Council - Regular Meeting

17th, 2026 to order at 7 p.m. and ask the city recorder to call the roll.

Council President Briggs. Here. Councilor Berantos. Here. Councilor Blosser.

Here.

Councilor Fitzgerald. Here. Councilor Holzapfel.

Here.

Councilor Jantz is excused. Councilor Schilling.

Here.

Councilor Shane. Here. Councilor Spivey. Here.

Please join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States

All right, thank you. Have any introductions tonight? No introductions tonight, Mayor. Okay. I have a script I read before we do public comment. For the record, please provide us with your name and whether or not you live inside the city limits. You have up to 3 minutes. It's your turn to talk and ours to listen. You are responsible for the content, even if it was written by someone else. Please direct all comments to the mayor. Do not direct your comments to individual counselors, staff members, or the audience. Defamatory or libelous comments will not be accepted. It is expected that you'll maintain decorum and respect for each other. A wide variety of viewers watch these proceedings. Therefore, we would kindly ask you refrain from the use of offensive language and name calling. Distractions, take attention from the speaker, the audience, city council members, and city staff are asked to focus on the speaker during their time by respectfully being quiet. Do we have anyone who wants to testify tonight? We have anyone on the phone? Nothing. We'll close public comment and move on to the consent agenda. We have four items on there. The July 2026 financial report, approval of the work session minutes and council meeting minutes for July 20th and a street sweeper purchase. Does anybody want to move anything off of the consent agenda tonight?

To approve. Second.

Councilor Schilling, seconded by Councilor Shane. All those in favor?

Aye.

Passes unanimously. All right. Reports or comments from mayor and council members? Any council members have any reports tonight? All right. If not, we'll move on to reports from the city manager.

Thank you, Mayor Slack. So we just have the one report tonight and is identified in the packet. It's the League of Oregon City's legislative priorities part two. So at the last meeting, we gave everyone the 2026 member voter guide in your packet. So hopefully you brought that again today. and had opportunity to review it asked if the council had any questions between meetings to go and send those to me i didn't hear from anyone so hopefully you all had an opportunity to review this um so tonight is just another opportunity to begin the discussion um if there's topics that you like or if there's things you feel we could cross off or if there's questions that you have we can certainly um attempt to answer those tonight, or if not get an answer, at least identify those questions to ask the league policy analysts and lobbyists, kind of maybe some background or history to any of the topics that you want. But if you don't have any questions, we can certainly just get to the voting tonight and go through that process to select our top five. Again, the goal is by September 25th to identify our top five priorities of the 27, noting that the league staff, the lobbyists will certainly advocate for or against, depending on the topic, all of these 27 items as priorities going into the 2027 session. But our input to the league board is gathered with all the other cities that vote. And when they meet in October during the league conference, they will take all that feedback and identify the top five priorities for the league lobbyists. So those will be kind of the areas where we'll put a lot of emphasis, a lot of lobbying into those. And then everything else, as bills come up that address these certain topics, they will focus on those priorities as well. So with that, I'll kind of pass it back to you, Mayor, and facilitate a discussion amongst the council.

Okay, quick question. So the 25th is when we have to have our stuff back to them?

25th is when I have to submit our voting ballot. So our last meeting, I believe, is that earlier that week. And so we can continue this discussion for the next two meetings in September. But by the second meeting in September, the council has to pick your top five.

Given that it's not crushing the urgent, I'd like to have a little more time to go through some of these in depth.

Council breaks.

I wanted to ask a few questions about the infrastructure funding on page 37. They have a... What's the page number at the bottom of the page?

18.

Okay.

And I guess the question I have is, would this help us in any way with our finished water or our raw water in our dam? I don't really see it would help that. There is some aquifer language in here, but how do you see that affecting our situation with our water?

