As Silverton breaks a new population benchmark, here are a few things that make the town special. Wochit
In 1968, Stu Rasmussen went to work for one of Oregon's flagship Silicon Forest companies — Tektronix. Commuting meant driving from his quaint hometown of Silverton, population 4,000, to Beaverton, population back then of about 10,000.
Things have changed a bit in the ensuing 40+ years. Beaverton's population exploded and now is pushing 100,000.
Silverton grew much slower and just last year reached 10,000 residents, and it's holding tight to its small-town, know-your-neighbor charm
When Rasmussen, a former mayor, dropped by a Water Street coffee shop at 9 a.m. Friday, the local proprietors were taken aback.
“Stu! You tripped me up. What time of the day is it?” Live Local Coffee co-owner Elisha Nightingale announced.
Rasmussen jested with coffee-shop patrons at a nearby table: “I usually come in here during the afternoon to do the crossword puzzle, so it threw everybody off.”
Rasmussen can recall when the coffee shop was a bakery. Next to it was a budget market, then a hardware store, then Mac’s Place (which is still there), then another grocery, meat lockers and finally a gas station (now a dog-grooming parlor). There was a sporting goods store on the other side — all in all, a classic 1930s-'50s downtown.
The complexion of the businesses have changed, adapted to the changes in society, but Silverton’s downtown core has adapted with new businesses, keeping the downtown charm intact. That’s part of the town’s appeal.
“It’s a draw for people who want to move here,” Rasmussen said. “It’s the town that I grew up in…People want that Norman Rockwell setting; that small-towness where they’re not only a resident, they’re your neighbor.”
The difference between Silverton and cities like Beaverton are not lost on him.
“I’m sure there were people sitting (in Beaverton) then saying, ‘We don’t want to grow! We don’t want to grow!” Rasmussen said.
Silverton is growing
The updated census from Charles Rynerson of Portland State University’s Population Research Center lists Silverton at 10,070 for 2017, up from the 9,725 number of 2016.
Silverton’s growth has been relatively modest, inching up in consistent, mild increments. But it is also controversial, eliciting significant chatter about town and in forums such as the recent Town Hall and during a lengthy Silverton City Council meeting in December focused on a proposed development at the north edge of town.
“Silverton seems to have a split personality,” Silverton Mayor Kyle Palmer said. “Some want no corporate interests. Some want no more commercial development at all. Some love the new choices. Some wish they offered living wage jobs only. Some are thankful for any new employment. It really depends who you ask.”
Growth inevitably means change, and Palmer and other civic leaders are realistic about that. But they also believe that with forethought and guidance the growth can be cultivated into the character of Silverton, rather than having that character compromised by the byproducts of growth.
”One must not forget that Silverton is a beautiful place," Silverton resident Anne Sukel said during a December public hearing regarding a subdivision. "There are not many beautiful places in this world. And people are very, very happy to make money off of them when they can. I’m old enough to understand that, but I will never applaud it.”
During the Town Hall, City Councilor Laurie Carter juxtaposed Silverton’s growth with that of Forest Grove where she lived prior to moving to Silverton four decades ago. Both, she said, were comparable in size at that time, but Forest Grove’s 8,275 population in 1970 expanded to nearly 11,500 a decade later. By 2010 it topped 20,000 and its 2016 estimate stretched up just north of 24,000.
That expansion was not necessarily greeted with open arms by long-standing residents, but the trajectory was understood.
“It’s because that’s where companies located,” Carter said of the Portland metro area. “It wasn’t because city councils or residents wanted their towns to grow.”
She noted that Silverton’s location – away from a major artery such as Interstate 5 – alleviates some of the worry about rapid growth. But not entirely.
“I would love to see Silverton stay the way it is, (but) it is a regressive attitude to think that we can remain a 19th-century town in the 21st century,” Carter said. “We will attract new people. We can’t have a not-in-my-backyard attitude toward everything. We have to face the fact that we will grow.”
Part of facing that is anticipating the growth and, perhaps, affecting the complexion of it.
“Seems to me like there is a happy medium between, ‘no one can move here, that’s it, we’re done, and we want the horse and buggy days,’ and being surrounded by three-story, high-density apartments and having a Dollar Tree, and a Dollar Store and Dominos and maybe a Wal-Mart and whoever else wants to come to town,” local resident Kimberlee McDermott said during the Town Hall.
"I don’t understand why we are not more proactive about us deciding what Silverton looks like instead of the developers or the corporations or whoever else looks at us and says, ‘Hey, they’ll let us build whatever we want as long as it meets the code,’” she added.
"There’s smart growth, and then there’s growth growth, and then there’s no growth. I think the smart growth is what people want.”
Who pays?
One issue Silverton’s city council anticipates reviewing this month is system development charges, fees paid to the city by developers to offset costs of needed new infrastructure.
“I am very concerned about Silverton doing it due diligence in making sure we are smart about growth,” Council President Jason Freilinger said. “The State of Oregon has really placed a very high burden of proof on cities to show why they would deny an application to increase growth through annexations, zoning changes, and building codes.”
Freilinger said Silverton’s SDC fees are, for the most part, adequate when construction takes place in areas that are already developed.
