City Council - Special Meeting

to represent how those things might impact economic development in southern Oregon. So, one of the things that I did this short session was go throughout the communities, make contact with each of them, and say, "These are some of the priorities that I'm seeing right now in Salem. At this point, they're just legislative concepts. Here are my positions on them. Do you agree, and do you want to work on those things together?" So, I did have some communities come together and say, "Yes, we actually do want to work on that." In fact, that's a a hot button for us as well. Jackson County was one of them. We worked very closely through the last session. In the long session, I would like to invite Grants Pass um to to uh work closely with so ready and through some of the other count uh communities across southern Oregon in order to make sure that we know what it is that we're trying to advocate for or push back against. Uh regional convening, I mentioned that. That's where, you know, we're looking to try to get people on the same page. um the enterprise zone administration. So, this is a tax abatement program that is uh all throughout southern Oregon. There are four main zones down here and we're the enterprise zone manager for all four of those zones. Uh that provides some tax relief for businesses that are expanding or coming into the area. Um and as I mentioned, uh recruitment and retention. So, we work um actually you've just finished up the three-year um BR&E survey that the chamber just put together. I don't know if he's going to talk about that at all today, so I'll I'll leave that to him, but it's where we dive in and understand what kind of challenges exist and what kind of progress is being made each 3-year period. The Josephine County Chamber puts that on and we dedicate two staff to doing survey work to help support that effort. And then as I mentioned the ED designation, this gives us access to provide grant funding available to communities with us as a conduit. Um and actually some communities can do this on

their own. Uh the city of Grants Pass did. So for the Spalding infrastructure, there was an EDA grant that was applied uh for by the city of Grants Pass. And if if I can be honest, I that's an area where we really could have stepped up to help take some of that pressure off because that's one of the types of things that we are capable of doing. And then as I mentioned, the revolving loan fund. These are loans that we make to small businesses to help them get access to capital when uh when the banking sector is not yet prepared. So a lot of newer businesses or businesses that have maybe fallen on hard times but have a good plan for success, we can step in and help out there. Um, another thing I hadn't mentioned yet, but this is data and insights. I think it's really important and we just launched a community survey. If any of you filled that out for us, I want to thank you because that gave us a lot of feedback on what the community feels so ready should be able to do well in order to support economic development. One of them was data and insights and uh we have just launched this platform on our website. I encourage you to go see it. We built it to go over numerous facets of the economy and focus on southern Oregon as a region. You can also break it down into just Josephine County and compare it to other areas throughout the state. So if there's an area in the state that you know is is doing really well, you want to find out why. You can select those two counties. Most importantly, you don't have to be an economist to understand what this means. There are summaries and you have the ability to pick three personas. a policy maker, an economic developer or a business. And it will give you the perception of what does this data mean for you and what can you do about it as a policy maker or as a business owner or someone in economic development. So, I encourage you to check that out and give us some feedback on it as well. It's designed to help give you more data so that you can make informed decisions. uh some of the impacts we've had over

the last couple years in Joseph or um well Josephine County and Grants Pass. Um about a million dollars in loans deployed to small businesses, $7.3 million worth of private capital investment due to our uh lending and uh tax abatement incentive programs and uh creating 145 jobs. I do want to make it clear, those are not us creating those jobs. That's businesses creating those jobs, but us providing some tools to help catalyze that investment. If we go beyond the numbers and highlight a couple of different projects, I mentioned Spalding and as far as legislative testimony goes, we did support the $2 million ask. Um, and I'm happy to to know that the uh city was provided with that. So, or will be provided with that, but that passed. And so, that $2 million for that sewer infrastructure is going to be huge in unlocking that other 60 acres uh right across the way there. Uh, another thing we're working on with the city of Grants Pass is um back in 2024 you approved urban renewal um agency grant and loan program and we were reached out to uh Brad and Dana and uh JC reached out and said is there a way that we can support since we do loans in administering and helping get this program on the street and so we have a proposal into the city right now to be able to provide assistance for that. And let's see here. So, this might be slightly duplicative, so we won't spend too much time on this, but this just gives you a few different um scenarios and different types of projects that we would be involved in that would also involve partners. Again, these are partners that are here in the room and how a project comes together because it's not just saying, "Okay, so ready make this thing happen." and it's so ready also working with other partners to make something happen. And so this just gives you a few different uh examples of who would be involved in

