City Council - Regular Meeting

I'll print out a copy to keep it up here. Good evening. Uh, thank you for coming today to Alman City Council work session at 4 p.m. on Monday, March the 9th, 2026. Uh, calling the meeting to order. Can we have a roll call, please? Councelor Van Dremel here. Councelor McCloud, present. Councelor Smith, here. Councelor McGee, present. Councelor Newton, she is um not going to make it tonight. She's ill. Councelor Thompson here. Mayor Johnson here. Thank you very much. Next on your agenda item two, public comment. Public comments is a time for Alman residents to speak and for counselors to listen. The council won't discuss topics or Oh, Mr. Mayor. Yes. If you could give me just a couple of seconds.

You're right. I forgot about that. Good evening, Mayor and counselors. As you all know, uh since November of last year, we have uh worked very uh diligently to find um the best person we could find to be Alby's next public works director. So, uh after several uh months process, um we had uh a pool of several very good candidates narrowed down to three who had interviews. And I'm happy to tell you and introduce you tonight to Paul Trumbino who's sitting back there and he might wave or stand up. And Paul, I can't see you back there. Come up here. Come on.

Paul comes to uh to us from Gley, Colorado, but he brings a very extensive background in transportation and u has strong background transportation and experiencing and navigating complex uh legal issues. So, I don't know, Paul, you I I told you you wouldn't have to say anything, but the mayor's called you forward, so good evening, mayor and council. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thank Peter and Kayla, uh, for the opportunity to be part of the city. I'm very excited. Been been a great Last week was the first week and, uh, it's been, uh, super fun. So, looking forward the team's been great. Um so um u just appreciate the opportunity. We're going to do great great work for everybody in the city.

Well, thank I'm sure the council will be scheduling any time with you just to get to know you a little better. Yeah. But welcome to Albany. Welcome to the city of Albany and um hope your transition goes well and um hope your family if you have family enjoy the city of Albany. Yes. Yep. Looking forward to it. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Thanks, Paul.

So item two again, public comment is a time for Albony residents to speak and for councilors to listen. The council will take won't discuss topics or make decisions during the public comment but will take those items comments under advisement. Speakers are limited to three minutes and must follow follow the rules c rules and observe the same standards of decorum. If unable to do so, they will be asked to step down and take a seat in the audience for the rest of the meeting. When you get to the microphone, please state your name and whether or not you live in the city of Albany. Mark Stewart. Uh good evening everyone. My name is Mark Stewart. Uh I live here in Albany. Uh I wanted to talk about the flock cameras that got brought up last week. Uh well last session. Um and uh I'm glad that you guys passed that resolution to suspend the usage of those cameras. Uh I just wanted to bring some information forward for you folks uh just so that you are in the know about these flock systems. uh Flock Security uh one of their primary investors is Peter Theal. He is one of the largest investors and Flock is feeding a lot of their data directly to him. And if you don't know who this guy is, you really should look him up because a lot of the things that are happening right now nationwide have his fingerprints on them. And just as a brief example, uh this is the guy that has

come out and said in all seriousness that Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist. He's he's on a mission to prevent the return of the Antichrist. it just he he goes way way off the rails and is also as it turns out now that we're getting more and more of these Epstein files released he was very heavily affiliated with Epstein. So uh I don't think that this is a a man that you would have come over and babysit your children. So, I don't think he should be trusted with the public's private data, any of it. Also, and this is kind of terrifying. So, under or O RS192, the public records uh law, Oregon's public record law is very, very um open to the public. Meaning anyone, you, me, anybody, we can make a public records request for all of the flock data in this state. All of it, anybody can. And with that data, we can track each other's driving habits. I could find out where everybody lives, where they're like where they happen to be during certain times of the day. Uh, you can use AI to parse out like actual driving patterns. Uh and that's that's just the legal side of it. Uh Washington State actually uh someone took them to court for it and a judge ruled in the public's favor for it. So there's already precedent in the event that a city fights back on that. So even if APD does not directly share their data with say ICE, they can have any of their employees go out as

