the state Capitol,” the
report said. The employee said
the others didn’t want to speak
out “due to fear that doing so
will result in harm to their career
opportunities.”
The report said the evidence
“reflects that people report-
ing issues were told to not speak
about their complaints and some
were warned about the possibility
of defamation or retaliation claims
for doing so.”
In his statement accompany-
ing the report, Avakian said that
“nobody should have to endure
harassment at work or in a pub-
lic place, and if there were ever
a place a person should be guar-
anteed fairness and justice, it is in
the Oregon State Capitol.”
Avakian turns over his office
Monday to Val Hoyle.
Hoyle said Thursday afternoon
she hadn’t read the report and
wouldn’t comment on how she
intended to proceed after taking
over the office.
“I feel very strongly there is
only one commissioner at a time,
and I’m not commissioner until
Monday,” Hoyle said.
Details about Kruse
The report recounts in detail the
reported sexual harassment by for-
mer state Sen. Jeff Kruse chroni-
cled in earlier investigations. The
latest report found Kruse, a Repub-
lican from Roseburg, was inap-
propriate toward several women
— Sen. Sara Gelser and Sen. Eliz-
abeth Steiner Hayward, a lobbyist
and two law students working in
the Capitol.
Kruse, who resigned last year,
could not immediately be reached
for comment Thursday.
State investigators said they
found evidence that Democrats
ignored Kruse’s behavior because
he was a powerful Republican ally.
Steiner Hayward said Thursday
that she disagreed with investiga-
tors’ conclusion that Courtney and
Kotek allowed a hostile work envi-
ronment and should have known
about the issues after the com-
plaints in 2016.
“It’s not the presiding officers’
fault that Kruse couldn’t comply
and I didn’t choose to complain
again until November 2017,” she
said. “I believe they took the situ-
ation very seriously.”
Courtney said in a statement
Thursday that he never knowingly
let harassment take place.
“I have taken severe actions
beyond my authority to stop it. I
will continue to work as hard as I
can to create a workplace free of
harassment,” he said.
Courtney did pull Kruse off
legislative committees in October
2017, days after allegations against
Kruse became public.
The scandal unfolded in the
Capitol as the #MeToo movement
took hold across the nation. At the
center was Gelser, who finally went
public with her complaints against
Kruse and touched off a mael-
strom at the Capitol. She proved
a key witness for state investiga-
tors, sharing details about her own
harassment and what she had heard
about other such conduct.
Thursday, Gelser declined to
comment, writing in a text message
that she was out of the country and
couldn’t study the report.
The report found that the Leg-
islature’s chief attorney, Dexter
Johnson, and Lore Christopher, its
human resources director, advised
at least one lawmaker not to go
public with a complaint against
Kruse.
Gelser asked Steiner Hayward
in a November 2017 text message
why she was keeping secret her
complaint against Kruse, according
to the report.
“Not my choice,” Steiner Hay-
ward replied. “Dexter and Lore’s
based on official process.”
Christopher didn’t return email
and voicemail messages seeking
comment.
In a message to the Oregon Cap-
ital Bureau Thursday, Steiner Hay-
ward said investigators took the
text message out of context.
“Johnson and Christopher
merely asked me not to release my
statement until the investigation
was formally started,” Steiner Hay-
ward wrote.
Steiner Hayward said she was
not questioned as part of the labor
bureau’s investigation.
“All he has is his and others’
interpretations of my situation,”
she said.
Avakian is a Democrat, and it’s
rare for a leader to go after others
in the same party as aggressively as
he has. Avakian has often declined
to be interviewed about the com-
plaint. He has been characterized
as a lone wolf within the Demo-
cratic Party. He ran for secretary
of state in 2016, but lost to Den-
nis Richardson. In 2017, he said
he would not seek another term as
labor commissioner.
The report found Kruse’s con-
duct was so well-known through
the Capitol that there was a running
joke that he was out smoking a ciga-
rette during sexual harassment train-
ing. Ironically, Kruse was known to
smoke inside the building despite
prohibitions against doing so.
“The record suggests that
respondents, at least initially, took
more serious steps to curb former
Senator Kruse’s smoking than they
did to curb his sexual harassment,”
the report concluded.
The report found that when leg-
islative leaders did act, they often
did so in private, treating com-
plaints informally rather than doc-
umenting them. A lawyer hired by
the Legislature to investigate alle-
gations against Kruse left two stu-
dent interns believing they weren’t
entitled to sue the Legislature
because they weren’t paid employ-
ees. While the report found there
was no intent to mislead them,
it did note that such a response
would discourage people from
complaining.
