Crab Rock Pizza
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Serving North Tillamook County since 1996
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April 6, 2023
northcoastcitizen.com
Volume 30, No. 7
Garden club adopts Nehalem Post Office for beautification N ative plants are beautiful and needed by pollinators to thrive. Nehalem Bay Garden Club (NBGC) is dedicated to supporting garden learning and enhancing the connection between plants and our ecosystem. NBGC “adopted” beautification and re-landscaping the front of the Post Office in Nehalem as a service club project. Over the past several months, NBGC has been working tirelessly starting with removal of old overgrown shrubs and some very “healthy” blackberries and weeds. Thanks to a generous donation by Jiffy Construction, the heavy lifting was done by mechanical removal and garden club members did the finer work with shovels and sweat equity. Once the beds were cleaned up, the real gardening fun was ready to begin. March 25th, under a cloak of snow clouds and a cold frosty morning, several intrepid gardeners bundled up and began the rebuilding process. The design focused on Native Plants that attract pollinators. Snowberries, Huckleberries, Oregon Grape, Coast Daisies, Lupine, Sea Thrift, Manzanita, Yarrow and Sword Ferns were added to the existing plantings of Rhododendrons, Azalea, and Roses. Many of the plants were purchased from Hope Stanton’s Aldervale Native Plants a local nursery specializing in native plants: https://aldervale.net/ Project Manager and Club Secretary, Kelley Roy was thrilled with the outcome “The Club members really pulled together to get this project done. It will be fun to watch as the plants grow and flower through the seasons
Manzanita Council briefed on financing options for city hall
and attract the precious pollinators of our area.” Nehalem Bay Garden Club funds projects and non-profit related groups from the profits made at the annual Plant Sale. Each year, the club holds a sale on Mothers Day weekend. Mark your calendar for this year’s sale Saturday and Sunday, May 13th and 14th. Nehalem Bay Garden Club has been in operation as a public service group for 76 years The club meets the 4th Tuesday of the month. All community members are welcome to join. Contact Constance Shimek Club President for more information at 503-368-4678, constance@nehalemtel.net
Will Chappell
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ODF reaches settlement in coho case Will Chappell
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long running lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Forestry for the incidental take of coho Salmon in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests has been settled, with the department agreeing to increase buffers around streams in the forests and complete a road inventory. The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands and the Native Fish Society, said that logging on steep slopes and road building activities had been harming coho salmon in the forests for years. “For too long the timber industry has treated our state forests like cash cows, without enough protection for fish or water quality,” said Amy Atwood, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The protections provided by the agreement aren’t everything we want, but they’ll go a long way toward recovering coho salmon on Oregon’s North Coast.” The settlement is part of the ongoing and contentious development of a habitat conservation plan (HCP) that is currently being undertaken by ODF. The settlement’s requirements are included in the draft of the plan submitted to federal regulators for review and the settlement would be superseded by that document upon its passage. However, the HCP’s future remains murky after the January release of new harvest projections for a transitional implementation plan set to start in July came in well below current levels. Stakeholders with an eco-
years. “We’re pleased to have the litigation resolved,” Wilson said. “It certainly takes up staff time and resources so we’re happy to have it out of our way so we can continue on with our business.” The suit focused on ten specific timber sales across the state forests that had occurred in the 2010s. The suit alleged the operations had led to debris flows or landslides that impacted coho habitat following harvesting. Atwood said that the sites had been identified as potential slide risk areas by ODF before their sales, saying the slides had been “foreseeable and foreseen.” To win the case, lawyers for the conservation groups would have had to prove that the debris flows and slides were caused by harvest operations and caused the death of coho, in violation of the EndanA series of landslides at the Star White Timber Sale and others like it resulted in the lawsuit brought by the gered Species Act. Center for Biological Diversity and others. The suit claimed that forestry activities had contributed to slides Lawyers for ODF had like these and debris flows throughout the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, harming coho salmon. Citizen argued that landslides were photo by Will Chappell. a natural occurrence on the coastal range’s steep HCP,” ODF’s State Forests underscoring the legal nomic interest in the forest slopes, with or without timDivision Chief Mike Wilson jeopardy ODF faces without believed that those figures ber harvesting activities. said. the document. HCPs allow would closely mirror those Even after the settlement The letter of intent to sue entities like ODF to craft of the new HCP and have was reached, Wilson pushed for the case was originally federally approved plans to begun lobbying the board back against the idea that sent in 2014, although filing protect endangered species of forestry to reject the HCP was delayed until 2018 as the ODF had been harming coho. under their purview, without and restart the process. plaintiffs gathered expert wit- “We do not agree with the which they are open to lawThe new settlement nesses. The suit went through allegations that plaintiffs suits like the one just settled. complicates that by immedimade that our management “This is an example of the pretrial motions in 2019, ately implementing several measures from the proposed HCP while simultaneously
kind of litigation that is a risk as long as we don’t have an
n See CITY HALL Page 3
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anzanita’s City Council heard a presentation about different financing options available for the proposed new city hall project at a meeting on March 27. City Manager Leila Aman discussed the different options available to the council to fund the project, before fielding questions. Aman started the presentation with a review of the estimated budget of the project. The total cost of the project is estimated at $5.8 million, with $3.6 million of that going towards hard costs, $1.3 million to soft costs and the rest dedicated to a $755,000 contingency. Before discussing finance options, Aman gave the councilors a quick review of other big-ticket projects that the city needs to complete over the next ten years. By far the biggest project is a $15 million reservoir and holding tank replacement, with all the other water and road projects totaling an estimated price tag of $10.5 million over the next decade. Aman said that the reservoir and tank project was likely to receive grant funding to pay for the bulk of its cost. She said that the city was in a good position to pay for the rest of the infrastructure projects over the next ten years. Aman then delved into options for paying for the new city hall project. She said that the city was unlikely to receive grants for the project because of its high median income. That leaves the council with two main options for financing the project, debt or a levy. Aman said that she will be recommending that city raise $3.5 million of the project’s cost through one of these two methods. The remainder of the funding for the project will come from the sale of the Old City Hall, the general fund, building fund and transient lodging tax dollars. The city has already spent $280,000 on the project. Manzanita’s general fund, which sees the bulk of its revenue come from transient lodging taxes paid by visitors, could support the debt service required to build the city hall,
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before the covid pandemic delayed progress for several
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