Talent Community Resource Center: We Have Questions
Part 1 of a Watchdog series monitoring the City's process of opening a Community Resource Center in Talent.
NOTE: This post was updated on 2.14.25 to change the year that the Talent Business Alliance became a non-profit. See footnote for details.
Talent Awarded $1.5 Million for Community Resource Center
News Release Date: 12-20-2024
A $1.5 million grant to fund a Community Resource Center in Talent was approved this week by the State of Oregon.
The funding will be used to purchase and remodel a former medical clinic at 49 Talent Avenue, currently owned by Asante, according to Talent City Manager Gary Milliman. Funding will come from the federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program administered by Business Oregon.
“We are delighted to receive this news,” Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood said. “The vision is for this 4,000 square foot building to serve the needs of a variety of non-profit organizations serving the people of our community.” Read entire >
We’ve all known about this possibility since July 2024, when Milliman announced that the City of Talent had become qualified to submit a proposal for the purchase of the old Asante building downtown as a Community Resource Center for lower-income Talent residents. Awesome idea. The TCW is 100% on board with offering a consolidated location for Talentonians who are struggling financially to access resources and assistance - which is why we’re paying close attention to how this goes down.
We may dive into the triggering event for this proposal at some point, but for now we will just focus in on the question of who will be given a space in the Center. Available space is rare and in high demand in that area of Talent, so of course people are wondering about which non-profits the City is going to give these spots to. There’s certainly no shortage of Talent-focused community organizations since 2020; they definitely won’t have any trouble finding tenants. So then, how are they going to decide who gets in? Will it be a fair selection process or are they going to just pick their friends’ and their own non-profits to move in? Will we the public have any say at all?
Well if you watched the Public Hearing portion of the August 7th City Council Regular Meeting, you would presumably not be too concerned about it. The Mayor and City Manager went to lengths to ensure everyone that it would be a public process and the no organizations have been selected to occupy Center space yet. In fact, they were months away from even establishing the criteria for selecting the tenants, much less the specific groups to be invited.
Here are the portions of the transcript from the Public Hearing that discuss this: (With ums and uhs mostly removed for clarity and some important parts in bold)
26:24 / MAYOR: I just have a clarifying question. So I want to make sure I understand the steps of this process Gary. Did I hear you correctly that we're authorizing tonight, we're hearing from the public about how to use this space, yeah? And authorizing you to submit an application for a grant, that's the first step? Can you describe, can you tell me what the steps are moving forward?
CITY MANAGER: All right so you have the public hearing which is both on the topic of the proposed application and to hear from the public about any other projects that the city may wish to develop for future applications. Then after the hearing is completed you would authorize the Manager to if you choose to to submit an application with the current project as described in the current round of funding. Those applications are due in mid-September. That is called a pre-application. That pre-application is then evaluated by Business Oregon staff, they are the administering Agency for CDBG, and if it appears to meet the criteria for funding they advise us accordingly and then we prepare a full application for submission by the deadline. Then it goes into a process of further evaluation review by the state, some back and forth always occurs on documentation requests and such and then there's a determination made by the state about which projects they're going to fund… that would be probably in late October/November. So you wouldn't see it come back until after that process is concluded and a grant offer is made and we'd need to respond at that time as to whether {indecipherable].
MAYOR: Great, and then after that it comes back to the Council to develop criteria based on the grant, is that correct, that's what I thought I understood, and then the staff uses that criteria for application and selection of who is actually the tenants of the building, is that correct? So we're not selecting tenants, we haven't selected any tenants…
CITY MANAGER: We're not close to doing that, we're not close to doing that. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to get to the point of soliciting tenants. A) We don't know we have the building and B) we don't have a commitment from the state or even a preliminary in that regard and C) we have some architectural work to do to define the spaces within the building better, it's a lot of technical stuff to do before we get to the point of actually talking to the prospective tenants.
MAYOR: Great and I think it's important for the public to know this next question, the question of the council developing criteria for the use of this building - once a grant is awarded, if a grant is awarded, based on the application - that is a public process, right?
CITY MANAGER: So that would be, the caveat to that is that depending upon the feedback we get from the business's Oregon staff they may want that sooner.
Later…
36:14 / MAYOR: I have an additional question for you Gary if I may. Again we're not selecting applicants we're not even creating criteria for the staff to select applicants which which is presumably how that will go. So do you want to hear…we're hearing from our community that they want to see a food bank, I think that is clear on the record and then based on some of the testimony online I'm seeing that concerns about making sure that nonprofits are those who directly serve lower income residents. Is there any part of this - because I know you're going to write a grant - is there any part of this where you want us to list potential - like a food bank you know these are the service - is that what you're looking for in this testimony? Or are you just looking for a for a… I'm not sure what.