Yeah, so there's kind of two components to all the infrastructure bills. So the state has a special public works fund, and we always advocate, the league always advocates to retain that and retain its funding and increase the amount of funding that gets put towards that. So that's one thing that they'll do here, but they're also looking for expanding different funding streams, adding some funding streams from the state, being a little bit more flexible with that requirements within the infrastructure funding that's given. So yes, I do believe that with our infrastructure projects, whether they be the water, with our finished water, like the Jamestown tank, or the dam project, or any of our sewer or stormwater projects, That's kind of all encompassing within here. So if that was a priority and infrastructure funding tends to be one of the league's priorities, at least has been the last couple sessions, and it may be again this session because it continues to be, I know, a need throughout the state of Oregon and many of the cities, then that's what we would really target. Keeping the existing funding streams alive with the funding, hopefully increase that if possible, and then look at maybe some other funding sources that the state can create as well. advocate that that would be one of our five certainly would be sure would be for me because one of my five so that is the number one priority great so it sounds like we might get some consensus around that particular topic sounds like we just about do yeah are there other questions or or thoughts that council wants to share at this point

I'm kind of interested in the public meeting law clarification, because there are some warts in there that don't really make anybody any safer or better protected. And there's some stuff in there that really is from where I sit, bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake. So I would put some muscle behind that if I could.

Governor essentially vetoed the bill that was passed the last session. But I will say that that is a topic that I think with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission and their implementation of, in their interpretations of public meeting laws, the League of Oregon City and the Oregon counties, the Association of Oregon Counties, the special districts and others throughout the state were really pushing for some clarity in the public meeting laws. And we received that through the House bill that was passed this last session. But that was one of the few bills that the governor did veto. And so while we felt we had a good win, it didn't survive the governor's desk. So I think that there will be a push for that again, maybe some refinement to the bill that was passed this last session so that it does make its way through the governor's this time.

and although it's it's labeled as clarity I think part of it is streamlining also and that's part of what I'm interested in that's great I didn't mark this as one of my priorities but I did have a question about um an acronym uh on page four it's row r-o-w

Right of way?

Right of way.

Yeah. So like your streets or trails, the right of way.

I guess that makes sense since it's transportation. It's just like, what's wrong?

Under the broad brand and cybersecurity, the last one was supporting municipal cybersecurity proficiency. Since we contract with the county for that, would we benefit from support municipal cybersecurity proficiency? Do we contract with the county? We do, yes. So we contract with the county. Would this benefit us?

Yeah, I was just reading the kind of recommendation. So the LOC opposes unfunded mandates and will advocate for technical support and funding to give all cities access to innovative technology, enhanced state programs, cybersecurity notification resources, and assistance protecting critical infrastructure and data during cyber attacks. I was reading the background on it, and it didn't really give me – I think some good context. I don't know where this is coming from. So for the city of Dallas, we have purchased cybersecurity insurance through our insurer. So we have that as a tool. If we were subject to a cybersecurity attack, we contract with Polk County for our insurance. information technology work. And they put in a lot of protections and securities to ensure that we're safe and do a lot of testing to make sure that we don't make mistakes or that if we do, we get trained to not make mistakes when they're real. So we're, I think, as an organization on top of cybersecurity pretty well. But I can find out more of the the context to this, if there was a specific example or maybe a specific statute that is preventing a city from being able to access something on the cybersecurity side.

I'm just wondering if this adds or assists in protections in case we fall prey to a cyber attack and we get ransomware or something that holds up our infrastructure in the city, if that all gets covered through the county, because I'm guessing that if it happens to us, it happens to them.

Maybe not. There's potential with that. The county also has their own cybersecurity insurance that they've purchased. So again, because if the... security issue occurred because of something that a city of Dallas employee did, right, through our system. The potential for it to reach into the county system is there, so it could impact them as well, but our insurance would be liable because one of our agents caused that attack to occur. If the county employee, say, opened up a cybersecurity issue, and that made its way into the city of dallas their insurance would cover the claim towards the city of dallas so that's how the insurance aspect of that would work um but i don't know if this it doesn't i don't know reading it doesn't seem that it's saying that the funding would be for like those cyber security attacks but would be more funding for um preventative measures right to prevent you know and build up the the infrastructure to uh reduce the risk of a cyber security attack um the city's ability to respond to a cybersecurity attack with, you know, ransoms and things like that, that's going to come through the insurance that we can purchase, which again, the city has already done. So I think this is more about funding to, you know, give cities access to tools and systems that will help prevent cybersecurity attacks. I can find out more of kind of the context of this, if you want, before the next meeting.

