On Monday, the Corvallis City Council will receive two final reports, each coming after lengthy research and deliberation, and both calling the question on wide-ranging recommendations. If Council approves, a measure would be referred to voters that would change how Corvallis government works, and a step toward a later tax measure benefitting downtown would also be taken.
Interesting times at City Hall, let’s take a closer look.
Proposal to Shrink Council, Lengthen Terms
The council’s marquee decision Monday centers on a final report from the Charter Review Task Force Phase 2, a seven-member group chaired by Mayor Charles Maughan that spent seven months studying the city’s form of government. The task force is asking the council to accept its findings and refer a single ballot measure to the November election.
The proposal would cut the number of council wards from nine to six and reduce the number of councilors to match, extend councilor terms from the current two years to four-year staggered terms, and cap councilors and the mayor at three consecutive terms each. It would leave the mayor’s four-year term and tie-breaking-only vote unchanged, and it would preserve election by ward rather than moving to at-large seats.
Task force members leaned on data showing Corvallis is a statewide outlier. A 2019 League of Oregon Cities survey found no other city in Oregon uses nine wards with concurrent two-year terms, and city staff found that six councilors is the most common council size among ten comparable Oregon cities. A councilor-tenure analysis cited in the task force’s report found that, on average, nearly five of Corvallis’s nine council seats have turned over with new members after every election since 1973 — a turnover rate the task force said undercuts institutional continuity.
The task force weighed splitting its recommendations into separate ballot questions. Like, one for reduction in wards, another for doubling terms, and potentially a third for term limits.
RELATED: Editorial: Fewer City Councilors and Longer Terms, It’s a Plan that Needs More Work
Ultimately, they decided a single measure was easier for voters to understand and cheaper to campaign for, pointing to passage of similar combined measures in Philomath, Redmond and Tigard in recent years.
If the council accepts the report and adopts the referral resolution, the measure would likely go before voters Nov. 3, and the task force would formally disband.
Downtown Vitality Task Force’s Final Report, Suggests New Taxing District
Council members will also hear a presentation on the final report of the Downtown Vitality Strategy Task Force, a 40-member group — including all nine city councilors — that spent roughly a year gathering input from more than 2,000 residents on how to reshape downtown Corvallis.
The report organizes its recommendations into eight prioritized goals, topped by cleaning up downtown and addressing public safety concerns, followed by strengthening the retail and restaurant economy and improving the district’s connection to the Willamette River.
Notably, survey respondents ranked “identify and address behavioral safety and social service gaps downtown” as their top priority among 28 potential actions, followed by reducing storefront vacancies.
The task force included a introductory letter in their report that candidly lists the concerns that came up most often during outreach: perceptions of nighttime safety, the effects of homelessness, empty storefronts, and worries that downtown could lose government jobs and services if City Hall or the police station relocate. But the task force also pointed to signs of momentum; new businesses, building renovations, the new Van Buren Avenue bridge and ongoing housing construction.
The report recommends the city develop and eventually ask voters to approve a Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, district for downtown.
Here’s how a TIF district operates. Each year as property taxes increase, those increases are diverted from the city’s general fund, and are instead set aside for projects within the district. TIF is essentially a new term what used to called an Urban Renewal District.
Two boundary options for a downtown TIF district: Council members are being asked to choose between two boundary maps for a feasibility study of a potential downtown TIF district. The set asides could possibly fund improvements such as riverfront enhancements, streetscape work and building upgrades.
Both options would include open space along the riverfront from Shawala Point to North Riverfront Park and Central Park. One option would draw a wider boundary encompassing the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, Linn-Benton Community College’s Benton Center, and ODOT-owned property and land adjacent to Central Park.
If Council approves, Consultant ECONorthwest will run the roughly $47,000 study, and the boundaries the council chooses Monday will determine what growth and revenue projections the firm builds around.
Also on the agenda
In consent-agenda business, the council will vote on a five-year telecommunications franchise for Ezee Fiber of Texas, which would pay the city 7% of local gross revenues. The city would permit Ezee Fiber to use public rights of way.
There are two agreements with the Oregon Department of Transportation. Firstly, a roughly $334,000 grant, mostly federally funded, to buy an electric street sweeper for maintaining bike paths. And secondly, a project delivery agreement under which ODOT will manage design work on the Tunison Community Path in south Corvallis and a batch of traffic-signal safety upgrades.
Councilors will also vote to fill vacancies on the Historic Resources Commission and Planning Commission, choosing by ballot among three applicants — Jim Ridlington for the historic commission, and Gregory Schiffer and Sachin Betrabet for planning — after interviewing them at a work session last month.
City Manager Mark Shepard’s written report to the council touches on several other developments: the state’s approval of roughly 533 acres of south Corvallis land as a “Regionally Significant Industrial Site,” a designation intended to help the city recruit and expand businesses; a credit rating upgrade from Moody’s, which bumped the city from Aa2 to Aa1, its first improvement in nearly a decade; and word that the Sunstone Apartments, a 50-unit affordable housing project on NW Division Place, has opened its waitlist, with 12 units reserved for households at 30% of the area median income.
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