Oregon City Council passes 2019 municipal budget

Written by Kelly J. Kaczala

December 31, 2018

Oregon City Council recently approved its 2019 municipal budget.

        City Administrator Mike Beazley at a council meeting on Dec. 17 thanked city officials for their work on the budget.

        “We made a statement of priorities for the year,” he said of the budget. “We recognize that a budget is just a plan and an estimate, and that it changes from month to month through the year. But it’s good for us to go through the process.”

        Beazley said Oregon, like most communities, spends the vast majority of the general fund on public safety, police, fire and courts.

        “The budget is spent on making the community work. Overall, our capital investment focuses on maintaining our roads, and on our water and sewer infrastructure,” said Beazley. “We feel good about that process. We have things to resolve during the year. We’re excited about the projects that council has identified for us to work on. We’ll look forward to continue to explore those together during the coming year.”

       

Property acquisition

        Councilman James Seaman, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, told The Press last week that the total amount of appropriations in the budget was just over $30 million.

        Some of the new expenses include the underground installation of overhead lines from Isaac Streets Drive to Coy Road on Navarre Avenue, and the purchase of property as part of the city’s downtown development project.

        “We’re shifting into a land acquisition phase. We’re looking to purchase four significant pieces of land for future downtown development,” he said. The property is in a corridor just south of the former K-Mart on Navarre up to Pickle Road near the YMCA, he added.

        “We’re not looking to make a profit with this land. We want to sell it to developers to create some jobs and make improvements to our quality of life for our residents. That’s our payoff,” he said.

       

Aging waterlines

        Other new expenses include local road and sidewalk improvements, upgrades in the fire and police departments, a new roof and parking lot for the senior center on Navarre Ave., and the replacement of waterlines.

        “We’re planning a lot of waterline upgrades. Some of our waterlines are quite old. We have to have money set aside to make improvements. Some of our lines are over 90 years old,” he said. “They’re starting to have problems, and we have to go in and fix them.”

        Improvements in the police department include the purchase of four new police cruisers. The fire department will see changes to improve response times to emergency calls. The department plans to expand the hours to run the Echo unit, which is a full rescue vehicle, from 12 hours to 24 hours per day.

        The department will also be paying specific people on staff to be available to respond to calls. Also, there are plans to hire additional Advanced Life Support (ALS) officers. For the first time in Oregon, the ALS unit and BLS (Basic Life Support) unit will be operating full time.

        At the Dec. 17 council meeting, Seaman thanked officials for their their work on the budget, which was discussed at length in several Finance Committee meetings.

        “There was great participation from council,” he said. “Everyone showed a deep interest in this process.”

Source: http://www.presspublications.com/22300-oregon-city-council-passes-2019-municipal-budget