At the regular meting of the Hines Common Council on Tuesday, Oct. 23, the council voted to hire Kirby Letham as the new city administrator.

Letham will be replacing Judy Erwin, who announced several weeks ago that she would be retiring from the position Jan. 1, 2019.

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Erwin told the council that the water tower in Hines was leaking again, possibly because of the warmer weather, and it would have to be patched again. Erwin said that the company that patched it previously would be coming through on Saturday, Oct. 27, to patch it once again. She added that the company tries to make the repairs as they are passing through to another job so it saves the city money.

Later in the meeting, Erwin stated she had recently attended a League of Oregon Cities (LOC) meeting to talk about  issues the LOC has targeted to bring to the state legislature. Those issues were identified as broadband investment/right-of-way authority, mental health, revenue reform of both property taxes and the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), housing and homelessness, and infrastructure finance and resilience investment.

Erwin added that she was going to be contacting State Representative Lynn Findley and State Senator Cliff Bentz about Harney County’s mental health issues so they would have that information available when the legislature goes into session.

Erwin stated she had attended a small cities meeting the previous week and there was a lot of discussion about the condition of roads in town. She said a representative for the Oregon Department of Transportation stated that rather than pave gravel roads in town, resources should be spent on maintaining the existing roadways.

There was also some discussion about not putting in new sidewalks either because of Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

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The council received three requests for donations, but there were no representatives from any of the groups present at the meeting, so the requests were tabled until a later time. The council agreed that a representative of a group or organization asking for a donation should attend the council meeting to answer any questions the council might have for them.

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Denise Rose of the Harney County Economic Development Office was unable to attend the meeting, but she submitted a written report to the council that Erwin read aloud to the council.

The next council meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13 at city hall.