City Council - Regular Meeting

What is it? longer and longer. Thank you for joining us this evening for the Albony City Council meeting at 6:25 p.m. for February 11th. I'll call the meeting to order. Would you please all join me in the pledge of allegiance? Pledge of

Allegiance. Goodness. Will we have a roll call, please? Councelor Thompson, here. Councelor Van Drimlin, here. Councelor Mloud, present. Councelor Smith, here. Councelor McGee, present. Councelor Newton. Hello. Mayor Johnson here. Next item three on the agenda is consent agenda. Adoption of the consent agenda. Counselors, would you like to do anything there?

Move to adopt the consent agenda as presented. Can I mention that my last name is not Van Newton? My last on the appointment for Maline McGregor for arts commission. It says my last name is Van Newton. I just want to mention Christopher and I are not the same person. We bring similar energies, but we're different. Noted. Yes. Thank you. Have a motion and a second with with those changes. If someone didn't second, I'll second. I second the motion. I thought you did. All those Okay. Do you have? Okay. All those in favor say I. I.

Those opposed say no. Thank you, councel. Motion passes. U. Next item four is the public hearing. Next on tonight's hearing agenda is a public hearing for approving the issuance of a senior living revenue bonds for Midnight Home Midnight Home of Albany. I declare the public hearing open at 6:26 p.m. Does the staff have a report?

I do. Um so this evening we are holding a TERA hearing which is required under section 147F of the Internal Revenue Code. So in order for a 501c3 um to issue bonds that are taxexempt we they have to get the approval of the governing board of the area and they need and they have to have a public hearing to do that. So, uh, as we mentioned earlier tonight, as Diane talked about, the project's going to be at the Menite Village for financing and refinancing, uh, construction, renovation, and improvements at their facility. There is absolutely no city liability in this at all. We are not responsible for any of the costs. We don't have to pledge any revenues or property taxes. And uh, and honestly, this approval doesn't even endorse the project. It's just saying that

that they can be issued tax exempt. And so, uh, really that's all I have tonight. If anybody has any questions about this hearing, I'd be happy to or what a TERA hearing is, I'd be happy to answer that. But also, I have for the record, can you um speak out the acronym? Yes, I can do that again. Oh, because I did it earlier. Yeah. So, TERA is the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. Uh, no written materials have been received. For those who wish to testify, there are three options available which were addressed described in the agenda. Those who registered to speak of the um this at this meeting can be called upon to comment. Is there any names for the public hearing? No one has signed up to to to um speak at test time. We will now take comments from those who did not register. Does any me member of the audience wish to speak on an item any of the items? If so, please state your name and make any comments you may have to the city council and provide your information to the signup sheet. Hey, nobody. Oh, are you still there? Okay. If you are attending virtually, turn on your camera and raise your hand to be called upon. If you are attending by phone, please unmute yourself, state your name, and I'll call on you to speak. That's taken care of. I will now call those areas registered to speak. Nobody's registered to speak. Does the staff wish to respond to any comments? There's none. I declare the public hearing closed at 6:29 p.m. Does the council wish to discuss the plan or ask additional questions of the staff?

Thank you, council. The resolution for the consideration on page 27 of your packet on the council agenda. Will the council like to make a motion? I will make a motion for to approve the resolution on page 27 of the packet and I can read the title. Resolution of the city council of the city of Albany, Oregon, approving for purposes of section 147F of the code the issuance of senior living revenue bonds in one or more series for the benefit of the Menanite Home of Albany incororated in a maximum aggregate principal amount not to exceed $100 million issued by the hospital facility authority of the city of Albany, Oregon.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? I second that motion. I have a motion and a second. Thank you, Councelor Thompson, Councelor Smith. All those in favor say I. I. I. Those opposed say no. Thank you very much. Your motion resolution passes.

Next on tonight's agenda, public comment is a time for Albony residents to speak and for counselors to listen. The council will not discuss topics or make decisions during public comment, but will take comments and requests under advisement. Speakers are limited three minutes and must follow the council's rules and observe the same standards of the quorum. If unable to do so, they'll be asked to step down and take a seat in the audience for the remainder of the meeting. We'll when we get to the when you get to the microphone, please give your name, state whether or not you live in the city of Albany. And there was some written comments received from Mark Stewart. So, the council received those earlier, so I'm sure we've read those. Um, so first up, versus Peter Kgi.

Mayor Johnson, members of the council and staff, for the record, my name is Peter Kanegi. I live at 1650 Neber.

You don't know. Okay. Okay. All right. For safety. Okay. Um, so I'm here tonight to follow up on the time I was here a few weeks ago. And I want to give you a little report. Um, since I was here before, my wife and I and two um, service providers from downtown Albany did the pit count down through Tequina Landing coming from our park or our property all the way down to the railroad trestle. Over the course of the last year, there are more people down there, there's more trash down there, and it's the problem is not getting any better. Um, so that's one thing. And the other qu I have a question for the council. At the last meeting, um, councelor Mloud had asked some questions of staff to get some information on what the city had done for both expended and efforts they had put in to deal with the issues down there. And I know you're not going to talk about it now, but sometime I would like to you guys publicly to release that information. Um, the other thing, um, at when I was here before, the mayor committed to come visit me so I could give him a tour of the issue that this city is faced with with. Um, he gave me his card. I reached out to him. I texted him a whole week of afternoons of nice afternoons because I knew he told me he didn't like rainy days. I did not hear back from him. I ran him to him at a meeting over in Corvalis. I mentioned it to him. I still haven't heard back from him. I I mean, I hope, Mr. Mayor, sometime you will actually make that happen. I think it's important for you as a leader in the

city to do that. Um, the one other thing I want to mention that would that just kind of frustrated me since my last time I was before you. I had gone to a fair bit of effort to submit photos that I fully expected to be a photo and video that I fully expected to be displayed when I was testifying. That was not done. Apparently, it was distributed to the council, but it's, you know, in my estimation as a public member, that's kind of, and pardon my French, but it's a bit chicken And I and and you know, that should have been part of the public record. People watching online should have been able to see it. People in the audience should be able to see it. So, anyway, I'm done. And and you'll see me again in a few weeks. So,

thank you. Next is Trisha. Marsheline. Marceline. Marlin. Margeline. Is your name really Trisha? Like T R E S H A? It is. That's my late sister's name. That's the second only second person I've known with that name. My mom was fantastic. Very stressed out. I was nine pounds 14 ounces.

I don't know what she was trying to name me, but struggled with the spelling. Um, hi Um, I went I live in town. I moved in in June of08 and um I'm from Woodburn, Oregon. And I was going for a walk trying to get some steps in. And I stumbled upon a posting on Thirstston and 19th. It's Sunrise Elementary and CTI trade school. It was um spraying glyphosate. And I went back today and looked at it. This was Friday the 6th. So, there was a posting. I have a photo of it. I was trying to figure out how to get it to you guys, but I I can't figure it out. So, um I took a picture. I pulled back like, "Okay, show me the weeds. There's moss." Maybe. Uh so, um the posting says February 2nd, 2026 to February 6, 2026 from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. when our kids are in school. And um they're spring for I mean I could understand in Oregon we have brambles right over by my house. So I mean there's lots of weeds. There's no weeds. So like I said I went back today. The posting has been pulled down. I talked to somebody. They go why don't you put it on Facebook. I've been holding this in for the six. It makes me want to cry right now. Um, I posted on my personal Facebook because I tried to do what's happening in Albany and they're scrutinizing it and they haven't pulled it up yet. So, it's not po, you can't see it. The photos of the posting and a pullback of Sunrise Elementary CTI is right there. What are you spraying this toxic chemical? I have a friend who has is in a class action with it right now. What are we doing?

I mean, what the heck is I mean, I saw the chemtrails. What a beautiful day today. I saw the chemtrails on the way over. They kind of hit us later in the day and they didn't do too much, but my family doesn't believe in chemtrails. They're real. Sorry. There's not contrails. Contrails disappear. Chemtrails spread out and cloud the sky. But our children, that's different. It offended me. And I just wanted to share that with this with this body. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Next is Christopher Glover.

My name is Christopher Glover. I live at B244. Um, I have called code compliance multiple times. Every time I get called, I call. I get put on hold. After about 15 or 20 minutes, it hangs up. I've asked my apartment manager about the light situation in the apartment complex, and she says it's in the works. Here's a picture at night of how dark it is. We have kids that play in that apartment complex. We have senior adults that live in that complex. The light situation needs to get fixed. I've lived there for eight years. I myself and my belated wife almost got hit multiple times in an apartment complex because the property manager refuses to take actions on but that's it.

Thank you, sir. Next is Mark Stewart. Hello everyone. My name is Mark Stewart. Uh still live in Albany. I've spoken here at a couple different meetings. Uh previously had much more hair going on. um was a little thrown. Uh I did not expect my submission to the council to have made it all the way to the chief of police uh before the council meeting even started. And and that that's Wow. Um, I had quite a bit in my head prepared to say and it it has thrown me off a little bit. Um, I want to make a request to the council. Uh, I am not Maya Angelou, uh, Michelle Fukull. Um, I'm under no illusion that uh I am capable of writing something that uh might truly inspire someone. My gift uh is more in my voice. And if it would please the council, uh, I would like to request to you that we set up a time, uh, on a future agenda where I be allowed to read my proposal to this council aloud.

Uh reading it on paper is one thing, but hearing it in voice might be entirely something different. And our attention span are so divided. uh no matter what's going on, life seems to to go on. the last meeting that I came to here. I mean, it was a packed house, but regardless, um, due to the what has happened with Senator Mark Kelly, retired veteran and astronaut, uh, and his retirement, I do feel that I am taking a bit bit of a personal risk by even attempting to speak this or put it in writing. So, if I'm going to be at risk, I I would at least like to be able to say it aloud. Um, and if that is something that would interest you, I'm I'm happy to work with you to set up a time.

