City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good afternoon and welcome to the May 27th, 2026 City Council Work Session. Thank you for joining us in this hybrid meeting format today. For work sessions like this one, there is no opportunity for public comment and those wishing to access the meeting can do so by watching the live stream available on our website, the broadcast on Comcast Channel 21, or by calling into one of the phone numbers listed for this meeting on the public webcast and meetings materials page of the City of Eugene website. Thank you again for joining us today. And I now call the May 27th, 2026 work session of the Eugene City Council to order. We are beginning today with an executive session pursuant to ORS 192.6602 review and evaluation of employee related performance. The Eugene City Council will now meet in executive session held pursuant to ORS 192.6602 . Representatives from the news media and designated staff shall be allowed to attend The executive session and all other members of the audience are asked to leave the meeting. Representatives of the news media are specifically directed not to record or report on any of the deliberations during the executive session, except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made in executive session, and at the end of executive session, we will return to open session and welcome the audience back into the public work session. Councillors, please log out of the public...

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CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE TO INTRODUCE OUR SECOND TOPIC, WHICH IS A WORK SESSION ON THE POLICE AUDITOR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is Carrie Peraldo. I'm the Employee Resource Center Director, and today we are here to do our performance evaluation or your performance evaluation for Police Auditor Craig Reneske. Mr. Reneske was hired as the City of Eugene Police Auditor on August 20th of 2025. And the employment contract with Auditor Renetzky states that Council shall annually review and evaluate his performance in a meeting to be held sometime between March 1st and May 30th of each year. For the auditor evaluation process, we will alternate yearly between an informal process and a formal process. This year is an informal process in which Auditor Renetzky submitted a self-evaluation to reflect work that he has done in the first year and goals that he has identified for the future. And then next year, staff will solicit feedback from a broader group of stakeholders and provide that to council in advance of their evaluation cycle for next year. So today is the opportunity for you all to provide feedback to Councillor Renetsky. And Mayor, I can turn it over to you. I also can summarize any of the compensation information that's included. before or after you do your round of comments.

Thank you very much. I think we'll come to that after round from council, and I have Councillor Leitch and then Councillor Groves in the queue.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Auditor Renetsky. You certainly didn't come into this position in an uncomplicated time, and I really have appreciated your steadiness and your leadership of the department really helping the community, and I know you have and you will continue to do that in a way that's helping them understand our system, how it works and functions. Not every city has a really well working civilian review board, truly independent police auditor system And when it's functioning well and doing exactly what it's intended to do, everything is smooth. And you have enabled our department to feel smooth that way. Every time that I've felt like I needed to reach out and communicate with you, you've proactively reached out to me first and given me the information that I needed to be able to make informed decisions. what to do in moments that have been really tense. And so just really appreciating that steady and calm leadership. And so thank you for your work and I will, I'm sure we'll come back after the compensation questions so that we can get a motion on the table.

Councillor Groves.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Auditor. I appreciate the work that you've done so far. I really don't have any questions about the AIS or your self-evaluation. This is more, you have a tremendous amount of experience, very impressive. You have excellent credentials, and again, I think you've done in the past nine months a very, very credible job. I'm interested in hearing your assessment. It's leadership and culture. If you've had a chance to interact, I'd like to get your nine-month impression. Thank you.

I think they do an outstanding job overall. I think a lot of police departments have issues, and Eugene Police Department is no exception. Two things are very telling. One is that a number of the complaints that are generated come from the department itself. That means to me that they are holding themselves to a standard, and when they see something that needs to be reported, they're comfortable reporting it. The second thing is, like I saw after the recent incident, that officer resigned and resigned quickly, and I think that is because he knew he would not be tolerated at the department. To me, that's also an outstanding sign. Every department, like I say, has issues. The bigger problem departments, that those issues are accepted and tolerated. Everybody that I've spoken to within the police department since that incident made it very clear that They did not appreciate his thought process. It doesn't represent them. So I think all of that points to a department that is definitely a lot better than other departments that I've seen in the past.

Thank you for that explanation. I'll just add, my experience overseeing a fairly large public safety organization, people carry on that kind of dialogue that we experienced us with people they're comfortable with and the fact that he was speaking with out of state and not with other EPD officers that's something I noticed right from the get-go anyway and I know there's a lot of people out there that think well this should have been by listening to the recording but how many people would you have to have on staff to listen to all the police recordings that are generated 24-7-365.

