Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Whoops. Sorry, we got a sound issue here. Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Board County Commissioner's Policy Session on June 10th, 2026. County Administrator Gary Schmidt, will you please call the roll for us?

Yes, thank you, Chair. Commissioner West is out of the office today. Commissioner Schrader is delayed, but will be here shortly. There is still a quorum present. With that, roll call. Commissioner Savas. Present. Commissioner Helm.

Here.

Chair Roberts.

Here. All right, thank you, Gary. And what we'll do now is I'll now recess as a Board of County Commissioners and convene as a Water and Environment Services Board of Directors. And, Gary, you want to introduce our first item for the morning? Yes, thank you.

You're meeting as the Water and Environment Services Board for the next two policy sessions. The first is Water and Environment Services Rules and Regulations Updates, presenting as Greg Geist, the Director of Water and Environment Services, and Ron Waringa, the Assistant Director of Water and Environment Services. Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Gary. Good morning, directors. As you may recall, Wes updated, completely updated our rules and regulations back in 2023. We've been living with them for a few years now. It's best practice to revisit them occasionally. Many of the changes that we're going to propose are more housekeeping, but one is related to the next policy session, which we're very excited about, which is our customer assistance program. So with that, I'll hand it off to Ron. And since this is related to our customer assistance program in some ways, I'm going to have Aaron come up and take my spot.

Take it away, Ron. Thank you, Greg. Good morning, Chair and members of the Board. Ron Wierenga, Deputy Director of Water Environment Services. And as Greg said, some of you might remember in 2023, we did a full rewrite of our rules and regulations to align the rules with the formation of WES as an intergovernmental entity where previously we had separate sets of rules and regulations for each district. completely rewrote them so that we had one set of rules and regulations to to administer that was a huge project took a lot of work where it really put us in a good position to ensure that our requirements for users of our utility that our requirements are clear, that people know what's expected of them, that we can seamlessly implement those rules and regulations, which just leads to efficiencies. So we did realize a lot of benefit from that, and it has been going well. As Greg has said, we have implemented those rules for the last three years and in doing so you know we're continually looking at ways to improve them and adjust them to continue to realize those benefits. The benefits that we see and that we're working on now, so one, I'll say this is a work in progress. The rules are draft. We're writing the language now. We have yet to go through a review from county council, which we'll do once we get finalized, a final draft of rule language, and then just setting expectations from a process standpoint. Once we get that done, as required, we'll go through a public comment period and receive comments to the public and respond to those. Then create that that final set of rules to bring to you all in a public hearing sometime in a couple months So we're this is like I said a work in progress. We're still working on the language and and as Greg said while the the vast majority of our changes are administrative in nature things like addressing grammar and CONSISTENCY OF TERMS, ERRORS, FORMATTING, THINGS LIKE THAT. THERE ARE A FEW PROPOSED POLICY CHANGES THAT WE WANTED TO BRING TO YOU IN DAYLIGHT AND GET YOUR INPUT IF YOU HAVE IT NOW BEFORE WE REALLY GO ANY FURTHER IN WRITING LANGUAGE IN THOSE SECTIONS. SO THAT'S PRIMARILY WHAT WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT TODAY. SO LOOKING IN YOUR PACKET, We broke these proposed changes with references to the sections where we would make the changes for the key policy proposals into two areas, two subjects. One has to do with reimbursement districts and the other has to do with rate charges and billing. Starting with the reimbursement districts, again, when we updated the rules in 2023, we added an entire new section to our rules on giving us the authority and laying out the procedures and requirements for reimbursement districts, which we didn't have previously. Again, those are often referred to as latecomer agreements, and you've seen some of those in hearings that we brought to you to establish those agreements. reimbursement districts being an entirely new section for our rules and regulations our first cut at it definitely we see some opportunities for improvement and again it's just in the applications that we've seen and talking to developers and their agents we have a couple things that we think we can clarify and make the process smoother and more predictable The first one is just a definition of a specially benefiting property in the definition sections of the rules. And again, a specially benefiting property is a property that will benefit from connecting to offsite infrastructure that a developer puts in as part of their project. And that really, once they're identified as a specially benefiting property, then we can determine a reimbursement charge that they would pay for a future connection. So it's an important first step in the process. The change that we're making would clarify that a specially benefiting property for inclusion in a reimbursement district and subject to a reimbursement charge shall be located outside of an applicant's common plan of development but qualifying infrastructure and be able to connect directly to the qualifying infrastructure. We have seen some applications and had discussions with people looking to establish reimbursement districts where they're including their own Development and infrastructure for their project in the reimbursement district application Which is not eligible per the intent of the reimbursement district language So we were proposing updating the definition of a specially benefiting property to make that clear It doesn't really change how we apply that section in our rules. It just sets expectations more clearly That's what that change makes. I'll keep going.

Were you going to solicit a question there? Is that what you're trying to do?

I'm just given time. Okay. If you want to comment now or later. Do you want a question? I didn't want to interrupt you. However you all want to do it. Yeah. How would you prefer?

Please the staff to do your whole presentation and then board questions do that.

