City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. They're hoping to change. I'm glad you're here.

Good, Carmen. So when are you having this knee stuff done?

Oh, you're going to get it done? Okay. Okay. You should have lots of airport pens.

All right, we're ready guys Good evening everyone being six o'clock. I'm gonna call the Coos Bay City Council meeting at order Would you all rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Thank you, everyone, and welcome. First item on the agenda is public comments. I think we have a few. I have to read the disclaimer here, so bear with me, please. Citizens wishing to address the City Council during this time set for the public comments are requested to sign this roster. I apologize, we already did that. The public comment period is intended for the public to share ideas and concerns. It is not intended for the interactive discussion with Council. There may be opportunities for the public comments during specific agenda items that require a public hearing. Members of the public are requested to confine their remarks to questions and issues under the discussion during this time. During any designated comment period, individuals shall not engage in personal attacks, shall not impugn the motives of any speaker, and shall at all times while in session conduct themselves in an appropriate manner. No person shall make personal, impertinent, slanderous, or unauthorized remarks or become boisterous while addressing the counsel. First one is Bill. You're up. Davis. What's your last name, Bill? I know you as Bill. Davis. Thank you. Come on up. I apologize.

No problem. No problem.

Yeah, I'm here.

I'm a pickleball advocate, and we would like to have the city work with us to revitalize the tennis courts up at Mingus Park. Basically, right now, they're neglected. They've been forgotten. And everybody loves pickleball. We're just asking for your help as to see what we could do about it. And because everybody wants to play and you can't have enough pickleball courts. And I can't, you know, it would be an asset to the community. It really would. And basically, that's all I got to say. I don't have really.

Okay. And we have Heidi that's going to also comment about the pickleball courts. And so why don't we have her come up. Yeah, come on up, Heidi.

Sorry, I just came from pickleball, so sorry, guys. So I was going to tell you guys that, like, as Bill said, like, pickleball is getting really deep in the community, as you guys all know. It's a really super popular sport. It's gaining momentum. And, like, I think Brookings just had a tournament where they attracted a bunch of people that came down and played pickleball. So it attracts tourism. We have people coming in from Texas and Roseburg and all over playing. And as much as we love, like all the, like SWOC has a really great facility. However, there's those two tennis courts up at the top of Mingus, as you guys know. And one side of the tennis courts is just dilapidated, kind of like flooding and stuff. And the other side is great for tennis. However, if we were able to take one side, just one side, and transform it into a pickleball court with like two or three courts, I think.

Or four, well, whatever.

Whatever we can get. It'd be great, especially because I'm a high school teacher. And at the middle school level here at Marshfield Middle, they are teaching pickleball in the gym classes.

And they're also teaching pickleball in the high school gym classes.

And there is a lot of interest from the high school students who want to play. They want to start a club, but there's nowhere to play locally. And I know that you guys know a lot of our high school students don't have licenses and can't travel. So to have a local pickleball court that we could also use for our high school students at our high school clubs and that kind of thing, It would be a really great asset for the community, especially because I've been to those courts up there, and there's never anyone up there. And it'd be so much fun to be able to have a local court for our kids, for our adults, for the community. So that is...

It wouldn't be that big of an investment. Oh, you'd have to go up there, blow all the leaves, you know. Clean it up, paint the courts at first.

So let me ask you this. I mean, for the city of Coos Bay, I think that financially it would be difficult for us to put fine dollars, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, for that. But I don't know how the rest of everyone else feels, but I wouldn't mind, and I don't know why we couldn't allocate those courts to you if you're willing to do a fundraiser and get the courts fixed up and usable for your use. I could support that. Don't know how everyone else feels but for us to financially to be able to invest into it.

I think would be difficult comments from anyone else Well, this has been tossed around in the parks commission as well Jennifer might have a little bit more information. Would you like to speak on it?

Well and certainly looking for any Recommendation you may have but maybe we should start at the parks Commission with this request. Yes, and so the first Commission meets the Third Thursday of every month and if I can get your contact information and make sure I direct you appropriately It's four o'clock. It's here in council chambers and you can come and talk to them about this They would I know they'd be open.

Yes So they have a Parks Commission meeting on Thursday. So if you could come and talk to them. Usually what happens, you came straight to us, but we would, the Parks Commission is someone that would oversee all these utility areas and that being one of them since they had discussion about it. But if I understand correctly, so they can, you can, I think you just need, if... You can get more support and probably if you're willing to take them over and you can find the dollars yourself to help facilitate this.

Yeah, I believe there was a renovation cost that we were looking at for those specific tennis courts. There was another thing is how the general assets of the community in terms of tennis and all the courts and such. We took some courts away when we expanded the skate park. that wasn't being used for tennis really much at all. And we knew that we had tennis spots up above Mingus. That being said, now that there's only two, we were just trying to get input from the community as to what the highest and best use would be. And I believe it would be restriping them to be either Pickleball or tennis tennis they could they can toggle between the two and it would be removable Nets and with different bollards that would slide into place depending on the usage that would incur a bit more cost. So that was one of the things that the Parks Commission does not have a lot. So if anything in the future comes in front of you that is a fee or something like that that supports parks, I would strongly recommend that you help with that or support that. But in the meantime, I think that finding some funding to help the city with this, with some kind of group leading the charge, might be the best possible way to get success at this. That's the first Wednesday of in August the first Thursday the third Thursday of every month as of this Thursday Actually last week was the meeting and we didn't have a quorum which was the first in a very long time And so we did not have a meeting but we will have one the next one is I believe August 20th Now if we would have a volunteer group went up there and clean those courts up on their own.

Mm-hmm Would there be a problem there with that? In terms of just blowing the leaves off and stuff?

Blowing them off and maybe high pressure washing them.

Getting up there and taping them down.

Once they're striped and stuff, I think they're talking about. What they've done in other places, they'll have a box, and they'll have the nets in there with a combination, and they have a leaf blower and stuff, and they can maintain it that way if that's allowed.

Once it was all set up, the group would maintain it. Yeah. I don't see any major problems.

Sounds like a great discussion for the Paris Commission.

We can go up there and do what we can, and, you know,

We don't because it's it's property of the city and

It wouldn't be exclusive use by one group.

Oh, no. No, not at all. Yeah, agreed. It's similar to, I would imagine, this is how I see this, similar to, like, the group that kind of came together to help support the pool boiler improvements, right? There's this group of people who believe in that, got some funding together, but it's still open to the general public for use.

But, like, out there, it's WOC. It's open to the public.

Clarify that for the public that may be listening to Cool, thank you.

Thanks Is there any other public comments in the audience even though you haven't signed up you're more than welcome to come up make a comment this time Anyone? Hearing that there's none, I also want to mention that we have Councilor De Novo, virtual, Councilor Stephens, De Novo, and Councilor Niebergall, all virtual. And so also I'd like to move number 5D up underneath the consent calendar. Is there any objections to that?

Why would we do that?

Because the Councilor De Novo has a meeting and she'd like to attend that one and also the presentation by the North Bend Charles and Visitors Convention Bureau.

But you're proposing to move it up under the consent calendar?

Under, after the consent calendar.

Oh, after. Okay, just moving it still as an action item.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not into, I'm sorry, not part of the consent calendar. There you go. Is that agreeable? I'm fine.

Yeah, that's fine.

Okay, so next item on there is consent calendar. So before we, it doesn't matter. I need a motion and a second for the consent calendar, please.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar as presented.

Second. Second. So moved and seconded to approve the consent calendar as submitted. I'd just like to mention that in this one item, it's to approve a $911,520 grant. Is that correct, Chief Atkins? Yes. Can you give us a little detail about it, maybe?

Yes. This is part of the Rural Health Transformation Program that was done in Oregon. It was a little less than a billion dollars that was issued this year for all these different grants. And we were approved for, it's called Increasing Cardiac Survivability in Coos County is the project. The idea is to put additional automatic external defibrillators in the community, so that 30 community defibrillators through the north part of Coos County hunting down the bandit. as well as enhanced cardiac monitoring equipment for several of the fire agencies and Basie's Ambulance. And then some additional devices that help do compressions for someone that's in cardiac arrest.

All right. Thank you. That's great. You have the comments, anyone? Okay. Yes, go ahead.

Sorry. Thanks. I just want to say my team also wrote this grant and it was complex and difficult. And I just really commend you all for being successful at getting this award and appreciate your dedication to bringing more money into the city.

yeah second that thanks sarah all right uh hearing no uh comments i'll call for the question all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed hearing that it passes okay next item that we're going to go down to is 5d consideration to amend the city's fee schedule to establish a vacant and blighted property program fees uh just to remind the council this came before us and we made some Uh, we approve the ordinance, which you have in front of you, uh, at your diocese, uh, to, if you want to reference it, the question that came back to us and we wanted the staff to bring back is this. The fee structure of what needs to be done. So I would like, I think we should just call this a review because I'm sure there'll be interaction about this and we'll go ahead and discuss it, uh, in detail and maybe give some more direction to the staff. I would like to go and Nicole, you can start us off.

Okay, great, thank you. So as the mayor indicated, we did bring this ordinance before you at your July 2nd council meeting. And just as a reminder, ordinances take 30 days before they are fully enacted. So within that window right now, which is a good time to be discussing the fees that were noted within the ordinance. We generally try to keep our fees within the fee resolution so it gives us a little bit more nimbleness there without having to modify code to change a fee as appropriate. the package that was presented in the agenda packet kind of walks through several different elements to kind of land at what might be a good approach for us to implement this program across the city and it kind of takes a blended fee approach that really is focused on primarily registration, cost recovery, and then in our worst case scenario, some incentive. Now, understanding last time we had a little bit of discussion around what does that incentive look like in order to make sure we're kind of creating a large enough incentive to encourage some of our longer term properties to maybe come into better use. So I think that's where we kind of land is how do we want to handle that? So I've added a little piece on the dais along with the ordinance. that might help us kind of distinguish between the different methodologies that we could select again we're kind of picking that middle ground that's kind of related to registration administrative cost recovery and then some incentive based for longer-term But there are several other. We talked last time about some valuation related to assessed value. You know, properties that have a higher assessed value maybe should have a different calculation than ones with a lower. Same kind of idea with some square footage. I think that came up as well. There are, within the packet, there are some, an overview of various organizations, you know, entities within Oregon and how they approach this, and it is all over the board, both in their fee methodology and then how they apply it. There are some that use a property classification, so whether it's residential, commercial, or mixed use, they have some fees based on that. And then the last kind of, which is, there's not a lot of examples, but kind of that risk-based, which is really hopefully putting in meaningful incentives so that it prevents long-term vacancies as much as we can, right? I would open up for you guys to kind of talk through maybe what you would like. This is presented as a package that you might adopt tonight, but there's also acknowledgement that, you know, that 30-day window is gonna bring us into August, so you could come back still in August and be within your 30-day window and establish fees. Doesn't mean the ordinance can be in effect without fees, it just makes it a little bit harder for us to kind of do much with, so.

Okay. For a few clarifications. Yeah. Number one, I think it states in this ordinance that there has to be a two-year vacancy before we can enact a fee. Is that correct?

No. No? There is no. The fee structure provides for if there is a vacancy greater than two years. Greater than two years. Okay. Yeah. We have that like an escalation clause essentially. So if it's been vacant long-term, we want to address that a little differently than someone who's in a 30, 60, 90 days. So I believe in the ordinance, actually, it's a 90-day vacancy before it triggers. Now, there could be some other things that might trigger it earlier if there are a lot of police calls there, response calls for a fire, neighborhood complaints, those kinds of things. It could trigger differently, but it's, generally speaking, a 90-day. They have to register within 90 days of vacancy.