That's an impossible task. Most departments don't do that. One of the things that people need to understand is the body-worn videos are activated typically when they're on a call. I believe this was what we call an accidental activation. He did not know it was activated. And you're correct. He was talking to someone out of state. Notably. I mean, if he was talking to another Eugene police officer, that was one of my initial concerns. I was relieved to see it was not. But yeah, there are departments that that's tolerated and accepted, and it's not in Eugene. I have had other people complain about things like that when they occur, which... That's what we want. But yeah, it's impossible to detect all misconduct. I'm just gonna be honest and realistic with that. It can't be done. But what I think is most important is that when it's identified, it's squashed like a bug. Just indicating we will not tolerate it and we're done. And that's what happened here.

And I know it's in everybody's heart. I get that, I understand that. I've been in similar situations. I really appreciate how fast you jumped on this too. I mean, within five minutes on that Saturday of me becoming aware of the situation, from a call from a constituent that had seen it on social media. I was just getting ready to call you and the chief, and you called me, or I could even call you. So I just really appreciate that proactiveness and jumping right on. You know, what is a community impact situation and an awful situation? Thank you, and thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor Scherzinski, and then Carrie, I'll ask you to summarize some of the information for our discussion of motions.

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to share my appreciation for the work that you've done since you've gotten here, and particularly the very proactive and clear communication both with council, with other community members, and with the public, really putting that effort in to make sure that we are aware of the things that we need to be aware of, of sort of helping to make sure that we have a a better shared understanding. I'm being very proactive about that and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I'm going to just add for a moment, Auditor Renetzky, that I want to acknowledge again my appreciation for your clear, consistent, available communication and the work that you have done to help our community understand the value of an independent police auditor and to understand that as exactly what it says in the title, independent of our police department and a separate doorway for our community to engage with when the question is about public safety and the extension of community values and consistency with our policies and local laws. I want to especially appreciate that earlier in this year, reaching out to both you and to Chief Skinner to make a very clear public statement about three different legs of support that our community has when dealing with public safety and community concerns about public safety, that they have elected officials, they have a mayor, they have a city council, they have a chief of police and they also have an independent police auditor. And that collectively, the work to ensure that we are working together, but also for our community's benefits and having integrity in our work, having transparency in that work, and also accountability in that work, It's really a dynamic system between all three of those and the public, and I really appreciate the way that you've approached this work, the seriousness that you've brought to this work and the availability of this work, and the fact that you openly observe our continuous opportunities for improvement. That is very much appreciated by myself and I know this body. Carrie, would you please summarize what you were mentioning a moment ago about our motions and options?

Yes, perfect. So as a reminder, prior to our recruitment for the police auditor position, Council established a salary range for the police auditor position. That salary range starts at $129,000, $188,000, and goes up to $174,387. And it's equivalent to grade 11 of our nonrepresented pay scale. When Auditor Renetsky was hired, he was placed at the top of that scale, so he is at the 174,387. Importantly, the city's nonrepresented employee compensation structure does not provide for increases beyond the top of the range. However, the employment agreement for Renetsky does provide for a COLA increase at the same time, and at the same amount as the non-represented employee group. So a COLA would be applied automatically through the contract to the auditor pay range and then subsequently for auditor Renetsky. But otherwise, according to the contract regarding any merit increases, Renetsky's employment contract still allows that council can consider increasing his compensation at the same time as the annual performance evaluation, which is what we're here for today. And then lastly, this isn't entirely related to compensation, but I wanted to reference it, and if you had more questions, Mr. Ronetsky can add to this, but he does have an interest in possibly adding his ability to teach locally at the university. It was something that he had done prior to coming here, and so if that is up for consideration, I wanted to add that at this time as well. and I'm happy to answer any other questions about compensation.

Thank you so much. Council, any questions regarding what was just shared? Any clarifying questions? Councilor Zelenka, Councilor Leach, Councilor Kuczynski. Councilor Zelenka.

Yeah, not on that. That was very clear.

But I just wanted to add my comments about police out of Rosensky.

I think you're doing, Craig, you're doing a great job so far in the nine months you've been here. The transition went as smoothly as I could have hoped for. And so I applaud you for that, your skill in being able to do that. I was talking to the mayor earlier when we were talking about How long has he been here? It seems like you've been here a long time and you just kind of hit the ground running, which has made me think that we did make the absolute right pick when we picked you to be the next police auditor. So thank you for the job well done. I also thought that the the way that you handled the racist officer incident recently was really well done, represented the office well. And I'm wondering if you thought that we could have done anything differently than the way that was handled. I thought it went well, but I'm curious what you thought.