CITY MANAGER: Yeah we will be discussing with the state in the grant process the types of uses that would be located in the building. We won't be discussing with them specific entities. I was happy to hear tonight that there's another party in town providing services that would be interested in partnering up on the building and we'll follow up with them and any others that come forward.
MAYOR: So you don't need to hear from the council types of uses, that'll be sorted out when you work with the state about allowed uses correct? Okay that that helps me a lot exactly in this discussion.
COUNCILOR GREIDER: Is there a plan or time to get more word out for organizations to come forward in…
CITY MANAGER: Well I think it's a good time now to let organizations know that this is a potential project. It's a little premature because we don't have any assurance or even an early indication as to whether the project would actually…but if there are organizations who are interested, sure I'd be happy to hear from. But we can't can't make any commitments to them.
COUNCILOR GREIDER: I fear that unless you follow Council business you may not be aware that this is out there.
CITY MANAGER: Yeah I'd be…being new to the community I'd love to hear about any organizations who would get engaged and you would be willing to reach out willing to do that to them yeah.
MAYOR: I would imagine - just to follow up to her question - I would imagine that at the point that we've written criteria and you're starting the selection process you would open that up for application is that right? Yeah right, so everybody would have a fair chance to meet the criteria that's been established by the state and adopted as policy, is that correct?
COUNCILOR BYERS: To Councilor Greider’s point…I am wondering if at this point it might be even more supportive to hear from organizations that serve the community just about the types of services that are needed and desired by the community as opposed to whether that organization themselves would be interested in participating…
CITY MANAGER: Yeah both would help.
MAYOR: Great. So with hearing that conversation I will be looking forward to seeing you know what kind of outreach the City is going to do.
One last little important bit, part of discussion of a letter from a local resident submitted as testimony for the hearing:
43:37 / MAYOR: On that note I would also like to state that in this testimony it says that “however the already arranged selection of Rogue Action Center, and perhaps other nonprofits not directly involved in services, to occupy the spaces does not fit with the qualifying factors of the grant…” We don't know what the qualifying factors of the grant, nobody's been selected. Just to be fair I do want to say that this is early in the process and it can be very confusing and people can be misinformed by some of that confusion so there's some certainly some latitude. I'm not prepared to think that there was anything maligned about that, it's just that we need to make sure that when we have information flowing through the community about an opportunity as great as this that it isn't encumbered by misinformation and discourse, unnecessary and really angry discourse at times. I think it's important to set the record straight on that as well. There have been no selections, we haven't even developed criteria yet.
Okay, looking pretty fair so far. As of August 2024 the Council and the public are assured that the tenant selection process will not be a closed-door, private invitation event but rather a series of public input hearings and openly-made Council decisions.
Not much happened (that we know about) until December, when the City was finally awarded the grant. No agreements have been signed or anything finalized yet, but the City had been approved by the State to receive the 1.5 million for the building. WooHoo! (Great job Gary, for real).
On January 15, 2025, City Manager Milliman gives a brief Staff Report update at the City Council meeting on the CDBG proposal approval and purchase of 49 Talent Ave.
5:49 / CITY MANAGER: The City has received a grant award letter from business Oregon on the Community Development Block Grant for the Community Resource Center. People have been asking about oh when's this going to be happening… I want to let everyone know that we're still waiting for the grant agreement that will come from Business Oregon. It's been several weeks now. I really don't have a date for that, but I'm advised that it should be soon. And we really can't be doing anything there including entering into an agreement to purchase the property or really doing any on-site planning for remodeling until the grant agreement is signed. Otherwise all of the subsequent expenses would be not eligible.
So we are starting to reach out to some of the community based organizations to determine their initial interest and possibly relocating there and we'll be talking to more next week and in the coming weeks. So I hope to gather a group of the Community-Based Organization representatives together once we have better access to the property so we can kind of couple a meeting with those groups and a tour of the building.
Wait what? Hold on there a sec, that doesn’t make sense. It’s too early for the City to plan anything about the remodel or even give the public an estimated timeline of when the various hearings and milestones will take place, but next week you’re inviting a unnamed group of prospective tenants to meet with the City and tour the building?
If it were too early to start planning the remodel, what would be the purpose of these groups touring the building? You certainly have some kind of timeline in mind if this is happening next week. And why is anyone who is not a City staff member being given access to the building at this stage, when we’ve been told repeatedly that you don’t even know what the criteria for tenant selection will be, much less the specific entities to be invited? How do you know which groups to reach out to if you have not yet established tenant criteria?
