NEWS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2021
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
City council thinks over Scammers work to separate
senior housing proposal people from their money
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Opponents say there’s no
need for more assisted
living facilities
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Hermiston city council-
ors asked for more time to
think over a proposal for a
new senior living develop-
ment after the plan was met
with opposition from exist-
ing assisted living facilities
during the council’s Mon-
day, April 12, meeting.
Representatives
of
Guardian Angel Homes and
Sun Terrace Hermiston told
the council they are strug-
gling to fi ll rooms and staff -
ing positions at their facil-
ities, and questioned why
the city would give away
land to incentivize building
more facilities.
“I don’t think there’s a
need,” said Matt Frantz,
whose family owns Guard-
ian Angel Homes.
The idea was fi rst pre-
sented to the city council
in August 2020, when the
council gave staff the green
light to put out a request for
proposals for a senior liv-
ing project on a piece of
property on Northwest 11th
Street.
The city purchased the
20-acre parcel, known as
the Green Property, in 2005
for $420,000. The plan was
to use the property, which
is adjacent to the city’s
recycled water treatment
plant, to detour recycled
water through the property
before returning it to the
Umatilla River, in order to
lower the water’s tempera-
ture fi rst. But tests of the
idea didn’t work as well as
expected and the idea was
abandoned.
Assistant City Man-
ager Mark Morgan told the
council that given a num-
ber of challenges with the
property, and the fact the
city had demolished a home
and outbuilding after pur-
chasing it, it was unlikely
the city could recoup its
entire investment if it put
the land up for auction. If
someone did buy it at auc-
tion, he said, they would
likely build a single home
on it, which would not add
much to the tax base.
Morgan’s proposal, then,
was to give away approxi-
mately 8 acres of the prop-
erty, on the far side from
the treatment plant, to a
developer who promised to
build some sort of housing
for seniors on the property.
He calculated that if such a
development went in, the
city would gain more than
$3 million in property taxes
and utility revenue over the
next 20 years.
He said additional senior
living would make sure
there was space for aging
Baby Boomers as they
needed it, and allow local
professionals with aging
relatives needing care to
stay in the area. He said the
development would also
create jobs, both directly
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald, File
The city of Hermiston is weighing the possibility of off ering
just over 7 acres of land, near the city’s recycled water
treatment plant, for a potential senior living development.
and through increased need
for services, such as dental
care.
Any agreement would
have a “clawback” clause
in which the city could take
back the property if the
development wasn’t built
in the specifi ed time frame
or wasn’t used for senior
living for at least 25 years.
The city put out a
request for proposals for
such a development, and
a committee of two city
councilors, staff and a plan-
ning commission member
selected a proposal from
Paradigm Compass LLC,
a partnership between two
Oregon investment fi rms
that both have a history
of building and managing
senior living projects in
Oregon.
One of the recent proj-
ects the partnership com-
pleted together is Juniper
Springs, completed in Red-
mond in 2018. The 7-acre
site includes 60 assisted liv-
ing units, 24 memory care
units and 12 independent
living cottages. Paradigm
Compass’s proposal for the
Hermiston site includes the
same mix of units on the
same size of property, and
would be staff ed by 50 full-
time positions.
“This was very, very
similar to our site,” Mor-
gan said.
Christopher
Looney,
one of the partners in Par-
adigm Compass, said the
company hires a third-party
fi rm with expertise in the
senior living market to con-
duct a market study before
building any project. The
analysis helps the com-
pany decide whether the
project will be profi table,
and is used to acquire the
required certifi cate of need
from Oregon Department
of Human Services.
“We did have a market
study conducted for Herm-
iston; it was conducted in
October of last year, and it
did show adequate demand
in the market,” he said.
He also noted that last
year’s property tax bill for
the similar development in
Redmond had been about
$200,000 — the type of
money that the Hermiston
project could also generate
each year after it was com-
pleted, likely in 2023.
During the public com-
ment period, however,
Frantz, speaking from the
point of view of Guardian
Angel Homes, described
himself as “really puz-
zled” about how the fi rm
retained by Paradigm Com-
pass came to the conclu-
sion there was enough need
to support that many more
assisted living units.
“I’m really shaking my
head,” he said.
Frantz said after talking
to Hermiston’s other three
assisted living facilities
besides Guardian Angel
Homes, he found that they
had a combined total of 241
assisted living units, with
47 of those units currently
vacant.
He said Guardian Angel
Homes had submitted a pro-
posal for the Green Property,
but only to build independent
living homes for seniors. He
said if Paradigm Compass
was sure there was a need
for more assisted living and
memory care in Hermiston,
the company would build the
project whether the city gave
them property or not, and the
same property tax and utility
revenue would come to the
city anyway, with the added
bonus of being able to put
the Green Property up for
sale.
