City Council - Regular Meeting

Bring this meeting to order. Hello. I am I am the mayor for the Kaylee Nielsen. And

yeah. Yeah. Madam mayor and members of the council, I would like the recorder to call officially call the role, and we'll hear a little bit from the mayor for the day. Councilor Duggar?

I'm here.

Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg? I'm here. Councilor Hassan? Here. Councilor Kimmy?

Here.

Councilor Teeter? Here. Councilor Tibman? Here. Mayor Beatty? Here.

Here. What? I

mean, today, you could totally have the job. It's a long schedule. So, madam mayor, tell us a little bit about your vision for the city and what you would like to see changed.

My vision for Beaverton is a space where green living is easy and where we can my goal is for there to be more education on programs and materials for people to use to help keep to help keep the city safe and healthy. One example of this is the Purple Box program. I am and my family knew about it, but a lot of my friend a lot of my friends did not, including my chief of staff, and the so we need more people to know about this program for it to be a bigger impact on, on the environment.

That's awesome. And when you serve as the mayor for the day, you go through a worksheet on an idea and questions, and you go through multiple questions. And when you present something, you have to come up with a plan. So that is what she did this evening. So thank you for being the mayor for the day. We're gonna take a a photo with the council. You could have your chief of staff up, and then, I'll take back over. How's that sound? Alright. Let's do it.

Okay. The third person, not the parent taking a photo down there, was the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce who was a Girl Scout in which I have on good authority two things. She said she will buy Girl Scout cookies from any Girl Scout that ever asks her, and today is her birthday. Alright, counsel. We have a lengthy agenda today. We are going to start with a proclamation,

while visitor comment, presentation two presentations,

an action item, city manager's report, a consent agenda, a public hearing on fees, two three work sessions, and council items. Alright. With that, we will start tonight with an award of appreciation for Jim McCrite. Jim McCrite has dedicated more than three decades to strengthening the city of Beaverton through exceptional civic leadership, volunteer service, and support for adult or for arts, culture, business, and community development. Whereas Jim most recently served as the executive director of the Oregon Startup Center from 2020 to 2025, advancing Beaverton's innovation ecosystem and supporting entrepreneurs following early service as the board chair from 2004 to 2007.

Whereas Jim co founded the Beaverton Arts Foundation in 1999 and played a pivotal role in establishing and sustaining the Patricia Resource Center for the Arts, serving as board chair for seventeen years, and as a board member for twenty four years. And whereas Jim has provided significant civic leadership for city of Beaverton, including a service as the chair of the citizen committee to build public safety center from 2014 to 2016, chair of the Beaverton urban redevelopment agency from 2010 to 2018, Vice Chair and Board Member of the Beaverton Budget Committee 2013 to 2016, Chair and Board Member of the Beaverton Arts Commission 1995 to 2001, Chair and Board Member of the Beaverton Area Chamber of Commerce from 1997 to 2002, and member of the THPRD Bond Advisory Committee. And whereas, Jim has enriched the art arts culture landscape throughout Oregon and beyond through his years of distinguished service, including as president and board member of the Mary Hill Museum of Arts from 1995 to present, past trustee and treasurer and finance committee member of the High Desert Museum, patriot and volunteer with the Portland Art Museum, and past president and chair of the National Museum Trustee Association, and past chair of Washington County Museum.

And whereas Jim's leadership, generosity, and commitment to public service has left a lasting legacy that will continue to benefit Beaverton and the region for generations. Now for the city of Beaverton City Council expresses its deep appreciation to Jim McCrite for his extraordinary and enduring contributions to the city of Beaverton and honors him for his lifetime of service of arts, civic engagement, and community progress. Yeah. I will just Jim's service is pretty legendary in the service, and there's not too many big buildings around here of boards that he didn't serve on and touch. And I think it's an exemplary past.

He was my mom's neighbor for a long time, kind to everybody, and we're just excited to give you this small token of our appreciation for your service. It's definitely not enough, but I know you got more in the tank, so I got another board coming up for you. No worries. Let's take a photo. Alright.

Tonight's, next order of business is public comment. As a reminder, public comment is an essential part of local government business and essential to the city council. However, in order to stay compliant with Oregon's open meeting laws, this is not a time for dialogue, rather a time to listen. If follow-up is needed, the city manager and city recorder are taking notes. You will have two minutes to address the city council once you are ready to go. And up first, we have Jacqueline followed by Caitlin.

All right. We have someone joining us from Ensenada, Mexico for this meeting, who I'm speaking on behalf of tonight. I'm ready. On October 29, my employee, Jaden Hernandez, received a phone call from her husband letting her know that he had been detained by ICE. While Jaden and I worked our normal shift that morning, masked men in plain clothes waited until her husband Tony was leaving for work, violently pulled him from his work truck, pointed a gun at him, and loudly proclaimed, we don't effing want you in our country.

This happened in a parking lot of an apartment complex here in Beaverton. There were no witnesses and no video footage of the violent assault. Tony is a Beaverton small business owner, and Jaden has was months away from opening her own coffee company here in Beaverton. They are kind, hardworking Beaverton community members, the very ones that make our community here so great. But now, they are no longer here, with Jaden having to sell everything they own and move to Mexico in order to reunite with her husband again.

It was that or months waiting for a court date with no guarantee that Tony would be adequately fed, nights sleeping on concrete, the fear of being deported at any time to any country, the fear of the judicial system, and the starting cost of $5,000 for just retaining fee for an immigration lawyer. I've emailed each of you Tony's full testimony of his experiences, and I hope you prioritize reading every word of it. I do wanna thank you, John. You have been the only familiar face during this difficult time, and I thank you for advocating for the Hernandez family, but also being a friend. My message today is a simple one, and it's twofold.

I'm tired of our leadership in this city not taking this seriously. While you all go attend holiday events and enjoy time with your families, we have residents too scared to leave their home to buy milk. We are among the most targeted cities in The United States right now, and we need each and every one of you to adjust your mindset. ICE has infiltrated our community because we have shown weakness and unwillingness to fight back. Use every resource you have to fight back and protect your community and stand up for everyone, but especially the nearly 20% Latino population that calls Beaverton home.

Kaitlyn in Ambers on deck.

Hello.

On December 10, the city of Beaverton social media released a statement claiming that a single 911 call had been made requesting officers to the parking lot adjacent to the courthouse, at first falsely identified as the police department. The statement reads like pure PR, a memo of competence and a promise that BPD isn't overstepping sanctuary laws and allowing ICE to operate out of their parking lot. On December 10, it appears that Kylie Delgado was harassed by a swarm of ICE agents while documenting vehicle descriptions. This was part of an ongoing civilian effort to keep our neighbors safe by tracking ICE presence and reporting alleged misconduct and excessive use of force to the BPD. Kylie asked her livestream viewers to call 911.

Multiple viewers have commented that they did so, and Kylie herself says she tried flagging down unresponsive police vehicles for over half an hour as 15 ICE agents continue to surround her. Concerned civilians shouldn't have to put their bodies on the line this way, let alone daily. It's time to properly address the state of emergency currently affecting this city's 18% Hispanic and Latino population the most. One way to do so would be to assign a BPD task force to observe ICE movements, so that rather than relying on civilian reports, it'd have the opportunity to stop federal misconduct and abuses of power before irreparable harm is done. Please let there be no more Tonys.

Anything that happens to him and Jayden now will be on our hands. A further solution would be to establish a civilian review board to look over police body cam footage and footage from witnesses like Kylie, so reports of illegal behavior can be documented and investigated, and law enforcement can be held accountable for the rampant and ongoing federal terrorism across the nation. I don't want to keep seeing the mayor on stage echoing the famous call to ask not what our country can do for us, because what I can do for my city is ask leadership to lead. Use the authority and resources only you have to meet the community where we are, and ask how you can make it a welcome and safe community for all. If you're at a loss for more ideas on how to do that, ask John.

Thank you for your time, and thank you in advance for having the courage, compassion, and integrity to help us fight back against a system of lawlessness and terror.

Thank you. Amber? Cline? Evelyn?

Hi, mayor Brady and members of Beaverton City Council. For the record, my name is Evelyn Coacher. Use sheher pronouns, and I am a lifelong Beavertonian. And I'm here to ask you to take stronger action using the city's resources against ICE enforcement in our city. I am very grateful for the actions of councilor Hartmeier Prigg and councilor Hassan during, the city council meeting a month ago to pass unanimously pass four badly needed resolutions to protect Beavertonians in this moment.

However, according to Perks statistics, in the month of November alone, 130 individuals were kidnapped here in Washington County, with over half of them right here in Beaverton, meaning that over the last month, we have lost two Beavertonians every single day to violence from our federal government. I'm sure that city staff will agree that time that they spend on these issues as thoroughly compiled for analysis in agenda bill twenty five two zero five is time well spent if it allows even one person to stay here in Beaverton in their home with their family. However, there have been other much more discouraging developments. As you just heard, a Washington County resident, Kylie Delgado, encountered ICE gathering in a public parking lot owned by the city of Beaverton right next door to a municipal building. Upon calling 911 to report this and upon other of her viewers calling 911 to report this, which can be corroborated by her video, nothing happened for nearly an hour.

By the time any police presence arrived, ICE was long gone. Incidents such as these only serve to sow more distrust and fear in the community and increase skepticism that Beaverton is adhering to Oregon sanctuary laws or indeed its own. Furthermore, FAQs containing instructions for City of Beaverton staff about how to interact with ICE state not to film their activities, which is a protected right here in Oregon and in The United States at large due to ICE illegally perceiving such activity as interference. Gratuitous language was also in those FAQs, stating that helping someone escape or hide from federal officers and stating that that is illegal. That is a sweeping mischaracterization at best, especially when immigration officers frequently do not show judicial warrants and are almost never carrying out federal investigations.

In plainer terms, I would like to think that I live in a city who would not cast out Anne Frank on the street. The actions of this past month are a good start. The emergency declaration states that the city will coordinate their response to and the recovery from immigration enforcement, that it will assist community based organizations, that it will reach out to and support local employers who have been affected by this, and that it will be a resource for adversely affected communities. I look forward to seeing measurable action from this council that proves that the city will live up to these noble goals to protect our immigrant neighbors and family. Thank you.

Amber Klein. Up next is Kylie Delgado and on deck Tammy Carpenter.

Hello. My name is Kylie Delgado. On December 10, I witnessed two suspicious vehicles make a u-turn in the middle of the road and pull into the Beaverton City Courthouse back parking lot. I was concerned because I know this law operates as a safe park space for at risk community members. I drove into the lot ready to film these two vehicles. As I parked, I saw eight ICE vehicles and somewhere between 12 to 15 ICE agents. Once I parked, they pulled closer to my vehicle, and soon I was entirely surrounded. I asked the community that was watching my live feed to dial 911 and to urge Beaverton police to respond. I felt outnumbered and in danger. Several community members made that call.

I looked around and I saw a number of Beaverton police vehicles within a 100 feet of me. I also witnessed several police officers officers walk out from the courthouse building and take notice of what was going on. I spoke from my car's PA system, again, asking police to respond. For thirty nine minutes, I sat in the lot, surrounded and alone. Three calls were made to 911 with my exact location. No one came. A day later, I received an incident report from Beaverton officer Robert Lamb. It alleges he responded and saw nothing. This is a lie. Officer Lamb then contradicts himself and claims he saw 10 people dressed in all black cursing at an unidentified vehicle.

This is also a lie. That day, the Beaverton City government team put out a statement corroborating these lies and have yet to redact their post despite ample evidence that delegitimizes officer Lam's statements. We were told by local legislators nearly a month ago that the best thing we can do when we see ICE activity is to call police. They told us police would respond. Thirty nine minutes later, in the wrong parking lot with a report full of lies is not an acceptable response.

I have a question for the police. If you refuse to do your job, are you prepared for us to do it for you? My question for city government, what sort of accountability are you prepared to take for posting a statement packed with lies? It's still up, by the way. Over 500,000 people have watched that livestream. Over 800 people have commented on those online reports that you made. We demand a public retraction of your statement and an audit of officer Lam's incident report. Thank you.

On deck is Jessica McBride.

Hi, guys. For the record, my name is Tammy Carpenter. I serve on the Beaverton School Board. I am here tonight speaking on my own behalf, about ICE stuff. And I I respect, as elected officials, there are limitations put on us, and my curiosity is how can we think about what we can do under normal circumstances, and how we can expand that under crisis circumstances.

We did many things during COVID that we were told in the past was not possible, and we are now experiencing a crisis. And my curiosity is, what can you guys be doing different now that you don't know is possible? One concerning question I have is around, the SROs, the police, in our schools. I've mentioned with a to a couple of you, some of my concerns, and so I'll just share them with you right now. I asked an SRO a couple months ago what he would do when I showed up at our school.

He did not have an answer. He actually just looked shocked, as if that idea had never crossed his mind. So my curiosity for you guys is, is there an ability to develop protocols for our SROs so that we can enforce our sanctuary status as schools? Additionally, this same SRO is telling our students that they'll be safe, they just need to tell ICE the truth. That's contrary to everything that our civil rights organizations are telling us to do in this moment.

So my curiosity is, are you able to engage with your SROs in this moment to help us and the school district maintain our status as sanctuary schools, and keep our students and community as safe as possible? Really quickly, before in the last ten seconds, I'm hopeful as electeds, we can potentially have a little bit of an ad hoc committee, maybe two or three city councilors, two or three school board members, maybe some members of the Parks Department, where we can come together and talk about how we can work together as elected officials to do as much as possible in this moment to keep our community safe. Thank you so much.

On deck is Doug, and after that is Daisy.

Hello. Good evening, mayor Beatty and city council. My name is Jessica McBride, and I live in the Greenway neighborhood. Beaverton has become a hotspot for apparent federal immigration enforcement. These masked individuals refuse to identify themselves and carry no warrants as they violently kidnap people from our city streets.

Children are afraid that they will return from school to find their parents have been taken, and some have even witnessed ICE at their school bus stops. While I am angry, I am not surprised that the federal government is empowering these racist and inhumane attacks. This is exactly what they said they would do, but I am surprised and disappointed in this elected body. You've established pillars of inclusive community and safety, declaring that diversity is the strength of Beaverton. However, as these violent attacks have worsened, as they promised they would, your response has been slow and woefully inadequate.

Last week, when residents called BPD for help, no one came. And later, as many have shared, a misleading statement was shared on social media. I understand that the federal supremacy clause prevents some direct action by the city, especially with law enforcement, but it does not prevent you from truthfully acknowledging the crisis that our city is facing. This evening and into the future, I urge you to act boldly in pursuit of justice by voting yes on the state of emergency, codifying our sanctuary city resolution, preventing evictions through appropriating funds, directing BPD to keep ice off of city property, and refusing to allow the use of flock cameras by Washington County Sheriff's Department within our city limits. Do not show yourself to be more devoted to order than to justice, to quote doctor King.

You have both the opportunity and responsibility to protect all of our communities. When you stand up, Beaverton will be behind you.

Doug and then Daisy.

Good evening, council. My name is Doug, and I've been involved in community organized ice watch and rapid response efforts in Washington County since this summer. In that time, I have easily responded to over a 100 calls of reported sightings of ICE in our community. On these calls, I've seen unmarked ICE vehicles run red lights, make illegal u turns, cut off other drivers, make unsafe lane changes, nearly run other drivers off the road, and frequently switch license plates or not use license plates at all. Many local government bodies have emphasized that they have no jurisdiction over federal agents.

But do we not have traffic laws in our city? Are those not to be enforced? I've had federal agents yelling at me that I'm impeding an investigation simply by filming them as they sit in a parked car on a public road in a neighborhood. I've seen people loaded into vans in shackles. I've seen cars abandoned on the side of the road with their windows shattered.

We've seen so many hundreds of our neighbors taken from us. When the state the city of Beaverton put out a statement full of lies this week, it felt like gaslighting because it was. You don't get to tell us what we see with our own eyes. This body must do more to protect the citizens of our community. Please, please, please, we're begging you, do more. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Daisy Bautista. I'm a 14 year old, and I came here to talk about what recently has been happening in our community. Many people have gotten detained and treated both aggressively and unfairly. My parents have always been hardworking people who have sacrificed everything they had to give me and my sister for a better future.

I see them and fear to the point. They are scared to go out. I can't really focus on school live with fear it. Mine's Jessica. You're thinking of their parents to go home safe another day.

