Resident asks city to quantify hours and cost of city responses tied to 'Caring Place'; staff to return with estimate

During public comment on Oct. 15, 2025, a resident identified as Betty Mom asked the Oregon City Commission to direct staff to quantify the city’s hours and the monetary value of city services spent responding to calls and incidents tied to the Caring Place and related sites.

Betty Mom said she believed the city had provided substantial staff time and suggested the city compile a dollar value the Caring Place organizers could use in outreach to other jurisdictions. “So tonight, when I was at the work session with you guys talking about the Caring Place… Is there a way that you can formulate the hours that the city of Oregon City has spent on cases or issues in that area and give it to the Caring Place people. And, there's your monetary value,” she said.

Commissioners and staff cautioned that producing a precise accounting would be difficult because contacts the city responds to are not always clearly attributable to a single facility. One staff member noted that a response to an event three blocks away could be tied to another cause and that using a notification radius similar to land‑use notices might be a method to approximate direct contacts. The staff response indicated they would prepare an estimate or “guesstimate” and return with that information.

Staff also noted the longer timeline: the speaker said the Caring Place had operated for roughly 13 years, and commissioners reiterated the difficulty of distinguishing service calls attributable specifically to the facility from broader community incidents.

No formal directive or binding accounting requirement was adopted at the meeting; staff committed to return with an estimate and described methodological limits to a definitive, facility‑specific accounting.