Four budgets for Grants Pass, Oregon’s month-old campsite program for unsheltered residents have inconsistencies that pushed projected costs for the camps up 76% from the city’s initial estimate.
On Sept. 18, the Grants Pass City Council rejected the fourth budget for the program, which weighed in at $440,000 and included more than $100,000 to rent fencing.
Councilors instead approved devoting $325,000 to two campsites for a year—still 30% above the city’s first estimate to run five campsites.
“Before this meeting,” Councilor Brian DeLaGrange said, “council was under the expectation that we were looking at a number in the range of $280,000 to $290,000, and then we come into this meeting with a $440,000 number and we’re told that we have to take action tonight. I don’t appreciate that.”
A day after the vote, Mayor Sara Bristol told Streetlight: “I think we’ve been presented with an estimate three times now over the last four to six weeks, and each time it’s been different and growing, so the council and I both have a lot of questions that will need to be addressed.”
In June, Grants Pass won a landmark Supreme Court case that has led cities around the country to ban unsheltered people from camping in certain places. In the months since the ruling, the city updated its camping bans that were the subject of the court case, blocking people from camping in Grants Pass parks and restricting camping to two campsites set up and funded by the city.
Bristol, several councilors and homeless service providers have said the plan for the campsites was rushed and didn’t consider important details. The city isn’t funding water for people at the site, leaving it to nonprofits, and three weeks ago, city staff received a letter from a disability rights attorney saying a policy limiting camp stays to a week leaves Grants Pass vulnerable to a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Meanwhile, Bristol and some council members have doubted that estimates for the campsites represent both true costs of the program and new expenses for the city. They’ve questioned costs for equipment, like portable toilets, that the city moved from its parks to the campsites and was already paying for; runaway costs for things like fencing and cleaning portable toilets; and a building demolition on a lot near the police department that the agency had planned to use for an expansion before the campsite program started.
“To me, it feels like a scare tactic,” Bristol said of the budget in late August, when the cost estimate was about $281,000. “It feels like an effort to show us how expensive this endeavor is so that we won’t do it.”
Questions from councilors prompt Grants Pass staff to lower its estimate for fencing rentals by more than $80,000
The biggest increase between the budgets is for fencing rentals at the campsites, which ballooned 429% from the first to fourth estimate to land at $106,100 in the cost estimate councilors voted down.
Each of the estimates for fencing were based on different rates that pushed up the cost:
- An Aug. 7 budget estimates fencing at $20,040, based on a $10,000 up-front charge to cover six months of the rental, then $1,670 per month for the next six months.
- In late August, the rate was $3.55 per foot, totaling $5,893 per month or $70,716 per year.
- An early September budget also estimated fencing costs would be $5,893 per month and $70,716 annually, but at a rate of $3.50 per foot.
- The rejected budget added a 50% cushion for unexpected expenses to the previous fencing estimate, raising costs to six figures.
A day after the budget vote, Bristol said of the fencing estimate: “Is it cheaper at that point to buy our own temporary fencing, rather than rent it, or to install permanent fencing?”
[ Read more: Camping ban citations worsen people’s ability to find housing ]
While discussing the budget the day before, several councilors echoed that sentiment, prompting City Manager Aaron Cubic to urge them to trust the judgment of city staff.
“Having a discussion on the dais about whether to add temporary or permanent fencing is really more of an operational issue and should be left to management to determine what is best for that specific item,” he said, adding that permanent fencing “does not make sense” at either of the campsites since they’re temporary.
“We’re not even seeing what it costs to own the (temporary) fencing or even put in permanent fencing,” Councilor Dwayne Yunker said to Cubic, “and I know it’s probably a lot less than $106,000. So just because you’re staff doesn’t mean you always make the best decisions, and at this point right now, I think some of these are bad decisions.”
Last Thursday, about a week after the city council meeting, Cubic said the city has revised its fencing estimates and is now budgeting about $20,000 total for temporary fencing. After Streetlight asked what that estimate is based on and if it was reached using the same method from the first estimate, Cubic offered to send a quote for the fencing, but did not provide it.
After city staff dismissed the idea of permanent fencing, Grants Pass installed it on a potential campsite the city plans to later use to expand the police department
Asked why the city had used different rates to calculate its fencing estimates, Cubic said: “Part of the increase, if there was an increase, (was because) in the beginning, we were looking at operating two sites. We recognized that there’s going to be a need throughout the year … to have a temporary, third site open at the same time.”
Cubic said during the budget discussion at the council meeting that the need might arise if Grants Pass temporarily or permanently shuts down another campsite.
