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Wednesday, August 14, 2019
City council approves $2 Community Recreation and Parks Fee
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CHRISTINE MENGES chronicle2@countrymedia.net
St. Helens City Council has set and approved a $2 Community Recreation and Parks Fee, to appear as a line item on residents’ utility bills. The resolution states the fee will not take effect until January of 2020, and will “sunset,” or end on December 31, 2021. The fee will “provide support for the recreation and parks programs as well as research for creation of a separate taxing district for support and sustainability of St. Helens Recreation, Parks, and St. Helens School Partnership facilities,” the resolution states. City councilors discussed the fee at the city council work session the day of August 7 and passed Resolution 1860 later that day at their regular session. Matt Brown, City Finance Director, said during the work session that delaying the onset of the fee until January of 2020 would be necessary because of the city’s new software system that facilitates utility bills. Before appearing on the agenda packet for the regular work session, the fee was set at $3. After a brief discussion, councilors agreed to lower the fee to $2. “We never had a consensus to be $3,” Councilor Ginny Carlson said at the work session. Mayor Rick Scholl said the $3 had been his idea and directed Brown to change the resolution to $2. City councilors have explained at various public forums that the eventual goal for funding the recreation center is to form a Parks and Recreation District, which they hope will be used as the permanent funding source of the program. St. Helens residents would have to vote on a measure to approve a Parks and Recreation District. As Scholl explained during a June 24 public forum to discuss the recreation center fee, the $3 fee was intended to raise money not only for the recreation center, but also to get the measure for the future district onto a future ballot, and to pay for market analysis on what an appropriate tax for a Parks and Recreation District would be. During the August 7 work session, Brown stressed to the councilors that he wanted them to vote on the issue that night. “I need direction on this rec program. We’ve kind of hobbled together and taken money out of the General Fund to help get this thing started. I don’t think there’s any disagreement that it’s needed in the community, it’s just a matter of how do you pay for it,” Brown said. City councilors first started discussing a line-item fee tacked onto residents’ utility bills to help fund recreation center programming last year, as Scholl explained at a March 25 public forum. At that forum, Scholl also said adding a line-item See RECREATION Page A2
Christine Menges/The Chronicle
Pat McCord, “Captain” of the Shiver Me Ice Cream ship, and Janeen Sepulveda, “Quartermaster and First Mate,” hand out ice cream to customers at low cost.
‘Pirate ship’ serves sweets CHRISTINE MENGES chronicle2@countrymedia.net
Residents in Scappoose, St. Helens and Columbia City may have noticed a truck passing by that looks strangely like a pirate ship. The same “ship” may have also been playing the “Pirates of the Caribbean” song heard in the ride by the same name at Disneyland or Disney World. No, the inhabitants of the ship are not coming to plunder the village. In fact, they have been seen indulging in very un-pirate like behavior: giving out sweet treats to residents, for a very
low price. Pat McCord and Janeen Sepulveda, partners in life and in the ice cream business, have been running their pirate ship-themed ice cream truck, “Shiver Me Ice Cream” since 2016. McCord serves as “Captain” of the ship, and Sepulveda as “Quartermaster and First Mate.” The ice cream ship starts running its route in May, and continues through the end of September, although last year the couple served customers at Halloweentown. A typical daily route serves as many as 100 customers, making approximately 50 stops a day, ac-
cording to Sepulveda. The couple said their truck has traveled very rural roads in the county, as well as stationed at county hot-spots like 13 Nights on the River, making sure to sell to as many people as they can. Ice cream from the truck is pre-packaged, and includes Nestle Drumsticks, Haagen-Dazs vanilla milk chocolate bars, fruit bars, and around 20 different varieties of ice cream. The novelties cater to different diets, including dairyfree flavors as well as low-calorie and sugar-free ice cream. There’s even one brand, Frosty Paws, that
is served exclusively to dogs for any customers who want to include their pets in on the fun. Prices range from $1 to $4, with the average price being around $2.50 to $3.50. But Captain McCord said the couple doesn’t always adhere strictly to those prices. “There’s been several times where kids and their parents stopped us and the parents for one reason or another didn’t realize they didn’t have any money on them,” McCord said. In those cases,
See PIRATE Page A6
Uncertainty over MTR Western contract raise CHRISTINE MENGES chronicle2@countrymedia.net
MTR Western, the agency Columbia County has contracted to provide buses for CC Rider, has informed the county transit service it wants to raise its hourly increase, but different people have provided different figures for what that increase should be. According to Karen Kane, Public Affairs Coordinator for Columbia County, Jeremy Butzlaff, President of MTR Western gave $8 to $10 an hour increases as the desired figure, while the Nicholas Carlstrom, Director of Finance for MTR Western gave a figure of $4 an hour increase. The figures were not given in an official notice but were part of a conversation that Transit Administrator Todd Wood had had with MTR Western officials on Wednesday, Aug. 7. Kane also wanted to correct some misinformation that the agency threatened to pull their contract, saying the agency did not do so. The reasoning behind the increase for the company is down to rising insurance rates, according to Kane. The company had informed CC Rider in June that their insurance rates were going to go up, but they never made a formal request for a rate increase. “We’ve gotten conflicting information, so we’re going to wait until we’ve gotten something from them that explains the rate,” Kane said.
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CC Rider is facing uncertainty with MTR Western, the contracted agency that provides bus drivers for the transit service.
Aside from the conflicting information, the rate itself does not add up for CC Rider staff. John Dreeszen, CC Rider Transit Coordinator did his own calculations on the rate increase, and his figures did not yield an $8 to $10 increase. “I think the question goes back to MTR, how did they do their calculations,” Kane said. “Two
months into your contract, your insurance rates go up? It’s odd. I’m not saying they’re not honest, I’m just saying, what are they looking at?” The increase request comes four months after the Columbia County Board of Commissioners approved a new contract with the agency on April 15 of this year, which was a wage increase from
$40 to $58 an hour. That new contract came after MTR Western had said in the fall of 2018 that they were going to need more funding. Before that time, in the three years the company has been contracted for CC Rider, they had never renegotiated a contract. The reason CC Rider contracts out for drivers rather than hiring in-house is because of overall savings. According to Kane, CC Rider staff compared the cost of having in-house drivers rather than contracted drivers before hiring MTR Western as the contracted agency. A lot of the cost savings is the PERS cost, which the county would not have to pay with a contracted agency like MTR Western. “That’s still the case until we find out what they’re asking of us, and why,” Kane said. Before the county knows of an exact cost increase, CC Rider staff will not know if they can meet the increase, according to Kane. “It may be possible to meet an increase, but we don’t know how much they’re asking us,” Kane said. CC Rider has been struggling financially for a while, making massive cuts to the service in February of this year in order to close the gap between revenue and expenses. As The Chronicle has previously reported, a large part of the financing gap stems from
See MTR Page A12
Market Fresh Deli is extending our hours From 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. to
7 a.m. - 8 p.m. for the summer.