HERMISTON — The Hermiston City Council will start their Monday meeting off with a work session at 6 p.m. to discuss homelessness.

Residents have created a grassroots organization called Stepping Stones to address homelessness in Hermiston, and on Monday they will present a plan to the city council for providing shelter for the area’s homeless residents.

The meeting will be held at the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, 1705 E. Airport Road, but limited seats for the public will be available due to COVID-19 restrictions, and people are encouraged to participate online or by phone instead. In-person meeting attendees can carefully drive around the “road closed” sign on Airport Road in order to access EOTEC.

For the 7 p.m meeting, agenda items include a request for the city to vacate a roughly 500-foot portion of East Ridgeway Avenue east of Northeast Seventh Street and west of Diagonal Boulevard. The section is undeveloped right of way that is not currently used for traffic.

Santiago Communities, Inc. plans to build a 199-space manufactured home park in the vacant property to the north of the right-of-way, and the developer hopes to use the right-of-way as the required setback for the homes on that side of the development.

The council will also vote on two updates to the city code. The first makes changes to the process for hearing appeals to code enforcement actions. The second creates a section on administrative warrants, which would allow the code enforcement officer to get a warrant “authorizing entry onto property for purposes of conducting an administrative search, inspection or investigation, or authorizing an administrative seizure of property or abatement of a nuisance as authorized by the Code.”

The council will vote on authorizing the city manager to accept up to $250,000 in Federal Aviation Administration grant funds to complete design work on a rebuild of the apron at the Hermiston Municipal Airport, and $69,000 in stimulus money from the CARES Act for airport operations in light of reduced air travel during the pandemic.

They will also vote on authorizing the city manager to apply for matching grant funds to build a “teen adventure park” on North First Street across from the police station.

In addition, the council will vote on a proposed supplemental budget, which cities use at the end of their fiscal year to resolve differences between what was budgeted and what happened during the year. The supplemental budget before the council Monday includes such items as adding $53,000 in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for the flooding of Riverfront Park, and authorizing the expenditure of $568,000 to rebuild Funland Playground.

Both the work session and the 7 p.m. regular meeting of the Hermiston City Council will be live streamed on YouTube at https://bit.ly/HermistonYouTube, or people call call in to listen or make comments during the public comment period at 206-462-5569, using the meeting ID 322-962-8667.

For the full agenda packet for Monday’s meeting, visit hermiston.or.us/meetings.