Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, I am going to call tonight's regularly scheduled city council meeting to order. Will the recorder call the roll?

Dougher? I am here. Thank you. Councillor Hartmire-Prigg? Here. Hassan? Here. Kimme?

Here. Teeter? Here.

Tim non here Beatty here.

OK, so we have a little bit of some adjustment on tonight. We do have two proclamations visitor comment city managers report an intense consent agenda and we have three public. hearings scheduled and we are going to not have a public meeting on the sewer and the water tonight. We are going to have a work session. I'm sorry, I'm trying to find my notes. There was a recently adopted Oregon state law about transparency that does not allow elected officials to vote on certain items where they think they might have a conflict of interest. Water and sewer makes it we have a conflict of interest, and we have to apply for a class exemption from the Oregon Ethics Commission to be able to have the discussion. Otherwise, we would be voting on something we cannot discuss. So tonight's plan is to have a conversation, and then on July 7th, have the vote. So if you're here to testify on that, know that we are not having a public hearing on the water and sewer this evening. And we are going to start today with two proclamations. We do have one, we have two, and we'll start with Councillor Duggar.

Thank you, Mayor. Proclamation for the city of Beaverton, whereas the presence, visibility, and celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual plus community enhances the quality of life in the city of Beaverton, whereas the LGBTQIA plus community has been the target of discrimination and violence based on gender, sexual orientation, identity, and perceived identity, which conflicts with Beaverton's core values as a community, and whereas LGBTQIA plus rights are human rights, And whereas this country has witnessed a significant amount of anti-trans legislation that seeks to regard the LGBTQIA plus community as lesser. And whereas gay pride events are intended to celebrate visibility and diversity as well as educate and foster engagement. And whereas the city of Beaverton strives to be a welcoming and safe place where people, families, and institutions thrive. and the contributions of all are celebrated and valued. And whereas the City of Beaverton's support of LGBTQIA Pride Month reflects a commitment to being an ally and supporting marginalized people, people's rights to love, joy, and expression, now, therefore, the City Council of the City of Beaverton, Oregon, do hereby proclaim June 2026 as LGBTQIA Plus Pride Month in the City of Beaverton.

We want to do a photo.

So I think we have some folks for a photo.

All right, one, two.

Okay. Proclamation from the Office of the Mayor of the City of Beaverton. Whereas, Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Independence Day, commemorates the events of June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger led Union soldiers into Galveston, Texas, bringing news that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people were declared free nearly two and a half years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation. And whereas as one of the oldest American holidays, Juneteenth commemorates formerly enslaved individuals and their descendants and has historically been a time of prayer, reflection, and family reunion. And whereas while July 4th, 1776 represents the birth of the United States of America and commemorates its independence from British rule, it did not offer independence to enslaved people. And whereas, although the Juneteenth celebration is specific to the emancipation of African descendants, its message promotes the continued freedom, equity, and economic prosperity of individuals from all races, ethnicities, creeds, and cultures, and improves upon the nation's promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And whereas America must never forget or repeat its vivid and tragic events of African American history, which exposed the dehumanizing impact of racial violence, from chattel slavery to convict leasing, from thousands of lynchings to the racial massacres in Tulsa and Rosewood, from segregation to voter disenfranchisement, and from mass incarceration to state-sanctioned violence. And whereas we must remember the courage of those who fought for freedom, including those attacked on Bloody Sunday during the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And whereas historically Juneteenth observances have not always received acknowledgement and recognition, even though Juneteenth is as critical component of American history as it marks a turning point in the nation and a step towards equality. And whereas on June 1, 2021, the Oregon Senate unanimously passed House Bill 2168, making Juneteenth an official holiday in Oregon, and whereas Juneteenth commemorates the strength and resolve of Black and African Americans throughout our history and serves as an opportunity to celebrate the numerous contributions of Black and African Americans, And whereas this year marks the 160th commemoration of Juneteenth, and whereas Beaverton honors the legacy of Juneteenth by partnering with our community to promote racial justice and create a more inclusive future for all. Now, therefore, on behalf of Lacey Beatty, the mayor of the city of Beaverton, does hereby proclaim June 19th, 2026, thus Juneteenth in the city of Beaverton and call this observance to the attention of all members of our community, encouraging reflection, education and celebration of freedom and justice. And on Juneteenth, this Thursday, there will be a flag raising out in the plaza and all are welcome to attend.

2 o'clock. Thanks, Councillor Husson.

We are now to move on to visitor comments. The city requires pre-registration for online in-person visitor comments at council meeting. Registration closed at noon today. All registration was conducted through the city recorder's office via email, phone, in preparation for the meeting. There are three people registered to comment at tonight's meeting. If you are here for a public comment or for a public meeting, the budget that is different than the public comment that we're doing now. As a reminder, visitor comments provide the opportunity for the community to speak about matters even if they are not on the agenda. Visitors may state their comments and should not expect the council to engage in back and forth dialogue regarding the comments, as this is a time for the council to hear from the community. The city council seeks to be a welcoming inclusive towards all speakers at public meeting and we strive to create an atmosphere of mutual care and respect. While community members may disagree with each other or the city on issues and may give critical feedback, they are expected to do so respectfully without disruptions. Disruptions interfere with the ability of others to present in person or online or to participate in this meeting. Council members do not interrupt community members during their public comment, and we expect community members to offer the same courtesy to other speakers. Visitor comments are limited to three minutes each person. It will follow up if needed. The city manager and recorders are taking notes. with that um fletcher nash you will have three minutes to address the council all right alicia and then after that is angie is it on okay

Alicia Burmese, President and CEO of the Beaverton Area Chamber. I am here tonight to thank the City of Beaverton for granting us the space and support for Concerts in the Round. We invite each and every city councilor, mayor, city staff to join us for one of the concerts this summer. This is the outdoor concert series that used to be produced by the city pre-pandemic, and the Beaverton Area Chamber has been excited to bring this back for the second year now. We do this with Florian Rakenya Productions producing each concert and sponsorships from Northwest Natural, Explore Tualatin Valley, OHM Fitness, Westside Refillery, and Omega Gymnastics. Their contributions make us able to pay these amazing musicians. Our first concert was June 7th. We drew a crowd of more than 250. And even this last Sunday with the temperature of 95 degrees, we still had a crowd of more than 100. Some forget that the round is shaded. From 5.30 on, half of it is shaded. By 6 o'clock, the entire round is in the shade. So we invite you to join us for one of our upcoming concerts. We have two in July, July 12th and July 26th. And in August, we are August 9th and August 23rd. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Beatty and members of the City Council. For the record, my name is Angie True, and I serve as one of the co-chairs for the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board, and I'm honored to represent MEF tonight. Hopefully, you've all had a chance to read the MEF memo sent to you late last week. We truly appreciate you taking the time to learn about our board's work over the past year. This has been a great year for our 20 person board. We successfully expanded our reach to proudly represent 14 different high schools across Beaverton, welcoming eight fantastic new members into the fold. Together, we've worked hard to ensure youth perspectives are woven into the fabric of our city's operations. And over the past years, our efforts have been centered on three major themes. The first theme is advocating for a meaningful youth input. We served as active liaisons to city boards and commissions, providing critical youth feedback on major city initiatives like the Allen Boulevard project and youth policy relations. Additionally, we've been able to connect with State Senator Niren Mislin to learn about what happened during Oregon's short session and where youth can play a role in the long session. Second, expanding on MUF's presence, we partnered directly with city staff on targeted initiatives, including successful student programs, the Library Advisory Board, and the Beaverton Arts and Commissions. Lastly, our third theme is deepening community service. Our members rolled up their sleeves for hands-on volunteering from Adopt-A-Road cleanups to supporting the League of Women's Voters at the Voters Forum this year. Looking ahead to the next school year, we want to build on this momentum. Our goals focus on expanding our community visibility, volunteering in support of more city events, and taking our civic education to step further with a trip to Salem to meet with state representatives. We are also excited to begin planning this summer for the return of the Youth Summit and Billy Awards for 2027, and we are hopeful for your partnership and financial support to bring these impactful events back to life. To achieve all of this, stability is key. We want to formally express our gratitude to our interim staff liaison, Jennifer Johnson. For her exceptional commitment this year, we strongly hope she can transition into a permanent role to ensure the continuity of our board's momentum. Thank you all so much for your time and your ongoing support of EMEAB and your commitment to empowering youth in Beaverton.

Thank you. Okay. All right. We are now on to the city manager's report.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I have a very brief presentation for you today. Just three slides in the PowerPoint. And we'll give just a minute for that technology to get loaded. Since you have a large agenda, I kept it very short. So first, excited to announce that Meadowlark Place construction is now underway. So members of the community who've been over in downtown near the library, you may have wondered what's going on with that now empty space, and this is what is going in. So we have an official groundbreaking coming up, but first a little bit about the project. Construction is underway. This is a major investment in expanding affordable housing options here in Beaverton, and it's thanks to great partnership and funding from our partners at the federal government, metro, and the state that we're able to bring this to Beaverton. This will bring 104 new affordable homes for adults 55 plus, including dedicated units for seniors with very low incomes and those transitioning from homelessness. The development supports a connected multi-generational community with onsite services, shared community spaces, and a Head Start childcare center. The project advances city council goals around housing stability, livability, and equitable access to essential services. And you can see here on the slide, the official groundbreaking is Thursday, July 9th at 10 a.m. Wear long pants and closed-toed shoes and make your reservation for the groundbreaking if you're interested in attending. Construction is expected to be completed in early 2028 with residents anticipated to move in that spring. And if you would like more information, there's a URL there on the screen where you can find out more. Next slide, please. Continuing the theme of the youth in our community doing great work, the city completed its first street mural program installation, which adds vibrant public art that enhances neighborhood identity and supports safer and more welcoming streets. This project originated through a partnership with the Safe Routes to School High School Student Advisory Committee, which aligns youth engagement with transportation safety goals. The mural is designed to encourage slower vehicle speeds and improve pedestrian comfort, which supports the city's broader safety and placemaking strategies. So we had more than 20 student volunteers that installed the mural, and what's really interesting is they used a steam-driven approach, and so they put a little science into the art by developing grid systems, measurements, and color coding, which supported efficient implementation. And the street mural program which is administered by our public works transportation division will keep working with neighborhood schools and community organizations to collaborate with the city on creative street level improvements. And then the students are also conducting pre and post installation traffic speed studies and those results will help us inform future street design and traffic calming initiatives. So if there's any community members attending or watching that are interested in this program, you can see the URL there on the screen with more information. Next slide, please. And then finally, we are at the height of our event season, and so it's a great time to get out and enjoy summer here in Beaverton. We've got a couple of upcoming events in the next few weeks. The city-supported event Pride Beaverton is taking place Sunday, June 28th at the City Park, starting at 11 a.m. A whole day of fun, a parade, music, and lots of great activities happening. We have the 4th of July celebration and concert on July 4th at the Veterans Memorial Park. You can come out and enjoy our kid entrepreneurs at the kids markets Saturday, July 11th at the Beaverton Farmers Market. And then 10 tiny dances on Saturday, July 11th. That's just kind of a snapshot of some of the events that are coming up over the next month or so. And that concludes my report.

Thank you. Any questions of the city manager? All right. Seeing none, the consent, Council President.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve the council consent agenda and the contract review board consent agenda.

I'll second. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion on tonight's consent agenda?

Councillor Husson. Thank you. I want to take a moment and just recognize Agenda Bill 26117, which is our city council grant agreements. When we heard from our community that our members were being impacted by the federal government, we decided to take some of our funds and see what we could do. I did want to signal to the city manager, if you all are comfortable with it, that if there is any other remainder budget in the city council budget, that we use it for that given the What our community is still experiencing right now, but I am supporting this and I wanted to call that out as well.

Thank you councillor Teeter Yeah, I appreciate councillor Hudson's call out there I do think that's really important and I would love to support some future investments like that if we have some flexibility within our own City Council or mayor budgets there are a couple other items here on a consent agenda that I will also want to draw attention to and The first is the intergovernmental agreement with the WCCLS system for library funding. I am going to be voting yes to approve the consent agenda, which includes this IGA, but I will say that there's a lot of pain in this IGA. The voter approved levy that voters approved just last November was a substantial increase on the property taxes that Beaverton residents are contributing to our libraries. And when I say our libraries, I mean our libraries across the full system. And yet Beaverton is only seeing about a 9% increase, one-time increase of 9%, whereas some other libraries are seeing over 100% increases in their own budgets. We don't have a lot of wiggle room to be able to do anything other than vote yes, despite the painful place we are in with our own budget. We contribute from our building maintenance funds and from our general fund to help subsidize our libraries, and we provide exceptional services in these places. And yet, we don't have a lot of flexibility with the partnerships we're getting that can support that funding moving forward. So my hope is that we can work with our county commissioners and our partners across the system to continue to improve that funding model and the governance structure as we move forward. I've got one other comment about some grant funding agreements that we've got coming in right here. One, we're approving a grant agreement with... The Department of Transportation, USDOT, Federal Highway Administration, for $2 million for loop funding, so downtown streetscape improvements. That's been funding that the city was awarded several years ago and has been held up because of Trump's attempted executive orders that have attempted to block us from receiving that funding despite it being legally granted to us. We have pushed back in court, so we are receiving that funding finally. We can move forward with some of our downtown street improvements. There is one other grant here with the U.S. Housing and Urban Development for about $700,000. And that funding goes to support low-income housing assistance. That's building maintenance. That's funding that helps keep people housed in our community. And that's funding the federal government also attempted to keep from us, despite us being legally entitled to that funding.

we pushed back in partnership with other cities and we are winning those cases in court and it makes a big difference and this funding matters a lot and so it's late but it's here and i'm really happy about that but other cities that didn't join lawsuits had it taken so it was it was a necessary fight for us so yep uh all right city recorder can you please call the roll counselor duggar yes

Councillor Hart, Mayor Prigg? Yes. Hassan? Yes. Kimmy? Yes. Teeter?

Yes.

Tivnon? Yes. Beatty?

Yes.

Seven yes, zero no. Motion carries.

OK. We have a plethora of public hearings that are coming before us. Our first one is on the supplemental budget. The majority of people that are testifying the budget are here for the adopted budget. So don't think that I missed you in calling you up in this category. The next item on the agenda is a public hearing regarding Resolution 4955, a resolution adopting the supplemental budget for the fiscal year commencing July 1, 2025, and making budget appropriations. Anyone wishing to speak at this hearing should follow the instructions included on tonight's agenda. For those attending in person, please complete the yellow visitor comment card found on the table near the door at the back of the council chambers. Once the card is filled out, give the card to the city recorder seated to the right of me. Each member of the public who wishes to speak tonight will have two minutes to speak. When you speak, please give your name and the city of residence for record. Council members may ask questions of anyone that gives testimony. Council members may also ask questions of the presenter, the city attorney, or the staff, and council will make that decision. Is there a staff presentation?

Yes, I have some very brief comments. Thank you so much. Susan Cole, Assistant Finance Director. Oregon budget law does allow for changes to the budget after the budget has been adopted. So the attached resolution tonight makes various adjustments to the current fiscal year, fiscal year 25-26 budget, reflecting various changes that arose after the budget development. This spring supplemental is the last budget action for this fiscal year, and it makes various adjustments that trues up the budget to the actual experience for the fiscal year. So that's the end of my presentation. If you have any questions or comments, I'd be happy to answer them. Any questions of staff?

Seeing none, is there anyone here to testify? I don't have any cards. Okay. All right, I now close the, I open the public hearing. There was no one here to testify. I close the public hearing. Do we have a motion?

Yes, Mayor. I move that the council adopt resolution 4955, a resolution adopting a supplemental budget for the fiscal year commencing July 1st, 2025 and making budget appropriations.