Thank you, Steven Meyer. Hello, my name is Stephen Meyer. I live in Albany. Lived here 10 years. I grew up in Northbend, Oregon, the son of German Jewish immigrants. Have a seat. I don't sit down. Okay. But tonight, I am not here, Steven. I'm here. Ready?

How sad that that could happen. It could happen here in Albany. Be aware. Thank you. Thank you. And so, so we're clear, council will address the questions if they had during the business from the council. So, you want to stick around, hear what they have to say, please do. Next is informational briefings and address staff reports, dep uh department strengths strategy discussions, executive leadership team. I think Peter will be leading that discussion starting.

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And this is an extension or a continuation of the presentations that were made on Monday evening. And so for this evening, we'll start off with the police department and Chief Hornen will be followed by the fire department, HR, and then the uh city manager's office. And then um if Kenzie can unlock the screen share that would be great. Okay. Thank you. All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Uh, it's my turn up here uh to present our kind of annual findings a little bit. So, I'll I'll touch a little bit on it and I'll also leave a little bit of time for any questions that you have. Uh, our mission uh is excellence through service. Uh so we try to do everything that we can to take care of our community uh with excellence in mind. Our current FTEES is uh 102.2 102.25. That quarter employee is a records clerk that comes in help uh helps us on high uh volume days. Uh we are our budget comes from two different forces. The general uh fund and the levy as well. Um, so again, I can break down a little bit as far as what employees. We have 15 employees that come off of the levy. Uh, so it's an important uh portion for us as well. Our primary functions obviously are fairly common sense. Uh, our 247

patrol responses, uh, detectives, uh, specialty units. Uh, we do have a traffic unit. Uh we do have an inter agency narcotics unit which is made up of uh the Albany Police Department. We are the host agency for that that includes the Link County Sheriff's Office, Sweet Home Police Department, Lebanon Police Department, uh the DEA and um other federal partners. Uh our community resource unit is the CSOS that you see out and about. They're the ones in the pickup trucks. uh and Myiramar, our park ranger, uh which is a partially funded position from parks and the police department. We have our community engagement officer who brings you the funny uh social media post and she's our PIO as well. Uh code compliance and then our school resource unit. Uh we have a contract with GAPS on that. Uh and then we have a what's called a secondary uh PAP which stands for uh it's it's basically a secondary answering point for public safety. So 911 calls come into Lin County or Corvalis and they get transferred to us if it's a Albany police call. Uh in addition we have records. Our records unit uh everything we produce that goes back out to the community through public release or through DA's office goes through records. property evidence where we house about 38,000 pieces of evidence in our facility, uh, victim services, and then it used to be the, uh, mental health intervention specialist is now called the behavioral health case manager. I'll bring her one of these days when she's, uh, done with her training and introduce our new employee to the council. Uh, this looks like the color blue threw up on the screen. Sorry about that. Um we're a fairly large uh organization, but this gives you kind of a layout of how the police department is designed. Uh you have me at the top and then I

have two captains. I basically split the department in two uh and run various functions. Again, we are 247 organization. So, uh the operation side is probably the most public facing on that as well as a little bit on our community resource side with the community service officers. Uh some of our accomplishments as you all know and we've heard uh in previous council meetings that uh we do have photo enforcement. Uh the entire set of cameras came up online in August uh with enforcement starting in September and October. Uh all cameras are uh currently functioning. Uh and we're uh still working out some processes but uh they're all uh in place. One of the things that we've also started to do with that is we've created a in in internal dashboard that allows me to go on a daily basis and look at the number of citations coming in that we've processed. Um you'll hear that there's a a community interest in those numbers on a monthly basis. So we've uh worked on a project to get that same dashboard to be public facing. So people can go in there and look at uh the number of tickets per camera uh or overall. and we are in the final stages of that, but we're trying to be as transparent as we can. We've also uh added more functionality to our online reporting of a number of different uh ways that people can communicate, whether it be uh crime tips or uh abandoned vehicles or they uh report a cold property crime. So, two weeks ago, my phone was stolen. I just need a case number for insurance. they can do that and not wait for a police officer to respond. Uh and also I'm very much invested in the future of leadership at the agency. So we've uh really made sure that besides what's minimally required by the state of Oregon for leadership training

for supervisors. We go above and beyond that and bring in top tier training to our supervisors both sworn and nonsworn. Uh and that was completed in 2025. Uh the accomplishments uh I am I would be happy to get to a point in a year where I don't have double digit hiring but uh we were at 11 for 2025. It's a national trend. Uh we did see a little bit of an uptick in attrition. Uh some retirements that were coming in as well as we had some folks just decided that they were going to leave law enforcement altogether. Uh, I'm happy to report that we're still above 20% for female officers, uh, which is almost double the national average. And for the first time, knock on some wood, uh, which actually changed today, believe it or not, our dispatch and records units are fully staffed. 911 centers are um having almost as big a crisis as law enforcement officers for staffing. So, we're happy to be there. Uh and as you know, we're an internationally accredited agency. Every year we have to go through some compliance or benchmark checks. Uh we went just completed that and I'm happy to report that there were no uh issues that were brought forward. It gave us a a quick approval uh on our way to the next year's um look through of our policies. And what that accreditation does who are not familiar with it, it allows us some best practices uh for policing uh and they're looked at and agreed upon across the United States. And then uh we uh HR's assistants approached the Albany Police Association about uh extending an existing contract. Uh we were coming up for an expiration. So, the city uh reached out to the the association that represents most of our employees and asked if they'd be uh

interested in entertaining a contract extension, which means we don't have to renegotiate the entire thing and they agreed to that. And that's a big testament to the culture of the agency uh that they're willing to do that. Some oop sorry about that. Some trends. I'm not sure why that turned white on you. Sorry about that. Um it uh when you get a chance to look this basically you're going to see that overall crime in Albany is is down on the downward uh trajectory. That's consistent with major cities our size. Uh as well as um some of our uh traffic offenses are way up. What I can see here is that in 2024 we went from six 6,300 plus tickets to 9600 tickets. And that's your photo enforcement impact. Uh we knew that that would go up. So that's explainable. What's concerning to me as a chief uh is the growth factor. Um you can see that in 2024 we had 36,000 uh plus calls and in 2025 that was 38,000 plus calls. Now, we put some things in place to try to mitigate the impact of that, including the uh east precinct that we opened in 2024, which we just signed a five-year extension on to keep uh going, but as we grow, those calls will continue to go up. Uh and so that in the last bienium, uh the council gave me two new employees and and that will help mitigate some of those impacts. Looking ahead, uh the labor market is low. What I competed for a police job in 1993, I competed against 500 uh people. We're lucky if we get 10 that show up in any other testing period. Uh the other complexity is our inability to get candidates that can pass a background check. Uh and so we will get halfway through a process with somebody and then they'll have a disqualifier uh and we'll have to start all over again. So, it's a

little bit of a challenging labor market in that regard. And then again, keeping pace with city growth. Uh I think uh most of the departments in the city are going to be dealing with that. Uh and then uh the cost. You're you're hearing that from the other directors as well. Our little portable radios that we carry on our belts uh have more than doubled in 10 years in price. Uh they're over $10,000 a piece. And so we have to buy them incrementally as funds become available. So, we're doing our best to try to uh look at costs and where we can move money around to make sure our equipment's up to standards. And then, uh we the good thing about the culture too is we have employees who feel safe to say, "Hey, I'm going to retire in six months or a year." That allows us to try to stay ahead of the hiring curve. I don't think most people realize that it takes 18 months from the point of application through training to get an officer ready for solo patrol because there's that much liability involved. So, the sooner we get notified, the sooner we can start that process of recruiting. So, those are some of the challenges that uh we're looking at ahead. Happy to answer any questions.

Wow. I have a couple I have a couple. Um, so looking at the size of our city in the in the next two or three years, what should the number of sworn officers be or to be what do you say adequate?

Well, you'll see uh I think Peter's going to send you the crime report uh in the Friday email which will give you the percentage. We're well well under the national average of police officers per population. Uh I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but it's pretty significant. We've long been behind and Oregon is either 49th or 50th in the country for a number of police officers per population. Uh Washington state and Oregon go back and forth. And so I don't think we need to double in size, but we're busier city than Corvalis and Corvalis has at least 10 more officers than we do. And so that's just something that I'm always having to weigh. Uh, I have positions that I'm not currently filled because I've got to keep patrol staff full so that we have people to respond to 911 calls where we we can't we have a detective position that we haven't filled. We have traffic positions we haven't filled. So, until we get to a full staffing and I can start to to deploy those people, we're going to be continually just focusing on those patrol positions.

Okay. Thank you. I I thought of a a question. It was referred in your um your presentation. Can you just restate what this is before I was on council, but the impetus for the um the photo radar and and um red light cameras? Sure. What what what brought that about? So, one uh there's it's kind of a little bit complex. One, I don't have enough people to go out and work all the trouble areas. Sure.

So, there's some automation and efficiencies there with uh automation. And we also wanted to focus on areas where there were neighborhoods and or schools. Uh I would love to put them primarily around schools, but the RS prohibits us from putting cameras midblock. It has to be on the signalized intersection. So that's why you're seeing North Albany Road was uh prioritized. We looked at Queen and Elm. Now, that camera is just outside the school zone, but anybody lives on Queen uh by the high school, middle school can attest it's a little bit difficult to get out of your driveway sometimes as people are coming down Queen. So, that was an ideal location as well as the neighborhood off of uh Gary North near Santam. Uh people are coming off Pacific at a high rate of speed into a neighborhood. So, where we can make some adjustments, can we do more in the future? Sure. uh but I just want to kind of get everything stabilized and figure out what is uh behind that. But the intent is is to see a change in driver behavior. I think in the annual report uh that Caleb put together, you'll see that we're starting to see that early, but as I've explained to people in the public, we really need a year's worth of data to see that change. But looking at when all four cameras were activated as of September 1st forward, really October 1st because we weren't sending tickets in uh September for over near West Albany, is you see a spike and we're starting to see a downward trend in the number of events, which means uh behavior that's triggering the the radar uh and the traffic volumes are staying the same. So that tells me behavior is beginning to change and that's really the the big intent the real big gain to the city.