Well, I haven't completely finished looking at the way we handled everything. I want to look at some of the hiring process to make sure nothing was missed. But I think as a general rule, it surely seems like there would have been nothing that could have been done to detect this. I think it's important to note that most officers ride alone, which means that they're not necessarily communicating with another officer that would hear that. In this particular instance, he was on the phone with another state officer and I get the feeling, but I have no way of knowing it, of course. that if he had had that same conversation with the Eugene officer, I would have found out about it, because he would have internally reported. It would have been reported. Other than that, other than perhaps expanding the timelines for people reporting things, getting more reports, I really love it when people come to my office and say, hey, this is what I've seen, or this has been my experience, because it gives us a chance to look into it. That's the whole front line, is if we're not aware of it, we can't look into it. So the public are really the eyes and the ears, and when they come forward, that is where the process gets started. So I don't know that we could have done anything differently other than just encourage people to come forward when they see things.

Yeah, thank you for that.

Also, a question about the police culture.

People have criticized that there's a culture of racism. Racism is strong and well in America, especially recently. And Eugene's not immune from that, from the racism, and exists here, unfortunately, in Eugene as well. The question here is how pervasive is it within the police department? I don't know, but I can point to a couple of things that leads me to believe it's not extremely pervasive. The chief's response that this was unacceptable, your response that this was unacceptable. The union came out right out of the block saying this is unacceptable and this racist officer does not represent us. And then the fact that the officer was not talking to anybody in EPD, but was talking to a friend out of state in Utah, probably didn't have that feel like you could talk about that, like you just said, within EPD. All that kind of leads me to think that it's not pervasive. But I'm wondering what you think. would be the next steps for training? Because you get to recommend training about police and more awareness about this kind of circumstance.

So that's really the second phase, and I have not gotten through the full evaluation. I think... One of my background is I taught a class on racism. So I gotta tell you with this incident, was I surprised? No. Was I shocked? No. Was I disappointed? Absolutely. There is no magic wand. There is no way of making things change. And you're right, Eugene is no different than any other city and it gets it. I think the most important takeaway from this that I saw is twofold, or threefold, actually. The union's response, but just talking to officers, they're really disappointed that this guy was among them. I think that's very telling, but also the chief's response. The chief is the one that sets the tone. The chief clearly wasn't gonna tolerate it. I wasn't gonna tolerate it. Education, is never a bad thing. But I gotta be honest with you, I don't know that education alone is gonna stop racism. We've tried that for years. So if I knew the magic trick to it, I think we all would have solved it a long time ago. So I think we just need to do whatever we can, continue to send a message that it will not be tolerated. Try some more additional education, but do I hold hopes that we'll wake up tomorrow and racism and sexism will be gone? No, I don't.

Yeah, I agree with that. If anything, it's getting worse. Well, finally, you don't usually get to test the metal of a police hunter, but you're thrown right into the fire after nine months. So I think you pass that test really well in the transition that your office is going through and the hirings you're going to be doing. AND THE SEAMLESSNESS OF BECOMING THE NEW POLICE AUDITOR REALLY SPEAKS WELL TO YOUR QUALIFICATIONS AND THE JOB THAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU.

COUNSELOR KISHINSKI AND THEN I'LL MOVE TO COUNSELOR LEACH.

YES. THANK YOU. I WANT TO SAY THAT I VERY MUCH BELIEVE IN COUNCIL APPOINTED AND HIRED EMPLOYEES BEING TREATED CONSISTENTLY WITH OTHER EMPLOYEES OF THE CITY. AND SO WANTED TO KIND OF HIGHLIGHT THAT WITH THE TOP OF THE SCALE, SINCE THAT'S NOT SOMETHING A MERIT INCREASE AFTER SOMEONE'S REACHED THE TOP OF THE SCALE ISN'T SOMETHING THAT WE WOULD for non-council hired employees. That's why I'm leaning that direction for this case. That is not at all a reflection of the work that you're doing, that you're doing amazing work. That's the reason. I did wanna ask with the teaching at the university, would that just be like one or two classes sort of off city time?