Second. Second. I'll give it to Councillor Duggar. It's been moved and then seconded. Any discussion on this? All right, city recorder, we're ready for a vote.

Councillor Duggar?

Yes.

Hartmeyer-Prigg? Yes. Hassan? Yes.

Yes.

Teeter?

Yes.

Tivna? Yes. Beatty? Yes. Seven yes, zero no. Motion carries.

All right, the next item on the agenda is a combined public hearing on resolution 4957, a resolution adopting the budget for fiscal year commencing July 1st, 2026, making appropriations and imposing categorization and declaring ad valorem property tax levies as provided by ORS 310.062. A resolution for 956, a resolution declaring the city's election to receive state revenue for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. I will soon open a public hearing on the budget, including the city's proposed use of state shared revenue. Then we will hear a short presentation from the finance assistant finance director on budget as. approved by the city's budget committee. After the staff presentation, I will open the floor to any comments from the public on the budget or the city's proposed use of shared revenue. Anyone wishing to speak at this hearing should follow the instructions that we've already given. For those attending in person, please complete the yellow card handed to the recorder at the right of the council dais. Each member of the public will have two minutes to speak. When you speak, please give your name and city of residence for the record. Council members may ask questions of any presenters, the city attorney staff, and this will help the council members make a decision. Before we begin the budget hearing, I need to make some conflict of interest disclosure. State law requires them for three items, the budget, the water rate, the sewer. Let me be direct about what this means. For the budget, the legislature passed a law last year that requires local government officials to close a conflict of interest if the budget includes their compensation. Our city charter addresses this. Any change to compensation cannot take effect until we stand for election. But yes, I'm declaring an actual conflict because my salary is in the budget, just like every other city contract, wage, and expenditures. And we can still discuss and vote on the budget. For the water and sewer rates, these will affect council members the same way they affect every Beaverton resident. Ethic law requires disclosures when decisions have a financial impact on people making them. So I'm declaring an actual conflict of interest, and I can still vote if needed. I also won't be able to respond to public comment about the water or sewer rates at tonight's meeting. Hopefully, we will have a better solution in the coming weeks. The bottom line, transparency matters even when the law is imperfect, even when it applies to city but apparently does not apply to the legislature. I would ask city councillors if they have a conflict as well.

Mayor.

Yep, because I understand the agenda has changed and you're not actually voting on the fees tonight I just want the public to understand that this is why we're doing it Yeah, but the council members may want to declare only a potential conflict of interest Okay for those rather than actual tonight, and then they could go ahead and talk about it.

I Declare the same potential conflict for the budget It's an actual I declare the same actual conflict for the budget.

Okay. Yes, I declare the same actual conflict of interest for the budget conversation.

I declare the same actual conflict of interest for the budget and potential conflict of interest on the sewer rates. I do not have a potential conflict of interest on the water rates because I am in a different water district.

I declare the same actual conflict for the budget.

I declare the same actual conflict for the budget. I declare a potential conflict for the water and sewer rates.

I declare an active conflict of interest for the budget and a potential conflict for the sewer and water rates.

I'm going to go ahead and amend mine to include a potential for the water and sewer rates then.

Same here.

Okay.

Thank you.

It's clunky because the state legislature just passed it. We're trying to work through it as well as other cities. It didn't give us much time to adjust to it. Before we begin the public hearing tonight, I want to recognize the staff and the budget committee for their commitment to the process, which is mostly thankless. Balancing this budget has not been easy, and hard choices have been made. I appreciate the work that staff put into this, and I'm confident that every person in this room wants a stable budget that serves the people of Beaverton. This budget, however, makes clear that our work is not done. It depends on one-time funding and may include dipping into reserves, which is our way of savings. This is not sustainable, so because clear is kind, I want to let you know where I stand. The Budget Committee passed the 2026-27 budget as prepared. However, my support of the final adoption will come with clear conditions, which I will ask the Council to support this evening. For me to support an adopted budget, I need counsel to direct staff to return in early fall with a concrete package of structural reductions, efficiencies, and ongoing savings. We need to be honest with our community about why we're here. Beaverton is structurally underfunded like many cities in Oregon. Measure 5 and Measure 50 limit the growth of our property tax revenues while inflation, service expectations, state mandates, and community needs continue to rise. At the same time, local governments are being forced to compete for limited resources. We've had to fight to protect library funding from one of the strongest and most used libraries in the state of Oregon. We have to push to make sure our supportive housing service dollars collected here are invested here. These are not abstract policy fights. They affect the services our residents see and rely on every day. And while those larger systems need to change, we still have to manage the budget in front of us tonight. We have spent years using one-time fixes, vacancy savings, and short-term reductions to get by. This is not a long-term strategy. So yes, we need broader reform, but until that happens, we have to make strong decisions we can with the tools we have. Until the systematic changes happen, we must manage our reality. This budget relies on roughly 2.5 million in one-time resources to balance the general fund. One questions I've asked staff to answer tonight is exactly how much of that is a standard carry forward versus true reserve drawdown. Furthermore, we must stop balancing our budgets on the back of vacant positions. Vacancy savings may help us get through a budget year, but they are not long-term strategy. Council sets the city priorities, and when we rely on vacancies instead of intentional budget decisions, staffing gaps start shaping what gets done and what gets delayed. That makes it harder to carry out council's direction and deliver the services consistently to residents. For the early fall supportive budget, my vote will depend on staff returning with a concrete package, a general fund balancing target, a clear path to eliminate our reliance on one-time resources and ongoing operations, operational efficiencies, a review of administrative considerations such as potential field partnership with Tualatin Hills Park and Rec to reduce duplication in landscaping or routine maintenance. contract and personnel review, a complete fiscal analysis of CEC equity events merger savings, and the promised rank review of our citywide $8.8 million of professional service and consulting contracts so we can bring work back in-house to protect our workforce. and program realignment, a long-term funding plan for medication services and analysis of whether welcome home funding should be directed to eviction prevention. Immediate clarification is needed tonight. Before we vote tonight, I have two questions I need answered about water funding and art program like TLT funding. I'm happy to offer them as we move forward. The water funding, we have multiple funds to do work for the city. and our art and TLT funding. This is not about asking staff to do more with less. They have been doing that for years. This is about structural sustainability. It's about making sure we do not have defaulting balances, ongoing operations with one time dollars and empty desk year after year. I'm confident we can provide staff with clear direction tonight as a city council. With that, I will open up tonight's public hearing and ask staff for a presentation.

Thank you, Mayor, City Council. My name is Susan Cole. I'm the Assistant Finance Director for the City of Beaverton. I just have some brief comments tonight. So the first or embedded in the public hearing for the budget is also a public hearing for state shared revenue. And I just have a few comments here. The general fund will be making use of the state shared revenue of liquor tax, about $2.5 million, cigarette tax in the amount of $48,000, state marijuana tax in the amount of $150,000, and then our street fund will be making use of state shared revenue for the gas tax at $8 million. The budget committee did have the required public hearing on the uses of state shared revenue on June 2nd. Next, I have some comments on our fiscal 27 budget, the subject of the other public hearing. The budget committee did review, deliberate, and accept public comment on the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget on two different dates, on May 28th and also on June 2nd. the budget committee did amend the proposed budget through a staff proposed amendment package number one which included seven different adjustments technical adjustments to the budget these amendments did pass the budget committee unanimously the budget committee then voted to approve the budget as amended on june 2nd 2026 and then forwarded on to this body here to consider the budget for adoption this evening that concludes my comments And I'm here with our interim city manager, Elizabeth Coffey, to answer any questions the city council may have.

Any questions of the staff? We can ask questions after public comment as staff as well. Yes. Okay. Do you have something for that?

I think I will ask my now. Go ahead. Okay. So, Susan, and you can call for backup because it's more than just a budget question. But we heard from a lot of community members, and I anticipate we'll hear from more tonight about the changes that we are making in the equity officer role. And I was hoping to have an opportunity to hear from staff just about, like, how we plan to address equity as a priority for the city and how we're going to, while we have an organizational change, like, it's not changing the, that is a priority for us as a city. So I was, we'd love to just hear more about how we're planning on addressing that going forward and into operations of the future.

Sure. And my question is, would Elizabeth like to sit here or is she going to address it from?

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thanks for that question. I understand and appreciate community members' concerns. And do you want to just acknowledge that this budget contains a lot of really difficult decisions? And we would all rather be having different conversations tonight around great new services that we're adding or enhancing. And we're having a different conversation instead. And so I want to reiterate that we still remain committed to equity as an organization. And we are going to be doing the work differently going forward. But we still remain committed to doing the work. And so we have decided with the reduction of the chief equity officer position to really look at our management structure and try to make it a little bit leaner. There was another manager position that was also reduced here at the city. And we have integrated our equity functions into our community engagement and communications division within the city manager's office with the goal of really embedding equity as a core operating practice and ensuring that it informs every message that goes out, every event that we do, really strengthening our community engagement efforts. and incorporating that into our decision-making processes. And that's part of the work that we're doing to really establish our communications and community engagement team as a key and critical strategic business partner. Not that they're not today, but that we really want them be involved in projects here at the city from the very beginning so that we're considering our outreach plans and our engagement plans and applying that equity lens from the beginning of projects. One of the reasons that we made this decision is based on feedback that we received from the Multicultural Gap Analysis and the Board and Commission's assessment. Can you hear me okay? The microphone's going in and out. I'm going to switch. I'm easily distracted, so hopefully this is a little bit better. We have received feedback from the multicultural gap analysis and the boards and commissions assessment that have made it clear that equity needs to be built into our everyday systems. So by really centralizing equity within our community communications team we deliver clear more well and culturally informed communication and engagement across all of our community communities so we're going to be on consistent angle accessible engagement stronger the patient responsiveness thank you

all right uh do you have a we could use the the chat it'll help me it's gonna take me too long would you still like me to no you're fine now just um thank you for that answer i think it gives some um insight if you could help elaborate a little on the city manager office set up in terms of and i'll just preface like As someone who fought for this position a couple years ago and really wanted it and wanted it to be embedded at the highest level, I think I hesitated around how I felt about this change partly because I thought as long as it's kind of at that higher level, can you just like, for maybe the audience, like help us understand the organizational structure so that we feel that it is still embedded in that work?

Yes, I'm going to try this microphone, and if it doesn't work, we'll know it's somehow user error. So yes, so the city manager's office is structured to contain multiple divisions, and one of those divisions is our community engagement and communications team. And so our manager, Nicole Sherbert of that division is actually a member of our executive leadership team, which is the highest leadership team here at the city. And they are the ones that are kind of on the front line, providing key budget decisions, advising on policy, debriefing on council issues, and generally handling kind of those larger policy and culture issues for the city. And so we still maintain that direct line to the executive team through this restructure. Nicole reports to Dan Weinheimer, our assistant city manager, and then I also, as the interim city manager, have frequent touch points with Nicole as well. So that team, through this restructure, is still part of the city manager's office, attends those staff meetings and those city manager office manager meetings.

Can you also elaborate on the Diversity Advisory Board and the Human Rights Advisory Commission? I know that the consultant recommendations were to pause, though I don't know that all of us wanted that to happen in 2025. Do you know what the future of that looks like?

We're currently working on implementing recommendations from our boards and commissions assessment, and so we will be working with Council in the coming year to look at our bylaws related to boards and commissions and happy to take feedback about that during that time.

Last question, and thank you for Councillor Hartmeyer-Prigge helping us start off. In terms of engaging with former Diversity Advisory Board and Human Rights Advisory Commission members, have we been doing that? Can we work towards that or commit towards that? Because I know that's also been a pain point for folks that I know in the community.

Yeah, so one of the focuses that we will continue to work on is that community engagement and strengthening those ties to the community. We have a wonderful neighborhood association structure that's set up here in the city, lots of really active and engaged members. um but we know that we can improve our engagement efforts and include more voices here at the table and so that's really one of the key things that i'm really excited about by housing our office of equity alongside our engagement team is really making sure that we're bringing more voices to the table as we're considering important policy decisions so we are really looking forward to and figuring out how to continue to engage with the community at a deeper level and bring those different perspectives into our decision making.

Thank you. I do want the count, like as the liaison for the Diversity Advisory Board, I don't know what the communication was, but I know that folks have reached out to me and have felt a little left out, and I think we need to talk about just what it looks like to continue to build trust with these communities if that's what we want to do, so thanks.

Councilor Duggar.

Glad you brought that up because it's been on my mind too, particularly with this change is there seems to be a narrative forming, right? We're backing away from ATRAC and DAB and now this. And I understand these are operational changes. One of our jobs as city council is to make sure that we are providing oversight. So what is, in the next six to nine months, In the next six to nine months, I'm curious to know, are there going to be KPIs? How are we going to know this change is successful? I appreciate the integration. I think that's a really good idea. I always thought of this as more of a, if you have your verticals of an organization, this should be a horizontal because it should not It should be, as you suggested, embedded in everything. And so help me understand, help me do my job better over the next six to nine months. How are we going to ensure that we're getting the outcomes that we need?

Yeah, so we've been hesitant to make too many concrete changes in the advance of budget adoption because it's not final and reporting structures aren't being changed until July 1st. And so we are, though, starting to work with the team to assess what their capacity levels are and where we might focus on over the next year or so. And I do anticipate using the city manager report that I give to council monthly to report out on my interim city manager work plan, which which is Signed off on in the consent agenda today, and so I'd like to use that that city manager report to give you some more updates on kind of some of the Operational things that we're working on in addition to some of the fun things that you heard about tonight So happy to come back to council regularly to report on What we're doing with equity work and the program so that it remains visible to you. I

I think that's critical because I think I've had four or five conversations with community members in the last week since this is kind of circulating in the community, and I think people are really interested. But they're more interested in what we are able to deliver going forward, and I think that's going to be a key story for us to continue to evolve this and make sure that we're not just forgetting that work or just allowing it to be second fiddle to something else. So thank you. Councilor Teeter.

I think my question kind of builds off of what Councilor Duggar just shared. I like to be able to set my own expectations appropriately. Is there anything we should expect to, any equity work we should expect to immediately stop or not continue or any programs that our equity office was doing that we should expect to not be done with this change? Or it sounds like we're going to be able to enhance our communication and external partnerships quite a bit, but is there anything we should expect to change as in not happen at all?

I think we're a little bit early on in the discussions with the team to determine that. But what I would say is that we are shifting the team's focus to be a little bit more external because they do a lot of internal culture work, which has been really fantastic. And they've built a really great foundation here in the organization. And so my ask of our executive leadership team is that we as leaders in the organization take up the mantle of some of that culture and belonging work that this team has been doing and carry that forward with our teams so that this team can focus more on the external. And so I would phrase it less as work that we're stopping and more just really trying to look at the expertise and talent that we have on that team and use it as strategically as we can.

And I think when Alexis Ball left the city, our focus on equity became very internal. And one of the things that council has been consistently asking is for that re-approach for our external partners. It is something that has been desperately missing that we have said from the dais and we've put resources towards. And so my hope going forward, I mean, We do a community event. We're trying to reach out and find that these long-term established relationships the city has had has not been nurtured and hasn't been dealt with. And so I'm looking forward to a plan because the council has asked about DAB and HRAC many times, and it was supposed to come back last year, and it hadn't. You're new to this role, but I think what you're hearing from us is the desire to have that conversation again and hearing from us our expectation about external communication. with the equity team is really important to us. Councilor Kimme?

Thank you for that, Mayor. I'm really glad to hear that you will be focusing on external engagement. It really has been missing quite a while. And I got involved with the city because of DAP. I got involved with the DAP because city reached out to our community and wanted us to participate. And I really appreciated that. And it seems like since the DAP or human rights do not meet anymore, We didn't have really a way to engage those communities. So I appreciate hearing that. I hope you can do more. Equity work really didn't end because the position was combined or horizontally moved. It still has to go on. It's in our policy, in our priorities. But please do focus on external work and building relationship back up again. Thank you.