But if we know that the building's been vacant for two years, we don't have to wait. The two years doesn't start after we adopt this. It can be considered already two years. Is that correct?

We have several that are in that vote, and I think we want to. I mean, again, this can be something you guys decide. But this was built around with this tool in place, so the ordinance is in place. We could then work forward. And a vacancy of two years would fall in a different fee.

And the only other thing before, and I'm going to leave it at one other question. So I asked this at the last time. If it's partially vacant, you have a large building that's 40,000 square feet, and you have a partial that's being rented at 500 square feet, that's considered not vacant? Or is it vacant? Or how is that going to be determined? When the rest of the building is deteriorating.

yeah I think that's a question here so there isn't a we haven't delineated that in the fee structure we just determined vacancy now if we want to do based on square footage that kind of makes sense that you'd say this much square footage is not in use especially in our core commercial areas right to make sure that those buildings are fully in use but if we don't do the square footage then then how do we determine that um that's a great question okay you might have some modifications to our code because we're just vacant and light it i got it yeah all right i'm going to leave yeah i'll open it up uh council to questions just for clarification um the miscellaneous feeds into the a versus what you're showing here so the So this, sure, the handout was just to kind of give some examples of what a flat fee might look like, what assessed value calculation might look like, and what score footage. At just very generalized, you know, assessed value at 20%, score footage at 10%. The piece of the resolution, which is the fee structure, that's what we're recommending based on kind of the cost of implementing the program. So this is just to give you an example of what some other structures might look like.

I'd like to clarify, when we were talking about whether the building is fully vacant or partially used, this ordinance Addressing vacant and blighted property. So if the property is determined blighted I don't know that it has to be a hundred percent one way or the other Would be my take on it So if the properties ninety percent of its condemned but there's one wing that's still being rented that doesn't prevent that from from complying with this ordinance in my opinion As long as we can legally

define that so that, you know, it's something that we can actually take action on. Yeah.

It makes sense because we have a property right now that we're dealing with where if you walk into the businesses that are operating, it looks fine, but we know that the rest of the building is deteriorating and it's an issue.

Yeah.

So I think we just need to make sure that it's legal.

And it's included in your ordinance what a blighted property definition is. We acknowledged that it would exhibit multiple conditions that impact safety, maintenance, and neighborhood stability. And we listed what some of those might look like. And understanding the building you're talking about, most, if not all, apply to that one. that wouldn't be what, I mean, again, this is how we interpret, but it wouldn't be vacant, it would be blighted. Yeah, so there's basically two tools to use in here, which would address... And then we also have nuisance code, and I mean, there's just a lot of pieces to this, so where we might have some overlap by code sections, those fees will, you know, all be tools.

Mm-hmm. Section 855-030 applicability goes through that pretty clearly, and then below that, 855-040 definitions clearly sets out what blighted property is.

Unsecured structures broken windows. Yep.

So I think we're covered.

So the ordinance has already been adopted. So then you need to decide on the fee schedule. And so the fee schedule that is before us is something that can, as I said, I think this is for us to review. And then make sure that we give staff direction on which way we want to go, flat fee or assessed value or square footage. I think we need to give direction on that. So my point was on the square footage, but because I was going to determine how the vacancy would be determined, you've clarified that choice. I don't think it matters on which one we address then or adopt, I guess, or suggest.

I like the hybrid administrative cost recovery. I mean, it's the easiest work for the administration. It gives them flexibility to change and rate that fee based on the seriousness or extent of what we're dealing with. It doesn't impair redevelopment. It appears to be the fairest across there. They've done a nice comparison matrix up on the top of the...

For the public, can you explain the hybrid? Because that is the staff recommendation.

Yeah, so that essentially, we're trying to bring in a couple things, right? We want to cover the costs, make sure that we're not pulling from other funds to cover what we're trying to do with essentially a small amount of our properties in the community. So we first want to do a cost recovery. But we also acknowledge we'd like to have some sort of listing of what's vacant. So that's an added piece to this. It's more of a flat fee. It doesn't matter what time is associated, who's going to touch that. And then we also note that there are several property owners who are kind of non-responsive to how we'd like our city to feel and how we live and experience it daily. So we have that elevation level that isn't necessarily tied to time. or a listing of properties. It's a, you're failing to respond to our encouragements, so it's a little bit higher of a fee there. So we're bringing kind of multiple concepts into one kind of fee structure. You know, there could be some capacity to expand what's proposed if you wanted to look at, you know, a period like say at a year or at 36 months. I mean, I'm really hopeful something like this program is gonna encourage someone to make some changes before 36 months. And then the other piece that's been kind of added in the last little bit and putting this together is you know for the folks who maybe are newly vacant and struggling maybe to come back into compliance if they're willing to put together an agreement that says we're gonna do this in this timeline maybe we work with them on that so there's kind of this middle ground that says hey sometimes it's tough right we hear that so

Our goal is not to be overburdensome on private property owners. Our goal is to help move forward for neighboring businesses in our community to have a vibrant place that they all want to come down and spend time and be supportive of their businesses. I think it's like building codes are not to encumber you, but they're to protect you from your neighbors. Stack of junk cars up in the front yard. You can't do anything about and that's kind of what we have here We have a building that or buildings. I'm trying not to make it Individual when you have a structure or building in our community that meets these requirements it impairs everyone else around them and pairs neighboring building owners neighboring businesses and community members who want to be down there and join them and if we can't get them to move forward we need some sort of a stick and

Yeah, and the other piece of this is we've had a lot of conversation around commercial buildings, but we recognize that this is also happening in our neighborhoods, and so addressing this from residential properties as well, so we can kind of secure some of those, which we had a program where we wanted those folks to register with us, specifically as those homes went into foreclosure and changed hands to banks who are not involved in community, they're not here, and so this gives us a little bit more teeth with them. There's an expectation while you hold ownership of that property that it's maintained in a safe and secure manner for the surrounding neighbors.

Nicole? Yes. One question. So I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. When we're looking at specifically the vacant and blighted property, I see per occurrence. So if we issue a notice to a business owner that they have to be compliant within so many days. And if that doesn't happen, we can issue this $1,000 charge every day until they come into compliance. Is that correct? That's correct. And that's actually in the ordinance.

If you go to section 8.55.120, It says within there, each day a violation continues after notice may constitute a separate violation. And again, it uses the word may, so there is that space that the folks that are kind of doing this work have the ability to apply that as it seems to make most sense. Boots on the ground often have a better feel for what the mechanism is to get forward momentum.

Sarah?

Yeah, Nicole, I trust you and the city team to make good decisions, but it does feel really subjective. So how are you going to mitigate that?

Yeah, I agree. And I think this subjectivity comes a little bit from the diversity of the properties that we're kind of dealing with, right? We're talking about residential, we're talking about building, maybe industrial, we haven't really had that concern. We're also talking about maybe a residential unit that is newly vacant and a commercial unit that's been long-term vacant. The subjectivity does give us the ability to deal with those on a case by case basis. And I think that's what we need here in order to help the ones who are maybe newly vacant and need to get over that. And those ones who just don't live here and have that investment in our community. We need to be a little stiffer in that. And I think if we have a flat one size fits all, It becomes a little bit more challenging to ebb and flow with the need for each case.

So so as Nate look this as Nate look this over our city attorney He looked over ordinance.

Yes.

Okay, look over the ordinance And so but have he talked to him about the subjectivity that shares talking about is he all right with that? I

You didn't talk to him about I guess about the fee structure at this point.

Yeah, all right. I'm just concerned that you know, we We have something in place and are we going to be subjective as Sarah said? How are we going to determine that? I mean, I think it could be a problem

It could be, but we still have guidelines, right? And he reviewed, and not to second guess any of this, but he reviewed the ordinance, which does already have that subjectivity in it with May, right? It's not shall. And there wasn't necessarily any negative feedback about how we might apply that. But happy to, for sure.

And I understand where subjectivity could be a problem. It's like, well, I don't like Billy, so I'm going to just fee him the heck. But I really like Tommy, so I'm not going to. That being said, I do think that we need to give the staff some elbow room and work room so that they can work with the building owners and property owners. And if they're working in good faith and moving steps forward, that gives them the freedom to be able to support that and help move it, not just be strictly fee-based or penalty-based. So I mean, subjectivity is a reality, but I think we have to give the staff the flexibility to work with those property owners.

And I'm not concerned about that. I think the staff should have the flexibility. I'm just concerned about Billy coming back and saying, well, you didn't treat me the same way that you treated... Yeah, so in fairness... That's because, Billy, you didn't do any work to move the project forward.

You didn't work to resolve the issue that we initiated with you. And I think clear documentation of interaction with the building owners make that clear.

We're not talking really about this one-off. I mean, one, we've moved this program in... and into and underneath our police chief. And if any of you have had any understanding of the amount of documentation they do, you know we put this in the right place. We're building a case, right? That's what we're really going to have to do because we need to be prepared. Should this go the longest route possible, which is a legal route, we need to have all of our ducks in a row there. And we're doing that from initial contact all the way through how we're working that. We've done that in the past. Don't get me wrong, right? We're keeping those documents. That's how we end up at the hearings official, right? With a good packet of information that that person can make a determination. We just upped the ante when we moved it into the police department because that's just kind of part of what they do.

And they'd love more paperwork when they can get it. Well.

I like the idea of having a little bit more flexibility for staff to respond to individual cases. I'm wondering, though, if there might be a way to divide this in between zones in terms of an urban renewal zone. schedule and then a non-urban renewal zone schedule. That being, I wanna just kind of explore this a little bit, but basically we have offered people in the urban renewal zone plenty of carrots to do things and we are willing to help. And so we're not talking about how much we are willing to do to support building owners. with this fee schedule discussion. But the fact that we have that there and we are willing to help, to me, says we don't need to be lenient if they're not utilizing it and if they're not doing anything. So if you are in the urban renewal area, which is our focal point for commercial development, if you're not doing it, I think you need to be It needs to be stripped like I I personally am just like kind of done with this We can just move into Coos Bay and buy a building and then just let it sit and decay and we just pay the general county taxes every year and I'll just sit there and just let it just Dissolve into a pile of rubble and then the city will have to deal with it eventually and then all of our community has to pay for all of this neglect this if we can Be strong enough with these fees in our commercial areas, which is the main part of where I want to focus on I'd be fine with this and that thousand dollars per occurrence is One thing is it per day? Maybe I don't know but like in this fee schedule if you have a 55,000 square foot industrial warehouse If we just based it off assessed value 2% be $9,000 what a year as a fee For an assessed value of 4.5 million, that's nothing.

That's the same, it would be the same kind of idea, remember we have to go back to the code and the code says per occurrence, per violation. So just as we would be treating that 500 as a per occurrence, same. There could be that same per violation.

9,000 per occurrence?

If that's the route we wanted to go.

All I'm saying is I think we've been way too lenient for too long. And that's why we have so many blighted properties that are basically coming Becoming our problem the community's problem. It's no longer one individual property developers problem It's our community's problem and it is affecting all of the neighbors who are trying their best to build a you know a sustainable and healthy vibrant building business or you know downtown when we're struggling with you know Decay that's right in the center of everything. It's just it's just I I'm like I'm done.

I basically I'm done so I agree with Carmen 100% That we need to I love the urban renewal area versus non urban renewal The the opportunity cost of the missed opportunity cost because you know, we're dealing with these buildings. We've been far too polite for too long and And I think a separate fee structure within the urban renewal agencies makes a whole bunch of sense.

I would disagree, only because how do you deal with it when that fund runs out? It's not an unlimited fund. Piece of the pie.

I think it would be really amazing if it was competitive. At this point, it's not. It's barely being utilized.

