OUR 114th Year
March 12, 2021
SEASIDESIGNAL.COM
$1.00
Gearhart looks
at bond for
resiliency station
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
R.J. Marx
From left, back row, Dan Hess, Anne McBride, Justine Hill, Mark Truax, Jim Henry, Brian Taylor, Bob Mitchell, Susan Penrod,
Brian Owen, Jeff Roberts. Front row, from left: Doug Dougherty, Sheila Roley, Lori Lum Toyooka, Sondra Gomez and Shannon
Swedenborg.
A campus milestone
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
“Congratulations, you have a beau-
tiful, brand-new school.”
Bob Mitchell, Seaside’s director of
building and code enforcement, shared
these words as he passed the certificate
of occupancy to Seaside School Dis-
trict Superintendent Susan Penrod last
Wednesday.
Flanked by former superinten-
dents Doug Dougherty and Sheila
Roley, architect Dan Hess, project
manager Jim Henry, district staff and
board members, the team celebrated
an accomplishment three decades in
the making, relocating Seaside High
School, Gearhart Elementary School
and Broadway Middle School stu-
dents to a safe location outside of the
tsunami inundation zone.
“This has been a long process and
there are so many people here who
started this process before I was priv-
ileged to be part of it,” Penrod said.
“I’ve been lucky to walk into this sit-
uation. I’m eternally grateful. What a
wonderful place this is for our whole
community.”
With a scenic mountain location
and panoramic views overlooking the
Pacific Ocean, Hess said he saw the
goal of the architect as “to get out of
the way,” he said. “As an architect,
we’re supposed to be able to visualize
these things, and of course we do, but
to actually experience it in person and
to see all the ideas of my team coming
to fruition — it’s very rewarding.”
Mitchell approved plans and build-
ing permits in 2019 after two years of
consultation with Hess, engineers and
contractors as directed by the State
Building Code.
Mitchell estimated he spent almost
This could be the year that voters consider a
bond to build a new resiliency station outside of
the tsunami inundation zone on North Marion
Avenue known as High Point.
The building will house the day-to-day
operations of the fire department and police
department.
At last Wednesday’s City Council meeting,
Mayor Paulina Cockrum said she would like to
pursue a November bond “if all the necessary
process steps fall into place by the filing dead-
line. Bond interest is quite low right now, and
that is a big part of my reason for wanting to
move forward at this time.”
In 2018, after considering nine locations, the
city’s fire station committee recommended three
concepts and locations to the public to help guide
the decision-making process.
“Evacuation areas toward the ocean in Gear-
hart along Marion are relatively safe and may be
good locations for a new station,” the commit-
tee wrote.
A survey showed that 78% of the almost 1,000
who responded supported a new fire station and
75.5% supported a bond to pay for construction.
About 50% supported the High Point site,
with an elevation of between 62 feet and 65 feet,
as their No. 1 choice, followed by 38.4% who
preferred the fire department’s location on Pacific
Way. The cinder block building, constructed in
1958, is considered a risk for flooding or collapse
during an earthquake and tsunami.
Only 11.5% of respondents chose the Dune
Meadows Park at Pacific Way and North Marion
Seaside School District
See Station, Page A3
1,000 hours on the project.
“On the plan review, I think I put
in 150, a couple hundred hours alone,”
he said. “It took many, many hours to
get through it all. But we did take our
time, I think we got everything right,
and I’m very proud to be a part of the
project.”
Roley, who was superintendent at
the start of construction in April 2019,
said Mitchell’s vigilance inspired a
confidence in the building’s safety.
“I was told Bob would find every
problem,” Roley said. “The other half
of that is, Bob is not just a problem
finder, he is a problem solver.”
As principal of Cannon Beach Ele-
mentary school in the 1990s, Dough-
erty became aware of the dire need to
move schools to higher elevation out-
side of the tsunami inundation zone
after watching a video of the after-ef-
fects of the 1964 Alaska earthquake.
When the school began tsunami evac-
uation drills, National Geographic sent
a reporter and published a feature that
garnered world attention.
As earthquake science progressed
and Seaside risk scenarios increased
to alarming projections, Dougherty
and the school board engaged experts
and studied options. Cannon Beach
Competitive
races for park
district board
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
Bob Mitchell, Seaside’s director of
building and code enforcement, in
April 2019, when the school district’s
plans were approved.
Elementary School closed in 2013,
the same year the district brought an
unsuccessful $129 million proposal
before the voters.
Three years later, a land gift in
the city’s southeast hills provided an
With five open positions on the Sunset Empire
Park and Recreation District board of directors,
the field is beginning to crowd.
Celeste Bodner and Erika Marshall each
announced this week they will run in the May
18 election. They face competitive elections in
Position 2 and Position 4, respectively.
Bodner is the founder and executive direc-
tor of the Seaside-based FosterClub, a national
nonprofit with a mission to improve the lives of
young people in and from foster care. She was
appointed to the board in August to fill the unex-
pired term of Jeremy Mills, who stepped down
in July.
See Campus, Page A5
See Candidates, Page A6
City sets new policy for
rental complaint process
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
The Seaside Planning
Commission has sought to
eliminate confusion about
who or where to call when
the vacation rental next
door is out of compliance.
Providing access to
24-hour local contacts has
been a goal of the city’s
code compliance officer,
Jeff Flory, whose job is to
monitor vacation rental
regulations and restrictions.
Since he started about a
year ago, he’s worked with
commissioners to tweak the
rules to add responsiveness
and accountability to the
process.
For
neighbors,
the
local contact information
can be obtained online or
by calling the Planning
Department.
If the emergency con-
tact or homeowner doesn’t
respond within a reason-
able amount of time —
considered about two hours
— then a complaint could
be lodged with the city.
Failure to respond to
a neighbor’s valid com-
plaint could lead to Plan-
ning Commission review of
the property owner’s condi-
tional use permit.
Street parking, long a
source of confusion for
homeowners,
neighbors
and law enforcement, was
also a matter of commis-
sion concern.
Visitors to a vacation
rental property are allowed
to use on-street parking, on
a limited basis, for a lim-
ited period of time. Added
code language states vis-
itors should not signifi-
cantly increase traffic or
negatively impact the sur-
rounding
neighborhood,
since this is a violation of
the vacation rental’s condi-
tion of approval.
“The question becomes,
as it always does for park-
ing, ‘How many is too
much, how long is too long,
what is OK,’” Chris Hoth,
the chairman of the Plan-
ning Commission, said.
“You can’t say it’s up to
three cars for 45 minutes.
It’s a little subjective about
what’s considered to be a
problem.”
It will be up to the code
enforcement officer to
determine what’s reason-
able. “If this is a situation
every weekend at a VRD
where there’s extra cars
there, we can argue it’s hav-
ing an impact on the neigh-
borhood, and at that point,
take a look at it on a spe-
cific case-by-case basis,”
Flory said.
“If it’s something ongo-
See Rentals, Page A6
R.J. Marx
Jason Lancaster and Amy Myers inside the Sasquatch Sandwich Co. food truck.
Hamilton Market gets an
OK for outdoor food sales
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
Sasquatch
Sandwich
Shop received a go-ahead
from the Seaside Planning
Commission last week to
serve hot food and gourmet
sandwiches from their food
truck in the parking lot of
the Hamilton Market.
William Montero and
his family purchased the
market in September 2019
from the Smith family, own-
ers of Ken and Sons Select
Family Market at 250 Ave-
nue U.
See Market, Page A6