These same students who are carrying whistles and packets of paper like good information of what to do if ICE is near you. We have also recently participated in the students walkout on December 8. Owning to the fact that we students feel ignored, we feel helpless due to our age knowing we can't do anything if they were to be deported. We can't help but feel stress we can't help but feel stressed out and anxious about what the next day can hold. When would it be the day that everything will be normal again, not just for me, but for everybody else to just go out simple as doing errands with my parents, going out to restaurants together as a family to eat, or just even go to our daily walks to the park.

Individuals are risking personal safety to attend church as it remains their sole source of hope in which people have been also been detained after leaving church. It's unbelievable that the community, store owners, parents, teachers are going full out to protect our kind and hardworking people from being taken away. I at least feel a bit of sense of calmness. Thanks to my sister who has taken on a parental role, such things like grocery shopping for her parents and occupying them both to work while also attending university. Even when this means she has to go to her own workplace and stay up late to finish her homework, She still keeps doing this for the past three months.

It has reached to the point she has ever taken me to my school activities and sadly attended to my school conferences as my new guardian. Seeing that she was once a fifth grader back in 11/08/2016 watching the TV full of fear as he got elected for the first time. Today now she's doing everything she can in her power to be able to keep my family and parents together for one more day of this nightmare. Now think about those kids who don't have an older sibling or aren't old enough to protect their parents. As like my parents, there are many others who have unfortunately weren't able to properly say goodbye to their parents who passed away back home.

They had sacrificed to suffer and sacrificed from not being able to see them on last time, wanting to go back but being held back because they have been told by their own parents to remain here and not come back because they have their own home and family here in The United States. Now many of those are being transported back who have not touched the land in the past of twenty years or more without knowing what their next step would be now that their now that their parents are no longer alive and be able to be welcomed home again where they first grew up and left behind for a better future for their kids. Now many of those kids have reached to become professional careers. Once I came back from the protests held at my school, I was told by a staff who asked us what they can do to help us during this situation. Me and other students said we want justice for the people who have been treated unfairly.

I really want this to stop before more people are taken away and it affects the new young generation. We will remain strong and united as ever until this is over. Us as students won't remain quiet. We will keep raising our voices for those who can't. Thank you.

And I would like to ask if I could repeat it on Spanish for those people who can't understand English. If guys give me

I already let you go over two minutes. Let her

do it.

Hey, sir. Let let's not scream. Continue. We it's translated. Hey, now. We let her go over two minutes, and that is if she had asked for

do it in Spanish.

Sorry. We already let it go over two minutes. Let's move our action item up.

Change model usually.

The council does have the testimony in their packets, and it will be posted online tomorrow.

And when it streams, it will have translation. Yep. Alright. We're gonna move our action item up to the top. Agenda bill or item number six one. And it is a resolution ratifying declaration of state of emergency due to federal immigration enforcement. What's the pleasure of the council, council president?

I move. It's

been

moved by council president. Do we have a second?

Second.

It's been seconded by councilor Duggars. Discussion on the motion? Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you to everyone who joined us tonight. Hearing from you is really important to us. I'm sorry I'm not in the room with you tonight. Tonight, this motion ratifies our state of emergency.

Washington County has been a highly targeted location for people being detained. At last week's night of impact, Beaverton was lit up the darkest red due to significant detainments happening to our people. As someone who has been on the ground responding to calls where ICE is stalking and taking our community members, I've seen the fear firsthand. There are many concerned community members doing everything they can to protect and take care of their neighbors. So, counsel, I wrote a brief statement and ask you to consider potentially adopting this statement as part of our action this evening.

We can take this separately from this motion, but I wanna read it to you as really my comments about this motion and during the later portion, if if you are inclined to adopt this with me, I would appreciate that. To the valued members of the Beaverton community, we, your mayor, and city council, want to directly address the visible and deeply concerning activities of immigration and customs enforcement within our area. We understand the profound fear, anxiety, and disruption these activities cause for our residents and our neighbors. Please know that the city of Beaverton remains steadfast and unequivocal in its commitment as a sanctuary city. Our law enforcement is strictly prohibited from cooperating with or participating in federal immigration enforcement actions.

While public property is in fact open to all members of the public, we want to be clear that ICE is not welcome. Beaverton is off limits from our city facilities to our neighborhoods. There is no room in our community for racism, intimidation, and fear. We stand with our immigrant and refugee community members, and we'll continue to work to ensure that Beaverton remains a safe, inclusive, and welcoming place for all who call home. So that's my comment. I will be supporting this motion. During council new business, I would like to ask us to adopt a statement to go out with this declaration that could be published publicly to let our community know we are with them.

Before we kinda go into everyone else, I had a immediate reaction to this guy, yelling at me, which is, unfortunate. That's my prerogative. So after this, I'll have Daisy come back. It's out of order to let that happen, but I'll let her come back and do it in Spanish. I don't want my personal angst over this dude yelling get in the way of that, but please stop yelling in here. Councilor Husson.

Yeah. I guess I'll address, like thank you for those of you who came tonight. For those of you who don't know, some of us are all moving in different ways around how this is happening. And I do think it's important that we let Daisy come back and and do the Spanish version, so I support that. What we're doing in this meeting, just to help explain it, is we moved the agenda bill, which is to declare the emergency in trying to show, I thank you all, that we're that we're hearing you and that we're seeing you.

I do wanna take a moment and acknowledge Kylie and others who came forward. I I did see the live, and I did see what was happening. And as someone who has been going out in the community and responding, I had a sick kid that day and I wasn't able to make it. And so while I can't speak for a lot of sort of the backside of what's happening on the comms side, I know I'm circling back with staff to understand what happened because it is important that we continue to build trust with you. I started the day with a friend who's been impacted by ICE on multiple levels.

So I do very much hear everything that you all are saying, and it really breaks my heart that that we are in this moment that, you know, like, as someone who has just lived in this in this, to be in this moment and try to do something and to try to speak up and then to to see all the things we can and can't do and to say, well, this is what we can and this is what we can. It's it's very it's very exhausting. And to hear a 14 year old when you have a 14 year old is also really exhausting. So I I just wanna hear you all. I want you all to know that we hear you.

We see you. What we are gonna be voting on in a couple minutes is the the ratifying the declaration of the state of the emergency. So I'm really excited to support this. I was one of the people that brought this forward, and it couldn't be sooner. I hope that it continues to come with more resources and support for us to be able to fight against what's happening.

I think all of my colleagues here believe that we don't stand for the values and what we're seeing happening in our streets, and we're all showing up in the different ways that we can. I think the last thing I just I want to honor, there are so many people that are doing this work in different ways, and some of them are doing it more visibly and some of them are doing it less. And I just I I wanna really say that. I would also ask that if you are someone that's impacted by any of this, please make sure that you know your rights. Please make sure that if you have someone in your family who could be impacted, that you have a family emergency plan, and please make sure that you understand how you can and can't engage.

We're gonna do as much as we can on our end from the counsel side and, try to work with you as best as we can. So I'm really excited to support this emergency. Counselor Hartmeier Prigg, because I am a bit of a word type language person, is it possible for her to share this document with us in email before it got approved? What is the best way for us to send the letter that she shared to put out with the community?

Well, if we don't approve it now, we'd have to do it at the first of the year just because of the distance. So we could ask staff to maybe print it and bring it back by the end of the meeting. We can work on that piece.

If that's possible, I'd

just like to take a peek. Email it? Okay. Okay. Thank you.

No. I'm sorry. I'm gonna allow the repeat in Spanish, but that's no. I'm gonna let the student repeat in Spanish, but we'd already closed public comment and we had hit our max time. So I was Unfortunately, we could take your comment. I called you twice and so we could have actually three times, but we'll take it via a written from you. Any other comments from the council?

Yeah, please.

Apologies, I'm a little under the weather right now recovering from surgery. I think that that council always kind of skirts this fine line between we don't performative. We wanna have results, and this is a really challenging issue that cities across the country are grappling with and looking up, parts of the constitution that we frankly haven't really ever had to ponder before. And we want to make sure that when we say something, we're able to back it up with the power of the council and the power of the government and actually have results, and that's been something that has been elusive with this current crisis that we're facing. But you're right that you need to hear from us and that we won't tolerate this.

My son's closest friends are, living in fear. I know just from the walkout that he did at his high school here locally that students feel helpless in the situation or trying to exercise their voice in any way they can. So I appreciate all of you coming out tonight. This is the first step of what we're doing tonight. It is not the last.

It is not the last time you'll hear from us, but continue to keep pushing us. It's very hard, I think, to be up here in in this situation. None of us ran thinking that this would ever be anything that we would have to contemplate what the response would be, and it does take all of us to come up with what that is together. And and we also need to hear from you on what you were seeing on the ground. So thank you. And thank you to my fellow counselors, counselor Hudson and counselor Hartmeier Prigg for bringing it forward in a previous meeting. Looking forward to voting on it tonight.

I'm happy to support tonight's emergency declaration. As the mayor, I've had to to do a few of these, and they get harder every single time we do it, and the issues become harder and more complex. Local government doesn't always have the tools to address the situation we're in. I appreciate doctor Carpenter's comments on thinking outside the box. A lot of us have been doing it.

I think we all have roles to play in this fight against an authoritarianism government that is taking over. The city hosted filming. I encourage our communities to film interactions. I've asked the city manager to do an after action review of Kylie Delgado's filming at our center. I think it's important for the council to understand the timeline and the response and WACA and the calls to the call center.

So I think we all are going in real time. I echo Councilor Husson's comments that it's hard and we are trying, and I think we are stretching our levels on a lot of things, and we're going to continue to do it as we move forward. A lot of tables are set, and all seven of us play different roles in those seats. The community members play different roles, and I appreciate everyone coming today and talking to us. It's not easy to come and and voice your opinion in a public setting and putting yourself out there, and so I appreciate everyone that did that.

Will the recorder, when she comes back, call the roll? And then after that, we'll have Daisy back up.

Okay. Yes?

So thank you to everybody who came and gave some comment today. I know we are all feeling a lot of pain and heartache over what's been happening. Do wanna echo some of the comments from my colleagues here. Counselor Tivnan mentioned not wanting to be performative and that is a huge priority of of mine too. We don't wanna say things that give people a a false expectation of security where we might not be able to.

But we also wanna put some strength behind what we're doing too, and we have been taking action before this as well. Join a couple of lawsuits with City of LA in California, keeping National Guard out of cities, joining a lawsuit with City of Fresno to protect funding from being withdrawn from supportive housing services that we provide here in the city. And we're gonna keep doing things like that. We are also talking later about codifying our sanctuary city status and reviewing our data security privacy protection measures with the courts specifically. So making sure that when we take in people's data, we are protecting it from being used for, nefarious purposes, and making sure that the companies that we work with are not sharing people's data.

So we will continue taking steps. Some of you all shared ideas in your public comments too. We appreciate those. But we will keep on working through this and keep taking steps forward with you all. I really appreciate the courage that you all shared that you've been experiencing over the past several months as well, but we'll keep going forward.

Councilor Duggar.

Yeah. I I won't add a lot. I mean, I think my colleagues have nailed it except that that I will say I'm gonna highlight again the the non performative part. Like, I don't wanna harm communities. And I think it's so easy for us to say we can do this, and then we end up harming people. And that that is something I absolutely don't wanna do. But I but I do wanna for those of you who I have interacted with, one of the first things I ask almost always is what ideas do you have? You guys have given me seven tonight. And I want you to know I'm gonna take those very seriously because they're good ideas. Even if the answer is no, I don't know yet, but I'm gonna but I also, as you see me out in the community, and as you see my colleagues, like I Google every single day.

It's one of the few things I actually use chat GPT for. It's like, what are other cities doing? What's Chicago doing? What's LA doing? Things like that because because this is unprecedented. We have a we have a jackass of a federal administration that's doing illegal things on a daily basis and harming people. And we don't know how to, you know, we're we're just sometimes as clueless. I I feel like I'm not prepared for my job sometimes just because I I wake up to this another crazy story, and it's harming my neighbors, you know, my my friends, my, you know, just just people that I really care in the community, and and it's different, you know. So I would encourage you if you see us out, please please come for a walk with me. Let's grab a coffee.

Let's talk about ideas you have. I will ask on your behalf. I promise you that. I I take all this seriously, and and I want you to know that that that we're not done yet. This is this is again, we we began it a few weeks ago, and we're I I don't think we'll ever stop until we get justice for our community. So I just wanna say thank you for showing up tonight too.

We do have a you guys could put your names in the chat. Go on.

Just a short as someone who is actually an immigrant and a refugee of war and somebody who carries a passport with me all the time, it is not performative. And everything that you do out there, we appreciate it. But at the same time, our community cannot be out there, And it is a difficult time. But one thing I can promise you is that all all seven of us work diligently trying to figure out a way to protect the Hubertonians. It seems like we are not doing anything, but we

are

every day, every meeting, there's a conversation, but it's moving slowly, and everybody's trying to figure it out. But I can assure you, inside from this side of the podium or dais, we are trying to do our best. So that's one thing I can promise you. Thank you.

Alright. Will the recorder call the roll?

Yes. If I

were in just sorry

about that. I didn't have a microphone on. Councilor Hartmeier Prigg? Yes. Councilor Hassan? Yes. Councilor Kimmy? Yes. Councilor Teeter? Yes. Councilor Tivnan? Yes. Mayor Beatty?

Yes.

Seven yes, zero nooh. No. Motion carries.

Daisy, would you like to join us again? Daisy, before you start, I I wanna apologize. I was wrapped up in getting the council meeting going, and I'm sorry, and that shouldn't happen to you. And I want you to take your time to now do it in Spanish. And next time a person of authority pushes like that, you should push back. So I'm apologizing. Thank

you.

And, I wanna say thank you to all of you for letting me talk again. Thank you.

All right. Thank you for joining us tonight. Sometimes we don't always get it right, and we don't always get an opportunity to write things in real time. And so thank you for coming back up and sharing with us. We are moving on to our presentations. Our first presentation, Agenda Bill 51, Agenda Bill 25,196, City of Beaverton Homeless Response Annual Report. Are our county partners joining you? Just you? Okay.

Please.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Chad Stover. I'm the Community Services and Homelessness Program Manager for the City of Beaverton, and I'm here with Assistant City Manager, Dan Weinheimer. And also part of the Community Services and Homelessness Program is Caitlin Brown, is sitting in the audience, and hopefully, she'll wave so you can see who she is.

Thank you,

Caitlin. And, tonight, we're here to give the City of Beaverton's homelessness response annual report for 2025. And then I also just wanna mention that on January 6, Washington County will be back to give their annual report as well. Okay. Next slide, please.

The purpose for tonight's report is we want to provide an overview of the City Of Beaverton's local response to homelessness, provide updated statistics for the calendar year 2025, and provide education on the local continuum of care. Next slide, please. And just to start off with a little bit of context here, this is a slide taken from the 2025 Washington County point in time count, as produced by the Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative out of Portland State University. The point in time count happens every two years in the January. And the this this year's, point in time count identified nine hundred and forty people in Washington County experiencing homelessness, of which seven hundred and one are currently sheltered in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.

This is a 30% increase in the number of people sheltered at the time of the 2023 count. Simultaneously, the total unsheltered count increased by only nine people remaining flat since 2023 and well below the 2021 unsheltered count. The chart above outlines the pit count trends over the past five years. And this shout this this chart also shows an increase in the number of people who are sheltered, and this is due in large part to thanks to the Beaverton Shelter as well as to the opening of several safe rest pods by Washington County after the twenty twenty three point in time count and before the twenty twenty five point in time count. The dotted line represents chronically homeless individuals.

These are people who are homeless for one year or more and have a disabling condition as defined by HUD. And this number increased to three hundred and eighty seven individuals, but the majority counted in 2023 had since been housed. And so that's a good sign because it means that we're we're reaching this population. Next slide, please. And just sticking with point in time, statistics, you'll see an overview of just the Tri County area, and you can see that Multnomah County has over 10,000 individuals, 9,696 households.

Washington County comes in at nine forty individuals followed by Clackamas County at five sixty eight. And then what's more interesting to us here in Beaverton perhaps is just the by locality, there's a breakdown done. These aren't all the localities that were listed in the point in time count, but we captured the highest ones. And you can see where Beaverton came in at forty five, before Hillsboro at fifty five. Next slide, please.

