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Illegal Dump Cleanup
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Headlight Herald
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 | Vol. 137, Issue 48
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www.TillamookHeadlightHerald.com53
Spruce Point construction underway Fournier
gathers Highway 6 economic data
WILL CHAPPELL
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Headlight Editor
ork is well underway at the new Spruce Point apartment complex in Manzanita and on pace to bring 60 new affordable apartments online by next fall. The project is being led by Home First Development Partners and supported by a $21.4 million grant from Oregon Housing and Community Services, as well as grants from the Tillamook County Affordable Housing Grant program. Construction crews broke ground on August 12, after the property was cleared of trees and a new street, Legacy Place, which intersects with Necarney City Road between Clipper Court and Pine Ridge Lane, constructed to serve the development. The 60 apartments will be spread across three three-story buildings and two two-story buildings, and the complex will also feature a community center with a leasing office and community area, common courtyard with a nautically themed playground and 96 parking spots. There will be 14 one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments, 23 twobedroom, one-bathroom, and 23 three bed, one-and-a-half-bedroom apartments, with all featuring washers and dryers. 48 of the apartments will be affordable to
WILL CHAPPELL
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Photo by Will Chappell
Workers prepare for the concrete slab bases of the five apartment buildings and community center to be poured.
residents earning 60% of the area’s median income or less, with 12 dedicated to those earning 30% of that figure or less. Colleen Osborn, Development Manager with Home First, said that the team working on the project was excited to be able to fully address the need for 60 housing units identified in the recent Tillamook
County Housing Needs Assessment. “The rents are going to be able to serve people in the community that work at the local places here, so we’re directly trying to respond to both Tillamook County and the City of Manzanita’s need for housing for the people that work here,” Osborn said. As of mid-November, workers
were preparing for the concrete pads at the base of the buildings to be poured by building interior footings and compacting base rock. Brad Dineen, the project foreman, said that the slabs would be poured at some point in early December when weather allowed and that framing would begin shortly after.
TBCC prepares for belt tightening WILL CHAPPELL
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Headlight Editor
variety of factors, chief among them a budget crunch at the state government, have converged to create a challenging financial situation for Tillamook Bay Community College, leading President Paul Jarrell to begin weighing cost-cutting measures for the institution. Other factors include an increase in the college’s contributions to employees’ pensions and preexisting underfunding, and with state funding accounting for approximately 60% of Tillamook Bay Community College’s (TBCC) operating budget, Jarrell said that any cuts to state funding would have a major impact. “Any changes that occur at the state level impact community colleges hard, and especially small, rural community colleges like us,” Jarrell said. “We have a smaller tax base, so we tend to get more of our revenue from the state.” Funding challenges first came onto the radar at TBCC when the state’s August revenue forecast projected a $372.7 million state deficit for the current biennium given the current budget. This prompted the state legislature asked every agency across the state to present a list of proposals to cut 2.5% or 5% of their budgets. The latter percentage would represent a $276.6 million cut to the overall state budget. At TBCC, around 60% of the $10-million annual operating budget comes courtesy of the Community College Support Fund, while property taxes, and tuition and fees contribute around 20% each. On the expenditure side, 76% of the budget is dedicated to paying for staff salaries and benefits, with the balance going towards materials and services. TBCC has 65 full-time employees, 60 of whom are paid out of the operating budget, and the annual cost per employee is around $100,000, according to Jarrell, who said that benefits are a large driver of those costs, adding 60 cents to every dollar spent on salary.
In this file photo at an Open House at the college earlier this year, faculty from the school’s various programs and departments gathered in the college’s atrium to provide information to event attendees.
