City Community Updates

NOTICE-

The City of Carlton is currently seeking up to 12 applicants to fill the Transportation Plan Update Advisory Committee with a term expiring on December 31, 2025.

The purpose of the Transportation Plan Update Advisory Committee is to assist the Carlton City Council with the update of the 2009 Transportation Plan. The Committee is tasked with data collection, research, and future vision for transportation within the City of Carlton.

The positions are on a volunteer basis, and the appointment will become effective immediately upon Council approval.  Meetings will be held at the Civic Center at 191 East Main Street and virtually.

If you are interested in a Transportation Plan Update Advisory Committee position, you may download the City of Carlton Application for Boards/Commissions from the city’s website www.ci.carlton.or.us/jobs or pick up an application at the Carlton Civic Center front office.

Please return application via email, mail or drop off to:

Aimee Amerson, City Recorder

191 East Main Street, Carlton OR 97111

aamerson@ci.carlton.or.us

To be considered during the first review of applications, please submit on or before:

Wednesday, July 31, 2024, by 4:00 PM

See the attached documents for a brief glimpse of Carlton City happenings throughout the week.

Some of the tidbits may change in timeline depending on contractors, meeting changes, or cancelation.

They will be listed in date order under the documents below. Enjoy!

Due to the removal of the temporary modular building on Grant Street, and the safety of the moving company workers and the public, Wennerberg park will be closed on July 1st and 2nd to the public during business hours. The Park will also be under maintenance at this time.

Grant Street will be highly congested or blocked at times, so access to the park will be blocked. Please observe the closure for your safety and others.

Please contact Public Works with any questions at 503-852-3104. Thank you for your cooperation.

PLEASE BE ADVISED-

City hall will be closed to the public from June 20th through July 5th as staff moves from our temporary location to the Civic Center.

City staff will be available by phone or by appointment only during this time. Please call the main line at 503-852-7575 for service during this time.

Thank you for your understanding.

PLEASE BE ADVISED-

City hall will be closed to the public from June 20th through July 5th as staff moves from our temporary location to the Civic Center.

City staff will be available by phone or by appointment only during this time. Please call the main line at 503-852-7575 for service during this time.

Thank you for your understanding.

Join us for an Open House event from 3 to 6PM at the Grand Opening of the new Civic Center.  Ribbon cutting and opening presentation is from 3 to 3:30pm. 

After the presentation, guests can walk through the whole building and see all it has to offer and provide to the community.

Don't mind our dust!  The building will not be quite complete at the time of the event. It will be close, but there will be a few weeks of final tasks or Punch list items to complete after the event. 

May 30, 2024

When I was first elected mayor, I promised that, while I most likely wouldn’t be able to get a decrease for city water use charges, I would at least try to help us understand why our water costs are what they are. 

The questions continue to come, and each year I’ve learned a few more details, so here’s the 2024 edition:

 The basics:  Carlton City's water treatment plant is located about 3/4 of a mile downstream of Carlton Reservoir (located up Panther Creek Road). Because Carlton’s water source is surface water, it’s potentially exposed to more contaminants than you would have from an underground water source. This situation kicks in a significant number of regulatory requirements that govern processing and treatment of surface water before it’s passed on to consumers. 

Because of the range of contaminants, no one-step process is capable of meeting all of those requirements. The water treatment consists of a series of steps, each designed to address specific concerns. One of the primary concerns is the removal of contaminants such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium. At the Carlton water treatment plant, removal is a two-step process where chemicals are injected which cause smaller particles to coagulate into larger particles that can be filtered out of the water. 

Once the incoming water passes through the filters, it goes through a second step: a dose of chlorine. Because the chlorine requires time to work, the water is moved from the filters to the “clearwell", a .3 million gallons holding tank that gives the chlorinated water time to purify before it moves into the distribution piping.

This process, and the ingredients it requires, is not cheap…We have chemicals, specially-lined water tanks, maintenance of the water lines, and regular testing of the treatment facility equipment required by state and federal monitoring agencies. These are all costs that your water bills help pay. 

The process of sanitizing to comply with required health and safety standards is costly and it’s not optional – nor should you want it to be.

Beyond the basics:

Cities throughout the country deal daily with these same issues, and after the last four years discussing these concerns with other Oregon cities, I can tell you that EVERY small city in the state is struggling with the same question: How do we maintain safe water and wastewater systems without increasing service rates? 

