City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

And here is number 12.

All righty. I have 7.03. I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. Will the recorder please call the roll?

Councillor Irvin.

Here.

Councillor Hite. Here. Councillor Lammerman.

Here.

Councillor Merida.

Here.

Councillor Settlemyer.

Here.

Councillor Wilson.

Here.

Mayor Solsby. Here.

I'll rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

of the United States of America, and through the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Items be added to the agenda. There are none. No special presentations. appearance of interested citizens. This is a time for citizen comment. The council will first take comments addressing items not listed on the agenda for a maximum of 30 minutes. The council will then take comments addressing action items on the agenda for a maximum of 30 minutes. Individual speakers must be recognized by the presiding officer, provide their name, identify whether they are a city resident, and if so, their ward. Please limit comments to three minutes or less with council approval. comments regarding any matter scheduled for a public hearing may be provided only during that hearing the Council will not make any any decisions based on public comment, however, staff and Council may choose to ask questions or comment, following the conclusion of citizen comments. First cash.

Thank you, Bruce college I live outside the city limits, so I like to start by raising to process issues for the council's consideration and discussion. The Council held a town hall saying it wanted input 300 people by one estimate attended and lots of people spoke supporting the pool in the library. Supporters the library went on together, I think it's now up to 900 signatures from Community Members supporting the library and. advocating for providing adequate funding and staffing for the library. The council has received lots of input. If in the end, those who support the library and gave you input felt the council has ignored the public's input and minimally responded to the library's budget reduction, even with taking 25,000 from the proposed library budget and adding an additional 25,000, the library budget still kept 50%. I acknowledge the council's contribution by taking money from its own training and travel. It has real as well as the symbolic impact. That being said, the budget committee's recommendation to have the library open only four days a week was very telling about the level of support that was being offered by the budget committee. The question is, how likely is it that community members will again provide input if they feel the council doesn't really take it into account in a meaningful way? Point two for consideration, creating a chilling effect on public comment. If a community member who is unaccustomed to speaking in public and before the council sees behaviors from a council member that's perceived as threatening or challenging when someone speaks, how likely is it that the council will hear the quiet voices in the community? I think the council should have some discussion about the role of public comments and input in its decision-making process. I also just want to add that I appreciate the fact that Mike Sauerwein now has the tools by which he can staff the library, and I hope that we look forward to some creative restructuring so that can still function fully as much as it can. Thanks.

Thank you. Chris Holliman.

My name is Chris Holliman, and I live in the city at 324 Adams Avenue. And I need to say that I am on the school board, and I am not speaking tonight for the South Lane School District. And I'm also on the fire board, and I am not speaking for the South Lane Fire and Rescue. But this is a time of hard choices. Our superintendent just went through a round of layoffs at the school district. And the fire department is not replacing staff that retires or gets hired away from us. You know, I look at what the librarians forward or new income is. And it appears to me, looking at other budgets, that the librarian, appears to me, will be of a higher salary than the fire chief or the paramedics. Think about that. Because we're reducing paramedics. Because we can't afford them. The citizens voted down the 47 cent per thousand dollar assessed value for the second time. So we've had hard budget meetings at South Lane Fire and Rescue to where we may eliminate an ambulance, which would mean we might end up with one ambulance. Now, when that vehicle takes a tour up to Eugene at either McKenzie Willamette or PeaceHealth, it's a three-hour turnaround. That means this community will not have an ambulance for that three hours. And yet people are worried about a librarian. Well, when you're having cardiac arrest and there's no transportation to a healthcare facility, are you gonna call the librarian? She makes more, substantially more. Every school in our district has a library. Children will not do without. Everybody is belt tightening. and underfunded right now. That's just a fact. But I think to have a fully staffed library with high salaries to me is ridiculous. Now, it doesn't affect our fire and it doesn't affect our school district, but those organizations are making really hard decisions. And I would like this council to make some tough decisions. And I think it's necessary And I think that the taxpayers are wanting that to happen. And I think that the salary for the head librarian is to me for a town of this size is ridiculous. I think fire safety and education is a lot more important, and we're going to be headed in a negative direction in those departments. So I'd like everybody to think about that. I appreciate it, and thank you for the time.

Thank you. Thank you. Tasha Lavoff?

If the taxpayers wanted it said, they would have voted for it. We've had a library for years, over 100 years. It's our job to support a safe library with adequate employees. I live in Ward 2. I'm Tasha Lavelle. I support our library. We have over 900 signatures that want our library supported. A safe space is important for all people to go. Are you okay? What else I was going to say? But you can't support a library on one or two people and have it be safe for children. End of story. If there's a Code Adam, if there's a safety emergency, you have to have adequate employees, not volunteers. there.

Also, I was going to say.