This was also my number two. And I, the question I have is I know the county handles a lot of our

internal uh technology but i don't think they're involved at all in our wastewater treatment plant or a water treatment plant those are all susceptible to potential hacking so they are they cover all of our systems so yep the county does so the county covers all of our i.t from our water treatment plant on the the west side of town um to our wastewater treatment plant on the east side of town and all of our facilities in between yes

I heard the word unfunded mandate somewhere in that discussion. Are there some issues there? A, are there issues there? And B, would this address them?

That's what I need to find out. Again, there's probably a specific ruling or a law that came out that was an unfunded mandate towards cities. I don't know what that is. So I'll have to do some research and find out.

I was hoping my colleagues would give some thought to number 19. That's the Emergency Communications System Resources. And what we're really talking about is dispatchers, the dispatch centers. And what I can tell you from my training experience is those folks If not volunteering, they're mandated to work double shift or long hours. The folks there, a lot of them call in sick a lot because they're so overworked. And they're the unsung heroes of 911. We talk about the police officers, the firefighters, the EMS. But the whole 911 system is a critical function of the emergency management system. And what they need is obviously more staffing, more technology, and things like that to better operate that 911 system, to make it better than what it is right now. So if you haven't looked at number 19, maybe take a look at that, give it some thoughts. I'd be interested to hear what other people think.

Could this address that directly, the way they have it worded?

Well, I believe it would have, I mean, I, I believe it's a dress to, um, look at the dispatch services, the fundamental system that supports a public safety.

Yeah.

Uh, Carlos, that was my number two on my list.

Um, thanks for that. I'm going to read up on it in detail.

And that was number five for me. You're saying 19, which page?

The bottom of page 13. The bottom of page 13, yeah. Yeah.

I just called out as number 19, if that's a little bit easier to follow it that way.

I just don't know. Where are you getting 19?

He numbered them himself. I follow the 19th one down there.

In the Carlos numeration system.

Yeah, in my world.

It matches my numeration system as well, Carlos.

Okay, all right. A great way to do it.

Two.

Two. Brian, on page 10, there's the discussion about community energy resilience and disaster planning. And could you talk a little bit about how that would impact Dallas? I know we occasionally lose power and other infrastructure items and would this be beneficial to the city?

Yeah, so the recommendation for the week here is to engage in some efforts to provide planning resources, technical assistance and funding for those natural disasters which cause energy shortages or disruptions. So yes, the city of Dallas has been impacted through natural disasters and ice storms, wind. You know, other events that cause power outages, you know, in and around Dallas. And so, yes, I think anything that would give additional resources, technical assistance, you know, some funding to be able to kind of harden your system could be a benefit to Dallas.

Did you look at maintaining affordable energy while supporting grid hardening and modernization? I would think that I looked more at that one than the one that you just talked about. It's on page 11. It had a little bit more teeth in it and a little more direction.

14 is more directed towards the hardening of your systems where the first one that Counselor Spivey was talking about includes more of the planning piece and thinking of it that way.

Just wait. Since I have your attention. So, back up to the General Government Committee. Did everybody look into the Administrative Procedure Act reform? The Administrative... That act took place in 1972 and has not been updated in many years. And we've noticed this dealing with the reservoir. The rules that govern the different agencies throughout the state play by different rules. And we get different answers from every agency. And that's what that one is looking at is trying to put the agencies under one playing field so that if they're making a ruling, they're not ruling against something else. They have to communicate a little bit, a lot more.

Sounds like it might help break down some silos a little bit, too.

So it limits the use of emergency orders. It helps a little, too.

