Elected officials are calling out Clackamas County commissioners for terminating an agreement to help provide social services in North Clackamas and urging commissioners to sell back a building for $1.
Wichita Center houses a food pantry, clothing closet, toiletry essentials and access to a variety of partner agencies serving youth and families. Milwaukie and North Clackamas School District officials didn’t mince words in criticizing the county during their joint meeting on Feb. 8.
“It sounds like anything community related they don't want to do these days,” said Milwaukie Councilor Adam Khosroabadi. “Regardless of the services provided, they clearly don't care unfortunately.”
County commissioners had tried to express their caring on Jan. 10 when they said that they share the concern of displacing services to the most vulnerable. But commissioners decided that Wichita services for families in need were outside of the parks district’s core mission of providing parks and recreation.
County officials had blindsided both NCSD and the North Clackamas parks advisory board in December by exercising a right, which is granted by an intergovernmental agreement, to terminate the Wichita Center partnership with 180 days’ notice. School district officials said the notice effectively terminates NCSD’s ability to provide community services out of the Wichita location on June 30.
NCSD Board member April Dobson called the morality of county commissioners into question when making her comments about their decision to force the school district into property negotiations.
“It is appalling and morally repugnant that the Wichita Center and the services that provides our community find themselves in a situation where they need to scramble to continue to provide that continuity of care for our most vulnerable residents,” Dobson said. “We will do absolutely everything in our power to help make sure that that care is still available for the people who've come to count on it so much.”
County commissioners are elected countywide but make decisions for the North Clackamas Parks & Recreation District serving about 105,000 residents; only one of the five currently sitting county commissioners lives in the parks district.
“The NCPRD Board of Directors hasn’t made a decision yet,” said county spokesperson Jessie Kirk on Feb. 9. “The board will have robust discussions in the weeks to come with all ideas considered.”
On whether county officials would sell, Assistant NCSD Superintendent Cindy Detchon said they “seemed open to that possibility” when she met with them in January.
“I haven't heard from them since on if they have a (sale price) number, but in the meantime, we've been continuing to look at any vacant properties,” Detchon said.
NCSD board member Mitzi Bauer said it was “very ironic” that a service center that serves North Clackamas’ homeless and low-income population is now itself looking for a new home.
“There's been work done in the county to show that this area of our community is very vulnerable,” Bauer said. "Our time is limited to solve where is our home for all of these resources, and I think we need to let our decision makers know… how important this is.”
Paul Kemp and other NCSD board members said that there’s no other good location for the Wichita Center services. King Road is centrally located, near mass transit and other social services.
“What I've heard is some of the other options are not nearly as cohesive and would keep all the services together,” Kemp said. “It just seems vital to make sure other leadership in the county understands how important that location is, and so many families have been going there for quite some time.”
Glenn Wachter, who serves on the board for both the school district and Parrott Creek Child & Family Services, said that Clackamas County created a precedent in selling land and buildings in September 2020 to Parrott Creek for $1.
“Buildings on those 80 acres were extraordinarily deficient in terms of the maintenance and upkeep on them, so Parrott Creek inherited some 1963 buildings for a dollar and 80 acres,” Wachter said. “We are reconstructing the whole campus, but we know that the county can support a transaction like that, and I’d like to call on them to do that.”
North Clackamas Parks valued the Wichita Center at $1.37 million in 2018 as part of a property exchange with the school district . At that time, the parks district received approximately $14 million in cash by transferring ownership of Hood View Park to the school district for a new high school's sports fields.
In exchange, the parks district received Wichita, Concord Elementary School in Oak Grove and Clackamas Elementary School in unincorporated Clackamas County.
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