Thank you. Romney.

Hi.

Hi, Faith. So I'm a little late to the situation here with the budget and it's not a very welcome thing when you're late to the party, especially when everybody else has already worked on a whole lot of stuff, been working hard on the budget. And so you hear these things about the library and it sounds to me like the budget you're needing to make some cuts. And so there's some cuts you're looking at for the library. I agree with the life-saving part of the fire chief and the paramedics. That's important. And figuring out your priorities is hard. Like the pool, we're saving lives. How much is it worth to save two lives a year? So actually, I don't really know what I'm talking about. So it sounds to me like I need to go and check out the online thing, check out the salary of the librarian like Chris did, and check out all these budget items. Once I get into it, it's a little, I kind of really get into it. Oh, I'm Romney Schiffer-Taylor and I'm not from in the district. I'm from out of the city limits. So I wasn't sure if I could even talk up here. So I had some questions, but you guys, can you answer questions? Okay, so the library salary, librarian salary is what again?

We actually, does anybody have that in front of us? I'm not sure we do. 156? Okay.

And that's the full thing. And so then you're looking at other heads of fire and chief and stuff like that. And so, and what are you wanting to cut? And what are you wanting to cut from the library to help with your budget? What's the amount of money you're wanting to cut?

Are you talking about what the budget committee voted on to make some changes?

We took some money out of supplies.

So the number of the budget for the library, how much is the budget for the library? Hi, Dana.

Essentially, the library's budget was half from the previous year, so around 224.

Okay, so the budget was 224.

This was reduced to that.

Before it was 454.

But Romney, something that I feel like I need to clarify is that we did not make budget cuts before the last two years. And we made budget cuts across every other department.

Okay.

And so you need to take that into account. So there's a lot here that you probably need to catch up on a little bit.

And so what I'm trying to understand is that is obviously the library is not being closed.

No.

Okay. So the library was never on the table. Yeah. So I'm just wanting to know, can you tell me right now what the fuss is about?

That's what I'm wanting to know from you. Well, just so you know, even when we were not making substantial cuts, this did happen with the pool as well before anything was discussed. And the same thing happened with the pool that the city wanted to close the pool. And you know better than anyone, the pool is not owned by the city. So- Yes, you do. So that was a huge misconception. And so we had to do a little.

So what would be the most effective and the most helpful from people who are supporting the library? What do you need from them?

What?

You need them to volunteer.

And Romney, you grew up here. You were born and raised here. And you remember when we were kids. The library was ran predominantly on volunteers. And so we did do this in Cottage Grove. That is not what we're asking for right now. We are asking for some patience. This is not a forever thing. Okay. So patience. Yes. And patience regarding. Counselor. Yeah.

I do think that this public comment time probably is not the best forum for the back and forth. And so this may be a fairly short meeting. And if you want to stick around, there can be quite a bit of discussion. But each person gets three minutes.

Is my three minutes up? No problem. I was just wanting to clarify in public what was going on. That's all.

We appreciate that. Thank you, Romney.

Yeah, and what could be helpful to be.

All right. Bill Christensen.

I'm Bill Christensen, Ward 1. And I just wanted to clarify that whenever I'm in a tough situation in life, I always just remember one thing. And that one thing is do the right thing. Do the right thing. And if you take some time and search your heart, and spend some time quiet time with these issues. A lot of times you'll know what that right thing is. And I don't mean do the thing that's popular. or do the thing that groups are wanting you to do, or do the thing that brings a lot of handshakes, or do the thing that makes you feel good, or do the thing that other people want you to do. But do the right thing, and not just for yourself, but for the people of Cottage Grove. the overall population of Cottage Grove, not a subgroup. And I would encourage you that if you do that, and I follow this principle, if you do the right thing, God will take care of the rest. I'm just bringing that into it. If you do the right thing, God will take care of the rest. And my life is a testimony of that. So I just want to encourage you to search your heart, do the right thing, not the popular thing, the right thing. If you do the right thing, it'll all work out. Thank you.

Thank you. Tyreen Perry. Did I say your name correctly?