“The problem we face now is most of the push we are experiencing is for developments well beyond our current infrastructure limits on the fringe of Silverton,” he said. “Typically, when it comes to the cost to run streets and storm-water infrastructure out to a development on the outskirts of town, SDC fees are only covering on average 25- to 50-percent of the cost. That means that unless we do something to fix the city processes, 50-to-75 percent of the cost for street and storm-water are placed as a future burden on the utility rate payers in Silverton.
“This is unacceptable to me as a utility rate payer and city councilor, which is why I feel we need to either look at our SDC methodology or creating special assessment districts like we did with Steelhammer Road,” Freilinger said.
Who plans?
One growth question that cropped up at the Town Hall was the efficacy of the city’s comprehensive plan, which one person cited as being 38 years old. That’s not entirely true as it’s been adjusted multiple times over the decades.
Residents Leigh Harrod and Gene Pfeifer both spoke about planning issues and felt they need more attention.
“It’s (comprehensive plan) been neglected over 38 years as have the streets over the last two decades,” said Harrod, who moved to the Silverton area in late 2015.
Harrod said she would like to see a moratorium on development until the infrastructure is available and adequate to handle it.
“You don’t want sprawl and you don’t want chaos,” she said. “A comprehensive plan is a land-use map…projecting 25 years forward; how the people of Silverton want the city to look.”
Community Development Director Jason Gottgetreu said those adjustments are ongoing, and are patterned within state stipulations that cities and counties meet mandatory standards dealing with land-use, development, housing, transportation, and conservation of natural resources.
“Silverton adopted its first comprehensive plan in 1979, and updated elements in 1980 and in 1989. The recent element updates were in 2000 and 2002 for housing and urbanization, respectively,” Gottgetreu said.
Portland State Population Research Center coordinates the 20-year population figure for the state and estimates Silverton’s annual growth rate to be at 1.4 percent.
That 20-year population number is used to evaluate the improvements and upgrades necessary to serve the future population.
The updated plans are more detailed than ones they replaced. Gottgetreu used traffic plans as an example.
“When estimating the amount of traffic anticipated to be generated over the next 20 years, the land inside the UGB was divided into 35 different areas which were then looked at individually to calculate the development potential within each area, which was then estimated as a future traffic estimate,” he said.
“Each area was then forecasted as to where the future cars may travel to during the morning and evening rush hour. This was then put into a computer model of the Silverton Transportation network to see which intersections would need improvements to deal with the increase in traffic in the future.”
Who patrols?
Silverton Police has 16 sworn officers funded through the city’s general fund and 17 total.
“In 2015, we were able to add an additional officer, in partnership with the Silver Falls School District,” Police Chief Jeff Fossholm said, noting that the school district pays for 75 percent of that officer. “They get a full-time school resource officer that is able to travel and handle any issues (in the district) … We get the officer back during the summer for regular patrol at time when most officers want to take vacation time, which greatly helps with our staffing levels.”
The size of the force and the facilities can be affected by growth, but the department has adjusted to it.
“As the city has continued to grow over the last several years, we have been very fortunate in that crimes occurring within the city have remained at or about the same level as in previous years,” Fossholm said.
“With the increase in annexations and expansion in Silverton’s boundaries, additional streets, neighborhoods and the park system, it does spread us out and gives us more overall acreage to patrol and respond to problems and handle calls for service within,” Fossholm added. “This has caused a slight reduction in being able to patrol all areas of town equally and for some parts of town have a little longer response time on calls for service.”
The chief said complaints have been minimal, but the department has assigned a traffic officer to specifically deal with traffic complaints and accidents, which overrun that officer’s 40-hour work week and requires some additional assistance from patrol officers.
“A big issue facing the police department is… we are out of space for any additional personnel in our current building,” Fossholm said. “I currently have three officers per desk and we don’t have any room for the officers to store their extra equipment or duty bags.
Fossholm said as the town continues to grow he anticipates requests for additional officers and staff will come with it.
“The good news is that we are not there yet, but when it’s time we will make the request and provide justification for such a request.”
Public school populations
Silver Falls School District Superintendent Andy Bellando said enrollment in the district’s 13 schools is tracked monthly, and the district’s largely rural boundaries – 260 square miles – means that only about 50 percent of the elementary school enrollment hails from Silverton.
Bellando said a few of the district schools are at capacity, but most are not. The district can regulate enrollment by adjusting its allowed out-of-district transfers.
“This will help address enrollment growth in the future,” Bellando said.
“School district enrollment remained flat for about 20 years – between 1994 and 2014,” Bellando noted. “We experienced an average of 1-percent growth in total enrollment each of the past three years, which may indicate that growth will continue."
jmuch@StatesmanJournal.com or cell 503-508-8157 or follow at twitter.com/justinmuch
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Silverton Growth by decade
Data compiled by Portland State University’s Population Research Center
1880 – 229
1890 – 511
1900 – 656
1910 – 1,588
1920 – 2,251
1930 – 2,462
1940 – 2,925
1950 – 3,146
1960 – 3,081
1970 – 4,301
1980 – 5,168
1990 – 5,635
2000 – 7,414
2010 – 9,222
2017 – 10,070 (estimated)
7 essentials to Silverton’s unique appeal
Quaint, historic downtown with creekside dinning establishments & the Palace Theater
The city’s nearly two dozen murals
Silver Falls State Park in its backyard
Gallon House Covered Bridge
Homer Davenport Days
The legend of Silverton’s Bobbie the Wonder Dog
Silverton Pet Parade