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Clatsop County could soon see a cap on vacation rentals, marking the end of a chapter in a yearslong debate over property owners’ rights and neighborhood concerns.

On Wednesday, county commissioners held the first public hearing on an ordinance that would establish a 10% limit on vacation rentals in unincorporated areas west of U.S. Highway 101, where the majority of vacation rentals are found. The cap would also apply to both sides of the highway in Arch Cape, which has among the highest concentrations of vacation rentals in the county.

Under the ordinance, existing permits could be renewed even if an area exceeds the 10% cap. New applications, however, would not be accepted in areas at or above the cap. The idea is to keep vacation rentals under control in areas that haven’t yet reached the cap and to slowly decrease the number of vacation rentals in areas that are already above the limit.

Vacation rentals in unincorporated areas only represent a fraction of short-term rentals in the county — most are found in cities, which have their own restrictions. But residents in neighborhoods like Cove Beach and Surf Pines have pressed the county to take action over quality of life concerns and other issues.

See the story by Olivia Palmer by clicking here.

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Cathedral Tree Trail is nothing if not steep. Just off Irving Avenue, the path quickly assumes a steady incline before leveling off at a small landing surrounded by evergreens.

Not long ago, the only way forward continued up a sharp grade over tangles of knobby roots toward Coxcomb Hill — but now, just to the left of the landing, a new route is taking shape.

Over the last few years, the Astoria Parks and Recreation Department has fielded a handful of community concerns over accessibility. Jonah Dart-Mclean, the city’s parks director, said improving the trail has been a goal for a while, but until recently, they haven’t had the staff capacity to make it a reality. Sarah Flynn, the department’s parks and public sites maintenance coordinator, has helped change that.

Flynn, who has taken the lead on the project, began scoping out alternate routes last spring. The idea was to find a path that could offer a shallower grade for people to hike up, and one that would bypass the wooden stairs and boardwalks on the original trail, which can be difficult to maintain and become slippery in the winter.

“The grade was definitely the biggest concern, and not going straight up a hill, because the existing trail, it just goes straight up,” she said. “You know, it was built to get from point A to point B without a real regard for how sustainable it might be to maintain that trail and how easy it would be for people to hike.”

Read the story by Olivia Palmer by clicking here.

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There’s a phrase in Chinuk Wawa — “ɫush-tumtum” — that Rachel Cushman uses when something makes her have a good heart.

It’s a phrase that came to mind for her on Sunday, as members of the Chinook Indian Nation and the Columbia Land Trust gathered at the Barbey Maritime Center in Astoria to witness the signing of a historic memorandum of understanding between the two entities, codifying their relationship and signifying a shared commitment to the land.

“Really it just is the beginning of a beautiful relationship between our two organizations and really establishing good relations over place and providing opportunity for cultural knowledge on stewardship opportunities,” said Cushman, the secretary and treasurer of the Chinook Indian Nation.

For years, the Chinook Indian Nation and Columbia Land Trust have been building an informal relationship and engaging in conversations about the potential for a memorandum of understanding. With the help of a small grant, Cushman said they’ve more recently had the opportunity to lay out the framework for that agreement and develop best practices.

The memorandum formalizes a co-stewardship model, where the two organizations work reciprocally to care for land in traditional Chinook territory. But because the land trust owns land, the agreement also sets the table for another exciting opportunity: the potential to give some of that land back to the people who have stewarded it since time immemorial.

“This relationship creates access to land,” Cushman said. “I mean, indigeneity is defined by our dispossession, right? And so this is really a decolonial move of the land trust, like, ‘Let’s build a relationship. Let’s work on getting Indigenous lands back in the hands of Indigenous people. And you know, for feasibility, let’s help steward the land that we have in a way that makes the tribe feel good and is good for the land, because the tribe has been the stewards of the land for thousands of years.’”

Take a look at the story by Olivia Palmer by clicking here.

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— Derrick DePledge