September 4, 2019

Homeless Grant
Barb Higinbothom from Community Action will give an education report on Thursday and talk about where we are with services and where we can go from here.

Marijuana Ad Hoc
The committee is scheduled for September 18th at 7 pm. The first item to address is outdoor grows.

Skate Park Bathroom
We met with the architect to get the skate park bathroom designed.

Water Master Plan
We met with Anderson Perry to go over the preliminary work on the water master plan. It is progressing well.

Public Works Projects
Mayor Hill sent me a request from Senator Merkley’s office who sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. They are looking for potential projects for the Water Resources Development ACT (WRDA). As I reviewed the bill it includes a lot of projects for water restoration and preservation. I will go over projects with Public Works to see what might be ready to be put in the bill.

Fire Department
The Deputy State Fire Marshal and Malheur County Building official met with Chief about different projects that are being built in the county and fire district.

The staff participated in emergency medical training at Parma Fire on Airways and IV’s
Some of the staff visited the Farm workers celebration at Lions Park. Sparky and the staff had a great time helping out at the Super Hero Walk at Alameda elementary.

We are responding to numerous burning complaints due to non-compliance with the burn ban that is in effect. The crew responded to an irrigation pump motor that was on fire and burned up the box protecting it as well. The staff responded to a mutual aid call in Nyssa for a fully involved residence that was covered by the newspaper.

Airport
Troubleshooting the visual approach slope indicator lights at the north end of runway 15 showed more than one bad bulb. New ones are ordered and will be at the airport soon.

The department of corrections assisted in weed pulling at the airport with a small crew Tuesday morning and a group of young men from Fruitland helped in the same capacity that evening through the Just Serve program.

​The Airport Manager assisted JUB engineering setting the cameras at each end of the runway Thursday.

Community & Economic Development
Staff is reviewing 7 applications for building permits this week. And we have issued 10 permits this week. Staff is staying very busy with inspections on all the issued permits. Staff set out notice on 5 land use actions this past week, took in 3 more land use applications and are continuing to work on 10 other land use applications. We are now at 59 Land Use Actions for this year.

Staff is working on mapping new lease areas on the airport property to aid in updating the Airport ALP Plan (Air Port Layout Plan).

Human Resources and Public Relations
Internal Processes - Peter has been revising some of our forms to help streamline processes and make them more accessible and easier to complete for employees. The long-term goal here is to standardize all paperwork and eliminate outdated versions.

Police
AMP (Athlete Mentorship Program)- Chief Romero continues to co-develop this new TVCC community benefit program that will match college athletes at TVCC with our local high school and middle school students. The purpose is: a) Outreach, b) mentoring services and c) exposure to higher education; with the goal of increasing the number of Ontario Youth that seek higher education.

Chief Romero launched a scholarship campaign at TVCC for a non-profit program that provides scholarship opportunities to college students nationally. The program (Unity Community Initiative-UCI) was developed by one of Chief Romero’s former student, who graduated from BYU-Idaho. Chief Romero sits on the Board of Directors for UCI.

Chief Romero took a tour of the middle school and met with the school administrators and SRO Elizondo, for a ‘meet and greet’ and listening tour of how OPD can improve services to our school population.

Chief Romero met with the Boys and Girls Club Board of Directors to discuss potential new youth programs.

The State of Oregon is mandating all police departments to conduct pre-hire, psychological testing, for all police officers and reserve officers commencing 2020. OPD is already implementing this practice.

Public Works

Field Service
An additional storm water line at TVCC was cleaned. Staff spent considerable effort clearing this line. Soil from irrigation run off had plugged the line.

Flashing crosswalk lights were installed at the high school this week.

Traffic crosswalk flags were installed at Verde Drive and West Idaho Avenue.

Crosswalk painting continues throughout the community.

Five benches were installed in the downtown area; the remainder of the benches scheduled for installation will be installed after concrete and asphalt work is completed next spring.

Water
Painting continues at the water facility and is approximately 70 % complete. This work is all being done in-house.

We have increased dosing chemicals to mitigate water odor and taste issues from our raw water source. We have seen some improvement, but we have not eliminated odor and taste. The root cause of this issue is algae blooms in the Snake River.

​We are meeting with one of our engineering partners to work on the completion of the water master plan for the City. This is a work in progress and will be completed later this year and presented to the City Council in the fall.