citizens and make that exact same request, get all the exact same data and have the same effect. Thank you. Item three on the agenda is a resolution to rename the art gallery in city hall. Director Leane, pages two in your packet.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thank you so much for the opportunity to chat today. Hopefully, this will be short and sweet as back in October, our arts commission came and presented to everybody. And during that, we talked about honoring um Gwen Marcase, who was a local artist who was involved with the Boys and Girls Club, LBCC, and the lead painter over at the carousel. And so um the commission went through and and looked at folks that they would like to honor with the gallery naming. At that time, council sounded interested and as a result, I am back with a resolution for your consideration. So you council, what do you think? Any discussion? Council,

remind me if this is on the agenda on the consent calendar for Wednesday. It is. Thank you. Have bring it back. Sounded good then. Sounds good. Now got a bunch of yes, nods. Yes. Perfect. Shameless plug one more time. So, um, Talking Arts Commission Young Artist Showcase. It's out there right now. We had over 30 submission from folks. Uh,

a lot of sixth, seventh, and eighth 8-year-olds. It's amazing. We still have a little bit of space left. So, if folks are interested, get in contact with me. They just have to be um a member of the of of school aged. Uh and then we're going to have a reception on the 3rd of April. So, if you're available, come on out as it's been really pretty fabulous to see what our youngsters think um is a pride of their community. So, thank you so much. Can you get that time out to the council, please? Date and the time from the Oh, it's the reception. Yes, it um goes um from 5 until 6:30 and I think I've already added it to your calendar, mayor. So, thank you very much. No problem. Okay,

next item four, ADA rule changes. Matt Harrington, pages 3 through 11 in your packet. Information only. Bear with me for one second. Bear with me for another second. Oh, no worries.

Supposed to be raining right now. Fine. Okay, there we go. That's the danger of wearing multiple hats. Okay, so um I wanted to give you guys just a quick overview and I think you all received this slide deck ahead of time. So, uh, those of you who are in like higher ed, uh, may already have received some information from your own institutions about this, but um, I just wanted to provide this as a, um, just anformational briefing about kind of some of the things that city staff is having to deal with uh, in regards to ADA rules change. So, what is changing? So, uh, the Department of Justice, uh, has changed title two of the ADA. Um, and the impact of that is that all state and local government websites, apps, social media content, uh, video captioning, I didn't put that there, um, must now meet uh, what's called the web consortium advisory group, um, 2.1 doubleA standards. That's a lot of acronym and version numbers and but uh what that

means is we need to have greater accessibility when it comes to um our web content really is what it comes down to. So for cities with a population of over 50,000 uh our compliance deadline is April 24th of this year. Uh cities that are under that threshold get an additional year. So, why is this important? Um, digital access is a civil right. Uh, especially in this day and age. Uh, there's no, um, getting around that because we live online a lot. So, um, but it does mirror physical ADA access, which, you know, that's been around for decades now. So um part of uh this compliance involves risk mitigation. So um it can if institutions choose to do nothing which I don't think that's the case uh because most are aware of this rule. Um, but if they were to choose to do nothing, they're uh opening themselves up to liability from the Department of Justice themselves um or private lawsuits as well. So, um and plus it just builds community trust. It's it is best practices. Um, these are things that we should be doing. Now, whether we have the resources to do them uh in the time and manner that the DOJ has outlined, that could be up for debate, but these are good things and it results in better usability for everyone. And I put this slide in. I really like it. Um, I think what people tend to focus on when we say people with disabilities are permanent disabilities. And that is certainly a concern because

there is a significant portion of the population that have those permanent disabilities. But there are, as you can see, many temporary and situational disabilities where adding accessibility helps everyone because I think most of us have been in some of these situations before of temporary or situational disabilities. So, what work have we already been doing here at the city? So, we do have um what we call our digital accessibility compliance plan. and I can send that out to you if you're interested in seeing it. Um, we were uh so I belong to a group that we have of local um public information officers here in the in the region and um that includes Benton County, Lynn County, the school districts, uh Samaritan Health Services, um city of Corvalis, city of Lebanon. Um we uh back kind of when we started this process, we were only one of two jurisdictions with Benton County being the other that actually have a plan. So that was really step one. Um it's kind of foundational to um you know the the implementation of greater accessibility standards. So um I will be glad to send that out to you. Um, one of the other things that we um have done is started on a process of migrating or mitigating PDF forms which are huge um notorious for being uh not very accessible. Um and so we're we're starting that process. It's a very um long and involved uh process. People's work habits are you know hard it's hard to change. humans are are resilient and