Thank you. I'll keep going The other the other change in this in the reimbursement section of our rules has to do with interest rates that are allowed to be charged for our to Applied to reimbursement charges as we as the rules say and as you've seen in some applications reimbursement charges are applied specially benefiting properties for a period of 10 years if the property owner develops their property and makes a connection they have to pay that reimbursement charge over those 10 years there's a provision in our rules currently that an applicant could propose an interest rate to that would be applied to the reimbursement charge over that 10 year period we intentionally left that broad in the first cut of the rules when of the reimbursement district rules when we establish them The challenge that we're seeing in implementation is people are proposing interest rates that are kind of all over the place, including upward of 10% or more. And the intent originally would be that we would allow an inflated cost of the applied an inflation adjustment to the reimbursement charge to reflect the cost the construction cost of the improvements that they built would increase in value over time just per inflation What we're doing in practice is doing a look back on the on a construction cost index At the time that we get applications and in working with our staff doing we've looked at sort of the long-term ENR engineering news record construction cost index for our region Over over the last ten plus years is typically around three percent plus or minus And so the proposal is to just set that rate in the rules to just so that they again It's predictable people that are applying know what they're gonna get and it eases the implementation and the decision about which interest rate to apply so we're not looking at what year are we in in the ten-year period and Is it this year's rate? Is it last year's rate? Is it, you know, there's a lot of variability. And ultimately in the end, it typically averages out to about 3%. So for ease of implementation and predictability, we're just proposing 3% based on construction costs. the last portion of the reimbursement districts is a is an addition of a section on whether section already exists but on apportionment of reimbursement charges this came up in one of our first hearings for reimbursement district the If a reimbursement charge is applied to a property and it's based on the frontage of that property, what happens if that property subdivides but doesn't develop? How do we handle the reimbursement charge? So if your reimbursement charge is based on 100 feet of frontage improvements and the cost of that infrastructure and then you just divide that in half, you have 50-50, we didn't really have anything in our rules to say how would we then allow for a division an apportionment of that of that charge another example that came up in the hearing was there might be a there might be a property with a house on it that you know it's five acres and in the future it might it might develop and connect and that reimbursement charge would be applied but what if the house just connects because their septic system fails and they want to connect for infrastructure with the full reimbursement charge be due to connect one house which would be a significant burden for that single connection and so we added a section to the rules to allow for changes to the reimbursement charge based on those circumstances that was something that County Council Jeff Munns had recommended after one of the hearings that we could clarify that so that's the that's the third change there that would be a policy change in reimbursement districts. The second subject where we're looking at some changes is in our rates, charges, and billing section of our rules. The first one has to do is a section on deduct water meters. We have authority in our rules now. So these are mainly for industrial users of our wastewater system. We have authority now to allow them to calculate an amount of water that they get if we bill them on water consumption on a water meter which we often do if they have as part of their industrial process in some way they don't discharge all of that drinking water that that is delivered to them to the wastewater system we can deduct that examples would be evaporative processes cooling towers or in some cases water that goes into product particularly for beverage companies and so our rules right now say you can you can have you can give us data from more than one water meter that delivers water to your property and we will adjust your bill But we often have folks talking about sub metering within their industrial process to say I can't get there. I can't tell you how much you should reduce from my water consumption and adjust my bill based on the water meters at the street. But we have or could have meters inside our process where I could give you a reliable number. and we do that in to some degree now in our billing but we don't have a section in our rules that clarifies the expectations says what they need to do in order to give us a good number in order to deduct from their bills so we added a section on deduct water meters to give us the authority and the procedures to adjust their water usage based billing with sub metering again clarifies what the expectation is it's more predictable people know what they need to do it gives us a little more a little more authority over the data that we receive and make sure we're accurately adjusting people's bills based on that and that's been an ask of folks that want more certainty on that process because they have to make investments and then the second part in uh in our in this section on billing has to do with income qualified discounts and we' re going to talk about that in the next policy session as well on Which we've talked to you about in the past, and we've daylighted that in order to implement some of the changes that we want to make to benefit our income-qualified customers, we are going to need to make some changes to our rules. So the language changes in the rules now in Section 5.15 is a new section that we've added for income-qualified discount customers. does three things one it grants authority to the district to provide the discount of monthly user fees to surface water charges in addition to sanitary charges we currently don't have that authority and we don't do that we don't apply our income qualified discounts to surface water charges and we're proposing doing so that so that our account holders will get a decrease on their entire bill The second change is to establish authority for us to use categorical eligibility for the discount. So right now we say in our rules there's a threshold for 60% of the state median income is an income qualifying discount. In practice we use other eligibility eligibility for other customer assistance programs like heating water and assistance and snap and and other evidence of income qualified participation and other programs, but we don't have that written in our rules that they someone could categorically qualify for the discount by providing to us that they that they qualify for another program so that just clarifies that we can do that it's a risk management exercise and then the last change is right now we have in our rules we set the amount of the discount in our rules we say 50 percent the bill we will reduce 50 to 50 percent of the bill if you qualify there's there is a need and a benefit to having some flexibility and what that discount amount might be and we're going to hear about that and in the next presentation but we were proposing removing that number from the rules removing the amount of the discount and having that be adjustable by the board In having a board adopted resolution of the of the discount amount and including it in the district's fee table that that way it is still a board approved discount but gives us the flexibility to Adjust that based on either need it allow it could allow us to expand the program to more users and with allows us to adjust it with available funding if we have some resource issues with providing that discount. So it's a change in how it gets adopted. Again, it still keeps it as board approved and then moves it to the district's fee table. So those are the primary policy changes we're proposing and working up language for those changes. As I said, once our draft rules and regulations are prepared, we'll coordinate with county council on a review. We'll do a public comment period, and then we'll bring the updated rules and regs to a public hearing for ordinance adoption. And that's all we have.

Right. First of all, thank you for all the information provided and very detailed as usual. Thanks, Aaron. I'm sure you probably had a part in that. And I know that Commissioner Sabas had a question first. Go ahead. Yeah.

Overall, my question is about the... special benefiting property in these things. And my question is kind of a basic one. Is it worth doing, or are we monetized for the effort it takes to watch this for 10 years?

Is, clarifying question, is it worth updating the definition or is it worth doing a reimbursement?

The staff time involved for this provision to allow a developer to pass that on and obligate other properties, other owners outside the area for a period of 10 years, you know, the responsibility to monitor that is the department's, right? Is it worth the effort?

I believe so. I mean, from a policy standpoint, I do think it is a best practice, particularly for utilities to have these sort of latecomer arrangements. I mean, we heard in our previous rules update a significant amount from the development community that we should have this ability to do reimbursement districts, which many municipalities have. from a cost standpoint to the district we do collect a fee for at the time of application for establishing the reimbursement district so we do get costs recovered I don' t know that we have in our cost recovery models looked at it in detail to see whether we recover all of our costs but I would say a significant portion of our costs are covered by the applicants so we get paid.

is on someone's title that shows that they're in this district how does a property owner or a new property owner it acquires a property mid-cycle or anywhere along that to 10-year period know that they're in this district the great question I don't believe it's on the title but when the board approves a reimbursement district it is recorded

through that that county recording on the property so in a title search it would come up the documents are recorded uh... from an administrative standpoint we within our own system are are permitting system flag those properties as having reimbursement charges applied, and we track it there so that when they come in, we would see that there's a reimbursement charge applied. But I think what you're talking about more is how does someone know from the public they are recorded documents?

Yeah, so, but it's not going to show up as a lien search, right? Because it's not a lien. It's not a lien, no. Right, it's not a lien. So it's not going to show up there. So how would, if someone was speculating mine of property that's in this district, where would it show up? I mean, would it show up in a typical real estate transaction where people do their due diligence, right? Or do they have to dig a lot deeper than normally would otherwise?

Again, I think Director Savas, that would definitely be part of the due diligence process. And it's part of what now? Due diligence, as you had said. I think it would have to be done through due diligence to look at all of the potential encumbrances on a property someone's buying.

Okay.

Interesting. All right. Commissioner Hill.

Hi, Ron. Thanks for the presentation. I should probably know the answer to this, but how many reimbursement districts are there?

Are there?

Yeah.

I think we've approved one. Two. Two.

Okay.

From the audience.

Okay.

Two from the audience. Okay. We have several applications in and are processing them now.

So you're adding more reimbursement districts as you go? Because this is relatively new.

Yeah, and again, these are applicant driven. So somebody applies and then we run it through the process to get board approval and establish the district. So we don't control that part.

Okay, got it. And then my next question, and if I'm understanding this correctly under the deduct water meters portion here, Is that's gonna require Like special equipment to determine water usage and everything So is that something West is providing to the businesses or is it something they have to procure themselves?