Yeah, this obviously could not conflict with the job. My thought with teaching is essentially this. These are the next generation of leaders in law enforcement. In the past, I have taught a lot of people that have gone into law enforcement, a lot of people that have become public defenders or lawyers. One of the things is there's a scarcity of experienced police auditor type people so that occasionally I'll get requests, can I consult on this, can I advise on this, and the answer's no. I think teaching a class or making myself available for those sorts of things that don't conflict with the city work would be helpful. Obviously it makes up the compensation, but I think it also benefits the community as a whole.

And I notice in your employment agreement right now, Section 1.2 prohibits you from, or it says that you have to be the exclusive employee of the city. So to allow you to do that would require, would we need to make a motion to say change the employment agreement? Yes.

So as of right now, he... it is prohibited under the contract. So if you wanted to allow him to have outside employment, including at the University of Oregon or anywhere else, you would need to have a specific amendment to this contract.

I would be interested in sort of adding that to the regarding our appreciation of his work to have staff amend the contract to allow, I mean, not like,

Employment everywhere, but like specifically about teaching I Have councillor leach in the queue and also emotions to discuss councillor Keating I just saw you partially wave a hand is that to be in the queue? Thank you

Thank you, Mayor. Again, thank you, auditor, for all of your work. And I think the timing of the question of a merit increase for me is really important. It's been less than a year. We set that range and got you at the top of that range. Next year, we have a full performance review. I think that's a really good time to really analyze the scale again. I'M SUPER APPRECIATIVE OF YOUR DESIRE TO TEACH AND AMENDING YOUR CONTRACT TO INCLUDE THE ABILITY TO DO THAT.

SO I WILL TURN IT. SO IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE YOU INTEND TO MAKE THE FIRST MOTION, IF THAT'S ACCURATE.

I INTEND TO MAKE The first motion with an addition, so basically the third.

So I'm just trying to figure out which one to add on the language around teaching.

Craft language around amending the contract to include. Or outside employment although if we want to only include teaching or you know, right The other contracts have been limited to teaching so that would be consistent.

So if you wanted to Add to the end of that motion and to authorize the council president to execute a contract amendment allowing for The auditor to teach a course That would get you there

Thank you, City Attorney. Councillor Keating, and then I'll turn to Councillor Leitch to put a motion forward.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a whole laundry list of comments that I was going to make, and I do plan on making them that are laudable in regard to the auditor's service to our community. You've been wholly accessible, transparent, you are engaging, and your community outreach plans that you have articulated both publicly and privately are welcome and appreciated. I do, however, have some issue with amending a contract on the fly. This is the first I'm hearing about a longing to seek outside employment or engage in in a teaching capacity at the university. At this juncture, when there's so much turnover in the auditor's office, I would submit, or from my perspective, it seems that the auditor would benefit from having as much hands-on engagement with your new employees, and especially at this tumultuous time in history. I would be very interested in exploring that outside of employment, maybe year two, once we have a full year under your belt, but there is no mention of this amendment in our AIS or in any of our or our most recent one-on-one even. So this is coming as a bit of a surprise for me. So I would not necessarily be interested in honoring said amendment because it does seem kind of 11th hour. I would support other merit increases, but I wouldn't want, though I recognize the intent is that would not detract from your commitment, I get that, I would want our auditor at this point in history, any one of our three employees, our auditor, our municipal court judge, our city manager, to be wholly focused on the duties this council has hired them to do.

If I can just address that real quickly. I haven't even spoken to the university, so it's not like something's in the works. And I think the other thing to be realistic is teaching schedules are set far in advance so that any teaching assignment would not even be for the fall. It would perhaps be for the next spring. So it's all a distance away, I think. So it's not like I'd be starting tomorrow, clearly.

I hear that. I appreciate that. If that is part of the motion, I am going to vote against that for the aforementioned reasons. I do, however, want to underscore the merits of this evaluation. You have outlined reforms appropriately, changing the You've mentioned both publicly and privately that you would endorse changing the amount of time that a person can engage with the auditor's office. Would you commit to 60 days, or would you support moving the 60-day timeline to a six-month, and that six-month to a two-year, Auditor Renetzky?