Okay, I am now going to open the floor to public comments on the city budget. Up first is Pam Pham.

All right. Good evening, Mayor Beatty and members of the council. My name is Pam Fahn, and I am the incoming and new executive director of Unite Oregon. And for 25 years, Unite Oregon has worked to lift the voices of immigrants, refugees, and working people on issues that impact their lives. We organize statewide with a significant number of members and partners who live and work in Beaverton and throughout Washington County. And we submit this testimony today to caution you from eliminating or shifting the Office of Equity work in ways that actually make it harder and more unsafe for your residents. And we actually urge you to think about the livability for all of Beaverton. So make no mistake, federal immigration enforcement is not a neutral law enforcement function. It is actually a tool of racial and political violence when that historically targets black and brown communities, that criminalizes belonging, that operates through terror, surveillance, and detention. The city of Beaverton should not tolerate this kind of violence against Beaverton's residents, and we must stand together under the shared values that all people deserve an opportunity to live without fear of being kidnapped or imprisoned. We also want to affirm Beaverton and Oregon's sanctuary promise laws, not just when they're convenient, but in the daily practice of all city functions, including those of approving a city budget. So several aspects of vital services are now at risk, and we want to make sure that we can talk about them together. And we really urge you to hold firm on each of the following. First, preserve equity inclusion by engaging immigrant and refugee, black, indigenous, people of color within... within your organ within the organization as a whole and the proposed budget it sounds like things are shifting and there's a reorganization of your office of equity staff and i think folks want to hear more about how moving and shifting and with what each of you have said is that we need a clear plan for how it will not be siloed or dismissed So I ask you what would happen if the main breadwinner of your family went missing into federal custody with little or no recourse to bring them home? That is what's happening in our community now. How would your family make it through? So these staff, the equity staff that you speak of, they should have no interruption in their ability to execute this work. These staff should have a direct line to the operations of the city, such as services and infrastructure that you all work so hard to execute, as well as the law, as well as the law enforcement and public safety that you also manage. Removing the connection to operations with slow response times and actually cost people their lives. We'd like to also see that it's imperative that the city maintains strong ties and engagement directly with community members, especially with partnering organizations like ourselves, with immigrant and refugee organizations like Unite Oregon, Adelante Mujeres, El Centro Cultural, and the Muslim Educational Trust, amongst many more that you know of. Please, as Mayor Beatty just said in their own words, please don't. Please don't. You know, continue to nourish these relationships. And I'd ask, can I actually submit these written notes? You can.

You can use your recorder. We also read your ones earlier you sent via email as well. Okay.

I didn't write any, but I can send. I can actually physically hand these.

If you hand him to that dude sitting right there at the computer. I don't know where the recorder went, but he's the assistant.

Thank you, ma'am.

And if you want to follow up with an email, that would be great, too.

Okay, thank you.

Someone else from Unite team sent us emails today as well. Okay. Up next is Blaine Soleimani-Pearson.

Good evening. Thank you, Council. My name is Blaine Soleimani-Pearson. I'm a Beaverton resident. I've spoken before about how the city budget is a moral document that reflects our values and our conscience. And tonight, I'm looking at the proposed fiscal year budget for this next year. And I'm deeply concerned about some of the values reflected in some of the proposed reductions. Specifically, I'm here to urge you to restore or keep the equity officer position, as well as not cutting so many full-time library positions as well. As far as the equity position goes, I'm actually going to modify a little bit of what I said based on what's been said tonight. While there's something to be said for efficiency, and I agree incorporating equity and inclusion into all fabric of what the city does, I don't think that's done by couching the office inside another office. uh if if we want it to bleed through the entire city and what the city does and how it operates then it does need to stand alone and have direct access as the last speaker just said and so i would urge you to consider an amendment that maintains the integrity and the structure of the equity office especially in light of everything going on outside of our city in our state in our country we really need to stand up as a bastion of we're willing to do the hard work and not make cuts to the things uh that we don't see as um as cuttable. We should see this as something that we need to stand behind and strengthen rather than streamline. And next, I just want to comment briefly on the library positions. Those will have real cutting positions, some part time, some full time will have real world impacts on the services the library is able to offer. They'll have to cut back as someone who I think I would lose my mind if libraries didn't offer services because that's where I entertain my children. It's really important that we keep as many services as possible to the library and cutting just two or three positions can really have a profound impact on families that go to the library on a daily basis. and utilize those services. So while I understand we have to make tough choices, we have to cut certain things, I would urge you to find a way to not cut those things or to reduce the amount of cuts or to reorganize in some way through the amendment process. Thank you.

Up next is Kamen Miner.

uh part by attire it's been a long day so i really didn't have a chance to prepare uh myself well um however uh thank you counselors and uh thank you mayor my name is cammy minor i am the creator and owner of black and beaverton i sit on the board of the beaverton black people's union and for all families of oregon i'm a beaverton resident There's a long-standing philosophical principle that says budgets are a moral document. A budget is ultimately a financial reflection of your core values. Because resources are finite, how do you, oh, because resources are finite, how you choose to allocate every dollar reveals exactly what you truly prioritize. Cutting through what you merely say is important. Our country is in a moment of decline, reverting to the days of being unethical and immoral with weak principles. Regardless of what you say, regardless of what you say, it is your actions that we as a community and public will hear from you. Ironically enough, it was six years ago this week, the mayor was engaging in supporting the eight can't wait campaign. This was a national campaign following the heinous crime committed by Derek Chauvin, a murderous Minnesota police officer. Fast forward to today. Only three actions have been adopted, leaving five on the table to dry up and wither away. And now to end up with this mayor's office cutting the chief equity officer position, diminishing this vital role as an office to support equity in our city. In doing this, we understand that equity is no longer a principle of this office. It is disappointing. The mayor's office reached out to me to see if there was anyone I knew who would be interested in reading the Juneteenth proclamation put forth this year. Side note, it is sad that the mayor's office has not made enough effort over six years to know the black community or black organizations in Beaverton to have a resource for this. Moreover, as I read the proclamation, I couldn't help but become even more frustrated as a proclamation ends with, Beaverton honors the legacy of Juneteenth by partnering with our community to promote racial justice and create a more inclusive future for all. This is disingenuous and a slap in the face to the community when you then turn around and remove the role of the equity officer to fund and do the real work. Regardless of what you say, it is your actions here that we as a community and public will hear from you. It's important to know where the priorities are. Everyone's watching. Thank you.

Evelyn, you're up next.

Hi all. For the record, my name is Evelyn Kocher. I use she, her pronouns and I am a lifelong Beavertonian and I'm here to also testify against the removal of the equity officer from the equity office. Having the equity office is incredibly important and removing it and housing it under another office does nothing to emphasize equity's importance over everything the city does. Every single department has a budget, but that doesn't mean that we can't also have a finance department to manage the overarching importance of the budgets of every department throughout the city. And the same goes for equity. How saying that equity should be a part of every single thing that we do and removing the department that oversees that and the manager that oversees that is the opposite of what you are intending. It de-emphasizes equity throughout the entire city. It's incredibly discouraging to hear the proclamations for Pride Month and for Juneteenth at the same time that this budget is being brought forward. And I think that the INSTABILITY THAT THE CITY HAS SEEN IN ITS ENGAGEMENT WITH COMMUNITIES OF COLOR, WITH IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES, WITH DISABLED COMMUNITIES AND WITH CAREER COMMUNITIES IS SEEN AS TESTIMONY. WE FUNDED AND DEFUNDED THE DIVERSITY ADVISORY BOARD. WE STARTED AND DEFUNDED THE HUMAN RIGHTS ADVISORY BOARD. If we are continually reforming how we are prioritizing equity in this city, then there will be no ground to stand on. And the relationships that are even now on shaky ground will continue to deteriorate until we can find some stability. Equity makes up less than 1% of the city's budget. And it is one of only three departments that is seeing an overall staffing reduction. The other two departments that are seeing staff reductions in this proposed budget are the library, due to the aforementioned issues with the library levy, and public safety, the police. However, when you look a little bit deeper at the police reductions, the reductions are for support staff and the community support staff. There's actually an increase in both detectives and sworn officers. The budget that is being proposed is literally funding more police officers on the streets while cutting funding to equity programs at the city. Budgets are a moral document, and I don't think that this sends the right message to the communities of Beaverton that we need to connect with that make up almost half of this city. As it says in the budget, Beaverton's crime rate is stable and it is low. Prioritizing creating more sworn officers and more detectives on our streets while cutting our equity programs sends a message to our community about what we as a city are prioritizing. Please consider refunding this position and fully funding the equity department at the city. Thank you. Sean?

Good evening, Mayor Beatty and members of the Beaverton City Council. My name is Sergeant Sean Hinckley and I'm the Beaverton Police Association president. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. We recognize the significant financial challenges facing our city and appreciate the difficult decisions before us. In recent years, the relationship between the Beaverton Police Association, city leadership, and this council has grown stronger through trust, collaboration, and a shared commitment to keeping Beaverton safe. Because of that partnership, we want to express our concerns about the continued reduction in police resources. If this budget is adopted, the Beaverton Police Department will have lost six full-time police officers, nine part-time photo enforcement positions, and three professional staff positions in recent years. In addition, two officers have been reassigned to TriMet as a cost saving measure. While efforts to avoid further layoffs are appreciated, these reductions have consequences. Fewer patrol officers can mean longer response times, reduced emergency coverage, and less proactive policing. Reduced investigative and support resources can also delay case resolutions and victim services. For comparison, Hillsborough serves a similarly sized population, responds to fewer calls for service, yet employs 20 more police officers and 13 more professional staff members than Beaverton. Despite greater demand and fewer resources, our officers continue to provide exceptional service. The quality of life in Beaverton is built on sustained investments in public safety, traffic enforcement, investigations, school partnerships, and emergency response. These services help create the safe neighborhoods and thriving businesses our residents expect. Public safety is a core responsibility of local government. Families and businesses choose communities where they feel safe. A strong police department is an investment in the city's stability and economic vitality. Before making further reductions, I urge you to consider the long-term impacts. Short-term savings can lead to longer response times Now I'm much louder. Reduce investigative capacity and lower community confidence. Every year, Beaverton police officers answer more than 80,000 calls for service. They respond to crises, protect vulnerable residents, support victims, and work every day to keep our community safe. Tonight, I respectfully ask you to support the resources needed to maintain public safety for our residents, businesses, and visitors. Public safety is a cornerstone of what makes Beaverton a great place to live, work, and raise a family. On behalf of the Beaverton Police Association, thank you for your leadership and commitment to our community.

OK, alright, I will now close the public hearing on the city's budget and the city's proposed use of state shared revenue before we begin deliberation on the budget as approved by the Budget Committee. Do we have any amendments to put forward for the budget?

There yeah. Do you want to do questions for staff first? It's not in script, but.

Can we do that? Yes, Mayor, and for example, if you wanted to follow up on public comment or that kind of thing. So maybe reopen the public comment, do these questions, then close the hearing.

All right. I will reopen the public hearing so the council can ask questions. You must have one.

No.

Okay. Councillor Teeter. Okay. You better ask a question now. I'm just kidding. If you don't have one, it's fine.

Does anyone else have any questions of the...

COMMONERS? ALL RIGHT. WELL, THANK YOU FOR PUTTING US THROUGH A ROBERTS RULES EXERCISE.

I HAVE AN AMENDMENT, THE AMENDMENT. OKAY.

I WILL NOW CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING, COUNSELOR TETER. AND I DO HAVE COUNSELOR HASSAN'S AMENDMENT. DO WE HAVE ANY OTHER AMENDMENTS BEFORE WE DISCUSS THIS ONE? OKAY. I THINK COUNSELOR HASSAN'S AMENDMENTS, AND I'LL LET YOU SPEAK TO THEM, WERE THE ONES WE TALKED ABOUT A FEW WEEKS AGO WHICH WAS BREAKING APART SOME OF THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES.

Yeah, so I don't have questions, but can I make some comments about, and then go to my amendment? Wait, no, amendment.

No, I just closed the public hearing. Okay. Where I asked if you had questions. That's fine. No, it's not questions, it's comments. We'll have deliberation on the budget. That's fine. That would be the appropriate spot.

So I heard folks, and I can't, I'm not going to talk about it because I have to talk about amendments. For folks who were not with us at the budget committee meeting, which is everyone here, but not here. The city of Beaverton, three years ago, when we saw the structural deficit coming, put together what would be called budget guiding principles. And these budget guiding principles were very kind of statements of our sort of values as a council. So we talked about budget rules and laws, and there were comments about how to use budget. And so very simple guiding principles. One of the last guiding principles actually talked about public-private partnership, which made me feel like you know, most public-private partnerships have to come through the city council. So there's a lot of great language in there that kind of gets lost, but it is language that the city leadership uses and leverages for conversations. The first year that we had the principles written, they had a diversity, equity, and inclusion principle, and I said I don't see a climate one, and so they just put them all together. which is fine, except it's 2026. And I would like to propose maybe more clarifying language. So the first amendment, do I need to read this for the record? Thank you. So there are some guiding principles out there. There's 31 of them. In case you're curious, you can find that online. I have asked for three of them to be sort of edited, adjusted, or added. The first one is diversity, equity, inclusion. The city will consider diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the budget process. The budget will ensure funding decisions reflect the city's equity goals, including accessible civic engagement, improved communication, and access to services. The next one is climate sustainability. The city will endeavor that budget decisions align with the Beaverton Climate Action Plan, which sets a clear path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen resilience to climate impacts, ensuring Beaverton remains safe and thriving for all. The last one is human rights. The city believes in the dignity and value of life when considering investments and partnerships. The city will strive to apply an environmental, social, and governance lens to ensure that we protect, respect, and fulfill the full range of universal human rights. So I wanted to make that amendment. I presented it to budget committee members if they wanted to give feedback or weigh in. And we felt this was a policy decision that the city council should discuss, so that is my, do I need to make a motion? I'd like to make a motion to make this amendment.

I'll second.

It's been moved and seconded. As far as procedure goes, we'll take the vote on this, and then we'll add it into the final motion. Is there any discussion on Councillor Husson's motion? Councillor Hartmeyer, please.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Haslam, for bringing these. I think that adjusting them as we go and seeing how they've worked in practice I think is really smart, and I think it's good. I do wish we would have thought about it a little sooner, but I love that we have it for going forward. So thank you for bringing it up and for kind of catching that, like, hey, we got it in, but maybe we didn't quite get what we needed. So I definitely would be in support. um another thing that we've talked about as a council that i it's not well thought out so i think for me i'm not going to add something to counselor husson's amendment but something for us to maybe think about as the year goes on and maybe a future work session around these guiding principles too as we've talked a lot about how our budget and our public contract dollars and how we use our procurement process to live our values as well. So I was thinking about getting something in, and I didn't get something down on paper. So thank you for these, because I think that they are good edits. And I would like to see us use these as that living document to adjust as we need to.

Councillor Kimme. I just want to echo what Councillor Hartmeyer-Prick said. I fully support Councillor Hassan's amendments. It's tough in this budget times, but we just want to remind ourselves and me that we are fully committed to our guiding principles and I do want to, I appreciate you bringing the amendments and I fully support it. Thank you.

