Lincoln County’s years-long attempt to give Ocean View Drive to the city of Yachats cleared a small but key hurdle Wednesday when county commissioners held a brief hearing to approve a new legal description and boundaries for a short section of the road.
The hearing was a continuation of one from August, when an Oregon State Parks official showed up to object to the county claiming a section of the road through Yachats State Park. A parks manager later said the agency didn’t necessarily oppose the new boundaries, but just hadn’t had time to examine surveys and years of legal documents and couldn’t get answers from county officials.
After a conference call between county and state officials in early September, the agency sent a letter to the county Sept. 27 saying it was fine with the legalization of the new boundaries.
The issue is a technical step in getting the road transferred to the city of Yachats, a process that officially got underway seven years ago. But the issue has been discussed for decades as part of the county’s vacating of County Road 804, now a popular trail stretching from the beach north of Yachats through the city along Ocean View Drive and then connecting to U.S. Highway 101.
Yachats has been pressing the county to complete the turnover because it needs to own the road in order to build a boardwalk overlooking the Yachats estuary. It also wants access to $308,000 in 804 Trail mitigation funds to help purchase property at the corner of Ocean View Drive and U.S. Highway 101.
Turning over the street to the city has been stymied by staffing changes at both Yachats city hall and county offices and ironing out differences in the road’s old surveys, legal descriptions and years of paving that encroached on a handful of properties. The hearings in August and on Wednesday were over a new survey and legal description for the section of Ocean View Drive from West Third Street through Yachats State Park and ending at Pontiac Street after the county was able to get new easement agreements from four homeowners along the road.