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. He said that there
are people in the Legisla-
ture with a wide variety of
expertise, from teaching to
nursing, but there are “very
few people in the Legisla-
ture who know how to read
an amortization chart.”
“They’re good folks,
they just don’t understand,”
he said.
Work session with
Rep. Greg Smith
Prior to the council’s reg-
ular meeting, they held an
hourlong work session with
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