Hi, I am Tyreen and I am from Ward 2. Hello Council, Mayor, and members of the public. Because of some comments that have been made during this process, I am here to speak on behalf of the library, but more specifically on behalf of the stories it contains. Stories are how humans share ideas, trace causes and effects, and pass on the content of character from generation to generation. They are the material of aspirations and ambitions, the means by which we imagine different ways of being in our world and different ways of shaping it. Handing dominion over our stories to a handful of large organizations driven by profit has already had and will continue to have a profound effect. It gives those organizations an outsized influence over what kinds of lives our children grow up wanting to live. I will not shy away from speaking on behalf of diverse stories. Stories with alternate definitions of what it might mean to be mature, what it might mean to love, of what it might mean to be heroic, of what it might mean to be a family. Stories that stepped in and helped me understand myself when no one else would. These stories too are essential to a civilized society. All children should be able to see themselves reflected on the page. All children should have paths opened up to a variety of possible ways to shape their futures. I will admit that I also stand here as something of a boogeyman. because I will not shy away from speaking on behalf of stories that wax sympathetic about characters others call villainous. Milton's Satan, Shelley's Monster, Maguire's Elphaba, For the profoundly disadvantaged members of our society, stories like these can shine light in the dark. Opening one's eyes is never a mistake. All stories, not just commercially successful ones that get TV or movie deals, not just the ones that pass through careful curation and moderation on podcasts, popular internet platforms, not just the ones that gain featured placement on store shelves. All stories, even bad ones if viewed through a critical eye, broaden people's horizons and are forces for good in this world. Our library as a repository of stories, those you agree with, but those especially that you question, is a force for good in our community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sarah Aloy.

Hello, my name is Sarah Aloy. I live just outside of city limits and I'm an active member of Cottage Grove. I am a homeowner here with a Cottage Grove address, and my family and I source majority of our essentials in Cottage Grove, spending our money in locally owned restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, retail shops, mechanics, food trucks, the list goes on. The point I'm trying to make is that my voice matters in regarding to city decisions and actions, and I cannot sit here through another meeting where members of this board belittle out of town people's participation. My future children will attend schools in Cottage Grove play in its parks, swim in its pool, and hopefully read books in its library. After the town hall meeting where over 300 community members attended to show their support and concern for budget cuts, I had the opportunity to speak with a councilman for nearly an hour and a half. I will not go into details of that conversation or the conduct of his family members in the following weeks. But he did express to me that he himself has never stepped foot inside of the library. How can he know what the library means to anyone? How can any of you, even those of you who have been inside the library, know what it means to each of us? Luckily, you don't have to. What you do have to do though, is listen to the hundreds of voices directly telling you the importance of it. It's your job to represent your constituents. And I'm not seeing enough of that happening. What I am seeing is a lot of personal biases and opinions dictating the way you're voting. I have watched or attended every budget meeting and time after time, I have heard personal prejudices slip through. I hope those of you that have said unhinged statements and embarrassing remarks are ashamed. This behavior is not okay. It's unacceptable. It's embarrassing to watch our council people and budget committee members receive HR lectures in the middle of these meetings. I beg you to set your personal biases aside and start acting on behalf of the community. Please listen to the 900 plus voices on the petition and make more of an effort to fund our library. We are not asking for the world. Please show up for the library the same way you showed up for the pool, AKA pull the funds from the same fund you pulled for the pool. You've said it yourself, the fund has not been used in years. Please prove me wrong that you are not voting on your own behalf and biases and start voting on behalf of your constituents, the job you signed up for. Finally, I'd like to thank you councilmen that are listening and hearing us. Thank you for truly representing your constituents properly. We see you and we appreciate you. A few of you have done your best work within the limitations of the budget to represent the will of the town and have been finding real solutions. I hope your fellow committee members listen to your voice as well. Thank you for listening to mine.

Three Milan.

Greetings and thank you for your service to our community. Audrey Malin here, resident of Ward 3, to speak to increase funding for our library. During the May 19th Budget Committee, Councilman Lammerman said, I'd like us to look at the City of Keizer's library, 100% volunteer operated library. Their total cost is 61,000 a year for a city of 40,000 people. They do it just fine. So on Thursday, May 21st, I spoke with Cindy Hunt, the vice president of the Kaiser Library, board of directors, and also a volunteer of the library. It was really interesting talking to her because I said, well, I'm from College Grove. They're trying to defund our library. And they said, your library is all run on volunteers. And she said, like any librarian, let me stop you right there and let me tell you the facts. So this library is less than 15 years old. It started out as a group of people trading books. They created a nonprofit foundation about 15 years ago. The library is all the books in there are donated books. They have two part-time paid staff. One is a librarian manager, the other does grant writing and community outreach. All of the librarians time is spent training, managing and scheduling the volunteers. The other paid staff spends most of her time writing grants. Their annual budget's 60,000. The city gives them 30,000 per year and a building for 100 a month. The city covers all the maintenance, taxes, and utilities for the building. She says it takes one to six months to train a volunteer. They do background checks on every volunteer, and the volunteers have limited access to the main computer. And the volunteers sometimes don't show up and they have to close the library for the day. And they aren't part of a librarian consortium for sharing books. She also said that the town of Kaiser is very dedicated to volunteerism. They use it in the motto of their town and it's a big part of the culture in their community. And I'm not sure our community has that. So they have 16,000 books. They don't have any audio books, CDs, games. They hold one event per week. Our library has about 45,000 total items to loan and holds roughly four to five events per week. So it's a bit like comparing apples with oranges, although it was really interesting to talk with them. So here we are. While accounting errors have required a 13% budget cut across multiple programs, the library proposed budget reduces funding by over 55%. With one full-time employee and no resources to build a program to to transfer our library from such a dramatic transfer formation will require a lot of time and resources and this budget does not so we're based you're basically cutting our library at the end of June, with one full time staff. So the petition we've been circulating says to support adequate funding for the library. So adequate funding is the bare minimum of 2.7 employees to ensure that there are always two staff members in the library during open hours. Audra, are you close? I'm almost done. Thank you. My apologies. I talk too much about the other library. So we are asking for 50,000 more for the library to fund those staff positions. And that's less than 1% of the $12 million budget. Public comments supporting funding for the library have been made at four city council meetings, three budget meetings, one town hall with over 300 people. We have over 900 signatures on the petition calling for adequate funding for the library. How much clearer do we have to be to ask you to adequately fund our library? Libraries are daily demonstrations of our democracy. It's central to democracy. I list all the things they do. An attack on our library is an attack on our democracy. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Cassie?