John Krise, who stated
he was present to represent
Regency Pacifi c, which
owns Sun Terrace Herm-
iston, also questioned a
need for more assisted liv-
ing units in Hermiston. He
said Sun Terrace is cur-
rently running an occu-
pancy of about 70% for the
fi rst quarter of 2021.
Jackie Linton, a Herm-
iston resident, testifi ed she
would rather see a por-
tion of the property used
for housing for homeless
residents.
After councilors had
time to listen to all of the
presentations and com-
ments and to ask questions,
Councilor Nancy Peter-
son said she wanted time
to absorb the information
and further consider the
data shared from both sides
about the need for senior
living in Hermiston.
Other councilors agreed,
and voted 6-1 to table the
decision to declare 7.18
acres of the Green Property
surplus until their April 26
meeting.
In heist movies, thieves
use elaborate plans, high-
tech hackers and clever
disguises to steal money.
But in real life, the tool
of choice for criminals is
often just a telephone or
email address.
Hermiston Police Chief
Jason Edmiston said city
residents losing signifi -
cant amounts of money to
scammers happens more
often than people might
think.
“We see this every
day,” he said. “And
what’s scary is what we
don’t see because peo-
ple don’t report it out of
embarrassment.”
Locally, he said he
has seen a single person
sometimes lose upward of
$100,000. And unlike the
theft of an object locally,
where police may be able
to track down the sus-
pect and retrieve the item,
money sent to scammers
operating out of foreign
countries is usually lost
for good.
Sometimes the scams
are simple, blanketed
approaches. A scammer
might continually call ran-
dom numbers until some-
one picks up, for exam-
ple, and then state they
are with the Internal Rev-
enue Service and the per-
son owes hundreds or dol-
lars in back taxes that they
need to pay immediately.
Other times, however,
they can be more sophis-
ticated. Edmiston said
with the proliferation of
social media and other
online sources of informa-
tion, scammers can fi nd
out the names of a tar-
get’s family members and
other details that can be
used to make a request
for help sound legitimate.
They might claim they
kidnapped a specifi c rela-
tive, or they might send a
text or email pretending to
be someone’s boss, telling
them they need to transfer
a large sum of money to a
client right away.
Criminals can also
create email addresses
that look very similar to
an organization’s actual
domain name, or “spoof”
phone numbers, making it
look like the person is call-
ing from a diff erent, local
number.
Edmiston has gotten
calls from residents letting
him know that they had
just received a call from
what appeared to be the
Hermiston Police Depart-
ment phone number, from
a caller that claimed to be
Edmiston.
Sometimes
callers
impersonating local police
will tell people they have
won Publisher’s Clearing-
house but must pay a fee
in order to receive the mil-
lions of dollars waiting for
them.
Sometimes they will
claim to be collecting
donations on behalf of the
department. Other times,
the scammers will tell
people they have a war-
rant out for their arrest for
a ticket they didn’t real-
ize they had, but can avoid
going to jail if they pay up
right now.
“It would be an abso-
lute tactical disadvan-
tage to call someone and
tell them you’re coming
to arrest them,” Edmiston
said of the warrant scam.
He said people claim-
ing to be from a national
charity supporting police
who say that proceeds will
be donated to local law
enforcement are not tell-
ing the truth — Hermiston
Police Department doesn’t
see a cent from such orga-
nizations. Similarly, peo-
ple can pretend to be other
charities or businesses too
(criminals have sometimes
impersonated the Hermis-
ton Herald to ask people
for “donations”).
They can also pretend
to be an electric cooper-
ative telling people their
bill is late, an online dat-
ing partner who needs
money to come for a visit,
a retailer needing someone
to confi rm their credit card
number, a property man-
ager renting out a home,
a recently deployed sol-
dier trying to sell their car,
a technical support person
off ering to fi x a virus on
a computer, or dozens of
other identities.
Edmiston said when
in doubt that something
might be a scam, it’s a
good idea to talk it over
with someone else.
“If it sounds too good
to be true, it probably is,”
he said.
But some people are
stubborn, and at the end
of the day, it’s their money
that they can choose to
send it where they want.
Edmiston said sometimes
victims respond angrily
to police trying to con-
vince them to stop sending
money to a scammer. One
person even threatened to
sue the department.
If a scam is run through
a credit card or bank
account, sometimes the
bank can halt the trans-
action. But often scam-
mers will direct people to
wire money, purchase gift
cards or mail cash to pre-
vent that from happening.
Edmiston said the depart-
ment does provide victims
information about how
they can work to try and
restore their credit score
if it was ruined by a scam-
mer, but it’s a “tedious
process” that is up to the
victim to work through.
“As much as we try to
assist people with justice
after the fact, it’s very dif-
fi cult, sometimes impossi-
ble,” he said.
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