After two tries in which it was unsuccessful in securing Oregon Department of Transportation Small City Allotment grants for cities under 5,000 population for a major downtown paving project, the third time truly was the charm.
Gold Hill was notified on Mon., July 27, that it was one of the 23 cities selected to receive funding under the program. ODOT had received 76 applications from an available pool of $5,513,000.
Gold Hill received $250,000 to work on the four-block stretch of Fourth Avenue between Dardanelles and Gustaf streets, and to add sidewalks on Fourth Avenue from Fredenburg to Gustaf streets. It is the same project, minus the sidewalk work, for which the city applied for grant funding in 2025.
In 2024, the city sought grant funding for work on Jacoby Street, south of the city’s main street, Second Avenue.
It was last year, about this time, when City Manager Lily Morgan found a shocking letter that she thought, at the time, may have influenced ODOT’s decision to pass Gold Hill by for future funding. She had heard that the city had missed an application deadline in 2023. Still, she told the Gold Hill City Council that she had found a letter from then-City Manager Jerry Breckinridge to Deanna Edgar, who manages the Small Cities Allotment for ODOT, dated Sept., 2022, stating, “I have determined that the City of Gold Hill will be unable to complete the obligations listed to (the grant)” and forfeited a grant award the city had won.
Because it is a competitive granting process, cities are expected to deliver the projects for which they apply. The 76 projects for which ODOT received applications totaled more than $17 million in requests. The projects have a cap of $250,000. Other cities in Southwest Oregon’s Region 3 receiving Small City Allotments include Phoenix, Coquille, and Port Orford.
Morgan said the city hopes to contract with the Jackson County Road Department to perform chip sealing on Fourth Avenue.
Reach reporter Brian Mortensen at [email protected] or 541-582-1707.