The Baker City Council will talk about the cost of rental housing in the city during its meeting Tuesday evening, Dec. 17, at City Hall.

The meeting starts at 6 p.m.

In a staff report to councilors, City Manager Barry Murphy wrote that a 2018 Oregon law requires cities with a population of 10,000 or more, and where at least 25% of households have “severe rent burden,” schedule public meetings to discuss causes and potential solutions.

The law defines severe rent burden as a person or household that spends at least 50% of its income on housing.

According to the most recent data, from 2022, 29.7% of Baker City households were severely rent burdened. That figure is from the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

That was the 12th-highest rate among Oregon cities.

Of the approximately 1,106 households that rent housing, 328 spent at least 50% of their income on housing.

Baker City’s situation did improve slightly compared with 2021, however, when 31.5% of households were severely rent burdened, the sixth-highest rate among Oregon cities with at least 10,000 residents.

Baker City’s rate has increased since the start of the pandemic, according to American Community Survey data.

In 2019, the rate was 25.1%, and in 2020 it was 24.6%.

Corvallis, site of Oregon State University, had the highest percentage of severely rent burdened households in 2022, at 39.2%.

The only other city in Northeastern Oregon that exceeded the 25% threshold in the state law is Pendleton, where 26.8% of households were severely rent burdened in 2022.

La Grande, which had been above that threshold in 2021, dropped to 23% in 2022. Hermiston’s rate was 12.8%, and Ontario’s was 21%. Those are the only other cities in the region with populations above 10,000.

In other business Tuesday, councilors will:

• Consider awarding a bid to a contractor to help the city update its development code, and possibly its comprehensive plan, with a goal of making it easier to build housing. The city has a grant from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development to hire the contractor.

• Consider accepting two grants from the Leo Adler Foundation.

One, for $76,835, would help the city buy a new fire truck. The city doesn’t have enough money to buy the truck during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2025.

The second grant, for $20,000, would help the police department buy a vehicle for the detective. The city might buy that vehicle during the current fiscal year.

• Discuss a final proposed version of a new franchise agreement with Cascade Natural Gas.

The agreement includes an increase in the franchise fee the company pays to the city from 5% of gross revenues the company collects from city residents, to 7%.

Utilities that use city rights-of-way pay franchise fees. These include Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative, Charter Communications, Cascade Natural Gas and Century Link. OTEC is the largest franchise fee payer.

Cascade Natural Gas paid the city about $230,000 in franchise fees in the 2022-23 fiscal year.

• Hear an update from finance director Jeanie Dexter about her efforts to fix problems caused by a change to the city’s billing software for water and sewer service, a change that happened in June 2023, before Dexter, a former longtime finance director, returned to the city in 2024.

Murphy, who was hired in December 2023, after the billing changes were made, in October called the situation “disappointing” and “really frustrating.”

Among other issues, monthly bills no longer show how much water each customer has used.

Tuesday’s meeting will be the last for councilors Larry Pearson and Nic Carman. Both were appointed in the fall of 2023, along with five others, after all seven councilors resigned.

All seven council positions were on the Nov. 5, 2024, ballot. There were seven candidates, all of whom were elected — incumbents Randy Daugherty, Roger Coles, Doni Bruland, Helen Loennig and Loran Joseph, and newcomers Gratton Miller and Stephen Carr, both of whom will take office in January.