And then transitioning to the Beaverton shelter. As you recall, the Beaverton shelter, we had a ribbon cutting center ribbon cutting ceremony back in November 2024. And then beginning in December, we began to transition folks that were staying at the Beaverton community center, who were which was acting as our temporary shelter over to the Beaverton shelter. So 27 people made it from the BCC over to the Beaverton shelter, making them the first, guest at the Beaverton Shelter. And then starting in January to December, we started to see over 1,000 people enrolled at the Beaverton shelter.

We saw 758 emergency bed utilizations. And one thing I wanna mention about the emergency beds is that the city came in, and we worked with our operator, Open Door Housing Works, and we established a standard operating procedure for how to use the emergency beds. So that was a a great thing right out of the gates to get that established, and that's important for police because of time, place, manner, and making sure that there's some clear expectations and just figuring out where to put the emergency beds in the building was also part of that. We moved, 51 households to permanent housing. There were 117 pets.

We saw five fourteen people utilize the coordinated care space, and then we had two good neighbor agreement related grievances. And this is a number that we're proud to keep very low, which is a good thing, that's due in part to the great work done by Open Door Housing Works. They've been really good at monitoring the Good Neighbor Agreement, the 500 foot radius around the shelter, building strong relationships with the people staying at the shelter and also with our neighbors around the shelter. And speaking of open door, they recently relayed to me a story that I'd like to share with you about the Beaverton shelter, and, and it goes like this. A woman arrived to the Beaverton Shelter in a vulnerable mental and physical state.

The Beaverton Shelter was recommended for its accessibility and compassionate care, ensuring that her mobility challenges were met with understanding and support. Through diligent healthcare case conferencing, Open Door staff helped her achieve a stable baseline of health, addressing both her physical and mental health needs. As Open Door staff worked on her housing focused plan, she not only regained her health, but also found a supportive community. Just a few weeks ago, Open Doors celebrated a bittersweet moment as she graduated from the program and moved into her own apartment with her beloved pet. Her journey has been a testament to the resilience and the power of community support.

Even shared her experience in a local Metro article highlighting the impact of the shelter's comprehensive care. Now she embar as she embarks on this new chapter, she continues to express her gratitude to the Beaverton Shelter and its community. Next slide, please. And sticking with the Beaverton shelter, the physical building itself, remains a flagship in the metro area for building a shelter through a trauma informed lens, and this is due in part to the great work done by many many partners were involved in this, including the City of Beaverton, but also our architect Ink Built Architecture and P and C Construction. And they have been the recipients of a number of awards, including the Daily Journal of Commerce Top Project Award, American Institute of Architects Honor Award, American Institute of Architects Oregon 2030 Award, the Oregon League of Cities Award for Excellence nominee, as well as they participated in a number of presentation and case studies including Energy Trust of Oregon case study, Housing Oregon Roots for Restoration presentation, Energy Trust of Oregon Allies of Efficiency presentation, as well as the National Organization of Minority Architects.

And there's a picture of the shelter showing the curves and the natural lighting that highlights some of that trauma informed design that went into this great shelter. Next slide, please. The Beaverton Library continues to play a very instrumental role in Beaverton's response overall response to homelessness. I wanna mention our library monitor. They work five days a week, and they are truly the face of the Beaverton Library interacting with all members of our community comes in, including our homeless friends that come into the to the central library.

And they're often working with our community resource specialists, with our Beaverton Police, and with others to help direct people to services when they need it. And so that's a great attribute, to to the library. And then, I also wanna mention some community engagement. Some of you may know, some of the community may know, some of you may not know. We're doing one book, one Beaverton right now, and the book is called Rough Sleepers, and it's by Tracy Kitter.

And along with that, there is a number of homeless speaking panels and opportunities for the community to come and engage in conversations about homelessness and learn about homelessness. And this is a really exciting thing because not everybody is well versed in being able to have conversations about homelessness. So, the city being able to facilitate that dialogue is a really great opportunity for our community. And then running congruent to that, the Office of Equity and Inclusion is also hosting a homelessness speaker series coming up on January 6. So there's a lot of good community events that are happening, here in the next couple of months that are gonna be, great community events for people to learn more about homelessness.

Project Homeless Connect, we have our community resource specialists that are stationed out of the library. We started a new contract with PHC beginning in Jan in July, and you can see that they have been busy. We've had over 1,200 visits in that time in just six months alone. 671 individuals have been served, and then you'll see a snapshot of just August. And just in one month alone, you can see that we received 295 visits from a 165 individuals.

75% needed housing support, 65% were supported with food or transportation, and 61% already engaged in the homeless service system. Next slide, please. Our Beaverton Police bike team continues to play a very, important role in our overall collaboration locally. We have four full time officers and one sergeant, but there are 20 BPD members who are trained in bicycle patrol, and they specialize in livability, and they take a trauma informed response. I recently went and spoke at the League of Cities conference in the fall and I was talking to a lot of people across the state and everybody wanted to hear about our bike team and what we're doing and how we're doing it differently.

And I told them it was really at the core of all of it is building relationships. Our bike team is out there. They're working side by side with Greater Good Northwest and New Narrative, our two outreach teams, which I'll talk about in a minute. And they're taking that trauma informed approach to get to know people, and their goal is to try to get people to services. They're working on doing that, and we're going to talk about Time Place Manor here in a moment.

And, they've been just playing an incredible role there. Next slide, please. So sticking with Time Place Manor, under House Bill 3,115, it requires all cities and counties to ensure camping ordinance are objectively reasonable as to time, place, and manner with regards to persons experiencing homelessness. Our city council adopted a prohibited camping ordinance on 06/06/2023, and it became effective 07/01/2023. And the ordinance permits camping within the public right of way between 9PM and 07:30AM for people without alternative shelter and places some manner restrictions.

You can see some numbers from the BPD from January to October 2025. We encountered a 162 camps, made 121 new contacts. There were 57 repeat contacts. They offered financial assistance to three, made 87 referrals to other agencies, and that's an example of the police working to get folks to services, and that relationship with our social service providers becomes very important for that. They issued a 160 warnings, 19 citations, and zero arrests, and that's with just over 2,000, homelessness related calls to service.

The b the BPD bike team enforces time place manner ordinance, but regularly consults with our city prosecutor and our library or outreach teams and provides resources. Next slide, please. Here's a map of our time place manner, map. These red triangles indicate where we see our camps pop up. And this might look familiar because it hasn't changed all that much in the two years that we've been doing TPM.

The largest concentration remains in our downtown core, and that's where you see, most of our camps, with respect to time placed manner. Slide, please. Another group worth mentioning that we don't talk about as often, but is doing great work comes from our Public Works division. They do our city homeless camp cleanup program. And you can see that over the last, three years, we've seen a steady decrease in the number of, homeless camps that are cleaned up.

We went from 49 in 2023 down to 33 last year and then 16 in 2025. And in this map, you can see the blue dots that are kind of up towards the top, and this runs similar to the previous slide that I just showed you about Time Place Manor. The majority of the homeless camp cleanups that we're seeing are concentrated in our downtown area, but the trend again has been a steady decrease over the last three years. Next slide, please. Switching over to safe parking. Safe parking program, it provides a safe legal place for people who are experiencing homelessness and are living in a vehicle. Just Compassion of East Washington County is our provider. This program is six years old. We have five locations. Four of them are private.

One of them is public over at Griffith. There's a total of 18 parking spaces. In the program, we provide case management. This is phase one assessments, into the coordinated entry system, referrals to housing. We give addiction and recovery resources and medical care, and also help with employment.

The length of stay, it can range anywhere from thirty days. There's a thirty day probationary period from when people come into the program, and they can stay up to a hundred and twenty days. This is a 100% funded by the city out of our general fund. And then down below, you can see some statistics about, January to November, positive exits, negative exits during that time, 28 positive, eight negative. If anybody's wondering what that means, typically, when we refer to someone who's graduated from the program and has gone on to the next step towards getting into more permanent housing, we would consider that to be a positive exit.

For some folks that maybe had compliance rule, problems in the program and weren't able to move on, that would be a negative exit. And so this is also worth mentioning that part of the success of Safe Parking program is they've had very clear rules and expectations that they go over for everybody who comes into the program, but also they work in close partnership with our private locations, the the four churches that provide property in which we get to do our safe parking program. So that's led to the success of this. And then with that, recently, Just Compassion of East Washington County also shared a story that I would like to share with you as well about, a family recently at our safe parking. A family of four had been living in their vehicle for an extended period of time after losing their housing, doing their best to stay strong each day.

The father was also facing a serious health condition, adding even more strain to their situation. After being shuffled between resources that offered little stability, they found relief in the safe parking program. It provided them with a safe, consistent place to rest and have access to compassionate case management. With support, they were able to connect to health care, work toward long term goals, and get on the family shelter wait list. When they finally moved into a shelter, it was a bittersweet goodbye to the place that had given them hope and stability during one of the hardest times in their lives.

That came from Just Compassion. Next slide, please. Beaverton has played a very important role during times of inclement weather, in the last five to seven years and beyond. But during that time period in particular, the Beaverton Community Center, when we were using it as a temporary shelter, it also doubled, as you all know, as an overnight inclement weather shelter during periods of inclement weather. And this even though I mentioned earlier that the, the BCC ended its time as a as a shelter at the December 2024, but our intergovernmental agreement with Washington County to continue using the building as an overnight inclement weather shelter continued beyond that until September.

That means that this last winter in January, February 2025, it was still active as an overnight inclement weather shelter, and it's a good thing it was because during that time, we saw 16 overnight shelter activations during that time, in which we averaged 44 people and four pets per night. So Beaverton carried the majority of the people during periods of inclement weather compared to other cities around the county during that time. However, with the IGA ending at the September going into this winter, we now do not have an overnight inclement weather shelter going into this winter. In addition to overnight sheltering during inclement weather, our library, again, has played a very important role. It doubles as a cooling center during the summertime and a warming center during the wintertime.

During the summertime in August, we had four episodes of cooling center activation at the library. And what that meant was is from 6PM to 9PM in the atrium area as well as the Kathy Stanton room, those areas got activated for cooling center purposes. And during those four nights in August, we averaged 13 people and two pets for each one of those events. Next slide, please. Our outreach programs are Greater Good Northwest, New Narrative.

They cover the geography for Beaverton. And you can see, that we have 168 people enrolled, and you can see the positive exits from the program for Greater Good Northwest. And there was a 123 people enrolled for New Narrative, and you can see the positive exits from there. So New Narrative is new, but between them and Greater Good Northwest, they have split the geography. So they're the ones that are out on all kinds of weather and during inclement weather overnight, going into all kinds of different places to find people wherever they may be, and they might be the only point of contact to get folks into services.

And so we're very grateful to Greater Good Northwest and New Narrative. We also have a victim services program Beaverton Police Department. Not many people know this, but there's 24 across the state, three in Washington County, one here at at the Beaverton Police Department. And, she does incredible work, working with folks that are in very vulnerable places, but also she ends up interacting with a lot of our homeless population as well. And so she plays an incredible role.

The the behavioral health court, worked with 24 people to find housing, and 14 may enter by the end of the year. And then also the Center for Mediation and Dialogue is working more upstream on this, and they're playing an important role, by doing eviction prevention and housing mediation. They received 400 calls, in this last year from tenants and landlords providing referrals and coaching, and they opened a 106 mediation cases. These groups and others, they come together once a month in our Call by Name Committee, and this is a great place for us to collaborate and to work together, and that includes city staff, BPD, and the library as well. Slide, please.

With all of these changes happening and, shelter opening and maybe access centers coming about, it changes the dialogue a little bit from the way things were, and it requires all of us to collaborate more. And we had a chance to collaborate this last summer and fall when we saw some activity around Griffith Park and just with the birth of the shelter, a new GNA boundary being drawn around, it changes the dialogue a little bit compared to the way things were in the past. And what that means is that we have to talk to each other more, police and THPRD, Open Door Housing Works that runs the shelter and our outreach workers, and we did just that. So Beaverton is really leading the way in terms of how do we collaborate internally across those different groups when we have different levels of jurisdiction that are happening. And I can't stress enough how important it is to build that trust and that relationship between our officers and our shelter staff and our outreach workers.

And we've been doing that. And so that's been a really positive thing that we started doing in the last year. And we have more coming up in the next year. And with that, I will next slide and say thank you for listening. I had a whole lot more, but I cut it down because I know we're busy tonight.

That was cutting it down, Chad?

It was cutting it down.

Councilor, Tivnan.

A lot of things to report on, and thank you so much. It's exciting to get an annual report on this now. Like, let's start the benchmarks. I had two questions that came to mind as you were, giving your presentation, and the first one is aptly about what you were just talking about, the communication and collaboration. I remember when we were doing all of the extensive, studies around where to put this.

We're also looking at some norms that were in at the time, just kind of standard practice throughout the region. And one of the real deficits was when shelter was at capacity, how do individuals know that? A lot of times they go there and they're told, we don't have room, but the shelter itself wasn't really in a good position to be able to refer them to say this shelter does or any ways to really effectively and, in the moment, communicate with other shelters. And part of that was just, you know, the wherewithal, but other parts of it around privacy or or HIPAA laws, like the information you can and can't share. And that's something that I know has been on the minds of folks as we're thinking about how do we create something that's cross city, cross county, a true resource for folks that don't really have boundaries.

Can you speak a little bit of that, to that? And then I have one other question after it.

No. Thank you, councilor Tin. That's a great question. I remember when the Beeve Dunn shelter first opened, in a way, it was really exciting, but it was also kinda lonely because we didn't have the other two shelters online yet, and we knew they were coming. And then a number of months later, Tiger came online, and then, most recently, Hillsborough, and I know Kim Marshall's in the audience tonight, so congratulations to Hillsborough for having their shelter as well.

So now all three are there, which is great. And the reason I'm telling you that is because now that all three shelters are aligned and that the county is implementing its local continuum of care of getting access centers online too, that inner county collaboration and communication that you're referring to should get to the maximum level that we want it to be at. I think there's always gonna be some struggles about, internal communication due to some of the the laws and just the way that the intake process works. Sometimes it can be kind of frustrating for providers, but we also know it's a good faith effort to have some sort of a system so that people can share data. And as we get all of our shelters and places online across the county, I think that's probably going to improve as well.

And so so more to come is what I could is the best way I could answer that question and say that we're continuing to it. And I will also add that in the early days, while we were still building up to get to 60 people at the Beaverton Shelter, there was sort of an awkward period of time there where we didn't have 60 people. And so then the question came up for Open Door, what happens if somebody comes to the shelter that didn't come to you through the normal intake process through Community Connect? And they were doing a lottery, which raised some questions for us because we wanted to make sure that that lottery was doing done in a way that was not gonna violate the Good Neighbor Agreement. But Open Door, being such a great organization that they are, they handled it really, really well.

And so they wanted to get people inside if they could. And then while we were building up by getting people through Community Keck into the shelter, they were still opening up the lottery. Once we hit 60, those lotteries started to diminish because we were at capacity now, and so they didn't have that, that option anymore, and so they were communicating accordingly as they got there. So now that we're at 60, those lotteries are not like what they were in the first few months that we started.

And let's remember this is a presentation, not a work session. Yes. Apologize.

Go ahead.

One other question, and you brought it up, is around the the grievances, and it's really reassuring to hear that we only had two so far. But that was also when we were looking at citing this. It was thinking through, the potential impacts, in in the surrounding area, and this is a very bustling, very busy area of town. Can you just give a little bit of background on what the nature of them was? Were they positively resolved? I'm assuming it was, business owners, but and that's an assumption, but just fly over on that.

Yes. The specifics were, in the first one, there were some staff that, I can understand this. They wanted to have lunchtime outside and get away from the shelter for a minute. Unfortunately, they did it in an area that was inside the GNA boundary in a place that was not too appealing to, one of our neighbors to the shelter. So that was called to the attention of the management. The management did the appropriate thing. They called an internal meeting and talked about that, and they said, let's try to find different ways that we can have lunch. And so that issue was resolved. They also looped back to the neighbor, which Open Door has done a really good job of to make sure that they're satisfied with the response that they're getting from Opendoor managing the shelter. And that was the first one.