Thank you. Thank you. Uh a couple questions. Um first is can you explain the difference between red light cameras and fixed radar cameras? I think there seems to be some um misunderstanding uh among some members of the community about that.

Sure. All of our cameras are both. So, uh, there will be times, and I've reviewed some tickets and and, uh, some people in our committee have gotten tickets with my name on it. So, it's looking at two different types of behavior. One, is there compliance with the posted speed limit? Are they going 11 miles an hour over the posted speed limit and that will trigger a potential violation? Uh, and or are they running a red light? For instance, if you go through Queen and Elm, I've seen a number of violations where their speed's up and they're like, "Oh, crud. I'm the red light." So, they go through it. They're getting a red light ticket and a speed ticket. So, they the cameras do both. If that answers your question,

as far as the signage requirements go, um, in the in the OS, uh, which u which of the which of the two do we do we go by? Do we do the signage requirements for red light cameras or for fixed radar cameras? The signage says photo enforcement ahead. Photo enforcement ahead. And so that's that's for the um for the OS that uh that governs uh red light cameras, not fixed photo radar. Is that I have to look into that. I don't I don't know for sure.

Okay. And then um my next question is about the um the maintenance logs of of the red light cameras. We had some questions among members of the community about that. Can you speak to that please? So a lot of conditions are set forth by one OS and by our contract. Uh and on a daily basis all the cameras go through a calibration process. So, if you've ever received a ticket and asked for the evidence packet, it will give you the calibration time in the morning, the violation time and the calibration time 12 hours later. And that's part of the evidence packet. Now, there so that's a a remote system check using the software. If something's out of whack as far as the calibration or they can't get proper communication with the device, that could trigger a maintenance call or we had reports of the flashing lights, the strobe lights going off at North Albony Road that prompted a maintenance call. But they do review the uh the maintenance standard maintenance every every quarter. It's not required by our contract, but Vera does that. And so that allows them to continually come out and check those and as needed if we see an issue. So, I've got a question about that myself. Um, who's performing this maintenance?

The company is Vera Mobility and so they've they've given us asurances that data is staying in the machine or at the police department. Correct. I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. They're not taking that data back and sharing it as far as the maintenance. No, the information on the system itself. Oh, got it. Got it. I've had constituents reach out to me or walk up to me in in the store or walk up to me on the street and say, "Are you sure they're not giving that data to X?" Is it our data or or are they using that data for their own purposes? Both both our photo enforcement and our automated license plate reader cameras. We own the data and it does not they can't take it and go off with it.

Correct. The only uh sharing of that is when they send it to the court. So again, as far as the maintenance logs go, um you said they there is a physical inspection. Um how often? Quarterly. Quarterly. And um our contract with Vera Mobility uh indicates indicates what about physical um inspections? It is not required.

Not required. Okay. And is there anything in the OS that um that indicates that those cameras need to have a physical um uh physical check uh for maintenance? No. No, not at all. Okay. Thank you for that.

Go ahead, Councelor Smith. Regarding people who leave, um I'm thinking of people who have decided they want to be teachers and they go through school and they go through their practicum and they get in the classroom and they think, "Ew, I don't like kids." Um how how uh what are some of the reasons that people choose to leave law enforcement?

Uh well, right, retirement, obviously. Uh, and I would encourage anybody who's done 20 or 25 years, go off and enjoy your well-earned retirement. Uh, I'm at 33. I have to figure out that lesson at some point, too. So, uh, but of late, uh, we've had two employees leave mostly because of the nature of the work. They did primarily sex abuse and child abuse investigations. Takes a toll.

And they decided that they needed to do something different. And I can never argue with that. um having just a small exposure to that, especially child pornography exposure as far as taking in tips from the FBI. You can't unsee it and you can't unhehere it. You can't unlearn it. And so I I can't argue with them departing. The average tenure of a police officer used to be around 18 to 22 years. We're seeing that 7 to 15. And that's not a good return on investment for cities and counties. Thank you. Did I answer your question? Yes, you did. Okay. Thank you, Chief. Does anybody else have anything? Thank you so much.

Yeah, I I'm sorry. I do have one more follow-up question. Um what what are what are we doing to help with retention um for for the officers that we do have?

So, we've had a lot of luck in that we've we've enjoyed full staffing in the police ranks uh much of the last two years. So, I think 2025 mid year was a little bit of a blip. uh we invest very much in uh wellness for our officers. So they are exposed to all the different wellness uh pillars as we call them and getting training and support uh as well as we you're trying to stay competitive in the labor market for salary and benefits. But I will tell you a as uh the president of the chief's association in this state money is not what keeps them there. they want to work in place that they're going to be supported uh by elected officials, by their the management uh and that they feel that they uh are doing meaningful work. Uh and so we really try to focus on the work is very serious, but we don't take ourselves very seriously. If you look at our Facebook, you can clearly tell that we don't take ourselves very seriously some days. And I think that's really paid off. And it's also a very comprehensive approach. Wellness is not a program. It's it's part of our uh core values. It is a core value for the agency. The minute the employee comes in the door, they're exposed to wellness, financial wellness, uh mental health wellness, physical wellness. All of our new people, uh we have them work out at the end of their day, keep them physically fit.

I appreciate that insight. Thank you. Yep. It also deals with stress, too. Yes. I I want to say thank you. Um, my godson had a crash, was in a a vehicle accident the other day on 34th by ferry, I think it is. And, um, your officers did a great job. So did the fire department that came out. So, thank you for tell them I appreciate them. Yeah. You're welcome. Yeah. Anyway, I can get you to force me to work out after work. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. That'd be wonderful, though.

Next is Fire Chief Leel. All right. Good evening, mayor and council. Uh Chris Leell, fire chief, and I'll jump right in with the fire department. So, mission statement, prevent, protect from harm. Uh we have 95 FTEES and a bienial budget of 48 billion. Um 10% of that is also the public safety levy. Um which equates to 16 firefighter EMT positions. Um, and then I also do like to remind council that we do bring in about $8 million a year in revenue through our ambulance service, our contracts with our rural fire protection district as well as the city of Millersburg. So, primary functions, uh, we have our emergency services, our life safety division, and emergency management. Um, so emergency services obviously fire suppression, our ambulance service. Um, really if somebody calls 911 and it's not a law enforcement issue, we get called. It can be a gas leak, down power line. Um, and then we also have our three specialty teams. Our water rescue team, technical rescue team, and then our hazmat team. Our hazmat team is part of a regional team with uh Lemon and Corvalis Fire Department. So, they serve uh Lynn, Benton, and Lincoln County. And that is supported through the state fire marshall's office. Um, our life safety division is a small but mighty group. I'll talk about that a little bit when I get to the org chart, but uh they're responsible for fire code enforcement. So, this is going out and doing uh regular business inspections or if somebody calls the department to say there's a fire lane blocked, um that would be their role to go out and that's our DFM compliance. Um our fire marshall is involved and they work closely with the building department and new construction. um it's pretty limited to what the fire department can do as far as we basically u have authority over access and water supply and we work under the Oregon fire code. So basically

making sure that when a neighborhood goes in or a new building that we're able to get our fire trucks in there and if there is a fire that there's appropriate amount of water that we can fight the fire. Um public education, community outreach. Um this is our risk reduction specialist Sandy Roberts. She does an absolutely amazing job for us. So going out um into the schools doing injury prevention, eighth grade CPR, uh firefighter friendly as we call them. Um and then all the different community outreach programs that she's able to go out and be a part of. And then Hillary Cosmiki, our community paramedic, um she is just doing an amazing job. Um we have a new program that I'll talk about here in a minute, but she works with the care facilities. Um she works with some of our atrisisk vulnerable population. um folks that um call 911 that don't really need an ambulance, but they need to get a hold of their either family or primary care physician, she's able to connect people and and make that happen. And then uh as far as emergency management, this really is shared by across the board all city departments, but um the emergency manager, Chuck Burino, reports to the fire chief. He works out at the downtown fire station. So for tonight's purposes, he is a part of our presentation, but he's involved with with planning, uh, disaster cost recovery and public outreach. Um, okay. So for the or chart, I'm not going to go through this. I will say that u 80% of our FTE are in emergency services. And I'll talk about calls for service. We are not a topheavy department. Our management team is the same size it was in 1999. Our life safety division is about 50% of where it should be. And we have a training division of one to where a lot of departments our size or even smaller have a couple different people in training.

One battalion chief. Uh three BCs, one per shift. Okay.

