By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A proposed new city of Yachats lighting ordinance banning marine lighting from motels and houses won’t likely be settled until a new City Council is formed in January.
Last month, the City Council sent the proposed lighting ordinance back to the Planning Commission, asking it to seek a compromise over its suggested ban on marine and other outdoor lighting from the Adobe and Overleaf motels.
The commission held a special workshop Tuesday to again discuss the issue, but reached no agreement and put off further discussion – and a possible decision — until its next meeting Dec. 15.
The last meeting of the current Yachats City Council is the next day, Dec. 16. That’s when three members – Mayor John Moore and councilors Max Glenn and Jim Tooke – formally participate in their last council meeting.
On Jan. 7 three new council members will be sworn in – current council member Leslie Vaaler will become mayor, and Ann Stott and Greg Scott will assume council positions. All three won election Nov. 3.
The new council would then need to initiate the process to fill the remainder of Vaaler’s two-year council term to get its fifth member.
Planning Commission vice chair Lance Bloch, who has been leading the work on the lighting ordinance for more than a year, said Wednesday the commission might be able to come to a decision Dec. 15 and change language in the ordinance. If it does that, it would require a last-minute addition to the City Council’s agenda the next day.
“But it’s the last meeting for those councilors … they may not want to tackle this at their last meeting but leave it up to the new council,” Bloch said Wednesday.
There have been few objections and mostly support for a new city lighting ordinance that focuses on “trespass lighting” from residences. But lighting of rocks and surf from the Adobe and Overleaf motels – which the motels say they use for guest safety and as a promotional tool – has been the most contentious.
The commission originally proposed banning such lights from residences – there are 4-5 in the city with similar lights – and putting a night-time curfew on the motel lights. But last time the council sent the ordinance back for more tweaks, the commission also changed its marine lighting rules — a 10 p.m. curfew and then an outright ban in one year.
That drew the ire of the owners of the Adobe Motel and its general manager Anthony Muirhead, who argued their five lights are used for guest safety – even though three are on the ocean bluff shining directly into the sea. If they are banned, Muirhead said in a letter to the city, the Adobe would have to fence off access across the ocean bluff to the popular 804 Trail.
Stymied over definitions, solutions
On Tuesday, Planning Commission members seemed willing to extend the grace period beyond one year before banning the marine lights. But it broke down when it tried to determine the difference between lights perched on motel rooftops that mostly shine on property below and those perched at the water’s edge.
Commission Chair Helen Anderson said the city depends too much on lodging taxes from the city’s two largest motels to ban the lights in a year. She said 3-5 years would give them enough time to re-do their exterior lighting and change their marketing strategies.
“We’re asking two enormous businesses to change their business model within a year,” Anderson said.
While that drew sympathy from some commissioners, others said the city needed to crack down on rooftop lighting that should be shielded or replaced with less distracting lighting lower to the ground. And then, they argued, the commission should better define “marine lighting” and still prohibit it after one year.
But after an hour of back-and-forth commission members could get no further and pushed the discussion to its Dec. 15 meeting.
Some commission members also urged others to go look at the lights at night – some have apparently not done so – and to reach out to owners or managers of the two motels to better get their objections and ideas for possible solutions – something that also has yet to be done. Neither Muirhead or Overleaf manager/co-owner Drew Roslund attended the commission’s online meeting.
“We need to do everything we can to work with these people,” said Commissioner Loren Dickinson.