Hello, my name is Cassie Schoenleber. I live in City Limits. Good evening. I, like too many of my fellow Cottage Groveans, really don't pay attention to what our city officials and city council do to and for our city. We absolutely must change that. We have to pay attention. Due to our city official errors, you will be hurting our very own city by these budget cuts. I started to get involved more, still not enough, when I learned that the Heritage Foundation's goal is not to take over our federal government, but our local school boards, our small town city governments and councils, along with our state government. I thought for sure our twice winning all American city would stand for people who want, who wouldn't stand for people who want to destroy our constitutional rights and freedoms. I'm starting to think I was wrong. Our little town is no longer even being close to being an all American city. The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 wants to eliminate our education system in all libraries. They released this information April, 2023. One of our council members said that he wasn't wanting his children to go to library because of the books they might see. He then said, he's never even been inside the library. So you're going to vote to severely gut our library in hopes to close it at a future date.

You can be quiet. Thank you.

Can we have orders? And you can stop my time and tell orders. Go ahead. Thank you. This is ridiculous. We're adults. This is the only place for access of free books, internet, and a quiet, safe place for everyone. I wonder how many of you have been inside and took the time to look around or to talk to people who are in the library. You can raise your hand if you've been inside the library. Thank you. Okay, so not all of you. That's cool. Libraries are cornerstones of democratic society, fostering lifelong learning, cultural preservation, and economic development. They are neutral and inclusive spaces dedicated to providing readers of all backgrounds and identities with access to a wide range of information and books. Exactly why libraries are being closed. Can't have people thinking and learning. I'm curious on how many of you are a plant for the Heritage Foundation's infiltration of America's small cities. I'm going to guess it's probably at least one of you. Our town is and deserves better. So please do better. Be better.

We were calling for order just a minute ago, so. Go ahead.

Thank you. Our town needs and deserves better. So please do better, be better, or be voted out. Almost 900 people have signed a position in support of our library. I'm sure there would be more if more people knew about it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Amy Merida.

Amy Mary day word three. We're in this agenda. Do we see this board working to establish policy? Taxes hypocrite.

Please address us Miss Mary day, not the audience.

Okay.

I'm offended that, um,

Librarians have been repeatedly referred to as some kind of unskilled employees. And I just wanna mention that the terminal degree for a librarian is a master's. That means you can't call yourself a librarian unless you have one. It's called a master's. It's a little bit more complicated than becoming an ENT. Mr. Sauerwein, I'm sorry. I'm so disappointed in your performance. And I want to address this board and say that unfortunately, Mr. Sauerwein has to go in his next performance evaluation. Let's not pretend that he didn't oversee a mistake that was 10% of our budget. Okay, I like you. That's not the problem. You failed at the job. Okay? My house is not on fire. So I don't know why I should support the fire department. My house has a less chance of burning down than my chance of going to the library at least once a month. You also oversaw what was happening at the community center, including the library. You weren't the department head, but other department heads, such as in the police department, came up with funds to support their department. The department you were overseeing really did not. i'm sorry about that, because the library is very important.

Donna Lewis. Shauna Lewis she online Oh, thank you.