The report said leaders should
have seen how women like the
interns were vulnerable to Kruse’s
advances but failed to act “due to
an acceptance of unwelcome con-
duct that is erroneously thought
to not rise to the level of sexual
harassment.”
The report referenced inappro-
priate hugs by Kruse, and quoted
Courtney’s chief of staff, Betsy
Imholt, saying she wouldn’t have
complained about such behavior.
Others named
The misconduct also extended
beyond Kruse, the report said. In
2017, a report surfaced that Rep.
Diego Hernandez, D-Portland, had
a list ranking lobbyists on attractive-
ness. Gelser told investigators that
after she heard a complaint had been
made about that, Christopher told lob-
byists it would go nowhere because
Hernandez was an up-and-comer
who would have a lot of power.
A legislative investigation into the
matter in 2017 ended with no one
acknowledging such a list existed,
the report said.
The more recent investigation
uncovered handwritten notes taken
by a human resources employee at
the Legislature relating to an inci-
dent observed by a person whose
name was redacted. That source
reportedly witnessed state Rep. Bill
Post, R-Keizer, holding a female
staff member’s chin while out having
drinks at a bar and “saying something
about her being cute,” the report said.
The report said the notes indicated
the female staffer shared with a wit-
ness text messages from Post while
they were at the bar.
“Post mentioned at least 5 times
that his wife was out of town,”
according to the notes quoted in the
report.
Post said an investigation in 2017
“found nothing happened.” He said
he didn’t learn who complained and
was told by legislative administrators
not to discuss the matter.
Included in the 100,000 pages of
materials the Legislature turned over
to investigators were handwritten
notes from Kotek discussing infor-
mal complaints about Rep. David
Gomberg, D-Otis, alleging inap-
propriate touching, telling a young
woman to get ready for “birthday
spankings” and saying an intern was
a stripper.
The report said the notes appear to
be from 2013, and indicate Gomberg
was told to stop his behavior.
The note went on: “Not helpful
for you if you discuss this conversa-
tion w/people in this building.”
“At that time I had a very seri-
ous conversation with the speaker,
and she informed me that I had
done some things that made people
uncomfortable,” Gomberg said in an
interview Thursday.
Gomberg said he was horrified
his actions caused someone pain, and
started seeing a counselor. He apolo-
gized to the public and his colleagues
in 2017.
When asked what his experi-
ence taught him about the culture in
the Capitol, Gomberg said “that (the
report of his conduct) was treated
very seriously and I responded to it
with equal seriousness.”
The report also recounts how a
woman employed in the Capitol in
2015 complained to Imholt about
Robin Maxey, Courtney’s spokes-
man. The worker said Maxey stood
inappropriately close to her at an
event and offered to buy her a beer.
The next day, the employee said,
Maxey sent her sexually explicit lyr-
ics to a popular song.
According to the report, John-
son, the legislative counsel, told the
employee that he was brokering an
informal settlement and she wasn’t to
have contact with Maxey. Legislative
leaders later denied a settlement was
in the works, according to the report.
Gelser told investigators that she
was surprised by the allegations,
but heard from younger people in
the building that Maxey had that
reputation.
Maxey didn’t respond to requests
for comment.
Courtney disagrees with many of
the report’s findings.
Kotek was equally firm in her
rebuttal.
“While I am still carefully review-
ing the commissioner’s determina-
tion, my initial reaction is disappoint-
ment and frustration,” she said in a
statement. “It’s just not OK that any-
one who has worked in the Capitol
has experienced harassment or inap-
propriate behavior. But it is utterly
false to conclude that I have know-
ingly allowed people to be harassed
in the Capitol.”
Avakian suggested in a memo that
working conditions for women at
the Capitol could be improved with
training in harassment law and han-
dling sexual harassment complaints,
using an outside organization to pro-
cess complaints and a fund to com-
pensate victims.
In the wake of Kruse’s resigna-
tion, Kotek and Courtney asked the
Oregon Law Commission to recom-
mend improvements to legislature’s
harassment policies and laws.
A work group concluded that in
order to prevent sexual harassment,
the Capitol needed to undergo a pro-
found culture change. The group
also recommended that the Legis-
lature create a new Equity Office to
investigate harassment complaints
and lead training aimed at preventing
harassment.