Wasco County Commissioners played a lot of catchup at their meeting yesterday. It was the first they’ve had since late December as both meetings scheduled for January had to canceled. Commissioners held the first of two public hearings on changes in the county nuisance abatement ordinances that clarifies the process and specified fines. Commissioner Scott Hege put it this way:
“We’re just trying to get a better way to more efficiently deal with those kind of problems, and I think all of this is to try to help us to have better tools to deal with those things, so that people don’t have to live next door to things that are really kind of pretty horrible. But still do it fairly and within rules and have a procedure. So I think that’s my sense of what this is generally all about, just so people understand.”
Those ordinances will come up for a second hearing and vote at the next meeting on February 21.
As part of an afternoon session, commissioners discussed the situation with Kramer Field. Commissioner Hege reported that the Parks and Recreation agency said they had neither the budget nor the manpower to maintain the fields this year. Wasco County owns the property, and Hege said he was working on memorandums of understanding and field use agreements with the Little League and Babe Ruth organizations. The county, he said, will do its part:
“Wasco County basically provides irrigation and maintenance of the irrigation system, fertilize the fields, spray the fields for weed control, prune the trees if needed, guarantee the Little League access to the fields – that’s what that field agreement is for.”
He said there won’t be time fot major repairs before the season starts next month, but the county will fund at least some of the immediate needs.