I'd support any sort of an extension. I think due process has been somewhat my theme, and that I don't want someone denied due process just because they can't get their case before us. But I also recognize the importance of not being able to come forward 30, 40 years later becomes an issue. So yeah, I don't have a set number. I think that anything that would provide more public ability to access the system is great. I recognize that a lot of times that the people that are coming forward have suffered a trauma or a traumatic event in their life and it's not something they can go, oh, okay, I have to come by tomorrow. I think those things get lost. But as far as a specific number, I'm open to just about anything.

Councillor Yee and then Councillor Leitch.

Yeah, really quick, I just wanted to share. I would not have a problem with changing the employment agreement to allow you to take classes as one of your supervisors. I would like your entire identity to not be police auditor. I hope that you were able to use your skills and your talents in other ways with the time that you have that you're not in our office. And I think using that to educate folks in our community is, I mean, it... I hope it would help you and be a positive thing for you. But it benefits the community as well. So I think that's fantastic that you'd be interested in doing that. And you should be compensated for your time for that. And that's great, too, if that works out. Or if you volunteer your time, whatever. I really appreciate you being willing to come to our community with a skill set that is somewhat unique in our nation and being willing to share it. I would support a motion that included that.

And Councillor Zelenka, I see you with your hand raised. So this round, as we're moving towards a motion, just 30 seconds is a quick question, I'm guessing.

I was going to say something similar to what Counselor Yeh said. Counselor Rasky is a tremendous community resource that we should share, can only benefit us if he does some teaching and the community and future leaders. So I would be careful not to micromanage him. He's a professional and I'm confident he will manage his time appropriately. And he's done such a great job so far. So the only thing I would add maybe as a friendly couple president is that you add locally to that and maybe say instead of a maybe one to two a year. And so it's not like he's going off to UCLA or someplace. It's benefiting our community. I think that's wholly appropriate.

Council President, would you please put a motion forward?

Thank you, Mayor, and one comment before I do that. I want to caution us to not suggest that our employees spend more than their 40 hours a week on work, right? They have the ability to have outside work activities. And with that, move to recognize Auditor Renatsky's positive contribution to the city. and to authorize the council president to execute an agreement amendment allowing for outside employment for local teaching purposes.

Second. Further discussion from council? Councillor Keating.

I feel like I'm debating myself because I'm hearing my colleagues longing for this flexibility and I also recognize that this would be kind of a defacto merit increase, but it wouldn't come from the city's budget. It would come from presumably the UO's budget, A, and B, students could be paid interns or help the office of the auditor and strengthening that relationship between the university and the city, I can see being beneficial. So I'm torn. Initially, I've expressed my reservations because it's a bit of a surprise, but as I'm hearing the conversation evolve, I can see the merits. I'm going to vote against it just because I've made that clear, because it was a bit of a surprise. I would like to have been notified ahead of time. but I can see the value and I do recognize that it's not immediately around the corner. It's likely in that year two anyways, but I hear you. We shouldn't be micromanaging per se what folks do outside their time, but this could be something that could be beneficial to your time here as a city employee. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have long thought that the university's police department, which are armed officers on our streets and do not have any sort of auditing function for their officers, I've long thought that they should, frankly, at the U of O. And I think the opportunity to have you, Craig, teaching there opens a doorway between us and the university, between the city and the university in a way where certainly at least, at the very least, students will get more comfortable with the idea of the importance of an auditor function for the police at the university and perhaps open a new channel towards seeing the university's police have an auditing function as well or maybe combining with our city's office in some way so i think it's a good idea that could lead to better options for the whole community thank you now take a vote for this motion all in favor counselors please raise your hand one two three

Five six seven in favor and all opposed one and the motion passes with a vote of seven to one Thank you all. Thank you police auditor Renetzky and staff and this concludes our second agenda item for today. I'll now turn to City attorney city manager staff for our third topic, which is a work session on intergovernmental and in the 2026 legislative summary. We have about 20 minutes remaining in our meeting today and so we may need to come back to this topic if we don't complete our discussion today, but I will turn it over to city manager, Haruyama, and then staff, Ethan Nelson.