All right. Accomplishments. Uh the first one is a big one. So getting our single roll ambulance out of the downtown fire station 247 365 not only improved our response to medical calls, it actually helped our fire response as well. uh especially in North Albany. Um the council's aware of it, maybe people in the audience or or that are listening don't know this, but the staffing model that we have at our North Albany fire station is four firefighters on duty and they either respond four on a fire engine or they split up and take two ambulances. Well, in the past, just based on call volume, most of the time they were responding in an ambulance. So, I'll give you a scenario. Before we had the downtown ambulance, say somebody took a fall at Bryant Park. Well, all of a sudden, the ladder truck at this station would go to the call and then we would lose an ambulance off the hill that takes that fire engine out of service. So, if we were to have a fire in North Albany at that point, uh, no fire engine to North Albany. The ladder truck that's downtown is now on a medical call. So, the nearest fire engine would be from our our station on 34th Avenue. So really adding this ambulance, trying to keep that station available to be able to staff a fire engine really was a gamecher for our department. Uh recruitment and retention. Uh excited to talk about this one because we last time we met this was a challenge for us, but uh recruitment has been really good. Um retention uh thank you to the council. This last labor contract that we were able to to get past is is a big thing. I'll talk about some of the things that we're doing that are helping with retention, but u very excited to to have that listed as an accomplishment. Uh the new training facility, this has been a significant project. We were hoping that it would be done now. Uh but it is a very unique structure. A lot of engineered drawings. We're working closely with the building department. I catch myself getting a little bit like it should be done already. But in the end, this has been a goal of ours since the late 1970s. So, a few more months. I

probably just need to relax and know it'll come and we'll have a great product when it's all said and done. Uh, current grants and grants that we had in the last year. A lot of good projects I think that you're all aware of as far as fuel reduction and defensible space the southwest part of town as well as North Albany. Um, DHS uh care home support. U this is something that I shared with council. This was the grant that we got for lifting devices to be distributed to all the care homes. Um that program I think is going to be phenomenal. I know that in January uh 17 times those devices were used. So those are 17 times that we could have responded out there for a 911 call taken a vehicle out of service for a non-emergency lift assist. Um so really this is a this is a great program and we're excited to see that move forward. And then uh FEMA safer that was for three firefighters that has been 100% paid u the federal government that is coming to an end but we are keeping those positions to help with the overtime and I'll speak to that please if you have questions

what do you have any idea of the future of the safer grants I will talk yeah um I'll just talk about it now the the grants that we're seeing it is becoming a lot more challenging that we've seen fewer grants at the federal level and the grants that are out there, departments across the nation are in the same boat. So everybody, it is so competitive. Everybody is applying for the same grants and so we've had a lot of success in the past of getting grants, but um the last couple that we've applied for, we've been unsuccessful and everybody's going for them.

Have there been significant changes or any changes in the um requirements for um applicants?

I would say no. Um it's just some of the stuff that um extrication equipment things that we were purchasing we've come to council previously those would be included. Now they've really it's a it's a small window of things that they're allowing people to even apply for grants for it. It's people and you know a fire engine or different things like that. And so we recently applied for a grant for a fire engine. We were successful last time. This time we weren't. Um, so we applied for a deputy fire marshal through something very similar to safer and we were unsuccessful with that. So, and we just haven't seen a lot of departments in Oregon that have been selected for some of these different grants. Federal grants. Yes, federal grants. Thank you.

Yep. Absolutely. Thank you. Um, oh, can you go back a slide? Oh, absolutely. Sorry. Can you speak to that photo um with the Is this the lift device? It is. Can you explain a little bit about that?

Absolutely. Um, so we went out the cruise, uh, Hillary, our community paramedic, she's going out, um, talking about when to call 911, uh, what's appropriate uses of our resources, and then demonstrating the device. And so, basically, it's like an inflatable bed. You roll the patient onto it. Um, it's very easy to use. Uh, we teach them how to use it, how to troubleshoot it. Um, the device basically just slowly lifts the patient up and then they're able just to to stand them up and so there's really not much to it. It is like just almost like an inflatable bed that that gets them up to where like a sitting position as you can see in that photo and then they're able just to stand up. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Absolutely.

That's fantastic.

Okay. U continue with accomplishments. U CPR in the schools. This is a big one for us. Every eighth grader in our community gets uh handsonly CPR and uh basic basic understanding of an AED. Uh one of the goals in our department is to uh increase survivability and sudden cardiac arrest in our community and we know the patients that have the best outcome that is due to early bystander CPR and early access to AEDs. And so the more people that we can put in our community that have that skill set helps us achieve our goal. Uh life safety fees. Thank you to the council again. Um we're able to with rising p personnel cost, cost of equipment to recoup some of that. Also, if you remember, we got approval for the false alarm fee. We go to a lot of false alarms. This isn't to u generate a bunch of revenue. This is more to motivate business owners to make sure they're maintaining those systems and we're not going out there multiple times unnecessarily. Uh peer support and health and wellness. I'll kind of talk about both of these. We've really had a culture shift in investing in our people and taking care of them. And um as Chief Harden kind of mentioned um you know this we need to take care of our folks and it's it's a marathon not a sprint. When I meet with the new folks I share with them that our goal is not just to get them to retirement that make sure they're in a good mental and physical space when they've done 25 or 30 years for the for the city that they're able to then go out and enjoy the retirement. So, uh, expanded our peer support program. Um, the health and well wellness focus. Uh, if you remember, part of the labor contract was annual physicals for all of our firefighters so they can detect certain kind of cancers that are uh, more prone to firefighters. Some accomplishments from the emergency management side. U, we're able to uh, get a lot of uh, training this last year in different ICs. So when um we have a major event and we need to open up the

EOCC um city employees that function in those different roles have that additional training. Um and then also updates were made to the uh flood response plan as well as the emergency operations plan. Um continuing with emergency management, lots of public outreach about disasters that could happen in our area, emergency preparedness and how to stay informed when events do happen. And one of the roles um that the uh emergency manager does when we have an event uh veterans day parade art gets all the different department heads together representatives from the departments and basically form an incident action plan of what we would do if we have a significant event. Okay. Trends increased calls for service and concurrent calls. So 10 years ago we were running around 8,000 calls a year. Fast forward to today, 11,884. So about a 48% increase in calls for service over the last 10 years. Um increased multif family housing, increased life safety risk. So one of the things that uh we have in a lot of apartment complexes in our community, we've seen a lot of new ones that um are being constructed. The national standard for number of firefighters needed to fight a fire in an apartment complex is 27. Uh we have 21 on duty and that's if everybody's available. So that has been a goal of ours as we look to the future. That really should be 10 15 years that we're striving for is to try to get to that 27 firefighters on duty and concurrent calls for service. We know that when we are fighting a fire, the medical calls continue to come in. So we need the staffing to address those as well. Um increased costs and lead time for equipment and replacement. Um the cost of fire engines and tools and everything that we use um continue to go up. fire trucks a million dollars and it takes three years to get. So, we'll be coming to council next month with asking for approval to purchase new fire engines. And then councelor Smith, to your point, just the the fewer grant

opportunities that we're seeing. Okay. Looking ahead, um challenges, appropriate staffing levels, um to go with our calls for service, um trying to control our overtime costs. Uh last year, we spent double what we had budgeted, I'm sorry, last bianium, double we had as many as 13 vacancies at one time. So trying to address that and then adequate funding for equipment replacement. Um improved succession planning. I think our department in the past has done a good job not a great job. Um where we are is um we we get people ready to promote but when they go into those leadership positions they really need continuing education and the city's offering some different classes. We're bringing in outside leadership opportunities to to keep these folks trained up. Uh continue u improving our relationship with Samaritan Health. uh there's been challenges there with weight times, wall times in the emergency rooms as well as in our facility transfer. We now meet with them regularly and and talk through and we really want to build that partnership. Adapting to changes in emergency response. This really is um looking for proactive ways to try to reduce calls for service and fire and EMS is ever changing. Um lift assist weren't a thing 25 years ago and so just making sure that we're staying ahead of the game and meeting the community needs and then conversion of overtime to personnel. Um we just did get approval from the city manager's office to hire uh three additional firefighters. Um this will be it's a budget neutral. So basically um no additional money added to our bianial budget but moving it from our overtime line over to wages and salaries. Any questions? I tried to go as fast as I could. So one of the things I want to thank you guys for is the um $85 on fire. Um, I have the forms on my desk or my office and people are filling them out and I ones that let me do it, I take it to the fire department. So, your staff's been great with supporting that endeavor. Um, is do you see anything coming as far as uh on the east side expansion because I know there's this

fire station right across from Through Lakes Road. How many personnel there? Five, six, five. That's what we call a full house. So, fire engine and ambulance there. Yes. And my boss and I have had conversations about what that looks like and and the south part of town and further out east at some point. That probably will strategically be where we need to put another fire station at some point. Thank you. Council, do you have anything? Councelor Smith,

I'm just going to just comment in general. Um the the uh prevailing theme here is money. People cost money. equipment costs money. Uh new facilities cost money. Streets cost money. Um and just keep that in mind when we talk about budgets next time. This to in order to to catch up and keep up um and keep our heads above water. It costs money and it's got to come from somewhere and that that numbers continue to rise in material cost, shipping costs, everything. So, thank you, Chief, for your report.

Is there any possible way that we can get these slides just sent to us so we can take a look at them, read through them, write questions down? I appreciate it. Uh, next is human resources. Holly Roen, is she here today? Yes, she is. Director Roden, I know HR HR sir, I think the slides are in our um packet. They They're in the packet.

