By Mia Maldonado/Oregon Capitol Chronicle
After a city in his district temporarily shut down several of its parks because it couldn’t pay for their maintenance, a Democratic state lawmaker is proposing the Legislature create a fund that would provide small Oregon cities with emergency financial assistance to keep community spaces open.
Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth, announced last week a plan to introduce during the 2027 Legislative session a proposed $1 million fund housed at the state’s economic development agency Business Oregon, which would allow cities with fewer than 20,000 residents to apply for a grant or low interest loan to maintain parks, libraries, museums and other essential community spaces when they face budget crises. The grants and loans would be available up to $50,000, Evans said.
The proposal was inspired by the city of Independence last week closing five of its parks, citing insufficient funding to maintain them, he said. Two have since reopened after receiving a $30,000 grant from the nonprofit, Friends of Community Parks, the Statesman Journal reported.
The financial assistance, likely funded by the Oregon Lottery, would provide a temporary solution to a greater problem that needs solving, Evans told the Capital Chronicle.
“The current property tax system is failing Oregon cities and counties,” he said, citing ballot measures voters passed in the 1990s that set limits on property taxes and how they’re assessed.
Before 1990, local governments had more flexibility to raise property taxes to address future funding needs. But between 1990 and 1997, voters passed three ballot measures limiting the property taxes local governments could collect.
The first decade and a half of these laws cost the state $41 billion in local revenues, Mark Henkels, a professor of public policy and administration at Western Oregon University, wrote in the Oregon Encyclopedia.
The property tax limits are pushing local governments to add new fees or taxes in order to supplement much needed revenue, Evans said.
For example, the Independence City Council in June voted to impose new fees that will cost city residents about $19 per month to pay for operations at the city’s library, parks and a local museum. A referendum to repeal those fees has temporarily stalled the city from collecting the extra revenue until voters decide in the November election, resulting in the city to close some of those spaces.
“The underlying need for comprehensive, thoughtful revenue reform is long past due, and we’re living with the consequences,” Evans said, “and right now, I’m trying to put a Band-aid on a bleeding chest wound.”
He added that he understands a proposal to divert revenue from the Oregon Lottery to a new emergency fund for small communities could be a difficult task to pull off during the 2027 legislative session because lawmakers “have so much work to do.”
One of the most pressing issues Oregon lawmakers will face come January is passing a transportation package that will generate new revenue to fund the Oregon Department of Transportation as it faces an impending $200 million shortfall in the 2027-29 budget cycle.
Evans proposes calling his plan the “Burns-Horton Protection Fund,” naming it after his mother, grandmother and his chief of staff’s grandmother. All three depended on access to libraries and parks, he said.
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This story originally appeared in Oregon Capital Chronicle: Oregon lawmaker to propose financial support for small cities left in financial limbo