By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Two Yachats City Council members objecting to plans to pave a 100-yard-long street adjacent to the city’s 4-acre ball field used a rare parliamentary maneuver Wednesday to pull a final vote on the project from the council’s agenda.
Now the council will again discuss the $165,000 Driftwood Lane paving project at its Aug. 5 meeting.
The request by Councilors Leslie Vaaler and Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey came after Parks and Commons Commission chair John Purcell asked the council to “slow down” approval of the project.
Purcell told the council that the project had grown from what appeared initially to be a simple paving project to fix a crumbling road, to include a two-lane street, two sidewalks and 18-foot parking spaces. That total width now spans 51 feet – not including working around a little-used skate park and extends far into the ball field.
“There’s a lot we can do there,” Purcell said, adding that the city does need more parking. “But slow this down and not award the contract for the current design … I think we can do better.”
While the paving project was discussed by the city’s Public Works and Streets Commission in 2019, not much was done about it until the city received a $100,000 state grant in December to move ahead.
Rick McClung, who oversees the city’s streets project, had an engineering company come up with a design in February. But after the coronavirus pandemic hit, city meetings were put on hold for weeks and the plan wasn’t widely circulated.
The design was finally presented to a joint meeting of the two commissions May 27. The parks commission had lots of questions, but reluctantly agreed to recommend the council go ahead with the project. The public works commission thought the design was OK, the project necessary, and voted 4-0 to move ahead.
After a contentious discussion June 4, the City Council voted 3-2 to approve the project. Vaaler and O’Shaughnessey voted against it.
But the Parks and Commons Commission again discussed the issue at its June 18 meeting, questioning how much – or if — the public knew much about it and the size of the project. It asked McClung to measure and mark how far the parking spaces and sidewalks would extend into the ball field.
McClung did that. Purcell went and looked Wednesday morning and hours later told the council he thought the footprint was too big.
The city has already put the project out to bid, and the low estimate for it is $165,000, McClung told the council Wednesday. If the city doesn’t award the bid in August, the chance of getting the project done this summer or fall is slim, he said.
The city has two years – until December 2021 – to use the grant from the Oregon Department of Transportation.
But knowing that there has been continuing debate by one city commission and by council members about the project, there has been no staff attempt to offer an alternative.
Some have suggested that the 16-foot-wide skate park be moved to just west of the pavilion and one 5- or 7-foot-wide sidewalk be taken out of the plans. That would keep necessary parking, one sidewalk and the two-lane road – and possibly shrink the project’s westernmost edge by more than 20 feet.
On Wednesday, Vaaler said she does not believe the project has community support and objected to the city contributing $65,000 out of its capital funds to do it.
“A delay will give the project a chance to be improved,” she said. “I feel strongly enough that this is a very bad project.”
She was challenged by Mayor John Moore and Councilor Jim Tooke. Moore said the city has a tendency to “study things to death” and badly needs public parking. Tooke questioned Vaaler on how or where she is getting peoples’ opinions on the project.
“I keep hearing these things but I don’t see them showing up to meetings,” Tooke said.
Vaaler then asked to invoke a rarely-used council rule that appeared to say that two of five council members could pull an item from the agenda if they object to it. But the rule was not clear and when Moore asked City Manager Shannon Beaucaire for advice, she was reluctant to offer an interpretation.
“I don’t want to be the one who divides the council,” she said.
With that, council members agreed to discuss the project again Aug. 5.