Clatsop County residents will get a slight break on this years property taxes when they come due Nov. 15.

Sept. 1, the Port of Astoria made the last payment   $415,000 on a general obligation bond owned by the Depository Trust Company in New York City and dating back to 1991. That repayment will lower Clatsop County residents taxes to the Port by 40.8 percent.

Jack Crider, executive director of the Port, said the Port used the bond to upgrade its Pier 1 facilities from rotting wood to steel and concrete to accommodate a large logging export business that recently took off.

Suzanne Johnson, Clatsop Countys assessor and tax collector, has released the revised tax rates:?12.56 cents per $1,000 of assessed home value in property taxes, down from 21.25 cents in 2010. 

That means a person who owns a $100,000 house paid $21.25 in 2010. They would now pay $12.56.

Voters in the county approved the formation of the Port in 1910. The permanent tax rate for county residents to support it the required minimum has been $0.1256 per $1,000 of assessed home value for at least a decade.

The Port has the ability to levy additional funds from its district for capital improvements if county voters approve. Registered county voters numbering 7,873 did just that May 21, 1991, when they passed a bond measure for $4.9 million to improve the Port.

Repaying the bond added property taxes each year. The Port refinanced it in 1996.

The repayment process lasted through 2010, when residents paid an additional 8.69 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value in taxes to finance repayment of the bond.

Colleen Browne, the Ports financial director, said it collected about $1.015 million last year in property taxes. The bond assessment the last taxes collected specifically to pay the bond totaled $415,000.

Crider said the Port has no plans to levy any additional funds in the near future. The commission will instead try to save money for future maintenance and other contingencies.

There is a never-ending list of projects to work on and disasters to take care of, he said. I have extra money only because of our revenues.

Crider spoke of Augusts revenues, which according to the Ports calculations totaled more than $1 million. Crider said it was the first time since hes been executive director that hes had a seven-figure revenue in one month. A significant portion of these revenues came from the timber exporting business on Pier 1 the bonds original purpose.

When the Port secured the bond and improved Pier 1, timber exports were relatively weak. Oregon voters had already banned exports of un-milled logs from state-owned lands through a referendum in 1989.

Many of the logs exported through the Port were and are from about 140,000 privately owned acres of timberland in Clatsop County, which has changed hands several times in recent decades. Weyerhaeuser acquired it in the takeover from Willamette Industries in 2001. It used its own milling facilities in Longview, Wash., and sent logs to domestic markets. In 2010, Weyerhaeuser sold the land to The Campbell Group, a timberland investment management organization.

By that time, the domestic housing market had imploded, and Campbell Group, focusing on stronger foreign timber markets in Asia, resumed exports through the Port, bolstering its Pier 1 operations. Westerlund Log Handlers set up operations there the same year.

Crider said the last log ship to go through the Port had been in 1996. In the interim, it used Pier 1 for research vessels, cruise ships, ship repairs and a variety of other uses, but never for its original intention: timber.

The first log ship through the Port in almost 15 years, the Santa Pacifica, came in October 2010. Crider said the Port has exported about 54 million board feet of timber this fiscal year, with one or two ships still to come.

 

Commissioners meet at 6 p.m. today in the Port offices at 422 Gateway Ave.