La Grande’s Urban Renewal Agency is an independent government agency ostensibly separate from the City of La Grande. However, state law permits formal integration of many elements of the URA and City, including seating the Council as the formal deliberative body governing the URA, allowing the City and URA to share the same chief executive, and allowing the City to incur debt on behalf of the Urban Renewal Agency. The URA has been responsible for a series of fantastic projects over the last twenty years that have revitalized downtown La Grande. URA improvements have increased the taxable value of surrounding properties, bringing increased revenue to the city and taxing districts. However, Urban Renewal has some administrative issues that I believe need to be addressed by the next Council. I also support refocusing Urban Renewal’s mission.

The La Grande URA is an incredibly valuable asset for the City, created in 1999 to address blight and renew the vitality of downtown La Grande. The URA is financed every year by incurring debt and paying down the debt with tax revenue levied by the Urban Renewal District. The original Urban Renewal plan allowed the URA to incur up to $21,992,525 in debt to complete a series of 15 projects, and while the list has been amended, the debt limit remains the same. The URA’s tax levy has diverted $12 million from government agencies that would have been collecting revenue in its place over the last two decades, including the City, Union County, La Grande School District, Intermountain Education Service District, 4H & Extension, and the La Grande Cemetery District. However, the URA's work has increased the value of properties in the Urban Renewal District, ultimately benefiting the revenue streams of entities that have lost tax revenue up front.

The City of La Grande is tightly integrated with the Urban Renewal Agency. The City Council serves as the deliberative body governing the URA, though the Council appoints an Advisory Commission to foster additional community input on projects. The City Manager concurrently serves as the chief executive of the URA, and I believe the Agency would benefit from having a separate chief administrator focused solely on redevelopment. During the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the URA overspent its budget by $16,701, placing its leadership at risk of personal liability. The City also incurs debt on behalf of the Urban Renewal Agency rather than the Agency accruing debt on its own, officially done because the City has a better credit rating than the URA.

Another URA practice that troubles me is the implementation of the underlevy, a practice permitted under ORS 457.455. This allows an Urban Renewal Agency, indefinitely or for the period of one year, to limit the amount of tax revenue collected, releasing the revenue that would otherwise be collected to other taxing districts. An Urban Renewal Agency may only implement an underlevy for either length of time “if the maximum amount of funds under ORS 457.440 is not required to pay the principal and interest on indebtedness incurred for an urban renewal plan.” The City does not currently budget the funds to pay the principal and indebtedness in full, instead interpreting these statutes to refer to annual payments made on URA debt exceeding $1 million scheduled to be repaid until 2034. It has been relayed to me that La Grande is not alone in interpreting the statute this way, but I am uncomfortable with kicking such a large fiscal can down the road as the City heads towards a financially uncertain future.

The City’s bare minimum transparency practices resulted in the City not posting Council or Commission meeting materials online between July 2018-September 2020. One item that is usually placed in the Council’s consent agenda - a section of each meeting reserved for items of “limited public interest” - is the annual intergovernmental agreement formalizing the relationship between the City and URA. In June 2018, the 5-page agreement document detailed a $346,000 partnership between the two entities, but in 2019 and 2020, citizens were not even able to easily review the document prior to the Council’s vote. Furthermore, placing such an important document in the consent agenda prohibits an automatic public discussion on the agreement as well as other items up for discussion, unless a Councilor pulls the agreement for a public discussion.

I commend the URA's work improving downtown, and I believe that the implementation of the Quiet Zone opens up Jefferson Avenue to become a second Adams Avenue. If elected, I will encourage the Council and Advisory Committee to focus more of the URA’s resources on repairing the crumbling buildings on Jefferson Avenue and recruiting new businesses to take advantage of better real estate. COVID-19 is permanently re-aligning the US economy, and remote work from beautiful small towns like La Grande will draw more higher-paying jobs from across the country. With a more vibrant downtown, and improved administration of the URA, La Grande can be positioned for a prosperous future with increasing revenues that will cover our infrastructure and public safety needs.

Please share your thoughts on Urban Renewal with me at 541-805-2630 or alexforlgc@gmail.com.

Citations

• 2018-2019 La Grande Urban Renewal Agency Annual Financial Report

• 2014-2015 La Grande Urban Renewal Agency Annual Financial Report

• IGA for Services between the City of La Grande and the City of La Grande Urban Renewal Agency Fiscal Year 2018-2019

• La Grande Urban Renewal Plan

• ORS 457.455