The other one involved a participant and who was engaging in some nefarious activity near one of the neighbors. And two things happened. The neighbor reported it, but the participant also self reported at the same time. And so that got back to the attention, and they had sort of a restorative justice conversation, but there were also implications handed down to that participant to make sure that he was following the rules. And again, management called together a staff with all the participants to talk about the dos and do nots of living under a new GNA. And then the positive to that one is that group that business actually said, Hey, we would like to work with you and, and offer some haircuts because they were in the business getting haircuts. So now they do that. So there's a really positive thing that came out of that. So two grievances in a year, that's a pretty good score.

Councilor Husson.

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. And I know we try to keep presentations brief, but we don't get time with you. So I just I'm really excited to ask you all the questions, but I'm gonna keep it to one. So everyone should know I have many, and I'm sticking with one. Might add two. I just wanna understand, like, I know that we have the bike team, and I know we have the homeless providers. Right? And so can you tell me more about, like, how they work together? And then if you're, like in your dream world, if you were to redesign that or design that, what does that look like?

Yeah. The, fortunately, one of the the best parts of my job, and I always tell Caitlin this, is that we have our monthly call by name meeting where we have our police present. That's, sergeant Nomaco right now. He's the sergeant of the bike team. We also have our library and public services manager there along with our outreach workers.

And this is the reason we call it call by name because it's a great time for us to talk about, hey, have you seen so and so lately that we all might know and we're a little concerned and that can they can share information and collaborate that way. So just by having that meeting once a month is huge because we quickly found out that they don't they're not able to all talk to each other as much as they would like, so I can't stress enough the importance of having that venue to be able to do that. But then, in real time, there are situations where the the Beaverton Police Bike Team might go on a call, and they'll connect with our outreach workers from Greater Good Northwest, a new narrative. And sometimes going out and interfacing with two as a pair, that's golden because they might already have a relationship that the other party does not have yet, and then they can work together in a very trauma informed approach that doesn't feel like law enforcement, but is actually collaborative and is trying to do what everybody wants is not to end up in jail, but to end up, getting the services that that individual needs.

And so seeing that partnership in play is fantastic.

One quick follow-up. Thank you. I am getting a lot of calls about families that are on their way to eviction because of the federal enforcement actions that are happening. If I were to direct them to resources, what's the best place to direct them to?

I think that is gonna be very situation dependent, so I can't just give you a single answer right now. I think we probably would need some more information to be able to help with that. And Okay. Our program would certainly be able to help with that, try to get find the right folks.

Can I send them to you?

Thank you.

Councilor Dieter.

Thanks, Chad. I've just got one question right now. I'm really glad that you noted it in a lot of the presentation, the the funding sources. So, supportive housing services funding only supports shelter operations, but these other pieces, like the bike team, street parking program, library outreach specialists, BPD, bike team, all of those are general fund. Right? I need

some help from Dan on some of that.

Yeah. I think that they are all general fund. We do get an allocation of SHS dollars that funds positions that we're using right now for Chad's position and part of Caitlin's position. So there's a staff resource that is SHS covered.

Okay. And the Public Works Cleanup Crew, is that General Fund as well?

It is right now, yeah. We got and originally, it started with a Metro grant that was one year, and a lot of good results, so we kept it going.

Okay. Thank you. That's really helpful. We are putting a lot of skin in the game with this personally as a city with our general fund, which is really struggling. Services are highly needed. So I appreciate the work that you and the team are doing with leveraging the support of housing funding to help do it. Thank you, councilor Teeter.

I'll just say that we have, the reason I did, I think, 26 meetings on SHS last year was trying to get the rest, not just me, but other mayors because there's this nonacknowledgment by SHS and Metro about how much cities do in this effort. And so we do have significant money from the general fund. We did get initial money for cleanup, but it it really does it's important to the community, and so we've we fund it, but it is a huge strain on our general fund. And I think the mayors of the region really understand that. And every time there's a discussion about reallocating SHS, and if you're the mayor of Portland right now, you strongly believe all the money should come to you because you have the biggest problem.

But it it would totally negate all of the work that we've been doing and the ongoing need we have to fund it. And it's not even that we're being completely funded. We're really not being funded at the degree we need to to address this. Councilor Duggar?

Thanks, Jed. As I was prepping for this, I was thinking back to our original conversation around the the shelter inciting. And I think you might have had the question, but I could be remembering that wrong around, like, the actual physical location of the shelter presented some pedestrian issues that we were concerned about, and I did not see those addressed. So did over the last year of operating, have we seen any increase in pedestrian accidents or anything that we need to be aware of that that came to fruition as or lesson learned? And if you don't have an answer, that's okay. Like, we can we can talk about another time, but I'm just curious.

The best I can answer that, councilor Duggar, is that nothing's come to me that involved participants that I can recall right now of any sort of pedestrian danger accidents. One thing that I will tell you is that with respect to the the GNA boundary that runs in a 500 foot radius around the shelter, it's it's kind of awkward because it slices through Griffith Park over here, then it goes across Beaverton Hillsdale Highway, and then it goes across 217. So it covers some interesting ground. The open door staff, they actually go out on scooters, and they're able to patrol the whole area. And so they themselves are in a little bit of a of a dicey situation, but they haven't reported anything to me that I'm aware of in terms of an accident or any problems that way.

Okay. Yeah. No. I'm I'm just curious because that that's always been on my mind. So thank you.

Chad, thank you for presenting tonight and paring down from what I heard was 87 slides. You know, as the mayor, I'm just I'm really proud of the work that the city has done to address this humanitarian crisis that's on our streets. And I would say the majority of my five and a half years as mayor, there's not a single day that goes by that I'm not talking about our houseless community, the impact to them and the impact to the community. And I think from my first day as mayor is what I've always told staff is I want us to lead with dignity, and the people on the streets are somebody, somebody. And your team has just done such a wonderful job in doing that in situations that were not easy.

I mean, I think the worst day of my life as the mayor was the accident when someone lit themselves on fire outside of the shelter. And every every day, I had to come to work and think about how we were going to address that. And we've had a lot of outside resources. We've taken a lot of extraordinary measures. We have done things that I probably get two phone calls a week from other mayors asking, how are you that geographically close to Portland?

And it looks so dramatically different. And, you know, we I think that we have addressed this crisis in a way that has that has highlighted the city's ability to do the best thing we can do and partnered with agencies at the same time, the amount of collaborating meetings that we have. And we don't always get it right. And we don't always make everyone in the community happy. But when we Beaverton looks dramatically different this year than it did in 2022 or 2023.

And so kudos to your team and the great work, and I can tell that you hang out with Kim Marshall because you are using her language and saying friends. It is something that I think changes people's perspective of interacting with people. And so I just when you adopt or co op other people's language, it shines through. And so, Kim, that is your your nod to what you're saying is working. I will say I would direct community members to community action rather than Chad.

He's, like, doesn't work twenty four seven, and he might not answer his cell phone, but if he's committing to that, I would but community action is kind of our clearinghouse that Washington County uses to make sure that people get to the But Chad is a great resource, and I hope you have your phone on 247 because councilor Hassan is really gonna connect you to community people. So with that, thank you for joining us this evening.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council.

Okay. You're staying with us. Agenda bill two five one nine seven, national community survey findings.

Yes, ma'am. I am standing with you. This is Dan Weinheimer, assistant city manager. And with me online is Jason Newmeyer, who is the Polco director of survey research. He's gonna be running the slides and, doing most of the talking. Just wanna give you a little bit of context. We did talk about this survey at our recent retreat. It's important. It was important. It is ongoing.

It's important to the city to have statistically valid data that we can hear from our residents, engage them, and hear what they what they want, what they're what they like, what they're interested in. And this is a tool that we found that is used by many cities in the country that can do that. We can use it to benchmark against ourselves year over year. We can use it to benchmark against those other cities, and it gives us just an insight into how residents perceive our services. So what you're going to hear tonight is the findings, from our first survey. We'll I'm sure we'll get better at it as we go, but, this is a good baseline for us to move forward. And I'll I'll just hand it off to Jason to take it over.

Great. Well, thanks so much. Before I jump in, I just wanna make sure you can see my slides appropriately there in the in the chambers. Okay. I'm seeing some head nods.

Great. Well, I'm very happy to be here tonight to present a summary of the findings here from Beaverton's first national community survey. Before I begin, on behalf of myself, my Polkow coworkers, I do want to extend a big thank you to Dan who was our primary contact throughout the survey development and implementation process. He provided thoughtful and detailed feedback about the survey itself, about the report that's been shared with you all, and this presentation deck that we'll go through tonight. I would also like to acknowledge my colleague, Lily Vasquez, who was Beaverton's National Community Survey project manager for this year's effort and did a bulk of the important work for this project.

So before we turn to these results, I do want to share a little bit about who PALCO is. So Polco is an online community engagement polling platform, and we provide local governments with resident and employee feedback. Today, hundreds of organizations nationwide use Polco for strategic planning, for budgeting, and for empowering resident voices. POCO merged with the National Research Center back in 2019. NRC is best known for these national benchmarking surveys like the National Community Survey, the National Employee Survey, and the Community Assessment Survey for older adults among a few others.

Since 1994, NRC has worked with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide to help build the largest national database of local public opinion in The US. You can also see on the slide here that Polco works closely with some other partners including ICMA and the National League of Cities, as well as many other local government leaders like the Alliance for Innovation and the engaged local government leaders, ELGL. Now before we turn to some of the specifics here, I do want to emphasize there are a variety of ways that the results that we're going to share tonight can be used, but most commonly the jurisdictions that we work with are going to use their survey data to monitor trends in resident opinion over time and to help inform their budgeting processes and their strategic planning. The results, as already, hinted at before, allow you to benchmark your community specific characteristics and services against other communities found in our national database. So the hope here tonight is that as these findings are presented, it's going to spur some ideas for where you might want to dig a little bit deeper.

So the National Community Survey or the NCS is a standardized five page comprehensive survey, and it allows municipalities to assess residents' opinion about their community and about their local government. The NCS focuses on the overall livability of Beaverton by categorizing survey questions into 10 main facets of community livability. You can see those 10 facets here on the slide. These facets have been identified through extensive survey research as those that are most impactful to residents overall quality of life. The NCS as you know also includes items within each of these 10 facets to provide a full picture of how residents feel about their community.

And finally, and I think maybe most importantly, these facets also tend to align with municipal departments, making it easy for city staff to quickly find the information that is most important to them and their work in the final report of results. So all households within Beaverton were eligible to participate in this first national community survey. A list of all households serving the ZIP codes of Beaverton was purchased based on the most up to date listings from the United States Postal Service. And then using the GIS boundary files provided by the city, addresses that were located outside of Beaverton's boundaries were removed from the potential list of households to survey. And from that smaller list, 3,000 addresses were selected to receive an invitation.

The 3,000 randomly selected households received mailings beginning on July 8 and the survey remained open for eight weeks. The first mailing was a postcard inviting residents to participate in the survey online. The next mailing contained a cover letter with instructions, the five page survey questionnaire and a postage paid return envelope. Both the postcard and the cover letter included a web link to give residents the opportunity to respond to the survey online. Now to help bolster some participation, a second set of 3,000 randomly selected households was drawn from that same address list, and they received a postcard invitation once we were along into data collection.

Responses from both samples were combined for our overall analysis. The survey was available in both English and Spanish, and all mailings contained paragraphs in both languages, instructing participants on how they could complete the survey in their preferred language. A total of 295 completed surveys were received from those efforts, providing a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points. We then compared the demographic profile of survey respondents to that of all adults in Beaverton using the most recent census and American community survey data and we weighted the final survey results. Now in addition to this randomly selected probability sample of households, a link to an online community wide open participation survey was also publicized by the city.

That open participation survey became available to all city residents on August 8, and that survey remained open for the final five weeks and two eighty seven responses were received from those efforts. Now the presentation that we're going to work through here tonight, the report that's been shared, are based on the two ninety five responses from the random sample mail based survey, but the responses to the open participation survey are provided separately in the online full report. Now, as I mentioned earlier, one of the major advantages to a local government in participating in our community surveys is this opportunity to compare ratings given by your residents to those from communities across the nation. Again, NRC was the first organization to conceive of this idea to create benchmarks for local public opinion, and this allows you to compare your ratings of services to ratings of similar services, from other communities. As you can see, there are currently about 400 communities in our national database.

Alright. So with that, we'll turn to an overview of survey results before we hit on some key findings that our data science and survey research teams pulled out of Beaverton's report. So in the survey, we have two questions that ask directly about these 10 facets of community livability we identified earlier. The first asks residents to rate the quality of each of these 10 facets, and you can see the results in comparison to the national benchmark here in the shading on the chart. The second question then asks about those same 10 facets of livability, but this time it's centered on how important residents think it is for the community to focus on this facet in the coming two years.

So we ask both about current quality and future importance of each of these 10 facets, and we use those answers to create the quality importance gap analysis that you're seeing here on the slide. We use this chart which you can find in the full report as well to help determine which areas are of relatively higher importance to residents and lower me, that are of higher importance and lower quality to residents, those with the largest gaps that you see on the slide. This chart again is just one of many ways to help interpret your data. It can be used, we use it to help identify key findings, but more importantly, it can help communities to determine which areas may need additional resource allocation or additional focus in the coming years and which others are performing well by comparison. Now on the NCS, there are 123 survey items for which residents provide evaluative ratings.

Of those 123 items, six items here in Beaverton received ratings that were higher than our rolling national benchmark. 113 were similar to national averages, and four received lower ratings. Ratings are considered similar if they're within 10 points of the rolling national average and higher or lower if they're more than 10 points different from that average. And as we turn to our key findings, these are gonna be our areas of focus. We'll highlight some of those areas that were higher and lower as we move forward.

So moving now here into those key findings, I do want to point out a few items that stood out to our survey research team. There is a lot of additional data in the full report that we won't cover here tonight, but the rest of this presentation is going to focus on a few areas we found to be most noteworthy before we turn to a few custom questions that were added to this effort in Beaverton. So key finding number one, most Beaverton residents enjoy a high quality of life. About eight in 10 residents rated Beaverton as a place to live and the overall quality of life in the city as excellent or good. In addition, roughly eight in 10 residents said they plan to remain in the city for the next five years, while around nine in 10 would recommend living in Beaverton if someone asked.

All of the ratings that you see here on the slide are similar to national benchmarks. And then finally, around seven in 10 community members also positively rated the overall image or reputation of the city and Beaverton as a place to raise children. Our second key takeaway, Beaverton residents reported a strong sense of safety. Nearly all residents viewed their neighborhood as a very or somewhat safe place during the day. 96% gave that rating.

Roughly nine in 10 also felt safe in the downtown or commercial areas, while around eight in ten expressed feeling safe from violent crime. And you can see here just over three quarters of residents felt safe from fire, flood, or other natural disasters and from property crime. Once again, you can see the shading on the chart here. Each of these items scored in line with our national comparisons that we see around The US. Now in addition to feelings of safety, the NCS actually also includes a battery of questions on safety services in the city.

So about nine in 10 residents provided excellent or good marks to the fire services provided in Beaverton. About nine excuse me. About seven in 10 residents positively rated ambulance or emergency medical services, animal control, and crime prevention, while around two thirds gave excellent or good marks to police services in the community. Our third key takeaway, while Beaverton's business and service environment is rated strongly, some perceptions of employment opportunities and cost of living received less favorable marks. So as we saw earlier in our gap analysis, the local economy was given the highest importance rating of all of the 10 facets of community livability with 88% of residents saying it should be an essential or very important focus area in the coming two years.

About seven in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with the current variety of business and service establishments, which you can see is higher than the national benchmarks, and the overall quality of business and service establishments. Around two thirds of residents positively rated shopping opportunities, another result that was higher than the national benchmark, while about six in 10 felt satisfied with Beaverton as a place to work and the overall economic health of city. Economic development was rated positively by around half of all community members while employment opportunities and cost of living received excellent or good marks from only one third and one quarter of respondents respectively. Our fourth key takeaway here then, residents praise the parks and natural environment in Beaverton. Around eight and ten residents expressed satisfaction with a number of these items including air quality, the availability of walking paths, and yard waste pickup in the city, with the latter actually performing higher than national standards.

