The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution Thursday, Jan. 18, updating the process for declaring property as surplus and inviting public comment.
The 3-1 vote, allows the board to establish the time period in which members of the public can submit comments regarding future use of the property to the director of County Assets, rather than apply a prescribed 45-day period to each property.
Under the new policy, the comment period will be no less than the marketing period of the property.
The prior policy dates to 2004, Assistant Multnomah County Attorney Jed Tomkins said when explaining the process.
Under that policy, if the board approved a recommendation to declare property as surplus, a 45-day public comment period ensued, followed by another 45-day period for facilities to compile a report on those comments along with other information. The property was marketed during this 90-day period, Tomkins explained.
After the 90-day period, County Facilities would return to the board with a recommendation regarding disposition. The policy included a provision that allowed the board to exempt a property from the process.
“But long lead times don’t align with the way the market functions,” said Tomkins.
The new policy keeps the same basic framework, but changes the prescriptive timeframes in the prior policy to timeframes that can be adjusted on a case-by-case basis, provided the public comment period is at least as long as the marketing period for the property.
As with the prior policy, the county would then receive offers and facilities would return to the board with a recommendation.
The new policy retains the exemption provision, but “the belief is that the exemption won’t be relied upon nearly as much,” Tomkins said.
But Commissioner Loretta Smith objected to the change.
“I am not in support of not giving a definite time frame,” said Commissioner Smith. “If you come before us and say we need to do this in seven days, and market it in seven days, the public doesn’t have a proper amount of time to actually look at this.”
“There is no reason to amend this current resolution because we already have item number 7 [the exemption clause] that gives us that time to act quickly.”
Director of County Assets Sherry Swackhamer said the new practice will allow the department to recommend a time period for public comment, and the board would then determine if it’s too short or too long and make changes.
“The standard is that it would be no less than the marketing period, so if the marketing period is 30 days it would be no less than that, if it is 90 days it would be no less than that,” Swackhamer said.
But Smith criticized the lack of a specific timeline.
“There’s too much room for error to rush sales through when we haven’t thoroughly vetted it.” she said. “There’s no need to amend it.”
Commissioners Sharon Meieran and Lori Stegmann, and Chair Deborah Kafoury, stressed the exemption exception has too often become the rule.
“Rather than rushing a sale through, I think what it does is align interest so there is certainty that we will know what the time is,” said Commissioner Meieran.
“You’ll make a recommendation to us, and if there’s any issue about that, we have the full opportunity to say, ‘No, we think it should be longer in this case,’” Meieran continued. “Forty-five days makes no sense from a market standpoint and in fact could hinder us from doing what is in our constituents’ and taxpayers’ best interest from selling our surplus properties for the best return on our investment.”
Chair Kafoury joined Commissioners Meieran and Stegmann in voting for the measure. Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson was absent.
The proposal “gives greater transparency to the public and is much more efficient than an arbitrary 45 days with a number chosen out of the air,’’ Chair Kafoury said.