What do you mean? I get that.

It's barely being utilized.

The agency's not. The dollars are there, but they're not being utilized.

The dollars are there, and people aren't breaking down the doors to utilize them. It just blows my mind.

Well. There could be a variety of reasons for that, and some people just don't want the string attached to a government thing. I don't know. To a grant? I understand.

Basically free money.

I know. I know. So the public understands. Urban renewal chair. So the public understands. There was an opportunity for a business that was given a Main Street grant of I don't know how many hundreds of thousands.

They weren't.

they could have gotten a main street grant and they could have gotten a renewal grant and those two totals would have been a million dollars and this facility said no and this facility is deteriorating so that's one of the things in our craw and that's one of the reasons that we are even addressing this type of thing it's not because we want to it's because we don't know what else to do to try to improve our downtown urban renewal districts or in the empire because this has happened multiple times so With that being said, you know, the parking lot on 3rd Street is a perfect example. I know I've referenced this before, and if you've been in this chamber listening to me, I know it's saying the same thing over. But that cost the city $500,000 because the property went to Mexico. We had to purchase it. We had to tear it down. And then it costs another $1.2 million or $3 million to put the parking lot in. And as Carmen said, we have enough parking lots. Do we need to create more parking lots and tear down more buildings? And I happen to agree with him. So that's the... that we're dealing with. So anyway, I stop.

Oh, you're good. I agree 100%. Whatever we do, again, I like the administrative hybrid. But I do agree. And I'm with Carmen and Lucinda that I'm up to here with it. So the fees need to be, if we move, they need to be hard and they need to be important. Because I was looking at it too. I was like, if I own a $4.5 million and you charge me $90,000, I'd say whatever. And I wouldn't change anything. Right? Any of that. But if you charge me $90,000 a day or every month, maybe even every month, you know, it depends. But if that was significant enough, I'm going to have to do something. Either sell the building or fix it. But I'm not just going to sit there and pay you $9,000 a month every two weeks. So it needs to be hard. But I don't want to separate the URA and the rest of the city, because this street counts and this street doesn't count. It just needs to be, we don't want blighted buildings in our community, downtown or otherwise. And if you violate our ordinance and you're not going to work with us to move it forward, then we're going to hit you and hit you hard. And it's not for them, and it's not for being overbearing government. It is, as we've all alluded to, is to protect the neighboring property owners, the neighboring businesses, and the community at large who wants to be down there and enjoying it and can't or won't because it's blighted.

Jacob, you've had your hand. Jacob, you've had your hand up. I apologize.

Okay. Perks of being online, I guess. I'm curious, Ms. Rutherford, is there anything legally preventing us from adding in that qualification to properties in the URA? Okay.

You know, I didn't discuss that with Nate in developing the ordinance. So I can't, you know, and I didn't go to school to be an attorney, didn't play one on TV. So my best guess, knowing that there are some, there's at least one entity that does this entirely within their urban renewal. They don't even, they don't worry about anywhere else because they're wanting to encourage that development in a different way. So given that exists, there is that possibility. Now there's only is that and not an outside difference. But it doesn't, you know, it does have a little bit of credence there, but this is where we focus our efforts, the strongest efforts, too.

Yeah, I think for me the reason why I would want to separate it is because the residential areas are, we're dealing with people's homes and, you know, there's people who are in a home and they're on a fixed income and there's just not a lot of resources. And we don't have a program like the URA where people can be like, hey, I need to fix my roof. can you help me? We don't have that for the people outside the urban renewal agency. And it's not like it's a commercial endeavor to own this home. And so that's where I'm like, this is a little bit different. This is someone's livelihood. Whereas in the urban renewal district, we're talking about commercial properties, usually buying them for, you know, some kind of fiscal benefit of some short, you know, they're they're they're doing business and So there is an expectation that when you invest into this area You're gonna keep it at a certain level and I guess that's where I'm at with the urban renewal area of having it's Different its own separate set of rules like this is the level everywhere else your home. We have some kind of you know teeth to maybe address people who have bought a house and then just let it decay and don't live in this area that makes sense to me because there's neighbors around that are like hey we're trying really hard and this this home is becoming a nuisance and we want something to to happen but i think it's for me purely it's the fact that we do have an opportunity we've given opportunities to people uh to fix properties in the urban renewal agency area and if they're choosing not to then it's time to start cracking

So aren't there commercial buildings outside the ERA?

There are, but I mean, this is like, I think it's because we have that program. I get you, yeah.

But I just, it's not... You answered my question. There are commercial buildings outside.

Yeah, and a great example of kind of that challenge then is like as you go down, for example, Second Street, one side of the street is in the urban renewal area and the other side is not. And there is a little, that feels like there's a little bit of inequity in how we treat those neighbors.

Yeah, it is tough because, I mean, one gets to pull from this big pile of funding.

Yeah, and the other one doesn't and they're within a stone's throw of each other I think that's where we where when we allow the flexibility of the staff to address that we can we can Remedy that difference and they can they can see that this is inside the urban renewal You've been given opportunities and not for funding and you're not taking them and you're not following with our ordinance We're hitting you and you're hitting you hard and outside of that they have the flexibility to say it's a home and

Times are tight or whatever.

Yeah, I think leaving the flexibility allows them to make that adjustment on the fly.

Yeah, I Think you know, I want to protect residencies for you know, the ability to I Mean this is tough times economically and I don't want to throw extra burden on on homes that are fixed income that being said I do think that there is a level of upkeep that we should focus on for health and public safety. I like the fee recovery property stabilization program. That sounds good to me as long as we have a big enough hammer for the URA.

Wait a minute.

Sarah, you have your hands up.

Let me get Sarah first.

Two questions. To clarify, this ordinance is, Nicole, it's for any property or just commercial property?

It is for any property.

Okay. I think that's a really important distinction because I'm not sure that was clear in the beginning. Second, it sounds like there's some more comments, but I just, I agree that I don't think this is a big enough stick and I would like to see these fees doubled from the proposal.

Stephanie.

nothing all right so all right so clear his mind yeah it really is um can i jump in for just a second i i would love to hear uh from our city attorney the if there's any legal ramifications for changing the fees like not allowing certain things in the ura or having the stick be a little heavier in the ura

Well, I mean, the way I see this being presented by staff and what I'm hearing is, you know, I mean, if we did anything, because there's some flexibility, as Troy has mentioned, for staff to implement fees depending on the situation, new instances and whatever else. I guess we could put in there, if you wanted to, URA should have a higher weight in decision and fines or something. I don't know, make it arbitrary and not specific enough. I don't know. Because $1,000 a day seemed pretty impactful to me. And that doesn't matter if it's urban renewal or not. That's a possibility. Am I correct?

Yes, agreed.

So the scenario that when I met with Nicole to go over the agenda, just to clarify, so if there's a building that they find that's not up to, that's been vacant and they want to assess the fee, they assign them, tell them that they are in violation. Then the clock ticks. They start being fined, whatever that may be determined by staff. And then they would have to apply for a permit, and that still doesn't stop the clock. And then during that, there's an analysis done on a time frame and what they need to accomplish. That clock still ticks, and then it ticks until they get done. So to go through this process on some of these buildings could take months. So we're talking... $30,000 a month if you do a $1,000 fine times two or three. So that's pretty significant in my opinion. I don't care how much the building is worth. That's a lot.

Yeah, I don't think that $1,000 a day was the baseline fee. No, but that's what can be assessed. That's...

Especially when we're talking about the buildings that have had long-term vacancy, right? We've got that $1,000 for vacancy beyond 24 months. So, and again, we go back to code and it says each day, you know, violation, so... And as a reminder, this ordinance kind of runs connected with our existing nuisance dangerous building and substandard building ordinances. So there is a possibility that some of those other pieces would help boost or address this concern that we're hitting those ones that really need some uh encouragement a little bit stronger encouragement you know hitting them a little bit heavier so i think if nate is comfortable with this well nate went ahead with the ordinance and i guess does the feed schedule need to be approved by nate or how we We can certainly run it past him for sure.

All right. Yeah. But, I mean, yeah, if it's may result in a daily penalty, yes, $1,000 a day is significant.

So the, yeah, I guess so the concern by some is the flexibility or, you know, to determine may or may not, how do we fall into that category? Is that in the fee schedule or is it in the ordinance? The ordinance says may. So he already approved the ordinance. Yes, okay. So it's just a fee schedule we can look at. I mean, if he feels like it's defendable, then that's... Well, the ordinance he already does think is defendable. So it's the fee schedule that you want to have reviewed by Nate then, everyone? You know... Okay.

Well... I don't know that's necessary. The ordinance is where the law is. The fee schedule is how we're administering it.

Yeah. Agreed. I think... I think the... Councilor Niebergall was talking about, you know, is there a way to... make it more focused in the ura isn't and that would that is a question i have as well for yeah to not make it a may for the ura what's the legality around removing the option for the ura or at least saying you know properties within the ura boundary are more likely subject to maximum penalties or some some kind of i don't know legalese

The only thing is, I totally understand where we're at. Lucinda, go ahead. You're first. You had your hand up.

I just, I agree with Jacob. I just, again, a second set of eyes. We said that, you know, we want to be thoughtful about this and want to make sure that when it does get rolled out that we get it right. So I think it should be reviewed by Nate. I still believe with, I believe Counselor Stevens said double and I'm in that place too. And Perhaps it's because of our length of service on this council and the work that we've tried to accomplish with some of these business owners. And it hasn't moved the needle at all. And so I want to make sure we have a big enough stick. So I propose that we double what we see in this structure currently.

Doubling the daily potential to $1,000 a day? Doubling it, yeah. To $2,000? Yes. So that's a potential for almost $700,000 a year? Yes. Well, I mean, it will definitely get their attention.

That's a possibility. That's a potential, though. That's still going to be up to staff flexibility.

It would be one of those things that would be, if you have a $5 million property,

would catch your eye but right now the nine thousand dollar like oh what i don't okay so if i understand i mean i think i think having nate looked at it i have no issues with that i think to make sure that legally we were following the correct right criteria makes sense um but i don't about any uh i mean if it's a new array there's no may because we do have some small businesses that might have difficulty in Occupying a facility or putting something in that maybe the building looks good and it's not a nuisance and there's a lot of things to it So I think there needs to be maybe not the heavy-handed this that we would want to see and something that's been neglected Just that's my point. The other thing I want to know this staff have the capacity to handle this I mean we're talking a lot here because this could be on a daily basis, going around checking multiple buildings and facilities and housing and all this stuff. I mean, I could see easily 20 or 30, 40 issues going on. So how does that get done?

Yeah, so we had some conversations about this. It's been a little bit in the department head meeting. Of course, we recognize we have a dynamic and really energetic compliance officer right now who's just out on the streets regularly pulling in. She's got a caseload that's pretty extensive already. There will be some point that she's gonna be at, you know, she's gonna have to figure out highest and best use of her time. So certainly that's gonna be an issue. We'll have to see what these fees actually result in. Does that mean there is capacity to add someone else? But right now, she's working fairly full time on what we have.

So this is going to add to it.

This is going to add to it for sure. But I think, you know, she reviewed all of this and she's looking forward to some tools to move the needle on some of these properties as well.

Yeah, I would hate to see our chief out there having to do this, right? I'm kidding. Okay. Anyway. Give me a notebook. I'll go out there and slap somebody.