Roughly seven in 10 residents positively rated fitness opportunities and overall cleanliness in Beaverton, and a similar proportion rated recreational programs and the preservation of natural areas favorably while around six and ten showed approval of water resources and Beaverton's open space. Fifth, community design and housing availability may be an area of opportunity for the city. About seven in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with Beaverton's overall appearance in public places where people want to spend time, while roughly six in 10 community members rated well designed neighborhoods as excellent or good with about half positively rating well planned commercial growth. Only about four in 10 residents gave excellent or good marks to well planned residential growth and the variety of housing options. And finally, as you can see on the bottom of the slide here, around 17% of rep of residents indicated satisfaction with the availability of affordable quality housing in the community.

Now even though some of these percentages are lower, each of these items did score in line with some of the trends that we are seeing around The US. They're all similar to national benchmarks. And then finally, most items related to mobility scored in line with national benchmark comparisons. So around two thirds of residents expressed satisfaction with the ease of travel by car in the city, while about half positively rated the ease of walking. You can see a similar proportion favorably viewed the ease of public parking in the community, while around four and ten showed approval of the ease of travel by public transportation, ease of travel by bicycle, and traffic flow on major streets.

Now similar to how we have a separate section battery of questions for safety services, we have a separate mobility battery of questions here for services in the city. About seven and ten residents expressed satisfaction with street cleaning services, and you can see here around two thirds gave excellent or good marks to street lighting throughout the city. More than half of respondents, 57% viewed favorably bus or transit services. This was a higher mark than our national benchmark. While around half of residents expressed approval for traffic enforcement and overall street repair throughout Beaverton.

Now as I hinted at before, in addition to the standard questions that are asked on every national community survey around The US, There were a few custom questions that were added here specific to Beaverton, and we'll hit on a few of those here now before we wrap up. The first of these custom questions asked residents to indicate if they would prefer a service reduction or a tax increase to the following list of municipal services. This is known as a forced choice question where the respondent is required to answer in one way or another. Results are shown here in descending order for service reduction and ascending order for increase in taxes. Therefore, the top four choices for police excuse me, for service reduction were police bike teams, community events and festivals, public arts, and youth services or school resource officers.

The list continues from here with the top five items that received support for tax increases including emergency response and disaster preparedness, a water supply infrastructure and conservation, street resurfacing and repairs, wastewater and sewer infrastructure, and finally library services. And then finally, in a second custom question, residents were asked how much they would support or oppose using new or increased taxes or fees as a funding source for the following projects or issues. About nine in 10 residents strongly or somewhat supported new or increased taxes or fees for road maintenance, street maintenance and pavement improvements, parks or trail systems, and to help improve cost of living or cost of housing. About eight in 10 community members supported library services in response to crime or drug use. You can see here about seven in 10 respondents supported improvements to Beaverton's downtown area and public streetscape infrastructure.

The list continues here and you can see again around seven in 10 residents supported trails or bike paths and growth or development, and around six and ten supported city events and the public arts program. So here's our overall summary of conclusions. First and foremost, most Beaverton residents reported a high quality of life and a strong sense of safety in the community. Third, while Beaverton's business and service environment is strongly rated, perceptions of employment opportunities and cost of living were less favorable. Residents praised the parks and natural environment in Beaverton.

Fifth, community design and housing availability may be an area of opportunity for the city. And then sixth and finally, most items related to mobility scored in line with overall national benchmark comparisons. So with that, we also have some additional data here in relation to Polco's track module, just some publicly available data that may be of use to you in the future when you're continuing to do performance management and key metrics. But with that, I'd love to catch my breath here and answer any questions that you might have about the survey itself, about the presentation that we went through, or the report that's been shared publicly. So, Dan, I'll hand it back to you.

Councilor Kimmy.

Thank you for the presentation. Just one simple question. Out of the 295 responders, how many it was Spanish?

It was a small handful under 10, but all invitations did go out, as I said, with both English and Spanish instructions. And there was a separate QR code and link, so you didn't have to click a down to get a translated version. You could go directly to it through a separate link in QR code, but it was fewer than 10.

It was all done mail and that was it. Right? There's no other efforts in gathering non English speaking population?

It was all done via mail through the random sample process. Yes.

Surveys are done that way. We promoted the survey through the city's communication channels and through events and things like that. So there was, you know, some promotion of the thing as well. So they received it that it was real and, you know, with

Right.

All those kinds of things.

So Yeah. I mean, I appreciate all the work and all the service that work that went into it but every time I you know we get this response back it's very rare. It's non English speaking residents we get any feedback. So my always I want to comment or do some effort into trying to get their input somehow which means you got to get out there get their face to face input because they are very hesitant to send anything into the government. So it's something conversation that should happen in the future. Thank you.

Councillor Duggar? Oh, Councillor Husson?

Just a quick question if there was a space for collecting the socioeconomic status and or income level?

Yes. That is a standard demographic, question that we include, and you can actually see every one of the 123 evaluative items broken down across income level.

Just I mean, if if I might I'm just pulling up the report. Is it on a page in this report? Like, I see the last page, but I'm just curious if it's somewhere on this. Yeah.

You may have the static PDF version in front of you, but there's an interactive online component, which I'm I'm not sure if you have that in front of you as well, but the crosstabs are all available online there, and you can see that by every one of our demographic questions. You can see the breakdown. So income, age, housing status, length of residency, gender. Right? Any question we ask in the demographics, you have that breakdown online.

We have not sent that link around yet, so we can We

will soon get that link. Thank you so much.

That does have the ability to search by socioeconomic data, all kinds of interesting

Are you done, counselor Hudson?

Oh, yes. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. We had a pretty robust conversation about this at our council retreat, and so this wasn't the first time we saw it or heard about it. It was nice to get the scientific y piece on the back end and the understanding. So thank you for joining us today.

Great. Thank you so much. If any other questions come up, we're always happy to help.

Thank you. Okay. We're gonna skip over the city manager's report tonight since it's available, and we are still we have a lot going on. So with that, council president, consent, please.

I'll move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

It's been moved by council president and seconded by councilor Husson. Do we have any discussion? Councilor Teeter.

Yeah. Real quick on the council appointments agenda item. I found out last Thursday that I've been appointed to the League of Oregon City's Transportation Committee. We don't know when that will be meeting yet, and we won't know for a few weeks. So just sharing this with you all. So in case it happens to conflict with one of the appointments that I'm I've got on the list right now, I might need some flexibility with you all to shift some things around. I'm very excited about it, and I wanna be able to help Beaverton out on that side of things. So I'll keep you all updated, and, hopefully, everything will just work out super smoothly.

We'll we'll work through it if it happens, but they should prioritize one of their largest city members in the calendaring of that meeting. So let me know if we could help. Jocelyn, are you out there? Alright. Congratulations on that appointment as well. It's gonna be an important appointment moving into this session where we're gonna be talking about gas tax and everything else. So thank you for serving on that committee. With that, will the recorder call the roll?

Councilor Duggar? Yes. Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg? Yes. Councilor Hassan? Yes. Councilor Kimmy? Yes. Councilor Teeter? Yes. Councilor Tibman? Yes. Mayor Beatty?

Yes.

Seven yes, zero no.

Alright. Let's take a five minute break before we jump into the public hearing and work sessions. Staff, thank you. You guys don't get to spend enough time together during the day? All right.

Alright. You guys are invited to start now.

Alright. Good evening, mayor and councilors. I have 87 slides tonight, but, no, I'm gonna shrink it down. My name is Andy Varner. I'm the community development department, director. Community development department, you'll you'll hear referred to as CDD throughout for those in the audience. And we are here, we're here tonight to, present information about the updated comprehensive fee schedule for the public hearing. I'm joined by Anas Lutinsky, our planning division manager in CDD and Coyle, our site development division manager. He's in the audience as well.

Okay. Let's get it rocking and rolling. I am now calling to order a regular no, that's not where we are. Sorry. The next item on the agenda is a public hearing on Resolution 4,936, a resolution adopting a comprehensive schedule for City Of Beaverton and repealing resolution four nine one zero.

This fee schedule will have a financial impact on Beaverton residents, businesses, and others who pay fees in Beaverton. Chart is not great. How did you want this you want me to like, this the way that this script is written, it doesn't give me the opportunity to open it this way. Do you want me to read this conflict of interest disclosure? Isn't that usually the attorney's role?

Mayor, thank you. The concept was that because of the there's potential conflicts that all of you may have as Beaverton residents, and there's actual conflicts that a number of you may have. And the idea was to announce those first and to get it out of the way before the staff presentation because it may inform, for example, the questions that

Okay.

Are are asked. So it the suggestion was, mayor, that that that you would do that, then ask any of your

Okay. Because you because I have a potential conflict of interest even though have a Beaverton business license?

Yeah. The that there are there are potential and there are actual conflicts with people who actually have licenses that are at issue today. And then potential conflicts are you may in the future apply for one of these things that have fees attached to them.

Okay. I don't believe that I have an actual conflict of interest, but I'll go along. I have an actual conflict of interest that I need to announce. The actual conflict of interest is that the proposed fee schedule includes fees for business license that will impact businesses that my family and I are currently associated with. I have potential conflict of interest because I or a family member or business that I'm associated with may have to pay the other fee set out in the proposed resolution should we ever need any of the services covered in the master fee resolution.

I encourage each council member to present to consider making a similar announcement of potential or actual conflict to interest before we begin this hearing.

I'll go first. Yep. I have an actual conflict of interest that I need to announce. The actual conflict of interest is that the proposed fee schedule includes fees for business licenses that will affect businesses that my family and I are currently associated with. I also have a potential conflict of interest because I or a family member or business that I am associated with may have to pay the other fees set out in the proposed resolution. Should we ever need any of the services covered in the master fee resolution?

Anyone else?

In clarifying, if I'm not sure I should go on the go whether I have an actual or potential. I I think I have a potential, but if I declare an actual and if I don't actually have an actual, that's okay?

That would be a kind of a no harm, no foul.

Okay. Yeah. So I have an actual conflict of interest that I need to announce. The actual conflict of interest of that proposed fee schedule includes fees for business licenses that will affect business that my family and I are currently associated with. I also have a potential conflict of interest because I or a family member of business that I associate with may have to pay the other fees that are set out in the proposed resolution should we ever need any of those services covered in the master fee resolution.

I have an actual conflict of interest that I need to announce. The actual conflict of interest is that the proposed fee schedule includes fees for business licenses that will affect businesses that my family and I are currently associated with. I also have a potential conflict of interest because I or a family member or business that I am associated with may have to pay the other fees set out in the proposed resolution should should we ever need any of the services covered in the master fee resolution.

I'll go next. I'm actually declaring a potential conflict of interest because I or a family member that I'm associated with may have to pay the other fees set out in the proposed resolution resolution should we ever need any of the services covered in the master fee resolution. For clarification, I did have a Beaverton business, but that will be wrapping up this year. So it does not have any impact on the future.

We'll go next. I have an actual conflict of interest, and it's that the proposed fee schedule includes fees for business license that will licenses that will affect business that I am associated with. I also have a potential conflict of interest because I, a family member, or a business that I'm associated with may have to pay the other fees set out in the proposed resolution should we ever need any of the services that are covered in the master fee resolution.

Mayor? Yep. I need to declare I have a potential conflict of interest because I or a family member or a business that I am associated with may have to pay the other fees set out in the proposed resolution should we ever need any of the services covered in the master fee resolution.

Let let's take a short recess so I can consult with legal counsel. Five minutes. Because of the actual conflicts of interest, the council members have disclosed, councilor Hartmeyer Prague will conduct this meeting.

Thank you, Mayor. To allow council members who have declared an actual conflict of interest to participate as much as possible in deciding whether the city should adopt the new fee resolution, we will separate our consideration of the proposed fee resolution into two parts. When it comes to voting on whether to adopt the proposed resolution, we will first consider all fees listed on the proposed fee schedule except for business license fees. Then, after the first vote is resolved, we will separately consider whether to adopt the business license fee portion of the proposed resolution. This process allows councilmembers who have declared an actual conflict of interest on account of the business license fee to participate as much as possible in deciding whether the city should adopt the new fee resolution, except for the business license fee portion.

As a reminder, those council members who have declared an actual conflict of interest on account of the business license fee must refrain from participating in any official action on matters relating to business license fees. Therefore, council members who have declared an actual conflict of interest because of business license fees may not ask questions or participate in discussions about those fees. With that understanding, let's proceed with the staff presentation.

Okay.

Alright. Thank you, counselor Hartmeier Prigg, and counsel, again, Andy Varner. I'm joined by, Anas Lutinski, here tonight to talk about information related to the comprehensive fee schedule and the public hearing, but we're going to focus on development fees for this presentation. As a reminder, a work session was held on this project on November 18. After the work session, staff finalized fee changes in response to Council feedback.

The full changes have been included as attachments to the Agenda Bill, so we will summarize the proposed changes in this presentation. After the citywide fee schedule was adopted earlier this year in April, CDE conducted a closer study of development application fees and open air Beaverton fees. The approach overall has been guided by City policy goals and Council priorities. This includes seeking to understand how Beaverton depart development permitting fees compare to peer jurisdictions, an analysis of cost recovery for planning, and consideration of the role development plays in achieving desired policy outcomes, such as housing production and support for businesses. Now I'll hand it over to Anna to describe the proposed planning fee changes.

Thanks, Andy. Following Council guidance to target an average cost recovery of 75%, the proposed planning fee changes are estimated to increase cost recovery from the existing 35% to 75%. The changes proposed are not flat across the board increases. Instead, they are tailored as well as possible to reflect the cost for specific applications, and use proportional approaches when it's possible to do so to reflect the variation in review time for different projects that need the same applications. In addition, selected applications are proposed to be deeply or fully subsidized to reflect policy priorities.

The proposed changes keep Beaverton in range with other jurisdictions, as illustrated on the following slides. So this first slide here shows just planning fees, and this was the benchmark fee study that we discussed on November 18. Existing Beaverton planning fees that are all the way over on the left are really neither the highest nor the lowest, But we do have even with the proposed increases, although they are significant, we are still generally in that same range, with other jurisdictions showing that these benchmark projects would still be charged higher fees in in these other places. Looking at the overall cost of development permitting, so this includes not only planning but also building permit fees, again, you can see that the existing city fees all the way to the left, are lower in this comparison. The increases to the planning fees that are proposed would increase that slightly, but we're still basically in the same range compared jurisdictions.

And again, this is representing an increase in cost recovery for planning specifically, guided by counsel's target of really aiming for that 75 percent, and also staying within range of those other jurisdictions. Over to Andy for Open Air Beaverton.

Okay. So that covers the planning fees. Again, a lot of reference to the Agenda Bill and from the November work session. So here, I'll briefly discuss the process and policy approach to updating our Open Air Beaverton fees. As a reminder, the Open Air Beaverton program was introduced during the pandemic to allow businesses to safely offer outdoor options, particularly in the dining sector.

The program's regulations have not changed since 2021, and we plan to make recommendations for updating the code, next year for the program. The OAB fees were not adjusted until earlier this year when we implemented our master fee schedule. We received feedback from both the council and participating businesses of the program indicating that improvements to these fees were necessary. So the proposed OEB fee options from the work session were based on, again, a regional fee, benchmark similar to planning, and a cost impact analysis for staff and right of way usage. The new options aim to promote fairness, transparency, and efficiency for both our participants and staff.

They also reflect council priorities, such as supporting our downtown businesses, and aim for better alignment with actual right of way usage and staff services. So you won't see any comparison charts tonight like we had in November as those were covered, in the previous sessions and previous agenda bills. But this chart will look different from the work session, based on counsel's feedback from that meeting, in November. And within staff, we had some internal discussions to determine that we can remove the sidewalk cafe fees from this schedule, and you'll see that in the chart. Between code compliance and economic development division efforts, we believe we can effectively perform the education and the enforcement required to maintain sidewalk access, thereby eliminating the need for a permit for those participating businesses.

We retained the previous fee structure for street parklets for the reasons noted in the Agenda Bill, namely assigning some nominal value for downtown parking spot for right of way usage. Additionally, minor changes are proposed to building permit fees, mainly to mechanical permits, and reimbursement district fees were accidentally repealed earlier this year, and they're now proposed for restoration in the fee schedule. The comprehensive fee schedule has been adopted to increase with inflation annually, as detailed in the resolution. The fees that you vote on tonight would be increased to reflect the Consumer Price Index when that index is published in January. And the new fees will then take effect on February 1.

And so you see the staff recommendation, for both Open Air Beaverton and our development permitting fees overall, and we'd be happy to take any questions from the council.

