PENDLETON — Pendleton is boasting about an improving economy, and the city has the data to back that up.

In his October newsletter, Mayor John Turner touted several statistics showing 2021 has been a year of economic progress for Pendleton.

• Home values rose by 17% last year compared to 4.5% in 2018-19. The city expects values to rise 25% in 2021-22.

• The city has recorded $9.9 million in commercial-industrial permit values, already surpassing the $8.9 million it garnered in 2020 and the $5.7 million it calculated in 2019.

• The $164,601 the city collected in business license revenue through Sept. 1, 2021, already is more than it collected in 2020 and approximately equal to what it got in 2019.

• A survey of the 12 largest employers in Pendleton showed there were 500 vacant jobs among them.

• The Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range is expected to bring in $1.1 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year and has grown its revenue year-over-year since generating $372,000 in 2016.

“Why did we choose these five things to measure?” he wrote. “Mainly because we can get accurate numbers for them without tasking the city staff to spend hundreds of hours searching for information. We think we can get a decent snapshot of our local economy if we measure these five areas and combine them with the number of new housing units.”

In an interview, Turner provided context for the significant jump in commercial industrial permit values, attributing the rise to the Radisson Hotel project at the Pendleton airport.

And while the newsletter didn’t list housing permit numbers, he projected optimism on the future of new housing in the city. The city has a goal of issuing 50 new housing permits per year, but Turner said between the South Hill Commons and the Westgate Apartments projects, he could see the city issuing more than 200 permits in a year.

South Hill Commons is a 70-unit affordable housing project on the east side of South Hill backed by the nonprofit Horizon Project and funded by the state. Publicly announced in 2018, Westgate Apartments is a 200-unit apartment complex project from the Wilsonville-based I&E Construction on Westgate, near Blue Mountain Community College.

Business license growth was among the statistics the city listed, but what it will mean for the city’s economic development fund is unknown.

In 2008, the city raised annual business license fees so that it could fund a newly created economic development director position. But when Steve Chrisman took on airport manager duties, his salary was transferred to the airport fund. Although the city recently hired a full-time airport manager so Chrisman could focus on economic development, City Manager Robb Corbett said his salary has remained with the airport fund because Chrisman continues to work extensively with the Pendleton UAS Range.

Unlike the water or sewer fund, where revenue must pay for utility workers or utility infrastructure, the economic development fund is a part of the general fund, a pot of money that’s also shared by public safety, parks and several other services. That means that although the city will generate more than $160,000 in business license revenue this year, the revenue can be used to cover other general fund services.

The city budgeted $43,320 for the economic development fund in the 2021-22 fiscal year, more than half of which goes to a subsidy for the Pendleton Downtown Association.

Corbett said he didn’t know how the increase in business license revenue would affect the economic development fund and the city would need to take a look at the fund during future budget cycles.