a working with a startup entrepreneur or an expanding manufacturer uh relocating a prospect um into the area or providing infrastructure investment and how we work with communities through that. Um and I will say and I alluded to this with a survey. So ready is looking I've been here for seven months and one of the things that I found was that so's uh activities had become broad and uh lost focus from the original core economic development district mandate and I'm looking to bring that back. So that's that's reeling in a lot of different functions that the community does not feel are the highest value for what we can be providing as well as um looking at our own budget and our ROI and then looking to our core mandates. And so one of the one of those things that we're doing is reeling in our activities to focus more on regional initiatives so that if we have impact in something, it's a larger impact as opposed to working on something over here and then not being able to see that happen throughout the rest of the region. Uh so like I say, working at a at a um more of a 30,000 foot level I believe is what the community is asking us to do and that's where our focus is going to be. I'll give you a quick story though on uh just as an example because I don't have any testimonies built into this but um just an example for how we act in that convenor role on a day-to-day basis as opposed to regional strategy. There's a grants pass company that was working on a procurement in Jackson County and was um running up against some roadblocks. So naturally they called and said do you know anybody at the city that we can help uh that can help us get through this procurement process. I said absolutely. Um and actually they mentioned that that the process that they were going through was not very smooth and not what they expected and I said I I know that city that's not the

way they operate. Let me give them a call. So, I called the city manager and walked through the situation and uh asked if I could get them in touch with the business so they could understand the process better. Uh they agreed and and the next thing I know, I got a text message from the business and said, "Thank you. We actually now have a chance to bid on that million-doll project um that's going to benefit Grants Pass employees and a Grantspass business um working with a a a business in or a city in Jackson County. I don't want to speak on too much more of the specifics because that procurement is currently underway, but it's just an example of of that convenor role that we play throughout jurisdictions and with private industries to help cut some of that red tape so that a business can access the people within within government that they normally would uh not that they wouldn't be able to access them, but it's hard for them to know who to call and how to get there. uh you know I mean you you're many of you are business people as well but um to businesses that are outside they see the city and they don't know quite how to approach cities and that's that's really universal across all cities. You can be the most businessfriendly city in the world, but when it comes down to it, businesses are intimidated by how to get through. And this helps us with recruitments as well because we're working on one in White City right now. And we asked them, "What is the number one pain point that you're experiencing as you are expanding into new markets?" And they said, "Really, it's permitting and dealing with the cities and counties." I said, "Perfect. Done. We'll get you direct contacts within the county and city." so that you can make that an easier uh an easier process. We did do that and notified the people within the city that this lead was coming and it made the process very smooth and they're very complimentary. So again, I think that's one of the one of the things that that um we're well

positioned to do is connect local government with private industry. And I just want to thank you for your continued investment in the work that we're doing. And um I hope we have some time left over in this 10-minute block because I would like to hear from all of you if there are things that you have for suggestions or questions or ideas for how ready can can uh continue or better support the city of Grants Pass. Thank you. Um we're going to go around real quick to make sure we don't have any questions. Rob, have any questions for this presentation?

Um off the top Thank you very much. Good presentation. off the top of your head. Um, how uh how much does uh the city of Grants Pass uh contribute to your organization dollar-wise? I believe it's 28,000. Thank you. Yeah. Rick, got any questions?

Thank you. You mentioned you've been helping businesses in the city of Grants Pass. Uh do you have like a a name like a couple that you've been able to help with financially? Yeah, actually some of them have been restaurants down here. I know that the the Bohemian we help them. Okay. Um yeah, a great business down there. Um I I'm drawing a blank for some of the other names. I and I'm sorry I I did get a list. It's in my phone. Um should have should have uh been prepared with more of those names, but go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Uh Eric questions.