Councillor Duggar. Yep, thanks for bringing this forward. I think it's incumbent upon us to hold ourselves accountable to these things, though. And so, because when I first saw them, I was like, you know, beautiful language. Like, what is it going to do? But then I was like, wait a minute. I can make sure that that happens, right? And so I actually printed a little tiny version of it, and then I promptly left it at home. for me it's going to be a situation where i bring it with me because every decision we make whether it's directly budget or sort of those gray filler i think we need to look at that and i think we need to see it so i'm i'm very happy to support these councillor tipnon just echoing what my fellow counselors have said apologies i'm under the weather

I think that it's only when budget season rolls around that we really sit and have a chance to look at these. I appreciate Councilor Husson taking that extra scrutinizing amount of time to really look at the words in it and to make sure that they have the right amount of weight and light shown on them and that they weren't bundled up.

Together and so I approve that these changes and we'll be voting yes for it All right, well the recorder please call the roll Just want to make sure this is on the amendment it's on the amendment correct correct got it Councillor Duggar councillor Hart mayor prig councillor Hassan councillor Kimmy councillor Teeter. Yes, I Councillor Tivnon? Yes. Mayor Beatty? Yes. Seven yes, zero no. Motion carries.

Okay. All right. We are now ready to vote. We need a motion to adopt the budget to have discussion. Including the amendment we just passed.

Okay. I move that the council approve resolution 4957, resolution adopting the budget for the fiscal year commencing July 1st, 2026, making appropriations and imposing, categorizing, and declaring ad valorem property tax levies as provided by ORS 310.0602 as amended by amendment package one that Councillor Husson proposed and we just voted on.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded, so we'll now have any discussion. Councillor Teeter.

Thank you. I appreciate a lot of the comments we've received tonight and a lot of the feedback we've received throughout this process. I am going to vote yes to support this budget. When I first heard about our potential equity officer cuts in particular, I had a lot of my own skepticism and critiques and questions and concerns that that work might not be able to continue forward and After conversations with staff and with our own team who's doing a lot of this work. I feel confident that we can deliver better services with a different structure. A lot of my concerns were that so much of our work was internal and that we were missing out on a lot of that external community impact and community partnerships. I was with the Beaverton Downtown Association when the mayor mentioned Alexis Ball when she was here in this role several years ago and she was incredible at building those external partnerships and it was incredibly valuable for a lot of the work that the city was doing and the community was doing to have that shared space just to collaborate and work together. And I think we'll have more opportunities to do more work like that and support some more of our external partnership building. We do have cuts across the organization, so we do have a couple police officers being cut and a support specialist being cut, associate planner being cut, affordable housing program coordinator, the equity officer, senior program manager and communications reprographics, and then three FTEs and our libraries. so these are cuts across the organization there are cuts to a lot of the programs and services that we love that i love that our community loves and we are in a really difficult place of just trying to make sure we can continue providing services while our expenses rise dramatically due to forces and factors outside of beaverton's control and while we can't increase the revenue to the point that we would need without While keeping in mind the affordability concerns people have like we are trying to keep our cost as low as possible And that means making some really hard cuts it means being really thoughtful with our spending I think we're doing that with this budget And I think we're finding ways to be more efficient to deliver the same services And it's going to keep on being hard moving forward, but I think this is a good budget. I'm excited to support it

Councillor Hartmeyer-Brigg.

Thanks, Mayor. And thank you to everyone and staff that has helped prepare this budget. Mayor, some of the comments you made at the top of it are really sticking with me, that when we look at, over the years we've now been implementing a lot of strategy. We've been really trying to both increase revenue as best we can and expenses as best we can. And this year, I think we actually was maybe one of the smaller expense reductions that we've actually made, which is also devastating to think about given what you just hear the impacts of these changes are. So I do look forward to just continuing this conversation on how we're going to manage our city expenditures in a way that we live our values, that we provide essential services, and that we help the city get to that financially stable and fiscal health that we need. So I am voting in support of the budget tonight, and I look forward to continued conversation and seeing what comes at supplemental time that we can help make those hard decisions. That's what we're here for. And making sure that we're doing them thoughtfully and that we're a partner to staff as we're going through these conversations.

Councillor Kimme?

First, I want to thank Elizabeth and our staff management team and the entire organization for tremendous work that went into developing this budget. I know this was an incredibly difficult process and your efforts have not gone unnoticed. I sincerely appreciate all the time and dedication that went into bringing us a balanced budget under very challenging circumstances. While I will be voting in support of this budget, I remain concerned about the structural deficit we continue to face. We balance this year's budget using one-time resources reductions and fee increases, but significant challenges remain ahead. As a condition of my support, I would like to see a clear plan by fall, probably maybe September, outlining options to reduce at least four to five million dollars in ongoing costs. Ideally, I would like to see us 2.53 million in potential reductions sooner rather than later, so we can make informed decisions during the supplemental budget process, particularly if a levy does not move forward. I recognize that structural changes take time and require difficult decisions, but the sooner we begin that work, the more we can minimize impacts on residents and city services. The encouraging part is that I believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. If we are willing to make thoughtful structural adjustments and rethink how we operate, we can put the city on the more sustainable path and emerge stronger, more efficient, better focused on delivering high quality services. Thank you for all your work.

Councillor Husson?

uh that is okay too um yeah just kind of some jumbled thoughts but i've been doing this uh i was on i've been on serving on council since 2022 but i been on budget committee since i think 2018 because i've never i've never had a budget that i loved and that's kind of how these things work it's it's not what you love it's what you can live with right what we can pay With that in mind, I want to acknowledge the cuts to our staff. And this is not the first year. I think before we started this budget cycle, we were in the 30s. We're adding seven more this year, something like that. Ten more this year. These are good public servants that did not deserve this. None of us ran to... to unemployed 40-something people now. This is the reality of the fiscal situation we're in when they're diminishing federal resources and they're diminishing state resources at the same time where we get unfunded mandates. multiple millions every year. I want to acknowledge also the impact to our community. We have some really good partners that are taking some good hits, some pretty big hits this year that have done really fantastic work and haven't seen their money go up for a long time. But you can damn well bet their costs have. So I acknowledge the cuts to our partners too. And there's going to be cuts to our community too that are going to be impactful because of this. Some of the drivers that really are in my mind are two that I think about are PERS and health care. Those are bills we receive as a city. We have no control over that. We get the bill and we have to pay it. And if that has gone up unsustainably high, we still have to pay it. We don't get a say in that. Those sort of things, because we are not allowed to run a deficit, that those impact our people that impacts our resident and we don't get a say in it that's frustrating to me attention uh... uh... although i hope you paid attention rather to all the work of the last year this is not the first time we've seen this budget we've had we've been talking about fiscal sustainability for probably eighteen twenty four months now uh... continuously nonstop we've done public events talking about it this is the fruit of that work and it is not easy work it is not comfortable work it is difficult work uh... I spent the last few months running for reelection, and the only reason that's germane is I knocked on a lot of doors. I had a lot of conversations with residents out there. Almost universally people told me, we like living in Beaverton. We want city services. We want fast response when we need emergency services. We want clean water and good streets and all the things that we are trying to accomplish. But people have told us over and over, told me over and over on those doors, it is too expensive it is i'm struggling to pay rent i'm struggling to pay my mortgage i might have to lay off people at my business those are the guiding things that i'm thinking about and and i'm going to support this budget but it is not easy and it continues to not be easy not fun Like, the people that are getting laid off, again, do not deserve it. They are good people, good public servants. So once again, just like every year since 2018, I'm going to cast a yes vote, reluctantly, in the hope that we can figure this out structurally, long term, because this is not okay. And I see you and I hear the comments, the beautiful comments, the difficult comments, the comments that we needed to hear. We've got to figure out a way to make this better and I'm gonna be proposing some things in the fall That I'm working on to try and solve some of that. So I hope you'll I hope this isn't your last Stab of the budget with me and with us Some some work will continue into the fall and I hope to structurally change some of this so we're not back here next year Having this conversation again Thanks Counselor hasn't

I will start. I want to start by addressing people who might not be in this room right now. We know the communities that are most impacted by these kinds of decisions are people in our low-income community, people in our black and brown communities, and people in our communities that just don't have support that they need. And I think when I have to think of what those folks are feeling and what those folks are going through, You know many of them say they don't really even feel safe walking into this space And so I want to take a moment and just talk about How we as a council as a city have a lot of work to do to build trust with those communities. I think we've You know intentionally or unintentionally started to really leave out folks that we have always said we wanted to include and so I want to just take a moment and Say to those folks that even though I We can't always let you in these spaces or help you feel seen and safe in these spaces. We will keep trying, whatever that looks like. I want to honor the testimony that was provided today. It is 1 million percent heartbreaking to be the person that was so excited to champion equity a few years ago, to establish the office, and then to see that we are moving towards cutting that position. If there was an amendment that I thought I could come up with to save it, you know that I would. We are in a pretty serious structural deficit, and that is just the reality, because I would just be passing it along to the next year and the next year and the next year. It is really hard to be in this moment right now. I am watching the federal government, and I'm seeing people in our community not trust government and then, you know, adjacent not trust us. I will vote yes on this. And I am not sure we are being as courageous about cutting the things that we need to cut and the conversations that we need to have about cutting. I appreciated the mayor's email on some specific topics. I think we need to go further. I don't think the budget process allows us to do that. I remember, as somebody was testifying, pulling out the budget and being like, wait, maybe I can find this magical $100,000. And it was just like, no, you can't. You can't. Just stop. You've read the budget. There's nothing for you to do in this moment. um but i think it's important to signal to city management that we know that we need to make the cuts it is not lost upon me that this council wants to do the flower baskets like it's something that's really important and i appreciate that but that's a 80 000 cost and i have to ask is that the right place right now I'm not going to do that in this forum because it's not the place, but I'm going to ask us as a council to say we've got to figure out what we can and can't let go. And I think it is more letting go. I do want to call out that this is structural. We've known about this for a couple years. So for those of you who are joining us, please don't leave. We need you. We need to partner with you. We don't want you to just show up at budget and then be really upset with us because we'll pass the budget. And then come back again. We want to partner with you. We want to figure out how we're going to make this better. We need to figure out how we're going to do it. This is really, truly going to be a collective. I think the last thing I just want to say, and I already said this, or two last things is, you know, I'm asking us to figure out how we build trust with these communities. I think that we have diversity advisory board members and human rights advisory commission members who feel left out and not a part of that conversation. Whether it's a check-in from us or a check-in from staff, how are we engaging? How are we publicly talking with folks about this? And I think the other thing that I want to say, and I want to be very clear, I'm very thankful for our officers and the work that the police do, but police is not public safety for everybody in this community. And so either say that we care about public safety and think of what public safety is, or say that police is public safety. Especially now it's not for a lot of people and I've been saying this for a couple years and I'm asking you to really think about what that means. And if our focus is public safety, then let's talk about what public safety is. If our focus is that policing is public safety, then let's just call that for what it is. Because I think that's really important for us to start landing. So I am signaling the yes to this budget. I am still deeply concerned that we're not cutting enough. And I'm asking us to feel like we are ready to go into more harder conversations to cut whatever that looks like. I think I will leave it at that, so thank you.

Councillor Tivnon.

Thank you. In conversation recently, a friend of mine said, I think he was quoting it from someone else, but he said government is pretty good at dividing up the spoils and really generally bad at dividing up the losses. And I've been pondering on that for weeks now and also reflecting on the fact that as I was cycling on to the council, we were coming out of the longest economic period of expansion in American history. and into this new terrain that we find ourselves in. I didn't know about measures five and 50 when I joined the council. I'm very aware of them now, as is every other elected leader and many members of the community as we're really starting to see that our wells are running dry in terms of revenue as we are experiencing absolutely unprecedented cost increases across the board, both as a city, both as residents, our Healthcare system, our schools, it's rampant, this depletion of existing resources as well as avenues for bringing in new ones. We keep talking about things like fees and levies, rates. We're hearing from our residents that they can't bear it. I think one of the most profound honors of serving in a role like this is that you live in the community that you are making decisions for You feel the brunt of those decisions right alongside everyone else, and I can tell you we're having those hard conversations in our own household as well. This budget is harder than the last several budgets I've been a part of developing. We have been saying for years now we're getting close to cutting into the bone, and I feel like we have arrived at it. I am also feeling this sense, I don't know exactly how to define it yet, but if we do get the levy passed, I don't know if the relief is fully there because in the conscience of this council and the, and the counselors that follow us raising taxes forever more. it isn't going to solve this fundamental quagmire that we find ourselves in with the escalations that we are facing that don't seem to have an end in sight. I think that having that conversation, the deeper conversation around core services and what a government in this coming up new decade that we will soon be in, entering out of the 20s and into the 30s and onward, what it means for local government to provide services and social value and benefit to its residents is going to be a conversation that is both derived from these budgets, but also what we as counselors, based on what we're hearing from our residents, think that cities should provide and need to provide for their residents. I'm very grateful to serve on this council alongside these counselors and that we've been in this together for as long as we have. And I'm very grateful to the city staff for hanging in there with us and for working as hard as they have on an extremely heartbreaking budget that I will be supporting tonight. And I think that about wraps it up for me. Thank you.

Thank you. The city of Beaverton has 542 staff members that work for us, and since 2023 we've cut 42 staff. This has been one of the hardest five years that we've had of all the years that I've been doing the budget. When we levied the last bit of our taxable rate a few years ago, we knew when that happened that every decision after that was going to come at cuts. I think every single day since I've been the mayor, I've talked about measure five and 50. I've talked about addressing homelessness in the city. I've talked about the federal government, prior administration with President Biden. It was about abundance and helping and partnering. And the reason we didn't feel the pain that we did in 2020, 21, 22, was we had a federal government that was investing in cities in prosperity and investments. And then we got the Trump administration that is focused on cuts. And governments work really well together when there's money. And now we are fighting each other. Beaverton has some really great things going for it. We have a lot of special districts in the city. We have a special district fire that has an amazing response time when you call 911 that partners with our police department. we have an award-winning park and recreation district that most people use every day i live near a trail my kids go in the parks and we have an amazing library that is funded both through the city and through partnership at the county and those partnerships over the years have not always been easy but when we have a lot going on the partnership is a lot easier when we're talking about adding versus reducting the voters of beaverton chose to have special district water parks and fire alongside the city and so we have to spend the next year thinking more about partnership together and what does it mean to combine some of the resources and do it because that's the community's expectation I do, after we vote tonight on the budget, which I intend to vote yes, is give some direction to staff to come back with some further cuts. I don't want the public to think that we haven't made the easy cuts. What we're talking about going forward is arts and mediation and library and planning services and police officers. There's no magic department left for us to cut that is going to make people feel good. But this is the structural reality We're in every city around us besides Hillsboro is in the situation that we're in with these very deep cuts And the only way that changes is with a brave legislature when the when the state issues a billion dollars of tax kicker back to the community and we are letting go of police and librarians, that to me signals we're taxing enough but the distribution's not great. And I would say we don't have to live this way. We don't have to live in this like constrained environment. Our kids deserve to have art and fire plants and a responsive community and a park that's safe. and a 911 call system that reflects their values we deserve those things and this council has been working very hard to preserve and protect and and continue those services nobody takes this job because they want to sit here I make hard decisions. I have a three-year-old and I was doing budget with her when she was 14 days old sitting in here with Councillor Duggar. So we take this job incredibly seriously. I've read the budget line by line. I think our interim city manager was shocked at the amount of questions I gave her, my understanding of the budget, and actually have had to pitch it with staff a lot of times when they're not sure of the origin of what we're doing. We also directed in Bureau prior to this to have staff work on development outside of City Hall to create property tax revenue. We are a city that is largely homes. We don't have a lot of industrial and commercial space, and the way we collect property taxes is in an equity for that multi-family homes collect less revenue and it's hard for us to operate and provide these services for us so after we conclude this vote i do want to spend a little bit of time talking about some direction to give staff i sent a memo to council earlier on some ideas But the hard work continues. It's not going to go away. And the 42 positions we've cut in 2023, those are 42 families. Those are 42 somebodies. Those are 42 people that had health care and a job and a place and dignity to work. These are not easy cuts. Every cut we make is somebody's somebody. With that, I will ask the recorder to call the roll.