Yeah, it's something that the the industrial user would need to procure and install and operate themselves including Calibrating it makes making sure it's accurate and then they submit the data to us for billing So it's it's it's entirely their process and it doesn't have to the equipment have to be approved by Wes yes, we do we do require a plan to be submitted to us and we we approve it and Um, in a sense that we're, we don't, we don't really dictate what people need to do to do the data collection and the sub metering. We just make sure that, you know, kind of on their behalf that it's going to be something that's accessible, that's acceptable to us because we can't just really accept a guess. Like I, I, my guess is we didn't discharge this much of the water we consume. It needs to be a little more fine tuned than that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Schrader, so we're geographically. Are you going to see the most usage in this particular? I'm sorry, but I said we're geographically is just mostly going to be in our areas of Industrial areas before the d-duck meter program.

Yeah. Yeah Yes, it would be our industrial areas and our industrial customers would benefit from being able to Quantify the amount of water. They might not discharge to us and gives them lower bills and

So it's really going to be it's not residential in any way shape or form. It's all commercial.

Yeah, okay commercial industrial primarily industrial Right any other questions?

Yeah, go ahead one more. Can you give me the fee? For to create one of these reimbursement districts I mean how much more does it cost you know because that that's gonna be the revenue in which You are saying that it's worth doing so how much is that? How much is the fee currently? How much does it cost to establish a reimbursement district?

It's pretty new, so at this point, it's hard for us to say how much time we're actually putting into it, so I don't have that number for you. I'm not looking for the time, the cost. Well, it's just our time that's the cost.

Oh, you're going to build the time?

Yeah, well, the reimbursement district or the application fee for a reimbursement district is based on the amount of time we think we need to run it through the process and get it approved, reporting fees, things like that. There's provisions in the language that if somebody wants to modify reimbursement district that there's a reapplication fee so we set a fee initially on what we think it costs and then we would adjust those fees through the routine fee setting process and our cost recovery models over time but right now I can't tell you how those are how those are stacking up against one another so the fee would be administratively determined yes as opposed to a set rate Yes, the fee is included in the district's fee table, which the board approves. And so if we make a change to that, we would identify it as a fee change and propose it to the board for adoption. So it would be something the board would approve. Yes. But it's not established yet, is what you're saying. No. Well, it's established in that we have a number in our fee table now that was essentially our best guess at the amount of time we thought. I just looked for that number. What is that number? I have to look it up. Okay. Unless you know it. Erin knows everything. One thing Erin doesn't know.

Please keep going and we'll bring that data back. Right say turn my colleagues any other questions I'm gonna give Martha hard time that song bad to the bone.

I really don't think you're bad to the bone I Know I know give you a hard time there. Yeah, all right. Is there any of the directors want to make a motion I?

I move we advance the policy updates as presented for adoption at a future public hearing. Second.

All right. Director Helm has moved to advance the policy updates as presented for adoption at a future public hearing. Director Schrader is seconded to that. Any further discussion or comments? Seeing none, clerk, you please call the poll. Director's Office. Aye. Aye. Director Schroeder aye director helm aye chair Roberts aye Motion passes 4-0. Mr. Chair.

All right, Gary. Do you want to just continue on then? Yes, and we'll just get that answer to the board you have right now Yes, go ahead.

The the current amount our fee table is three thousand four hundred and ninety dollars for a reimbursement district application So we can compare to that over time Okay All right.

I in my head I' m wondering the difference between a five property reimbursement district or a hundred property reimbursement district would be far more expensive to monitor administratively. You' re just taking a guess?

essentially yes. the next policy session you' re still meeting as the west board is water environment services So who's presenting, Ron and Aaron? Aaron, Ron?

For time, let's say we just go right to Aaron.

All right. Aaron Blue is Finance Manager for Water and Environment Services. Go ahead, Aaron.

All right, good morning chair and commissioners. In December we presented an outline of changes to improve West's customer assistance program. Since that time we've been hard at work assessing available funding, potential enrollment and financial impact. We're back today and excited to provide an update to the board on specific changes proposed to our income qualified bill discount as well as the actions required to implement those changes if approved. Next slide please. The income qualified bill discount, or IQBD, is the most significant element of WES' customer assistance program. The current IQBD is a 50% discount that applies only to the wastewater portion of the bill. Enrollment is at about 650 households, including 250 in rate zone two, which are directly billed by WES, and 400 in rate zone one, which are billed by our city partners. Funding is entirely through sewer user charges and at existing enrollment levels, the annual cost of the program is about $160,000 or 15 cents per household per month. As we shared before, at less than 1% enrollment, we know the current program is underutilized. And while we don't know what the exact number of enrollment should be, our best estimate is that somewhere between 6 and 12% of households in our service area are eligible. And that's based on knowing that 6% of households in our service area are served by PGE's bill discount program. And Oregon State's estimate that 12% of households in Clackamas County qualify for the low-income heating and energy assistance program. We face two significant barriers to program participation. The first is that eligibility is limited to customers who are directly billed, which excludes renters and multifamily households. And the second is that our intergovernmental agreements, or IGAs, with our city partners don't consistently provide for pass-through of our IQPD. Next slide, please. The changes that we're proposing to overcome those challenges are outlined here. First, we're working to expand eligibility through a pilot program with PGE to include WES' discount on the electricity bill for renters and multifamily households. Based on an analysis of enrollment in PGE's program, we're anticipating that that action alone will more than double WES' current program and add 800 new households. Second, we're proposing to amend the IGAs with our city partners to address outdated terms, which include discount eligibility based on income thresholds from 1982, the year those agreements were executed, and ensure that the terms for pass-through of WES's IQBD are consistent for all of our city partners. As WES's IGA with the city of Milwaukee doesn't currently allow for pass-through, that update will result in 150 households that are enrolled in Milwaukee's program, which will become immediately eligible for WES's program. And then as Ron just mentioned, as part of the rules update, we're also proposing to extend the discount to the surface water portion of Wes's bill, which increases the benefit to directly billed customers. And new enrollment based on that change is projected about 60 customers who we bill for surface water services only. Next slide, please. Expanding the program requires that we also plan ahead to fund the increase in enrollment. And to limit the impact on all rate payers, as we previewed back in December, WESA's new program proposes capping the rate funded portion at .5% of budgeted rate revenues, which would provide about $280,000 in funding this next fiscal year at a household cost of 26 cents per month. NONRATE REVENUES CONSISTING PRIMARILY OF LATE FEES WOULD PROVIDE ANOTHER $150,000 FOR TOTAL FUNDING OF $430,000 ANNUALLY. WHILE THAT'S A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE FROM THE CURRENT PROGRAM, BASED ON THE PROGRAM UPDATES WE JUST COVERED, WE KNOW THAT DEMAND WILL EXCEED AVAILABLE FUNDING. AND TO ADDRESS THAT GAP, WE'D LIKE TO ASK THE BOARD TO REVISE THE DISCOUNT PERCENT FROM 50% TO 40%, WHICH WOULD ALLOW US TO EXTEND ASSISTANCE TO ADDITIONAL 300 HOUSEHOLDS OR APPROXIMATELY 1,600 HOUSEHOLDS IN TOTAL. And that 40% discount was not arbitrarily proposed. That's the percentage that will allow WESA's rates with the discount included to maintain a low impact rating for the total annual cost of wastewater and surface water services to be no more than 1% of the total household income for the lowest 20% of earners in our service area. Because a reduction in the discount has the same overall impact as an increase in the rate, this is an opportune time to make that change, as the current low enrollment means the impact will be limited, and adding the discount to the surface water charges offsets the majority of the reduction. If the 40% discount level is approved, customer bills will reflect a minor change of about $1.12. from reducing the discount to $26.08 per month from $27.20 per month. For our city partners, we're also proposing to implement the 40% discount effective in July, 2027, rather than this year. to give them time to inform their customers and make those adjustments. Next slide, please. We have one more potential update that we'd like to share. And as the board is aware, West has good neighbor agreements in place with the three cities who host our Tri-City and Kellogg treatment facilities. Through those agreements, we contribute $1 per unit billed in each city to support community improvement, economic development, and environmental restoration in the areas around our treatment plants. Eligible uses of Good Neighbor Program funding include recreational improvements, habitat enhancement, and the broad category of collaboration opportunities approved by the parties. Consistent with that purpose for creating collaboration opportunities, we're proposing to add wastewater customer assistance as an eligible use of Good Neighbor Program funds. Specifically, a portion of the funds could be used to provide financial assistance for wastewater treatment portion of the residential bills to income qualified residents within the city and West's service area through a city administered program. This would potentially allow the cities to retain the 50% discount on West's portion of the bill if they so chose. It could also allow them to expand their own programs. To preserve the majority of Good Neighbor funds for environmental and recreational uses, we're proposing that the wastewater bill assistance portion be capped at 10% of annual contributions or $10,000, whichever is greater. That would provide a total funding of about $44,000 per year for those cities if they elected to utilize that funding and if it's approved by the board. Next slide, please. If the board directs us to move forward with these changes, this table outlines our target timing for the next steps, including approval of a pilot program with PGE, which is in the final stages of legal review right now, and that we're anticipating bringing back by the end of July for board approval. Also amendments to the IGAs with our cities including amending the good neighbor IGAs which we would target for July, August. The rules update that Ron just covered in detail targeting for August and September. And then finally a resolution to set the percentage for the IQBD and approve the program funding. We believe these changes will have a meaningful impact on improving affordability of our essential services for households in need and would be happy to take any questions you may have.

