Former City Councilor Weighs In on Civic Campus Proposal

With an estimated cost approaching $200 million...

Jun 04, 2026

The city is in the planning and design phase of a proposed new Civic Campus and Police Station that would replace the 101-year-old downtown City Hall. The project, planned for the Madison Avenue corridor between 5th and 6th streets, is intended to address “aging infrastructure, seismic concerns, accessibility issues, and the growing space needs of city government.”

With an estimated cost approaching $200 million, the project is now entering a key financing stage. City officials recently released a funding feasibility study exploring potential options to pay for what could become one of the largest public infrastructure investments in our town’s history.

Former Corvallis City Councilor Mark O’Brien added his two cents recently to a public forum. His take is below.

“As a former Corvallis City Councilor, I’ve watched the City wrestle with budget challenges for years. What strikes me about the Civic Campus debate isn’t whether City Hall and the police station need attention. Buildings age. Facilities eventually need to be replaced. That’s not the real question.

The real question is whether Corvallis is willing to have an honest conversation about priorities before asking taxpayers for more money.

For decades, City government has largely operated on the assumption that services, staffing, programs, and facilities move in one direction: bigger. When revenues fall short, the discussion almost always turns to new fees, new taxes, or new funding sources. What we rarely do is ask whether every service we provide today is affordable, sustainable, or even essential.

Now we’re being asked to consider a Civic Campus and police facility project while simultaneously discussing new taxes and ongoing operational funding needs. The city itself has acknowledged significant budget pressures beyond the cost of the buildings.

That creates a difficult question for voters: Are we funding a building project, or are we being asked to permanently expand the cost of government? And to be fair, the City Council doesn’t intend to ask for a vote on the proposal but to just enact it unilaterally.

Reasonable people can disagree about the Civic Campus. Some see it as a necessary investment. Others see it as poorly timed given housing costs, inflation, and economic uncertainty. But before Corvallis adopts new taxes, I believe residents deserve a clear answer to a simple question:

What has the City already been willing to stop doing?

Government should be willing to make the same difficult choices that households and businesses make every day. Until that conversation happens, many residents will continue to view every request for additional revenue with understandable skepticism.

The issue isn’t whether Corvallis needs better buildings. The issue is whether we’ve exhausted every other option before reaching deeper into taxpayers’ pockets.”

-Mark O’Brien

The proposed Civic Campus and Police Station project has drawn some scrutiny because of its estimated $200 million cost and questions about how it would be funded. The debate comes as the city faces budget challenges, and has led residents to question whether such a large capital project should be prioritized.

Supporters have argued the investment is needed to replace aging facilities and improve public services, while other people are concerned about the long-term impact on taxpayers and how we are going to pay for such a large expense.

More info on the project can be found on the city website here. A Vimeo worksession video has been posted here.