PENDLETON — For the second time in two months, the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners voted to provide the city of Pendleton $2 million to help build a new road, this time with a written agreement to back it up.

At a meeting Tuesday, Dec. 1, the commissioners unanimously voted to provide the seed money for a revolving fund that would build a new road connecting Highway 11 and Highway 30 on Pendleton’s South Hill. Pendleton city officials anticipate the proposed road will lead to new single-family housing developments on bare land in the area.

“The building of homes will not only increase the economy, it’s also going to provide places for people to put kids in our schools (and) shop locally,” Pendleton Mayor John Turner told the commissioners at the meeting. “It’s going to be a huge economic booster to our community.”

Commissioners previously voted to approve the deal on Nov. 10, but without making the accompanying document available at the meeting. At the time, George Murdock, the board chair, explained the written agreement wasn’t available because county counsel Doug Olsen was out of the office. Commissioner Dan Dorran said he supported the project but couldn’t vote for it without seeing the document, but the vote still passed 2-1.

Olsen’s absence, however, didn’t prevent Murdock from providing information about the agreement just one day before that meeting in his “Weekly Public Officials Update,” an email he sends to certain people. But none of what Murdock explained in the email about the deal was available to the public on the county board’s online meeting agenda.

But with the contract publicly available at the Dec. 1 meeting, Dorran joined Murdock and Commissioner John Shafer in approving the deal. In an interview, Murdock said the first time they voted on it as a “concept” and the second time they were approving the actual deal.

Murdock during the Nov. 10 meeting, however, did not describe the deal as a “concept,” and neither Shafer nor Dorran appeared to have details about the deal at that time.

The $2 million sent to Pendleton is not a straight-up grant, but instead structured as a revolving fund, meaning the city is expected to reinvest money back into the fund after withdrawing from it. City officials expect to replenish the fund by creating a reimbursement district where developers pay for the cost of the street as they start building houses.

The $2 million is coming out of the county’s general fund, the fund the county uses to pay for a significant amount of the county’s payroll and services. For the 2021-22 fiscal year, the general fund budget was $36.5 million, with $3 million unappropriated.

Robert Pahl, the county’s financial manager, said the deal was made possible by tax incentive agreements the county made on economic development projects, including the Amazon data centers in the Hermiston and Umatilla areas. As payments for those agreements came in, Pahl said the revenue allowed the county to have enough money to invest in the Pendleton project.

The city already has started work in planning the road, signing an agreement with the private property owners of the land to identify where the city should obtain rights of way to build the road and accompanying water lines. But $2 million won’t be enough to get the project done, and the city is meeting with other agencies to continue raising money for it.

Port of Umatilla General Manager Kim Puzey said he’s met with Turner and City Manager Robb Corbett about the port joining as another financial partner in the project. Puzey said he anticipates the port commission will discuss the prospect at its next meeting Tuesday, Dec. 7, at 1 p.m. via Zoom (meeting ID 547 598 7432 and Passcode Port 3224). He added the port hasn’t committed to making a financial contribution yet or on a definitive dollar amount.