All right. Go ahead, sir.

Yeah. Thanks, Aaron. I have a question. Knowing that Milwaukee is a wholesale customer-derived versus CCSD Service District 1, let's just say across the street, right, is Milwaukee, as the retailer... participating in reducing that rate, or is it simply the pass-through only in Milwaukee on the wholesale rate?

Yes, good question. So right now the city of Milwaukee has their own customer assistance program that they're discounting the retail portion of the bill on. Extending Wes's IQBD to Milwaukee would allow them to discount Wes's portion of the bill for their customers. So potentially a 40% reduction in what we bill Milwaukee for the wholesale services.

Okay, and is that similar with Gladstone and Westland and Oregon City?

Yes, exactly. So right now the IGAs with Right Zone 1, Gladstone, Oregon City, and West Linn all allow for the pass-through, and they are including a 50% discount for the wastewater treatment portion or West's portion of the bill for customers that qualify.

Okay. So early on in the presentation, when you were talking about the participation level, essentially, I know that recently, I forgot who, it was the waste haulers. They were looking at the utilities to see what participation was. And it sounds like you are same, like looking at what PG and others. So I guess that in order to understand who those customers are, we're relying on maybe PGE or one or two, eh?

We are, yeah. So the pilot program, if I can talk a little bit about that, PGE has offered to distribute collateral on WESA's behalf to customers that qualify for their program, promoting WESA's program and letting them know how they can apply for WESA's program. So yes, we are relying on kind of a data sharing agreement with PGE to access those customers that we don't have direct relationships with.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? All right. Is there a motion?

I move we approve the plan for implementation of the income qualified bill discount as presented and direct staff to return with specific program elements for adoption. Second. Second.

Director helm has moved to approve the plan for implementation of the income qualified bill discount as presented And to direct staff to return a specific program elements for adoption director Schrader a second of that any further discussion I just have one clarifying question chair if I could so when the waste haulers were here and talked about the program and they opted for the 75% discount and

That was a recommendation. And what it did was everybody else pays a little bit more to supplement this program. And this is the same kind of thing, or is this built into your budget to offset?

Great question. It is already built into Wes's budget. So the proposal would be a $0.26 per household per month impact if you approve the funding level as proposed. Right. Okay. Thank you.

So essentially by offering a discount, we're also increasing the rate.

No, it's already built into the existing rate and existing budget. It's built in. Yeah. I just wanted to clarify that.

Yeah, and I just want to compliment Wes and your entire staff. This is really amazing. And the collaboration and partnerships that, I mean, to hear you talking about PG and how you're working across the board in many areas, just very impressive. And as always, I'm Even your material you presented today. I had a chance to read through it very detailed organized and the presentation is great So I want to thank you and all your staff. Thank you. So if there's no other comments I'll ask the clerk to call the poll for us Director's office aye Director Schroeder aye director Helm aye chair Roberts aye Motion passes 4-0. Mr. Chair. All right again. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you, Greg I will now recess as Water and Environment Services Board of Directors and reconvene as the Board of County Commissioners. Gary. Thank you.

Next was scheduled the moderate income revolving loan fund program. We are going to postpone that until next week at the request of Commissioner West who had championed and requested this session but he was not able to be here today and we didn't know that until a few days ago. So at his request and the Chair's agreed, we're just gonna postpone this until next week. So it will not be today. Moving on then, we're now on page seven of your scripts if you're following along. The next and final session for this morning is Strategic Communication and Community Engagement Plan Review. Presenting is Public and Government Affairs, the Director of Public and Government Affairs, Tonya Holowetzki. Thank you Tonya, go ahead please.