I was thinking, I'll do it. So for me to summarize, I think the council all agrees that we want to do something. And I think it's pretty clear we all want it to be pretty stiff because we want to see, we have tried in the past to get the needle to move, being encouraging, it's not working. So I think there's a clear initiative to make the penalty stiff to get some attention and make some movement. I do agree that it will be an increased workload. But if it does what we want it to do, that will be a short-duration workload until things start getting fixed. And then at some point, we will have the reputation. And people know if they're going to buy a building down here. They have to take care of it and have to keep it up. and it will be more of a maintenance program but either way it's going to be a high workload to begin with because we have a preponderance of buildings that need to be addressed and might i add to that uh point that you just made that urban renewal becomes a positive tool for

our compliance officer and staff to work with instead of saying, you are here, you're not using it, which is more negative. To me, we've got the negative. We get their attention. I just don't see the necessity of putting it You're in urban rule and you're not because it becomes a positive tool to make a difference. And again, I will state that it's not an unlimited fund.

No, it's not.

But it can also be utilized. I mean, there's many ways. Also, staff can say, hey, this is available to you. And I think that's a possibility. All right. You have clear direction. Yeah.

Mayor Benetti, Sarah still has a comment. Councillor Stephens.

Thank you, President DeNovo. I agree with you, Councilor Cribbins, and you, Councilor Kilmer. And I think it's okay for us to say that we are a city that is laser focused on economic development. And this sends that clear message. I don't think we should be afraid of that. This council has been trailblazers in the past. And I think that we need to be bold and we need to be confident here and we need to send the right message. And that is that there is a stick, but there's also lots of carrots and we're here to support you. And I have a lot of confidence in our city staff to navigate this well.

All right. I know we might be adventurous in how we do things, but I just want to mention that there's 12 cities and counties that are also doing some type of vacant property program. So we're not like the only one, and I know some others are looking at it because we're all running the same problem. So anyway, so Nicole, we'll look forward to having this back and reviewing it again and maybe come to a consensus, and then we can pass a resolution. Anyone else? All right. Thank you so much. Good discussion. Appreciate it. Next item on the agenda is semi-annual presentation by the Coos Bay North Bend Charleston Visitor and Convention Bureau. Channis, good evening.

Good evening, Mayor Benetti, city council members, the city council that are up on the board up there. Thank you all for allowing me to come and give our semiannual report. You guys have a really long agenda tonight, so I'm going to try and rush through this a little bit fast. Let's see if I can get a go. Okay, whoops, skipped one. So just a reminder of who we are. We are the destination marketing organization for Coos Bay, North Bend, and Charleston. We brand our destination as Oregon's Adventure Coast. We do all the advertising, marketing, travel trade relations, state advocacy, and regional participation for Coos Bay, North Bend, and Charleston. We also handle some visitor services, which includes our visitor information centers, not only the one that we contract with the city to manage, but the other two in North Bend and Charleston to help them as we can. And we work with a lot of our local providers to make sure that they are providing what they say they do. And our funding, of course, comes from the local lodging taxes that are collected in the city of Coos Bay, the city of North Bend by the Coquille Indian Tribe, and in Coos County for an area right around Charleston. So I just gave you a really quick look at our fiscal 26 actuals to date. Just a reminder that we do not have any of our fourth quarter TLT in the bank yet. We will have North Bend and the Coquille Tribe sometime in August, but we won't have the city and the county until October. So we will not be closing our fiscal 26 until we get to audit. We'll be close, but there's still some outstanding expenses as well. What we are looking at in fiscal year 27 is a slightly smaller budget. We had a $1.63 million budget this year. We have brought that down to $1.5 million for this coming fiscal year. We're trying to be a little bit more conservative in our budgeting due to a little bit of a downturn in the tourism industry as a whole because of the economy and, of course, the gas prices. reminder of how our taxes split as you guys know you're putting an ordinance or a ballot measure to discuss the city's charter and I just wanted to remind everybody that we have a blended right of tax for our hotel properties and our lodging properties and it began with 7% way back in the 70s, it started at 5%, and then it was increased in the 90s, I believe. And in 2019, we increased it again to 9.5%. The 2.5% is subject to state law. And that began when we changed this or added this tax. It was a 70-30 split, which means that of the original tax, it was opposite. The city keeps 72% of the original seven and the VCB received 28. Of the new two and a half, we received 70 and the city keeps 30. That still means as a blended rate, the city keeps 61%. Now, part of that 61% does come to the VCB as part of our contract to run the Visitor Information Center. But from all of our other funding partners for the VCB section only, as well as the City of Coos Bay, we get 39%. visitor spending in 2025 was very strong at the county level visitors spent 253.8 million dollars when i started in 2017 that was about 277 million it went way down during the pandemic we lost about 100 million dollars in visitor spending but it has shot right back up again in these last four years so That was a 5.6% increase. For Coos Bay, North Bend, and Charleston, and I'm sorry my fonts didn't come across very well, but we, in our three communities, we generate 44% of that county total at $154.6 million. These visitor spending dollars also generate $16.8 million in state and local taxes at the county level. And for Coos Bay, North Bend, and Charleston, we generate half of the county's total of state and local taxes. Some time ago I explained how we do our return on investment calculation, and we have changed this up a little bit this year, so I wanted to remind everybody how we came to our number. We use a University of Massachusetts calculation. We did a lot of research when we were looking at how to calculate ROI without spending an enormous amount of money doing visitor surveys. which is the only true way you can decide or get the data of how much our advertising influenced somebody's visit to our area. So the University of Massachusetts did their own exhaustive research and said on average about a little less than 15% of what a visitor spending in a destination could be said to have been influenced by a DMO in what we do, advertising, marketing, trade shows, all of it. so we use this calculation some destinations use a much higher number some use a lower number we thought this was fairly conservative so to figure roi you take the visitor spend you multiply it by that percentage that 14.7 you minus what we spent and you divide it by what we spent and that's how you get roi so if you look at 154.6 million times 14.7 you get 22.7 million dollars We upped the amount that we are using as our calculation of what we spend. It was determined by my board that we needed to include some of the things that I had left out in the past, some administrative costs and things like that. So we're now using a slightly larger number of what we spend to bring people here. And that is about $1.3 million. So when you do the calculation, our return on investment is still really healthy at $17 to one. So for every dollar we spend, $17 is brought back into this community in the form of visitor spending and taxes.

Janice, just a question. Does that take into account any other DMOs spending money in the area, for example, travel southern Oregon coast or anything?

Not really. No, it's strictly what we have spent to bring that visitor here. So we do know that travel has been down. It's been down all over. It's not just here. So in the winter, we put together this local vacation loot promotion, which was if you reserved a hotel or a lodging property for a two-night stay, you got $120 worth of coupons to spend at going charter fishing, going out in the dunes, going to restaurants, that kind of thing. And while we didn't have the conversion that we would have liked to have seen. We still had 34 completed reservations. We had 40 that were booked, and then six got canceled because they couldn't go out with the charters because the weather was bad in February and March, which was something we hadn't thought about when we put this together. But we still had visitors from Eugene, Medford, and Portland, which are our normal markets, but we also had Idaho and California take advantage of the program. And the page that we created for this promotion got 19,500 hits. That's the most for any single page other than our home page that we had ever seen. So interest was really high. It was just timing that was probably bad. So right now, we're doing the $75 fuel freebie promotion, which is with a two-night or longer stay at one of our participating hotels, you get a $75 gift card that you can use to offset the cost of gas, which We went down for a little while and it's going back up again. So far, we have 66 Visa cards and stays committed. And so that leaves us, we bought about 100 cards. So we still have about 34, or 20, yeah, 34 that we can... deliver they have to book by the end of this month but they can stay anyway anytime between now and Bay Area Fun Festival so September 20th. Again this page has also gotten almost 19,500 page views in just two months and we've had a hundred thousand ad impressions so again it's very enticing it's just that it's still expensive to come on a vacation for anybody. We've heard from some folks who are like, we would love to the great the card is great, but we can't afford the hotel room anyway. So there is still some of that happening. Just a quick Yes, ma'am. Sorry.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt. I did have a question. So when you're talking about 19,000 views, this promotion was structured in a way really to promote the entire region. So if I remember correctly, we're promoting fishing, we're promoting outdoor recreation. And so we're still getting a lot of exposure. That's correct. Not only right, this promotion, but to the entire region. Is that correct?

That is correct. Yes. So we are promoting all of our outdoor rec, all of our indoor adventures as well. So we talk about the museums and the not only the art museum, the history museum, but the Marine Life Center. We're talking about bowling. We're talking about some of the other things, gaming. So things that people can do when they're here, which we know in advertising, it takes six to 10 advertising impressions before anyone decides to make a move not even a booking but just a move to learn more and so people who are visiting now who aren't taking a part of this promotion probably made their plans two years ago we're going to go to coos bay oh we can't go this summer oh we can't go next summer oh let's go in 26. So these people have seen our ads and seen our ads and seen our ads for several years because we don't stop. We advertise year round. We used to only advertise in the off season, but now we advertise year round. There's always something on. In fact, we had our ad agency here last week for our VCB board meeting, and that is how we talk about it. We are always on somewhere. We are advertising something somewhere. I will call the council's attention to the video link. I'm not going to play it tonight because we're kind of rushed for time. But it's a cute video we did for this promotion with our visitor services coordinator for TikTok. It's really cute. So I looked at our social media stats for FY26. So this is all of July through June of last year and the beginning of this year. And we had some pretty impressive statistics here. We had 9 million impressions on our Facebook posts. with 717,000 engagements. Our Instagram is still kind of growing. We go up and down with it. But we still had a half a million impressions with 137,000 engagements. TikTok is where we are starting to put a lot more emphasis and a lot more attention. A lot more videos are being posted. And we still had 302,000 video views on that when we weren't even doing a lot. And YouTube is very interesting. We actually advertise on YouTube. And our videos are 30 seconds to two minutes long. That's probably the longest video we have. And we had 4,300 hours of our stuff watched. So that's pretty impressive. And then I'll close with the visitor center. I always like to give you guys some information about the statistics. I don't know if everybody's aware, but our visitor services manager decided to leave us in June. We're very sad about that because she was awesome, but she had another opportunity and decided to move on. So next week, we will be interviewing some candidates for that position and hoping to fill that really soon. But from January to June, we still had a pretty impressive six months in the visitor center. We had more than 8,500 visitors come through our door. Our volunteers, we have about 20, 21, it kind of fluctuates, So we're always looking for volunteers. I say this every time. We love volunteers. They gave us 1,580 hours in those six months. We mail out our visitor guide through not only our own website where people ask us to send information, but through Travel Oregon. And we sent 6,600... visitor guides in six months. That's averaging about $1,100 a month. So that's really pretty good. And we also do a lot of merchandise sales at the visitor center. So we had about $10,000 worth of sales so far this year. So that's my report. Hopefully I wasn't too long.

No, you're too long. I'm always an advocate of tourism and how far you've done and what you've done and accomplished and help our economic interest in the community. Questions from anyone? Comments? Lucinda, anyone?

Yeah, Janice, I think, didn't mention that the state... in total was, I think, Janice, correct me if I'm wrong, up about 100, excuse me, about 1% for the year. So the fact that our region is up 5% and then Coos Bay North Bend, Charleston is up 4%. I mean, that's really great work that Janice and her team are doing.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I'm a firm believer that tourism is part of our economic development. So as we were talking about all the things that the city is trying to do, including tourism is that economic development engine is also pretty important. So thank you.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. Thank you, Janice.

Thank you for all that you're doing for our area. Thank you.

All right.

Next item on the agenda is the community development department annual report. Chelsea, good evening. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, how are you?