Hopefully I'll be a little bit better than I was last week, but probably not much. This is all very, very uncomfortable for me. So the committee's goal is tough because it's budgeting. I'm new to meetings. There's been at the town hall and at these meetings, there's been five or six really strong examples of how money could be reallocated and moved around to meet the needs to properly fund the library to have more people instead of cutting it to a point that it won't function well. I'm sorry. Schools having libraries do not help adults and it doesn't help children during the summer. And libraries are more than books. There's people like myself, they're not tech savvy, don't have computers don't. And even if I did have a computer, I would need I don't have family or friends that are going to help me but a librarian will. I remember when there were some volunteers at the library I absolutely 1000% would not trust, because they were gossips I have not had that experience with professionals. So I don't think anybody intends to make it a push or pull between the police and. and as you talk about the history of Cottage Grove, and I'm a lot older than you, this town has always had an interesting seesaw of opinions where the school has been closed. I think, unfortunately, personal opinion, But since the federal government's spending a billion dollars a day and fighting over tearing down a White House, people are voting no, or maybe they wouldn't before. Because I definitely want our officers to have what they need. I don't want an officer to be working alone. I want them to have backup. We need our EMTs who used to be more volunteers. When I was a lot younger, we had a huge volunteer fire department. We don't now. So I guess I would encourage the council and the committee to also watch past meetings because we all say things we don't realize and also everybody's intent and what they say and how it's perceived is also often misconstrued. So hopefully people could understand the intent. And I also want to say I've been very disturbed by how some speakers in the audience have been treated.

Thank you. I want to address a couple of things that were brought up tonight. One of them being when you live out of the city limits, your say does not matter. That is not true. I lived out of the city limits for many, many years and not many, many, but quite a few before. That's the reasoning around that. It's not that your say does not matter.

Of course, So on behalf of myself, I would assume I could speak for council. I want to say that you're doing a phenomenal job. This budget issue was not your fault. I don't care what anybody says. This was done prior to you. The city manager is no longer here.

The majority of the city council who approved that budget is posted somewhere online. You know, when you're traveling up I-5 or down, you're looking for the next place to dump. We need to load it down to where it won't impact the facility.

to vote on a budget. So I would like to have some information hopefully for us to talk about next meeting. So I'm hoping that the staff, if we think it important to give us some updated information since it's three years, three years, about three months since this draft budget started getting information together and stuff. I'm hoping that they will work maybe on if they have any information that might see more funds in the transient lodging tax and the budget carry over being two funds that I would think as the year has gone on, maybe we can adjust those funds to give us better information moving forward. And I'd like to hear from the police department if they know when their new police cars might be in service. And the reason why I'm doing that is I found myself looking over in the police funds And I hope they don't need all their money to fix their cars if they're getting new cars real soon. So there's a fund there that maybe I'd like to talk about. But it would be interesting if we had any estimation on when the new police cars will be in service. So... Is that something that I can ask if people agree that it would be nice to have updated information?

Mr. Sauerwein. Good evening, Your Honor, members of the council. We are scheduled to do the third quarterly budget update at the June 22nd meeting. And if you would like, I'm not sure whether we've received any additional transient lodging taxes. As we've discussed before, we get those supposedly from the state that are sometimes a bit sporadic. But I can certainly see, get you what we have and haven't. As far as the end of the year funding balance, I think we budgeted what we thought was a reasonable estimate. I can certainly talk with our interim finance director and see if there could be some adjustments to that from when we first put the budget together. But again, it's my understanding that all of this information will be in the third quarterly budget update.

So I guess I'm unclear. The second quarterly update, I don't remember it saying anything about the transient tax, did it? And make an estimate. I know that we were talking about spending less than we budgeted and you had wonderful information on that. Would it be I think we'll get that kind of information, but I'm just going here that where it actually says on the state document that was shared with me, it says the governing body, us, when we're doing the budget must take all available information into consideration when adopting the budget. This information includes the public testimony presented at the budget hearing, which will be next week and it's been for a while. And any new information affecting estimates of upcoming years resources or expenditures. For example, if a higher beginning fund balance, additional grants or other resources are available, the additional monies can be added to the applicable fund balances and additional expenditures plan. I agree that we will get some information on a third quarter budget update, but I think that that will, be a hard turnaround for us to make any kind of the wise guesses that we could get from the city staff, focusing on the two funds I was thinking of. And one was mentioned here, potentially knowing about the upcoming, the upcoming information on this transient taxes and what we might be looking at for the cash carryover, please.

Well, as I previously stated, we will get you any updated information we have on the transient lodging taxes. And I will talk with the interim finance director about whether or not we have an updated ending fund balance.

Thank you. Anyone else? Councillor Meredith.

Thank you, Mayor. So I hope that we will take into account the numerous public testimony that we've had throughout the process. And what I'm hearing over and over again is that it's vitally important for our functioning of the library to have at least two staff present during the hours of operation. So I hope that we'll be able to look at PB, David Ensign he or him, Look at where our budget is and what we what adjustments, we might need to make to ensure that happens so before we. PB, David Ensign he or him, approve the budget, I know in the in the current forum, I cannot cannot and will not support the budget in the current form so i'm hoping that we can we have seen a number of. of pathways towards getting the funding that would ensure the staffing levels of that level, that we have the adequate staffing levels. So I would hope that we would choose one to make an adjustment.

