Winston council: Who owns the Riverside Center?
By Dan Bain KPIC NewsWINSTON, Ore. -- The Winston city council wants their attorney to find out who owns the Riverside Center. MultimediaThe council directed the attorney to investigate who is actually the owner of the center, and to determine if it is still operational. Mayor Rex Stevens says there is a reversion clause in the deed that is invoked if the center closes. Stevens says the council met with their attorney in executive session last Friday, and he advised the council to let him investigate to find out if the City of Winston has ownership of the center. "We've had to take it to the attorney because I feel that it is a legal question right now, and we need an answer from a judge, not a bunch of attorneys, not the city council. We think that its gone beyond that." David Littlejohn, the Riverside Board Chairman, contends that the Riverside Center should not lose ownership because it has never closed, but he says they have been forced to reduce their activity because of the lack of action by the council. Littlejohn said, "We don't think that it's a legal issue at this point. The question is whether or not Riverside ever ceased doing business and whether or not the land was ever forfeited according to the deed. And we would argue that we maintained services the entire time, although albeit it a reduced scale, but nonetheless, we're still doing what we're doing. Now, we've come to ask for an expansion of our ability to serve people in the community with a changing need, and it seems like we're being met with resistance." Stevens says the students that would have gone to the center are now being taken care of in the schools. Littlejohn says the board has stalled long enough, that their activity has just about ground to a halt, but he says when they brought the issue to the board earlier this year, they were still providing services. He says the problem is everything being drawn out. Stevens says it could take a few months for the attorney to bring back his findings. |
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February 9, 2012
- Roseburg, Oregon
