North Coast
Citizen Serving North Tillamook County since 1996
Thursday, May 16, 2024 | Vol. 31, Issue 9
www.northcoastcitizen.com
Twin Rocks opens staff housing WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Members of the Twin Rocks Friends Camp community gathered on May 10, to celebrate the completion of a new young adult community house on Breakers Avenue in Rockaway Beach. After an appreciation lunch at the camp, the group rode the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad to the house, which will house up to 12 young adults, with move ins starting this week. “We’re excited to introduce this new staff home, offering a reasonably priced and comfortable living space for our vibrant community of young adults who contribute passionately to our mission here at Twin Rocks,” said Twin Rocks Friends Camp Executive Director Ken Beebe. The new house was built on property adjacent to the camp’s beachfront Harbor Villa Retreat Center that was acquired with an eye towards increasing employee housing. The camp was established in 1918, initially consisting of three acres east of Highway 101 on the south end of Rockaway Beach before significantly expanding over the decades. Housing for a handful of staffers already existed at the main camp, but Beebe said that finding affordable housing for young staff members had become an increasing challenge in recent years. “It’s difficult these days
Citizen Editor
Members of the construction team and Twin Rocks’ community in front of the new young adultt housing in Rockaway Beach.
for young adults to find affordable places to live in Tillamook county,” Beebe said. After the property was acquired, the camp began work on building the 3,586-square-foot house with significant contributions from community members. Beebe said that Board Member Jim Fisher volunteered his services as general contractor and other subcontractors offered a variety of discounts to help facilitate the project, leading to a total cost of construction of just $420,000, under half the estimated full cost. Volunteers also helped to keep costs down with more than 1,000 hours of labor
WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
A group of Rockaway Beach citizens gathered at the city’s wayside on May 9, to celebrate the completion of a project that added a new wheelchair house and more than 4,000 square feet of pavers around the Chamber of Commerce’s Red Caboose. The ceremony took place during the first farmer’s market of the year and celebrated the additional accessibility the project will afford those with limitations. At the ceremony, City Councilors Penny Cheek and Kristine Hayes spoke before Cheek cut the ribbon on the new facilities. Cheek shared the project’s history, which started when the chamber of commerce applied for a Travel Oregon grant in 2023 and were selected to receive $94,000 towards the work. Hayes, who is also the president of the chamber of commerce, estimated that the total cost of the project was just under $110,000, with the rest of the funding coming from private donations. Those donations came from the Marrick Family Trust, Builder’s First Source, Bob Kern, SAI Design & Build, Shane Hayes from Intrepid Construction, and Matt, Jim and Sue Vachter who donated $2,500 for the purchase of a new beach buggy wheelchair. Work began in early April
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County dialing in emergency radio bond specifics WILL CHAPPELL
donated in the course of the construction. The new house has eight bedrooms spread across two floors, with kitchens on each floor and a large communal area on the bottom floor. Beebe said that the floors will be separated by gender and that the house will be open to camp staffers between 18 and 34 years old, including interns in the camp’s college program. Beebe stressed that the new space will offer meaningful opportunities for relationship building and fellowship among the residents. “With this home, we aim to create an environment where young adults can thrive, connect and grow
Twin Rocks Friend Camp Ken Beebe addressing the appreciation lunch at the camp’s dining hall.
personally and professionally,” Beebe said. Rent at the home will be
below market rate and the first tenants are set to move in this week.
Rockaway Beach chamber inaugurates new wheelchair house and pavers
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on the installation of the new pavers, with 4,400 square feet installed, stretching from a terminus on North Miller Street up to the railroad tracks and continuing next to them to First Avenue and encircling the chamber caboose. The new wheelchair house is located at the north end of the caboose and will house the chamber’s fleet of beach wheelchairs. It is called Barb’s Beach Mobile House in honor of a longtime volunteer who helped to maintain the chamber’s first beach buggy for more than three decades.
City Councilor Penny Cheek (left) cuts the ribbon in front of the new wheelchair house while Councilor Kristine Hayes (right) assists.
The newly installed pavers as seen from near their terminus on Miller Street.
A group of Tillamook County staff is working to finalize the details of a bond question to support the replacement of the county’s emergency radio system that they plan to bring to voters in November. The new system would bring Tillamook’s emergency radio communications into the digital age and carries a projected price tag of $27 million. “Now, we need to come into the 21st century and we need to increase reliability,” said Tillamook County Commissioner Doug Olson, “we need to do all those things technically.” The system that currently supports emergency responders in the county was built between 2001 and 2003, following voter bond approval in 2001. The system consists of 12 towers spread across the county housing VHF repeaters. According to Rueben Descloux, communication systems administrator, the old system is overburdened and becoming challenging to keep in service. The analog nature of the system limits the number of users that can simultaneously use the system while also constricting its range, making countywide communications impossible. The analog system is also more prone to static or other interference than a replacement system would be, with sometimes troubling results. Olson relayed the story of an officer-involved shooting that occurred last summer in Rockaway Beach during which the responding officers radioed for backup. But owing to interference other officers responding misheard the transmission and slowed their response believing the suspect was in custody. In addition to the technical constraints, the physical infrastructure of the system is deteriorating and replacement parts are becoming hard to come by. This leaves the system at risk of failures that could not be repaired, according to a report on the system by Federal Engineering completed in 2020. That report recommended that the county begin the process of replacing the aging system and a second report that year, also by Federal Engineers, recommended a new, digital system and provided a conceptual design. At that point, the replacement system carried a projected budget of $20 million, but with inflation in the intervening years, that estimate has now risen to $27 million. Tillamook County Chief of Staff Rachel Hagerty is also a part of the team working on the new system and is leading the work to put the financial package together to support the project. Hagerty was already able to secure a $2 million federal appropriation last year and recently applied for another $8.9 million in federal funding. Hagerty is also working with bond consultants at Piper Sandler to determine the specifics of a bond question, which must be submitted by August for inclusion on the November ballot. Several factors, including the bond term and interest rates, will See EMERGENCY, Page A3