Garibaldi Fencepost October 1

She’s the Bobby Fischer of books. She’s everybody’s favorite local librarian, June Ekborg: “I’m so excited about some events that are coming up at the library that I want to give everyone as much notice as possible. 

“Saturday, October 12th, is National Chess Day. It is also the date for our monthly chess ladder invitational. Games will start at 2 p.m. All ages and skill levels are welcome to join the fun. Drop by for an informal game or join the chess ladder competition.

“Tuesday, October 15th, 2 p.m. we’ll be hosting our first ever Book Club Fair. The fair is open to anyone who is in a book club, interested in starting or joining a book club or just curious about local book clubs in general.  This is the perfect time of year to start thinking about good books to cozy up with; and the book club fair is the perfect way to get started.”

Lastly, a short while back I noted that the planning commission was going to have their first legislative hearing in too long to remember. The previous legislative hearing was before my time, not only on the commission, but in town.  

Once the city management began scheduling the legislative process, we discovered we didn’t have one on file.  

Now, this ain’t a dealbreaker because the state notes that legislative hearings are less formal than others such as conditional use hearings, but it left us without a process.  

So, we drafted one.

It also gave us more time to get familiar with how the dynamic will work with City Manager Boone and planner Fregonese.

And now, not only are we on a solid timeline for our first hearing with this group, but we’ll be doing three.

All three will be scheduled, if all goes well, for Tuesday, November 19th. The first one will be to patch a loophole reportedly opened back in 2020 by loose verbiage on an outright permitted application (aka “not the commission’s fault”).  The other two will be addressing food truck and food truck pod regulations per the recommendation of the county some time ago.

Since we don’t know how long these will go, the commission agreed to proceed as far as we can go that night before fatigue sets in, then schedule extensions for following nights until we’ve plowed through all three.

The experience will allow the commission, staff, and council to better gauge time and effort for upcoming big tickets items such as 406B – which is pushing cities in Tillamook County under 1,000 residents to loosen up “middle housing,” options.

Regarding 406B, at the end of October, circa October 28th, the commission is scheduled to hear a presentation of our local code audit draft with respect to the new laws. This audit, paid for by grants the county received, will tell us how much more we have to go to have our local code be compliant with 406B. Planner Fregonese has seen a copy of the initial draft and has assured the commission our updates will likely be minimal.  

The last thing the overwhelming majority of this fishing village wants to see is our little sliver of heaven sliced and diced, so planner Fregonese’s assurances are comforting.  

We had begun working on similar legislation to incorporate protections and compromises to help preserve our land-capped village, and initially the commission appears ready to work out legislative ideas into these to maintain such protections as best we can.