Let's see if I can share my screen. Christine makes it available. While we're waiting, as council's aware, community development, the department hasn't is just kind of newly, recently, a stand-alone department. Let's see if it gets it going. It's taking just a little slow. Okay, there we go. Uh, back in before 2024, this department was together with the public works department. And so we've had, um, past two years of kind of learning and growing together. The community development department consists of the building and planning divisions. Um, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to just report out, uh, kind of give you some highlights of what's happened the last year, some data, some trends, um, just keep you informed. So I talked about staffing and some policy weaves Not just the department, but the city has really been focusing on Changing our mindsets to getting how do we help projects get to yes and so shifting from a regulatory mindset to more of a customer service first approach and We in the department have had some changes with staffing. We are currently operating with a a little less staff than normal. As we mentioned tonight, code enforcement once was under buildings, now under PD. That's a great change just overall. But we spent a year or two really struggling with staffing. And so happy to say as of June this year, we filled all of our vacancies and we are operating at pretty good levels. I wanted to note that we did work through the SOAB WEX program to bring on a tent position. We have Ariel who's helping set the front counter. That's made a big difference. I wanted to touch on some new ways of doing things that we in the office are doing. There's a regional effort, Urban Forum. I think we've talked about this at Council. There's a map that is out there available for use, trying to help make it easier for developers, property owners, to see properties and what they could do with those. So we've implemented that. There's also a tool on the website. It's kind of referred to as a permit finder pro. It's an inquiry tool where somebody, a customer, could come, or a citizen, go online and say, I want to build a shed. And so it'll take them through a series of questions to an outcome that says, for whatever you want to do, these are the applications, the forms that you need. We are working with Coos County and city of North Bend on Transitioning our permitting system to a new system called cloud permit. So we're working regionally together to try to make improvements there and Then we've been working with HUD through a distressed communities technical assistance their program to help Create some standard operating procedures for our permits processes to help streamline those come up with FAQs For the public and so it's really been a benefit to staff We've had a lot of change in staff So helping them understand and then also the public and I just want to highlight Leah The program manager happens to be here tonight from the Portland's office. So reiterating our many banks to the help that you've given the city And then I wanted to touch on last year, council had some key policy actions that involved community development. We worked through leading that self-storage moratorium. After a moratorium was in place, community development took the lead to help get council set with some permanent adopted restrictions. So we did that. We're also working on the urban growth boundary expansion. continued efforts the state just approved the work program and so we'll be continuing that work throughout the rest of the year and then last year was when council adopted an updated economic opportunities analysis and also adopted a development strategic plan really emphasizing our desire to be the region's economic service center So I want to give you some numbers from last year. Community development is where if you would like to get a building permit, a land use permit, public works permit, or a business license, you come to our counter. So last year we processed 142 planning permits, 336 building permits, and 157 public works permits. And the total fees that we took in for that work was $335,731. Just looking at multi-year trends for planning permits since 2020, some key insights. You can see in 2023, we really peaked at a high of 276 permits. That, we think, was driven by a surge in accessory structure and other what we call general reviews. They're like the lower-level review permits. And then you can see that it started to trend back downwards to more of an average 140, 50 permits per year. And that's reflective of some of the process changes we've been trying to implement and that we're trying to streamline our processes. And an example would be Instead of requiring for a garage that one gets a building permit and an accessory structure planning permit we now just Review the planning Review is done with the building permit so you get your building permit and we've combined those reviews to try to make it easier and I wanted to note that our fee collection it's declining it was high in 2020 at $60,000 we were taking in and we're now down to about $16,000 taking in that's a reflection of back in 2020 we were seeing a lot more higher level reviews maybe like code amendments or plan amendments that were initiated by outside Private parties so they were paying fees for that That's not happening so much right now and then we're also part of our public part private partnerships Something that we can do is waive our planning fees. So if there's a land use required a review sometimes we will waive the fee that's part of our give to a project and Um, this is just showing you the breakdown of kind of where the, the permits and the fees, how they, they lay out there. The majority of our permits are uncategorized. Um, so it's probably like your floodplains or just your other general reviews. We do a lot of pre-application conferences, trying to meet with people before they formally apply to help them understand what we're looking for. Um, Accessory structures. There's fences decks. We do a lot of that and then your conditional use permits and property like land divisions and Looking at our building permit multi-year trends, you can see that there was a real consistent volume of permits between 2020 and 2023, averaging about 500 permits annually. Since 2023, since that time, it's kind of dropped to about 300 permits annually. And of course the fees have dropped in line with that. um building permit fees a lot of times they're really driven by the commercial structural permits that were that's where the bulk of the money comes in from so in 2026 to date i think we could say and marcy's here but building is still trending on the low side we'd love to see it increase And this is a breakdown just again it shows you know about 50% of our total building fees come from those larger commercial structural projects followed by the residential structural and then our commercial residential mechanical and then some other. Public works permits you can see the the volume of those stays pretty consistent over the last five years about 174 permits annually taken about $30,000 annually for those Permits and the trend there is pretty steady. There's not a lot of variance in that and I just wanted to throw up this slide to show the inspection staff. We're not just processing the paperwork, but staff is out in the field looking at projects, making sure they're being built to what was approved, helping people figure out what they need to out on the ground. We in 2020, you know, between building planning and public works had almost 3000 inspection hours, you know, inspections throughout the year. We're down on that, but that's reflective of just down on overall permit numbers. We deal with the business licenses, and then we, in the past, manage the special events that's since been moved to the administration's office. But I just wanted to show that there is a trend with business license applications every year. Since 2020, we've increased. We process more new applications every year. So that just trend shows that people are applying for their licenses, new businesses are coming. big or small. Special events, it's pretty likely that we're processing about 40 applications a year for those. Community engagement, so at the front counter, we deal a lot with the applications and emails a lot of emails but we also get people in person at the front counter with questions on the phone with questions so just highlighting that kind of a volume that those staff see and in 2025 2026 the numbers aren't real complete because we had staff turnover and so the counts weren't real great But you can just see that we're likely seeing 2,000 people at the counter or communicating via phone on top of everything else every year. And then I'd like to highlight that we've worked with our GIS coordinator recently to implement a new system, a new way of tracking this. It used to just be a hand tally, but now we have a... Cool online dashboard that's helping and so Helping track that and just the first two weeks of July there was already a hundred visits so a lot happens there at the front counter and then just briefly touching on we manage the reserving the Mingus Park Community Building and those reservations, the bulk of them go the general public or the Boy Scouts. And then we also deal with the parking permits for the Marshfield District. So that's just examples of work that's done up there. So last but not least, I just wanted to put faces to names, highlight the department. Pretty much everybody here is new. Starting on the right side is our Building Codes Administrator, Marcy, and our new Codes Inspector, Zach. And then over on the left is our Planning Administrator, Kelly, our Planner 1, Sydney. And then at the bottom are leads, Code Planning Specialist on the right is Jennifer. On the left, Elizabeth, our Codes Planning Specialist. And then in the middle is Ariel, our SOA WEX. I guess we lucked out getting her to help. So that's the team. Just wanted to give you guys... some info and if ever in the future you want any specific information you'd like to hear about please feel free to let me know we are implementing a customer satisfaction survey giving people the opportunity to to give us some feedback and so we're open to that questions for chelsea anyone

I just had one when we were looking at the building permits and the breakdown. Has there been any analysis of why that has trended so low?

Marcy, do you want to speak to it as your expert opinion or?

And is that like across the board in many communities?

Yeah, other than the cost of materials, really, I haven't seen any analysis. Do I need to be a speaker?

Yes.

So I don't have any definitive information at this time. The market is down. Residential building is slowing as well.

So Marcy, is that going to increase with like Timber Cove now coming online and those permits? I mean, they're doing something. I mean, is there a permit per home or how does that work?

It is a permit per home. And as we know it, they're still moving forward rather excitedly. So there is one I viewed yesterday that has most of the interior finishes in. They're doing trim and cabinetry today and tomorrow. So it'll be ready very quickly.

And then Eaglewood we also have happening, correct? yes we have groundbreaking tomorrow for another 30 homes sites there so they're moving forward with some of their permit applications yeah during that one period of time chelsea i know you're still up here but um when there was that big increase in 2020 did that have to do a lot with coosby village or that would be my understanding yeah all right all right thanks thank you jacob i think you had your hand up first then we'll go to sarah

Yeah, well, first of all, I want to say I think that was a great presentation, especially seeing the multi-year trends. I really appreciated that. I'm curious, though, there was an uptick in business licenses just consistently over the years, and I'm curious what you attribute that to.

I would think it's getting the word out right it's a fairly new program you know lots of words but I think getting the word out getting businesses to buy in on it I think our fire inspection program is a piece of that too they're out there communicating with the businesses building is out there so I think I think it's just getting the word out and every year we're doing a little bit better job.

Okay. All right. Awesome. Thank you. Sarah?

Chelsea, I just want to say thank you to your team for giving one of our youth an opportunity to have a work experience and just make a plug that we do, SOAB has funding for paid work experiences to give job seekers and youth the opportunity to build skills and also support employers. So thanks for highlighting that.

Yeah, no problem. And thank you, because really it made it possible where we didn't have the funding to bring on a full-time person. So it was a really great opportunity.

All right. Anyone else? Any other questions for Chelsea? All right. Thanks, Chelsea.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is consideration to approve the after-the-fact emergency contract to remove the sunken vessel commando. Jennifer.

Thank you. On July 2nd, the fishing vessel commando sank while moored at the city of Coos Bay Marina. As the vessel settled and broke away from the dock, the stern, or the back of the boat, shifted underneath the floating dock structure. On July 3rd, city staff observed a negative plus .7 foot tide in which the dock was resting on the vessel's stern, and it caused the dock to lift upward. This indicated the vessel was directly impacting the structural integrity of the marina. Over the following week, city staff made multiple attempts to work with the vessel owner to resolve the situation. Despite repeated communications, the owner took no meaningful action to remove or stabilize the vessel. Staff reviewed the upcoming tide forecast and identified a series of increasingly lower tides beginning the week of July 11th. Predictive tides ranged from minus 1 to minus 2.1 feet, which significantly increased the forces exerted on the dock system if the vessel remained lodged beneath it. Staff was concerned that these tidal conditions could result in substantial structural damage or even catastrophic failure of the dock system. This information and urgency of the situation were communicated to the vessel owner. However, no corrective action was taken. So staff contacted the port of Coos Bay to determine whether its equipment could assist with the removal effort. Unfortunately, the port's available equipment was not capable of safely handling a vessel of this size. Given the approaching low tides, staff immediately contacted several Marine contractors. The primary challenge was locating a contractor with specialized equipment, qualified personnel, and the ability to mobilize on or before July 11th. Billard & Marine responded immediately and confirmed it had both the equipment and the personnel necessary to perform the emergency work within the required timeframe. Prior to authorizing the work, staff consulted with the Oregon Department of State Lands, which provided the applicable Oregon statutes confirming the city's authority to remove the vessel because it posed an imminent threat to public property. Staff also consulted with city's legal counsel. regarding the city's legal authority and potential liability. Based on the applicable statutes and the circumstances, legal counsel advised that the city should take all reasonable measures necessary to protect its property. Staff further consulted with city's insurance provider, which provided similar guidance. So on July 10th, the city executed a time and materials emergency contact with Billiter Marine to remove the vessel beneath the dock and try to refloat it. And then the original plan was to take it over to Billiter's facility in Eastside. And we were going to do this in two phases. So the first phase was just to remove the imminent threat and then get it safely over to Eastside. The second phase was going to be decommissioning it. So with all of this, we've been working closely with the port. And the port offered that if we could float it and dewater it, and it was still structurally intact, then to have villager tow it over to their yard, they would remove it, and they are going to be commencing with decommissioning two other vessels. And they would include this. our vessel, the commando, I shouldn't say our, they would include the commando vessel to reduce costs. So we worked with Billiter, Billiter's open to that. So, as I said, we moved Billiter July 11th. We've been able to remove the vessel from the dock, but there was a lot of floating debris, lines, cords, cables. It's underwater work, the visibility is very poor. So I believe we're on day eight, and today was a very successful day. We got the vessel far enough removed from the dock so when we ride it, it's not going to impact the dock, and then they did a lift test with the pillows that are going to float it to the top. So tomorrow, the plan is to float this vessel to the surface and then dewater it. And then the port will be on site to help us out. They're going to take a look at it, and if all looks well, they're going to authorize it being towed over to Charleston. So for this first phase of work, staff is proposing utilizing resolution number 24-13, which is our procurement rules. Section 11 emergency contracts authorizes the city to enter into a public contract exceeding $100,000 without competitive bidding when circumstances that could not reasonably have been anticipated require prompt contracting to preserve public property. Staff believes the circumstances surrounding the commando fully satisfy the criteria established under the city's emergency procurement revisions. So the city's insurance provider is actively working with staff regarding this incident. Staff anticipates that the insurance will reimburse approximately one half of the emergency removal costs and will assist the city in pursuing cost recovery from the vessel owner. In addition, staff is investigating potential financial assistance with the US Coast Guard and the Oregon Department of State lands to further offset any costs. So the estimated costs for this first phase of work is now anticipated to be between $250,000 to $300,000. It has gone up since the staff report. Staff recommends funding this work from Fund 45 Capital Fund. So with that, I can answer any questions.

