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Tillamook County
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2022
Citizen Serving North Tillamook County since 1996
Headlight Herald
Photo by Ed Ruttledge
northcoastcitizen.com
December 29, 2022
Hoffman Center features the 7th Annual Community Art Exhibit coming in January S
ince 2017, the Hoffman Center for the Arts has hosted an annual winter art exhibit featuring artists from Clatsop and Tillamook counties. The 2023 exhibit posted an open call for artists to reflect their interpretation of the theme “Scarlet” through their mediums. The 7th annual community art exhibit runs January 7-29 during regular gallery hours, Friday-Sunday, 1-4 pm. There will be a reception, open to the entire community, on January 7 from 2-4 pm. Work is available for pur-
chase with 70% of the purchase price going to the artist and the remainder benefitting the not-for-profit Hoffman Center for the arts. Our mission is to be “a welcoming place for north Oregon coast residents and visitors to create, explore and enjoy arts and culture.” We offer year-round events and workshops in Clay, Gallery, Horticulture, Visual Arts, and Writing. To learn more, sign up for the twice-per-month Hoffman Newsletter at Hoffmanarts. org.
Dorota Haber Lehigh
Barry Calvarese
Thomas Levering
The Hoffman Center for the Arts 594 Laneda Avenue Manzanita, OR 97130
County’s Short-Term Rental Advisory Committee looks at new regulations Will Chappell
T
Reporter
illamook County’s Short-Term Rental Advisory Committee began discussing different regulatory frameworks at their meeting on December 13 at the Port of Tillamook Bay. Committee members asked staff for more information on most of the options presented before moving forward in their decision making. Each of the options has its pros and cons, although the biggest challenge with any regulation will be addressing already operating properties, according to Daniel Kearns, the lawyer advising the committee. One option which would mitigate this challenge is limiting the number of nights a property can be rented during the year. Localities using this type of regulation tend to set
the limit between 90 and 120 nights. Committee members expressed concern that this approach would further concentrate tourist activity in the summer months, leaving properties empty and businesses strapped even more in the winter. It was suggested that the limit could be monthly or quarterly to encourage more distributed stays. The second option Kearns detailed was limiting short-term rental licenses to properties that are a primary residence. This option was dismissed quickly by the committee as too restrictive and removed from the list of options. The two final ways to restrict the number of properties were distance and density limits, and a hard cap on the percentage of properties allowed to operate as short-term rentals.
Distance and density limits would impose a buffer zone around short-term rental properties to prevent clustering. This clustering has led certain neighborhoods in the county to become what many at the meeting referred to as, “party streets.” Kearns said that density restrictions could be tailored for different communities but said that bringing existing licenses in line with the new regulations would be very difficult. The committee expressed concerns about the approach limiting rental activity in developments designed with the practice in mind or in communities like Tierra Del Mar where rental properties outnumber full-time residents. A cap on the percentage of properties across the counties permitted to hold licenses would be less complicated to implement.
Localities opting for this approach typically set the cap between 12% and 17%, although Bay City recently enacted a cap of 5%. Across the county, between 12 and 24% of properties are currently operating as short-term rentals. The last two regulatory tools that Kearns described were mechanisms that could bring the number of shortterm rentals in line with any new restrictions. First would be placing a transferability limitation on licenses, leading to attrition of licenses as properties transfer hands going forward. Someone pointed out that circumventing such a regulation would be as simple as placing the property into the ownership of a trust or LLC and selling that, which Kearns acknowledged was true. The other option he mentioned was a limit on short-
term rental licenses issued to each property owner. This would prevent consolidation of property ownership for short-term rentals and reduce the number of licenses. Committee members asked staff for additional information about the impacts and feasibility of all the proposals, except the primary residence restriction that nobody had favored. The committee then decided that it would hold its meetings in the Port of Tillamook Bay’s conference room going forward. Meetings will be held on the second Tuesday of the month from 9:30 a.m. to noon and are open to the public. Please send any comments to headlightreporter@countrymedia.net.
Garibaldi Council can’t make quorum, Riggs resigns Will Chappell
F
Reporter
or the second month in a row, Garibaldi’s City Council meeting, scheduled for December 19, was canceled due to the absence of three council members. In both months, Judy Riggs, Laurie Wandell and Gaylord Forsman were absent from and declined to participate remotely, leaving the body short of a quorum and forcing the meetings’ cancellations. “I’m disappointed in the disrespect that was shown to the city staff,” Mayor Tim Hall said, “but also to the people who came to hear the
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discussion of things that we were supposed to talk about.” In November, all three of the councilors gave notice of their inability to attend the meeting but in December only Forsman did. Riggs said that she was exposed to someone who tested positive for Covid on the day of the November meeting and had begun showing symptoms herself. Wandell said that she was out of town for the meeting and had alerted city staff on the Thursday or Friday before the Monday meeting. Forsman was also absent from November’s meeting with an illness. In December, Forsman provided notice that he would be out of town and unable to attend the regularly scheduled meeting. However, neither Riggs nor Wandell contacted city staff to communicate their absences from the meeting and did not answer repeated calls or texts at the meeting’s appointed start time.