Organize here just a minute. Okay, good morning, Chair Roberts, commissioners, Tonya Holowetzki, Director of Public and Government Affairs and also the lead for the implementation team for your strategic goal for communications and engagement. This is an informational session where I will present two plans for you and to you. One is a strategic communication plan and the second is a community engagement plan. Both of these plans are to meet your strategic priority for public trust and good government So I'm going to start with the strategic communication plan and you have both of those plans in your packet the strategic plan this is the county's first ever strategic communication plan and I am honored that we had the opportunity to develop this for the county and What it does is it shifts the county from a reactive communication model to a proactive communication strategy. It builds from three disciplines under the broad field of communications. It builds from public relations, crisis communications, with the overarching umbrella of strategic communications. Each one of those disciplines have different goals. Crisis communications, as you know, mitigates damage and restores trust. Public relations builds reputation and trust. And a strategic communications approach, its primary goal is to achieve the county's mission and to reach their key performance indicators. Clearly they have different audiences, I won't go into that, and they achieve different things. Crisis communications is urgent, it's fact-driven, and it relies on a rapid response. Public relations is about storytelling, and it's relationship-driven. And strategic communications, on the other hand, is data-driven, and it is very much results-oriented. So their metrics, thereby, are also different. For crisis communications, the metric is the speed of response and the narrative control. For public relations, it's about earned media and public sentiment. And finally, for strategic communications, it's about measurable outcomes. So with that in mind, this new approach aligns all our public messaging with the Board of County Commissioners five core strategic priorities for 2025 and 2030. A strategic communication plan reflects the strategic priorities of, in this case, the county and organizations and businesses and so forth. So the plan is guided by the values of transparency, unified storytelling, and active community relationship building. It fosters a reliable two-way dialogue between county officials and the residents they serve. So to put those priorities into practice, the plan relies on three core communication strategies. Number one, maintaining a consistent narrative. Number two, establishing continuous feedback loops. And number three, ensuring crisis preparedness. It is guided by a risk assessment matrix that allows the county's approach to address the situation at hand. Routine updates to the plan focus on delivering clear data through digital channels. Sensitive topics rely on transparent public meetings and town halls, and highly controversial matters prompt proactive narrative framing through media interviews and direct outreach. So this plan addresses all three of these issues and components. To measure progress, the plan is monitored through a combination of digital dashboards and annual public surveys or focus groups. This digital dashboard is our next step that we will be building out to address those and to monitor those three KPIs. And the county's measure overall success across those three performance measures are public awareness, public trust, and active engagement. I want to also add that while this is the county's strategic communication plan, what we have also done is worked with all of the implementation teams across all of your 10 strategic goals. that they too implement a communication plan that dovetails, that builds upon this strategic communication plan, and they too have those three KPIs as their evaluation measures. So over time, we will be able to, over this course of the five years, we will be able to measure success on a communication level across all implementation teams and roll that information up to the strategic plan across those three KPIs. The one thing that I wanted to also address in this presentation is that if you look at Appendix B, in the communication plan, while you have goals set for each of the strategic goals that are under the five priorities, what we did not have were purpose statements for the actual priorities. And one of the things that's essential for us to be able to launch and navigate a successful communication strategy is that we do have clearly defined purpose statements. The why, why does this matter for your strategic priorities? So the implementation team did put forth some proposed statements for you to consider. We don't need to address them today, but your feedback on them would be greatly appreciated and very helpful. So as you look at through Appendix B, in order for us to build communication strategies and messages for your strategic priorities, we've established a purpose statement for each. We've set a goal. Now these are communication goals and communication statements. And then some core messages that we think will resonate and reflect those purpose statements. So I won't go through all five of these, but I do ask that if you have feedback on these to please provide those back to the implementation team so we can adjust these accordingly. So with that, I am going to pause and see if you have any questions or comments or would like further clarification on the strategic communication plan. And then I will move on to the strategic engagement plan.

All right.

Commissioner Savas has a question. Could you repeat that last part? You're going to move on to what part?

The strategic engagement plan.

Okay. So maybe the answer is there, but I do want to ask a question. What departments do you engage with on a regular basis? And which departments do you not engage with? engage with or they choose not to employ your services?

Yes, that is part of the next presentation, but I'm happy to answer this now. We engage with every department. We see ourselves from the engagement perspective, well communications and engagement both, as strategic consultants to those departments. Now some departments have more capacity and more resources. And so we come alongside these departments. DTD is a good example. We actually have lead communication specialists that work directly with DTD to help with their communication and community engagement strategies. We work closely with many of the divisions within H3S. They, on the other hand, do not have leads. There's one lead for public health where we do, again, work very closely. But we come alongside and we build strategies and proposals on how to approach, whether it's communications or community engagement. When I get into the community engagement component, we actually did an analysis of some of the engagement strategies that departments have done over the course of the years, and we have some data to share there. Wouldn't say that there's any particular department that doesn't want to use our services I think we've built a really good relationship across the county with all the departments, and I think we are recognized in fact I know we're recognized as experts in these areas It's it's more a matter of resources A matter of resources. Okay.

All right. I know there's been over the years, you know, before you got here and ongoing, you know, I do know that you've had embedded folks that are in particular departments that do that work. So there's coordination that are there naturally. Absolutely. You know, I think absent that, it would seem that if I was in your shoes, I would be reluctant to message on behalf of department if I didn't have their input so I don't miss message, right? Absolutely. Or maybe omit something. Absolutely. So I'm just curious about if there was a ranking you had. I mean, I'm asking for it now. I'm sure it's not here, but I just want to get a better idea. I don't want PGA to take... a criticism if another department was not engaged, right? Right. So that's my point is how do we, and then did the metrics in the end for this work will reflect that and maybe be calibrated for maybe departments that don't engage.

Yes. Well one of the things, and again I won't spend too much time explaining, but we have an intake process. We actually created a form that for any need that departments have, they submit a form and part of it is around communication planning and community engagement. When that form comes into our department, we assign a lead to that project and then that lead works with those departments or that department to help shape their communication or community engagement strategies. So, we work very collaborative, as I said, across the board, and we've worked really hard over the last years to, number one, better articulate what our services are and what we provide, but then also build those strong relationships with the departments with whom we don't have embedded staff. We currently have embedded staff with WES. We have an embedded staff with DDD. And we have RPIO, splits between the county needs and the district attorney's needs. And we have an embedded staff with public health.

Thank you. All right. Commissioner Helm.

Yeah, thank you, Tonya. I appreciate this. I will say that during... candidate forums that both Commissioner Savas and I were involved in. We heard from people that said we don't we can't find information on what's happening at the county and more communication is needed so I think this is a great start we were able to say that we're working on that it is one of our strategic goals and it there is a frustration out there I would say from my point of view that you can't make people get involved you can't make people want to know and they rely on misinformation on social media and everything so it's you know i i really appreciate this effort it's i think it's going to be a game changer for the county um is there have you gauged what types of information people are looking for in general i mean is it data is it is there a way to even know what things people are looking for

We do a community survey every two years. Recently we've also, this year unfortunately we were not able to do it due to funding challenges, but we also now do focus groups that follow up with the community survey on the next year budget. So we do community survey one year and then we follow up the following year with focus groups. What we do learn is what their priorities are. One of the questions we ask in the survey, what are your top concerns and priorities? So that is what we do know. I can't tell you off the top of my head what those top are, but I'm certainly happy to share those with you. When we do the focus groups, we dig a little bit deeper to try to get that information. We've only done, we've started this, we did the first focus groups following a community survey last year, the last cycle. So we only have one group. Set of data if you will so over time I hope that the department will continue to do that because I truly believe that communications is Data focused we talked about pretty but from a from a professional's perspective Communications is all about data. And so we hope to have more of that and then can better answer that question. Okay. Okay.

Thank you and Commissioner Schrader

Yeah, thank you for being here today.

You have a great staff. It's always wonderful to work with you guys. And my question is, well, let me give some context. Back in the day, we had complete communities where we actually had actually quite a bit of resources. to work with a consultant, I believe. I can't remember the name of the consultant, Gary. You probably won. Kogan Owens. Kogan Owens Cohen, which gave us an outcome with Hamilton Villages, which might have been a good thing or...

I don't know.