My Good evening, mayor and council. I'm not sure what I did to have to follow both the chiefs, but it's a tough act to follow, but here we go. So, good evening. I'm Holly Roen, the city's human resources director. And I'll just start here with a quick snapshot of our department. We have uh currently nine FTE, which is pretty exciting. That's an increase from six FTE last bianium. As part of this budget, the council approved transferring an administrative assistant over from the city manager's office and adding 2 FTE to our department. Um, which was a long-standing goal for HR. Um, even with that growth, we do remain a relatively small team. We support about 450 employees across the city and that is across four bargaining units and as well as our non-bargaining, excuse me, and temporary staff. So our work spans several core functional areas. First is recruitment and selection which includes everything from job design and outreach through hiring and onboarding. Second is compensation, benefits and leave administration, ensuring employees are paid accurately, receive their benefits and have appropriate support during uh often complex leave situations. And third is employee and labor relations where we partner closely with our supervisors, our employees, our unions to address workplace concerns. We interpret contracts and policies and we maintain productive working relationships. In addition to those functions, we also lead workforce development, including training, leadership development, and professional growth initiatives across the organization. We also oversee regulatory compliance, ensuring the city meets state and federal employment requirements. And finally, we support workplace safety initiatives. That's obviously in

partnership with our departments, but also our risk manager. And we help promote safe working environments for employees across all of our departments. This the exciting part. So this org chart reflects our current structure, including those recent staffing additions that I mentioned and the increase from 6 to 9 FTE. The administrative assistant uh who transferred from the city manager's office continues to provide support also to finance and IT, but we're very excited to be able to claim her as part of HR now. And uh along with this transfer, there was the addition of those two FTE that the council approved in the recent budget. The first of those new positions is our HR manager, Christian Dell, who you all know well. He transferred over from the police department. He's now supervising a team of analysts who oversee our recruitment, benefits, leave, class and comp, and HIS among other programs. And the second of those new positions was filled by senior analyst Marbel Vidrio. Uh her work focuses heavily on employee relations including complex leave situations, workplace accommodations, performance management, professional development and training programs, and workplace culture initiatives. This is where we're placing a great deal as she has a big job. Um, this is where we're placing a great deal of our effort in trying to address some of the um, uh, concerns, and I'll touch on this a little bit later, but concerns with respect to staff workloads and turnover and, uh, some of the juniority issues we're experiencing. We did have a senior analyst retire this past November, um, who would have been the counterpart to Marbel and and shared a lot of those functions. Um, after a really thorough review of the projected workloads for 2026, we particularly in recruitment and onboarding and and all of that, we decided that we needed to continue to invest in automation and

process improvement on the sort of day-to-day operations side of the house. And so, we chose to temporarily underfill that senior analyst. Um, so that's why you'll see the five analysts represented there. And this supports our immediate operational needs while also allowing flexibility to later um fill at the senior analyst level, particularly in light of an anticipated retirement we have coming up. Our major accomplishments. I've spent a lot of time talking to you about our team and the staffing. This was a big deal for us. Uh we in addition to having the two new positions, we actually hired and trained six people in our department in the last year. It's where most of our effort has been spent. So, um, outside of that admin assistant who's, um, transferred over, myself and one analyst, everyone on the team is basically new, um, within the last 14 months or so. And, um, let's see. So, hiring and training alone and rebuilding our team capacity has been a heavy focus for us. With the new team in place, we've um, focused on service delivery improvements, including transitioning our analysts toward a full cycle service model. We uh routinely heard from our um internal customers that that was a model that suited their operational needs and being able to have a single point of contact. So we focused heavily on that and this approach improves our organizational resilience. Work can flex between te team members. We have improved coverage. um our analysts are not solid into narrow functions and as a result we're seeing faster turnaround times improved service delivery and consistency and improved overall perception of the HR function within the organization and our uh HR team um is realizing additional professional development opportunities there's improved team morale uh there's a better work life balance for the team by adding the HR manager we've been able

to begin tackling longstanding p uh projects including online benefits enrollment which imp improves that employee experience, a new comprehensive performance management system. The procurement process is completed for that and we're now uh fully into implementation along with a um expanded automation of various processes using monday.com. I know you've heard many of the departments talk about that. That's been a wonderful tool for our department. An example of that would be our leave management workflow which touches virtually every employee at some point in their career that was 100% manual for the most part and it's now significantly automated u from the intake to generating legal notices to the followup uh calendaring reminders and overall the employee experience that we've been hearing is a vast improvement in that area and it frees up HR staff to focus more on employee support

uh accomplishments uh with collective bargaining. 2025, you heard the chiefs talk about this, was a very busy year for collective bargaining. We settled agreements with police and fire. And um you know, we did that in a pretty timely fashion while supporting key priorities for the city such as fiscal responsibility, administrative efficiency, collaboration, and competitive compensation structures. And with the addition of that senior analyst role, we've also increased our emphasis on professional development including supervisor training programs. Uh we completed a three-part series called Fierce Conversations. And with that, um we've also alongside that fierce conversations training offered citywide trainings uh that focus on topics such as emotional intelligence and future ready workforce. But recruitment uh recruitment workloads continue to grow. In 2023, we hired 42 new employees. 24 we hired 45. And in 2025, that was bumped up to 55 new employees. Um hiring levels we do think will stabilize when we get through um the boom of recruitments that we or sorry retirements that we've been experiencing, but we're no longer planning around the sort of precoid figures of you know 25 people per year. Um we do believe it will remain consistently above that. And alongside hiring of course comes the full life cycle of onboarding and offboarding employees. Uh benefits setup, personnel actions, accident interviews, COBRA administration. It's a pretty significant workload that our team was able to pull off. We've also prioritized process simplification just in general. We're looking at everything through the lens of does this need to be done? Is there a more streamline way to do this? Can we automate this? And um that's been really successful. We're looking through all of our contracts, our policies,

various workflows. We're really with the aim of how do we improve the employee experience, the supervisor experience, and HR's experience. Um examples of this would be uh migrating our recruitment requisitions and referrals fully into our uh recruiting software, Neo Gov. Um improving transparency and reducing turnaround times. So our trends. So there's several workforce trends that are shaping how a HR operates today. Technology not being the least of them, including AI. It's rapidly changing how work is performed and HR is no exception in this area. It's being increasingly integrated into recruiting, analytics, workforce planning, but the core of HR remains deeply human. connection, judgment, relationship management, culture, leadership. These all land squarely within the function of HR and cannot be replaced through AI. We're also seeing a shift toward skills-based hiring and a growing need for reskilling and leadership development, especially as our workplace experience levels reset across most departments. Nearly half of our employees have been hired since CO and 30% of our current employees have joined us just within the last three years. That represents a significant transition in institutional knowledge and a shift in our workforce. At the same time, rising benefit and pension costs are also increasing the focus on total rewards strategies, including flexibility, professional development, career growth opportunities, wellness support programs. You heard both chiefs talks about talk about the emphasis of wellness within their respective departments and other benefits that contribute to the overall employee experience. Oh, sorry, my apologies. I did want to

take this opportunity just quickly to um talk about the focus on building a future ready workforce. Counselor McGee had asked on Monday evening um and I'm glad she brought it up. I got was at the back of the room. I got a little excited, perked up, started making notes. Uh she wanted to know what are we doing to address workloads, staff burnout, turnover. And I recognize that as an organization, you've heard that all of the directors talk about this and beat this drum for the last several years. It's a very um you know, it's a reality that the demands for service continue to grow. And the increases in staffing don't necessarily keep pace with that. And I know that our deputy city manager is also going to touch on this from an organizationalwide perspective, but I wanted to be insure and touch on it as far as HR's role and um what some of the specifics that we're doing. As I mentioned, just over 30% of our current employees have been hired just in the last three years. It's pretty astounding figure. Um, and I did want to note, as the city manager mentioned on Monday, that a large portion of those are retirements. They're not necessarily turnover in relation to, you know, staff burnout or workloads or things like that. Um but you know we did forecast most of those retirements and we proactively put systems in place to account for those and to to respond to the corresponding um change and I think overall that's been fairly smooth. So specific things we're doing to prepare a future ready workforce. Um we're strengthening our exit and stay interviews uh to capture workforce insights. We certainly want to look to address issues before turnover occurs. Uh last year we conducted an employee experience survey to gather additional feedback to inform HR systems and programs and also the u recent strategic plan survey the deputy city manager sent out included um soliciting feedback from an employee values

component. We've implemented a retirey workback program to support knowledge transfer and smooth out some of those transitions. We've had about a half dozen or so employees take advantage of that just since November. Um, we continue to partner with our departments to evaluate all of our organizational structures, potential reclassifications, workload alignment with additional HR staffing capacity. This has allowed us to improve turnaround times on recruitment as well as the quality of our recruitments. We're getting positions filled faster and with high quality candidates. Additional HR staffing's also allowed for a shift from a reactive to a proactive position in terms of employee relations. um tackling some of those issues as they pop up before they become bigger issues. We're enhancing our onboarding, training, and in-house professional development opportunities for staff so employees can get up to speed and become successful more quickly. We're strengthening the employee experience through the launch of an enhanced online performance management system called Neog perform. As I mentioned, that's uh implementation is underway which will serve to improve communication between employees and their supervisors, increase clarity of expectations, strengthen development planning and professional goal setting and employee recognition. And we're continuing, of course, with our compensation and benefits enhancements through collective bargaining, through review of our policies, through the budget process, and working hard to increase employee awareness of those benefits and the value that they bring to them. And um we're also focused just generally on a holistic strategy. I want to emphasize that it's no one thing um and Albany is um committed to ensuring that this continues to be an incredible place to work and that we are um creating fostering an environment where employees can thrive so that they can continue to be in service to our community.

Lastly, my favorite part looking ahead um we're very excited about the future of our HR team even as we navigate a few challenges. One pressing issue for us are the physical space limitations of HR. For any of you who've come to visit us, um there's a a capacity component, but also just generally the location of HR. We are in Cuband. Um it's it's a little difficult. We have some folks doubled up. Uh there's a lack of of privacy and we've routinely heard from our employees that that's a challenge for them. So, there is a spa city hall space utilization study that's underway and we hope to realize um some long-term improvements and solutions out of that. Uh at the same time, with additional staff now in place, we're finally able to address years of backlogged projects, which temporarily creates some capacity issues as we try to get caught up. Um but overall, it's very exciting to be able to get to those things. And as I mentioned on the org chart slide, um we did choose to underfill one of our senior analyst positions to address the recruitment benefits leave workload which has created a temporary um capacity issue on the employee relations function. So I'm backfilling a lot of that alongside Marbel. Um but it it does pull me from my other duties. Um, yes. So, despite these challenges, we're very excited about the future and there's a lot of opportunities that come with having new staff on board, new ideas. It's a wonderful team that we've been able to assemble. Um, dare I say maybe the best HR team this city's ever had. I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but I feel that. Um, they're very uh committed to the organization and the employees and proud to be part of it. So with that, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Council Council Smith,

you answered one of my questions, which is I don't recognize anybody in the building anymore. Well, a few, but the the change is real. Barry and just a a comment about the um building the team that was all that was a challenge for the entire time I was here. When I was here, the team was one person and that it was that way for a long time. Um, it's it's amazing how much this organization has changed just since it's been in this building, this being our 30th anniversary here. Um, and I'm I'm uh I'm impressed with with everything. it. If you are an employee of the city of Albany, you are well taken care of. We were well taken care of all along. It's just better now. And because it's different and because the world is different and I um I'm proud of the ability to keep up with change and help new people um stay here. It is a great place to work for a variety of reasons. Um, I will I will leave it at that. Thank you. Oh, one one more question. The backlog of projects,

are the some of them so old that they're no longer relevant?

