Clatsop County Courthouse in Astoria, Oregon
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Clatsop voters approve $34 million bond for new skilled nursing facility

ByDana Whitcomb

Clatsop County Courthouse in Astoria. Photo: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons.

Clatsop County voters approved a $34 million general-obligation bond for a new Clatsop Care Center skilled nursing facility, unofficial returns from the Nov. 3 election show, clearing the way for the health district to replace a building that opened in 1926 as Columbia Hospital.

Measure 4-249 authorizes bonds to build on district-owned land on Olney Street in Astoria, next to the existing assisted living campus. Preliminary work is slated for 2027, with a late-2028 opening target. Residents stay in the current Franklin Avenue building through construction, so no one has to move twice.

The estimated tax rate is about 37.5 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. District directors voted earlier to end an existing operations levy a year early so the two do not stack, trimming the net increase to roughly 14 cents per $1,000, according to district materials and reporting by The Astorian.

What the new building is supposed to fix

Plans call for 44 skilled nursing beds, up from 38 residents in the current wing, all on one floor. The design emphasizes wider evacuation routes, more patient lifts, modern heating and cooling, and electrical capacity sized for today’s clinical equipment. Common rooms are drawn for families who drive in from Seaside, Warrenton and the county’s rural valleys.

Memory care, assisted living and in-home services keep operating as they do now. Bond money is limited to capital costs; it cannot cover salaries or day-to-day care. A citizen oversight committee is required to review spending once the measure is certified.

Administrators have said the historic building on 16th and Franklin would be sold after the move, taking a century-old structure off the district’s maintenance books and putting a developable shell back on the market in downtown Astoria.

How it fit the rest of the local ballot

Turnout in Clatsop County landed near 64 percent. Voters also passed an Astoria measure requiring council approval for mayoral appointments and a Warrenton marijuana tax. They rejected Astoria’s vacant-homes excise tax, a proposal to add two at-large council seats, a package of Astoria charter revisions and a Cannon Beach foredune charter change.

County clerks will keep updating tallies through November before certification. For families with relatives in skilled nursing, the practical question is whether Olney Street opens on time with enough beds that North Coast patients are not sent inland. For taxpayers, the question is whether the early sunset of the operations levy keeps the net bill close to what the district promised on the voters’ pamphlet.

Health district voters live across Astoria, Warrenton and surrounding pockets that use Clatsop Care for rehab stays after hospital discharges as much as for long-term placement. Keeping those beds on the coast is the core argument bond supporters made at forums this fall. Opponents worried about the sticker price on a district that already levies for operations. The early sunset of that levy was meant to answer them. Whether construction bids come in near the $34 million authorization will decide if a supplemental ask ever returns to the ballot.

Bond counsel and underwriters will still have to price the issue once certification is done. Interest rates move; a higher coupon would stretch the estimated 37-cent rate. District materials already warn that the levy can vary with assessed value and final financing terms. Residents who voted yes on the pamphlet number should expect the first tax bill to be close, not exact.

For hospital discharge planners at Columbia Memorial and clinics up the coast, the promise is fewer patients sent to Portland or the Valley for skilled nursing. That only holds if the 44 beds fill a real gap rather than reshuffle the same census. Tracking out-of-county placements between now and 2028 is the quiet metric that will show whether the bond did what speakers claimed at town halls.

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