So, first of all, was it a determination that would cause it to sink or whatever? Is there any indication of what's going on or what happened?

Yes, Billard and Marine and the divers have provided what they believe their explanation to be. And there was a lot of open cavities, if you will, like fuel tanks and such. And so that was there. It's hard to know what happened with respect to when the owner assumed ownership of the vessel. But the bilge pump that would normally remove water if water fills in, it's a wooden boat, so that does happen. It has a float system that turns it on when the water gets high. That float system got wrapped around all the loose cables and cords that I was kind of talking about that they're witnessing under underwater. And so it wasn't able to tell that pump to turn on. So it didn't. It filled with water and filled all those cavities with water. And that's why it sunk so quickly.

And so I think, isn't it, if someone moors there, they're supposed to also have insurance, am I correct?

That's correct.

Did they have insurance?

Well, technically, he didn't have a moorage agreement because we had that boat on GovDills. He bought it, and he bought it with the understanding, and it was his commitment to remove the boat within 10 days, and he failed to do that.

So he didn't have insurance? He did not. All right. So where do we go from here financially, I guess? I mean, this is a pretty big cost to the city.

Yeah, it's definitely an unexpected expense. It will prevent us from doing some things that we would otherwise want to do. Our best step forward is to continue to work with CIS and potentially their legal team would want to recoup whatever we can through that. And they have great incentive to do that as well, right? It's a trust, so it's a collective pot of money. We're going to continue down that avenue, right? We don't intend, you know, failures on a private part to impact our ability to serve the public. So that's our first and foremost goal is to kind of recoup as much. But we will work with, you know, with CIS in order, that's our insurance company, and then NAIT as necessary to kind of do that work.

So CIS, our insurance agent or company handling our insurance for the city, they're going to take care of this, right? I mean, they're going to hopefully... Well, they'll be a partner in that.

So they always do subrogation, right? So when there's an insurance claim, they're going to go out and find and do a lot of investigative work to see if there's an alternative partner who should be paying their portion. So they're going to still do that just like they would do with any claim.

So it's but I saw I think I saw near this is kind of come out of one of our funds and so insurance Is that gonna pay for these?

So we'll pay them up front You know as we're incurring those and are billed for those and it will become a part of that claim and it's looking like you know They're gonna claim or pay 50% at least of what it costs to get that belt away from The dock system, right? That's what we had under insurance so we had a policy to just like we do with all assets you know to cover and the doc is under that policy so that it looks like they're gonna cover that that was a piece that we already had insured but as they go further with this it is very possible they'll include other costs in that claim so I don't think we know just yet what they're fully gonna cover okay any other questions counsel

Yeah, I'm curious, do we know how many boats that are currently moored at our docks don't have insurance?

I have that number. It has lowered significantly since we have actually changed our mortgage agreement. I can provide that to Nicole, and then she can send that out. But it is small. More than zero? With those vessel owners.

It's more than zero, yes. Yes, it's more than zero.

Yeah.

So just kind of as a reminder, we had recently brought some fee changes to you in regards to how our docks, you know, try to get our docks being used in the intended use. And that's helped in modifying our mortgage agreements, which then has given us a little bit more ability to make sure people are in compliance with insurance, registration. Those are all kind of elements that we weren't really requiring. So we are now, and we are holding people to that. And it's a struggle with a couple of boats who just are maybe not there yet. But it's much better than where it was, where it was the majority of folks who were either missing registration and or insurance.

I have a follow-up to that, if I can. And this might have been addressed when we did the fee change, but I'm thinking of this analogous to a car. Can we impound boats that are currently moored? And if so, what's that process?

So those are some conversations we've been having with Nate, because I was landing in the same space, right? We know what to do with vehicles who are parked in the right of way without appropriate authorization. So there's a little bit difference in how that's handled. There's a different process there. So we're working through that as we consider this situation in relation to how we should address the rest of the boats that are there. It's very formal. Like most things, we want to make sure we create a case and document all those things.

Is the difference because they're on land versus water, or is it something to do with size?

A piece of it is also because we actually lease that land from DSL. They're kind of that overarching agency who has kind of oversight for our waterways. And then there's just the complication of live-aboards versus not. We have that, obviously, in recreational vehicles on our public rideaways on our streets and stuff. But an average car is different than an average boat. You might be able to live there. So we're working through that. We see that as an opportunity to improve how we address some of these. But I do think we've made great headway just in modifying the fees down there so the folks who really are there folks who are taking care of their boats they want to have they understand the importance of you know a safe and good group of folks that they're mooring their boats next to right they appreciate that kind of and that will enable us to you know maybe over time uh operate that marina in a little bit different way so sir do you still have a question

I do. Yes, thank you. I'm not saying this is the direction we're headed, but Nicole, can you just help us understand what would happen if this council voted no right now?

Well, that would be a challenge because I signed an emergency agreement with Billiter, you know, kind of on behalf in advance, knowing that somebody had to do something, right? This is an impact to our waters, if nothing else. The boat had fuels and things on it. So we had to take some sort of action here. We'd likely be in some litigation with Billiter for their rights to recoup the funds that we said we would be responsible for carrying. But again, not an attorney. But, yes, we've signed an agreement, and this is much how our emergency procurement works, right? We go out and do something because it's emergent, and we come back to you, so we make sure we're letting you have awareness and just kind of backing up that based on our policy that's already been approved through that resolution.

And that could impact future emergency situations. Yeah, agreed. I just had a question regarding the lines and things that are, I was down there and it looked pretty complicated. It's complicated. Yeah. Is it affecting any things, because those lines were near the dock, so it could still be affecting somebody's ability to park a boat, or more a boat at that location.

Yeah, I think we actually, and Jennifer, if you could speak to this, but we actually tried to get the boats that are kind of near relocated just to make sure we were, you know, being really thoughtful about their boats and their assets. I mean, we're kind of hopeful folks treat it as a construction site, right? And, you know, we don't want folks traipsing through our street projects, our sewer projects, those kind of things. So same thing. Yeah, trying to protect that space.

Which is a good argument for CIS when you're talking about that portion of it still being an issue.

Another example of negligence falling to the cost of our community, which was difficult, but I will move to approve the after-the-fact emergency contract with Billetter Marine and a time and material basis pursuant to Resolution No. 24-13, Section 11, Emergency Contracts. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve resolution number 24-13, section 11, emergency contracts. Is there any other comments or discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for the question. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, passes. Thank you. Next one, consideration to begin negotiations for transfer ownership of building and permanent art collection to Gu's Art Museum. Nicole.

Yes, thank you. So at first, I'm going to acknowledge that we have some folks here from the Art Museum who can help if necessary. Possibility to kind of round out this conversation. So we've actually, the city's team and the Art Museum's team, been having this conversation for a little bit of time. Both kind of acknowledging that there's obviously the right person, organization, who should be in charge of a museum and an art collection. And generally speaking, that's not a rural city with limited expertise, right? And so we fortunately have a really strong team at the art museum right now who are interested in considering what that might look like to become the owner of that building and the permanent art collection. We also understand from their perspective that gives them access to funding that they would not ordinarily have without an asset under their belt. We're happy that they're interested in taking on that building. The building in itself is kind of a piece of art if we know that history there. It was built very distinctly in a time period. So again, you know, having someone who can appreciate that and preserve that is really important. So we started conversations just around what would this look like and looked at different options. You know, is it just the art collection? Is it the building? talking through insurance, what would that look like if we had one and not the other? And then also had some conversations around what does this operational cost for the city look like annually? How can that organization take that on? Can there be this kind of weaning in of those costs over a period of time so that they get kind of used to picking those up? Through all of that, they've put together a kind of a letter of intent, a letter of interest, which is what was put in your packet. I think it's a great starting point. It is really close to where we were talking. Very difference would just be potentially in, we had talked about various options around that, that how do we support them over a number of years till they're kind of on their feet know what that looks like. Is that five years? Is it a full amount for the five years? Is it a tapering? I think those are things we can easily get to. Worst case, worst case is really not a worst case, right? It gets us to the people who should rightfully own. This is perfectly in line where we could land, right? But I think it begs the question, like, is there any, do we want to fine-tune any of this? That's what we're asking. This is a city asset. We want to get your approval to kind of have those conversations. And we'll work through legal counsel to make that transition possible if you so agree. And if you had anything you wanted to add, I guess.

So did anyone from the museum want to make a comment? I mean, you don't need to if you don't want to. It's totally up to you. I mean.

Let me try it for a second. My name is Scott Carpenter. I'm a member of the board. I'm vice president. And I helped in putting that letter of intent together. I think that the key thing that we're looking at here is that when we look at the museum, we see the opportunity to make this a regional museum, not just a city museum, to bring in different kinds of exhibits than we can bring in right now, to do education for both adults and for youth throughout the entire sort of region that we're working in. Um, but to do that and to do it properly, you have to do it in a way that uses money, unfortunately. And one of the key things that we keep running into is the fact that we have, um, We have a difficult time raising funds when we say we don't own the building and we don't own the artwork. We really don't even have a property interest in the building. We have the right to manage it at this point. So bringing in some decent funding has been difficult and will continue to be difficult, we think. professional money raisers we have done assessments of the building to understand what it's going to cost us to keep the building not only maintained in the future but to pick up some of that deferred maintenance so for example there's about a quarter million dollars in window panes alone that have not been maintained that someone is going to have to take care of in the near future and by near futures i mean the next few years So what we want to do is we want to put the building and the relationship with the city in partnership so that we can go out, raise the money, continue the stewardship that we have toward our educational and our exhibiting obligations, and do that in a way that makes sense for everybody. And we think the best way to do that is to sort of move the building and the artwork over to us. We are fortunate enough right now to have significant funding in our operations. But in order to do what we need to do, we're going to need a lot more than that. And we think this is the way to do it. And so to the extent that you have questions about specific areas of the letter of intent, I think we'd be happy to answer it. But that's just the general overview from our perspective.

Any questions? As far as I'm concerned, this is something that we have talked about for years, and I'm glad that we have a board from the museum and a director that wants to have this and take this on and the collection because, truthfully, it doesn't belong in our hands as far as I'm concerned. It belongs where you need to have it and go out and get the funds that you need to. So I think we just need ratify this with the attorneys and you need to go shake whatever needs to be done but I think it from my discussions with the board members that I've had discussions with this is pretty close to what we talked about and I'm not sure what we incur and cost a year annually with this, you know on average That's what we did.

