By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District’s former main station in downtown Yachats has hit the market with an asking price of $550,000.
But a small lot under the east equipment bay is owned by the city of Yachats, which got the land decades ago when it took over the assets of the Yachats Water District. Back then, the city agreed to lease the lot to the fire district for $1 a year so it could expand the station. Payments were made for a time and then forgotten. In 1992, the city and fire district agreed that should the station ever be sold, the city would get a proportional piece of the sale based on the value of its lot.
So 29 years later the Yachats City Council is wrestling with a bunch of questions. When the old station sells, should it:
- Enforce the agreement and collect its portion of the sale price?
- Just let the financially strapped fire district keep all the money?
- Or, given Yachats’ desire for more workforce housing, credit the city’s portion of the sale to the buyer if they develop the land for housing?
The dilemma came up during Thursday’s council meeting when it was asked to approve an agreement to use an appraisal from January to determine the value of the overall property – there are three lots and two buildings – and also agree on the appraiser’s value for the city’s lot.
After an extended discussion, the council agreed to accept the appraiser’s split when the property sells – and not require a new appraisal, which can take months to do and possibly stall any sale.
According to the fire district, the appraiser put the value of the city’s lot at nearly 24 percent of the value of the entire property — or $132,000 if the fire district gets a full price offer.
But the council’s discussion revealed a range of thoughts and ideas on what might be best for the community, the city, or the fire district, which extends from the Waldport city limits to almost the Lane County line.
“We need to have a discussion on the ethical thing to do with this property,” said Councilor Ann Stott. “Should we be making money off this property when we never paid for it?”
Councilor Anthony Muirhead said he would like the city to forgive its portion of the sale if the new owner uses it for affordable housing. “I’ll be proposing in the future a forgiveness plan,” he said.
Mayor Leslie Vaaler and Councilor Greg Scott said the council needed to put the city’s interests first, with Vaaler leaving open the possibility of dedicating the city’s share to some kind of affordable housing program.
“One of our priorities … is housing in the community,” said Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey. “We need to help incentivize workforce housing.”
While the fire district has had a handful of inquiries about the property since it moved to its new station in 2019, district administrator Frankie Petrick told the council Thursday that none of those people said they would use it for housing.
“No one has approached us with ideas for affordable housing,” Petrick said. “A lot of people think it’s a good idea … but no one is saying ‘I want to put affordable housing in Yachats’.”
The two local governments are also in widely different financial shape. The city, which relies mostly on lodging taxes to fund day-to-day operations, is in strong financial condition. On the other hand, the fire district has been borrowing the past three years to pay bills and is counting on the station’s sale to help get out of debt.
The situation will become even more complicated as the council debates what to so. Katherine Guenther, who becomes the interim Yachats city manager on Friday, is also the chair of the fire district board – and will likely need to recuse herself from one side of any future negotiations.
In other business Thursday, the council:
- Approved a contract for Guenther to be both interim city manager and city planner at a rate of $7,000 a month. Stott raised one point in the contract, which said Guenther could not hire or fire a city employee without council approval – asking what constituted an employee. Stott was upset that Lee Elliott, who after left the interim manager’s job Thursday and last week ended the contract of Anita Sites, who worked as a City Hall administrative assistant through an employment agency. Because Sites worked under a contract, Elliott and Vaaler said she was not an employee. Councilor Greg Scott said he also objected to the decision. “We lost an employee who was integral to running city offices,” he said. “When all the information we are getting says it’s hard to hire, we dismissed someone who was capable of doing the job.”
- Approved a state-mandated drinking water protection plan and a 20-year water master plan intended to guide city decisions on water supply and services;
- Scheduled a special meeting for 2 p.m. Thursday, June 10 to discuss recruitment for a new city manager.