They're very vocal, let me put it that way. And we had huge community meetings on a regular basis with actual activities. My concern is that given... given the shifts to media, what is our presence in Instagram, LinkedIn, website communication? How are you using the social media platforms that seem to be where people are going with this? I honestly, I miss those days when we had huge groups of people together on round tables doing that. seems harder to do, but where is that piece reflected in this? And like our website, updates, that kind of thing?

Well, we use all of those channels, not only for our communications, but also for the community engagement. The sad news is that even social media is not a go-to in today's world. For many reasons, I don't want to go into those. It's become very toxic. It's become very much of an echo chamber. But we do, we understand that people do use them. We track demographics. It's mostly the middle-aged and it's mostly women. So we aren't hitting a large swath of our demographics through social media, for example. But we use all the channels that are available to us. Our newsletter, and I'll talk a little bit about that more when we talk about our CPOs and Hamlets. We've instituted a newsletter recently that we put out quarterly to the CPOs, which has been very well received. We follow that up with monthly, we call them quick notes that we just quickly information updates that we provide to CPOs and Hamlets and encourage them to share with their communities and also to subscribe to those. So we're looking for different ways of reaching them directly. But all the channels that we've used, whether it's our website, whether it's our social media, the meetings that you all have that carry the information to them, the media landscape is changing. It's shifting. And it's not very well trusted anymore. for many reasons. So that's the challenge that we need to continue to face. I'm not even starting to talk about AI because that is really one of the things that as accounting, and I mentioned that in my budget presentation that we have to really, we can't ignore. I'm not saying that we need to do anything today, but we need to stay on top of what's happening with our information channels and they're changing. They're changing not only for us, but they're changing

everywhere. Is a lack of funding inhibiting you from some things that you think you could be doing? Always. A lack of funding?

I mean, everybody. Yeah. Okay. And I also had a question. And staffing. More than 40% of our staff is dedicated to other departments, so we have less capacity to deal with countywide needs.

So I had a question about the youth program. So how is that coming, how is the youth program coming along?

That's in the next presentation. Okay, great. Great, great. If I. Okay, that was.

All right.

Thank you.

I might let you just continue then in your presentation. I'll hold my questions to the end then. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, by the way.

Let me get reorganized. Okay, so now I'm switching to our community engagement. And again, there's intersection between the two and that's why it makes sense that communications and community engagement live within PGA. But we also know that community engagement is a core function of the county and as public servants, we all engage in community engagement. And that is the approach that we take when we speak about community engagement. So the report in front of you is really about more about a frame, it's three pieces. It's an engagement strategy, it's an engagement framework, and then it's around the tools and methods that we can use that are at our disposal to be able to do what we need to do when it comes to community engagement. So the plan that's in front of you is really a roadmap for fostering trust, transparency, and collaboration. Can you reference a page number, Tonya? I'm not on any page right now.

Okay, all right. It's a big packet, so it's all right. I don't know what pages you have. That's all right. No worries.

Apologies. The community engagement plan begins on page 18. 18. Thank you, Tonya.

Okay. Thank you. Sure. So again, it's a roadmap for fostering trust, transparency, and collaboration through consistent public participation. To ensure that our programs meet local needs, the framework that's in the plan draws on several established community programs. So this is where we call our legacy programs. Those are existing programs. Those are our advisory boards and commissions, which provide the board of county commissioners with lived and professional expertise. Our community planning organizations, or CPOs, which facilitate independent community dialogue and feedback on land use decisions primarily. and hamlets and villages which serve as an extension of the county leadership to bridge communication gaps in unincorporated areas. So those are what we call our legacy programs. What we are proposing and what we're moving forward with is in order to expand our reach, we're introducing two new initiatives that will focus on younger residents and also on recognizing the volunteers that serve alongside us for the benefit of the community. So the youth engagement program that we will be launching offers eighth to 12th graders what we call micro-volunteering and leadership opportunities, while a new internship program will introduce young adults to public service. The volunteer recognition program will celebrate the service that volunteers provide and help build civic pride. These programs will be complemented by recurring public events, which include regular town halls for open dialogue, an annual CPO roundtable, which we currently have as our... Community leaders meeting the annual state of the county updates and the I mentioned that by annual community focus groups that we that we used to target targeted feedback on community concerns. So behind the scenes, the county ensures the quality and continuity of these efforts through data-driven best practices and through centralized resources. We do set forth some engagement performance indicators that track effectiveness and keep efforts people-centered. while we also are proposing to launch a staff-led community of practice, which enables internal teams across departments to share strategies and maintain consistency of practice. And then finally, we are launching a Engage Clackamas public webpage that will serve as a centralized online hub, making it easier for residents to access surveys, polls, events, and other volunteer opportunities. One thing that is in your plan is a community engagement framework that was adopted by the International Association for Public Policy or IAP2. PGA formally adopted this framework back in 2021 and presented it to the board. and since then we have been sharing this framework, Commissioner Salvas to your point, and using it when we build community engagement protocols and programs across the department with the counties. One thing that is not part of the plan but that I wanted to share with you is that, and I mentioned that, About two years ago, we wanted to get a better understanding of, as I stepped into becoming more involved with our community engagement program, is where is it, what are we doing, and how is it functioning? So we did two audits. One, we looked at, we conducted a study around community engagement with spanning four departments. So we took nine projects that other departments, whether we helped or not, conducted in community engagement and those were County Admin, DTD, H3S and WES. And we looked at, and we interviewed the leads for those projects and asked certain questions. And what we learned is that when you look at that spectrum that's in the plan, the IAP2 spectrum, there are five opportunities for engagement beginning, whether we're informing our community or whether we're empowering our community and everything in between. So what we learned is that most of our engagement efforts fell into the inform effort. 67% from those nine projects, 67 of them mostly focused on informing as part of the community engagement strategy. 44% took advantage of the consult model, meaning not only informing but asking for feedback. 33% involved actually a community and 33% also asked the community to collaborate in the decision making process. And it's not to anybody's surprise that we really do not do much in the empower vertical, if you will, but there's many reasons and I don't think that's one that often gets used. When we asked them about resources they used, so 78% of the projects relied on outside resources, 56% of them relied on consultants, and 11% relied on some college support or facilitators. Both were at 11%. When we asked the engagement staff across the departments what goals they had, if they set goals, 100% said they did, 70% said they established those goals at the beginning of the project, and 22% that those goals, said that those goals evolved over time. And the reason we're asking these questions is because what we're trying to do is establish a county-wide practice around community engagement. The consistency's important, and raising the bar in how we do community engagement is important. So we needed a baseline of information of what we were currently doing. When asked if they identified what success would look like, only 55% said that they did that prior to engaging. And 78% did not have engagement metrics to measure the success of their engagement efforts. So again, the purpose of this plan is to build all of those elements and metrics into the way we engage with the community so that we can measure our success. When asked about the type of support they wanted and needed, 100% of them said they wanted, they were interested in a community engagement network, which is what we were proposing to launch, to be able to meet regularly to share and discuss engagement strategies and best practices. So that we did prior to even embarking on the strategic engagement plan, but it also set us up well to then think about what are some of the things, the gaps and some of the needs that are there. So as you look at the plan, like I said, you will see that we are continuing to embrace the IEP2 spectrum. And you... There are examples out there today where some of the engagement efforts that are underway reflect this spectrum. I think the Sunrise Corridor is probably the best example that has really embraced community engagement. And while they may have not used the spectrum itself, the vision and the spirit behind what they're doing is exactly what this model embraces. So I'm not gonna go through everything that is in that plan. I would rather open this up for any questions you have. We do have a plan, a well-developed plan for our youth engagement program. We did run it by some educators to see how viable it was and we got a huge thumbs up. They felt that that micro engagement was just right for students. It allowed us to introduce them. It's a two hour commitment for that micro engagement. One hour is an introduction to the county and the second hour is the actual opportunity to engage in a conversation around participation, so with a project or a program. And then the second level is a leadership track, which is an eight-hour commitment where we actually work with the youth to build their leadership skills and where they actually help us design and develop program. So again, it allows us to engage students at their interest level, but also build a pool of potential future volunteers. And with the volunteer recognition program, we too have a very detailed design for that. And we're proposing that we start small and then build. And again, I'm happy to answer any questions about that. I know that we're, I'm watching time. But I did want to finish to talk about our legacy programs because those programs have been in place and what I'm speaking about are our community planning organizations and our hamlets, Commissioner Schroeder, what you referred to. Those programs are 40 years old and I think it would behoove us to do a similar analysis because the landscape is shifting and the needs are shifting. and I think many counties are doing just that and I would recommend that we also think about how we step back and engage our communities to ask and to find out how these programs are working and what we can do differently if we need to and how do we continue to meet the needs as the landscape shifts, not only from a community engagement perspective, but just from a day-to-day livability perspective.

