Lincoln County commissioners award $130,000 in community grants — but not without a few changes

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

Lincoln County commissioners on Wednesday awarded grants totaling $130,000 to eight organizations and one business – but not before juggling allocations after questioning two of the projects earlier this month.

The board also approved re-allocating $435,000 in unused federal pandemic relief funds to various county projects and approved giving $500,000 to the Pacific Communities Health District Foundation to help finish its 16-bed drug treatment center in Newport.

The 30-year-old community and economic development program funnels money once a year to eligible municipalities and public and private nonprofit organizations. This year the program allocated $60,000 for one “impact” project and divvied up $70,000 for smaller community-based projects. The impact grant this year was directed toward housing or broadband projects.

Applications are filtered and ranked by the board of the Economic Development Alliance of Lincoln County. Its executive director, Paul Schuytema, gave the board’s recommendations to commissioners March 6 and immediately ran into questions from commissioner Kaety Jacobson. Normally the recommendations are approved by commissioners with little comment.

The EDALC’s board recommended the $60,000 grant go to the Housing Authority of Lincoln County to help pay for water and sewer infrastructure for a 2.6-acre parcel in north Lincoln City that it is developing for a county medical clinic and two housing projects.

But at the early March meeting Jacobson said the county had unused money from the $9.4 million it received under the American Rescue Plan Act and it was possible those funds could be directed to the housing authority’s Lincoln City project and the $60,000 county grant could be used on another project.

On Wednesday, county administrator Tim Johnson recommended that change – and to award the $60,000 to Pioneer Connect to pay for engineering work to help bring broadband internet service to 200 homes along Oregon Highway 34 east of Waldport. Pioneer is awaiting word on a $24 million federal grant to install fiber-optic cable to much of the rural areas in its service area, Johnson said, and getting help with engineering costs will help that request.

Jacobson also questioned the EDALC’s recommendation of $15,000 to help pay for two employee-only electric vehicle charging stations at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport. Jacobson said in early March and in an interview with YachatsNews that she was concerned that the charging stations were not available to the public, and that the distribution of grants did not reflect a greater geographic area.

On Wednesday, Johnson recommended dropping the charging station recommendation and instead awarding the $15,000 to the city of Siletz to help with a $250,000 playground and sports park project.

Commissioners agreed unanimously.

Other awards went to:

• $15,000 to Habitat for Humanity for its Waldport housing project;
• $15,000 to Lincoln City for an accessible playground in a new park;
• $7,500 to the Lincoln City Cultural Center for its farmer’s market revitalization project;
• $7,500 to the Rotary Club of Newport for its eco-friendly visitors project;
• $5,000 to the Logsden Community Club for its commercial kitchen; and
• $5,000 to Newport Oregon Pride for its pride weekend celebration.

There were 12 applications seeking a total of $172,000 in standard grants. There were five applications totaling $277,000 for the larger, project grants.

Other ARPA allocations

The county received a total of $9.4 million in pandemic relief funds from the federal government and over the last three years allocated them to dozens of projects ranging from homeless shelter programs to courthouse replacement planning to digitizing county records to buying high-walled cubicles for offices.

Jacobson, Johnson and grants manager Shanelle Burch spent the past month going through projects to see what projects had leftover money or others that weren’t going to meet a December deadline to be under contract. The unused money came to $435,000, which was reallocated Wednesday to projects, including another $100,000 for the county’s winter sheltering program and $157,000 for the community justice program’s Youth Tides shelter.

Also part of the ARPA funds it officially allocated Wednesday was $500,000 to the Pacific Communities Health District Foundation to help with the $14 million cost of remodeling a former adult foster care home in Newport into a 16-bed drug treatment center. To be operated by Samaritan Health Services, it will be the only inpatient drug treatment facility in the county.