No, we we routinely go through and scrub out the things that aren't relevant. Uh it's just you know uh councelor Smith you worked here when our former HR director David Shaw was here and way back then he identified that we were woefully underststaffed and um there were things that just as a matter of consequence didn't get attended to things like an online performance management system were way behind the times on that. um being able to leverage systems we had and actually build out the modules instead of just using maybe the basic components. We're putting a lot of focus on that crossraining staff getting them the training that they need so that they can be you know um feel successful and empowered and knowledgeable. Um there online benefits enrollment arguably we should have done that 10 years ago. We're getting to it. It's done. It's going live in March. So,

this is a function of city government that most people don't see and it's rewarding to see that it's being done so well. That's what it makes everybody else successful. Thank you. I'll pass that along to my team. Questions? Thank you. Um, I used to work in HR, so this is exciting for me. Yes, kind of my table. Can you um talk to us more um going back to the trends, can you talk to us more about the enhanced employee experience and total rewards emphasis? Um can you expand on that please?

Sure. So there's a lot that goes into that. Um enhanced employee experience could be everything from like that online benefits enrollment, right? you come as a new hireer, especially if you come from the private sector, and we hand you a stack of papers and say, "Hey, you know, here's all your benefits paper. Can you fill this out?" That can be pretty off-putting and a little jarring if you're used to being able to log in and do everything online. Um, you know, Neo gov perform is going to be kind of a gamecher for the departments and being able to to have real-time interface with employees and and goal setting in a way that again we're doing evaluations in paper right now ideal not 2026 um the employee experience is looking at um for example in 2023 I think it was now 2024 we went to a new employee employee assistance program. Uh we used to use a local provider that was just for some routine counseling services. This expanded program is not just um counseling but also um you know stress management tools, online tools that they can do, virtual courses, financial assistance, legal assistance, um a whole host of services. And so everything um that basically affects an employes well-being in their personal life which translates to their work life, we want to be sure and offer um those you know resources. The employee experience might be something as simple as if I want to put in for um protected leave, what does that look like? How do I interface with HR? What level of support am I offered? Uh we are glad to be able to have leveraged monday.com to automate a lot of the paperwork processing which is obviously legally necessary but not very personable. And that frees up staff time to really walk alongside employees and

help identify what resources are available to you. What does this process look like? What can you expect from us? Um so is that touching on some of I mean, I could go on forever on this, but we're just we're really trying to hit, pardon me, on all marks. I'm impressed. Sounds great. Thank you. Yeah. Any other counselors? I just want to say thank you. Go ahead. Thank go highlighting what you're doing for to to maintain retention or to to combat burnout. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Absolutely. So, I just want to say thank you. Um, I was here when Dette left and you came on and you were running fast as you could and so you you seem more calm and more relaxed and more settled in your role and I think you're doing a wonderful job. So, thank you very much. Having an HR manager has made a world of difference. I can imagine. Yes. Thank you for that.

Take your workload. Thank you. I think the city manager is up next. Thank you, Ollie. Good evening, council. I don't know if I have it easier because I come after everyone or because I have to harder because I now have to build off of everything that you're the end of it. You're the last one.

I, you know, here um so I'm not going to spend too much time on these first few slides. I will just say this one will feel a little bit different um given that as the city manager's office we are really here in support of all of the other departments and really um removing barriers and positioning things so that they can be successful. Um so you will hear a lot about those organizational impacts. Um primary functions I am going to spend a little bit of time on though um because there are some differences this year. Um so we I've broke it down into kind of three areas management and risk. So this incorporates um the larger general strategic uh initiatives that come out of the city manager's office. So the day-to-day operations um really working with departments to um ensure that they have proper resourcing, the right conversations are happening with the right people in the room. Um but I want to focus a little bit on the risk piece because this is new um to our department. Um as you may remember from the budget discussions, uh we uh did um facilitate the hiring of a risk manager um during this last year. That was a position that was originally budgeted two years ago in HR, but due to the capacity issues you heard about, they were not able to fill that. Um, so we are now also helping with um really reducing exposure for the city as well as enhancing safety uh for employees. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in our accomplishments. Uh we have our communications and engagement team, which is part of the reorg um that you'll see on the next slide. Um has been able to really work on more proactive engagement with the community. You probably saw them out there at more events this year. um more involvement with our strategic plan this year. Um and then finally, we have our city recorder functions, which is the lovely agendas and minutes that you all enjoy, as well as records management and those uh public um records requests. So, there's a little bit of a lag here and I don't know, technology loves us today. I don't know why this is blue. Um but you can see um our org chart here. I'm not going to spend too much time on that. Um this looks very different than you saw last year and this just reflects all of that movement. Um we too have a

lot of new people in our team and rather than just you know applying like for like as positions turned over or became vacant um we really took a good hard look at what do we need not only today but for the long-term success of the organization and then I'll just note um you did hear about emergency management earlier um and fire um functionally they are over there but budget budgetarily they are in city manager's office. So talking about accomplishments and this is where I get really excited and I'm going to get a little bit nerdy about risk. Um, so as I mentioned, hired that uh risk manager. And so for the first time ever, we're really actually being able to take a proactive approach in how the city addresses risk. And that makes me very excited. As someone with a budget background, and I may be a little harsh on this, I always look at dollars that we have to pay out because things were done incorrectly as dollars that are not providing value to our residents. So anywhere where we can reduce that and turn those around and put them towards, you know, projects, programs that our residents really want to see, I see that as a win. Um so in this first year our risk manager has been able to take the first comprehensive look and update of our risk management policies and also implement proactive training in a lot of areas we have not been able to touch in years. Um what that has done is we're already seeing significant success in reduction of claims um and also in reduction of work days lost. Uh so for those of you who don't know what work days lost are, those are days where due to illness or health issues, injury um related to work, um we have someone who is out on a paid leave, they're not performing a function for the city. Um in the first seven months um since they've been on board, we have uh had 21 uh work days lost. Uh for reference, last year the entire year was 800 work days lost and our average over the last several years has been 600 days uh work days lost. So, a tremendous amount of work that is being done in that space to get people back into the office more quickly, finding them functions where they could provide value to the city and then also really reducing those upfront.

Um, and this all is going to pay dividends not only in that space of productivity today, but also long-term as those numbers go down that also impacts our insurance premiums which are a significant cost to the city um each year. You also can see there accomplishments for enhanced engagement. Um, so we were all very excited to introduce what has been a long-term goal for the city council of the Albany Civic um, academy this year and I'm excited to say that the team is actually going to bring it back in the spring this year um, following feedback from the team or from the participants that that would be a better scheduling space. Uh, we were also able to move to the weekly newsletter which reaches over 20,000 uh, residents here in Albany. Um, so really getting people more ontime information. And then as mentioned previously, we've had greater presence at events, um, and really being able to engage youth, for example, um, in the high schools in a way that we've never been able to before. Um, which is wonderful as you see public trust, uh, numbers declining across the country. This is a great way to remind people that, hey, the city of Albany is here and we're your neighbors. We're your partners and we are wanting to really understand what you're looking for. Um, some other key accomplishments here. Um, so you're going to see here process improvement and I've listed out a couple of um, uh, items here. Um, so agenda processing has already seen some significant improvements. Um, you've heard about monday.com a couple times. Um, we've actually taken the first piece of the agenda creation process and really worked to automate some key portions of that. You see that now um, in the whiteboard that comes out each week. Um, and that's going to be further refined in the next few months. Um we have uh solicit or gone through solicitation, secured a vendor and we are on track for this spring um to move over to a full um you know full automated um management system for our agenda processing. Um that is another one that is incredibly manual right now. Um you are also going to see coming down the pipeline very soon. Um we're engaged with a vendor right now on municipal

code updates. So, if you've ever tried to go look up our charter or our municipal code and try to find anything in it, it is impossible. It is. It's very tough. Um, so in the next few months, you will actually be able to search, index, filter, et Yes. Yes.

