The John Day Budget Committee approved a $6.9 million budget at its meeting May 27, 2025. The budget now heads to city council for adoption. (Justin Davis/Blue Mountain Eagle, File)

BURNS — The city of John Day is once again poised to join R3 (known officially as the Regional Rural Revitalization Strategies Consortium) following the new group’s first board meeting on Thursday, May 4, in Burns.

The meeting was attended in person by John Day Mayor Heather Rookstool along with the city’s legal counsel and members of the city council. Interim City Manager Rick Allen attended the meeting virtually.

“We’ve been invited,” Allen said when speaking about John Day’s R3 status.

In addition, the changes John Day has proposed to the language of the intergovernmental agreement were met with support from the R3 board, according to Allen.

The changes to the IGA related to the timeline for a member city to depart the agreement and John Day’s desire for unanimous R3 board consent for any major decisions made by the group.

Those proposals still have to be voted on by the R3 board, but Allen said he’s certain it will no longer take a minimum of six months to exit the consortium.

Work to hash out the finer details of the agreement will take place over the next two weeks, according to Allen.

“What we’re going to work on over the next couple weeks will be what are those items that require unanimous consent,” he added.

The R3 board electing to add John Day to the agreement isn’t the final step as Burns and Lakeview’s city councils still have to vote to allow John Day to join and John Day’s council has to pass an ordinance approving the city’s membership in R3.

However, there is clearly a light at the end of the tunnel now.

“The biggest concern of those other two cities was whether or not John Day was going to be a positive supporter of the process moving forward,” Allen said.

Turnover within the city’s leadership on the heels of the November elections led to concerns by Lakeview and Burns that support for R3 within John Day might not be what it was under former City Manager Nick Green, who spearheaded the idea.

Rookstool did a good job of mitigating those concerns in speaking to the R3 board, Allen said, reminding them that John Day had a 6-0 consensus to move forward with R3 and that the city has never had a split vote in relation to the consortium.

“They (Lakeview and Burns) just needed some reassurance,” Allen added.

While R3 is currently made up of Burns and Lakeview with John Day on deck, the agreement is open to any city in Oregon with a population under 50,000.

Allen said he’s heard rumblings that the cities of Baker and La Pine are interested in eventually joining the intergovernmental agreement.

Initially formed around the idea of sharing heavy equipment like snowplows and chip sealers among the three partner cities, R3 has shifted its focus to addressing housing shortages in rural Oregon communities. House Bill 3138, which has been introduced in the 2023 Legislature, would fund R3 to the tune of $30 million to help fund housing initiatives by member cities and others around the state with populations below 50,000.

What that looks like will be the subject of future R3 board discussions.