City Manager Will reintroduced the Stormwater Master Plan at the Newberg City Council meeting on Dec. 15 and told councilors the project will return with a formal request for funding authorization.

"The Stormwater Master Plan will appear at the next Council session with a request for funding authorization for $237,000," Will said, adding that the figure is “$80,000 less than our initial estimate for this project” because staffer Danette Hinton installed and processed flow-monitoring data in-house, avoiding consultant costs.

Will described the scope of the planned master plan: a municipal-code review, citywide topographic surveys and hydrologic modeling using local geology, soils and runoff data, and a range of flood-level scenarios. Deliverables will include capital improvement project (CIP) cost estimates, an SDC-eligibility assessment, fact sheets for proposed CIP tasks and a draft Master Plan document for council and public review.

Staff told council the plan will also recommend a change to the municipal-code review cycle (proposing to move from a five-year to a 10-year review frequency), produce staffing and maintenance estimates to feed into the CIP process and present the final data in a capital-improvement table.

What happens next: The council will see the formal authorization request at a future meeting; staff signaled the project is budgeted in the current capital plan and that preliminary savings from in-house monitoring reduced the requested amount.