A site closure is likely to happen soon, as the city council will consider replacing one of its current campsites—a small lot across the street from city hall—with property next to the police department on Wednesday. The city bought the property to potentially expand the police department, but Grants Pass leaders have been discussing turning it into a campsite for months.
The city has already done work on the lot to prepare it to become a campsite, including a demolition most recently budgeted at $65,000.
And although Cubic had said during the city council meeting two weeks ago that permanent fencing “does not make sense” for temporary campsites, at the same meeting, he said the city would install both permanent and temporary fencing on the lot.
The city installed the fencing last week, according to a staff report released Friday.
The report said Grants Pass had multiple contracts for fencing on the lot, which covered both cedar privacy fencing and temporary chain link fences.
Photos of the new fencing viewed by Streetlight show that workers installed both a wooden privacy fence and a chain link fence parallel to each other across the south side of the lot.
According to Google Maps and Josephine County property records, two commercial buildings and a home are on the other side of the fences.
Rates for cleaning portable toilets and handwashing stations don’t match in the city’s budgets
It’s impossible to know if Grants Pass will pay more or less for equipment at the campsites compared to what it used to spend on the same things for people camping in city parks. That’s because the city doesn’t actually know how much it spent renting and maintaining that equipment, Cubic said at the city council meeting two weeks ago.
[ Read more: Camping bans get a green light from the Supreme Court ]
Yunker asked Cubic how much the city is paying for portable toilets, site cleaning and garbage service at the campsites compared to the parks. Cubic said he didn’t have that number and “that would be difficult for us to calculate.”
The second-highest increase in the budgets was for renting portable toilets and wash stations, plus cleaning them both twice a day, which in total rose 84% to $143,100 from the first to the fourth budget.
Like the fencing, the costs to clean the portable toilets and handwashing stations were calculated at three different rates, including a third rate that wasn’t disclosed in the last two budgets:
- In early August, the city estimated the service would cost $62,400 per year for five camps, at a rate of $1,040 per site per month.
- Later that month, the estimate dropped to $43,200 for two camps, but at a higher rate of $1,800 per site per month.
- In early September, the city estimated the service at $79,200 for two camps, and that budget didn’t include the rate used to arrive at that number.
- The rejected budget added a 50% cushion to portable toilet and wash station rental, as well as their cleaning costs, pushing the estimate to clean the equipment to $118,800 per year.
Asked why the rates changed, Cubic offered “to review the numbers that you’re discussing with me so I can make sure to provide you with the appropriate explanation. … You’re quoting me numbers that I’m not familiar with.”
Streetlight sent Cubic a spreadsheet comparing the city’s four budgets for the campsite program and several emails following up to ask why the rates changed, but Cubic didn’t respond.
Aside from the portable toilets and fencing estimates, the budget that councilors voted against last week added 50% cushions to costs for cleaning the campsites and garbage pickup.
Without those cushions, the budget would fall 27% from $440,000 to about $321,000, which is just under the amount councilors approved for the campsite program last week.
Streetlight asked Cubic if those expenses are based on contracts, why would they go up 50% in a year? Wouldn’t that be a bad contract?
Cubic said the 50% cushions “don’t necessarily have to do with the actual contract that’s in place. They have to do with the potential flexibility that the additional resources would provide the city in order to make sure we’re maintaining appropriate service levels for the use of the resting spaces.”
The budget councilors voted down included about $39,000 earmarked for city administration and the public works department
Some councilors have questioned why the campsite program budget tacks on an administrative fee and lump payment of $10,000 to the public works department, which totaled about $39,000 in the budget the council rejected last week.
According to its annual budget, Grants Pass charges a 7% administrative fee to programs to fund departments that provide services within the city government, including the city manager’s office, finance and legal departments.
JC Rowley, finance director for Grants Pass, told Streetlight in late August that the fee for public works was based on rates for other services the department provides. Neither the administrative fee nor the public works payment will go directly to or be added on top of staff salaries, he said.
As the budget for the campsites grew, so did the administrative fee, which grew to about $29,000 in the budget councilors voted down two weeks ago.
“We keep hearing residents complain about the nonprofits and how they’re trying to profit off of homelessness,” DeLaGrange said. “Well, I mean, if the city’s charging $29,000 to run our own sites, that’s not a good look.”
Contact Streetlight editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@streetlightnews.org. Follow her reporting by joining our newsletter.
Streetlight, previously BigIfTrue.org, is a nonprofit news site based in Oklahoma City. Our mission is to report stories that envision a more equitable world and energize our readers to improve their communities. Donate to support our work here.