Well, and that's the big where I've got to get back to it. The regulatory breakdown directly impacts local governments when uncoordinated state agencies issue overlapping or conflicting rules. Cities are left trapped in the middle, forced to navigate a maze of contradictory mandates that drain staff of time and stretch city budgets. Furthermore, recent court rulings have stripped away traditional checks on administrative reach. Cities have lost the ability to challenge flawed, one-size-fits-all state regulations that ignore local realities. And the other part of this is it brings the public back into the commenting instead of it just being an emergency act.

I would say I don't have a vote, so I'm not going to comment on whether or not this would be in my top five. But this is certainly something that Dallas has had to encounter recently. And in other cities I've been in where, you know, you're working with a state agency on, you know, maybe they're the ones that are offering the permit, but it's being reviewed by four other agencies and the other agencies give conflicting information with what the agency you're trying to get the permits from. So it can really be a challenge working through this. And so this act, while I think well-intended, has not been touched in many years and could probably be used to refresh.

That sounds vaguely like some stuff we're dealing with right now.

So if you don't have anything else, I'm glad that you've dove into this document. So our next meeting is on September 8th. I'm not here that night, but Emily will be staffing the council that night. So certainly get your questions to me. I will be here up until the 8th. I'm leaving that day. And so... But I will work to get those answers to any questions that you have between now and then, and then Emily will come with those answers that night. Anything else on this for tonight?

All right, are we ready to move on?

Sounds like it.

Okay. All right, we're ready for first reading of ordinances.

Ordinance 1926.

First one is ordinance 1926.

Ordinance 1926 is an ordinance pertaining to the granting a non-exclusive franchise agreement to Spectrum Pacific West LLC, an indirect subsidiary of Charter Communications Incorporated. So this is a renewal of a franchise agreement with Spectrum or Charter, whichever way you want to look at that. And so during the committee meeting, there were two things that they wanted to have us look at and negotiate together. with this agreement. Both of those are included in the agreement. The first was getting the insurance rates to mirror better the other agreement that we're going to consider tonight. And so the movement that we were able to get was under the commercial general liability. The proposal that the committee looked at was a $1 million per occurrence and a $2 million general aggregate. They increased their general aggregate to $3 million, which marries up with the other document. And then the other section was Section D under insurance. This is on page 60, where it says the grantee shall require contractors and subcontractors working on grantee's behalf to maintain adequate insurance related to their work in the franchise area. So the committee was, this provision did not initially exist, but we wanted to make sure that the subcontractors of the franchisee also maintain insurance for the work that they're doing. So that's the language that staff and the company agreed on.

Questions on that ordinance? If not, I'll declare to pass this first reading. And second, next one is ordinance number 1927. 1927 is...

An ordinance granting to Forged Fiber 37 LLC, the right to construct, operate and maintain telecommunication services in the city of Dallas, Oregon. So this was another franchise agreement that the Admin Committee looked at just a few weeks ago. There wasn't a change to the insurance limits in this one, but the committee did want the similar language regarding the contractors to be included here. When this report was written, we were still working with the the company on some language that they were agreeable to. So if you go to the insurance section on page two and three, under section, yeah, under section four, subsection two, we'll add section E, or no, sorry, after subsection two, 3 under 4, so section 4, subsection 4. So after subsection 3, we would add this language, which we agreed to today, which is companies shall require contractors and subcontractors working on this company's behalf to maintain adequate insurance related to the company's work in the right of way. So again, allowing contractor, requiring contractors and subcontractors working on the company's behalf or the franchisee to maintain adequate insurance related to the company's work in the right of way. So that's the language that we would include before your second reading. What is adequate?

Shouldn't there be a number there? One million, two million?

That's right.

So in this one, it says two million per three in the aggregate. In the other contract, we had one million and three. Why the difference?

State contracting rules are one and two. Right.

And this is two and three. And the other one is higher. Which is higher. Yeah, I get that they're higher, but why are they different is my question.