(One Carlton neighbor recently suggested making sure system development charges for new-built homes are high enough to cover some of these expenses.) According to Carlton’s currently listed SDC rates, the per house SDC total is $28,616. The larger portion of this applies to water, sewer, and stormwater maintenance costs. Recently one developer prepaid their development charges which the city used for a badly needed upgrade of the Hawn Creek wastewater pumping station. That station transfers wastewater from the northeast and east parts of town, down Grant Street, and into the main pump station, located at the Public Works compound, which then takes it across the river to the settling lagoons.

But without development, there are no SDCs, although the water system is still in use, and the costs of maintaining it continue.  We have already talked about the deferred system maintenance that has left us in the quandary…but what do we do now? 

The alternatives: 

1. Do nothing & hope the systems hold up (they aren’t, plus that strategy is what got us into this mess in the first place). 

2. Be as frugal as we possibly can be, while at the same time assess annual cost of living water rate increases, which allow us to set aside a portion of the funds we need to make the necessary improvements. 

3.  Work as hard as we can with our state and federal representatives to find public dollars to support our needed projects. But getting state & federal assistance is highly competitive because just about every jurisdiction in our state, (and in the entire country) is facing the same deferred maintenance issues and is also looking for help.

So we're focusing multiple options--2 & 3 while continuing to search for others

Which brings us to our water bills: Remember that what you pay on your water bill covers more costs than just piping the water from the reservoir through to your faucets.  It includes: delivery-lines maintenance and other city staff services: 24/7 monitoring of the water and wastewater systems; regular monitoring (testing) of the water quality, regular monitoring and testing of the reservoir levels and conditions and monitoring the intake and treatment plants’ performance, maintaining the holding tanks and the main delivery line that brings the water into the city. And being first responders for water and wastewater line failures.

That’s about 12 miles of water line, 4 miles of wastewater line & approximately the same amount of stormwater line within the city. These lines will always be the City’s responsibility no matter who we get our water from.

So for now, we’re stuck with Option 2, the most dreaded option: raise rates. At the same time we watch for any other opportunities that may appear, such as state or federal grants. Earlier this month our city manager made a 2-day trip to Washington, DC to visit our Senators Wyden and Merkley, and Representative Salinas and their staffs in order to discuss our city’s critical infrastructure needs. We keep in close contact with our state Representative, Lucetta Elmer. And we watch for any and every funding opportunity that may come along from agencies such as the Division of Environmental Quality, the state legislature, and any federal and state assistance programs.  Your city council and staff are not counting on a fairy godmother to drop a pot full of money in our laps. Councilors all pay the same bills you pay and are just as concerned. But we don’t have any other good options.

The rate increases are NOT determined by throwing darts at the board…they are a carefully calculated formula that includes factoring in many things such as needed and required improvements to our system, debt, inflation, and more. When we reach out to agencies such as DEQ, or our state and federal representatives, their first question is: What are you doing about user rate increases? When we show them our figures, the discussion moves immediately to finding ways to relieve the burden we are all facing. 

We are working to avoid loans because that would cause an even higher increase to rates due to interest and repayment obligations. A portion of every water bill goes into an account that is specifically designated for the repair and replacement of our city water and wastewater lines. It’s not the most glamorous or exciting use of funds – it’s like a building foundation: nobody ever sees it, but if you don’t have one, the building isn’t going to last very long.

~Linda

See the attached documents for a brief glimpse of Carlton City happenings throughout the week.

Some of the tidbits may change in timeline depending on contractors, meeting changes, or cancelation.

They will be listed in date order under the documents below. Enjoy!

The Carlton Pool is OPEN!!

For scheduling, prices and lessons offered, see the Supporting Documents below!

Swim Lesson for both sessions are currently FULL.  If you would like to be placed on a waiting for Session 2, please contact the Pool House.

Pool Reservations are currently ALL BOOKED.  If you would like to be placed on a waiting list, please contact the Pool House.

PLEASE NOTE- THE PROGRAMMING AND DAILY SCHEDULE IS DEPENDENT ON STAFFING LEVELS, MAINTENANCE, AND CAPACITY.  ADMISSION IS NOT GUARANTEED. 

Consumer Confidence Report (CCR)

Each year the City of Carlton provides the Water Quality Report to all of its customers. The report contains important information about Carlton's drinking water from the previous calendar year. Please click on the current report images to view in larger font.

A paper copy can be requested by calling (503) 852-7575 or by emailing aamerson@ci.carlton.or.us.

Additional Information on Carlton's water: Oregon Health Department Drinking Water Data