Thank you, Mayor. Just really quickly, we are following up from the January work session that adopted the 2026 legislative priorities and policies. Today's discussion will include a summary of the 2026 legislative session overview of the 2026 Federal United Front Partners of Lane County delegation trip. And then, of course, I'm talking about the process moving forward for the 2027 legislative agenda. And also no actions required to counsel today. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Ethan Nelson, City of Eugene IGR Manager, and just waiting for the start on this journey. In front of you, I'll just wait for this. In front of you, you do have a printout of the presentation I was going to give, and so I'll just start walking through that. Great. Okay. For the viewing public, my role is to advocate for the city's policy and funding goals at the state and federal level. Short presentation today, and I'll make it expedited due to time constraints. And here's today's agenda. Roll through this as quickly as we can. As you recall, in January, Brooke came to you, Brooke Freed, Chief of Staff, came to you and said went on over and you endorsed these priorities at the state level. I just wanna touch base really quickly on the use of the strategic plan, and if you take a look at the strategic goals, those ended up being part of the priorities that you endorsed. And so there is a connection between the strategic plan that you've put time and energy into and will be coming back to in the future, in the next year or so, and how that then is incorporated into the city's... state and federal agenda. Our session outcomes, and just kind of touching base, in your packet, there's a number of different items, including attachment A, which has got a policy and priorities that served as the direction for our advocacy efforts. Attachment B is a session summary, provides more detailed information on each of the priorities, and also a listing of the priority one bills. that the city actively lobbied on. Attachments C and D are the end of the session reports from CFM Advocates and the League of Oregon Cities. And attachment E is the pack of materials covering the United Front trip, including a hyperlink to the 2026 United Front booklet. Adjoined is Zach Reeves from CFM Advocates and question, and he needs to jump on it. So we're going to dive on into kind of the summary of what we accomplished. So 2026 legislative session was focused on economic development and infrastructure investments by matching our local needs with legislators and the governor's strategic priorities. Eugene secured critical state funding to advance pre-development activities in the Clear Lake Road industrial area. This project has received widespread support from local public agencies as well as Eugene Chamber of Commerce, Onward Eugene, and numerous individual businesses in the region. Senator James Manning identified this project as a session priority and was supported by other Eugene delegation members and as you see we secured an additional five million dollars in state funds for the project. During the fast-paced short session, Speaker of the House Julie Fahey identified the Eugene Airport expansion project as a priority for her district and working with city staff included a $1 million request for the project. These funds will support the current Concourse A expansion and rehabilitation. During the short session, Lane County sought a statutory revision to ORS 430 that would create clarity and flexibility toward the operations of state-supported crisis stabilization centers. Eugene was supportive of the effort, and House Bill 4070 passed the legislature and was signed by the governor. This statutory change clarified who is served and how they are served in a designated stabilization. A priority this year was also to ensure that the legislature's allocation of $206 million for the 25-27 biennium for the newly created statewide shelter program stay fully intact. Fortunately, throughout all of the pre-session budget reduction scenarios, the Oregon Housing Community Service Department never proposed any reductions to this vital funding, and the program stayed at the initial appropriated level. Short session also focused squarely on balancing the state's biennial budget, addressing the current and forecasted shortfall of federal health care funding, updating the Oregon state tax code, as well as addressing the likelihood of the transportation tax being referred to Oregon voters, which it was, and it was defeated. With all of this, or it was passed, the measure was passed. With all of this to address over the course of five weeks, property tax reform discussions did not occur at the legislature. However, Eugene will continue to engage Representative Nathanson as she implements the task force that was identified in House Bill 2321 from the 25th session and with the League of Oregon City's Revenue Reform Workgroup in the advance of the 27th session. The 26th session was the second session where the city advanced a bill that would increase the penalties for people convicted of threatening a public official. Over both sessions, Senators Prusansky and Manning have supported the city's bill request, with Senator Manning utilizing one of his two session bills this year. Senate Bill 1530 expanded the existing crime of aggravated harassment to include threats concerning public officials in specified circumstances. The bill passed the Senate but lost momentum on the House side and did not move out of the Rules Committee before the session adjourned. Now I'll switch gears and move to our federal advocacy efforts. Many of you know the United Front Partners of Lane County is our regional partnership for federal advocacy, excuse me, the 41-year partnership includes City of Eugene, City of Springfield, Lane County, Willamette Lane Parks and Recreation District, Lane Transit District, and Springfield Public Schools District. The annual United Front delegation occurred between April 20th and 24th this year. The focus of this trip was to support regional priorities and seek to build support for Eugene's FY26 congressionally-directed spending request, or an earmark, for $3 million toward the Eugene Airport expansion. Within the Council packet are digital copies of these documents and with a printed copy of the one-pagers and the United Front book at your seat today. If you don't have a United Front book, I already gave you one because... Participating in the trip was Mayor Knutson, Chief of Staff Brooke Freed, and myself. Due to budget constraints, SPS did not participate in the DC fly-in this year, so one partner is not present. In addition to advocating for airport investment, the delegation led by Mayor Knutson emphasized the variety of ways our city and region is focusing on economic development efforts ranging from the Southern Willamette Valley Innovation Corridor Clear Lake Road economic development infrastructure, workforce development investments, as well as mitigation, wildfire mitigation efforts, and the continued need to build housing. On our last day, we met with officials from Health and Human Services to share the community impacts of the reduction of Medicaid and Medicare funding Oregon is experiencing due to the passage of HR1. This slide gives a six-year snapshot of state and federal discretionary spending to the city. It does not include all programmatic grants, only the directed funding that we've received. So if you had any questions, if you want a greater breakdown of when and where those investments were allocated, just let me know. And then this, I think this is the core, good part to land on is that we're prepping for the 2027 session. And as you can see, there's a number of different stakeholders that I've been engaging a lot and been working with counterparts across the organization. We really have a process that's outlined to engage counselors, to engage internal stakeholders, and then to engage external stakeholders to really identify what are the key policies and priorities that we can move forward with, and then bring those through to the Intergovernmental Relations Committee, as your standing committee, to discuss the policy items, to navigate any items that come on up related to... guidance or lack of council guidance and then endorse an agenda and we're looking to endorse that agenda by October meeting to then bring it to the City Council for our annual work session to discuss the policies and priorities and have you provide feedback deliberate and ideally take action on that so that's the process that we're going forward on your IGR committee members include councillors Evans Councilors Ye and Councilors Grove as the current chair, and Mayor Knutson is on the body as a ex-officio member. So with that, I'll turn it back on over to Mayor Knutson.

