ASTORIA, Ore. — Astoria leaders have agreed to cover a major city fee for a nonprofit looking to move into a former church downtown.
Jenny Pool Radway, executive director of Consejo Hispano, said the decision is a huge relief.
Consejo Hispano serves Latinx communities on Oregon’s North Coast and is on track to close on the former Peace First Lutheran Church on 12th and Exchange Streets early next month. The purchase will allow the nonprofit to expand its services and build more financial capacity, Pool Radway said.
But the change in use — in particular, the presumed up-tick in traffic that Consejo Hispano’s presence could bring — triggered a $72,500 system development charge from the city of Astoria. System development charges are one-time fees intended to make developers shoulder a share of the costs associated with expanding public infrastructure to accommodate future growth.
For Consejo Hispano, the large, unexpected fee threatened the purchase of the building.
At a special meeting Thursday night, Astoria City Councilors voted unanimously to use city funds to pay the system development charge. The church had operated a daycare at the location as well as other community services, City Manager Scott Spence noted. He said the city is not concerned about Consejo Hispano creating additional traffic issues.
“I think this is a unique opportunity to help a community partner,” Spence told the City Council.
The money the city plans to use comes from a fund that was created to hold a reimbursement from Clatsop County related to the city’s Astor West Urban Renewal District. There is around $749,000 in the fund. The City Council’s decision to cover the cost of Consejo Hispano’s system development charge will be the first time the money has been used in this way.
Spence said city staff recommended drawing on that particular fund because there was flexibility in how the City Council could use the money and it would not impact other city services.
City Councilor Andrea Mazzarella said she understood the logic of pulling the money from that fund and she believed Consejo Hispano was a worthy organization to receive the help.
But, she felt it would be good to create “a policy or procedure for how these funds could be accessed by people in the future so that it’s not kind of this mysterious, unknown pool of money — that if you know to ask the right person … I was on the budget committee and I didn’t realize that this fund was just available for someone to come ask for assistance.”
Other city councilors echoed her thoughts, with Councilor Vance Lump advocating for the creation of an exemption program to system development charges so that certain types of housing developments or service-based groups like Consejo Hispano have a way to seek relief from the fees.
Pool Radway hopes the purchase of the church building will help solve a number of practical issues for Consejo Hispano. But there is an emotional side to the issue as well. She wants the building to be a place for the whole community to come together and celebrate Latino culture.
“Latinos have been a part of Clatsop County for many, many decades,” Pool Radway told the City Council, “and there’s no space to really come together and say, ‘We belong.’ We’re a part of this community, and the community supports us.”
Now is an important time, she said, “to remind people how much value we bring to the community and how much the community values us.”