Thank you, Anna and Andy. Are there any questions for staff? Councilor Teeter.

Yes. Thank you. I have two questions. One is about the Open Air Beaverton annual permit fees. Can we pull up the slide with that chart again a few slides back?

Yeah. This chart. Yep. Thank you. Looking at this chart under the permit column, it does not show $350 on the renewal for an annual renewal of a permit. But looking in the actual e list, it looks like there'd there'd be an annual $350 permit fee. Is that is it annual? Or do you pay $350 the very the first time you apply, and then you have the permit, you just need to get it reinspected? Can you walk me through I'm misunderstanding something or I'm not seeing something right.

Can you walk me

through Let me turn my head to Khoi in

the back. Do we have that?

Back on up, boy. Yeah. Khoi is our site development, division manager, and they oversee the the program.

The core of the question is just, would people have to pay $350 each year for the permit?

Correct. Good

evening, counsel. Khoi Lei, site development division manager. For related to the questions about processing

for

renewal, we propose to collecting the right of way use permit plus the reinspection permit. No application or permit fee will be collected with the renewal.

Okay. No permit fee. So no application. No permit. Okay. So that chart is right there.

And so you saw a discrepancy in the in the fee schedule?

I I might have. It

doesn't okay.

Think so. I I was getting really confused looking at it, and it could have been me misinterpreting it.

If if if that's true, that's a correction we can make. Okay.

But this is the intent Yeah. Okay. Got it. And then I had another question about in the list of fees, there's a right of way temporary use fee. It looks like for staging for construction projects that people can pay $1 per square foot. Is that I was reading that accurately. Right?

Okay. That's correct. Councilman

Peter. Yes. The reason why I'm asking about that is because I'm always thinking about, like, what's the value of our right of way and construction staging being charged $1 per square foot versus open air Beaverton right of way usage being around $3 per square foot or so. I was just kinda thinking through the discrepancy there, like or not discrepancy, the difference there. And is that something you all can weigh on? Like, why would construction staging be priced less than a parklet?

Koy can correct me if I'm wrong here, but one of the reasons is when you have a construction permit, it's a much shorter duration than so it may be a dollar per square foot, but typically, I think you're gonna have you may have two weeks to have that your staging location there. So and I think we kind of addressed I tried to address this in the work session. Some of this is it's a science that we're constantly trying to figure out as the right of way constraints change with the different uses. And that's, you know, curve management. You know, we're always trying to

close things out.

That's all my questions.

Thank you, Councillor Teter. Are there any further questions from Council for staff? Okay. Seeing none, city recorder, is there anyone here to speak on the proposed resolution?

Yes. We have David Anderson had signed up to speak.

Okay. And is David in the room or online with us tonight?

He's in the room. He's headed up to the testimony table.

All right. Thank you. So the first speaker is David Anderson. When you speak, please give your name and state whether you are a resident of Beaverton. Please remember to speak clearly and loudly so that your comments can be understood and recorded.

In Old Town Beaverton. My wife and I co own Syndicate Wine Bar. I am concerned for my district. It does not get the foot traffic it used to get. It doesn't get the business it needs to survive, let alone thrive. There are many thoughts as to why. I'm not here to discuss those thoughts tonight. What I am here to do is to report to you, on what I live every day in hopes of opening your eyes to the reality we all see. We see empty restaurants and businesses. On busy nights, they're half empty.

Rarely is there a way to get into any place. When five other businesses joined ours in 2023 to build outdoor dining structures through Open Air Beaverton, it was with the hope of creating a vibrant space to breathe life into our district for the benefit of all. I believe the city calls this place making. The city offered us grants, and that helps, but many of us spent more than $10,000 of our own money, which is a lot for any small business coming out of a pandemic. The city now wants to charge us more than was ever discussed just so we basically have the right to continue using these structures.

We built our dining structures on faith the program would appeal to post pandemic consumer behavior, but in the past two years, we've seen a return to pre pandemic behaviors. Customers place comfort as a top factor when choosing seating, If it's too hot, too sunny, too cold, too windy, or if there's even a little bit of rain, customers prefer to sit indoors. Only if the weather is perfect do customers choose in the outs outside seating, and then our indoors is empty. If we run out of outdoor seating, we lose business. It is a misnomer to say our outdoor structure increases total seating capacity.

No. It just gives us a chance to attract what business there is in the district, so we don't lose them to another restaurant. We love our outdoor structure, but we have our own fees to recover. We are three years away from breaking even on our investment. To suggest our annual fees should increase, as much as are being proposed, with others in our neighborhood facing even more, it's going to force us to make a simple decision. Some of us may sell our structures to other restaurants, or we may just hire a dumpster and dismantle it. It's just the reality. I cannot justify paying these fees during a slow period for my restaurant. I need to save every dollar I can so I can save every job I provide. I can't justify paying a city that's struggling with its own budget.

I don't want to say it, but it feels like bait and switch. We went into this program knowing there could be fees, but they were never discussed until tonight what they could be. I have also a difficult time with Open Air Beaverton basically impacting just six businesses that we're talking about. Those are the ones with with parklets like my own. That's going to garner you maybe $6,000, and yet you pour a $180,000 a year into the 1st Street Dining Dining Commons, which frankly does sit empty most of the time. If you proceed with these cost increases, you'll see a number of dining structures disappear, starting with mine. I know this for a fact. I talked to the other business owners. If they do come down, there's going to be questions from our customers as to why, and we'll have to point them to look at the city council. One of you recently said, you feel the dining structures make our district more inviting.

I agree. I love it. I love the outdoor dining we have. Is there not value for the city to continue investing in the place making that we small businesses have undertaken and help keep our fees lower, which we have previously agreed to. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, David. Dave, if you would wait just a moment because I need to ask the council if they have any questions for you. And it looks like counselor Duggar does have a question for you.

Cool. Thanks for being here. Sure. Can you tell me about how many months of the year you have actual business that sits? Like how many months are you generating revenue for your outdoor structure?

Right now, it's locked up.

Yeah. Know it's No one wants it.

No one it's Goldilocks situation. It has to be the perfect weather. I might have a few people starting in February. It gets peak use in the spring. It actually goes down in the summer because it's too warm. I can't change their behaviors. As we get into fall, like September, October, there's a lot of use. I would say four, if maybe five months total out of the year when it's really used.

And and I think I heard this, but your your capital cost out of your pocket, not counting grants, were more than $10,000

That is correct. Maintain it, you know, if it if it gets defaced, we have to repaint it. Yeah. But it was it was $10,000 of our own personal money. I mean, city was gracious. Thank you for the grant. It helped. But there are other restaurants in our district that paid far more than that. So

Thank you.

You're very welcome. Thank

you. And councilor Husser?

Yeah. Thank you for coming here and taking the time. I hear your testimony, and I'm trying to think of, like, what, you know, what is the ask in in your testimony? Because I'm just I mean, I'm pulling up the thing. It says the current fee was $22.95. They're proposing $3.50. I see some of the other fees. I just I'd be curious, like, what is what is something that feels like a win to you but also allows us to recover costs look like?

Sure. So our Beaverton business license is, what, dollars 100 a year. And that's just the cost of doing business in this town. It's a fair fee. We have one parking space that we're using. So if you add that to the modified site reinspection fee, that would be $750 for our particular business. Another one down the street, Raindrop Taphouse, is looking at $12.50 And I can tell you, they don't have the money to do it. There's I've talked to the folks at Barjoon, I've talked to the folks at Lazydays, and that's four out of six who are very concerned about these costs. I don't know what the exact fee is. I think right now, we're it was proposed it was going to be something like $112 a year initially.

If I had known back in 2023 that in addition to the $10,000 of what savings I had left, that I was then going to have to start stomaching $7.50 as a onetime fee without even a payment plan option, I would never have gone for this.

Okay. I'm just looking at the fees and trying to trying to process. I mean, just my comment is, like, I we care so much about our small businesses, and so what does something look like?

So

I mean, to to a small business that has to make a tough decision, my understanding is with this proposed fee change that sidewalk cafes will have no fees. My choice is simple. I'm just gonna put chairs out, up front and there's no sidewalk cafe fee with this new structure. So you can come take that structure away, I'll just use the sidewalk. And I think you're probably going to see a lot of other businesses follow suit if they can.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. Are there any further questions for David? Okay. Thank you, David, for joining us this evening. I see no more questions.

Thank you very much.

City recorder, is there anyone else wishing to comment?

There is no one online, but there was written testimony also submitted by Angela Anderson in opposition, Mary Beth Buffum, unknown, Keegan Lewis opposed, the Beaverton School District who requested a delay, and the Tualatin Hills Parks And Recreation District who opposed.

Okay. Thank you so much. Council, do do does any member of the council have any further questions for staff? Okay. The public hearing is now closed. We will first consider all fees listed on the proposed fee schedule except for the business license fees. The council may either adopt the proposed resolution or take other action. But if other action is proposed, the motion must include specific direction as to what that other action is. Is there a motion regarding the resolution?

I put my name in, councilor Hartmut Prigg.

Oh, thank you, councilor Duggar. I just missed it. Alright. Yes, please.

Question before I do, mayor. Do I, if if I wanna propose

You wanna propose a change?

Change. Yes.

Yeah. And so

Do we need a motion first and then I propose the change or how does that work?

You should include your change with your motion.

With the motion.

Yep.

I move that the council adopt resolution number four nine three six, resolution adopting a comprehensive fee schedule for city services and repealing resolution forty nine ten, except for the positions provisions relating to business license fees with the following change. In the right of way fees, I believe for one park parklet, I would like to see that a $150. And for an additional one, I would like to see it at 200. Make sense?

Say it

again. So for for Open Air Beaverton, the first parklet, the first parking spot would would be moved to be a 150 instead of 500. And the second one, So if you had two spots, you would pay a $1.50 and then a 200. So you'd pay 350. If you had one spot, you would pay $1.50. That makes sense?

Mhmm. Everybody

I'll second that motion. Yeah.

If if I may. Okay.

It has been moved that we ex hold on. I wanna make sure I get my language right. It has been moved that we adopt Resolution 4,936 that adopts a comprehensive fee schedule and repeals Resolution four ninety one except for the provisions relating to business license fee and amends the parklet fees to be a $150 for the first space. And if you had a second space, that second space would be $200. It's seconded by mayor Beatty. Is there any debate on the motion?

Have something? Sorry. The attorney's waiting.

Yeah. I did. Thank you, mayor. Staff identified during their presentation that there was an error in the fee schedules that, counselor Teeter identified, and just so the record doesn't show you approving the fee schedule with the error, it would make sense to any motion to approve that schedule to identify the correction as well, that there is no annual application fees for open air.

If the motion maker and the seconder agrees to that, do we need to restate the motion?

Yeah. Can you tell me that again?

Yeah. I I can restate it. Okay. I'm gonna restate it with this additional change, and and councilors Stugger and mayor Beatty, please let me know. So this motion would be for resolution number four nine three six, a resolution adopting a comprehensive fee schedule for city services and repealing resolution four nine one zero except for the provisions relating to business license fees with a change in the Open Air Beaverton policy to clarify that there is no annual application fee for the Open Air Beaverton program.

The parklet fee would be reduced. For the first parklet, it would be a $150, and the second parklet would be $200. Councilor Dugger, Mayor Beatty, any comment in affirmative to revise the motion?

Just to just to clarify real quick, there would be an application fee at the start, but not renewal application. Yeah. Okay. Application and permit. Application and permit fee. Yeah.

Initial? No renewal. Alright. I just wanna ask for, to make real clear, if city recorder and city attorney feel that the motion is clear or if we should try again.

As far as, I'm concerned, councilor, I think you've got it.

Alright. Thank you. So we're gonna start with counselor Duggar on debate, then we'll go to counselor Hudson and then counselor Teeter.

Yeah. Thank you. Colleagues, I've I've struggled with this one. I think you all have heard me pretty loudly, and I appreciate you listening to me complain for a few months about this. I I really struggle to find the right balance because we do need to capture some costs, But we all talk about how important small businesses are.

I think this sends a signal to the market, this proposed amendment, that we are serious about our fiscal restraints, but we're also listening to our community and that we are we are prioritizing our small business. The one thing that really stuck to me and I keep coming back to in this debate is this is about cost recovery. And the right away fees do not cost us anything currently. We are not recovering that particular part of this money. That is just money that we are gathering. There's no cost to the city. There is a cost in the application. There's a cost in the renewal inspection. There's a cost in the permit. Those are all why I left those alone.

I it it's really difficult for me for us to say we're we're taking essentially a free parking spot, we're gonna charge you for what relates to community actual benefit too. You know, I benefit, a lot of you benefit from downtown dining. I think of councilor Teeter when you were the chair of the BDA, the director, and you brought the street seats program That is a design I think it was a design competition, but I I can't remember. I might be getting that wrong. But I I remember I just moved into Downtown Beaverton, I thought, wow.

This is gonna be really cool one day. But you guys, the day is here, and it has been the last few years. We have this, and I want I'm really protective over it. And I really I hope you'll join me in sending a signal to our small business community. This isn't a big fiscal impact for the city. It's not. $5,000, $6,000. This will cut it down to maybe 1,000 or 2. It's not gonna be much. I think I've I've spent a lot of time on fiscal stuff for the city. It concerns me a lot, but this is one that I I really think we have to we have to put our values in front of us, and we have to support our small businesses. And and frankly, I want to subsidize this. I want more of this. I wanna send the message to the community. There's there's tons of benefits.

I won't even go through them all. You guys know them all. But like more eyes on the street make a safer community. We we have people you know, cars don't get broken into when people are outside. That's that sort of thing. So hope you'll join me in supporting this amendment. It it would mean a lot to our small business community. And I I think it sends the right message in an in a time when it is slower downtown. I live downtown. It is slower. We are likely entering a recession, if if not teetering on the verge of one. And I think this sends the right message to the community. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Hudson.

Before I respond, Sue, you mentioned that there was testimony from the parks rec. Could you just just to be clear, I have a school district letter, a letter from someone that's not on the list. I don't see Mary Beth, and I'm just trying to make sure I have

So that one came at 05:20, and I was already downstairs. So I did forward it

Okay.

To you electronically. So we do have it. My apologies. At a certain point, we have to draw the line, and I have to come downstairs to to prep for the meeting.

No. And and no worries. I just I think just to hear that the school district and t h p r d are having some feelings right now for me, I'm I I'm open to supporting the way you're moving. I'm trying to wrap my head around two of our partners' concerns and trying to make sure I'm caught up on that. So I'm just gonna take a minute and read the the one that came in. It did come in at five today. So, I guess I I'm feeling a little like, oh, like, did I read everything, before this moment to be able to make this kind of a decision? Not to say that I don't want to make this kind of decision. I just trying to gather everything in front of us.

Thank you. Councilor Teeter.

Thanks. I've got a few comments. One, thank you, Councilor Duggar, for making this motion. I don't know if I was just I wasn't fully ready for the other options of straight up approving it, and I like this a lot better. I do think Wheelis is something that I wanna subsidize.

I know that's a little different. Well, I've shared kind of a a balance that I've been trying to trying to strike over the past several months with this too, and I think I've really leaned in the into the place making aspect of this over the past couple months too. And councilor Duggar mentioned the first street seat that was put out in front of Milk and Tea in 2019. I can't take full credit for that because the city actually did have I think it was usually about $25,000 each year that it could use to replace making in Downtown Beaverton. And that was used to help build that 1st Street seat put in front of Milk and Tea and it came at a perfect time because we did not know that the pandemic would be coming a year after that.

So maybe it's a little ironic that we we can still lean in into place making even though we are not funding it directly anymore. So I would support these because I don't wanna see them go away, and I do think that there is a very real possibility of that. I wanna see more of them. So I would support this motion. I I hesitate to say this, but I will say it.

I'm a little frustrated that some of the testimony from our district partners came in so late. This is not the first time that it's happened. And if they have issues that are that are this important, then they can share them earlier on in the process. We give adequate notice for these sorts of conversations, and we have these sorts of conversations quite often. If THPRD is also worried about development costs, they have the opportunity to cover those through their own SDCs, but we don't have that that same sort of financial flexibility with the city with the condition we're in right now. So I would be willing to vote and approve this motion as it is right now.

Thank you. Mayor Beatty?

