News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
An influx of relatively affluent residents into in-town subdivisions such as Buck Run has begun to change Sisters' low-to-moderate income status, which could jeopardize some grant funding for Sisters' sewer project.
At the time of the sewer bond election in May 1997, Sisters had approximately 60 percent "low-to-moderate income" residents. The Oregon Economic Development Department (OEDD) estimates that demographic changes have reduced that percentage to 51 or 52 percent.
"If we get too much growth it could affect all the grant money we're going after," sewer engineer Dick Nored told a city council workshop on Thursday, October 21.
City administrator Barbara Warren reported that a $750,000 federal Community Development Block Grant administered by the Oregon Economic Development Department has been withdrawn from the table because the sewer system is much larger than what is needed to serve the current residents.
According to an OEDD memorandum, "Community Development Block Grant funds cannot pay for growth and must benefit low-to-moderate income users ... when designing a system so much larger than what the existing users need, there is no way to determine that the future users of the system will be low-to-moderate income level beneficiaries."
City officials say that the system is sized appropriately to serve the city and its Urban Growth Boundary area. Other granting agencies have accepted that position.
OEDD has proposed using a different grant category to provide $750,000 specifically targeted to pay hookup fees for lower income residents. However, that money would not be available until the end of the project.
According to engineer Dick Nored the city is "about $5.5 million short" of funding the entire sewer project. However, according to Nored, a drop in interest rates to 3.25 percent makes using more bonded loans possible while still keeping monthly sewer bills at $39 or lower.
The difficulty of securing grant funds has forced the city to break the project into phases. Phase One, which is fully funded through loans and grants, is slated to cover the downtown core area. Construction should begin next spring on that phase, according to Nored.
A second phase would cover the rest of the residential area of "old" Sisters.
The city has a commitment from the federal Rural Development agency for grant funds to pay for the second phase, but the money is not expected to be available until around the first of the year at the earliest.
The industrial area of the city and outlying subdivisions such as The Pines and the Pine Meadow Ranch development are slated for additional phases.
The city cannot allow new, more affluent residential developments into the system immediately without jeopardizing grants available to "low-to-moderate" income communities.
That means that planned subdivisions such as PMR, The Pines and Timber Creek will have to wait to come on line until the less affluent residential core of the city has been served. Significant delays might force developers of the planned subdivisions to construct temporary sewer systems or to go on their own permanently.
The delay in the process is frustrating to developers who have verbally committed to paying systems development charges (SDCs) up front to help finance the project.
"For over a year we've been talking about The Pines and PMR and selected other individuals participating on the very front end. Now we're on the very back end," said Eldon Howard, developer of The Pines.
Growth is already shrinking the future capacity of the sewer system, which was designed for a projected 20-year growth period.
"What we're seeing now is a lot of growth and the system may last 10 (years)," Nored said.
The city must assess systems development charges on new growth to cover their impact on the system so that treatment facilities can be expanded in the future. The city must craft a sewer master plan in order to charge an SDC. The city estimates the SDC will be $3,933.
But new homes and commercial buildings built since the May 1997 sewer bond election have already brought about 18 more "equivalent dwelling units" (EDU) onto the system without paying SDCs.
According to PMR developer Steve McGhehey, another 50 EDU will be in place on PMR by spring, worth about $200,000 in SDCs.
According to Mayor Wilson, the city must have its plan in place and begin charging an SDC before such growth impacts the system.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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