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About Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 20, 2019)
LOCAL WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2019 HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A11 City council reverses course on proposal for mini-storage facility By JADE MCDOWELL NEWS EDITOR A local developer left the Hermiston City Coun- cil meeting empty-handed last week after expecting the council to rezone prop- erty he planned to use for mini-storage. “I wish I had understood the process better,” Steve Richards of Eastern Ore- gon Development told the council after they voted down the ordinance on Nov. 12. “I thought it had already passed.” While the council had voted in favor of the rezone at their Oct. 28 meeting, the vote was a nonbinding oral agreement directing staff to draft the proper ordinance for approval at its next meeting. Instead, the addition of two previously absent councilors and one fl ipped vote caused the ordinance to fail 5-3 on Tuesday. The 9-acre property in question stretches from Highway 395 to Southeast Fourth Street on the north side of Roger’s Toyota. It’s zoned for commercial use, but Richards needed a “neighborhood com- mercial overlay” added in order to build a storage facility similar to the High- land Mini Storage project he opened last year. The project would have been built on the Fourth Street side of the property, keeping the 4 acres clos- est to the highway open for development. But the plan- ning commission recom- mended against the rezone, noting the city had hoped to put in a street on one side of the property some- time in the future, increas- ing access off Highway 395 to possibly attract a large retailer. During their Oct. 28 meeting, councilors were persuaded to go against the planning commission’s recommendation after lis- tening to a presentation by Richards noting the inad- equate number of storage units in town, and an ease- ment and other factors that made the property diffi cult to develop for retail. At that meeting council- ors Doug Primmer, Doug Smith, Manuel Gutierrez Staff photo by Jade McDowell A “For Sale” sign sits at the narrow entrance off Highway 395 to a 9-acre property a developer would like to use for storage units. and Rod Hardin voted in favor of the rezone while Jackie Myers and Roy Barron voted against the proposal. On Tuesday, coun- cilor John Kirwan, who was absent at the previous meeting, reminisced about his fi rst visit to Hermis- ton as a teenager in 1990, when he drove through empty property that later became the location of Home Depot. “Sometime in the past, the council had the fore- thought to plan for the future,” he said. Kirwan said if the coun- cil allowed storage units on its largest developable site along the main thor- oughfare through town, they could be preventing the next Home Depot-type development. Smith disagreed, not- ing storage units would not be very hard to dismantle if, sometime in the future, a big box store with deep pockets decided it wanted the property. Primmer also voiced his support for the proj- ect, stating if they didn’t approve the rezone, Rich- ards would still be free to build other allowable projects in the zone that weren’t a big box store or restaurant. “We’ve got a piece of property, we’ve got an interested party, we’ve got a potential development, and nothing on the horizon for that piece of property,” he said. In the end, however, Smith, Primmer and Guti- errez were the only ones who voted in favor of the rezone, while Hardin, Bar- ron, Myers, Kirwan and Lori Davis voted against the proposal. Richards told the coun- cil after the vote he had thought Tuesday’s meeting was merely a formality, and that the council had already approved the project. He felt it was unfair his time was limited during his presentation on Oct. 28, and that he didn’t have any chance to make his case to Kirwan and Davis or answer any of the concerns Kirwan brought up. “You have two coun- cilors voting who didn’t see the presentation,” he said. Rep. Greg Smith, who pro- vided updates and answered questions about the Oregon Legislature. He also answered a ques- tion from Gutierrez that he’s been asked more than once lately: whether he plans to run for Congressman Greg Walden’s seat. Smith said Walden’s retirement announcement came as a surprise to every- one, including him, and he was fl attered Gutierrez would think of him. He had looked at the numbers and there was “defi nitely” a path to victory, he said, but there was another problem: “I’m too old,” he said. At 51, he might not seem that old, but Smith said that in Washington, D.C., it takes 10 years to get enough seniority for a decent com- mittee assignment, let alone the kind of power Walden wields as top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee. “I would need 20 years to get where Walden is,” he said. “As much as I love serving, I’m not sure I have 20 more years in me.” He said as much as he respects Rep. Cliff Bentz, who has thrown his hat into the ring at age 67, the dis- trict would be better served by electing someone who was closer to age 45. One question on the fore- front of the council’s mind Tuesday was whether the Democrats’ efforts to pass a cap-and-trade carbon tax in Oregon will return in the 2020 legislative session. “I’m hearing a lot of talk, but I’m not seeing the dom- inoes lining up to back that up,” Smith responded. He said despite chatter to the contrary, he thought it would likely be post- poned until the longer 2021 session. Smith said propo- nents of the bill put forward last session didn’t under- stand the devastating effects it would have on many of the his district’s largest employers. “I can’t imagine a com- promise that would move me to vote for it,” he said. The council also asked about how the Legislature plans to address the Pub- lic Employee Retirement System, which continues to drain budgets for cities, schools and other local gov- ernments. Smith said the issue at hand with PERS is that while the Legisla- ture is powerful, one thing it doesn’t have the power to do is break a contract. The extremely gener- ous deal with retirees in the 1980s, when Smith was only in sixth grade, might have been a mistake, he said, but the state can’t go back on its word now. “This might be the rea- son my Millennial genera- tion is mad about the deal struck by the Boomer gener- ation,” councilor Roy Bar- ron responded, adding that the blame is “on the people who made the deal, not the people receiving benefi ts.” Mayor David Drotz- mann said it was frustrat- ing PERS “has been eating our lunch for years” and yet state rules capping property tax rates limits cities’ abil- ity to raise money to pay for it — unlike the state, which can just pass another tax to pay for things. “I’d like for local govern- ment to be part of the dis- cussion,” he said. “You’ve got the option to go out and raise revenue. We don’t.” Smith agreed that cities got “thrown under the bus” during discussions of PERS reform. 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