Periods of rain. High around 60F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..
Tonight
A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 53F. N winds shifting to WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Avoiding the “false narrative of parks versus affordable housing,” as resident Tom Camero cautioned city leaders, dominated public comment Saturday at the annual Hood River City Council goal setting session. The event at the Hood River Fire Station was attended by about 50 people, with 14 people making public comment.
Camero called Morrison Park “one of our sacred places” and joined several other citizens in urging the city to preserve the park, aka Lot 700, and not turn it into affordable housing, as per the city’s pending plan with Mid-Columbia Housing Authority. The city approved the zoning change last year and sold Lot 700 to the Housing Authority for $1.
The gathering, in the meeting room at Ty Taylor Fire Hall, was the council’s first public meeting of 2019.
Four elected leaders took the oath of office from municipal Judge Ruben Cleaveland. They were: Mayor Paul Blackburn, starting his third term, and three new councilors elected in November: Tim Counihan, Erick Haynie and Jessica Metta.
(Metta got hugs afterward from her children, Adrian and Cecelia, 6, and Jackman, 3, and husband, John.)
Also present at the session were continuing councilors Kate McBride, Megan Saunders and Mark Zanmiller, along with City Manager Rachael Fuller and all department heads, and facilitators Eric Jensen and Alice Cannon of the company Jensen Strategies.
Also attending was former councilor Susan Johnson, who relinquished her seat in 2018 in order to run against Blackburn for mayor.
Jensen called it “one of the best attended” such sessions he has been involved with.
In her preparatory remarks, Fuller noted that a clear work plan and strategy for the city moving forward, and one that will be transparent to the public, were the basic aims of Saturday’s session.
In public comment, citizens called for preserving open spaces and protecting parks and trees from being cut both on public and private property, spending money on developing green belts and open spaces.
Concerns were also expressed over transportation planning and public safety, including traffic at Rand Road and Cascade Avenue. (The city has plans with Oregon Department of Transportation to upgrade the Rand-Cascade intersection in 2020.) Brian Towey, who ran for council in 2018, noted that the city Transportation Plan has not been updated since 2011.
Miko Ruhlen praised the city for conducting the downtown parking study in 2018, and forming a citizen committee on the issue, but urged the council to keep parking a top priority and deal with it before affordable housing.
West side resident Wendy Boglio decried the recent removal of more than 100 trees on private land across the street from her home, calling it “absolutely stunning” the city did not take more steps to stop it, nor the illegal earth-moving that followed on the property — for which the city had issued a stop-work order.
Dan Ball, of the citizen-based City Tree Committee, submitted a statement from the committee urging the city to do more to regulate tree removal on public and private lands, “including fines and other civil and criminal penalties” and to increase the fines for damaging or removing city trees, which now range from $50 to $200. “That’s too low,” Ball said.
“All of our goals are linked,” said Jim Klaas, who also ran for council in 2018 on Morrison Park protection platform. He told the council, “You must find the best solution but not the quickest solution. You must find solutions that benefit not just one aspect of our community but all aspects of our community.
“You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul. You cannot pave over parks for housing when we desperately need what little parks we have left. You need to find a better solution.
“Morrison Park is a public asset. Morrison Park is a significant percentage of our entire parks inventory. Morrison Park’s unique location provides a critical link to the waterfront and or downtown for the developing west side.”
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