Thank you, staff, for that presentation. And Council, seeing that we have about 12 minutes remaining, 11 minutes remaining in our meeting today, and I think that final slide that you shared, Ethan, relating to how we prepare for not just the 2027 session, but for legislative sessions going forward, I know we're going to need more time for this discussion today. And so what I might suggest, if you are willing, is to offer some feedback on what we just heard about this past session and the United Front work, and then we will find time for another work session to delve into the process of designing our engagement and the way in which City Council of Eugene guides our advocacy work statewide and with the federal work. So seeing a handful of nodding heads to that proposal, I'll now open up the floor to one-minute rounds for just Council feedback on this past session and what we heard about the United Front trip. And we'll see if in 10 minutes we can hear from eight Councillors, if you are willing. Councillor Keating.

Thanks, Mayor. I'll dive in and be brief. Thank you, Ethan, for this and thank you to the IGR team. In the increased state support for behavioral health systems, you mentioned HP 4070, who is served and how they're served in designated stabilization centers. Can you give us a stabilization center update or are there any tweaks or fixes in the near future for the 2026, for the 2027 legislative session in regard to either funding or seeing the stabilization center come to fruition?

Uh, councilor Keating, I cannot give you an update on the stabilization center right now. That's something that we can probably spend some time, uh, reaching out to Lane County to get an update and, uh, it can work with, uh, city manager to provide a, um, memo or an email update to council and mayor.

Thank you. In regards to the threats to public officials, we keep taking a bite at this apple and yet it can't get past a different chamber. With LOC support and a broad base of support, what can be done to ensure that this reform is realized in future sessions, hopefully in the 2027 long session?

Thank you, Councillor Keating. In regard to the question of how to get the concept through the House, we'll continue to do much of what we've been doing as advocacy, and I think that we will, I've been reaching on out to our local House members to to weigh in and to be more engaged, because we know that on the House side it's a little bit more difficult to move this bill. And so that's what we'll continue to work on. And I'll be having meetings during legislative days in January, excuse me, in July, sorry, June, with some of the House members that have got concerns on the bill, out of the Rules Committee and out of the judiciary.

Thank you again to you and to the entire IGR team.

Other comments, questions, remarks on this past year's advocacy and the last session? Councillor Clark, Councillor Zelenka, I do not see, but I want to be sure that you also heard. Okay, well, with that, I will say that we'll come back for a longer discussion on our IGR work. Thank you to staff for the effort over the session and for the United Front trip. An enormous amount of work goes into all of those. And that concludes our agenda for today. And I now close the May 27th, 2026 City Council Work Session, and we are adjourned.