Ontario council approves street closure
Pendleton officials also speak on downtown plan

By Katie Pizza
Argus Observer
Monday, August 25, 2008 11:01 AM PDT

Ontario Middle School students gather near Southwest Second Avenue between Southwest Sixth and Fourth streets Friday. At their last meeting, Ontario City Council members opted to close the street. Ontario School District Superintendent Dennis Carter cited student safety as one of the reasons for closing the area to traffic.

Ontario — The Ontario City Council approved a middle school street closure and listened to presentations from the Ontario Revenue Committee, Pendleton downtown development officials and representatives from the Ontario 8C Bond Task Force at its meeting Monday night.

Before the elected board approved the closure of a portion of Southwest Second Avenue between Southwest Sixth and Fourth streets — which runs through Ontario Middle School — council members discussed the pros and cons of the move.

Council member Susann Mills expressed concern traffic through the area would have to move to other streets. However, Councilman Lewie Allen said the change was worth it to increase student safety.

“I think it’s up to everybody to protect the kids,” he said. “They can drive two or three blocks out of their way if they have to save their lives.”

At the Aug. 14 City Council work session, Ontario School District Superintendent Dennis Carter said the school district requested the closure to have more control over who enters the area.

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Also at the Monday session, the Ontario 8C Bond Task Force formally presented its $18.5-million facilities upgrade plan.

The project is part of a 20-year blueprint and, if passed by voters in November, will provide new science classrooms at the high school; a new building at Ontario Middle School to accommodate up to 500 students plus offices and renovate an existing middle school building to handle up to 250 students; and make upgrades at the remaining Ontario schools.

Task force member Ralph Poole said the ideas were garnered from surveys across the school district, which asked residents what improvements they wanted to see and how much they were willing to pay.

“We sent out over 8,000 (surveys),” Poole said. “We got a little over 10 percent back.”

Of this 10 percent, about half the respondents said they would support a bond no more than $1.50 per $1,000 in assessed property value. The $18.5 million bond is based on approximately $1.49 per $1,000.

Poole challenged the City Council to adopt a resolution expressing its support for the plan.

However, Mayor Joe Dominick said the council would need more time to analyze the information and ask further questions before deciding whether or not to support the plan.

The council also heard from Pendleton Mayor Phillip Houk and City Manager Larry Lehman regarding that city’s downtown revitalization process.

Houk said the Pendleton plan was funded through tax-increment financing, which freezes property values and uses the increased money gained from area development to pay for portions of the upgrade.

Currently, the plan pays for 40 percent of the facade work in Pendleton’s downtown. This facade work, he said, encourages business owners to revamp the inside of their buildings as well.

One of those revamps involves elevators in some two-story buildings. Pendleton, he said, pays for 25 percent of the elevator costs, which led to increased living areas in downtown.

“These folks can live downtown, shop downtown and contribute to the downtown area,” he said.

However, he said, the revitalization project was not without issues.

“There will be aches and pains,” he said.

One of those aches and pains, he said, involved the city creating a new sewer system for downtown.

“Some people thought we should do it through the city, which we didn’t have the budget for,” he said.

The sewer system went ahead as planned, with area businesses hooking into the new infrastructure.

Houk spoke highly of the $33 million urban renewal district. However, one local downtown business owner, David Eldredge, Eldredge Furniture, spoke negatively about the potential funding during the public comment portion of the meeting.

“If you get something for nothing, it’s going to cost someone else,” he said.

Lehman asserted the revitalization would bring more commerce to the downtown area and said many residents spoke highly of the changes. Dominick thanked the two officials for their presentation, and Ontario City Manager Henry Lawrence alerted those in attendance to a downtown stakeholders meeting slated for the second week in September.

The Ontario City Council also heard from Max Chavez, an Ontario Revenue Committee member, regarding the matrix utilized by the committee to rank its 14 money-generating ideas.

Each member assigned a number to how important they believed factors such as community impact and revenue gained were, with each factor’s numbers averaged to create a multiplier for that factor.

The committee members then voted on how each revenue-generating idea fared in each category, and those numbers were averaged and added to the multiplier. Negative aspects, such as citizen impact, business impact and implementation costs were given a negative number, with revenue given a positive number.

The 1 percent sale tax idea — projected to generate $3.3 million — was the only idea left with a positive number.