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Clatsop County planning manager urges regional push on housing, job training and health care during Astoria presentation
Summary
Clatsop County Planning Manager Jay Blake told the Astoria City Council the county's Economic Opportunities Analysis found housing affordability, childcare and low wages are top constraints on future growth and recommended coordinated county–city action on target sectors including health care, construction and the blue marine economy.
Jay Blake, planning manager for Clatsop County, told the Astoria City Council on Jan. 6 that the county’s Economic Opportunities Analysis, or EOA, identifies housing affordability, a shortage of child-care options and relatively low wages as the main obstacles to long-term economic growth.
The EOA “is essentially a county plan for the future of the economy of the county,” Blake said, and the county cannot carry it out without input from municipalities, businesses and residents.
Blake said Clatsop County’s unemployment rate is about 4 percent but is volatile because of seasonality and changes to resource industries, and that wage levels in the county are well below the state average. The county’s population is older than the Oregon average, and the area has a higher homelessness rate than the state, he said.
Blake summarized results from a public questionnaire completed last summer by 184 respondents and two…
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