I am gonna support John's motion. I think, when I looked at the fees and when I talked to him about it earlier, I understand there's sometimes a difference between one spot and two spots, and we're trying to balance recovering fees and the use of public space. I think it's a it's a fair amount. I wish that there was a way for us to work with a state fire marshal to to be able to move them in and out in a more flexible manner so they didn't have to sit locked up in the road when they're not being used because that doesn't help anyone in this scenario. That's not a rule of the city.

That's a state fire marshal rule when it comes into it being functional. And so I think that's something a future legislative ask that we can do to tweak the the law so that it can be used during high season and then maybe removed differently. And so I think this is a still a massive reduction to the first fee that we heard, and I and we definitely heard from the businesses that it's impacting. I think this is a a meaningful step towards, accomplishing that. I think in a future iteration, because that's what we're always doing, we should take in the width of the sidewalk.

If you have a business that's outside of a 12 foot sidewalk and you could put tables outside, that's really different than our narrow sidewalks in Downtown Beaverton where they don't quite have the same accessible access to do it. And so I think, I'm comfortable going to going forward today, but I think this is a a continuing iteration for us if we continue to offer like, go down this path. I think there's room for us to look at ways differently. But right now, as we're trying to cost recovery, we're expel expending a mass amount of staff time trying to negotiate between 300 and $900, and this is not what a business owner wants to do on a Tuesday night as much as we don't want to do on a Tuesday night. And so thanks for sticking in with us.

I think this is a meaningful compromise. I agree with Councilor Teeter on some of the fees with THPRD. They have the ability to recoup that. We partner with them on a lot of things. They have the they're going out for a project to go out way in advance to do this.

And so I I don't necessarily have the same concerns. We did dial back for them with water, but we are like, we have to cover the fees and and how we're operating, and and and this is just the only way for us to move forward in how we do it. They have a lot of parks, and I understand and I think the way that they're gonna have to make it work and come and work with us. So, I have less concerns, I understand. I do appreciate that their letter was a lot more detailed.

We're not sure how it's quite gonna impact the school district, but we're only, as THPRD pointed out in a meeting a couple weeks ago, only 35% of the parks are in the city of Beaverton. So I don't think it's gonna have a massive impact the way that we should just move everything in the city and do it. And I would say the school district is really similar. A lot of the schools are outside the city boundaries. So would have been helpful to see a little bit more understanding of how it was gonna impact the schools within the in the city limits because I think about their major construction projects right now and Beaverton's underway, it won't impact them and all of their other future construction is not in the city limits, at least what they're projecting right now.

So I'm okay to support it today, and and, you know, government is a work in progress, and it is not a forever policy. It's a way for us to adjust it right now. I think we're being responsive to the business community and not raising the business license fee extra huge right now, and we're we're looking at every area possible to make sure that we can recover costs, but it shouldn't be at the detriment of a handful of business. So I'm I'm comfortable reducing the fee for the parklets today.

Councilor Kamiya.

This is a major struggle for me. It's gonna be easy to make easy to make it's easy to say yes to the proposed amendment. But I think we we all made the commitment to financial recovery. And from that perspective, staff worked many months to come up with a plan to to fee recovery for our general fund. This park parklets and dining commons started because of COVID.

And as we just heard from the testimony from our business owner, that people's behavior has changed and there's a decline in the usage of parklets and outside dining commons. And at certain point, we have to address fee recovery. And and as we just heard the testimony that if we raised fees, whatever that might be, there's no business incentive to keep the park outlets and dine outside dining. So so eventually, it's it will be good to have but not must have. So in that context, I'll be voting no on the amendment.

Councilor Tibnall?

Thank you. I'm gonna be supporting the amendment as councilor Duggar outlined it and appreciate the way in which you framed it. I also concur with the mayor that we're kinda turning over every single rock right now looking for ways to recover costs for the city. I think that demonstrates to our residents that we're taking this seriously as we can, but also we have to build in the flexibility, especially in this room. When people come into it telling us things that they're experiencing that we factor that in to our decision making.

And the in person testimony just holds a little bit more weight for me than a written letter, especially when it comes in very last minute. But I I do appreciate that the decisions that we make do have an impact on our jurisdictional partners and those have overlapping services within our city. But yeah. Thank thank you for taking the time to come in and for the written testimony as well. And hearing that, like, bird's eye view of what's going on in Restaurant Row is always very helpful.

Thank you. Okay. So seeing no further comment, I believe we are ready for a roll call vote on this. However, counselor Kimmy, I wanted to clarify. We did make the motion in one package that it is to adopt the fee schedule with the amendment. So I just wanna make sure that that everyone has that clarity as you proceed with your vote. Okay. So with that clarification, city recorder, would you please call the roll?

Councilor Duggar?

Yes.

Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg? Yes. Councilor Hassan? Yes. Councilor Kimmy? No. Councilor Teeter? Yes. Councilor Tivnan? Yes. Mayor Beatty?

Yes.

Motion carries six, yes. One, no.

Okay. Thank you. Our next is the business license portion of the resolution. So I will move that the council adopt the provisions relating to business license fees contained in resolution number four nine three six, a resolution adopting a comprehensive fee schedule for city services, repealing re repealing resolution four nine one zero.

Second.

Thank you. It's been moved by me and seconded by councilor Hudson. Let me see. Okay. It is our city charter and council rules provide that ordinances and resolutions are to be decided by a majority of the council members present and voting on a matter. This means my vote and councilor Hudson's vote are enough to decide whether to approve or disapprove the motion, and the rest of you may abstain from voting due to your declared actual conflict. City recorder, will you please take the vote by roll call?

Councilor Duggar? Abstain. Councilor Hartmeier Prigg?

Yes.

Councilor Hassan? Yes. Councilor Kimmy? Abstain. Councilor Teeter?

Abstain.

Councilor Tivnan?

Abstain.

Mayor Beatty? Abstain.

Two yes, five abstain.

Alright. Well, thank you, Councilor Hartmeier Prigg for facilitating from off-site. I would just also like to point out for the record, if you're angry about the fees, there's only two city councilors that voted for them tonight, and that is Councilor Hartmeier Prigg and Councilor Husson. So, that is a great place to direct your public comments. Alright. We have three work sessions and it is 09:00. And so we gotta get on this. So no 57 staff PowerPoint slides. I know you got your moment in the sun, but our ability to concentrate dwindles every minute after 9PM. So seven minutes to go, Mike.

Testing that we're on. Great. Mayor Beatty, members of council, my name is Michael Williams, and I am the economic development manager for the City of Beaverton. I am joined here today by Neil Simon, who is a government affairs principal with Porter Wright. Today, Neil and I will be presenting a high level a very high level summary of our community profile and engagement findings for an economic development strategic plan update.

Our work started with a best practices analysis that looked at recent plans from all over the country. Next, staff did a review of Beaverton's workforce and an analysis of industry trends. Finally, we did stakeholder and expert engagement, which Neil will be presenting shortly. All of our findings will also be available on a Beaverton website. After we present our findings tonight and get your comments, we will be developing a set of draft recommendations this winter and spring for Council's consideration and final adoption.

So let me just start with a few slides on the community profile, and then Neil will talk about the engagement. Starting with the community profile, we all know Beaverton is a great place to live, but it's also a great place to work. Beaverton is not a bedroom community. It has more people commuting into the city, about 54,000 according to the census, than commuting out of the city, about 41,000. The census also identified 7,600 people that live and work in Beaverton.

On average, Beaverton's working age residents are younger, more diverse, and better educated than the region and the state. This is a workforce profile that is very attractive to many businesses, especially those that are highly innovative and oriented towards global markets. So how did the pandemic and the recovery from the pandemic shape our economy? Well, first, there was a boom of new businesses starting up or moving to Beaverton during the pandemic. This is considered establishment growth by economists.

Most of these businesses were small service sector businesses think health care and professional and technical services. Our average business size shrank over this period from 12.7 to 10.6 employees, and this was likely a result of an influx of small businesses and a loss of a few large businesses to work from home. However, employment did not fully recover from pre pandemic levels until about twenty twenty four mid-twenty twenty four, and we believe it has softened a little bit since. So even though our business parks are not as full as they were pre pandemic, we have more people working in Beaverton than before the pandemic, and a lot of that is or some of that is due to work from home. So in this slide, I listed the business categories where the City Of Beaverton has higher concentrations or shares of employment as compared to the county and region as a whole.

This is done with a series of ratios called a location quotient. Further, I grouped these businesses into two groups, the first being businesses where people meet and interact, and the second being highly skilled services. This is just, something that I saw within this grouping of businesses. What I see with the first grouping is a commercial and cultural hub, which makes sense given our Central Westside location and our workforce. Remember, young, diverse, well educated.

Beaverton is also a hotspot for highly skilled workers and tech start ups. That's our second category here. This is likely due to our Silicon Forest legacy, our well educated workforce and proximity to large businesses in innovative sectors like semiconductor and athletic apparel driving the demand for these services. These large businesses also provide a pipeline of start up founders leaving these companies to develop new and innovative products right here in the City Of Beaverton. So that concludes what I think is a very high level summary.

Council has received a lot more information in these profiles than this. I just wanted to get these few points on the record. And again, all of this will be available, online. So let's pivot to our community engagement, which was developed from in-depth interviews, focus groups, and meetings with local boards and commissions. We also completed a business survey, and while those findings were not completed in time for this presentation, they will be provided to counsel and the public soon as well. So at this point, I'd like to present Neil Simon, our consultant with Porter Wright and our partner in carrying out this engagement.

Thanks a lot, Mike. Really had a pleasure to work with your team, and it's pleasure a to be with you, counselors. Thanks for, the late night. Pleasure to serve my hometown, where I grew up with this important work. To jump in, we talked to people, and all the verbatims would come out to about a 500 page book if we were to bring them together.

So we're happy to dive through with just the high points today, of course. Some great strengths that come across that you all should be very proud of, based on where we're at as a city. Beaverton, business owners, talent recruiters in the region think of Beaverton as a safe and clean place, a place where they've got food and beverage options that are growing, a place where we've got momentum with the research performing arts center. People want to come to Beaverton, and they wanna be part of that. They also see a business culture that is business friendly with lower taxes than neighboring Portland, an expanding semiconductor network, and, great growth with some of the businesses that, Mike just mentioned.

Just one of the verbatims that I think is worth sharing, from a commercial real estate broker that looks at a lot of different markets, they said, Beaverton is a safe and stable environment for people to do business with a high quality of life. It's attractive to companies and their employees. It's a place they're gonna want to work and live. You can't get much better ringing endorsement than that. When it comes to the strengths, we heard things like that time and again.

But, of course, we've got our weaknesses. The city, based on the people we talked to and our conversations, permitting is is a challenge. We've obviously just had that conversation. It's seen as difficult compared to some other parts of the region. Traffic is something that people notice as a weakness.

Hotels with a minimal level of choice in this area. And on the workforce side, not as much skilled labor as some employers are looking for, especially in that engineering, developer, you know, technical programmer space. One of the verbatims I'll pull out from here is, from a large retail company CEO. Beaverton doesn't have the greatest reputation for permitting. It's not a deal breaker, but a nuisance.

So it kinda shows that middling when it comes to your weaknesses, on just on that one particular front. On the opportunity side, things that popped out during our conversations, there's an opportunity for you all to market the city. There's an opportunity for Beaverton to promote itself given how safe and clean and tech driven and culturally vibrant this place is. There's an opportunity to attract businesses from neighboring Portland and Multnomah County, given the dynamics right now. And there's opportunities to redevelop some underutilized assets, invest in some mid sized event venues or gathering places where maybe a company is gonna have an off-site and they go to city because they can't quite find the right spot for themselves in Beaverton, and an opportunity to grow the STEM talent pipeline.

One semiconductor company in the region said, it would be great to have a chorus of mayors with us and other large employers and business associations talking about educating the public or definitely state policymakers about what economic development really does and how it benefits the state. So when we start having these conversations about opportunities that you have to leverage your voices, that point there is economic development is jobs. Economic development is quality of life. And, bringing that to Salem was something that some of the business owners would hope they would see more hand holding from elected officials across Washington County, to activate Salem on. On the threats side, these will be external factors.

Right? They they're beyond your control. I know you, had the start of your meeting, with that the public comment on ICE. It's a it's an important issue. We heard it months ago. We've we've heard it yesterday. We heard it today. That's affecting businesses who's coming to restaurants, not just business owners, but, of course, the customers that they're seeing. So that that's real, and that's been real all of this all of this calendar year, frankly. We've heard about instability at some of the largest companies being a threat because of the shadow that it that it casts over some of the other small businesses.

We've heard the negative stereotypes of Portland and Oregon nationally hurting business attraction efforts. And we hear that regional and state policies make Oregon less competitive for economic development, primarily in conversations around taxes, regulatory environment, and land use. Again, speaking about the overall state of that business climate in our state, there's a very real concern about the threat that high taxes poses, and one retail company executive said, policymakers totally underestimated and continue to underestimate the impact that they have when they make decisions around taxes. That was a comment about the statewide environment, and not a comment about Beaverton, but the statewide as a as a threat that affects how Beaverton might be able to function when it comes to attracting and retaining business. So how does Beaverton stack up compared to competitors or suburban peers?

I think it's, important to note how much times have changed. In 2017, the word was from the community engagement exercise at the time, be like Portland, with place making, walkability, arts, food carts, breweries, all the stuff. Right? Today, the feedback really is almost totally opposite. We're hearing phrases like, don't be like Portland.

That association will hurt business, and it will hurt recruit recruitment and retention of business. On these factors on the screen, education, permitting, and public safety, Viewersen largely scores better than some, and, certainly, better than Portland on on most, but not quite as good as some peer metro area suburban cities. So what can you do as elected officials? Showing up matters a lot. Businesses really wanna hear from you and see that you're engaged.

So getting comfortable with talking to businesses, leaning in on listening, and supporting those wins, being at those ribbon cuttings, all of that shows that the city cares about keeping businesses here and helping the business community thrive. Understanding their challenges, likewise, matters in that same way. When you're seeing businesses consider, gosh, am I gonna stay open? Am I gonna have to move? Having that open conversation about what you can do to retain them, means a lot.

Our conversations also reminded us that the business culture of our place matters. Beaverton has an opportunity to improve its business friendliness through faster permitting with creative customer service mindset, a greater business outreach, more government conversations with business leaders, and stronger state advocacy for business friendly policies because this is the overall state climate that impacts Beaverton. Given that businesses leaving Oregon and the aggressive recruitment efforts from outside states to lure companies away, Beaverton's economic development strategy should prioritize retention. That means embracing those who are here and their needs, looking at talent attraction efforts, workforce development programs, including apprenticeships. And marketing the strengths of Beaverton, the dining options, the diverse culture, and the strong sports and recreational opportunities.

These are some things that are definitely worth leaning into as you look to the year ahead and defending against a down economy, you know, globally. So all of our conversations, kinda ended with, well, what would be a big idea you'd like to see the city do? What would you really like to see happen here on economic development front? And of those, you know, two focus groups and the 20 some interviews, we had a few things that kinda percolated. On the left side of the screen here, you know, we've we've got leaning in on robotics and AI, going all in on that that tech environment that's here.

This would be supporting businesses pursuing practical application of this technology in advanced manufacturing, health care, financial services, and security, and ecommerce and transportation. In the middle, coworking, catering to the city's strong knowledge based economy, high rate of working from home that we we saw in the community survey, and that craving we still all have for togetherness and community. If we can foster that in our in our common spaces, whether it's a content studio space or co working spaces that bring together start ups, creatives, small businesses geared for growth. All of these things could be a good opportunities to capitalize on here in Beaverton. And lastly, on the right, we've got a well kept secret here.

What a view we have in Beaverton. We really do. Beaverton's views of Mount Hood and sunsets over the Cascades could root the city as a central location in the region, connected to the geography that draws so many to Oregon in the first place. This picture is about building tall, and may making like a tree top walk that could be a tourist destination. This is what happens to be in Denmark outside of Copenhagen.

This draws hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. So something that could be done to capitalize on getting above that that that tree line and doing something that says, hey, we're the place for, not just sports and recreation, but of course, the natural environment too. So a few things to to leave you with there, as you contemplate some of the ideas for 2026. It was great to hear from the community, hear from business leaders who wanna see continued success in the community and are happy to be partners with you as you develop your plans going forward.