This is the vote for resolution 4957, the budget adoption for fiscal year 2627. Councillor Duggar? Yes. Councillor Hartmeyer-Prigg? Yes. Councillor Hassan? Yes. Kimmy? Teeter? Yes. Tivnon? Yes. Beatty?

Yes.

Seven yes, zero no. Motion carries.

Before we move on to our next item, I do want to talk a little bit about some of the issues we have with the budget as it comes forward is the really constrained state laws that require local government to not have conversations among itself that the legislature is allowed to have. The legislature does something called a caucus where they sit in a room and they talk about ideas, they figure out where everyone's at, they kind of build consensus when they're coming forward, and they say local government doesn't have the right to do that.

Mayor, point of order. We still need to vote on resolution 4956. Oh, I thought we were doing them in. State-shared revenues. No, the legal script has the votes separate. They just had combined the hearings.

Okay. So I'll entertain a motion for that.

Is it 4957 or 56? 56. So you voted for order. Okay. I move that the council approve resolution 4956, a resolution declaring the city's election to receive state revenues for fiscal year 2026-27.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, I'll have the recorder call the roll.

Councillor Duggar? Yes. Councillor Hartmeyer-Prigg? Yes. Councillor Hassan? Yes. Councillor Kimme? Yes. Councillor Teeter? Yes. Councillor Tivnon? Yes. Mayor Beatty?

Yes.

Seven yes, zero no. Motion carries.

I do appreciate the city attorney's very lengthy script, but as we're changing things on the fly, it's hard to, just so you know, we have a lot going on in the script. So sorry about that. Sorry, Susan. Thanks for being the watchdog for us. I appreciate the interruption and point of order. What I was going to say was we need to give some direction to the city leadership team here. So part of our struggle is not kind of knowing where everyone's going to vote before we come in the room, where everyone stands on different amendments because we are not allowed to deliberate on the budget ahead of the budget. So now that we've passed the budget, we can actually have some conversations about direction we wanna have about the budget in a future budget or future years. So I understand that in Councilor Kimme's remarks, he would like us to consider $5 million of reductions. That's not where I am. I'm in the 2.5 million right now on the one-time use revenue money of coming back with a reduction package that gets us off of our one-time use funding. I would like the city to look at efficiencies differently. And I send a list of them that you've said, and it's no shock to the city leadership. I've been talking about it a lot. I don't think those are the only ones. Those are ones that I see as somebody that's looked at the budget a lot of times. But I think we could accomplish it if we could have the city manager come back and do two work sessions. And where we could give her some direction on some cuts we'd like to see and a package moving forward. So we don't have to do like an official vote. I think we could do like head nodding and give some direction if we're open to that. But I'd like to hear anyone else's kind of thoughts. Councillor Teeter?

Yeah, I support this. I was talking with the city manager just earlier this week about this topic. I think it's something that we need to do. We've heard from a few of us tonight about how hard it is to actually make substantial changes in direction with the budget when it comes as late as it does with the budget committee process and then council hearing. It just makes it very awkward to give our vision or our potential ideas as a council where we might be able to stomach some cuts. I was mentioning to the city manager and talking back and forth about the sensitivity we need to approach this sort of conversation with. Because it does affect staff roles, even though we might be talking about the work that the city needs to prioritize or de-prioritize, there is somebody who's doing that work who might be afraid or cautious or not sure of what all of that means. So if there is a good way for us to have that conversation where the where staff are able to get a feel for our Own priorities and where we might want to make some Some deeper cuts in coming years. I would love to do that. I think we need to do that and Especially if we're going out for a levy But even if we don't like we're gonna have to have these conversations soon anyways And I think the the community deserves to know that we're having these conversations, too Councillor Husson

I would say most of what you shared, Mayor, in your remarks are things that I'm open to talking about when I think of 2.5 million versus 5 million. I'm probably closer to five, but that's also because I'm thinking of these fees that we've sort of said that we are comfortable passing, which I am really struggling with. I want to take a moment to make space for staff who are impacted by this. That's a really important piece of this which makes this so difficult. We're sitting up here talking about potential people's livelihoods, their ability to have work, and we're in this deficit. And so I would like to see us continue to move in that direction, whatever that partnership looks like with the city leadership. And I'm open to what that conversation continues to look like, but I do think that a year ago we were talking levy and i wasn't comfortable then and i'm i'm no comfortable now so thanks counselor duggar yeah thanks mayor i've thought about this quite a bit um

I think I'm probably closer to the $2.5 million, $3 million, but I could be convinced. But to me, more than the number itself, I want to give you the framework that I will look and judge those cuts. So for me, I'm thinking of three things. Number one, I want to prioritize the impact to our residents, minimizing the impact to our residents. Number two, we really want to look at prioritizing non-management staff. Some of our lower wage employees, this is a really tough time already. When the cost of bread goes up, On the upper end, it's not that big of a deal. On the lower end, it's extra hard. So I'm going to look at the ratio of management cuts to non-management. And then as we've gone on this fiscal sustainability journey, we've talked about mandated services. But what we haven't talked about are the level of mandated services. So if the state requires me to have this service, What does that look like? Is it one person? Like if we have 10 now, could we get by with one? And so I need to know a little more data on that to understand because a lot of this stuff is mandated and we have to have to have it. But I don't know that I've seen how much of it is mandated. And so those are kind of the three in the framework that I'm going to judge these cuts. I am flexible somewhere between two and a half and five million in cuts in order for us to have conversations around additional revenue.

That's it for me. Councillor Kimmy.

Less amount is much better. But the reality that I see from looking at the... Our revenue and expenses, there's a really good reason why I came up with five. That doesn't mean that I want five. This is much better. So I'd love to have more discussion, but I want to really ask the staff to come back a certain date or a certain time frame so we can address this sooner rather than later. I think waiting until October or November would be too late. in my opinion, I think it should be earlier the better. So September, early part of September. I don't know if you can exactly tell you the time, but that's my preference. Councillor Tivnon.

I'm in support of having this conversation, absolutely. I am a little concerned about a timeline like that. If we are, even if we say at the lower end, apostrophes or no, sorry, quotations around lower, because it's a big, big number. I don't know what that looks like in terms of staff actually pulling something like that together while also keeping other projects on track. to early fall. So I'd love to hear from staff on what they think is feasible. Sometime this year would be great. And in terms of the target number, it's a big space between the two that were suggested. I'm open to either and just open to the conversation in general.

awesome so to do a little recap here uh i'll work with the city manager to kind of bring back a timeline and some un like uh packages and understanding and obviously before a package we'll get some input from the city council and come back but just like from numbers perspective uh five million is probably 50 staff right so if we've cut 42 and the pain we've had And I don't mean to laugh here, but the council often directs staff and says big things. And then when we see what we're asking for, it's different. So I think we can work on some arranging package so we understand what 2.5 or 5 million looks like and what the cost of that's going to be. And because we've already done 42 staff, and we've already done a lot of the, that's just staff. A lot of the other money we've cut has been other areas that weren't involving people. But city's main thing that we produce is people. And so the cuts now are going to come at that. So we'll work on some of those things. We've asked to explore some partnerships. We're all going to have to get on the phone and call county commissioners and talk. We needed to do that with the library. We need to do that with Metro and SHS. We need to do that with our parks department, who's very well funded. We need to do that with a lot of our partners that aren't feeling the cuts the same way that we are. If you're an agency that can charge fees for service, you're not feeling cuts the same way as property tax base. you know our school district passed a budget where they're laying off lots of mental health people um and it's it's we're gonna feel it in every category right now and we have a renewed expectation to work externally as elected officials and we have to work with the staff to come back with a different package so elizabeth and i will work on that um she knew this is coming she's been talking about it so uh we'll work on that kind of coming forward all right our next couple agenda items as we move through our agenda as a reminder we're working through the new state law that requires us to have um declared conflict of interest for us with the water rates we cannot if i have if we hold a public hearing and we take public comment the council cannot deliberate and talk the council needs to deliberate and talk so what we're going to do tonight is hear the presentation not take public comment Then come back in July and open and have a public hearing and take comment and then have a vote. So tonight we need to ask the questions we need to ask of staff. Because when we have a conflict of interest, the way that the state law has put us up against this, similar to what happened with the business license fees, we can have no deliberations and no comments. So we're having to do this out of order to adjust to a state law. So I just want to remind the public that's the place that we're at and I would definitely encourage you to email your state reps and state senators because of how challenging this is. City attorney, if they have comments, can we receive them via email or is that going to put us in a precarious situation?

I think the critical thing is that you're not voting tonight. I think you can listen to comments, particularly written comments you can accept from the public at any time.

Okay. So we would ask that if you have comments tonight to send them email and come back and give them in person if you so wish in July. But for that, we're not going to open a public hearing and have that on our next items here. How do we want to do this next piece? So are we just going to have a conversation about water and sewer together? How do you want to do this?

Susan is approaching the microphone. And the thought was we would have a work session and she would give her presentation and then you'll have the opportunity to ask questions.

So are we going to do water and sewer combined or are you going to take them one at a time? You know, for someone that's not the finance director, we sure see an awful lot of you. So thank you for being up here and pitch hitting so effortlessly through the last couple meetings. I know how difficult it is. So thank you, Susan.

Thank you. I do have a heart for public service.

I know. She also volunteers on the budget committee at THPRD, so you should help us understand where to ask for money.

And that term is over. Okay, but you know, you've read the budget.

You know how to help us. So does Councillor Hartmeyer-Prick, please.

Okay, so if I could have our city recorder tee up the water rates PowerPoint. And please excuse the title. It does say water rates approval. We'll just pretend it says water rate work session. Okay, so next slide, please. So our water program provides clean and reliable drinking water. It promotes resiliency, sustainability, security, economic vitality and redundancy. All these things are wrapped into our water program and our capital improvement program for the water utility and the operations and maintenance. We're very proud of our water sources. We don't have to worry about other things that the rest of the country has to worry about in terms of supply or bacteria or lead or any of that. Our water is very clean and very resilient. So with that, we are actually investing in more water sources and additional seismic resiliency and connecting more pipes to our Joint Water Commission resource out in Forest Grove. So we do have a long range financial model to enable the water utility to invest in these improvements. So we do have a long range financial model. We developed this in 2020 in anticipation of applying for a WIFI loan, which is the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act through the Environmental Protection Agency of the federal government. So this long-range financial plan enabled us to secure an $81 million loan from the WIFI loan program. It also set a path for financial sustainability for our water utility. This financial plan allows for smoother, more predictable rates. And fiscal 27, the one that starts in July, is the seventh year in this 10-year planning horizon, which is out to 2030, for these generational projects. And then rates are estimated to be an inflationary increase after this 10-year horizon. Next slide, please. So this slide is letting the public and the City Council know that the history does inform our present and our future. Generational investments have been made to diversify our water sources. We did join the Willamette Water Supply Program in 2019, and that is an estimate of $100 million. That is just Beaverton's portion. Our other partners in this water supply program include Tualatin Valley Water District and the City of Hillsboro. So those two other water districts make up 95% of that system, and the total cost is well over a billion dollars. This project is taking water from the Willamette River, pumping it up to Sherwood to a new treatment plant, and then continues to pump it up here to Beaverton. IT IS ANTICIPATED TO GO ONLINE ACTUALLY IN THIS NEXT FISCAL YEAR, AROUND DECEMBER OF 26. THE OTHER INVESTMENTS WE'VE MADE WERE 165 MILLION IN INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS, AND THIS IS WHAT I REFERRED TO EARLIER AS THE WIFI LOAN. 165 MILLION IS FINANCED 49% BY THAT LOAN. THAT IS A VERY COMPETITIVE LOAN AT ONLY 1.85% THAT WE'RE PAYING FOR THAT, WHICH IS VERY FAVORABLE TO THE CITY. The other 51% to fund these projects are coming through a series of water revenue bonds, other loans, such as through the state of Oregon, our own water rates, and then system development charges that are charged on our building permit fees to developers who develop in our city. Some projects that this loan is helping to finance include the North Transmission Intertie Line, which will increase our seismic resiliency as well as water redundancy. We do want redundant water supplies in the city. Currently, we rely on one pipe that runs along TV Highway. The North Transmission Intertie Line will supplement that pipe to bring more water from the Joint Water Commission to us. The $165 million also helps to finance connections to the Willamette Water Supply Program. We are funding the Willamette water supply through revenue bonds, but those connections then are funded through this $165 million infrastructure investment. We also put a lot of investments in South Cooper Mountain, including a cutting-edge stormwater reclamation project referred to as the Purple Pipe. We have an independent water treatment plant in that area that treats the stormwater to drinking water standards as required by the Department of Environmental Quality. And then we have a series of pipes and pumps that enables irrigation with that system in that neighborhood. We also have a series of aquifer storage and recovery wells that are financed through the WIFI loan program. And those wells are deep wells in the basalt, I think it is, in our city that allows us to pump clean water into those wells and then pump it back out when we need it. We are also investing in advanced metering infrastructure, which is cutting-edge technology for our water meters that will help our residents and businesses use water more efficiently and also will help us monitor our water supply more readily through this automated system, which uses cell phone technology to read the meters. Next slide, please. So this slide is a visual display of how our capital investment is ramping up, and you can see here the peak in 2027, actually the year that we're approaching. So over this 10-year period, the city will have invested $378 million in its water infrastructure to bring these projects that I just mentioned, new water supply, seismically resilient infrastructure, and cutting-edge technology. We are anticipating to wrap these projects up in the coming fiscal years of 28, 29, and 30. And so that is why you see the deep blue color there drop off as we wrap up these once in a generation projects. Next slide, please. So this slide is a visual to show you how we are actually paying for these projects and how we plan our rates. So the $375 million is financed through a number of debt instruments, as I mentioned, the WIFI loan, water revenue bonds, and such. This is the main driver of our water consumption rate. So this slide takes a little bit of study. On the left-hand side is the debt service payments on these loans over the course of time. You'll notice the scale at the bottom runs from fiscal 2020 to fiscal 2030, and this just gives you a relative... look at how our debt service is increasing over that period. And then on the right side, you can see the consumption rate per unit and how those rates are changing over time. You can see in the middle of this graph, which is the period that we are in now, the line is relatively steep, and that reflects the rate increases we've had here in the last handful of years, and then they level off into the future. However, this slide is kind of zoomed in. So the next slide here, if we change, zooms out a little bit more, takes it to 2040, which really illustrates the steepness of the consumption rate that we had planned for over time in order to make these investments, and then levels off to an inflationary increase beginning in the year 2030. So we are projecting after the year 2030 that rates will increase roughly 2% per year after that time period. Next slide, please. So this here is the water rate recommendation. So this shows you on the left a table that has our monthly meter fees, and that is by size of meter. Residences generally have a five-eighths meter, so their rates would be going from $25.05 up to $27.55. And then a proportional increase for the other size meters, which are generally our commercial class of customers, apartments, multifamily, public facilities, and so on. So we do charge that monthly fixed charge each month to customers. And then on the right is a table that shows our consumption rate. As the city council will recall, we did study tiered rates last year, and the decision was made to just keep with our same uniform rate. So that is presented here is our uniform rate. which would be going from $6.87 per unit up to $7.47 per unit. And just as a reminder, the unit is CCF, which is 100 cubic feet of water, which is equal to 748 gallons. And then just for information there at the bottom, there's a little table there that shows how much it would be per gallon. So we're going from roughly 90% of... one cent to about one cent per gallon. So our water still remains very competitive when you consider it would be about a penny a gallon with this increase. Next slide, please. So this slide here shows you examples of water bills that households or commercial businesses might expect. So we have an example household of eight units, which has been used industry-wide. That might be changing in the future as the per capita consumption decreases, but for now we're using it as an example. The monthly bill currently using this amount of water at the five-eighths inch meter would be eighty dollars and one cent per month under this rate proposal that monthly bill would go up to eighty seven dollars and thirty one cents which would be a change of seven dollars and thirty cents per month or nine percent change Then we have some examples of maybe a two-person household, and we determine the two-person household using four CCFs and the seven-person household using 12 CCFs by just doing an internal survey of our own staff. Like, how many people are in your house? How many people are in your house? So it's a very unscientific survey. look at this, it's more anecdotal, but just to give you an idea of the more water a household uses than the higher the monthly rate. And you can see here that they would all go up about 9% under all of these different scenarios. And we have two commercial examples there. At the bottom, a restaurant, a fast, casual restaurant without a drive-thru window that is on Cedar Hills Boulevard. And then the retail with 21 employees that is up by Fred Meyer of 158th. Just for examples, just to kind of show what that bill impact would be for different classes of customers. Next slide, please. As a reminder, the city does offer customer assistance through the Community Action Organization of Washington County. We've had that partnership since 2020. No funds are exchanged in this partnership. We use Community Action for eligibility and intake. And so Community Action meets with those customers and then Community Action informs us as to those customers and then we credit their bill. So the financial assistance that we offer is for water storm and sewer utility services. Since inception with this partnership, we've offered over a half a million dollars in city utility funds for this customer help. And then we've also had other assistance programs since 2020 due to COVID mainly. 460 in ARPA funds, 123,000 in low-income household water assistance through the state of Oregon, and 40,000 in CARES Act through Washington County. so the total assistance since 2020 when you add all those together is over a million dollars in financial assistance to our community for these utilities and that concludes my presentation and i'd be happy to take questions all right counselor duggar

Cool. Thanks. Got a few questions for you. How much is required to... I'm going to start with the easiest one. And by that, it's definitely not the easiest one. How much is required to kind of maintain... So we have a minimum in our reserve, which is much bigger than our typical reserves, right? Because of operational needs. But like... Like per our policy, like if we just looked at the minimum to keep the lights on and keep it where we are today, what kind of increase would we need?