adaptable but also sometimes change resistant. So um one of the the good um things that we are doing Oh yeah, I noted it there. So, uh, Eric, um, came to you with, uh, a product that we're implementing for agenda management. And one of the benefits of that product will be that all of those agendas and minutes, even though technically some of them are archival and aren't subject to remediation under these changes, they will be uh, accessible. So um investing in technologies like that is is a good bang for the buck. So um we're also have already engaged with uh departments to define like what their exposure is because each department is different. They all have you know different vendor websites uh that serve some kind of function on our our main city website. um various amounts of forms, PDFs, etc. So, um we've started that. We've also started some citywide training. Um and then obviously I wanted to kind of brief you guys on what what we're doing as well. We're making some um changes to our document templates to again like create more of a a baseline for that accessibility. I think you well this very template right here um that was one of the changes about uh a little over a year ago I think that we implemented that. So, and then working with our procurement staff to make sure that our outside vendors, even though they are third parties because the content that they are publishing is in the name of the city, we are ultimately liable. And so, we want to make sure that our

procurement and our contracts reinforce the standards that we're being held to so that they are also held to those with our agreements with them. So what work remains and so I think I kind of touched on a lot of this. It's a lot of that technical like um you know remediating documents uh web pages um and really that comes down to people. Um at this point we do not have uh resources allocated for um like technology solutions. Um, I would love to, you know, come back and have that put in a future budget, um, because that really would help, uh, from a lot of this manual remediation. But for now, we're talking about adding tasks onto people's plates um, to get this work done. But the the good part is that we're allowed to prioritize and so we can pick those things that um are of greatest use or more frequent use. And in a lot of ways there's side benefits to um moving some of these things then from say a fillable PDF form to a true online form in one of our platforms that handles that. So, it's a little bit of um you know, accessibility, but also just getting up to 2026. So, it's not all it's not all bad news, but um so, uh and then of course ongoing maintenance, like this isn't a one-time thing. this is like changing habits and and uh getting in to an accessibility mindset of of this is just the way that we do things now. So that goes with you know

periodic audits and and regular staff training. So, um, some other opportunities that we're looking at toward the future, not in April, but ongoing. Um, we're talking about, uh, a wholesale website update upgrade really. Um, that's something that will have to come back in a future budget. But uh in addition to accessibility uh benefits that also means um some staff efficiencies as well uh not so centralized in one location and it really gives uh staff some ownership of their content that we push out to the public. So, um, again, you know, I think I don't know if I've talked to you. I know I've talked to staff repeatedly about plain language and if you know what that concept is. Um, and uh, the benefits of using plain language concepts extend to accessibility uh, because the content is not as wordy and easier to understand. It also has side benefits to like say automatic uh automated translation as well because if you're not using a lot of um uh cultural idioms and things like that um it can translate a lot more efficiently because machine translation isn't too far off. It's getting better all the day. So um back to accessibility mindset and and helping everyone. This isn't about, you know, the 7% of the population that have permanent disabilities. We certainly want to strive for that, but it's really about the 100% of Albany having better access to their material.

So, and then greater collaboration with our regional partners. I mentioned the group um the Lynbettton PIO's group. um this is this project um everybody's kind of scrambling but we're all benefiting from uh our combined work so it's resulted in a lot better uh collaboration amongst our regional partners so um finally what happens on April 25th the day after um we have a defensible plan um and we will be able to demonstrate progress toward complian clients. Um, I think that goes a long way. Um, and we will continue to follow that plan and adjust our timeline as our resources allow. Uh, that's the best we can do. Um, I can't say whether, you know, on April 25th the DOJ is going to decide to put out lawsuits to every, you know, city and county and and school district that hasn't complied. But it's certainly possible. Again, it's risk mitigation. I I find it unlikely, but you know, this is being broadcast out to YouTube, so they'll probably pick up on this. But anyway, um we are aiming for progress first and perfection is unlikely, but we will certainly uh aim for that. So anyway, in closing, better accessibility for all. And I just wanted to provide this update as a as a perspective on what we are dealing with in the next like few months and ongoing. So any questions?

