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PENDLETON â The Pendleton City Council is making some changes to its goals for the first time in four years, but tackling homelessness in the city wonât be one of them.
The council met for a workshop on Tuesday, April 27, to discuss the results of a community survey that gauged what issues residents wanted the city to prioritize.
In an interview after the meeting, Mayor John Turner said he was happy to see that 480 residents responded to the survey, a clear jump from the last time they solicited input on council goals in 2016 and only received about 250 responses.
Respondents were shown a list of goals and asked to rate them on a scale from âextremely valuableâ to ânot at all valuable.â
PENDLETON â The soft opening for the motel formerly known as The Whiskey Inn began on a sidewalk on Southeast Second Street.
About a half-dozen of Pendletonâs unhoused residents gathered Thursday, April 1, across the street in front of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, where Paula Hall, the chief executive officer of the Community Action Program of East Central Oregon, explained why the new homeless shelter and transitional housing project had been renamed the Promise Inn.
âWe are making a promise to the homeless population and a promise to the community that we are going to keep this as an asset,â she said.
The local area received some good news last week with the announcement that the Community Action Program of East Central Oregon will receive a large grant to help transform a former local hotel into a facility to help provide housing for the homeless and the housing insecure.
A $1.3 million grant of state funding administered by the Oregon Community Foundation will drive a plan to refurbish The Whiskey Inn on Dorion Avenue. The facility is a first-of-its-kind in the eastern portion of the state and it will hopefully go a long way toward helping those in the community most in need.
PENDLETON â Superficially, the future of The Whiskey Inn doesnât look promising.
The former motelâs sign featuring a cowboy slumped against a post is turned inside out. Whatever visual evidence the empty parking lot offers is confirmed by a sign at the entrance that states the motel is âpermanently closed.â
But by the end of March, the 35-room motel, situated at 205 S.E. Dorion Ave., will be reborn as a facility that will serve the unhoused, a first of its kind in Eastern Oregon.
On Wednesday, March 10, the Oregon Community Foundation announced it was granting the Community Action Program of East Central Oregon a $1.3 million grant to purchase the former motel and turn it into a facility that will offer temporary housing to local homeless residents.