Um, and while these are technology improvements that I want that I'm highlighting here, I want to speak a little bit to to kind of the bigger picture here. Um because alongside these we're not just taking broken processes and shoving them into a piece of technology and going good job it's done. Um so there behind the scenes is extensive work that's being done with departments um around process mapping really laying out how the process works where are their pain points where are there opportunities for us to streamline and really refining that you know prior to putting it into that technology piece. The gap that that technology piece is really capturing is and I think uh you know uh Holly really hit this very well is that technology piece is allowing us to take what is you know very expensive staff time and focus it on the spaces where it can really matter have a big impact and so more of the sort of daily grind stuff that can be moved through the automation is kind of being done through that rather than having to add new employees to keep up with that load. Um, also this is part of a larger um, you know, a larger accomplishment that we've really shifted towards this planning for the future. Um, you heard it said many times during the budget and I think we've brought it up um, several times in various presentations that we're really trying to act as an organization um, that is preparing for kind of that next 20 years um, as a city because Albany is growing. um Albany is is changing and we want to make sure that we are addressing that um strategically, proactively um so that that feels intentional to residents um and they have a positive experience um rather than having you know dealing with a lot of these things like like poor service or things like that. Um you'll also see on here a strategic plan update. I know that is still underway. Um but that is another key piece here that has been significantly reworked this year. Um really to address some of the pain points um that we heard from prior years for departments in terms of how to execute pain points that we heard from council members around vision

areas. So we're really excited to see where that goes next. I'm not going to spend too much time on the trends because I think our departments did a very good job on this. Um, you've heard the recruitment in local government remains challenging. Um, I'm going to talk a little bit on the next page about kind of how we're addressing that. Um, the aging infrastructure, equipment, etc. Ultimately, what this gets to, and I think, uh, Council Member Smith uh, did a fantastic job of noting this, is when you look at this, you see a lot of dollar signs, right? The cost of providing public service is going up. Um and so one of the things that we've been trying to do organizationally is see how we can take this line that is really increasing very quickly and try to slow it down. Um we're not going to be able to invert it, but how do we start to slow it so that those impacts are not so significant um on our residents. So you will see that um as we talk a little bit through our challenges and opportunities here. Um so one of the things that I want to note um is as you start to look at our our challenges um one of the things that we are trying to shift our focus on is really starting to understand the why or the root cause behind some of these these areas. Um so you heard things like burnout burnout is a symptom. Um you know and so as we're starting to look here you're seeing things like the employee turnover, new supervisors, managers. Okay, these are some of these areas that we're where we're having you know some issue or or potential problems. When you look on the other side, I tried to make sure that we responded with some key opportunities here um that are really intentional to how we're addressing those particular pain points. Um so you've heard a couple times about intentional transition planning. Um that is not a singular department function. So our team, the HR team, the finance team, department directors, we have all been working together to figure out how can we make the most as employees exit the organization or as we know that they will be exiting the organization to make that transition as smooth as possible. So this includes things like working

through getting documentation for processes, starting to put in standard operating procedures, working to understand or receive earlier notice um on on employees who are are going to be exiting the organization so that we can have intentional crossraining that is happening. Um it's also thinking about things like okay what does this look like from a reorg standpoint? Let's not replace like for like we've gone through some extensive reorganizations. Um you heard about some from from uh HR. We've also worked uh with community development and some of their um team that's been turning is turning over um as well as our parks department as well. We've also focused on building um taking those new supervisors and new managers and really building them into emerging leaders. Um so this is going to be a key opportunity moving forward this year. Um because as you start to look at all of these opportunities, we don't want to see these as one-off projects. We really want to set a culture in Albany way that really carries through this idea of continuous process improvement, good public stewardship um and and really supplying that value to our residents. And so we're working to um we're working on some training right now um that's going to work on that cultural piece for the organization as well as give employees a really good toolkit um to start to um really amplify that throughout the organization. Um, and then you'll see in there the automation and process enhancements. Um, we've named a couple of them already, so I'm not going to spend too much time on that. And then again, the new strategic plan is going to be a tremendous opportunity. Um, this is the first major update of that plan um, and of those vision areas. And it's going to really drive what those work plans look like, what that budget recommendation looks like, and really be a space to set that next era um, for Albany. So, we're very excited um, about what that looks like moving forward. And with that, tried to go very quickly because I know I'm last. Um, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Council Council, you have anything? I do not. Um, thank you. When uh when will we have a uh update on the strategic plan survey? Yeah. Um, so actually in your next meeting. Um, so the 23rd, um, SS Wilson's group is going to be joining us virtually. Um, and they are going to go over the results of the, uh, engagement survey, talking through the trends, what you heard. Um, and so that is going to be this this next meeting on the calendar for you. So, I question about the facility.

So, we're outgrowing this building is what I'm hearing. Is there any plans 5 years, 10 years to look at either expanding this building? I don't think we can. footprint or this landscape, right? There's a Kayla's got a space utilization. We have a space utilization. I don't know about that, but we still we still have not enough space for the number of people we have.

So that's that's so that's actually what that plan is. So one of the big things that we are trying to do and you may remember back into the budget there were a lot of assessments feasibility studies that were included in this last iteration of the budget and that is us recognizing that there's a lot of information we don't have um largely because we've had a long time without having the capacity to do that due diligence. Um so we're essentially doing sort of a current state analysis on not only this building um but all of our buildings what's our liabilities outstanding um really to help us understand where we can move where we can address and how do we grow um and I will say um through one of the key things that we're looking at right now is it's really expensive to expand a building and not just one time ongoing you have to pay to continue to you know heat cool um you know just run general electric through that building maintain maintain that building. Um, so it's oftentimes really difficult from a cost perspective to justify expanding a building. So we've been working really hard uh with our consultants right now to see are there ways for us to rework this existing building um so that we can not only accommodate the team that we have today, but accommodate the team that we expect to have over the next 1015 years. Um and what would that look like? Um so we're going through that process right now. Um but more to come hopefully in this next budget session.

Thank you. Councelor Smith has a question on that same theme. Can you um address the myth of the third floor capacity? That's what it is. A myth. It I believe it is a myth. Um and it w it would have been that end of the building only is but that's not true, is it? Um so I if I had a swear jar for um every time I hear about the third floor. So um yes and no there is there is the capability of of adding a third floor to to this building. Um now what that looks like in the details and the cost.

It's not realistic. Um and so that is one that we had to kind of go through that that exercise because one of the first things that we heard when it was like we're looking at facilities. Um we need to kind of look at how we grow. everyone was like, "Let's build a third floor." Um, but um, we're really trying to focus in on how we utilize the space we have today to its maximum ability because if you think about it, the way people work has also changed significantly. Um, we have some pretty um, you know, where you used to maybe have very um, a lot of paper, a lot of people who were sitting at their desk full-time, we have started to implement things like flexible work scheduling. So, that really starts to look different. you've seen the movement or the shift of the organization over to the laptop so that you can move and work to other spaces. It creates more opportunity for us to have meetings in in you know productive meetings in different conference rooms or in hallway or wherever versus having to have those in our offices or our cubicles. That opens up a lot of different possibilities we didn't have even you know five t years ago. So yeah

thank you great report. Great report. So is that it Peter? Is this the last one? Yes. I I think you uh you've seen that you have an extraordinary team of directors and staff is wonderful as well. So thank you. So next is business from the council. Um what we start with last time I started on staff. Let's start with councelor Smith.

I can the only thing I can uh report on is that um I did my my promised um testimony at the legislature this morning before the House Committee on Transportation in support of House Bill 408 um which would establish a short lifespan task force to look deeply into transit funding statewide. I was one of 15 witnesses at the public hearing and um one one person in opposition um many questions um not for me only one only one question for me and that was about uh the changes in our writership num numbers over the last few years it's doubled since 2023 which is a good thing um but I as a result of that I apologize I uh have been yawning off and on. I had to do working person scheduling today rather than retired person with a part-time job scheduling and I am tired.

Thank you, Councelor McGee.

Um yes. Um first of all, thank you to um all the staff directors who provided the updates on Monday and today. It is really good to hear the trends, the challenges and things that they um and the successes and things we uh can look forward to. So, I appreciate that. With that being said, I I do still have a question regarding H bill I mean, I'm sorry, H U House Bill 4148 regarding the the transian tax. I know that it was stated on Monday that this was a priority for council and I'm and I don't remember this being a priority for since I've been on council. And so I think if we're going to talk about priorities of council, I think it would be really um beneficial to kind of have a refresher on what those priorities are. Not every time, but sometimes because I think that things get um I don't want to say confused, but for it just seems like there was a little bit of less transparency regarding that. And I know that councelor Nen stated last year when sending folks to the legislature like what are we lobbying for? And I just I just would like to have information regarding that bill because I do not remember it being this particular since I've been on council a priority.

We we can arrange an update for uh your legislative priorities and what were established last time you went through that exercise. Last time was 35 something. Pardon me. The bill was 35 something. It wasn't forward. I think what councelor McGee is talking about is what are the legislative priorities of the council. Okay. Because I just don't remember that one being one that we had established. And maybe it was one prior to me coming on council, but I just I don't remember it being since I've been on council. So, it'd be good to get that refresher of what our priorities are. Sure. Thank you. Thanks, Council Mloud.

Thank you. Um, yes. I would just like to echo councelor McGee's statements on legislative priorities and how they are established. We need more information about that. Um updated more frequently, reminded more frequently um just more information more often u and uh make sure that we're all on the same page about what our uh priorities are. Um also last Friday I attended the first taste Oregon. I just wanted to say welcome to Albany. Uh they they moved here from from Salem. So welcome First Taste Oregon. Also a week ago today I attended a seminar about finding affordable and accessible solutions for communities. It was a panel discussion focusing on initiatives and solutions for housing affordability, availability, and empathetic responses to unhoused communities. U that was a a great uh great seminar. I I really enjoyed that. Also, I noticed that the immigration and support services were added to the city website. Thank you to the city manager for the email update on that today and um and the information that has been made available. Um that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Brlin. Uh nothing other than to also echo the sentiment about particularly right before we go into a legislative session um ensuring that we're all on the same page about legislative priorities particularly before things are sent in the name of the city uh would be great. Councelor Thompson.

