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About Seaside signal. (Seaside, Or.) 1905-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 26, 2018)
October 26, 2018 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 3A Commission seeks to preserve ‘rural lifestyle’ the need for housing, but asked for consideration of poor drainage and flooding on the property. Jack Zimmerman, a City Council candidate, sought to determine the “extent of con- tamination” on the property from previous uses. The state Department of Environmental Quali- ty deemed all lots “safe for residential,” Alligood said. “There may be contamina- tion, but that level is low enough that it won’t affect occupancy.” Dideum also asked for an updated Department of En- vironmental Quality report — the submitted document is dated 2006. Drainage, she said, “only gets worse.” “Mucky peat,” described in a soil report on the site, oozes water all the time, she added. “You cannot build on it,” she said. The property would be “overexcavated” to replace topsoil with new fill, Alli- good responded. A switch from agricultural to residential By R.J. Marx Seaside Signal Objections from neighbors and concerns from the Plan- ning Commission led to a recommendation against the rezoning of a nearly 30-acre property in Gearhart eyed for higher-density housing. Residents said the proper- ty is prone to flooding, unable to handle additional traffic and lacks essential services. “You want to make your $2.5 million, walk away and leave everybody else with the ramifications,” Mary Chan- dler, who lives on McCor- mick Gardens Road, said at the Oct. 11 meeting. Planning commissioner Terry Graff echoed the con- cerns. “Unless you live out there day to day, you don’t see what’s going on,” Graff said. “The people who live out there live out there for a rea- son, they like the rural life- style. I don’t think they want a development plopped down and disrupting their quality of life.” Palmberg Paving Inc., the owner, wants to rezone 498 McCormick Gardens Road in advance of a sale. The change, from rural agricultural to residential, could deliver 10 parcels on 7.5 buildable acres, about 20 percent of the nearly 30-acre site. CHUCK OVERTON/WINDERMERE REALTY Lake on the Palmberg property in Gearhart. Developers would have different options available to them, said Li Alligood, of Otak, a consultant to the owner. “Some might want to do rentals, others single-fam- ily homes, others multifamily homes,” she said. Heidi Palmberg Snidow said she and her family made a “difficult decision” to mar- ket the property after owning it for more than 60 years. The family will not be part of the development process. “It’s strictly to do a zone change that would have to be reviewed,” Snidow said. “We have lived and worked in this community and are really a part of it. We do feel it’s im- portant to maintain its charm and culture.” Alligood said she recog- nizes future development could alter the character of the neighborhood. “We can’t deny that won’t change,” she said. “But it’s a great spot, near the commercial services on Highway 101. You can walk to services, you can walk to downtown from the location.” Planning commissioners weighed criteria based on the city’s comprehensive plan, community character and lo- cal housing needs. Letters, staff reports and outside analysis provided in- formation on soil, traffic and housing. So did residents and com- missioners. Affordability is an issue for Virginia Dideum, the chairwoman of the Planning Commission. There would be no guar- antee the homes would be “affordable housing,” Dide- um said. “And what is afford- able to me is not affordable to someone else.” McCormick Gardens Road resident Brand Dichter pointed to potential risk in a tsunami or earthquake, in- cluding liquefaction. Current zoning protects the area “much better” than a medium residential zone, Commissioner David Smith said, and will “also protect what little control we have on traffic on Highway 101.” Rebecca Rutledge, who lives on McCormick Gardens Road, said she understands BUSINESS Directory TIRES/WHEELS D EL ’S O .K . D EL ’S O .K . is changing its name to Same great service YOUR #1 SOURCE FOR TIRES CUSTOM WHEELS • AUTOMOTIVE SERVICES Schools prepare as shelters in a storm State pushes school resiliency By Brenna Visser Seaside Signal With construction under- way in Seaside to build schools outside the tsunami inundation zone and a bond on the ballot in Warrenton in November to do the same, preparing schools for a disaster is in the limelight. But as schools look for op- portunities to relocate to higher ground to be safer in an earth- quake and tsunami, administra- tors will face a new task: how to prepare to be a community’s default shelter when disaster strikes. Schools are at the center of the state’s emergency planning strategy. The state has empha- sized making aging school buildings more earthquake re- silient, with programs like the seismic retrofit grant, which has awarded more than $225 million to bring schools up to building code standards. While schools are tradi- tionally expected to serve as shelters, an analysis by the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission found there has been little to no plan- ning by school districts for how schools would be used follow- ing a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake. “People have a lot of as- sumptions that schools would be good shelters,” said Tiffa- ny Brown, the Clatsop Coun- ty emergency manager, who helped author the report. “They are buildings that accommo- date large numbers of people, but that’s where it stops. That’s where our planning has kind of stopped.” For schools to be ready, more needs to be done to ed- ucate staff on what it takes to run a shelter, as well as the im- portance of planning for neces- sities like food, water, commu- nication and medical supplies. Preparing a school to serve the COLIN MURPHEY/THE DAILY ASTORIAN Construction crews work on the new school campus in Sea- side. mass care needs of a communi- ty takes planning well outside the scope of the typical re- sponsibilities of educators, the report states, but because there is no state mandate requiring it, little to no coordination be- tween schools and other agen- cies has occurred. That’s why the advisory commission recommended to the Legislature to have clearer guidelines for what should be expected of schools, including requiring preparedness mes- saging and encouraging supply storage near school grounds. “I think there are two differ- ent stages: Preparing your own constituency and preparing as a community shelter,” Brown said. “Clatsop County is at the first.” A community effort The majority of schools in the county have some coordi- nation with the American Red Cross to be used as shelters, said Jenny Carver, the local Red Cross disaster program manager. For some, like Warrenton Grade School and Seaside High School, gearing up to be a community shelter didn’t seem practical given the like- lihood the campuses would be inundated by a tsunami, but this fact isn’t disqualifying, Carver said. “We look at inundation zones, but that’s not the only disaster we prepare for,” she said. But this strategy can also be complicated. As was seen in the Great Coastal Gale of 2007, regions like the Oregon Coast can become so isolated, agencies like the Red Cross can’t get access to run shel- ters. “Having new schools be seismically sound and out of the inundation zone will change the conversation,” Brown said. “But we have to build them, plan for them, with shelters in mind. Then we can use them that way after.” Hours: Mon-Fri 8-6 Sat- 8-4 503-325-2861 35359 Business Hwy 101 For emergencies 503-325-0233 Astoria, OR (miles crossing) FLOORING CCB# 205283 Luxury vinyl planks and tile. you walk on our reputation Flooring Installation 3470 Hwy 101 Suite 102 • Gearhart, Oregon 503.739.7577 • carpetcornergearhart.com FLOORING Randall Lee’s 0% FINANCING AVAILABLE Window Treatments, Fabric, Designer Wallpaper, Visit Our Counter Tops, All Flooring and Miele Vacuums Outlet! 2311 N. 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