For our water utilities specifically?

For water utility. Like no new employees, just the minimum to keep where we are and on where our policies say we have to be for reserves. Okay.

That's a very good question. Thank you for asking. With this rate increase, even with this rate increase, I should say, our policy is 42% of expenditures. And in the proposed budget, or now in the adopted budget, that fund balance is at 39%. So we're lower than our target fund balance, which we're comfortable with because there are so many variables that occur during the year, including vacancies and weather. We've had a very hot spring. So currently that is not necessarily a driver of the rates is that fund balance.

Thank you. How is that base rate change calculated? Base rate. So that sort of pipe fee, I think you called it, the fixed rate monthly. Oh, the monthly? Yeah, like that seems, because when you look at inflation, right, even at the most recent numbers, 3.8, maybe 4%. So, and I know we are investing in capital, right? Is that where all of that's going, like in that base rate?

Right. So when you're planning a utility that has debt, the fixed rate provides a more predictable stream of income because it's fixed every month. You know what you're going to have regardless of the weather or consumption or that sort of thing. So we balance between the fixed monthly and the consumption rate in order for the utility to have a stable revenue source to meet those debt obligations. And so as time goes on, we do look at what's called the debt coverage ratio to get very technical. And so we do need to bring in enough income that exceeds our operating expenses, that's required by our debt covenants, is that we have to bring in 25% more revenue than our expenses. And so in order to have that predictability, we look at the fixed monthly fee and those increases to bring in a stable amount of revenue that can help with the consumption rate with that revenue. So we've been striking that balance over the years.

And what is new growth in the system? How does that impact that number? So I'm thinking like hundreds of new houses in South Cooper Mound, right, that weren't paying in but that are now, right? But we had already backloaded that expense by building the system. They're paying into the – how does that impact the numbers as you guys like look for the next 12 months?

Sure, yeah. So our account growth is actually, ironically, is quite small, 1%. Our population growth in Beaverton has, on average, been less than 1%, even with the South Cooper Mountain growth. And so that does affect our water. You're right, it does help. It brings in extra revenue because we have more accounts. But it does not bring in enough to offset rate increases, unfortunately. So we still need to increase rates in order to meet these obligations.

I'm going to amend what you just said. Sure. There's a cost containment portion that I think might be missing because we have to maintain that ratio of the difference between revenue and expenses. And so I want to kind of talk a little bit about if you could tell me what cost containment. Things are happening now. And then more importantly, as we move forward in the next year, what more can we do? Our residents are telling us loud and clear, Contain your costs, right? And I feel like every year we've just been approving water rate increases. Like what things are we doing and then what more can we do over the next fiscal year for cost containment?

Right, so if I could talk you into backing the slides up a couple. One more one more right there. So what this slide is showing you is the debt service that we've entered into. So we have, as I mentioned, the $81 million with you loan. We have a $20 million loan through the state of Oregon. And off the top of my head we have maybe $100 million of water revenue debt outstanding, and that's on the municipal. bond market, so anyone can invest in those bonds out there. So really the driver of the rates is, you can see in this graph here, is the debt service, because we have to get the rates up high enough in order to pay that debt off. And some of the debt service has not yet begun. So in fiscal 28, we're anticipating the WIFIA starting and also the north transmission line, the $20 million loan for that. So that is really the rate driver. In terms of operational expense containment, for fiscal 27, there's one quarter of one FTE that's been added, and that's actually for my team, for the utility billing team, to help with the advanced metering technology and the account growth. We did add staff in fiscal 26 for the purple pipe system. So as with any utility or any growing system, it needs to be properly maintained. And that's what those staff were for, is to maintain that DEQ standard water treatment plant, as well as maintaining the pumps and pipes for the purple pipe system. And so the utility is itself growing. We have to maintain the pipes and reservoirs and aquifer storage and recovery wells that we've invested in. So, and Tim Elthianio is here too, if he has any other comments he wants to make with cost containment. But the utility reviews its expenses each and every year for that reason, but we still have a responsibility to provide clean and reliable drinking water to the community.

sure and um what is our operational ratio of our expenses relative to our peers right so i'm thinking hillsborough ben gresham those similar sized cities do they have this similar number of employees in their water area and that may be a loaded question because some employees do multiple things right but Sir, I actually do not understand. Sure.

Yeah, no problem. I actually do not know about Ben and Gresham. I'm happy to bring that information back. Hillsboro actually has a larger water utility because they run the Joint Water Commission. They're the managing agency for the JWC, and so they will have more staff than the city of Beaverton. They will also be the managing agency for the water treatment plant in Sherwood as part of the WWSS. So I believe that they are also staffing up. The main difference with Hillsboro is they have a larger industrial base. Intel, for example, uses almost if not more water than the entire city of Forest Grove, more than 3 million gallons a day. So the city of Hillsboro also has an extensive two or three page rate schedule where they have different rates charged to different commercial sectors as well as tiered rates. So they have a very complicated rate structure. So their rates are lower than Beaverton's, but it's a function of their industrial base, their commercial base, and then their tiered. Toulon Valley Water District is also a partner in the WWSS. Their rates are higher than the city of Beaverton. Their base is mainly residential. They don't have a lot of commercial sector within their But their rates are quite a bit higher than Beaverton, but their investment in the WWSS is quite a bit higher as well. So just with those two, those I do know off the top of my head, but in terms of comparing to other water utilities, I would have to gather that information and come back to you.

Yeah, that might be interesting. Don't go too much, but my last question is the debt that we've incurred. When do those bonds start being removed from the balance sheet? Like, when are they going to be...

Sure. So if you go to the next slide, see if I off the top of my head here. So you can see this. It's very small. I apologize. So we we are having one particular debt issuance complete this current June. So we did do a bond refunding in 2016 that is paid off in 2026. And so that enables room in 28 and 29 to bring on. the wifia and also the north transmission line the 20 million dollar debt through the state of oregon and then you can see here in the year 2039 it starts to go down a tiny bit and then levels off and then if i were to take this chart out to 2060 it would stay pretty much the same and then in 2050 or so it starts to go back down but these are you know 30-year debt obligations that we've entered into okay yeah i think that's everything i had

Thank you.

I think it's important, though, as we're, you know, as somebody on this council that spent a lot of time in water and when all of you guys joined the council, I think with my trauma, I was like, you need to learn about water. You have to learn about water. We saw the rates for TVWD starting to climb. We know Hillsboro's rates are also going to climb because of the amount of debt they've had. They haven't had to climb as fast because it is offset a bit with industrial, but they're starting to see it climb again. And so what the city council did years ago to try to fortify that was direct staff to go look for WIFIA loans to be able to secure our water rights on the Willamette and other places. And through the north transmission line, we had owned previous councils invested in water rights that we knew we were going to need. And WIFIA is a once in a generational opportunity for us to borrow money from the federal government at a very long rate, at a very low interest rate. And so our upfront investment is getting us our water rates from somebody else. And it's going to, over the long term, keep us TVWD's rates are exploding in real time because of how much they've invested. And we were very, they wanted us to be bigger investors in the transmission line and the council just didn't agree to absorb that much debt. And we can see now how much of that water is being used in industrial parts that we don't reap the benefit of. So us contributing more didn't make sense. i think the water rate usage as we've looked at many different things to address it and the reality of climate change is more water is being consumed and we're actually a very rich water city the amount of rights we have and so i do think in the future unfortunately one of our our tools might be to sell our will our water to other people which we often do with the city of tigard and other people And we do it at a very fair rate. That doesn't mean we always should be because our community has invested in the infrastructure to get that water rights to us. So these are a lot of conversations we've had over the last 10 years that I think now are starting to come to fruition. So as we're we're doing this it's just a reminder to me that we need to be we need more of this information going to the public it is wonky it's hard we need a communication strategy so people understand i look at it like having a mortgage we have somewhere to live over the next 30 years because we've invested in our our debt the payment we're paying is much lower than if we had to take these projects in one at a time. I've actually been telling the federal government to look at a WIFI alone style for infrastructure around housing because it's really the only way we're gonna get things done effectively. I do know we're gonna talk about sewer rates and that's just challenging for us. It's like trash. We don't have a lot of control over it. So, Councilor Titor.

The mayor talked about a little bit of what I'll say. We are a 5% partner in the Willamette water supply system. So even though our investments are generational alone there, TVWD and Hillsborough are bearing a lot of that cost. And so we're able to do it through a partnership there. That treatment plant is coming online soon. maybe end of year or beginning of next year. So a lot of our costs there will switch over to staffing support. But at least we're not building out a big system anymore. We'll be finishing that off. I smirked at myself a little bit looking at the rate increases because we feel a lot of the burden every single year we talk about water rate increases because every single year we're talking 7% to 10% increases. and it is driven by debt service and decisions of previous councils that will lead to a more resilient water system so that if there is a natural disaster or an earthquake, people will still be able to have clean, reliable water in Beaverton. I think that really matters a lot. I also smirked because when i'm not on council anymore there will be future counselors who are able to vote for two percent increases and they'll get to brag about that to the community and they'll say your past council's raised your rates by ten percent yeah we did but at least you have water in that and those disasters and when you need it most um so i don't feel like we have a ton of flexibility in these decisions uh it's more just we've made generational investments we've got low interest loans but we've got to be able to pay them back and see it through and i i really appreciate this long-term forecasting look i think that matters a lot i think the mayor hit it really well that we need to be communicating this that this isn't going to be a forever uh you're not going to be seeing 10 increases every single year but It will level off more as these projects come online. And so I think we just need to keep sharing that story. I'm kind of like, stay the path. Stay the path.

Okay.

You want to talk about sewer?

Love to talk about sewer.

Would you bring up that PowerPoint slide? Okay, so again, fork session versus rate increase. Next slide. So the city does have a long partnership with Clean Water Services, and Clean Water Services is the regional provider of sewer and stormwater within Washington County. Clean Water Services builds and maintains the wastewater treatment plants and holds the permits with Department of Environmental Quality to ensure the Tualatin River and its tributaries remain healthy. And the city provides local services to city residents and city businesses. And it's through an intergovernmental agreement that the city bills for both regional and local services. So traditionally, the city has adopted the same percent increase as Clean Water Services, which is this proposal as well. The city is undergoing an evaluation of its local sewer and stormwater services and its own rates that we need to charge for the local services, and that is anticipated in the fall of 2026. Next slide. So this slide here shows you those rate changes and the associated bill impacts. So sewer also charges a fixed monthly charge, and that's per equivalent dwelling unit. So this slide here breaks out the Clean Water Services regional charge with the Clean Water Services slash Beaverton local charge, and it shows the current rate and then the effective rate increase. Clean Water did adopt their rate increases on June 9th. And then down below we can see the sewer usage charge, and that is based on the winter water average and is also per CCF. So the winter water average is from the months of November through April, and the reason why we do that is because we assume that not all water consumed in the summer months Goes down the drain. So our sewage usage rate is to capture the impact of The effluent going down the drains and so that's why we use the winter water average basically assuming May through October a lot of the water consumption is for Irrigation and so customers are charged the same amount for sewer usage all 12 months of the year which is based on the winter water average and And again, the unit is CCF or 100 cubic feet or 748 gallons of water. So you can see here the net result when we take a single family residence, which would be one equivalent dwelling unit using eight CCFs each month as their winter water average. You can see here how their bill would go from $59.19 to $63.24, or a 7% increase, or $4.05 per month with this proposed rate increase. On the right side, we look at stormwater, and stormwater is our utility that basically manages the rain. When it falls down on roofs and streets and such, our stormwater utility manages that water and helps to make sure that it's clean before it goes into a tributary or into the Tualatin River. And this stormwater charge is a fixed monthly charge that's based on equivalent service unit. And an equivalent service unit is basically one single-family resident, and it's an estimated impervious surface is what an ESU is. So you can see here the Clean Water Services regional charge is going up about 4%, and then the local charge is going up 5% for a total bill impact of 5%. So you can see here that the estimated bill impact for a single-family resident would go from $14 to $14.66 per month. And then down below is the estimated bill impact when you add the two together of sewer and stormwater. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions on storm and sewer.

If we didn't bill for CWS, would we still have to pass all these fees this way?

So that is a good question that as we move toward this consultant review of our sewer and stormwater, I'm not sure if Megan is listening. I know she was upstairs. I do intend to talk with our city attorney's office to see What that would mean in terms of the regional rate and the local rate and what the city of Beaverton needs to do this is a holdover from the old revenue share days where The Clean Water Services has an IGA with seven cities in Washington County and all seven cities have tended to do this model So the question is because we have an IGA What does that mean? Do we have to continue to do this model or do we just adopt our local rates? So I don't have an answer for you at this moment

so does cws charge us like we're we collect revenue for them they've passed this rate we don't charge them cost recovery to do the billing of our water system that's correct we are their fiscal agent basically for free so what if we were like no we're not going to pass this rate like what if we're like we're willing to pay this like what happens then like what happens if we say no

So Clean Water Services has already passed their regional rate. So what we would be saying no to is within the IGA and collecting their revenue on their behalf. And there is movement afoot in Washington County that Clean Water Services is looking at to see if they should do their own billing or if they should continue to partner with cities. And some other local cities have picked up on your comments regarding providing fiscal agent services to clean water services without a charge, and maybe we should be looking at cost recovery. So other cities in the area, City of Tualatin being one, i'm not sure if this is an iga that's opening i think the iga and forest grove is also opening so those cities are picking up on these comments and they're talking to clean water services about hey maybe we need to start charging for these fiscal agent services i'm not sure what that might look like but i know those conversations are underway if we did not adopt the regional rate i don't know if that's necessary because Washington County has already adopted the regional rate. So we would need to adopt our own local rate for sure. So that part would remain.

