By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The fine details of how even a small city is governed and operates were on full display Wednesday night during the second Yachats City Council meeting of the month.
In a meeting that fell just short of three hours, the council waded through five reports and a housing presentation from Lincoln County, adopted changes to the city’s comprehensive planning guide, approved a new manual and fees for the Commons, discussed the restructuring of the finance committee – and then spent more than an hour fine-tuning proposed changes to the city charter.
“Thank you,” Mayor John Moore said at the end of the meeting. “That was a big agenda and a lot of work got done tonight.”
The council has been working on charter changes for months, mostly to account that it has been operating under a city manager-council form of government for three years that was not reflected in the document. The proposed changes – that must be approved by voters in May – detail the roles and how the mayor, council and manager operate.
The additions and changes now go to the city attorney to check before a final OK by the council and to the Lincoln County elections office by early February.
The council also discussed the proposed makeup of the finance committee, which it is trying to re-invigorate by including representatives of city committees and commissions to improve financial communication and decision-making. The committee, which makes financial recommendations to the budget committee, has sometimes had only three members at recent meetings. The new proposal would expand it to at least seven.
The finance committee would also be charged with taking capital improvement requests from each city committee, prioritizing them for yearly proposals to the budget committee. It would also develop a five-year capital improvement plan.
The council approved wording that makes the city manager the chair of the committee and a voting member. Moore was also picked as the council’s representative to the committee. But questions about who approves – each commission or the council – finance committee members and how a citizen representative is picked led the council to continue the discussion at its Feb. 6 meeting.
In other business the council:
- Approved a new use manual and fee structure for use of the Commons. The changes had been under discussion for more than a year but got hung up on fees charged to some local groups. The issue was finally settled late last year when the Parks and Commons Commission worked out an agreement with One of Us Productions.
- Agreed to include all volunteers on city committees or groups in the city’s workers compensation insurance. The change would add about $2,000 to the city’s $40,000 annual insurance premium.
- Received required yearly reports on the city’s urban renewal district and system development charges that showed both were in improved financial condition compared with the previous year.
- Listened to Paul Thompson, who complained that a new one-day-a-week contract for planning and code enforcement was not enough. City Manager Shannon Beaucaire said the situation with a new planner/code enforcement officer hired in early January is intended to be temporary. The city has money in its 2018-19 budget to hire a full-time employee to handle planning, code enforcement and other projects, she said, but has had trouble recruiting someone for the combined job.
- Got a quarterly activities report from the Yachats Chamber of Commerce’s visitor’s center showing a 9 percent increase in contacts for October through December 2018 compared to the same period of 2017. But at least two councilors expressed dismay that no one from the chamber or center was present to answer questions.