The Herald reached out to both Wandell and Riggs who said that they had separately decided to boycott the meeting for different reasons and without knowledge of the other’s plan to do the same. Riggs said that she had been “subjected to a hostile work environment and harassment at City Council meetings since May 2022,” in an email. She pointed to the “bogus” lawsuit that former City Manager Juliet Hyams announced her intention to file in October, characterizing it part of a “smear campaign.” She said that she had “physical proof to dispute every claim,” but did not elaborate further and had refused previous opportunity to comment on the matter. The suit will claim that Riggs led a coordinated campaign of harassment against Hyams, leading to her resignation in July. Riggs said that she had chosen not to attend the December meeting to avoid
Headlight Herald
further harassment. Finally, she announced to the Herald that she will be submitting her resignation. After boycotting what would have been her final council meeting Riggs said, “I can’t fulfill my obligation to the constituents of this town when I am not allowed a voice to bring up their concerns in a public meeting.” For her part, Wandell said that she had decided not to go to the meeting after Hall and Interim City Manager Jay Marugg declined to add items to the agenda at her request. Hall shared the email chain wherein Wandell requested the additions, which showed that Marugg had responded to each of Wandell’s concerns. In a phone call, Marugg said that after answering Wandell’s questions in an email he had not added those items to the agenda as they had been previously addressed in council meetings and it is against the rules
of order to take up settled business again. Wandell’s concerns included nearly $10,000 in fines by the IRS against the city, the lack of a contract for Marugg and what she believed was a procedural error in the passage of a resolution earlier in the year. Marugg and Hall both said that in addition to the emailed response, these items had been addressed numerous times in council meetings. The fines had been enumerated by Marugg in financial reports and the oversights that led to them had been addressed. As for Marugg’s contract status, he said that his contract as Fire Chief had been verbally renewed following its expiration at the end of 2021, and his proposal to serve as city manager, accepted unanimously by council, was the operating
n See COUNCIL, Page 3
Sat. & Sun. April 29-30, 2023 Saturday 9 am to 4 pm Sunday 11 am to 4 pm at the Tillamook County Fairgrounds
& BEE DAY 2023
H21195
Tillamook Beekeeper Assoc.
Cosponsored by Tillamook County Solid Waste
$1.50 Volume 29, No. 25
Grant announced to help upgrade septic systems in county Will Chappell
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Reporter
ounty commissioners paved the way for Tillamook County to be the lead recipient on a multi-million-dollar grant that will help to upgrade septic systems across the county as well as in Clatsop and Columbia counties. Commissioners made the decision at their December 16 meeting and approved the sale of property by the sheriff at an auction, which will take place on January 31, 2023. The grant to improve septic systems across the county will be coordinated by the Community Action Team, (CAT) which needed a county to partner with to apply for the funds from Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality. Casey Mitchell from CAT told commissioners that the application would request just shy of $2 million, which would be used to repair and replace aging systems. The funds would allow CAT to perform the work at no cost for low- and middle-income residents. Upgrades would be financed through 30-year, zero-interest loans that have no payments. Those loans would be repaid only when the property sells and forgiven if the property does not sell during the loan’s term. This arrangement would be accessible to homeowner making less than 120% of the area’s median income. Mitchell said that CAT has had great success with this loan structure before, usually seeing funds reused five times before being exhausted. The grant will allow CAT to upgrade systems in Tillamook, Clatsop and Columbia counties that threaten contamination of important watersheds should they fail. Mitchell said that being able to offer the work to homeowners with no out of pocket cost made the sell much easier. CAT will have two years to allocate the funds and an additional year to finish spending the money, allowing for flexibility in work schedules. Mitchell told commissioners that the grant has a quarterly reporting requirement. He said that CAT would prepare the reports, but that county staff would need to review and submit them to the Department of Environmental Quality. He told commissioners CAT had already allocated funds in the grant proposal to reimburse the county for employee time, meaning the county would incur no cost. Around 15% of homes in Tillamook County have septic systems according to county
n See Grant, Page 3
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