Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
By the end of this year, downtown The Dalles will get a bright new public space. In a project that has been years in the making, The Dalles City Council voted 4 to 1 to award the bid for the Federal Street Plaza to Ajax Construction, LLC of Hood River for $3,398,000. The project will turn Federal Street between Second and First Streets into a public plaza, complete with a splash pad.
Councilors raised a number of concerns about the splash pad, and there was a move to consider dropping that from the project, but to make any changes now that bids have been opened would require starting the bid process over and delaying the project until 2027.
And the public testimony was overwhelmingly in favor of the project as it was bid.
“Without that water feature, you’ll have a big slab that nobody goes to. Step outside the door on a 90 degree day and no water and nothing else, you don’t want to be outside; I don’t care how much shade / We’re building a space for generations to come and The Dalles most certainly deserves this / We budgeted something on the order of $4.1 million dollars for the project; we’re about a million dollars under budget. I say, let’s take the win.”
That was former mayor Jim Wilcox, Freebridge owner Steve Light, and Councilor Dan Richardson.
Councilors also voted a series of fee schedule adjustments, and city attorney Jonathan Kara reminded people that:
“No fee is designed to generate revenue for the city. They are designed specifically just to abate the cost of providing those services.”
And in a sharp departure from the norm, councilors actually. cut fees in one category. That was rental fees for Lewis & Clark Festival Park. The recreational permit for exclusive use of the park for a single day dropped from $250 to $150, for single day nonexclusive use from $100 to $50. Exclusive use for multiple days dropped from $500 to $250 and for nonexclusive use from $250 to $150.
And a reminder that as a result of an ordinance passed last year, all dogs in the city must be licensed by June 1st.