Okay. All right. Commissioner Schroeder has a question.

Yeah, a couple of questions here. So you mentioned a webpage, Engage Clackamas. Is that launched already? It's getting there. It will be launching. Okay, that's what I wanted. And then I really appreciate the youth program. I'd really like to be involved with that because I still have my teaching credentials. And there is a fantastic curriculum that the National Association of Counties has put together. And we tested it this last, looking at engaging youth under the women of NACO. So we had a group of youth where we actually implemented the curriculum, and it's all about counties. And it was quite successful, and we're going to try and grow that at the national level. So when you talk about internships, this is not like a commitment for like coming into the county once a week or anything like that. It's just hourly commitments.

We're looking right now. I mean, we're looking at this as a pilot. We're going to learn as we go. And I want to just recognize Donna Hockey, who's back here sitting here. Donna, please wave your hand.

Oh, there you go. Hi, Donna.

She has been the lead for building this program, and so she will definitely reach out to you and work with you to learn more about it.

Thank you for that. You're my new best friend, I guess, right? Yes. point because I've been worried that we are not engaging youth enough to as a as this is a career pathway or maybe not I wouldn't call it career it's a sense of service pathway where you have community involvement. It's an excellent curriculum. It explains counties clearly. And I'd be very interested to know who you're reaching out to from what school districts, what teachers you're speaking to, and see if we can really build this program up. I know Lake Oswego has a youth council that's been very successful as well.

In my past life, I don't know if you heard of Oregon Student Voice, but I was the lead behind building that. Oh, fantastic. We have some experience in getting Oregon students involved.

Yeah, and I would I would be more than willing colleagues to dedicate my time towards meeting students and I missed the classroom I say I do miss it, but I'm sure that all of you will have opportunity to Be engaged in this we're not asking for your liaison assignments today.

This is an informational update and as we implement We'll come back to you. Sorry.

I'm getting ahead of myself Gary. There you go.

Okay All right. All right. Did you have anything else for you? No. All right, mr. Hill

Thank you, Tonya. This is a really comprehensive outline and plan. I really appreciate it. You've done a lot of work. Your team's done a lot of work. Thank you. I can't wait to see it implemented. So question, when I get, and this is probably something you're looking at, when I get my CLATCO newsletter in the mail, I wonder is it still relevant? Is it, you know, what is the cost? Do people read it? Does it go into the round file? I'm a paperless person.

The magazine?

Yeah.

This is the last year that we will be doing that. We have gotten good feedback from folks who get it. We've heard people say, oh, this is a keeper, or they'll pull pages out of it. But it's extremely expensive, unfortunately. So there will be one more edition coming your way, but consider it the last one. So if you want it as a collector's item, please hold on to it.

Okay, good to know. And I'll say about the youth, keep an eye on our youth because they are getting more and more involved, and I'm very excited. When we attended, Commissioner Savas and I attended the Damascus Roads open house, there was, I met a young kid there, and I'm not good at gauging ages. I don't know the difference between a 16-year-old and a 26-year-old anymore, but this kid I'm sure was less than 20, and he's running for Happy Valley City Council. Wow. And I'm like, good for you. And he'd just been to D.C., you know, and lobbying for, you know, our community. And I'm like, wow, good for you. So I love it when I see our youth getting involved. And, you know, the mayor, Wes Lynn, I think, set a record as the youngest mayor in the state of Oregon. So I love fresh ideas and, you know, kind of a new way to look at things. Yeah. I'm excited for those people to get involved. So that's it. Back to you, Chair.

All right. Commissioner Savas.

Yeah. I got a lot to say here, but I won't cover everything. But I'll just give a most recent example. I got a call last night from a community member, and she was trying to figure out how to get her community more involved around a particular issue. And in that area, the CPO dissolved, I guess, or is no longer active anymore. And, you know, I think there was a point in time, you know, I'll just use the fabric analogy, right? We have this fabric of networking. And, you know, as a result of COVID and some of the lack of involvement, I think there's now holes in that area where our community is not as connected as it once was. And I know one of our goals is to work on that. And I know we've been talking about what if it's, you know, complete communities 2.0 or something like that where we go back to whether it's the same consultant or a different consultant. The other aspect that has really changed things quite a bit is what was once pamphlet media, the community newspaper status of having newspapers everywhere and having reporters, abundant reporters, reporting on all the good stuff and the not so good stuff. So there was a lot of information circulating. And that's really tanked quite a bit. So it's not as robust as it once was. You know, so people's source of information often is what they see on the news, on TV, right? Which is pretty Portland-centric in this area. And that's their source and or social media platforms like Nextdoor and others, right? And, you know, during this election cycle, not referencing any elections for people, but more on some of the, not petitions, well, petitions as well, but initiatives, levies, all those kinds of things around. And when you're looking out next door, sometimes you think it's in your neighborhood, but it might be in another county. Yeah, I know. There's no geographic-specific targeting in those things. So you never know what it is. But because of that, people tag on to that. They think what they read is happening in their backyard, and it's not their backyard, right? And so that stirs up a lot of... whatever it might be, whatever that motion might be that's reeling on that, it just amplifies, right? And again, it may not have anything to do with anything in Clackamas County, but another one. And I know there's no way of controlling that, and I'm not saying that that's a place where we need to be proactive, but... You know, I think there's also avenues, and I don't know if, for example, CCSO, how engaged they are or not with your department. But, you know, during the election cycle, you know, prior to May 19th, I saw a number of postings, right? Not from your department, but from some of these most social media platforms. And, you know, I'm assuming that CCSO relies on their own stuff internally rather than your part. Is that a fair? Okay. Yes. Yeah. So I know that's hard for you all to be involved in that. I'm hoping that they're flagging that, right? I assume that they're flagging some of those negative posts and maybe trying to, you know, adjust or calibrate their messaging. And which got to my earlier question on the last round is what departments are active and what are not. But I don't know how we again. I don't know how we really fix that I know references to we I know Commissioner Helm and I and Commissioner West to say well go to our website right and sometimes I would double check our website say oh well That issue I really can't really find it easily right it's not intuitive. You know in order for you to find that so I You know, all to say that I, you know, we're always going to be reactive to some degree. I think that's a, right? Absolutely. We're always going to be reactive. But I'm just running how we capitalize on, you know, things that... when we see a red flag, that the right department's reactive to it, whether or not it's yourself or not. Let's just say it's a city, that they've got something going on. I don't know if we see something maybe that the city's not aware of. I assume that they are as well. But I just didn't know if there was an opportunity maybe have more integration, right? Whether it's jurisdictional integration and departmental integration. And I think that's not really as much anyone's fault, but I think it's gonna put you in an impossible position to, if you don't have a participating agency to, intervene, right?

