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The Dalles Historic Landmarks Commission refines 2025 goals, prioritizes inventory, plaques and cemetery upkeep
Summary
The Dalles Historic Landmarks Commission reviewed staff recommendations to restructure and prioritize its 2025 goals, emphasizing an updated historic inventory, new plaque designs and continued maintenance for Pioneer Cemetery, and asked staff to pursue grant funding and GIS mapping to support those efforts.
The Dalles Historic Landmarks Commission spent the bulk of its Nov. 20 special meeting refining a proposed work plan for 2025, with staff urging the commission to adopt clearer timeframes and numbered goals to make progress more measurable.
Joshua Chandler of the city’s Community Development Department introduced new senior planner Sandy Freund, who presented staff recommendations to classify goals as short (1–2 years), medium (3–5 years) and long/continuous (5+ years) and to number goals for easier reference. “We put together in the staff report, as the attachment, the existing 2024 goals,” Freund said. “Staff’s recommending that the board members consider a potential restructuring exercise beginning with this meeting to ensure the goals are achieved and prioritized over the coming years.”
Why it matters: Commissioners said repeated, open-ended goals had stayed on the list for years without clear completion markers. Staff said clearer categories and numbering would let the commission identify when a goal is complete and let staff track progress more effectively.
Key priorities discussed included: updating the city’s historic inventory, creating and fabricating concept plaques for historic buildings, encouraging restoration workshops for homeowners and contractors, pursuing grants for a preservation plan, and ongoing support for Pioneer Cemetery maintenance. On the inventory, staff said the office relies on an inventory book from 1985 and is working with Wasco County GIS to publish an interactive public map that will link to the state database. Commissioners supported treating the inventory update as a short-term priority and leaving nominations to state or national registers as a continuous activity.
On plaques and public recognition, staff proposed combining separate goals for plaque design and fabrication into a single, actionable goal so the commission can better track progress. Multiple commissioners favored continuing an annual restoration workshop and establishing ongoing recognition for completed restoration projects.
Pioneer Cemetery: Staff reported routine maintenance for the Pioneer Cemetery has been moved into the city’s general fund so regular upkeep is covered, though landscaping and informational signage remain outstanding. Freund said that while routine maintenance is now budgeted, “it doesn’t cover the landscaping, the informational signage of the cemetery,” and commissioners discussed treating signage as either a short- or medium-term project.
Grants and funding: Commissioners and staff discussed grant opportunities through the state’s certified local government program and other sources to fund an inventory update and preservation planning. The commission asked staff to prepare written goals that reflect the meeting discussion and circulate them for review ahead of the January meeting so the final package can go to city council in February.
What’s next: Staff will produce a revised, numbered draft of the 2025 goals and circulate it to commissioners; the commission expects to finalize the goals at an upcoming meeting before forwarding them to the city council in February.