We find out a little more when we mine Facebook for the Mayor’s comments to public questions regarding the grant. Here’s what Mayor Darby said on January 12th:
Ah ok, so there are obviously groups that have already been pre-qualified then. Assuming the Mayor’s comment here is accurate, we can deduce that those who have been invited to meet with staff and tour the building are all current or displaced tenants of property owned by the City of Talent.
Talent Business Alliance - Non-profit since 2022 20051 that promotes Talent businesses on their Facebook page and organizes business-owner mixers and consumer events that aim to bring customers to small businesses. Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood is the paid Executive Director, Councilor Pare-Miller is paid employee, Councilor Ponomareff is a (volunteer) TBA Board member, and Councilor Byers was paid by the TBA, with money provided by the City of Talent, to organize the Harvest Festival in 2024. Formerly headquartered in old Town Hall, we understand that the group is currently using a room in the Talent Community Center.
Rogue Action Center - Social justice advocacy group. Was renting at low cost the City’s owned building on Home Street. Councilor Greider (2020-2024) is a paid employee.
Jackson County Long-Term Recovery Group - Fire recovery non-profit that surveyed residents and wrote a Recovery Plan called Rogue Reimagined, published in 2023. It’s not clear what they’re working on now or where they rent City space.
ACCESS Talent Food Pantry - Serves Talent’s lower income population with free food and groceries on a weekly basis. Currently operates in the parking lot outside the Talent Community Center after having been displaced by the fire in Town Hall in April 2024.
Other than the Food Pantry, none of these groups explicitly serve low-income Talent residents (the original intent of the new building, according to early discussion and Press Releases). The only thing they have in common is that they have served Talent in some way in the past and have been tenants of City property before.
So what’s the issue with that? Well, first of all, it has not been decided that a purpose of the Resource Center is to relocate City tenants. Certainly it would be nice for the City to have most of its renters in one central location and to free up valuable rental and/or meeting space in other City buildings, but that is not the aim of the CDBG program or the grant, nor is it part of the criteria for space rental. Because there have not been any criteria established yet, remember? This ‘previous tenant’ criteria may be something that the Mayor/Council/City Manager have always been planning on, but that doesn’t make it a given. As per the City Council, the qualifications for tenancy are yet to be decided and the process of making decisions about the qualifications will be a public one.
Second, the potential for actual and perceived conflicts of interest here are…bountiful. Several City Council members appear to have non-Council interests in which groups will be allowed to rent space at the Resource Center. Given the assurances of the Mayor and Councilors back in August that tenant selection would be fair and public, one might find it surprising that none of them questioned the City Manager’s announcement that groups are already being invited to a City meeting.
On the other hand, given the direct connection that 4 Council members have to the Talent Business Alliance and secure in the knowledge that it has been (unofficially) offered a spot already, it’s reasonable to wonder if perhaps they wouldn’t want to question the process too much at this point.
What this could mean for the community is that when the tenant selection process is officially started in view of the public, the Council would seem to be inclined to establish criteria that will include the already-invited groups. “Previous City tenant” would need to be a tenant criteria in order for these groups that have been low-key offered a space to get one, and then that criteria could disqualify otherwise qualified non-profits hoping for a space.
Then the City will find itself in this unfortunate situation where it looks like, behind the scenes, they’ve handpicked a bunch of nonprofits that they already had relationships with or are being paid by (or even running), thereby preventing smaller, newer, lesser-networked groups from being given this opportunity to grow and reach people from downtown Talent. The optics are not great you guys!
They told us that this process would be transparent. They said everyone would have an equal chance to meet the criteria, and that the criteria itself would be open to public discussion. So far that has not been the case. There is still time to course correct on this one and we encourage Council to do so. Council and City staff should cease conducting meetings with prospective tenants until the public has been allowed to participate in the discussion about which types of organizations should occupy the building and until tenant criteria has been approved by Council.
Read the Part 2 followup to this story:
CORRECTION 2.14.25: According to Mayor Darby in a Facebook comment dated 2.13.25, “When TBA changed from a 501c6 to a 501c3, it was to stop collecting a membership fee from businesses and instead raise money to help businesses by increasing foot traffic through events, etc” …. “TBA has been around since 2005. The old board changed the name in 2019 but the current organization still has all of the same tax id number since 2005 etc…easy to verify which news sources do when they are dedicated to objective news.”
We used 2022 in the Report because that is what it says on the TBA website and it seemed most accurate to use the year from which the current organization name and registration as a 501(c(3) had been active, which we assumed from the Our Story paragraph below was 2022. That was an incorrect assumption.