Jarrell said that as part of the cost-reduction exercise, TBCC leaders decided to implement a hiring freeze in anticipation of the projected need for cuts, removing one job listing earlier this month, and that they have also put a hiatus on nonessential travel. While Jarrell estimated those changes will save several hundred thousand dollars, any further reductions would likely mean cutting staff positions. “We think we might be able to come up with a couple hundred thousand out of that materials and services that could be savings,” Jarrell said, “but we are looking at the likelihood of having to do some kind of staffing reductions as well.” Further complicating matters is the recent news that TBCC’s required contribution to the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), which manages its pensions, increased by 5% on November 1. Previously, TBCC had been participating in a state-managed program whereby the proceeds of
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bonds purchased years ago were used to help defray the cost of PERS participation, but in October, the college was informed that the bond funds had run out before their expected expiration in June 2027. That meant an increase in the college’s PERS rate from 26.5% to 31.5%, or an increase of $200,000 to $250,000 over the rest of this fiscal year and $350,000 in fiscal year 2027, a deficit that will remain regardless state funding. On a positive note, the state’s December revenue forecast adjusted the projected deficit for the current biennium downward from $372.7 million to $63.1 million, signaling the potential for a smaller reduction to that funding. But Jarrell pointed out that even at the current funding level, community colleges had been set to receive 7% less than they had requested based on their projected need. Jarrell was quick to stress that even as TBCC faces a straitened budget, he
and its board of directors are committed to prioritizing affordability for students and that there is no plan to deviate from the prior practice of increasing tuition and fees at a level related to inflation. “We are the most affordable community college in the state,” Jarrell said. “We really want to keep it that way.” As TBCC’s administration wades into the discussion about staffing cuts, Jarrell said that they hope to achieve some savings through attrition as faculty resign or retire and are not replaced. To the extent that trend does not meet budgetary needs, Jarrell said he and other administrators will look at ways to combine and streamline positions to continue delivering the most important programs and services for students. “I think we’re really looking at how do we meet the mission critical needs of the college in the face of some staffing reductions,” Jarrell said.
Headlight Editor
s part of his ongoing effort to improve conditions on Oregon Highway 6, Tillamook County Commissioner Paul Fournier is asking residents and local businesses to share information about the road’s economic importance. Fournier said that he hopes to arm Tillamook’s representatives in Salem with data to support a legislative push to fund a long-term solution to a massive slide between mileposts 33 and 36 that the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) spends upwards of $100,000 annually to maintain. As ODOT officials estimate a long-term fix to cost tens of millions or upwards of $100 million, Fournier is concerned about the disastrous impacts any prolonged closure would have on local businesses but said that the road is not on the radar of most people outside the county. “I think what it does is inform on the importance of the road,” Fournier said of his in-progress economic impacts study, “because we’re not even on any of the lists, like it’s a maintenance only road at this point.” Fournier’s quest to address the issues on Highway 6, which date to the road’s construction in the 1930s, began as soon as he took office as a Tillamook County commissioner early this year. He reached out to officials at ODOT, Representative Cyrus Javadi, Senator Suzanne Weber and his counterparts in Washington County about the issue. Fournier learned that a road upgrade or replacement was not on the list of future projects for ODOT and that funding for the issue would have to be allocated by the legislature. Weber, who sponsored legislation funding a safety study of the highway in 2022, and Javadi were supportive but said that the issue lacked awareness outside the county, a point reinforced by Washington County commissioners’ lukewarm response. As part of his initial research into the subject, Fournier had spoken with officials from the Tillamook County Creamery Association, who estimated that a closure of Highway 6 would cost the company $66,000 a week in additional transportation costs. Fournier reasoned that if the impacts to the creamery were so large, it could be a successful tactic to determine the overall impacts on the community to demonstrate the road’s importance to the local economy. To that end, Fournier is asking local businesses and individuals to reach out to him or respond when asked, to tell him about how they would be affected should the road close. “I’m basically looking for why Highway 6 is important to their business, for their personal life and what are the impacts when it closes and if it closes for one day versus one week versus one year,” Fournier said. So far, Fournier has heard from local automotive shops that rely on consistent deliveries of parts from the Willamette Valley and made See DATA, Page A3
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