When the Pendleton City Council recently met as the Pendleton Development Commission to discuss extending the life of the Urban Renewal District (URD) program, the chairman of the commission made one thing perfectly clear, and Mayor Turner reiterated the same message on the KUMA Coffee Hour the following day, whether or not the extension was approved, your property taxes would not change.

That must have convinced the commissioners, since the extension was approved without question. Pretty interesting since the funding for the continuation of the programs to rebuild Byers Avenue and the other streets within the URD, some sort of plaza to “connect” Main Street with the river, the rebuilding of Til Taylor Park, adding another dog park in the process, plus all the other projects redesigned to reinvigorate the downtown area, will have to be borrowed.

Those loans will be repaid using property taxes generated in URD is what’s claimed. Have you reviewed your latest property tax statement? Take a good look. Though I don’t live in the URD, nestled in there along with the city, county and other tax obligations is an Urban Renewal Tax. It only stands to reason that if the URD was allowed to expire, my tax bill would be reduced once the loans used to finance the program were repaid.

Since the city expects to borrow upwards of $30 million for their URD projects, I expect the majority of us senior citizens will be dead and buried long before these loans are repaid. Do you really think that it’s a coincidence that upon formation of the URD, the backlog of maintenance on the city’s infrastructure began to accelerate as funding for that maintenance was diverted from the city’s General Fund to support the URD?

The size of the pie is only so big and can only be increased two ways — taxes and fees. City officials’ hands are tied when it comes to raising taxes, and that pie continues to shrink as the pandemic drags on. That leaves two choices: raise fees or rein in spending.

Which avenue do you think our elected officials have chosen? They’ve backed away from a gas tax for now, but those other fees will continue to increase.

Rick Rohde

Pendleton