S.F. Tool/Chieftain Mayor Dennis Sands (standing) leans forward to listen to an audience member's comment regarding the funding of Joseph street repair.

JOSEPH – Nearly 25 Joseph residents attended a Jan. 15 town hall meeting to offer the city council their opinions and solutions addressing the city’s street repair quandary.

The council, Mayor Dennis Sands, and Brad Baird, president of Anderson Perry & Associates, the engineering firm that created the proposals already under consideration, listened, answered questions and took notes from citizens whose demeanors ranged from congenial to nearly hostile.

Sands opened the meeting with a rundown of the city’s preferred alternatives of funding the street repair through either a property tax increase or a transportation utility fee.

While a transportation utility fee, which would amount to approximately $14 per month added to the sewer/water bill of Joseph residents, gained some traction within the audience, others complained that those who owned lots without hookups would escape the fee. The council offered to investigate the possibility of collecting fees retroactively.

The transportation utility fee is, in fact, the $1.2 million bottom rung of three alternatives to repair the streets. The other alternatives include a $2.55 million street repair bond levy that voters torpedoed and sank in November, and a $4.2 million comprehensive repair plan with unidentified funding.

Town hall attendees proposed a number of alternatives, one calling for the city to purchase the road repair equipment and performing the work itself, and then selling the equipment after the project ended. Baird proposed the city establish talks with the Wallowa County Road Department to minimize the repair costs.

Several citizens asked how the streets got into their present state of disrepair. Others said they suspected the city council and business owners wanted to fix the streets at the expense of Joseph citizens for the benefit of tourists. Council member and The Embers Brew House owner Teresa Sajonia replied that most businesses are on Main Street, which is a highway maintained by the Oregon Department of Transportation.

The idea of a city sales tax, similar to Ashland’s, also went down in flames. The kicker to the meeting: An informal poll of audience members conducted by the city council indicated nearly half of the forum’s attendees didn’t see any need to repair the streets at all.

The meeting concluded in a manner similar to previous forums on the subject: with little consensus on a clear direction for the city to take. However, several attendees saw positive aspects to the forum.

Newly elected city council member, Rodd Clark, said he felt encouraged by the attendance numbers and the number of citizens proposing ideas and speaking up. He also said the council needed to get a formal proposal of the transportation utility fee together by March to get it placed on the May ballot.

Clark said the possibility remained that if the council got a clear and positive consensus from citizens supporting implementation of the transportation utility fee, the council could implement it without going to the expense of a ballot proposal.

Joseph resident Lem McBurney said he thought the meeting went well – with some reservations. “These people (the council), who aren’t getting paid, are trying to solve a problem people are complaining about. I think they need to come up with a one-page outline ‘Here’s alternative one, boom, boom, boom,’” McBurney said. “I wish people were a little more informed, so they could bring some more solutions with them – the city council is asking for solutions, and I don’t think people understand that,” McBurney added.

Tyler Evans, also of Joseph, said the issue he has with the proposal is a lack of vision. “I want to see a vision of the city and what it’s going to look like in 10 or 20 years. We hired Anderson Perry, who gave us three options to choose from and we figure out how to pay for it, but we’re not figuring out what we want our city to look like. If you share a vision for the city, people can get behind that and vote toward that benefit.”