By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
After three city planners from out of town the past two years, the new Yachats City Council made it clear it wanted to stop the revolving door and see if it could fine someone local to do the job.
On Thursday, longtime Yachats resident and former Planning Commission chair Katherine Guenther started the 16-hour-a-week job. She will be an independent contractor and paid $27 an hour.
Guenther moved to Yachats in 1994, worked 20 years as a Realtor and spent 15 years on the Planning Commission, including many years as its chair.
Guenther said she wasn’t particularly interested in the position until the City Council expanded the job requirements to add that a candidate could have significant planning experience in place of a college degree in planning.
“It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time over the years on a volunteer basis and as a former Realtor,” she told YachatsNews.
Guenther told City Manager Shannon Beaucaire and an interview committee that she would take advantage of educational opportunities “including on my own dime.”
The council made it clear in the last months of Beaucaire’s time as manager that it wanted to move away from a contract with the Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments and hopefully find a city planner with local connections. The last CoG planner commuted from Albany until beginning to work remotely this year. The previous CoG planner lasted three months before going to work for the city of Waldport, and the one before that commuted from Tillamook.
The city received four applications for the position and a committee interviewed three people.
“If someone local wasn’t important to the council, I wouldn’t have applied,” Guenther said. “What I heard was reassuring.”
For now, Guenther said she will be at City Hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but will work to refine her schedule with interim City Manager Lee Elliott, who starts Monday. And, being in the office and available other hours will give her the opportunity to work more closely with the city’s code enforcement contractor.
“I’m hoping that’s going to be a good working relationship,” Guenther said.
Guenther is also chair of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board, is a board member of View the Future, a Yachats nonprofit conservation group, and chair of the Yachats Fireworks Committee, which organizes the July 4 fireworks display. She plans to continue in those volunteer positions.
In other business last week, the City Council:
- Heard that an estimate to rebuild or replace portions of the Little Log Church and Museum could range from $400,00 to $600,000. The project has been stalled for two years over fundraising and if or how to fix the deteriorating church;
- Committed to giving Lincoln County a decision on a choice of guardrails along Ocean View Drive at its April 1 meeting;
- Threw its political and some financial support behind a Yachats Trails Committee proposal to have a retired landscape architect from Eugene propose designs for a boardwalk along Yachats Ocean Road between Pontiac Street and U.S. Highway 101;
- Rejected a request from the Public Works & Streets Commission to allow it to have one member who lived outside the city;
- Voted 3-1 to increased the upper pay range for a potential city accounting employee by $4,000 to $65,000 after hearing that the city of Waldport’s effort to find an accountant drew no applicants. Two councilors, Greg Scott and Ann Stott, expressed frustration that the job had not been posted. Mayor Leslie Vaaler voted against the higher salary range, saying she wanted the interim city manager to review the application and pay during his first week on the job.