Thank you. Um I want so Peter Canady came and talked to us before and and I wanted to thank him for bringing up an issue that hasn't been formally um I mean it's been talked about kind of uh on occasion during my time here, but we haven't grappled with it in any real way. And that's um that's homeless, homeless camps in kind of a big picture way because it doesn't just happen where near his property that that's one of the largest uh well a larger one seemed like via the pictures. Um, and what I know is our parks department has a fund for cleanup. And I know I am very supportive of cleaning up as quick as we can and being very aggressive on cleanups. Um, you know, there are laws against camping. I can't camp and and they shouldn't camp either on public, you know, areas. And I but I realize there's a bigger picture in that. Anytime you bring that up, you start to get into a discussion of how do you solve this enormous issue of homelessness. Um, so we need we should tackle we can be the leaders on it. We can only do so much as a city. And that's why I hearken back to we have obligations to enforce city codes and to do the cleanup and and I know that budget line is already half expended already in this bianium. And so it's a cost. It's a cost. But we got to be serious. You know, when we talk about things like the trail from Corval to Albany, lots of people say, "Yeah, it gets lots of support, but a lot of people get very concerned that there's going to be homeless camps nearby when we discuss the trail at uh or the proposed trail in um Menite Village.

Lots of people brought up it. It's a thing out there and and what the answers are, I don't know. I think there needs to be a sense of urgency amongst groups. There's lots of groups involved in this. We need to have a sense of urgency of what we can do. Um the Albany partnership I'm a part of um does some like co-housing. Uh, and we have asked to do some more through the city's CDBG, CD, whatever it's called, the community development block grant, which is federal money, which I will also say that we have a federal government that's more interested in tax breaks for the wealthy than taking on this kind of an issue, not only here, but in communities across the country. That CDBG grant could be much bigger, and we would do a lot of good things with it. But um I would just I don't have a a great answer, but I think in general we at some point we need to talk about aggressively with the kind of groups that are on the front lines of this what we can do. Um because uh as Peter pointed out, it's growing and it's an issue that's talked about in the community and u it kind of falls on us whether we like it or not. That's my business.

Thank you, Councelor Newton.

Yeah. Um, wanted to just say thanks to everyone who came out tonight and spoke. Uh, sometimes we have no one, but it's really a privilege to be able to hear from, you know, more than a handful of folks. Uh, Peter Kanei, Trisha, Christopher Glover, uh, Mark, Stephen, thank you. Appreciate you taking the time to be here. Um, Peter, totally heard on Tina Landing, trash maintenance issues, the need for better followth through. I think it'd be really helpful um for the council and for the public to have a clearer picture of cleanup schedules and next steps. And I'd appreciate an update from staff and I do think a maybe a a council site visit would make sense to see some areas. Um Christopher, I know he's not here. Oh, you are still here. Okay. Um want to acknowledge you shared today about lighting issues and about trying to reach the city. That sounds really frustrating. Um, just wanted to clarify as well, just because I I've had I made the same mistake. Um, street lighting, exterior lighting, those are usually handled by the utility provider. That's um, Pacific Power or Consumer Power. But, um, something I want us to look into when you when you're calling the city, when you're calling our um, uh, why am I blanking on the name of it right now? But you're getting your calls the

utility billing.

No, no, no. It wasn't utility billing. It was um, what Chris Chandell used to do? code compliance. There we go. Thank you. My brain is still firing. I promise. Um and you were getting bounced or the call was dropping. That's not cool. I'd love us to look into that. I hope that isn't happening to other people. Um Tesa, thanks for raising um broader health and safety concerns. I appreciate it. Um Steven, I believe he's gone now, but wanted to acknowledge the fear and and grief that he was um expressing. Um, and then lastly, not to be a broken record, um, I want to address a process issue that I think we need to get clearer on as a body, um, I also was frustrated to learn that legislative testimony was submitted on behalf of the state city. Um, stating that the council agreed to an item without the full council being pulled, the email being the letter being sent to everyone, or even a discussion or vote taking place. Um, I reached out to several of my friends that serve on councils in other cities here in Oregon and the standard process I heard from them is that legislative positions representing the council are discussed at council meetings and voted on before they're submitted. That is the process I want to expect us to move forward um and follow follow through with moving forward. Um, Council McGee addressed this earlier, but we encountered a similar issue last year. Um, I did also raise concerns then for clarity and transparency if testimony or correspondence is going to take is going to take out the is going to go out in the name of the council. It should reflect an action the council has uh has already taken. Um, and I also wanted to clarify because I have a nice little commute and I found the meeting um the record for legislative priorities. So, the last time I'm aware that the council formally discussed and voted on priorities was July 25th, 2022 in connection with that was in connection with the League of Oregon Cities, the legislative agenda. And at that meeting, the council voted to advance the following five priorities.

Local funding to address homelessness, infrastructure funding to support needed housing, addressing Measure 110 shortcomings, property tax reform, infrastructure financing and resilience. TLT reform is not among those priorities. In the meeting recording, then councelor Novak, Mayor Johnson, and city manager Peter Trodson did express that they felt that TLT reform should be a priority. Um, but kind of acknowledged and lamented that, oh my gosh, it isn't one. It isn't an option that League of Oregon cities gave us, right? So, but going forward, I want I expect that legislative positions attributed to this council should come back to us for discussion and direction before they are submitted. And Peter, I understand that we had a more casual process about this over this last year, but I really do think it is important we have a more formalized process and have that voted on before the council. And for staff or anyone speaking on behalf of the entire city and council to hold back on any comments on legislative testimony until this process is finalized, as always, in your personal capacity, totally okay. Like say, "Hey, I'm Michael. I'm a local parent and I care about X, Y, and Z." Um, in addition, I would really like to request that either the mayor or staff reach out to Representative Javity, Representative Walters, and to the chairs and vice chairs of the House Committee on Revenue to let them know that the testimony that was submitted was not the consensus of council and that it was sent an error. Thank you.

Actually, the last time that you considered legislative priorities was August 5th, 2024, and TLT flexibility was something that you voted on. So, I would request if you want to change that testimony, then you should probably tee it up for a vote and see if that's actually what you want to change. There's no good reason why you would change TLT flexibility. That's a good thing for the city's budget how it is. I understand that you agree with that bill. I do not agree with that bill and I do not agree with the process that this is that the how this is undertaken. And if the majority of the council thinks that that's an incorrect

or an inadequate bill, then we should vote on it. you you did vote on it August 5th, 2024. However, that November, you had new counselors come in who didn't who who may not have agreed and then additionally, you've had another counselor come in even later than that. So, we have inherited the legislative uh priorities of councils in the past and custom is normally the case that councils inherit the work of previous councils. There's nothing saying you can't change that. But in the absence of taking a step to change it, that's what we have to go.

As councelor Van Dlin stated earlier as well, I do think that prior to a legislative session beginning, we should have where we hey see, hey, these are the bills that are are are going to be out. What what do we want to actually speak on and actually have that discussion prior to the legislative session beginning? I think that that that is that's fair. The history of the short session is that it was supposed to clean up clean up uh what hadn't been done. So I think the way the LOC conducts this now

is they conduct it every two years to try to establish an agenda. We have done it in coordination with them. If that's not adequate for us, we can certainly change that process, especially since the short session now seems to have more and more crammed into it. Yeah. Second on. Yeah, I have a comment I'd like to make. I want to add to the TLT discussion. I want to remind the council of the many discussions that we have had about the Orla lawsuit, Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association lawsuit against us that was directly tied to TLT. Uh refund.

Yes. Um f what's the right word? Um flexibility. Um, so that has been a a constant for several years. And on uh on my own behalf, I spoke for myself at the at the hearing today. I said I am an Alb city councelor and an appointed member of the Lynn County Special Transportation Advisory Committee here in support. I here is in support. Yeah, I don't think there was an issue. There's no issue of that. And I was actually going to have media clip because I thought you did a fabulous job.

Well, thank you. Um I I just want to thank you, Peter, for reminding us that we do take a vote on legislative priorities every two years. And those are general topics. They are they don't have bill numbers attached to them. When the bills come out in the in the flood that comes out in at after the start of the session, I suppose we could do that. We could take a look at it. That's a good idea. I support that. Go ahead.

Yeah. for for me this is a process thing more than anything like that I'm the the TLT the specifics notwithstanding I'm I'm concurring on on the process notes here um particularly when we do have new members of the council uh I think it's prudent to

before a legislative session have a refresher on those priorities and if at that time the council feels like adjustments need to be made that would be the time before the session starts, especially a short session where things get a little crazy. Um, yeah, that's that's where I'm coming. This is not about one specific piece of testimony for me. This is about process.

Good. Thank you. So, my time. Um, I want to address Peter Kaggi's comment and I do apologize. I was in Southern California rest. So, I hadn't been reached out to because I just didn't have the capacity to take on anything other than my family and my laying my uncle to rest. And so, I got back on Monday. Um, and so you're on my list to call. And so, I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. Um, and then the LOC president will having her regional meeting here on the 13th. It's her birthday. Um, so I'm buying a chocolate cake and I'd love to have you guys join us in in chambers here. And I think the meeting is at it's from 11 to 1. Yeah, 11 to 1

on Friday. On Friday, Friday the 13th, no doubt. Okay.

Um with that, I'll go to the city manager's office and thank you, Mr. Mayor. I you had mentioned the one thing that I was going to mention, which is next Friday's event. Um, I did want to note also that um, you know, when when when you hear talk about um, uh, cleaning up camps, um, I did provide the council that information on the 26th. Um, and you heard that we had gone through over half of our budget for the year. You also heard that the weather right now is not conducive. So, um um Kim Leane has has mentioned to me that um we need to wait out wait for the area to dry out a little bit more. We are working with Apex uh property cleanup to do a cleanup, but that won't be for a few more weeks as we hope that the uh area will will dry out a little bit further. the dollars, the limited dollars that we have to do those cleanups, uh, as you can imagine, they go much further when the cleanup is not done in muddy and mucky, uh, conditions. There the adopt a park folks do have uh, cleanup for that area on their calendar. Um, but they don't have an exact date yet uh, for that, but it'll be but it'll be announced as soon as they do. And uh, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Um, next meeting is Monday, February 23rd, 2026 at 4 PM. It will be a work session and the Wednesday session is February 25th at 6 PM here in Chambers. With that, I will adjourn the meeting.