North Coast
Citizen Serving North Tillamook County since 1996
Thursday, June 12, 2025 | Vol. 32, Issue 12
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www.northcoastcitizen.com
TLT increase heads to recount WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Manzanita’s new city hall on Manzanita Avenue will open in early August.
Move in begins at Manzanita city hall WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Following substantial completion in mid-May, Manzanita’s police department has begun to move into its new home at Underhill Plaza and will be followed soon by the rest of city staff, as they prepare to open the new city hall in early August. Finishing touches are still underway as low-voltage electrical equipment, like internet infrastructure is installed, and staff will spend July settling in
and familiarizing themselves with the new facility, a decision City Manager Leila Aman said was made to manage moving costs. “When people are like, ‘why are you closed for five weeks?’ It’s like, well, because we are small, we don’t have a whole army of people who are here doing this stuff, it was just more cost-effective for us to do this,” Aman said. Work began on construction of the new city hall and police station last April after city council decided to finance
the $4.6 million construction project with a loan from Business Oregon that will be repaid over the next decade at the end of 2023. Crews first demolished the school and Quonset hut that had been on the site last spring, before moving onto construction, pouring the buildings’ slabs in the summer and completing framing in the fall. The new facility will consist of two buildings, with the police department housed separately from the rest of city staff and the public areas of the site in their own building, which is
designed to withstand a maximum Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunami and serve as the city’s emergency operations center. The project was substantially completed in the middle of May, when Cove Built LLC, the local contractors who led the project, handing over the keys to the new facility and completed a final punch list of work. Manzanita Police began their move into the new facility on June 9, and Aman said See MANZANITA, Page A3
Tsunami 101 roadshow stops in Tillamook County WILL CHAPPELL Citizen Editor
Oregon’s Department of Emergency Management hosted the first of a series of Tsunami 101 presentations at the Pine Grove Community
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House in Manzanita on June 4, drawing a full house. At the presentation, which was repeated later in the day in Tillamook, experts from Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Oregon Department of Emergency Management discussed the tsunami situation in Oregon and how residents can be prepared and will be alerted if one occurs. Laura Gabel, a geologist with DOGAMI based in Newport, kicked off the presentations by discussing the science behind tsunamis. Gabel said that tsunamis are generated in areas called subduction zones where tectonic plates are pushing against each other and that the entire Pacific Basin is ringed by these zones, each of which can generate tsunamis. Oregon’s local subduction zone is known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It extends from northern California to Vancouver Island and runs roughly parallel to the Oregon’s entire coastline
between 60 and 70 miles offshore. The zone exists where the Juan de Fuca plate is slowly slipping underneath the North American Plate, pulling the North American Plate downwards at a rate of around one and a half inches a year. The pressure created by this subduction builds up in a stuck or locked zone and will eventually be released when the North American Plate springs back up, causing an earthquake and tsunami. Gabel explained that while Oregon could be affected by tsunamis generated elsewhere around the Pacific, these distant tsunamis would take hours to arrive and would be much less impactful and easier to prepare for than a local tsunami generated by the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The good news is that the Cascadia Zone is by far the least active in the ring of fire, Gabel said, leading scientists to discover it relatively See TSUNAMI 101, Page A3
Laura Gabel of DOGAMI addresses a packed house at a Tsunami 101 presentation hosted by the Oregon Department of Emergency Management at the Pine Grove Community House on June 4.
Barring a shift in ballots with missing or unverified signatures, the vote on a measure raising Tillamook County’s transient lodging tax will head to a hand recount before election results are certified on June 16. Updated results from Tillamook County Clerk Christy Nyseth’s office released on May 29, showed that in the week following election day, ballots received by mail had narrowed the margin between yes and no votes on the measure to just 11, below the threshold of 17 votes that would trigger a recount. Measure 29-183 seeks to increase Tillamook County’s transient lodging tax (TLT) rate from 10% to 14% and was advanced by county commissioners in response to a budget crunch in the county government. A concerted campaign was mounted against the proposed measure by members of the lodging industry, who argued that the increase would negatively impact their already-tight bottom lines. After the first round of vote results were released on May 20, election night, the measure had received 21 more no votes that yes, with more than 7,000 votes counted. By May 22, with more than 9,000 votes counted, the margin had fallen to 20. Oregon statute requires that a recount be conducted in an election on a ballot measure if the margin between yes and no votes is less than one fifth of one percent of the total votes cast for and against the measure. With 8,981 votes tallied as of May 29, the threshold for a mandatory recount was 17.9 votes, and 4,496 no votes had been cast, with 4,485 yes. See TLT, Page A5
Famers’ markets return STAFF REPORT
Across Tillamook County farmers market season is in full swing, with markets in Neskowin, Pacific City, Rockaway Beach and Manzanita underway, and Tillamook’s returning this week. Rockaway Beach’s Thursday markets returned on June 5 and will run through September 25 at the Ocean’s Edge Wayside in downtown. The market is open from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. each week and features live music in addition to fresh produce, baked goods and handmade gifts. Manzanita’s market has been up and running since May 16, taking place Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Taking place at Underhill Plaza at 635 Manzanita Avenue, the market accepts SNAP benefits and even offers matching funds to card users, with a limited time offer of $40 extra to spend when a SNAP user spends $20. The Tillamook Farmers’ Market is set for its inaugural edition of the 2025 season on Saturday, June 14. The market takes place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekly in front of the county courthouse on Laurel Avenue. It also offers a SNAP match program and features live music, kids’ activities and a kids’ bucks program that gives youngsters $2 to spend at the market. The Pacific City Famers’ Market kicked off June 7 and will run weekly from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Pacific City Library, located at 6200 Camp Street. Neskowin’s market launched on May 17 and takes place on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Proposals for All Meadow at 48875 Highway 101 South. The market participates in SNAP’s double up food bucks programs and offers a matching program of its own for SNAP recipients.