To the editor:
A recent letter to the editor from Greg Scott and Tom Lauritzen conveniently left out some important information about the outgoing Yachats City Council and infrastructure projects.
They stated that in the last two years, the city has “only spent approximately $236,000” on infrastructure projects. They neglected to add that the city also obtained an additional $291,000 in grants for these projects, so we could complete over $500,000 worth of projects that cost our city less than half the total cost of the projects.
Certainly, at least Tom Lauritzen knows, that the best way to pay for projects is using OPM (Other People’s Money), and your city government has done a far better job of using OPM the last two years than any other council in decades. Their letter also neglected to mention that we also replaced our failing Public Works vacuum truck – a critical piece of equipment for water and wastewater work – for less than the $180,000 budgeted for it, replaced our smaller dump truck that was on its last legs, and should soon complete a pole barn to allow those vehicles to be parked indoors to lengthen their lifespan.
In their letter, they stated that “The city purposefully paused all projects during fiscal year 2017 and 2018 in order to fund the city’s portion of the Highway 101 project.”
To underground the wiring on Highway 101 from Ocean View Drive to Seventh Street cost the city about $1 million – money we did not have to fund the project at that time. To pay for it, Lauritzen suggested and the council agreed to simply borrow $650,000 from our water and wastewater reserves to fund the project, and arrange for the repayment of those internally borrowed funds over time.
We are still repaying those borrowed funds. The Highway 101 project drained our reserves of the money we normally would have used for larger capital projects the last four years. Since that project was finished, the City Councils have been building city reserves back up to the point where they were before the Highway 101 project was started.
We have done that, and are now at a point where additional projects can be undertaken.
In their last paragraph, they stated: “Remember, we need to inspect what we expect.” I completely agree with that statement, and given the deliberate omissions in their letter, we would all do well to heed that advice in the coming years.
— W. John Moore, Yachats mayor 2019-2020