I mean, I'm very interested in a future where we don't bill for them because we have to do all the hard work and take the criticism and then bill at no cost recovery and do it. So I know obviously we can't do that right now, but you've heard this from my mouth and other cities have heard it and are picking up on it too because Our water bill would look dramatically different if CWS wasn't on it.

Thanks, President. Can you explain to me why our fixed charges going up so much, 20% in one year?

So again, we are just following Clean Water Services percent change.

There's this four.

They are increasing their local charge. So they manage unincorporated Washington County and they're increasing their local charge in unincorporated Washington County by 20%. And so we are increasing our local by that same percent. which is why we're undergoing a study with a separate consultant to see if the 20%. We do need a local rate, and the rate increase would be somewhere within that range. We just don't know for ourselves the exact dollar amount we would need without this consultant study.

Okay, I think we've got to get that answer. Yes, we do. Like, we really have to get that answer because that's that's it'll be absolutely unsustainable.

It'll be similar to to what it is now. I just don't know what that exact amount is.

And that's fair. I know we have to get that expertise, but what leverage do we have?

to push them for cost containment is is it a function of like hey we're not going to bill for you if you don't get your crap together or like their costs their costs would actually go up because if if the cities did not bill for clean water services they would have to staff up they would have to invest in a computer billing system um so their costs might actually go up if they have to do their own billing versus just paying us so that is a question that we'll be exploring in partnership with clean water services over the next several months um so at this point in time um what the where the dollars go the regional rate goes for the wastewater treatment plants to maintain those water treatment plants and then the local rates help with the local crews and local infrastructure to maintain those pipes and to maintain that system so that when people do use the sewer system that it goes somewhere that it's supposed to go instead of in somebody else's basement yeah

no i would be curious to know you know what leverage we do have if there's any maybe the answer is zero we don't have any but but like i do think we have to have a cop and i'm sure everyone has to have a cost containment conversation with them but i know they're exploring like when we toured their facility i can't remember the down there like yeah durham and you know they they they're capturing renewable natural gas and things like that and so i applaud them for trying things You know, again, people are loud and clear with all the levies failing and all this, like cost containment is a thing. And so I'm looking for any sort of leverage that we have.

And that would be through the public comment at the Washington County Board of Commissioners when they have their own rate hearings or this body talking to the Washington County Commissioners about cost containment with Clean Water Services. They did just turn over their general manager. They had a new general manager just start, I think, at the end of May.

From Hillsborough?

From the Clean Water Services has a new general manager. Yes. He's from Hillsboro. He is from Hillsboro, yes, yes, yes. So he should know some of these things. So there would be some conversation, yes, exactly, conversations at that level.

Okay.

Yeah, but once you go to a special district, like you're going to need changes. Counselor Cedar.

My question was about the 20% as well. I just want to understand it a little bit better. Is that cost to cover the general cost of maintenance of sewer lines?

Correct. Yeah, our crews and our equipment to maintain pipe sizes lower than 21 inches, 12 inches, somewhere.

So I think my question is just... Trying to wrap my head around how 20% could make sense if we're not adding anything new. So like an inflationary increase seems more like it would be appropriate, but I don't know.

Keep in mind it's on a very small dollar basis. So it's on a $7 basis to $8.43. And so that would fund our local sewer crews. As the mayor pointed out with our general budget, we have health insurance increases, we have PERS increases, cost of living, inflation during COVID was very high. Those prices have not gone back down. The percent change has gone down, but the price remains at a high level. And so all those changes within our sewer utility are impacting the cost structure of that utility.

Okay, I think I was getting myself mixed up. I was thinking this was for capital construction. This is for the personnel, the operations.

That's right. And for capital both. Yes, it is for both, but not as much as for water. So this is also to replace those pipes. It's not for new development. That would be for our system development charges, but it would be for capital replacement of old pipes.

Okay, sure. Sure. No, that makes sense. We keep an inventory of street maintenance needs, so mapping out the condition of our streets across the city so that we know where to invest. Do we do something similar for sewer infrastructure?

For all of our infrastructure, yes. It hasn't been as extensive as the street maintenance since we have this separate utility fee. So it's not as, it hasn't been the topic of conversation like our street has since we're going for a street maintenance fee. But yes, we have an inventory of that.

Okay, and I might have even seen that before. But thank you. That's all my questions.

Okay. Well, I think that's all the questions from us. So as a reminder, we're not taking public comment on the water and sewer rates today because we're trying to be compliant with the state law. You can email your public comment to us or return on July 7th when we have the public hearing and the official vote. We're going to take a five-minute recess. We have an action item, some ordinance of some first reading, and I have a walk-on resolution for us this evening as well. So we will be back at 8.50.

Tension but we're now resuming

All right, we do have an action item tonight, Resolution 4960, Downtown Parking Plan Presentation, in consideration of resolution adopting the Downtown Parking Plan.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for having us on this very jam-packed night. I will be as brief as I possibly can. Here to request that you consider a resolution to adopt the Downtown Parking Plan. Next slide, please. The Downtown Parking Plan is nine strategies focused on trying to manage our downtown parking assets to the best of our ability. We went through these nine strategies with Bura in a work session on May 26th. Next slide, please. We also did a number of community engagement activities, and the community feedback was general support for the downtown plan with the highest priority being focused on our curb management strategy and working on parking branding and parking recognition and working on a few of our other low-hanging fruits around continuing our enforcement efforts, 3rd and Washington becoming a public parking lot, and our on-street permits. Next slide, please. So our next steps, if you will consider the adoption of the plan tonight, is to work on some of the efforts that were started during this planning process and coming back to council and bureau and other city boards and commissions and community members. to roll out changes associated with our parking plan and efforts that we have heard from the community that they are ready for and we would like to take action on. And with that, I will conclude my presentation. And thank you again.

Yeah, great work on the plan. I'm excited about it. I did have one bit of feedback. And I'm sure it's buried somewhere there. It's not a strategy necessarily, but I do think we need continued conversation and outreach to the business community, particularly as we implement this. Because we might go too fast in one area or too slow in another. And I'm really sensitive. We get some good public comments. Remember Anderson sent us something. and we've had a lot of conversations with those businesses i just want to make sure that they are feeling agency in these conversations and they can like almost over communicate and over involve like i think i think that's a really important part of the success of this long term i didn't see it i'm sure it's buried in there i'm sure it's on your mind but i just want to publicly call that out and just ask us that we continue to really index uh pretty heavily on that absolutely thank you thank you counselor hartmeyer pregg

I just can't use the mic. I'm kind of a mess up here today. Thank you, Tyler and Molly. It's actually also, you know, I don't often print these things, so it's actually cool to see it all printed out. And I think that it's nice for people to kind of see where we're at and where we're going and kind of know what to expect with parking, which I think is really great, especially since we've, as a council, thrown some curveballs. it's I think this plan is just it's going to be really helpful and I know that it's not all going to be implemented at once but I appreciate seeing that you've taken community feedback and council feedback to kind of put it in an order that we're going to follow and get it done and And I'm looking forward to just seeing how it evolves and how we can support. And I know like earlier tonight in our consent, we were able to accept our race grant, which is really exciting because it's one of our proof of concept projects for the loop, but also we'll get to test out some parking things too. So I think it's really exciting that like these things are happening tonight. And just want to thank you because I know that a lot of my questions have also been like, help me understand what my role is in this conversation. Because I do think that Parking is definitely one of those things that we all encounter. We still hear people complain about it all the time, even when we know there's tools at your disposal now. Like, you can go use this parking lot. You've always been able to. And we're trying to make that really clear. And so I just, I'm grateful for the changes. One thing I was thinking about as we were talking about Bureau budget earlier and some of the city-owned land, And mayor's gonna love this wrench is like where we have city-owned land Can we be using that in a temporary manner to help with some of the parking alleviation?

That is such a fantastic Suggestion councillor Hartmeyer prig. I am surprised.

No one has I'm just thinking that especially we heard a lot lately about concerns in Old Town specifically so I, you know, just as now that we have a plan and some guiding principles and things that we can help you along the way, I'm hopeful that it also means you can try more things or, you know, have the flexibility to do other things, the parking that you need. And I'll take credit for the idea. Fantastic.

I was like little mayor in training. I love it. Nope. Counselor Teeter.

Thank you, Molly, for your work on this. I don't have very many comments. I feel like we've shared a lot of the comments over the past several months on this. There's a community feedback slide that showed some top priorities. That feels pretty in line with a lot of my own values. One of the top ones is strategy six, the curb management, and it says adjusting time regulations. Curb management for me is also the walkability and bike parking access improvements that I would also find a lot of value there. But I think just getting this approved It'll be really nice to be able to keep moving forward and give a little bit more direction. I'm glad that we're moving forward with the library lot and kind of the farmer's market lot, whatever we want to call it, but opening that up a little bit more. I know a lot of my council colleagues have talked a lot about branding, and branding's never my cup of tea, but I see a lot of value in it here, and so I am glad it's on the list. I'm glad to see that it's big on community feedback. So I think this gives us some good guiding direction. So thank you for your work on it.

Thank you. Councillor Husson.

Thank you. It's really clear you've been listening to us. You've been listening to community. You've been listening to businesses. I just wanted to come on and it's like a quick question. Do we still have the Transportation Advisory Commission?

We have the Traffic Commission.

Okay. But we have like these transportation ambassadors. Is that gone?

For the TSP, for the Transportation Systems Plan? Yeah, we do.

I believe so, yes. Little idea while we're in the idea factory here. You know, could we have some of those folks participate in some sort of a video to talk about? I know you guys have sent us marketing and branding, so I don't want to give any more ideas. Except I just thought, as I walked last night through the downtown area, and please do support local because it was kind of chill on a Monday night. how can we leverage the people that we already have to sort of create, to make them be the social media ambassadors around the parking and the design and what that lands because I do think it is a little tricky with the different pieces and I think we've got really good ambassadors within our own kind of right in front of us. So I'm really excited to support this. Thank you for your work.

Thank you.

I'm just sitting here trying to think, were you in downtown Beaverton for your anniversary? Is this why it was so meaningful and why you brought it up twice? It totally was. Look at that. Happy anniversary, Councillor Hussain. She had a special night, and she's happy. Councillor Kimme.

Congratulations. Wow. Oh, wow. Okay. This is my 30th year, just in case. I know. Anyways. Thank you for the plan. I'd love to see it. I mean, it's great. One thing on my mind is, when are we going to see a huge sign from the library, number one? number two is um people don't know it's only one dollar to park at the resort parking lot maybe you can put a huge sign says it's only a dollar an hour so then people would know and they're willing to park there like big humongous sign you know uh just to let people know is parking's available somewhere free but some someplace one dollar When would I see that? Because I've been waiting for like four years and I haven't seen one. When do you implement certain things? Yeah, that's my question.

So the third in Washington lot, we've started the land use process. So as soon as we get through the application process, we just completed the required neighborhood meeting. So once we get through the land use application process, and it is a type three because of the type of land use that it is. So it has to go to planning commission. So once we get through that, then we can start making signage changes and more advertising for the third in Washington lot. For this garage, we've got a number of signs up that state and we'd have to work with our public works and our planning folks on signage rules around how we could adjust the sign and what we can have in the right of way because it is all within the garage right now. There is a large sign inside as you're pulling up to it that states the rates. And then we are working also on adjustments through online social media that Councillor Hassan just mentioned. We can work on things like that that advertise it more.

Follow-up is, do you have to start working on the sign after the process? Can you just work on making the sign? So as soon as you get approval, just put it up there?

Can I defer to you on that one? The city traffic engineer is not here. So you are the decision maker right now.

Actually, everything is going to be ready to go. And that's the whole thing is we're going to get the land use completed. And so we can publicly actually market it and have it all ready to go. The current sign right now is not clear. And it's, to your point, we want to identify it as, hey, come here, Kamal. And we may even put our economic development manager out there with his own sign inviting people to come in.

Just make sure it's shiny and attract people. Edward wants to be a human sign.

Councilor Tivnon. Thank you. I echo what other counselors have said. I know that this has been a long and winding road to get to tonight, but this does feel reflective of the feedback we've heard from the community as well as what you've heard from us on the dais. One thought about the third in Washington lot is when the Meadowlark project is fully in place and thriving, we could see that lot absolutely maxed out on occasion because of the limited street parking that's available around that new housing. And there's impacts that I've been worried about in relation to that project and just what it could end up meaning for the surrounding neighborhood. And so I know this is something we can revisit as we see how it really plays out. But I could see that lot getting to where people are circling and looking for a spot on occasion. And so are we going to time it? And what does it mean to time the lot at the farmer's market? I mean the lot where the farmers market takes place. But my dream is that we see those lots full. We see them fully utilized and then see what the remaining on-street impacts really are. after that. I'd say the only other thing that I'll put here is for the branding and marketing efforts is that that comes back to council on occasion. This is more than just about parking. It's placemaking in a big way. And I think one of the big lessons out of this budget cycle is we are Just by nature, we have to be a leaner organization and anywhere that we can maximize efforts, we should be doing it. And so anytime we're looking at signage in the city, it's not just informational, it's placemaking. So it would be exciting for the council to be able to think about that almost in a holistic fashion across the city. That's it for me.

Thank you for coming back with this evening. What I think you heard from council is urgency. You've heard it every time you've come to present to us about the need. Like, sometimes our city takes the path of it has to be perfect before we get going. Parking is iterative. I really like Councillor Hartmeyer-Prigge's suggestion on using city-owned lots in the Bureau District as parking to solve some of the issues we're having. So I hope everyone else heard that suggestion as well. I think we maybe have heard it before, but I'm unknown on that piece. What we need is the community needs to see action and they need to see things moving quickly. And I understand our traffic engineer plays a large role in how we do place making and signs. Just today on the fifth floor, I stopped a city employee to ask about having the Beaverton sign on TV Highway touched up where the beaver is, our very historic sign. I'll leave that person nameless. But they told me they had to check with the traffic engineer. So I think the traffic engineer wields a lot of power in the city. But what we need is place making. What we need is the community to feel like we're hearing and listening. If you don't know where to park, we end up with parking issues. and potentially people's cars getting towed. We built a parking garage, and we only charge a dollar, and it's not used a lot, and we have a library lot, and some of Councilor Tivnon's points are very relevant for a future conversation with development happening down there, because it's not intended to be a parking lot for affordable housing projects or any multi-use project down there. It's intended to spur our business community and our needs. So thank you. We're going to take a vote on this tonight and just act with urgency. We need to be a culture of yes around here and we need to push Decision-making down so things can happen and not get bogged up in the middle part of this organization And so I would just encourage our staff you hear from the council at the dais Make sure you're talking to your management and getting these ideas moved and pushed we have to deliver value to our community this year We just had an entire conversation about our budget and what it means to our community. They need to see things not move in Reverse Councillor Husson

I move that the council adopt resolution 4960, a resolution adopting the downtown parking plan.

Second. It's moved and seconded. Any more discussion on the resolution? Seeing none, I'll have the recorder take the roll.

Councillor Duggar?

Yes.

Councillor Hartmeyer, Prigg? Yes. Councillor Hassan? Yes. Councillor Kimme? Yes. Councillor Teeter? Yes. Councillor Tivdon? Yes. Mayor Beatty?

Yes.

Seven yes, zero no. Motion carries.

