NEWS
A8 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Giant produce arrives for Funland
Staff photos by Ben Lonergan
At left, workers unload giant produce at Hermiston’s maintenance facility on Monday, Sept.
28, 2020. The larger-than-life replicas will be part of the new Funland playground when it is
completed. Above, a worker guides a replica of a mythical squid-like creature known as a kraken
off of a truck. The piece will be used in the adventure area of the new Funland playground.
City council advances industrial park project
A local improvement
district will amass funds
for paving and utilities
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
The Hermiston City
Council approved formation
of a local improvement dis-
trict during their Monday,
Sept. 28, meeting to make
more industrial land on the
south side of town “shovel
ready” for development.
The LID will assess prop-
erties along Campbell Drive
and Penney Avenue for fund-
ing to pave the remainder of
Campbell Drive and install
water and sewer mains in the
area. It will also create a road
connecting East Penney Ave-
nue to Highway 395 across
from Bellingers, and create
an access road into 40 acres
of industrial land owned by
the Port of Umatilla.
Half of the project will be
paid for by a $1.46 million
federal grant from the Eco-
nomic Development Admin-
istration, which Hermiston
qualifi ed for after Hermiston
Foods closed its processing
plant in that industrial zone.
The required 50% match
for the grant will be met by
$250,000 from the city of
Hermiston, $50,000 from
Umatilla County and money
assessed from neighboring
property owners.
The Port of Umatilla,
which owns a majority of the
land in the new LID, will be
assessed $700,000 while the
other 18 parcels will split
the remaining $500,000 in
costs based on the amount of
frontage they have along the
project.
Two of those property
owners, Jon Patterson and
Craig Evans, told the city
council that the price tag
estimated by city engineers
at Anderson Perry seemed
high.
0
“I could do it myself for
less,” Patterson said.
Evans said he would be
assessed for more than he
originally paid for his lot.
Property owners can
block the formation of an
LID if more than 60% of the
affected owners fi le an offi -
cial opposition, known as
a remonstrance. Assistant
City Manager Mark Morgan
said four of the 20 affected
properties fi led remon-
strances, for 20%, but two
of the remonstrances were
determined invalid because
the owners had previously
signed legal agreements with
the city to never oppose an
LID there.
Morgan said the city
hopes to start utility con-
struction next spring and be
paving by September 2021.
He said much of Hermis-
ton’s easily accessible indus-
trial properties have fi lled
up or are too far away from
water and sewer to be fi nan-
cially viable for develop-
ment. This project will open
up new parcels of varying
sizes for development.
On Sept. 28, the council
also approved a supplemen-
tal budget adding more than
$10 million to the 2020-21
budget. About $9.6 million
of that comes from the sale
of bonds that will pay for
construction of a new city
hall and renovation of the
basement of the Hermiston
Library. Another $540,000
comes from federal CARES
Act stimulus dollars that
were awarded to the city,
and $159,890 is the insur-
ance payout for the damage
to the old city hall caused by
a fi re in the HVAC system in
December 2019.
City Canager Byron
Smith showed councilors
designs for the new city hall
during the meeting, which
he hopes to put out to bid
in October so that construc-
tion can begin in late 2020 or
early 2021.
The plan includes a main
level, second story and base-
ment that will allow the
city to centralize services
currently spread through-
out multiple buildings in
Hermiston.
That includes the munici-
pal court, which is currently
taking up space at the pub-
lic safety building needed
by Hermiston Police Depart-
ment to accommodate its
growth.
While councilors all
approved of the fl oor plan,
they did not like some cos-
metic aspects of the exte-
rior renderings, including
barn wood around the win-
dows. They were split evenly
between three other alterna-
tives for exterior materials
that Smith showed them, and
he said it seemed fair to let
city staff who will be work-
ing in the building break the
tie.
During the portion at the
end of the meeting for city
councilor comment, coun-
cilor Roy Barron said he
was feeling “disappointed”
about the outcome of the
council’s last meeting,
which resulted in a vote to
adopt an ordinance regulat-
ing homeless shelters in the
city. One aspect of the ordi-
nance bans shelters from
within 1,000 feet of schools
or parks, and the Stepping
Stones nonprofi t which had
hoped to build a shelter
in Hermiston stated after-
ward that the rule did not
leave them a viable location
inside the city.
Barron asked if the plan-
ning department could draw
up some new maps of what
options might be available if
that number were changed
to 500 feet or 750 feet, so
the council could revisit
the issue and decide if they
wanted to amend the ordi-
nance. City Planner Clint
Spencer said he would do so.
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A WORC taxi will get you to and
from your job anywhere in western
Umatilla County.
Anyone who comes in through the end
of December, can get four FREE punch
cards, which equals 40 one-way rides
to/from work.
Visit https://hermiston.or.us/public-transit
to find out how to sign up, and how WORC and the HART
bus service work together to connect Hermiston.