Yeah, well, you're right. And from at least a community engagement perspective, that is kind of the goal of the community of practice that we want to establish so that the departments are talking to each other, so that those practitioners out in the field are actually talking with each other And we have a forum where we can then talk about challenges, successes, best practices, sharpening our skills around this engagement model, all of those things. But from a communications perspective, you're absolutely right. If we're not engaged, a lot of times we don't know. But like I said, we do work. I don't want to come across saying that we don't engage with all the other departments, even with the sheriff's office, I will say. We did meet originally around the levee to kind of put our thoughts together and discuss. And they did seek input and advice from us, so that was super welcome, and we're always happy and willing to step in and help. We may not have the resources, but we have the expertise, and so we can be thought partners with the departments.

Right, and I know it's not your role, nor do you probably have the funding to have enough staff to do all the things you could do, right? Right. So I will say that, you know, being involved in elections and forums since the year 2000. It's been a long time. But historically, I would see if the fire district or school board or CCSO had a levy or a measure that they were out there, that they were taking advantage of all those platforms and forums to be there. It might be an election about maybe candidates, and then we'll ask someone they're representing, again, a levy or a measure or something that they're all asking for. And, you know, I saw some from the fire district, depending on where I was and what issue the fire district was promoting. So I saw presence, right? There were people in the room. But I think there was a vacuum. And I found myself, Commissioner Helm, and especially Commissioner West, especially, I want to give a shout out to him, that he took those opportunities sometimes to broadcast the levy, right, the issue of the levy. But I've certainly seen cases in the past where CCSO was far more engaged. on this topic and and promoting and I just think that that was something that not again not your department because you're not engaged there, but it's something that it would be incumbent upon CCSO to step in that space a little bit better than they have.

Commissioner Salvas if I could circle back to a comment you made earlier around you know as we all said the shifting landscape and the changes that are happening and and when we talk about community planning organizations, we're talking about unincorporated Clackamas County. One of the things that I'm super excited about, and I think CCI will step up to, and we've been having conversations, CCI, Committee for Community Involvement, is the advisory board to PGA, and we have been talking about looking at their scope, and while we all know that CCI was established through state goal one, I think our environment and our needs have evolved since State Goal 1. Even the state is looking back at State Goal 1. But my point here is that I think CCI can be a powerful voice for unincorporated needs. And that's the conversation we're having because we don't. We have a lot of advisory boards and I didn't touch on that today. But they are the only board that is uniquely positioned to your point when someone has a need to be able to be that bridge, that voice to bring those issues to the county. So we are talking about, yes, we have this mandate called State Goal 1, but we also have this unmet need in unincorporated county And how can CCI be that conduit and be that voice and be that champion for those needs? So this will happen after my time, but I'm hoping that PGA will come to you with a proposal for a reset on bylaws for CCI that reflects that need and that huge gap that's happening in an unincorporated environment.

Yeah, thank you. There's two things I wanted to do this, you know, the remainder of the year, and that's elevate CCI and get my colleagues to be more engaged in who they are and what they do. And then the second one was this, when other came up, the topic was taxes, right, and probably tax relief for seniors and low income. And so I think what got lost was, and I did it where I could, was bring up the tax deferral program that's statewide, that's in place today. But I think we ought to be communicating that. I don't I don't know how we do that. Maybe I talked to, you know, Assessor Ruda about that or Assessor Bronson about that. But, yeah, I think those are two things. Again, just based on what I heard, I think there's some space there that they could fill that vacuum. Yeah.

All right. This is information only, so just a couple quick comments. I know we're running late, so I think that... Communication across any organization is a challenge, simply put. I mean, particularly the county is so diverse and so large, and really the communication platforms are constantly changing. I think we talked about that. And so that's where I think it's using a multitude of platforms to kind of help get our message out. And really some of it we can get in front of them and some we can't. I'll give you a little story of a reporter that I will just tell you. And it stuck with me ever since. And it was reporting on bad news. Bad news gets clicks. And I kind of said, hey, we do all these really wonderful things which are positive, and they're really not ever written on. And the comment back to me was, that's not my job. And so it was really important to me to recognize that we, as a county, do a lot of wonderful things. And if we don't tell our story, nobody will. And that's why I really believe we have to be aggressively proactive. And this is where I want to kind of give some shout outs. You've got a lot of staff in the back room. And I want to thank you for all that you do. I will do back flips on our business spotlight videos. I believe that is just, you guys have knocked that out of the ballpark. And that is really helping recruit businesses to the county, which is so essential in telling that story. I can tell you going to DC Trent and his entire staff Just worked diligently to make sure I felt like I was speed dating or something because they had me going from place to place and I think we both left kind of exhausted, but we accomplished our goal and we came back and then And then also kind of Dylan and others that help on groundbreaking events. There's a lot of coordination on putting that together. And there's a lot of groundbreaking going on, which are great stories to tell. So I just think that the one thing that I know you've taken huge budget hits and you know from my perspective is I strongly believe it's a section of the organization you have to fund and the reason is because unless we educate the people about the critical things we do s.h.s. Funding right that will come before the voters at some time and if we haven't told those stories about the lives we've changed and how we've addressed that homeless issue and really a thoughtful compassionate cost-effective manner. We won't see any of those dollars continue. And so I think it's—and also I think it's really—it is about a coordinated approach on this. All the departments really, I think that working together to kind of send out a consistent message and— where we can really, really highlight the great work. So thank you. Thanks to all the staff in the back room for all your hard work. I sincerely appreciate it. And unless there's anything else, we'll go ahead and conclude this session. I want to thank you, Tanya, and we'll be adjourned. Thank you.