ST. HELENS, St. Helens has a new city administrator, and he says his first job is the city’s finances.
Erik Finch started Oct. 13, he wrote in a letter to residents in the city’s Oct. 22 e-newsletter, The St. Helens Strand. He spent his first week “mostly listening,” he wrote, meeting department heads and staff “from the folks at the front counter to the crews at the water quality plant and the team upstairs in accounting.”
Money First
“My early priorities won’t surprise anyone who followed the hiring process,” Finch wrote. “The first is putting the City on steadier financial footing. That means taking a careful look at how the City does business, including our contracts and recurring costs, so we can be confident every dollar is doing its job.”
His second priority is “helping City Hall work faster and communicate better so that simple requests get simple answers without long waits.”
“These aren’t quick fixes, but I’d rather do them carefully and report back honestly as we go,” he wrote.
A Hard Year to Walk Into
Finch arrives after a rough budget year at City Hall. He wrote that staff had “carried through a difficult year.”
In September, the City Council closed a $350,000 shortfall in funding for the city’s Spirit of Halloweentown and Holiday in the Plaza events. It approved a $250,000 transfer from the contingency fund and a $100,000 loan from the community development fund, which has to be repaid this fiscal year, KPTV reported.
The 2026-27 budget also furloughed full-time library staff 10 percent. Combined with the loss of three part-time assistants, that closed the library on Thursdays, according to the same newsletter. Partial Thursday hours, 2 to 7 p.m., return Nov. 5.
Reaching Him
Finch asked residents to send questions, concerns, and ideas to cityadministrator@sthelensoregon.gov.