Because that's what they offered, right? And that's what we agreed to. So the initial agreement in the other agreement that we looked at, the initial proposal was $1 million and $2 million, which is the state minimum requirements. We're trying to move all of our contracts to at least one and three or two and three. The company on the other agreement, Spectrum, was willing to increase their aggregate to three, but they wanted to keep the 1 million per occurrence. I felt that was fine. So that's what we just did on the first reading for. They already offered two and three with this company here. So we weren't proposing a change. I don't think that we need to include the language under contractors and subcontractors, because that's really between contractor subcontractor and the franchisee um so whatever the franchisee is going to require for the work that they're doing for them is what they will require um we're going to require the insurance to be the two and three so if there's a claim from us on the franchisee we would be under the two million three million limits um with this agreement the other thing is the the reason we talked about the subcontractors and the their pushback on that and i think it's it's correct is

The subcontractor's insurance kind of depends on their scope of work. They have subcontractors doing a very small job. They wouldn't necessarily require the same insurance limits, which is why that one is a little more ambiguous. But the key thing is it's ambiguous, but it's on the franchisee to make sure it's enough.

And it still satisfies the state requirements.

our reach is to the franchisee, not the subcontractor. Their reach is to the subcontractor because we don't have a contract with the subcontractor. So if they don't want to increase it higher, that's their prerogative. They would have to cover it up to two to three.

I think it's good for us to have language that puts a nod to the franchisee saying, hey, we want your subcontractors to make sure they have insurance, but it's really up to them on the limits that they're going to require. If we didn't have that language, there's nothing that says that the franchisee would tell a subcontractor they had to get insurance. So I feel good knowing that we're requiring the subcontractors to have some level of insurance and leaving it up to the franchisee based on the scope of work for the project that they're doing.

if legal thinks the word adequate is fine. I'm concerned about these vans from out-of-state license plates rolling up in front of your house to put your service in, and these guys are contracted from, you know, who knows whether they're licensed or not, and who knows whether they're insured or not. If you say that our agreement's with the franchise and that's the number that we can go after if they cause damage, then I'm okay with that. But I'm really concerned about all the non-

And, and it is, and if, if there's a drop there, then they would be, the franchisee would be liable to the city for not ensuring that the insurance was proper by their subcontractors. Franchisee that would be on the hook. Yes.

Any more questions on that ordinance?

So just before you declare it to pass its first reading, so we will incorporate that language under subsection four of section four for your second reading.

All right. We'll declare it to pass its first reading then. Let's move on to ordinance number 1928.

Thank you, Mayor. Ordinance 1928 is an ordinance related to background checks for city employees, volunteers, certain vendors, and participants in city programs. So this is the first time the council, any council members are seeing this ordinance. It's coming before you because there's some rules within the law enforcement database system, which is the system used to do criminal background checks and things of that nature. So in order for us to conduct background checks for these purposes, because you're supposed to only use leads for law enforcement purposes, you have to have an ordinance on the books to... to do these types of background checks. So that's really what the ordinance is about, is just enabling us to continue to do background checks the way we have for these certain types of checks. And this would be part of the municipal code if it were to be approved by the council.

Are we exposed in any way because we don't have this on the books now?

I don't think there's any risk of anything that we've done, but it would be something that if we don't pass an ordinance, then we can no longer continue to do background checks for employees who have, we can't do a background check on someone that makes application, but we can do some background check on someone that has received an offer from us, right, for employment. So that would be the employee side, you know, volunteers, certain vendors who will work with the in areas that do law enforcement you know data have that information there um so yes we want to we want to be able to continue to do that but in order to do that we have to have this I don't think there's any liability moving backwards but if we don't pass this then we'll have to stop doing those background checks the difference between how we've been doing them in the past and what we're expected to do in the future Chief, if I say anything wrong, feel free to come up and correct me. I don't think the process of doing a background check will change. We'll continue to pull the same information. What we will do is, and I specified in the agreement here a little bit, um you know there are certain things that we will look for we will craft an administrative policy that will say you know if if we find these things through the criminal background check um then the police department will give a recommendation of um recommend or do not recommend um to the uh you know hiring manager if that's what we're doing the background check for um and so the the specificity of that is going to be outlined in policy um but yes we'll is that not how we don't think so It's similar. Chief, you want to maybe come up? I'm probably maybe missing a new one.