Councillor Sotomayor.

And I'm sorry, I maybe got lost in there somewhere. Chief, do we know when new cars might be put in? Is that just a dream that it's known by now?

Mayor, Councillor Settlemyer, if there's a consensus of council that you want some research on this, I'm happy to look at it and report it back to Mr. Sauerwein. He can share that information with you guys, but I'm not sure addressing or asking specific questions like that in this meeting.

We were asked to look for funds that could potentially be transferred. When I looked at the budget for the past three years, is that what the buildup is? there's been a $30,000 fund that pretty much gets spent by maintenance for cars in the police department. I think it's absolutely wonderful that there's In the same another part of the budget that talks about $540,000 of new vehicles being done. I didn't feel like I was attacking our current police department to just see, hey, there's $30,000 there. And it's the same amount as with we've all heard stories. And I definitely understand the cars are falling apart. So I would hope that the council could get some feel for, is there going to be a new fleet? And perhaps with what we're talking about, dire times now that we could consider taking some of that $30,000 and using it somewhere else in a positive way. Chief?

Mayor, Councillor Settlemyer, first of all, there's no accusation that you're attacking me or the police department. I don't take it that way at all. I just think procedurally, this isn't the proper way to address the budget line by line. If you look at the budget as presented and you look at our overall materials and services and you look at the reductions that have been made, all of that stuff, the way that we put those budget numbers together are ahead of time, well ahead of time And those conversations are had internally about what we think we're going to need to operate our individual departments. That's then presented to the city manager, who's the budget officer who presents it to the budget committee. So those conversations have already occurred and have happened. So as far as grant money that we've applied for, we haven't received the grant money yet. So we're in the initial stages of being told by our state representative, our Congresswoman, that we were approved to receive that money, but the money hasn't come in yet. So when you look at that item, if you wanna go and look at the capital outlay in the proposed budget, It essentially accounts for $800,000, which was the amount of the grant that we have been told that we were awarded but have not received yet. Other than that, if you look at the previous years, we've zeroed that out. So we've accounted for nothing outside of the $800,000 that we may get or that we're supposed to get. So when you look at everything else, I mean, we've made significant reductions in the budget in the police department. has been underspent significantly year over year since I've been here. And when you look at buying vehicles, outfitting vehicles, whether or not we get the money when it actually does get here, making those purchases, we've cut so much out of our materials and operating supplies that at the end of the day, when you look at how tight this budget is, not just the police department, but everywhere else, moving money around for positions. I mean, at some point, there's no more money to move around and there's really no more for us to cut out of the budget. So we need money for fuel. We need money for maintenance. We need money for oil changes, tires, brakes, all of those things that we have to do throughout the year. And we also need to make sure that if our vehicles go down, we've got some way to replace them. Right now, aside from this grant money, we don't. So if that grant money doesn't come through in our cars, for whatever reason, something happens to them, there's no cushion in this upcoming budget. So.

Councilor Sotomayor.

Thank you very much. That was exactly what I was asking. And maybe I shouldn't have asked, but I just... I'll admit I just bought a brand new van. So I wouldn't be in the position to having to figure out how to fix them. And I just thought, Hey, maybe there's some place there that we didn't look at. Thank you, chief.

So I have to kind of a second, uh, the chief's sentiments with that. The biggest issue is you can look at the 800,000 grant. That's simply what it is, is a grant. It's not gonna be there next year. It's not gonna be there the year after that. When you think about it, the city manager and all the staff have presented a budget that has been fairly well stripped down compared to last year. Everyone's nitpicking all these little line items, but you don't stop a bleed by cutting it again. You can try to pull out money where you think is not necessarily needed, but maintenance doesn't only talk about a water pump going out. It doesn't talk about all these other major things you would think of when you think of maintenance. It's simple things also. That being said, I know there's some comments about me not going to the library. Honestly, I work too dang much to have extra time to go to the library when it's actually open. Most of the time I'm working six, seven days a week doing something. I don't have time. With that being said, Just because I don't go to the library doesn't mean I can't look at numbers and figure out that something needs to change. When it comes to the library, in my opinion, the radical minority is dictating how the body does what it does. We have one council member up here with the library t-shirt on right now. which in my opinion isn't right, because this is a nonpartisan body. They're not thinking about what's saving the library, they're thinking about the individuals who work at the library. Everything just keeps coming down to personnel, not the library. If it was about the library, we wouldn't be pulling 25,000 out of materials and services. I could keep going on for quite a while, but I'm not going to, because we have more stuff to get to, but go ahead.