We did look back and so we're about 50,000 and the costs we cover and

Right, and on top of it, there's deferred costs and maintenance that's been brought up, which we're not able to take care of at this time. And so putting in their hands and letting them deal with it would definitely be the way to go, as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to see us move forward on it. Other questions from council?

I had a question. This makes complete sense. I just had a question on the permanent collection That wasn't something that came to the city.

It actually went to cam, correct or well I've tried to figure out how we got that collection to you the city my understanding is that at one point there was a question as to whether they permanent collection was subject to property taxes and at that point the museum had absolutely no way to pay even the property tax portion of the bill so it was moved to the city and i think that it is properly at this point in the city's name there have had there have been a couple of contributions to cam that need to be cleaned up and actually really should be moved over to the city but the the proposal is that we take all of those pieces and move them over to the museum

Okay, and the reason that I ask that is because, you know, sometimes when people make donations, I don't know how that's curated or what the process is, if there's ever pieces removed. But I think you've been good stewards of that and protecting that. PERMANENT COLLECTION, SO IT JUST MAKES SENSE.

IN FACT, THAT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR TRANSACTIONAL COSTS THAT I WAS AWARE OF AS A BOARD MEMBER WAS WE PUT IN A COUPLE OF NEW AIR CONDITIONING UNITS ON TOP OF THE SPACE WHERE THE PERMANENT COLLECTION IS HOUSED TO THE COST OF ABOUT $100,000, AND THAT CAME OUT OF GRANTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MEMBERS. It's an important part of what the city owns. We want to protect it. We are obligated to protect it. And that's what we want to do in the future, too.

Thank you.

Let's see, Jacob, you have your hand up.

Yeah, I just in effort at transparency, I do want to acknowledge that Lydia Hines, the director of the Coos Art Museum, while we have different last names, she is my wife. And for this one, I'm going to recuse myself from voting.

Okay, Sarah.

It's similar. I just want to acknowledge that my life partner is on the board of directors for the Coos Art Museum. I don't think there's a conflict of interest here, but just wanted to disclose that.

All right. Comments from the council? No? All right. If not, how about a motion? Do we need a motion here? Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to authorize city manager to negotiate the terms of the ownership transfer and work with legal counsel to prepare the appropriate documents for the transfer.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to direct our city manager to begin negotiations on the transfer ownership of the building and permanent art collection to the Coos Art Museum. Is there any other discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for the question. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Hearing none, it passes. Thank you very much for coming here. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. There's a long wait, huh? Sorry. Let's see. Discussion regarding community development fees and cost recovery. Chelsea?

Yes. Thank you. So let's see if we can share screen again. Here we go. Okay. Okay, so City of Coos Bay fee and cost recovery analysis, looking at, this isn't the first time we've had a conversation about fees, but the last time it was discussed, council asked for some more information about what's the actual cost of service. You know, if we're gonna look at increasing fees, let's understand what our cost is. So we have since done that. We worked with a group called Ref Tell Us. They helped create a really fancy calculator spreadsheet. You put in all the numbers and it gives you some data. So we did that for community development. And the key findings are that our fees are below comparable cities of our size and also below the current cost of services. We see that the general fund is really subsidizing our business licenses and our development reviews, and that subsidy tends to increase with the complexity, the level of the review. So this is a slide that just shows kind of the overall general cost recovery. There's so much that goes into this, but these are examples. Our public works permits, the fee that we charge right now on average is about 110. The time it takes for staff to process that is about 175. So our permit fee today, we're only recouping 63% of the actual cost. Business licenses, the fee of 90 is an average between the 120 for a general and the 60 for other types of business licenses. They both take the same amount of work, and the cost for staff to process those is about $203. So in that case, we're only recovering 44% of the cost. General reviews we recover about 50% the type 1 planning land use review about 45% Type 2 about 42 percent of costs and then a type 3 only 24 percent of cost and so so you understand a type 1 and a type 2 is something where staff is reviewing in-house and 2 is just a little more complex than a type 1 a type 3 is a staff review that's going to Planning Commission for An actual decision so that requires more work And so you can see like for a type 3 we're only charging 560 but it really costs us almost $2,400 to do that work and And this is just to show where communities, like a standard where you should be, is at recovering 75 to 100% of your cost. And so with every single one of those examples, we're below what would be kind of a standard norm threshold of cost recovery. I wanted to give you an example of other communities and their fees relative to our population so up at the top Coos Bay you've got our kind of average fee and then in brackets what that cost really is compared to some other communities and you'll see like the dolls and Trout Dale they're not terribly higher Dallas is higher Pendleton you'll see that the boxes aren't all filled because it's not like apples to apples not every community has exactly the same permits so just trying to use the best available information but when you look at North Bend we know North Bend has a special situation where they can only raise their fees so much but they're even higher than us in some cases Florence, a nearby community and much smaller, has really across the board much higher fees and then Coos County. So just some comparables to be able to see the differences. And so there's an impact that we have. We get about 150 plus permits of each, planning, business license permits each year. And so if you were to take the cumulative impact, you're talking maybe $150,000 annually in subsidy. And so that just compounds every year. And so looking to counsel for some direction, some options. One option would be to just maintain the current fee structure. That does support affordability for property owners, developers. Another option would be to set a flat fee rate at a percentage of 75% or 100% cost recovery. That gives customers, the public, a predictable number. But we might still be under recovering costs. Another option would to make incremental or specific adjustments. So, you know, maybe look at what's the highest cost of permit or where do we put the most work and effort into something. And you could align your costs with that complexity and quantity. It just would be a little more complex in trying to adjust the fee schedule that way. And then the fourth option would be to adopt a full cost recovery model where you have a base fee that's pretty close to the cost of recovery and then you add on an hourly rate that takes longer. So of course that's less predictable to the customer. It takes more staff time to implement, to track, but it's an option. And regardless of what council chooses to do, we do think it would be wise to implement an annual fee increase that's tied to some kind of cost index. And in the staff report agenda packet you can see kind of the differences between those. But staff really here is just looking for some direction on policy, you know Do we want to continue with the current rates? Do we want to look at doing something different? If so, you know, what is that and then whatever council decides? We're prepared to bring bring a proposal back.

That's in line with that So any questions Yeah on these other analysis, there's no comparison on this the sewer. What so do we this I?

Yeah, I really just was looking at community development So public works permits and so when you say sewer that does like our public works permits do include sewer connections caps repairs site development, but You know, this isn't a full this isn't the whole city comparison of these it's just community development really in the business license It cuts us that much to do a business license. Yeah, really more like $200 per license. Yeah, I

Okay. Well, I think there needs to be some adjustment so I but I'm not sure how the council which way they want to go here With what's been recommended or not recommended suggested.

There's some different options I'll say they probably unpopular Which is we need to bring this up. I've always thought our fees were pretty low honestly, and this is in addition to the fact we don't have system development charges, so. SDCs, yeah. Yeah, SDCs, so we're already, like leaving money on the table, in my opinion. Other communities do have SDCs, not all communities, but we have chosen to forego those to help boost development. And then we've also undercut our own cost of service here to the point where we're subsidizing it. And I mean, we've got to raise it. Here we are talking, we just went through budget. It's tight. We need to find ways to boost this up, unfortunately. So I'm in support of a more full recovery of funds, flat fee with an annual increase. That would be me.

Chelsea, I have a question. Could you give me just kind of a general example of what a Type 1, Type 2, or Type 3 permit might look like or who it would affect?

Yeah, so a type one would be like a lower level planning review, not a lot of discretion, pretty clear and objective standards. And so we do a lot of our housing developed like single family homes. Stuff like that would be a type one. A type two is something that has a little more discretion, a little more impactful. We send out notice to adjacent neighbors. There's more criteria. So maybe like a conditional use permit for a business and then your type threes are like your larger scale developments your Coos Bay Village Tequit Plaza Timber Cove Those types of things so that so the $2,500 roughly for that type 3 is Is going to be nominal to the cost of the entire project Likely when you're yeah comparing those types of projects.

I mean honestly even a type 1 if you're getting a residential

House permit and you're paying two hundred and ten dollars to get that permit when you're gonna spend upwards of four hundred thousand to build a house nowadays, I mean So my my generous on the city's behalf opinion is I hate to Assess fees whenever we can I mean, I think our community is pretty tapped as it is that being said I think Councillor Matthews indicated it I'm going to sort of rephrase it, not necessarily leaving money on the table, but what we're doing is when we're subsidizing these, we're taking monies away from services that we could or should be providing to the community. Good reframe. Because everything we generate is an effort to give back and serve the community. Absolutely. And so if you're doing something, you should have some skin in the game to fulfill that. So I would agree with Councillor Matthews. I'd like sort of the flat rate at 75% to 80%, which is we're getting most of it back.

And maybe still having to subsidize part of it, but it's not as painful So you you want to provide a service and pay 20%? Have the community paid 20% on the fee for that and the and the in the applicant pay 80% You're saying a 80% cost recovery not a hundred percent cost. Yeah, I I strongly disagree.

Just curious, how many of these communities have system development charges?

That's a good question. I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I don't believe North Bend doesn't have SDCs. I know that for sure. But those other ones outside the area, I'm not 100% certain.

Could we get a refresher on system development charges?

It's very complicated.

Yeah, so just simple terms for a simple man.

Yeah, no, it would be very difficult to do, to be truthful with you. So real quick, the water board has a system development charge fee schedule, and basically you're buying into the system as a whole, and there is a set system development charge for various meter sizes that would – basically be your buy-in to the system. And so for a small residential 5-8 line, I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 that you pay the water board to buy into the system. And that's a one-time buy-in system. Paying for initial access. Yes. And that does not include, like, you actually, like, doing all of the hooking up and all those various things. I think that gets you the meter. So it gets you water to your land, but then, you know, you've still got a lot more to go from there. So that's a significant cost. That is significantly more than the cost to get a permit in Coos Bay. And...

But we used to have SDCs. They were, I believe, stopped to spur development. And can you explain why that is much more difficult to reinstate, Nicole?

So my understanding, and I wasn't here, so I need to do a little bit of research when we did that, but all you've done is put a moratorium on. We wouldn't be establishing a new plan. When you establish a new plan, you actually have to go out and say, you know, here's our infrastructure, and how should those fees be applied to improvements? Usually, SDCs can only be used to add to the size of your infrastructure. It can't be just to do repairs and maintenance. It's got to be adding capacity. So there's parameters in there in your plan, right? So we have a plan in all the various areas we used to charge SDCs. We just said we're not doing it right now because we believe it will spur development. So while there are some impediments to setting one up, we've got it set up. We just said, hey, we don't want to We don't want to do those anymore because we think it will help encourage development.

So my understanding is, yes, we did stop them or put them or whatever was done. But my understanding also is that we really would have to do a new plan. Our plan that's existing is not going to comply. So therefore, we would have to start basically from scratch. The other thing I can tell you that other communities, Jacob, for instance, I'll just use Timber Cove, they're waiving SDCs just to get these developments going because it's a huge cost to them. And so other communities are saying because there's this big push for these housing developments and they're trying to find ways. I think the state even is asking for communities to waive that to get grant money and whatever. I don't know if we should go down that road. No, I'm not saying bring on SDCs. No, I'm just explaining to Jacob, right, that I think going down that road. I think that, you know, I don't know, I'm sure if 85 or 80% on some of these. I think, you know, I mean, here's my take. I think, first of all, on the review, I think we can do 171 if you compare it to everyone else. And I think at the type one, we could do, you know, Now, on the others, I'm not sure if we just want to full implement the full amount. Maybe we want to do a percentage increase.