This is appearing simply because there was a change in the ORS and OAR.

It's a change from the Leds policy itself.

This is housekeeping. Every year we get audited by leads and for the past couple of decades, they had no problem with us doing these backgrounds along with numerous other cities. This time they decided we need to have an ordinance and we need to have a defined criteria for recommend or do not recommend to pass our leads audit. If we don't pass our leads audit, they could theory strip away our ability to access leads. So we either have to have this ordinance or we have to stop doing criminal histories on backgrounds, one of the two.

choice there, really.

What is certain contracted vendors and appointed city volunteers? What would that entail?

If we have a contractor come in to work in the buildings, especially on the CJS side, on the police side, we do a criminal history check on them to make sure they're okay to be in that area and access that area unsupervised. That would be a type of vendor that we'd do. Another one would be an IT person from the county. We have to do criminal history background checks on those to get them authorized to access our systems as well. Vendors would be the ones that we do criminal histories on, like all CC vendors.

So when we have a vendor doing work, we ask their employees to fill this paperwork out. They know ahead of time we're doing the background check?

Yes. Everybody that's exposed to this fills out a document, agrees to it, and signs for it.

It's the ride-alongs run here. Is that new? It's not new.

If we let someone do a ride-along in our patrol vehicles, we run a background check on them.

It really is just housekeeping.

It's exactly what we've been doing with the ordinance that goes with it. Right. And we're not the only city. There are a bunch of us out there that have to do some housekeeping on this audit cycle.

Just for clarity, Chief, anyone that has any access to a terminal that has CJIS information has to be cleared, correct? That's why you have to do it for ride-alongs, because you have NDTs in the cars.

to be cleared to be access in the same access point as that terminal to actually access the terminal it goes beyond what this does um this wasn't wouldn't affect that but we fingerprint them and and do all kinds of stuff so it's my concern is are we telling these folks we're going to do a background check on you yes yes so they know like oh maybe i don't want to work in your building right yeah and we've had that that's okay i don't want to go on a ride along we've had that too and that's okay okay hearing is that we're not really changing anything in the way we do business we're just putting in writing right we're just uh they've they've decided that we were in we're not in compliance along with a bunch of other government entities right and we're getting into compliance if we don't comply then we can't do it if we continue to do it they take away our access to that system which means if something was stolen we couldn't put it in the system it's still so

How many years or months and how long do you have to hold on to this paperwork?

I'd have to look at the ordinance. It's written into there.

Is that something new too?

No, the retention's not new. Okay.

Other questions for Chief Mott?

The retention's three years, Councilor Brandesis.

It's for a non-hire, right? It's forever for a... Yeah, select for a vendor or volunteers three years.

For a hire, it's permanent.

Thank you. All right, any more questions on ordinance 1928? Not all declare it past its first reading. Let's move on to resolutions. Resolution 3577, repealing resolution 3440.

Yep, thank you. So resolution 3440 was a resolution that established the stop sign on northbound 11s at the intersection of L and L. So you remember when we did a temporary measure to help the traffic flow there before we signalized that intersection, we adopted a resolution to install that stop sign. Now that the signal is there, there's no need for the stop signs. In fact, the stop signs don't exist anymore. So we are repealing the resolution that established that northbound stop sign. We don't have a resolution for the east-west stop signs. Those have been around long enough that they didn't have a resolution. And so this resolution simply repeals 3440. We're just doing some cleanup work on the records.

Questions? If not, I'll ask the city recorder to take a roll call vote.

Councilor Spivey? Yes. Council President Briggs? Yes. Councilor Berrientos?

Yes.

Councilor Blosser? Yes. Councilor Fitzgerald? Councilor Holzapfel?

Yes.

Councilor Schilling? Yes. Councilor Shane? Yes.

All right, it passes unanimously. Is there any other discussion tonight? If not, we'll declare the meeting closed at 7.37.