Hood River City Council Approves Westside Urban Renewal Project List Totaling $87 million
Hood River City Council
By Cole Goodwin
The Hood River City Council held a meeting on April 10, 2023, to discuss Juneteenth, a water ordinance, Ruthton Park trailhead, transit, economic development, and a project list totaling an estimated $87 million for the proposed Westside Urban Renewal District.
The City Council has been discussing and working towards the creation of a Westside Urban Renewal District since November of 2021.
Hood River currently has three separate urban renewal districts: The Waterfront, The Heights Streetscape, and Columbia-Cascade. Each distinct district retains its own tax increment revenues and funds are not commingled between the districts.
The creation of new district will allow for the use of the area’s property taxes to facilitate economic growth within the proposed area. The current proposed area includes 410 acres on the westside of Hood River.
The majority of Monday night’s discussion centered around a proposed project list for the Urban Renewal District totaling an estimated $87 million in costs. The proposed projects included road and infrastructure improvements, parks and trails projects, and affordable housing projects. Following a lengthy discussion, the Council voted to approve the project list with the understanding that the list is tentative and that changes may be made to the list in the future for any number of reasons, including public input, and shifting community priorities.
The meeting began with presentations on the Hood River County Transit Master Plan Update which focused on planning for improved transportation options in the area.
The presentation was followed by an update from Jessica Metta of the Mid-Columbia Economic Development District. The thirty-mintue presentation focused on covid-19 impacts, goal areas and strategies to strengthen businesses, encourage a robust workforce, build resilient infrastructure, and support powerful collaboration for the purpose of realizing economically resilient, thriving, equitable, sustainable, and diverse communities.
Jessica Metta at Monday night’s meeting.
Metta also called attention to the need for multi-agency collaboration to address the lack of basic modern day necessities such as clean running water, electricity, and broadband at Native American in-lieu fishing sites in the Columbia River Gorge.
“I naively was going into it like let’s talk about economic development and they’re really like no, we really just need those basic needs,” shared Metta.
“How do we help them achieve basic level services at those in lieu-sites?” said Metta, “How do we help with job training opportunities for their youth?”
“Thank you for just calling that out. We think of third world countries as the ones not having access to water. But go to any of the in-liew sites here and across the river and there’s folks that don’t have any sort of running water. So during the pandemic everyone was like wash your hands but for some communities that wasn’t even a possibility. Ao I appreciate your efforts to highlight that and to figure out what are the systems that need to be created in order to create that level of access there and support for those communities,” said one city council member in response.
The meeting then moved on to a public hearing on the adoption of local limits and pH revisions to the Sewer Use Ordinance 2075. The proposed changes garnered many questions from the council about the potential impacts of the changes, and made several formatting revisions to the proposal. Following a reading of the ordinance City Councilers voted to approve the ordinance which will become law in 30-days.
The council then addressed several items on the consent agenda, including the approval of council meeting minutes from March 27, 2023, and OLCC permit applications for two local breweries. The council also approved the renewal of a Microsoft Office 365 license agreement.
City Council also voted to direct staff to continue developing the intergovernmental agreement for the annexation exemption for the Ruthton Trailhead.
City Manager Comments were provided next, with updates on city projects and initiatives. Committee reports followed. Then the Council then voted to appoint Joseph Sheahan and Gary Reed to the City of Hood River Budget Committe.
The Council also voted to approve a request to waive fees for Jackson Park for a Juneteenth celebration which is being planned to take place on Sunday June 18th at Jackson Park.
The meeting concluded with an executive session, during which the council discussed matters related to real property transactions.
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