All right. The next item on our agenda is the first reading of two ordinance. Ordinance number 4811, Fiscal Sustainability Straight Maintenance. Fee, first on July 7th, 2026, during a regularly scheduled city council meeting, a public hearing will be held regarding ordinance adding Beaverton code chapter 2.09, creating a general services fee. Ordinance number 4822, fiscal sustainability street maintenance fee. Next, on July 7, 2026, during a regularly scheduled City Council meeting, a public hearing will be held regarding the ordinance adding Beaverton Code Chapter 3.05, creating a street maintenance fee.

With that, we're on to Council New Business.

I'm going to hand you guys a resolution that had already been sent out in advance. We have been, and the reason it's coming this way is by the time we were able to work this and get it, there couldn't be council direction to add it to the agenda. So we're doing a walk on as we call. We sit it in advance. I know that a lot of you have had conversations with the city attorney and the city manager, which is what our intended place to be. what is happening uh not only in this region around data centers but what's happening across the nation it's the focal part of communication at every mayor's conference i've been at the majority of conversations i've had at every municipal level between the mayors and metro and everyone else has been around data centers i've continued to remind people that our code doesn't allow it which is why you don't see massive data centers in the city of beaverton but i did think it was important for us to have A resolution reaffirming the city of Beaverton's values and priorities related to utility scale standalone data centers. And so this is what I have for us tonight. My hope is that the council would vote to adopt it. It's just restating. Everything that we have already believe in our values and what our code does and does not allow so that way we could Our staff have a focal point to point to when we get community requests and that way we can share with the community where our values are the resolution came to be this was a lot of work with the US Conference of mayors and Climate mayors. This is where a lot of this came from our team drafted a good chunk of it Our city attorney has reviewed it for accuracy and we sent it out So I would ask us to adopt it. We could read it aloud. You can give feedback. I think the community deserves to hear where we are on this particular issue. Let's see. Who's first? Councillor Duggar. Yeah, skip new business. All right, Councillor Hartmeyer-Prigge.

Cool. City Attorney, just curious if you have any thoughts or anything that we should consider.

Councillor, no. As the Mayor said, my office worked with her on this, and we're comfortable with it as written.

Great, thank you. Yeah, I think that there's still so much to learn too about the impact of data centers and most of what we're finding out is negative. And like data centers are kind of a personal, like they affect me in a personal way because my day job is something that's affected by AI use. And I think that we very mindlessly use technology and don't really think about the impacts of doing so. And so I'm grateful that our city code doesn't allow standalone data centers. I think that we're just hearing a lot of negative feedback on them. So thank you for putting this together. I'm comfortable supporting it as written.

When I would just say that, like for me personally, why this is really important, my husband and I are both on the national burn pit registry. Our experience in the US military being in environments where we don't think about the personal environmental impact to soldiers. I've lived on military bases where water supplies are not great, where high rates of birth defects. I've had vaccines that were not authorized by Congress and you know I have lost. four friends that I deployed with two very rare cancers that have a direct correlation to water and burning of things in foreign countries that we were exposed to. And so thinking about having facilities like this near schools, We have to do better in a country that knows better. We have to protect our very vulnerable residents. I've had many conversations with the mayor of Phoenix and other mayors that have adopted data centers and their cautionary tales of what happens and the need to work in the future. I obviously would like a stronger code that completely rewrites it. That is a labor intensive thing when our code right now doesn't allow it. And so this was a bit of a compromise to make it a functional piece that we can press out now without using a lot of staff time.

Councillor Husson?

Councilor Teeter.

Thanks. Yeah, I talked to the city attorney about this after you shared it with us, Mayor, because I had been looking through code and had not seen anything about data centers, and I just wanted to make sure if that meant that it was actually prohibited. And yes, the city attorney conversations and affirmed that if it's not mentioned as code as permitted or conditionally permitted or anything like that, then it's not allowed. And so I like having this, so it makes it easier for us to just say, oh, it's not in our code, so it's not allowed. We can actually just show this to people and say, yeah, it's not allowed. And we've specifically expressed that we don't want that sort of usage here. We have very limited industrial land, and we're trying to protect that for the actual businesses that want to employ people who live here in Beaverton. So I support this. I think I really like this approach of doing it as a resolution rather than having to create a whole bunch of new code updates. I think this is much easier and much more feasible and practical for us to be able to do, and it's a good quick first step. So thank you for bringing it forward.

Yeah. And I think what we're seeing out of our neighbors in Hillsborough is when you operate in a city, manage your form of government, it's designed to be slow. And so our ability to adjust to things that are happening is very difficult just because of the structure of our government. So this was the fastest path to get something done. Councillor Husson?

Yeah, thanks for putting this together. Putting on my budget guiding principles hat for a second, when the city manager and I sat down and worked on them, there's actually, it's not on data centers, but it talks about private development. And so I walked away feeling like we're good in terms of the kinds of things we would or wouldn't allow. Part of the data center issue is the tax breaks. And so we have very specific language in our principles that say, Any privately sponsored development of anything will pay its fair share and that there will be a partnership. So there is something in place that I feel really good about. I think putting together this resolution is just another way to signal that we are really strongly hearing from our community. So I appreciate this being put together and I'm happy to support it tonight.

uh i think uh for the record i'll just give it a quick read and then we'll we can take a vote a resolution affirming the city of beaverton's values and priorities related to utility scale standalone data center development whereas regional investment and utility scale data center development has accelerated in recent years driven by increased demand for cloud commuting, artificial intelligence, and digital infrastructure. And whereas communities across the Portland metro region are increasingly grappling with the questions related to infrastructure demands, electrical capacity, water use, noise transmission impact, neighborhood compatibility, emergency preparedness, and long term community benefit associated with utility scale data centers. Development, and whereas the city of Beaverton has limited industrial employment land, much of which is located near residential neighborhoods and areas plan for mixed use walkable and transit supported development. Whereas the city council supports economic development and innovation while recognizing large scale industrial uses should align. with Beaverton's infrastructural capacities, land use goals, and community priorities. Whereas the City of Beaverton values thoughtful land use planning that balances economic opportunity with neighborhood livability, sustainability, infrastructure capacity, and long-term community benefit. And whereas the utility scale standalone data center development is currently prohibited in the Beaverton In Beaverton and the City Council desire to support the existing prohibition now for be it resolved by the City Council of the City of Beaverton. The City Council recognizes that large scale utility standalone data centers may create significant infrastructure, land use, and neighborhood compatibility. impacts and supports the current prohibition on such uses in Beaverton. Nothing in this resolution is intended to discourage or limit technology infrastructure that is accessory or incidental to otherwise permitted uses.

Mayor, I move that we adopt the resolution as read. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any more discussion on tonight's resolution? With that, I'll have the recorder call the roll.

The recorder would just like to note it was not received by our office nor published online for the public prior to the meeting. So we did update the packet as late as noon today. Okay, this has been assigned resolution number 4961, which is the next in the roster. Councillor Ducker?

Yes.

Councillor Hartmeyer-Prigg?

Yes.

Councillor Hassan? Yes. Councillor Kimme?

Yes.

Councillor Teeter? Yes. Councillor Thibnaum? Yes. Mayor Beatty?

Yes.

Motion carries seven yes, zero no.

It'd also be great if the city could do some communication on this as well. That would be great. Councillor Duggar?

Thanks, Mayor. I've got two council new businesses. They are adjacent to one another, but I'm asking for each of your support in directing the city manager and the city attorney. The first, I'd like to direct the city manager and the city attorney to work together to develop policy language banning ICE facilities within the city of Beaverton. For our friends on the right, they don't pay taxes. That would take up important land that would be paying taxes and we were in a fiscal environment. For me, it's a moral thing. We know the federal government has a large budget for facilities to detain people and to generally harass immigrant communities. That is not, in my view, that is not welcome here in Beaverton and I would like that. It's probably not allowed already based on my conversations within our zoning code, but I would like this brought forward for us in a policy if we can get the majority or four of us to support that. So I'm asking each of you to maybe give a thumbs up if you are willing to support the city manager to bring that forward.

Wait, sorry, can you clarify the specific ask at the start? You mean like detention facilities? Any ICE facility.

Not allowed within the city of Beaverton.

Can we do that? Can we say like a particular agency versus like a detention center like I get because the detention center would be about conforming land use issues and I agree. I'm just asking for clarity. Are we allowed to exclude? Would that be in a? Could we do that?

Yeah, Mayor, I was expecting perhaps something about detention facilities and whether that's compatible with our...

I think that's the most likely. I think that's what we're seeing across the country.

I just don't think we could say no Department of Human Services buildings, which is basically what you're asking. I don't know if legally we could do that. So I think we would need... I think we would have much firmer grounds to say detention center, but I'm not an attorney. I'm just thinking about...

how about how about the ask is go as far as you can legally and then bring that back to us yeah i i understand i mean we've had lots of conversations so you know if we get a majority of counselors saying so do you need a thumbs up from

I mean, I support this philosophically. I want to be mindful of staff capacity and the likeliness that this could happen. I do think that the budget principle that we passed included language around human rights, so I feel like it's less likely. But I just want to be mindful of the way to direct in a way that is not putting more So I realize that's not the answer.

I hear you. I don't think budget language would allow us to defend an application about a facility, but I don't think we can go as far as, I would be comfortable with you just doing some preliminary legal research on what we would need. And so you know the city of Newport is $500,000 into a lawsuit over something similar, so I just want to make sure We don't have the industrial space for that. So I think a cursory look at what we could do in a similar format to what we just did with these facilities would be comfortable. But I think we're going to have to be more narrow because land use is very specific. And that's how we're going to be able to defend ourselves.

I can support that.

Any other? Yeah.

city attorney about this too because I like this idea and I think that our zoning code is one of the few areas of actual regulatory authority we have over what happens in our city I agree that it can be tricky to get the code language right, so I think some feedback, some analysis of what we could or shouldn't say would be helpful. The city attorney and I talked about, well, could we say no private detention facilities? Because we can't say no detention facilities, because then what do our police do when they want to hold somebody in our holding cells in the police station while we do the paperwork for DUIs? We need to be thoughtful with how we do it, but I like the vision behind it, especially if it's something that maybe it's already banned in our code and we just need another resolution like this. So a little bit of analysis would be helpful, but I like the direction.

Cool.

Everyone I had to comment on it. Okay. Um, I would really like us to time box this ask to like a new more than 2 hour exercise, right? We are very. Staff constraint in that office specifically. Um, and so I, I, like, I also wonder if like. As you stated, Mayor, with this resolution, like we know land use, we know ordinance, all of that is just going to be heavy workload. So I do I think I can support it, but I think it needs to be a very limited time boxed activity. Just due to. Like capacity and yeah, and I did for clarity.

I did talk to them and they have. They felt like they have the capacity to do this right now. Like it. That was one of my first questions so cool. The second one is hold on.

Sorry there, counselor Edward.

Sorry all my questions were asked and answered.

So sorry about that word. Counselor tip non. Did you have anything? On that one.

And just add on to what Councilor Hartmeyer-Prigge just mentioned. We just passed the budget and now we're adding in some potentially sizable work right out of the gate. And I know come next council meeting, we'll think of more things. So I think that that idea around just getting very, very clear on time. is a big one and also that we are in a position where when we ask if someone can do something I think staff generally want to be able to say yes to that and I want to be really really careful about asks that are made to them. When I say that I mean for myself personally because it's very easy to say, yeah, we can make that happen, and then realize, wow, I don't know if we can actually feasibly do that without pulling from something else. But as far as the spirit of what you're saying, I am in total support of that within what we are truly capable of doing. So, yeah, if it can be time-limited and get us some really good insight into something that is... buried within our ability to add something to the code language, great.

And then the second one is very adjacent, but also directing a policy creation that any business in the city that applies for a grant, whether it be a bureau grant, city grant, whatever, if they have a contract with ISTATE, we'll have to attest that they do not. If they do, they're not eligible. for any city money in the form of our grant programs. Because it doesn't feel right to me to be taking money from taxpayers and harming members of our community, and so we should minimize that. I don't think this was going to be a big ask. I've talked to the city attorney. I think it can be a simple attestation from those businesses as they apply for various grants if we have them. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that. And it could be if we find out on the back end that you do, we get the money back kind of thing. But I think this is a really important one for me. These are also two things that other cities have successfully done or are working on. So this felt like it's adjacent, but it was important to me that we direct them to create that quick policy. If a resolution is easier on that, I'm open to that as well.

I think that is not just a legal question, because if it's an adaptation to a grant, it requires stuff from the city manager's office. So I support it in theory, but I think we need a little briefer on what actually workload that requires from us. And then I would want it to be very narrow to immigration versus DHS as a whole, because we do a lot of work with the FBI, particularly around child trafficking. And I don't want to have unintended consequences with agencies that maybe cater or do other things adjacent to that. And I'm old enough on the city council that we have bought in strip clubs to deal with child trafficking here. And our previous mayor was indicted on those type of charges. So I want us to be mindful of how the language is crafted because we intertwine Department of Homeland Security and ice and use that terminology interchangeably, but I think it could have an impact here So that's and that's why I didn't do it.

Yeah That's why I didn't write the language myself because I originally was talking about DHS and I was like there, you know after having conversations It's more complicated than that. So I thought best to direct them to do that counselor Hassan I Love the spirit of what you want to do

I agree with the values and the spirit of what you're trying to do. I struggle because I know there are people who are doing that kind of work for their livelihood. And so if the will of the council is to continue down this path, I'm not going to stop us. I know people who don't want to do that kind of work, who need to do that kind of work. I know business owners who, well, I don't, but I imagine that there are business owners who don't want to do that kind of work, that need to do that kind of work. So I just want to be really thoughtful about if you're going after a big company, yeah, okay, I'm here for it. Let's go. I don't need to help another CEO make a ton of money. But I think there are families right now that are having to do things for work that is not in line with their values because they have to put food on the table. And I just want to be thoughtful of how we do that. So this is just my initial gut reaction. It's the first time I'm hearing it. So I'm not against it. And I respect the spirit of it. I just want to be mindful of folks.

To be clear, this isn't preventing it. This is saying you're not eligible for city grants if you do that work. So you have to make the choice.

Well, I want to like a little bit with Councillor Hassan here because the majority of what we see in our city is catering, which is why I said catering in particular. And a lot of our businesses tend to be minority owned businesses. And so I just, I want to understand the impact of what that means a little bit more before I could assign onto it. So I do think a small amount of work from the offices to track it down, but You know, we've worked really hard to not have chain restaurants here. And so like, that's the piece that I'm slightly worried about.

I think if I was prioritizing staff workload on some of the things we shared tonight, my first priority would be about the detention facilities analysis over this, because I think we don't have that many city grants these days. So I would prioritize the other work, but if this is something small that we can do, then I won't push back on it. I like the spirit of it, too.

Council Hartmeyer, break.

Yeah, Councillor Teeter, that was what I was thinking. I don't think we're giving out a lot of grants right now. And so I'd say that the first ask, I feel comfortable with the time box request. I think right now I'd just say there's so many considerations that I think I'd rather not proceed. Like I would not be supportive of that this time.

Councillor Kimme.

It's wonderful. I'd love to do it, right? But I want to consider if you're going to do it, what are the possible outcome or consequences if we start as a policy, as a code, prohibit federal government to activity here, ICE, whatever that might be. Is that going to affect our for their funding in the future or not. So those are things on my mind because they're going after sanctuary city. So that doesn't mean I'll be against this, just there's more things that's involved. before I can support detention center, of course. But if because of that reason we might be cut off from other federal subsidies, then I'll be concerning about that. So there are more things to think about. So I can go ahead, but I'd like to hear more from the city attorney and other people's staff and their feedback. So just look at the whole picture.

where I think we're at is the city attorney and city manager and I can work together on bringing back some information on both of the requests with attempt, sorry. And come back to the council either in this public setting or in one-on-ones.

I'm gonna take over. Are there any additional council new business items? Seeing none, we are adjourned.