Council, any questions? Councelor Smith and Council Mloud. I know that this has been a an a rolling issue since for at least um 23 years. And when did you get the the this um hard deadline in April?

So the Department of Justice actually uh officially entered this um rule change in 2024, but there was a lot of uncertainty at the time, number one, if it would even make it to final rule making. And then with the change in administration, there was a lot of like things up in the air as well. And like I said, we have taken some steps. Um, it was unclear like what the picture was like even in 2024 when they passed the the rules change. Um, because it I can't remember how many pages it is, but it's a lot to go through and um, even now there was kind of some uh, misinterpretation of the language in the rules change. for instance, um I I don't mean to out them, but GAPS thought they had an additional year um because of how many students they serve, which is under 50,000.

Um because of the way that it was written in the rules change, um they found out fairly recently that um no, they are subject to the same deadline that we are because they operate within the city of Albany. So, but Becca at the uh Greater Albany Public Schools is making like huge strides on her own. So, um we're all just kind of getting there as resources allow.

Three more comments. Um acknowledging that that there was confusion about what the rules said emphasizes the importance of plain language in every document. Um uh for speaking for myself only, I am glad to know that the PDF thing, the fillable PDF thing is going to change for the better. Um that as most people know, I have problems with those things and I ask for help all the time. Um and I can't remember now what the third one was, but thank you very much for doing this. Oh yes, the third thing was that great graphic. Oh. Um, I was checking things off. Oh, yes. I I have problems when it's noisy or um when whatever ear infection, that was really a good Where did that come from?

Um, it was from another jurisdiction. I think actually internationally, but I just it when doing trainings with staff, um, sometimes it's it's hard for people to relate to those permanent disabilities. And so this was a way to kind of broaden that focus and get people to think about relatable scenarios that they may have had. So very good. Thanks also. Thank you. Um I think this sounds like a a a great um common sense thing to do for a Well, we don't really have a choice. So

Right. Right. Right. I I I feel like this this should have been done 20 years ago. Um I I I do have concerns with uh the slide that says there may be some sections of the website which come down temporarily. Is that um because you won't have them in compliance by the deadline and when it there is no like right now I couldn't give you a list of things that might come down. It's just that we are saving that as a possible

um I don't know the right metaphor to use but anyway um as a strategy to be in compliance. I I hope and I I um we are going to work hard to minimize that, but um that's certainly something that if if we were looking at risk like it is better for us to take that section down um chances are because like I said, we can prioritize things. It wouldn't be something that would be of high use because we would have already mitigated that. So I I can't say what that would be. It's just one of those things that may happen if we are forced into it.

Got it. Thank you. Any other counselors? Um I'm I found it on the website when this morning when I searched for it and there are some pre-existing um exceptions it looks like. Yes. So I'm happy I'm happy to see that there are giving you some wiggle room like like not not going back and doing all the agendas and all that things. There are exceptions. They are pretty limited. Um but uh they do exist

and I feel confident between our our plan um our progress from now uh through April 24th and beyond that um you know we could honestly like if we were to be called in front of a federal judge with the DOJ that we could say we are making progress and demonstrate that. So, um I think we're doing pretty darn well. Be a long line of people if that happens. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's us and everyone else. So, okay. Yeah. Well, thank you. Council appreciates it. Um next is business from the council. I'll start with councelor Thompson. Uh nothing tonight.

Thank you, councelor Mc Mloud. Nothing tonight. Thank you, sir. Councelor Vanalin, also nothing tonight. Councelor Smith, nothing. And councelor McGee, nothing. And I have nothing. U city manager report.

Wow. I I'm not going to break a perfect record other other than to say that uh I I just want to uh commend Matt Harrington for helping us stay a breast of these ADA changes. It is still the original unfunded mandate. There are no funds that come with it. It's pretty complex. Matt has stayed ab breast of it for many many months now and has provided training to all hands and I think we're in much better shape than than many uh municipalities around. So uh kudos to to Matt for making sure that that's the case and that's all I have mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. With that I'll adjourn the meeting. I will see you all on Wednesday evening at 6 pm for a council meeting. I'll journ now.