By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle
YACHATS – Local land trust View the Future, which has been working for decades to protect land, highlight local history and stage events and workshops, is hoping the city will agree to a five-year, $50,000 contract to help manage how it protects some properties.
In return the non-profit would both manage conservation easements for city-owned property while also helping establish future greenspaces to be protected in perpetuity.
A conservation easement is a landowner’s voluntary permanent legal agreement that restricts certain land uses to protect natural, cultural or wildlife values that is binding across ownership changes. It may allow for public access for activities like hiking and camping. A land trust typically holds the easement and monitors compliance.
View the Future made its pitch to the Yachats city council during a council meeting Wednesday that stretched nearly four hours and included presentations about the final design plans for a civic campus, exhibits planned for display inside a completed Little Log Museum and a request to designate Yachats as an official “Bird City.”
During View the Future’s presentation, executive director Gretchen Dubie and co-chairs Joanne Kittel and John Theilacker reiterated the information provided to the city which enumerated the expertise the organization offers in handling conservation easements, its past and ongoing work with the city, and the service it brings to the table if a contract is approved.
The majority of the funding, if provided by the city as proposed, would be disbursed in $10,000 increments each of the five years. It would pay for screening potential new conservation easements, monitoring current ones to include the Landmark property and the lot where the city’s wastewater pump station is located on Ocean View Drive, and monitoring and enforcing restrictions.
Councilor Nicole Hedlund acknowledged how the organization’s skills in handling land conservation would benefit the city but said its cultural preservation and education programs seems to fall more under the city’s community grant process.
“So I’m not sure what the contract would look like and where it would come out of the city’s budget,” Hedlund said.
In answering, Theilacker noted the monitoring of easements and related costs, working with agencies to implement plans – an example being a proposed viewing platform and parking at the Landmark property. He also said the formula developed by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission estimates the cost of overseeing a conservation easement for just 25 years to be roughly $20,000, which may also include setting aside money for legal fees, if needed.
In her opening statement, Dubie addressed the community grant question by saying that View the Future hoped this would be to be an ongoing service to the city … “which is why we proposed it this way versus a grant-funded one-time project.”
Councilor Catherine Whitten-Carey suggested a one-year pilot program instead of a five-year contract and like Hedlund pointed to the community grant project where other local nonprofits seek funds from the city. She later added the city has to work within its just-completed 2025-26 budget.
Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey then asked where the five-year idea for a contract came from.
“We’re trying to get to a point where we raise a sufficient amount of funds that will guarantee our cost for monitoring for 25 years or more for these easements,” Theilacker said. “Which is why I’m a little concerned with a one-year pilot program because we are committing to taking these easements and monitoring and enforcing them forever.”
Mayor Craig Berdie then stopped the discussion and asked councilors how they felt about a three-year contract with an automatic renewal.
“And the reason I propose three years is I think several of us are a little uncomfortable with five,” Birdie said. “But three spans the next city council (and) gives them a year to see how this works … and with an automatic renewal you wouldn’t have to have a large debate over it. It would just renew unless it was cancelled.”
Council then directed city manager Bobbi Price to work with the city’s attorneys and View the Future to draft a three-year contract for consideration.
In other business, environmental activist Jim Welch, who co-founded the group Swallows In Flight To Yachats (SWIFTY) requested Yachats be officially recognized as a “Bird City.” The group previously presented this request to the Parks & Commons Commission, highlighting the benefits of the designation – which includes drawing bird-watching tourism to the city. Welch said Yachats would be the first designated Bird City on the Oregon coast and added it “Will put a feather in the cap of the city.”
The council was in favor of the suggestion and will vote on it at its August meeting.
- Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