Awesome. I was with you till the human tornado. I don't know if I could win a a term another term, erecting that here, but I think the next mayor of Beaverton should totally take the human tornado under consideration. Thank you. You know, I know the focus groups and you guys went out of your way to talk to people that don't always talk to us, and we get a lot of the STP, the same 10 people that communicate with us on a lot of things. So I appreciate kind of getting out of the the spear here and talking to other businesses. None none of that surprises me. We're a region. What happens in a region impacts all of us. What Portland does impacts us, which is why the mayors meet so frequently together.

And we do talk about economic development, like all the time. And mainly we're trying to fight off other levels of government that don't do economic development, who think they do economic development. So I think it's really sexy and trendy. Now the governor and everyone down is talking about it and all of them are calling Beaverton because we do it. We have a brand here that's that's pretty awesome and doing pretty well compared to our neighboring people. So I mean, was helpful information and and I appreciate that. Let's see. Councilor Tivnaud, is that who's first? It scrolled up.

Yep. Thank you.

I'm also excited to have this discussion on BIRA. I'm assuming that that's gonna be happening because I think there's a a lot of space to think big in the context of that board. The one of the things that you talked about actually, the chickens came home to roost for me personally having a small consulting company here in Beaverton. I work with clients everywhere, but I had a local client. And I work from home, so I'm not going to have something around the kitchen table, but we needed a work session.

And then the question was, where should we have it? And I was a little embarrassed. I'm like, I should have all this on off the top of my head serving in this role in the city council. And we have an amazing chamber that provides all sorts of resources, but that that was an area we were stumped on. And we actually there's only home there. Know. There was only four of us, so we ended up actually getting one of the study cubes at the library. And it's and I can't wait for it. I think it's gonna be a great space for in the context of that. But scale it up just a little bit, and I think the options become very limited.

And now we're in this space of the incubator for you know, we've had it for small businesses, scaling businesses now in the nonprofit side. And I think that need for space is only gonna continue to grow. So that that was one that really, really resonated with me as something that we can definitely wrap our arms around. We can't create more greenfield space. We can't create a whole lot more in the light industrial space. So there's certain constraints that they are just there. But to the mayor's point, I I I look at what we got going for us. It's like, how can we just turn the volume up on it and continue to make those investments in the areas that are working? So thank you for this report.

Councilor Teeter.

Thank you both.

I just got one comment, and it's about strengths of of Beaverton. And it's something I I didn't see much in this presentation, but I think is a definite strength that we can build on, and it's the ability to develop and grow businesses here. I know we just have we've got the nonprofit incubator, the Oregon Startup Center, Impact Beaverton, Farmers Market, the Beaverton Downtown Association, Adelante, Mujeres, like, many organizations that do entrepreneurial business development. And I have always favored growing local business and retaining them more than attracting businesses from elsewhere. Not that we should solely focus on one or the other, but I think I would love to see some more here about, like, do we actually have as much of an opportunity there as I feel like we do?

Or is that just are we doing are we about maxing out what we're doing already in that area? So I'd love to see some more there. Or if you're already to have any thoughts on that that you can share right now, that'd be welcome. But I do think that's a strength and an opportunity for us to leverage in the future.

Councilor Kimmy.

John was first. Oh, thank you for the presentation. You're right in line. I always talk to our city manager about building world's tallest beaver here. So that could be our attraction.

Right? Right in downtown. Because I saw in Japan there was a world's king largest King Kong there and everybody's taking picture in front of it. So I'm just saying we should make Beaverton stand out by building something significant cause I wanna attract businesses, but that we're I think our strength is also a small business, a restaurant role and other small businesses around downtown. And for the future, our economic development plan, I'd like to see specific plans how we can invigorate, make downtown stand out.

One of the criticism that I saw on the YouTube video a while ago was that Beaverton really doesn't have downtown. I think we have progressed significantly since a few years ago. I like to make that happen. So, it's not just international businesses and whomever coming to build a business here, but our strength is as councilor Tivna was saying, could be incubator, it could be an idea hub, it could be a startup, something innovative, plus why would they come here because of food, because of little charming stores and, you know, just put put Beaverton on the map. I'd like to see more detailed plan in the future when we when we see the plan. Thank you.

I I wholeheartedly do not support the world's tallest beaver. I'm just throwing that out there. Councilor Duggar.

Yeah. Yeah, guys. Thanks for this. I'm gonna add a couple more strings too. Number one, we have the busiest TriMet station in the entire system. I'm proud of Beaverton for having that. Even though that was called out as a weakness, some of our transit North South connections, are we are punching above our weight, which is actually my second one. Beaverton's scrappy. We do punch above our weight in a lot of things, which has always made me incredibly proud to to live here as a resident and then be a city councilor. The reality is we've been in crisis, you guys, for years now.

And I think that is affecting our government, that is affecting our community, that is no doubt affecting our people right now. I love this. I think it's a great time because I think this is a time when when this government, this local government can be providing hope, not only to our residents, but across the region by doing things like partnering regionally. Right? Like, we can we can set the standard for because the reality is not being or being a non full service city, it is in our DNA to partner. We have a a parks district. We have a separate school district. We have a separate fire district. We we cooperate just by our operating model. I think we can be we can lead.

I I I don't wanna necessarily wait for Prosper Portland or some of the others to do this. I think Beaverton can convene. We do that naturally. I also think even though we've been in crisis and we have some we we are kind of still in crisis with our budget and things. So I would be really curious to see, like, some policy wins that don't necessarily have a massive fiscal impact that we could impact that that that would greatly improve our business friendliness or improve move the needle on attraction and retention of business.

I do I love that your comment about bureau. I can wholeheartedly agree. I I I think I wanna put on a separate cap then and think about economic development in the Bureau District. But I do think we we have an opportunity to really think big. And I think that's there there's that's twofold for us. Number one, we just need to because we're hearing loud and clear from the community. Economic development is quality of life. But number two, I think people need something good to look forward to. I think people need to feel positive and they need hope right now more than any time in the last damn bit of crisis that we've been in the last five, six years, however long it's been. I can't even remember.

We we need to give some It it stuck out to me at the the the ally training the other night. We the the people need something to be for, not just against. And I think I think a good economic development strategy with big ideas gets people excited. And I think I think that can act a little bit about this. So I'm I'm I'm super grateful for the work, and I'm I'm I'm gonna push it really hard to think big and then challenge people like me to to think even bigger. So thank you.

Councilor Husson.

Yeah. I'll try to, be brief. It's it's hard. I wanna dream with you all about what I wanna see in economic development, and then we we we thought we think about what's been happening in the last three months in our community and and what we even heard from one of our small businesses. And that just makes me pause.

So I'll start with what I think we need to be focusing on, and then I'll try to dream with you at the end. I think we need to have a really strong retention strategy of small businesses. I think that while the connection is there and we have built a lot of those relationships, I do worry there are people who are leaving. And so I said recruitment and retention, but I really think retention is something that's on my mind, especially as we see small businesses leaving and thinking about how are we building partnerships and relationships with those people so that they feel comfortable to come to us rather than leaving and then us, you know, being surprised that they're gone. So I'd like to see a focus on the retention strategy with an emphasis on diversity.

So are we bringing in different types of businesses, different types of people from different cultures, from different backgrounds? What does that look like? How are we how are we building those relationships? As a you know, just thinking of my parents when they were running a small business back in my very young heydays, you know, they didn't necessarily feel connected to city staff to say, we're gonna close our business or we're gonna open our business. So how do we build some of those relationships with the small businesses that we might not be able to connect with?

I liked something that councilor Tavanaugh brought. Like, is there a place for this strategy or plan to have a directory around coworking space? I think that's actually a really big opportunity. I appreciate that Alicia raised her hand and said, call me, but, all of us can't just call a friend and find a space. Like, what if there was a directory we could send people to to say, here's where you can get space or here's where you could get space? So I don't know if that's a space for this plan, but I think that'd be something that'd be really interesting to see. And I think if we could dream just, like, how are we building more of the right things here? You said schools, I think, is one of the slides. And, you know, is it I don't think we're big enough, but, like, is it a mini Portland community college? Right?

Like, are there classes, or is there something we can offer to start attracting more of us, to continue to attract more people around here? So I don't know what the nightlife is is around this time, but just, like, what are some things that we can think about? So just some stuff. I I do think, like, retention's gonna be really critical, given the climate that we're dealing with right now. So thank you very much.

I would just like to point out to me as a geriatric millennial nighttime is 5PM. That's when I'd like to see some real nightlife happening and then in bed by nine. So that would be ideal. Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg.

Thank you. I I want a roller disco, mayor, and, like, that could start at 5PM and be perfect for us geriatric millennials. But I I I think my fellow counselors really kinda covered everything. It's the a kind of analogy I've been thinking a lot about lately is just the ecosystem that we are all a part of. And a healthy ecosystem includes healthy communities, healthy families, healthy businesses.

And I think some of the ideas that are both in the plan and then also that were shared by my other counselors, right, is, that's how you grow your micro business to your small business to your medium business and so on. And so I think your retention comments, counselor Hassan, are really interesting, right, of just how do we keep the the businesses that start here. And and maybe not everyone can get into Oregon startup or into an incubator or whatnot. But so I think it's also part of that economic development plan is that we keep investing in these programs that are that are helping in in impact and things like that. So just really great work.

I do kind of love that, you know, Mike, you and your team have been working on this for quite some time, and it does seem like it's kind of becoming a buzzword, a buzz phrase, a buzz topic in the state. And I I think it's kinda cool to see what we've done in Beaverton that's worked and and also just kinda where we're headed. So thank you.

Thank you for joining us this evening. I'll I'll end tonight with this topic saying that, like, the reason this council has been able to lead through so much crisis the last five years was the foundation that allowed us to do it of past councils investing in longevity and investing in business, investing in water, and investing in infrastructure. It gave us the bandwidth to move resources, to buy this building, to adapt, to keep our water rates low when you look at what's happening in other cities. We have a responsibility to respond to crisis in real time and plan for the future. And that is what all of us promised the public we would be doing.

And so we have to we have to kinda do both things because we don't know what the future holds for Beaverton. But if we can stabilize it by creating good jobs and a good community, a future council's gonna have that ability to respond. Hopefully, it's in prosperity, and they they're not dealing with wildfires, rain, ice, both in the the the natural sense that shut us down last year and the government that's coming into our streets every day. We owe it to our kids to build a foundation in a place where they can grow and thrive, and that starts with a good, strong economic development, and to counselor Hudson's point, retention to make sure that this is the bailiwick of the city. This is what we're supposed to do, and we have to be able to drive resources to economic development.

So thank you for joining us this evening. I know our, Beaverton climate action plan, is gonna be sent to us a memo and and come back to us in January because it is getting so late that we are gonna move on to our access center siting. And it looks like we got the dream team back up here.

Good evening, City Council. For the record, Chad Stover, Community Services Homelessness Program Manager. And here today to talk about the Beaverton Access Center siting criteria. Do we have a visual?

Thank you, Jessica. Okay.

And we can go to the next slide. Okay. So for the objectives for tonight is we have four things. We want to review the Beaverton Access Center, concept and recap the 10/01/2024 work session. Then And we're gonna summarize the community feedback of access center siting guidelines, including the updated draft guidelines. And then lastly, seek council's feedback on the siting guidelines. Okay. Next slide, please. And for our focus tonight, we have two critical questions that we have before the council. One, are there elements of the draft siting criteria that you would like to see changed?

And what role does the city council desire city staff to play in selecting a site and operator, I. E, the RFP committee? So please think about those two questions, and we'll come back to those at the end. Okay. Next slide, please.

Just to start off, just a reminder, about what is a supportive housing services funded access center. It offers services for community members experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of becoming homeless, offers resources, connection, and support, offers nonemergency services such as meals, laundry, bathrooms, and showers, closed closet, and food pantry. He would be open seven days a week from 7AM to 7PM, allows for twenty four seven operations and temporary overnight use during inclement weather, and is low barrier but excludes the use and possession of firearms, non prescription drugs, and alcohol. Next slide, please. And then just to bring us back, about a year ago, if you recall, city staff came in October 2024 to talk about an earlier draft of the citing guidelines at that time.

And, during that conversation, the council, you you directed Citi staff to move with speed, and you approved a list of stakeholders for community outreach, which I'll talk about in just a moment. And then at that time, we were already talking about one of the buffers that we're gonna talk about tonight, and that's a 500 foot buffer from schools with flexibility and mitigation factors. And that part's underlined for some important reasons that we will discuss this evening. And we talked about not necessary to buffer at home daycares. That means day care centers that are not licensed.

And then there was consideration to act to consider the access centers in Cornelius, Hillsborough, and Tigard. And you suggested a location other than the Beaverton City Library. And then also to review community input process for the Beaverton shelter. Next slide, please. And on this slide, this is just a recap of the different community organizations who we talked to back in October, November 2024.

And, at that time, we were intending to come back to council in December. But due to some changes that were happening at the metro level at that time, our plans to come back to council then got pushed back. And so everything stopped, and we we were in a delay mode and much time went by. And then we get to July 2025, and financial things seem to be stable again. So the county reached out to us and said, please go forward again with the access center, and so we proceeded to do that.

But because about a year had passed, we thought it would be good to just recap with these groups that we had talked to back in the 2024 just to remind them about the conversations that we had the first go round and then just checking with them and see if they had anything further that they would like to provide in terms of feedback about the access center siting guidelines. And you can see, in the columns 24 or 25, if there's a a month there, that means that we were able to talk to them in person and actually have a conversation face to face. Sometimes we did it in Zoom. Sometimes we were, left to email to correspond this way. You can also see in 2025, some of those organizations, they don't exist now, and so we weren't able, obviously, to get back in touch with them again the second time.

But we did a good faith effort in 2025 to loop back with all the organizations who we talked to in the first round. Next slide, please. Okay. Now this is getting right down to it. This slide here is your most up to date draft of the siting guidelines, and we broke it down into five categories.

So for accessibility and transit connectivity, sites should be near high frequency transit lines with connecting sidewalks. It is ADA accessibility is required or must be feasible through cost effective retrofitting. For building suitability, preference for a stand alone building, size and layout must support county program requirements. Three, safety and buffer zones from sensitive locations. A 1,000 foot from elementary and middle school buffer, 500 feet from high schools, playgrounds, and licensed childcare facilities unless mitigating strategies are in place.

Number four, neighborhood integration. Sites should allow engagement with the neighborhood but avoid proximity to residential areas, apartments and single family homes, and isolated zones. Zoning preferences. Commercial and mixed use zones are preferred for siting. Okay?

So this right here is the most up to date draft of siting guidelines, and we can come back to it in work session today. Next slide, please. Now, taking that into consideration, we now have a map that is indicative of the siting guidelines that I just read to you on the previous slide. So on the left, you can see the legend here, and you'll notice that it's color coded. So you see red or downtown regional center, TriMet bus routes, freight lines, licensed child care facilities, Twalton Hills Park And Recreation Playgrounds, they're all represented in colors on the map.

Now one thing that I just wanna point out about the map, number one, please don't take it too literally, especially when it's this small because it's hard to see specific locations. But this is really just to give you a perspective based on the siting guidelines that we saw on the previous slide. You'll notice that much of Beaverton starts to get clouded out as we add buffer upon buffer upon buffer of the different things that were included in the guidelines. Right? I I wanna bring your attention to the light blue shaded area of the map.

The light blue shaded area of the map represents what is left over for where we could put an access center if we were to follow these siting guidelines as they're laid out. Okay? So just to give you that And next slide, please. This brings us back to our two initial questions. And I will now turn it over to the City Council for feedback.

Thanks for the map. I I would say I'll start with the second question first and let the council kinda catch up with their thoughts here. I would like the city staff to play a very large role in site and operator perspective. The county, they've been really great partners with us, but they're not in it every single day. Most people cannot recognize a county commissioner, they're not involved in the same way that the council and the mayors are, and by proxy, you're an extension of us, and so having our voice at the table really, really matters.

I would say that our our shelter has been a shining example of community engagement and what it looks like and what it's doing and thinking outside the box. For me, what is what is highlighting can we put that map back up? We're surrounded by a lot of UUA, the unincorporated areas like Aloha, and we are shouldering a large, large percentage of the work. And for me, a lot of the map with a lot like, there's a lot of locations in Aloha that this could be presented. And so while I understand Beaverton is a large player in this, we shouldn't only have to shoulder this responsibility.