The Astoria City Council met for a regular meeting beginning at 6:00 PM and adjourning at 7:48 PM. The agenda, minutes, and transcript all identify the meeting date as Monday, January 5, 2026, while the supplied timestamp was 2026-01-06 14:00:00+00:00; this summary uses the required date in the title. Mayor Sean Fitzpatrick and Councilors Andy Davis, Andrea Mazzarella, Elisabeth Adams, and Joshua Conklin were present, along with City Manager Scott Spence, Public Works Director Jeff Harrington, Assistant City Engineer Cindy Moore, Finance & Administrative Services Director Hilary Norton, Police Chief Stacy Kelly, Fire Chief Dan Crutchfield, Assistant to the City Manager Ryan Quigley, and City Attorney Blair Henningsgaard.
Well, good evening and welcome to the Monday, January 5th, 2026 meeting of the Australia City Council. For the record, the time is 6 p.m. Ryan Quigley, could you lead us in the pledge, please? Please rise if you're willing and able. Hi. Thank you, Mr. Quigley. Mr. Spence. Welcome back. So if we could have a roll call, please. Counselor Davis. Here, Councilor Mozzarello. Here, Counselor Adams. Counselor Conklin. Here. Mayor Fitzpatrick. So first up, we have a presentation. And that's going to be from the Columbia Pacific Economic Development District, also known as COLPAC. And with us here tonight, we have their director, Sherlock Heath. Ms. Heath. Hi, thank you for having me. It's great to see a lot of friendly faces behind the dais today. As the mayor mentioned, my name is Sarah Lou Heath. I am the executive director of uh ColPAC because that was a lot of syllables to get through. Uh this is my colleague Jackie Pewitt. Um and special thanks to Ryan for uh accepting a second version of this slideshow. And so is there a clicker okay. Um so a little bit about the district. Uh we are a federal economic development district, and we get that designation from the economic development administration at the federal level. We have been around for just over 30 years, and we work in CLATSUP, Columbia, Tillamook, and Western Washington counties. Um our regional role is to help facilitate partnerships and collaboration, maintain federal relationships, and provide tailored on-the-ground services. We work closely with all of our county EDCs and here in Clatsup County, that is Cedar and Kevin Leahy. Uh, and so we make sure that we we cover our different areas and always work together. Um of the services that we offer to our region um include grant writing and administration, um, our revolving loan fund for small businesses, uh, a new program that we are launching with the county that we'll touch more on called the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy Program, uh several brownfield redevelopment programs, the Northwest Oregon Transit Alliance, and um a document that we hold for the region called the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. And so we've got about 10 minutes, so we're gonna run through these pretty quickly. So if you've uh got a question, feel free to interrupt or we can take some questions at the end as well. I'll jump in here. Uh Jackie Pewitt, Program Coordinator of COPAC as Sarah Lou said. Um so we um as an organization offer uh community development black grant administrative administration services. Um what CDBG grants are purposed for, um, but to improve quality of life in the communities, um, and especially they target communities that have low to moderate income populations. Um two of our most recent um grant uh C B DG grant projects are the St. Helens Sewer Capacity Project. It's a 1.5 million dollar project. And then also we are um assisting with a disaster recovery, so a C D BGDR um project right now, and that's been interesting to learn about. So um think of us if you um here folks in the community um people that have needs, you know. Um a lot of times the CDBG grants are primarily for water and wastewater treatment plants. That's a common use for them, but there are other possible uses, um, like senior centers, libraries, um structures, and organizations that benefit the community at large. But there are other possible uses, um, like senior centers, libraries, um structures and organizations that benefit the community at large.