News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The City of Sisters is set to launch several street projects this spring, using funds from the city's Urban Renewal District and from a parking fund paid into by business district property owners.
According to City Manager Eileen Stein, the city will realign East Cascade Avenue where it runs from the library parking lot past Sisters Jewelry Co. and intersects with Cascade Avenue/Highway 20.
Instead of the oblique angle now existing at the intersection, engineers will realign the street to "T" into the highway at a 90 degree angle. The project will also include curb extensions to make the intersection easier to navigate for those on foot.
"We'll be making it a much more pedestrian-friendly intersection than the (existing one) is," Stein said.
The project is estimated to cost $450,000.
Additionally, the city and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) are partnering to create a new crossing at Cedar Street, so that students going to school can cross there rather than at Locust Street just to the east. The Locust Street crossing has long been a concern to parents and educators because heavy cross-traffic makes foot crossing there hazardous.
In recent years a crossing guard has worked the crossing before and after school hours.
ODOT is contributing $50,000 to the project. The project also includes the extension of sidewalks and storm water control systems built along Highway 20 where it fronts on the school district's administrative site.
Projects are expected to go out for bid this month.
Urban renewal projects are debt-funded, with the debt service coming from "tax increment" collections for the Urban Renewal District founded in 2003 to fund downtown improvements.
The term "tax increment" refers to the fact that as property taxes increase each year in an urban renewal district, all receipts above the level that existed when the district was formed go into the urban renewal fund rather than being distributed to local governments.
The city's Urban Renewal Agency can incur up to $9.9 million in debt to be serviced by the tax increment collections over the 20-year life span of the district.
Some Sisters merchants have been wondering when promised projects to improve the downtown area will begin.
The city has long planned to create amenities such as curb bulbs and sidewalk improvements to make the downtown area more pleasant and pedestrian-friendly for those patronizing downtown merchants.
According to Stein, the district is not yet ready to take on a major overhaul of the Cascade Avenue corridor.
"The big Cascade Avenue remake project that the Urban Renewal District was created for is a multimillion-dollar project," Stein said.
The rough estimate is in the neighborhood of $5 million.
"We don't have enough tax increment accumulated yet to pay the debt service on a project that large," Stein said.
The city currently has about $230,000 in tax increment funds in the bank.
Separate parking district improvements are also slated to take place this spring. The city's parking district is funded by a 5-cent-per-square-foot assessment on downtown business properties.
No projects have been conducted for several years.
Projects slated for last year were delayed due to turnover in the public works department, Stein said.
Now, the city plans to get moving on new parking in several areas of unimproved right-of-way, largely along Main Avenue. The city will pave unimproved right-of-way and stripe the areas for new angled parking.
According to Public Works Project Coordinator Paul Bartagna, the improvements will create 91 conventional parking spaces and 12 handicapped parking spaces.
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.
Reader Comments(0)