Okay. Well, today is actually a special day. It's someone's birthday in here, and he is probably not going to be happy about this, but Mindy is so wonderful and make sure that we all remember. Thank you, Mindy and Jessica. So today is our city manager's birthday and we want to wish you a very happy birthday, Mr. Sauerwein. Happy birthday. All right. Business from the city manager. Item A, proposed self-serve RV dump station and water fill station. Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Mayor. So we tested a little bit in regards to this with the fee schedule. So this is an information only item and would accept comments or concerns. So for several years, I've aspired to create a pill station for drinking water. I was looking to do this in the industrial park, most likely along the wide streets so that... We'd be able to accommodate folks that are wanting to fill their swim pools, or we occasionally get folks that have wells, whether they're in the city limits or outside the city limits that are failing, and they come and purchase water. Right now, the only location to do that is at the city shop, and it takes a lot of time. staff time to accommodate those requests. So the idea is to create a self-serve fill station. Some of you may have seen these in your past at other cities. Benita has them. E-Web has them around the city. Eugene Sub has them. And so I had been interested, diligently trying to find a location for it. Then we suddenly have the RV dump station that there's a need in our community. And so I focused a little bit harder and I proposed to the city manager and the finance director that how about we look at purchasing the odd shaped parcel number 600 in the industrial park. and create a fill station and a dump station there. People would be able to get off the road to be able to, those streets are extra wide. So some of these very large RVs would be able to be accommodated by going in and out of this location. And then I added some additional thoughts. I'm not trying to, encourage, but there is more space there than is needed to create an RV dump station and or water fill station. We could also, the proposed site plan is there's about 10,000 square feet on the east end of this piece of property that could be hard surfaced. There's been a lot of community conversation. There's been times a desire in the community to have a place to put yard waste, grass clippings, those various different things. It might be that this facility or this site, we could partner with somebody that's in the composting business. There's two businesses in Eugene that provide that service. Maybe they would operate a facility there. on the complete opposite end of the property to the west. The property gets really narrow. It's very difficult to be able to put something there that's usable. But another thing that's come up in our community is that Part of our town is divided by the river, the Coast Fork River, and we have sewer lines, we have water lines, various different things that cross the river. We have bridges that could go out in an earthquake. And one of the other ideas is to... located a connex box or something similar to that that could be housing emergency response items. So a small package filtration plant for water, various different things that could accommodate meeting folks needs during an emergency. So this is a thought. that I've had and I have discussed these concerns about the price of the RV dump and the location of it and trying to address those concerns. Getting this as far away from the sewer treatment plant will minimize potentially the impacts of us getting something that's in a smaller quantity as was stated earlier. that it would have the ability to dilute its way to the facility. We won't have to man this site with a person to operate it. Folks can operate it 24 hours a day, self-serve, so it could accommodate people's needs better than at the present time. You can only get water at the at the city shop during our operation hours, which is generally Monday through Friday, 7.30 to 5. But it's even more restricted at the wastewater facility for RV dumps, which is Monday through Thursday, excuse me, Monday through Friday, I believe it's 8 to 3, and then on the weekends from noon to 2. So those hours are really not great for folks that are traveling and getting back from their vacations or their camping trips. So I wanted to throw this out there and make sure that there was no glaring no's on this and we'd like to continue to develop this thing.

Council President Ervin.

Thank you, Mayor. It's a resounding yes, and thank you for hearing all of the requests over the years. I'm thinking Cottage Grove pump and dump comes to mind. But there's another, I remember actually Amy Merida brought it up many years ago, it seems like now, but the purple pipe is wearing purple tonight. As being something I know the potable water would, I think it's a fee based, like there's a card system. Is that what you're typically thinking of? But maybe the irrigation type water, non potable water could be a free resource if that's piped out there, but just a, just an idea. And I, and I really like partnering with another group or I know right now it's at the water treatment plant. Is that mulch out there, but the kind of thing where people community can come and it's just a, it's water and holds the resource.

Yeah.

Mayor, Councilor Irvin, thank you for discussing the affluent reuse program. We do have that in mind to offer a similar type of a structure. We might be able to offer that at a much reduced price than, I don't want to say free, but we might be able to get it at... A reduced price and we do have locations. We have a fire hydrant at the dog park right now. Excuse me, the disc golf park and we've extended the purple pipe into Bohemia Park. So there is an opportunity maybe to create a fill station for people that are looking to use water reuse for gardening and various different things. Um, we also have, uh, established a fire hydrant at the disc golf course so that the fire department could access that affluent water too, to cause you can legally fight fire. My understanding with that treated water.

