Yachats council approves seven focus areas for 2025 tied to goals for itself, city manager and staff

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

YACHATS – The Yachats city council has adopted seven focus areas and goals to guide work for itself and city staff during 2025 and plans quarterly meetings to check in to see how they’re doing.

The focus area and goals are:

• Infrastructure: Achieve water sustainability;
• Livability: Provide safe access to and use of city infrastructure, parks and trails;
• Housing supply: Identify ways to expand the housing supply and diversify housing options;
• Environmental stewardship: Be environmentally aware in the city does;
• Fiscal sustainability: Effectively manage and plan for the city’s financial needs;
• Public awareness: Deliver efficient, effective and transparent municipal services; and
• Alignment: Synchronize and update city policies and administrative rules; and

The council finished working on the goals during a two-hour workshop Wednesday morning and approved them during its regular monthly meeting Wednesday afternoon.

The goals for 2025 come after the first formal set in 2024 during the second year of mayor Craig Berdie’s first term and the first year of Bobbi Price as the city manager.

Behind each goal are a number of specific action items that councilors and Price worked on to try to reach the goal. And, each priority area is assigned a councilor to monitor the work.

For example, under “Infrastructure” the council listed five things the city should do to help meet that goal. These were:

• Work to calculate the amount of water needed for resiliency and housing expansion;
• Plan and find money for a new reservoir while creating middle-income housing;
• Implement a street rehabilitation plan and communicate that to the public;
• Reduce the amount of wastewater getting into the sanitary sewer system, and
• Develop plans and calculate the cost of public works storage and emergency shelter on land the city bought last year near the water treatment plant.

Under the “Livability” goal, the council listed six things the city should do to help meet that goal. These were:

• Continue pursuing traffic calming measures and pedestrian safety with the Oregon Department of Transportation;
• Evaluate the effectiveness of code enforcement and public safety programs;
• Review existing ordinances related to loitering, dogs, and camping;
• Develop a park plan for the Landmark property and reapply to the state for the estuary boardwalk grant;
• Establish and fund a public art initiative to encourage local artists to submit ideas for public art projects; and
• Begin implementing the civic campus master plan.

“It’s very intentional,” Berdie told YachatsNews on Thursday, who said Price asked for clear, concise goals to guide the work of she and city staff. “It does flow — from the council to the city manager and then to the staff. It helps allocate resources.”

Another reason for the goals, Berdie said, was so the council and staff can better attempt to keep its focus “and try not to get distracted by a lot of extraneous stuff.”

It was Price who Wednesday suggested – and the council agreed — quarterly workshops to check in as to how the city was doing and whether goals and the associated work needed to be adjusted or changed.

“Then we can evaluate ourselves and see how we’re doing,” Berdie said, while adding that it’s hard to accomplish all of the goals and tasks in one year.

In other business Wednesday, the council:

• Heard from local resident Dan Stein who is trying to start a “Strong Towns” group in Yachats, which met for the first time Wednesday. Stein described it as a “grassroots effort to identify needs and help solve them.” Berdie encouraged group members to apply to join the city’s many commissions or committees and get involved that way;
• Heard a presentation from Dave Larmouth of Dahl Disposal on a new, more standardized statewide recycling system that will be paid for in part by manufacturers of recyclable material and agreed to support the effort;
• Agreed to use a model flood plain ordinance recommended by the state of Oregon and the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an interim step until more permanent rules are developed. The rules, which affect 6-8 properties in the Quiet Water subdivision along the Yachats River, will still need a hearing by the Planning Commission before returning for the council’s final approval.