How about a road to recovery?

Well, yeah.

A stepped approach to where we get to the cost of service. Water Board is going through a similar process where the cost of service that we are providing to specific communities is going to be increased. user types is below and it's being subsidized by other ones that are you know paying more than their cost of service so we're trying to get it closer to an even sure rate and it's going to be there's going to be some there's going to be some um growing pains with that harmon how many years is the water board taking to adjust those fees seven

Does that seem like a long time?

I thought it was 10. Yeah, 10. Yeah, it was 10. 10, that's right. 10 years, and I think that's going to be a wise decision to do it over time. Basically, when I look at this... this table right here, I'm like, wow, we need to catch up now. But maybe that's a little bit too ambitious. So maybe jumping it up. I would like to see a stepped approach for how we get to where we're getting to the cost of recovery. I don't think we can get to the point where we're only shooting for 80% of our cost recovery.

I agree. Okay. Because I just sat through the Water Board budget, and it was a really good plan, and it was really evenly distributed amongst different user classes. And this is kind of the same thing. That would make sense to me, too.

Yeah, I think we can get 100% on some of these that, like I mentioned, because they're really comparable to other, like North Bend, you know what I mean? So, but I think, you know, jumping up the business license at that amount right away would be a big leap, so I would hope that maybe we can adjust that differently, and maybe, I'm not, I'm not familiar with the sewer, you know, fee, so I can't address it.

But maybe even a five-year step plan to get to 100%.

But some, I think some you can do right away, I mean.

Yes, agreed.

And the others, I think you need to do a percentage.

I agree with the percentage. We just got a report on what's happening with the permits and licenses and things like that. We still need some help, I think, to push people into those modes of, yeah, let's do this. And I am just not a big fan of saying, well, we're way under this, so let's just double and triple it to get to even 80%. Businesses plan, and development is a business for what they're going to do. in the future. So I think we have to be cognizant of that.

The business license is annual, correct? Correct. So I think that one we need to be somewhat cautious. The general review, that's not annual, is it?

That's per project, per application, yeah.

Right, so that they have to apply for. So those types, I think, you know, they're not going to be that annual one that would be affecting someone on a regular basis. On a planned basis, yeah.

Yeah, that could be handled a little bit differently in my opinion, but anyway. I like the idea of slowly going there and just, I mean, we are asking our community to forego potential services by not recovering, recouping our costs. We are coming up with this money to do this work somewhere. When we're saying yes to these low cost recovery fees, we're saying no to other things that we I think should be doing. Well, Councilor Kilmer, I totally agree. I don't want to stress people out too much in terms of their planning, and we need to help people through what I believe is already a trajectory towards a bit of a tough economic time. That being said, We have to do our due diligence to provide services for our community, and it is going to be something that we can't subsidize forever. And I think we've fallen behind on this without a cost increase.

We have to remember, too, that when somebody puts money into a building or builds something or, you know, takes something from dirt to a, you know— we're adding to the coffers with that development too. So there is encouragement to develop as well or fix a building when we implement the hammers and all of those other things. So yeah, we're moving in a direction and we're hitting them from all directions as well.

Aren't these, do these general, go ahead, Jacob.

Well, I just get a quick question for Chelsea. If we did in some form adopt option four for maybe say a type three application, how would that look to the person getting that receipt? Is it like itemized by the hours that the city employee took? What would that look like?

Yeah, it's not something that we do a lot of right now, so it's a good question. My guess would be we'd have a fee and then you would know that there would be this rate for every hour thereafter and we would be tracking our hours and then through finance coming up with some kind of invoice that shows that, what those hours were put towards.

And we kind of have a model. It's totally a different idea, but we do have a model for that in our public records request, right? We estimate when we get a request in, and it's not just we can just pop this back out to the requester. It's going to take some time to put it together. We give an estimate. And they pay that estimate, and we keep track of time, and then we kind of, we right-size that when we're done. And so it would kind of maybe make sense, we're letting them know in advance what that might look like, cost-wise. Maybe they even pay a portion towards that, a deposit, and then, you know, if there's more due, we keep them informed, essentially.

So aren't some of these costs supposed to be self-supporting for the system, like permitting, right? I mean, isn't that in line with that type of fee?

Yeah, so we didn't look at building permits because building is an enterprise fund. It is self-sustaining, and we did recently look at raising those fees. All of these fees are general fund dollars. Okay.

So I think what we've been talking about, maybe I'm wrong, is this number three, incremental fee adjustments, high cost, high volume permits. Is that what we're talking, is that what we discussed? So isn't that the one that we want to move forward with?

Like a stepped, I can come, I can look at what a stepped approach would look. I'm imagining, this is not my expertise, but I'm imagining it being kind of like water quality, trying to figure out how you're going to implement this cost. So we can look at that and bring something back, yeah.

Yeah, and I think there's some costs you can do, like, right away, move up in comparative with other cities. Troy, I interrupted you.

No, I was just going to say, what I don't know that we specifically addressed was the implementation of an annual fee increase tied to some sort of index. I just like the CPI just because it's publicly known and easy to address. I know it's more volatile than the municipal, but nobody knows what that means. But I think we would kind of address that if we did an incremental fee adjustment cost. That would be built into it.

Well, what I see is we're going to do a pretty big jump to claw back some of those percentages, and then eventually it will get down to a lower percentage annually. So maybe we do a 15% or a 20% increase for the next X amount of years to get us closer to that 100% of cost recovery. Because, I mean, we are... I mean, the highest percentage of cost recovery we have currently is 63%. The lowest is 24% cost recovery.

And that's, in my opinion, that's for the individuals who most could absorb, based on the example, that cost.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, the cost didn't look that large for me. It's like the cost for a Type 3, on average, is... two thousand three hundred and fifty six dollars it's not insane yes and i can see that being you know that's within the realm it's not an individual necessarily but um yeah i'd like to see a stepped approach yeah you know i mean i think there's some you can go right away like again i think you could do the general review type one you can go right to that 171 463 i don't think there's a problem i mean look at the county they're extreme They're much higher. I would not have guessed that. I know.

But I guess I don't think we should be where the county is in our situation. But I think that we could, you know. And then the building grants, I would be cautious on how much we go up at a time. Stuff like that.

So just listening, I don't know. I don't want to put words in your mouth, Chelsea. But I might be confused if I was her whether we were going to do, whether we were just going to do a stepped increase across the board or we were going to take two or three of them and make them 100%. and then step the rest. Is that what I'm hearing?

Sounds like we're cherry picking.

I'm hearing both of those things, yes.

Right. I would be fine with taking two or three of the smaller ones, making them 100%, and then stepping the larger ones.

yeah that's reasonable to everybody else with the goal being to reach 100 on all of them within some x amount of years yeah i don't think you can get there immediately but i think whatever seems fair i don't know five years or whatever it may be i don't know yeah how long do we want to subsidize it yeah i i'd like to see it come back and also um i'm not a fan of municipal cost index either So it's clear, right, how you're going to do this for us?

I'm going to bring back some more information. Good. Yes.

That was great. I think I'd like to see some samples of what it would be.

Just to have an idea of what we think it's going to look like and what it will take. Yep. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry.

All right, city management report.

Just three things and one we kind of already brought up, but I just want to call attention to Leah Anderson from HUD here and just like kind of this reminder, right? We reached out to them two years ago under their distressed community technical assistance grant Our first kind of look was like hey, can you help us with some financial projections? That was what we were kind of like we need to know what the future looks like and and they like did this whole wrap around and what we've got from that is obviously that financial projection piece. They've helped us develop a grant program so a part of how we've grown so robust is because of their work there. They're working with us in our how do we get to yes, those SOPs. We had a whole management training when we had new leaders kind of in these core positions. It's just a huge shout out to get these communities kind of who need just there's just struggling and getting them back on board and Understand they're gonna be working with Gold Beach. So we have an opportunity to maybe tag in some maybe some additional site business So just you know, thank you. It's a great program and really appreciate what it's done for our group here So so were you here a couple years ago?

No, there's a different team

So she's actually with HUD, and we've had Enterprise. So that's who HUD consults with. They have a group of folks, and Enterprise is the one who was connected to us. So they're the ones who've been here. It just happens that the whole team was here today to do some follow-up work on several things, and Leah was able to join them in that. So hopefully she sees live how beneficial this has been to keep that program kind of going. Just reminder that groundbreaking is tomorrow for Inglewood at 4 o'clock. We hope to be kind of short and sweet. We'll have a couple words, get to see the site, and be done. Maybe 30 minutes. And then since we're just kind of talking about housing and development in general, have a check-in on Thursday with Northwest Housing Alternatives. Remember they were folks who were Connected to Englewood. They are also connected to the Gloria Day Lutheran project for senior housing up there They're coming to town on Thursday and asked to reach out and kind of give us an update So doing that and I'll report back to you guys on that All right council comments Jacob Are you muted?

There we go.

Beautiful. Just one little one to say that the Empire District block party is going to be on August 4th from 5 to 7. So if you're in the area and want to come by, it's going to be a fun time, I think. That's it. That's it.

That's all I got. Stephanie.

I don't have anything.

Troy. No comments for me tonight. All right. Carmen?

Well, I have at least one comment. I feel like lately I've been really pushing heavily for fees and recouping costs, and it feels a little weird to be in that seat to where I'm asking for fee recovery, cost recovery for this community, and I just... I think you've probably seen, I do feel fairly strongly about this. It's the sustainability of this community and the ability to do the job that we are tasked with and going through budgets and seeing tough lines here and there. It doesn't feel like we are doing our community a service if we're not doing what we can to make sure that we're protecting our citizens from costs incurred by individuals or companies or anybody who decides to kind of leave something derelict on our plate. And so while I seem to be pushing heavily, I'm doing so kind of with a heavy heart to do that, but I also I hope that it comes across that it's for the entire betterment of this community. But that's just where my mind frame is currently. I really do hope that we can find a way to encourage and be positive in our supportive role as a urban renewal agency for helping businesses and building owners find ways to improve their their assets and improve our community and be a part of this community in a larger way and we would love to help support and know that the lack of SDC's is another one of those things that's we're really hoping to invite people to develop and it's not I think we're focusing on fees right now but it's nice to focus every once in a while on what we are doing to hopefully support development and building and I think that many of my fellow counselors are doing a better job of focusing on the the the assets that we can provide. And I appreciate that there are other voices at this dais that are helping to give the message that we're open for business. We want to see development. We want things to move forward. And that's all I have for the moment.

All right, thanks, Carmen. So, you know, I'm proud that we have this interaction we do with the council and staff. I think it's important. And because of it, we bring up different suggestions and ideas, and that's what we're sitting here for to do. And I'm proud that they're happy that the staff is doing what they're doing, like Chelsea and Jennifer trying to improve things. She's working with HUD and these different agencies to try to find better ways to serve the public and the businesses. We are pro-development. We always are going in that way in economic development. And it's just that we all want to get there, maybe a little bit differently, but we all want to get there. So anyway, I'm pleased that we all have done a good job in the last couple council meetings. I don't know I'd have to maybe go back and read some counselors go back and look and see how we've acted and done I'm afraid to do that so I won't but I think we've done a good job overall anyway I'll end my comments with that because we do have an urban agency meeting to speaking for urban renewal anyway so I'll adjourn the council meeting and we'll reconvene with renewal and Stephanie will handle this thank you everyone

Just a couple minutes like two minutes. We'll take a couple minutes Not long, so don't go too far So that she can get that set up so Christine can get that set up and then we'll be back