Councilor Hunk.

Absolutely. Yes. For me too.

I think this is a great idea.

I love the 24, sorry, I'll try to talk louder for you. How soon could this be done?

Well, I'll engage this probably tomorrow or Thursday with our engineering firm and start putting together a site plan for it.

Councilor Wilson.

As I stated on Friday, the sooner the better, in my opinion. And then addressing the The larger section, almost 10,000 foot section, definitely in favor of partnering with Lane Forest or Rexius. I think Lane Forest probably, in my own personal opinion, would be the company that would be most likely to agree to do something like this. And I think that would be a great asset to the community as opposed to what we have now, which is really not much of anything for that type of accommodation.

Councilman.

Madam Mayor, Council. Quick question. What would the total cost of setting this be, setting all this up?

I don't have it anywhere yet. You can buy a self-serve water distribution facility from somewhere between $25,000 to $40,000. Very similar for wastewater. It just depends on which brand you go with. And then it'll require us to put some hard surface down enough to meet the planning requirements for the construction of the site. So it's most likely going to require paving and various different things to do. have any of those monies been thought about with the current budget we're looking at, or would that be something added on to a capital project? Mayor Mrakas, And they're through like a resolution, at some point, resources that comes from each other, please, so this isn't this isn't this is all five or the capacity to use. Mayor Mrakas, sharpest facility. City Council Chambers, council meredith.

um it's not untreated water but treated water um i just wanted to say that i saw the splash pad in effect and the kids were having a ball it's treated drinking water that splash pad is thank you we're not using a flow out there yeah counselor sotomayor

I might be a minority in that I have seen the wonderful roads that lead to that area of our city. And I haven't been down there more than once out of curiosity. I think it's wonderful. You elaborated a little bit more on Friday that this is one of those really tough to market pieces of the industrial site and the idea that we can just bring in, I mean. You've mentioned a little bit for everybody, the idea of emergency response things. You know, I'm an old science teacher and we always talked about what if the earthquake? I welcome that, that there's a little bit of a response there and everything else sounds wonderful. Thank you.

Mayor, Councilor Sandmeyer, thank you for that. prompting me. As you can see, this piece of property is very odd-shaped. We have actually, since I've been here, I believe, received four offers. The council's accepted the offers and for some reason they fall apart before they actually... perfect the purchase and sell agreement and pay the city. So this piece of property is available. And that looks like it would do a really nice job meeting the needs of what we're trying to accomplish here.

Thank you, Director Stewart for your forward thinking. We appreciate it. All right, report from the city manager.

Well, good evening, Your Honor and members of the Council. I'm having a hard time believing that I'm going to be 64 years old. My father, who will be 91 next month, informed me last week that he didn't believe I was going to make it to 18. You know, I always tell people my parents raised two perfect children, my older brother and my younger sister, and somewhere in the middle they had me. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, especially Mindy. I really appreciate you and Jessica. Thank you very much. Just a couple of things I wanted to update you on. First touring the Weyerhaeuser Mill. We see staff's been in contact with the general manager and we had talked with them about a remodel project that they were working on. That project is still ongoing. They have suggested that maybe we set up a tour for the city council in late July or early August. So more to come on that. We'll bring back some dates, some possible opportunities for council and also for the media to tour the facility. Second, dealing with the swimming pool, as I think we discussed during the budget committee process, there were really two things that the budget committee and the council asked staff to work on. First is they said that if we're going to be providing $75,000, that we need a seat at the table. Had a great meeting this afternoon with the school superintendent and the school finance director. And we suggested forming a committee that would provide that seat at the table. We'd have city staff, representative from the city council, school staff, and also representative from the friends of the pool group that's recently formed. So looking for volunteers from the council for somebody to join me in meeting going forward. Anyone interested? Councilor Irvin.

Yeah, Councilor Irvin.

Okay, Councilor Irvin, I'll be getting in contact with you when we set up a meeting. The school district did ask that we wait till after graduation, let them get through the month of June. So we'll have our first meeting in July or August. But we already kind of outlined kind of a scope of work of what we want that committee to do. Oh, the second thing that was asked was that we work with city staff and we also work with the school district to update the contract that expired about eight or nine years ago. And we went through the existing contract and we passed out copies at one point, it's like two pages long. And so we will be updating that. And then the final thing I had this evening is a little, we talked a little bit about this our last meeting, is we have a couple of ideas for a citywide cleanup. And there was a request to create a city council committee. And last meeting, we said we'd wait for volunteers. So again, council members who are interested in volunteering to be on a cleanup committee. Great. We got a lot of great. We will. We will form a subcommittee of the whole for the cleanup committee. And that would conclude my report, Your Honor.

Thank you. No city attorney. So this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.