Yeah. Um thank you for the presentation. Uh the you mentioned the grants passed $2 million sanitary sewer infrastructure. Is there going to be anything that uh any followup that your organization is going to be dealing with with that? Uh if not or if so then what what uh what type of things?

Sure. Thank you for the question. Uh so right now I'm I'm just happy to know that that you know I don't know that it was necessarily our testimony but you know the continued testimony of those on behalf of that um that support from the state. Uh really we work closely with um the community development um uh and economic development folks here at the city. So if there is a need a reason for us to step in and and further shepherd something along uh we're definitely able and willing to do that. I believe for that particular ask that appropriation is part of a a bigger project that um I'm not aware that we are required or been asked to provide further support past what we have

Victoria um on the page hi thank you so much for your presentation uh on the page where you list the 991,000 in loan deployment it's slide six I don't know if someone can go to that or not but um but it's Okay. If we can't Oh, thank you. Thank you. You can. Thank you. Um, over what time frame are we? That is over a three-year time frame. Threeyear time frame. I missed that if you said it. Oh, okay. Uh, thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Uh, question, Seth.

Yeah. Hey, thanks uh, Blair for the presentation. Um, I just had one quick question. On one of the slides, you mentioned tax incentive programs. Can you talk a little bit about those if any of them have been utilized or how people can utilize them?

Yes. So, there are um there's a map that you can uh view that shows you all of the eligible zones within the Grants Pass urban and then the Rogue, which is the Josephine County rural uh enterprise zone area. Each of those zones has a total of 12 square miles worth of land that can be designated. So at some point in the past certain tracks or I should say parcels are included in an overall zone. What happens is if a capital investment is being made by a manufacturer or somebody in processing distribution in the traded sector in one of those zones, uh they the capital improvements that they're going to make in that area, whether it be real estate or equipment purchases, are eligible for a tax abatement of 3 to 5 years. And that will provide them with the the business with the ability to not have to pay those real estate taxes for that period of time. And that is used as an investment or I'm sorry as a as an incentive to make that investment happen. And the $17.3 million is the amount uh that we have um approved over the last 3-year period. And one thing that I will say is that this is a this is a careful balance. Programs like this, I actually did oppose the expansion of this program in the legislative session. The governor had a bill, so did Senator Solomon, that was going to and did extend that period optionally up to 10 years. I believe that um some of the the issues the businesses have with taxes are um at the state level, not necessarily at the local level. And so I believe that pushing that incentive out to 10 years makes local communities shoulder too much of the burden of that because I mean if you think about uh actually

there's there is a study I will say this there's a study that you can find out of um the Brookings Institute that shows that about 80% of the enterprise zones or tax abatement programs just like this across the country are projects that would have happened anyway. And so I do take issue with overutilization and overextension of these types of programs because if you if you take that into context, that's $2.4 million of of revenue to the county that that was abated that maybe did not have to be. So one of the things that I'm making sure that we're doing it so already is keeping tax incentive programs in our back pocket as opposed to leading with them because I believe there are other reasons that we should be attracting businesses to the area. There are other things that we can offer them like would you like connections within local government to get your project done quicker? Um would you like to be connected with other businesses that can tell you about the the workforce and how that might benefit your business and and be a good fit for you. Um and then make other B2B connections in order to help them with the supply chain and things like that. And then you have your incentive if you need it to make the tiebreaker for that business. But I don't like to lead with incentives because uh there's no free lunch and it's our local communities that do give up that tax. So I just want to make that clear that it is a tool that we are in charge of but it's it's not something that I actively push questions. Joel,

we're going round table here. Pay attention. Do you have a question? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um thank you for being here. I'm really happy to see that the new leadership is pushing to make its value more known and accountable. So my question is with the RCC not being able to host SBDC which in my view is a travesty unfortunately is so ready in any position to pick up some of those pieces.

Thank you for that question. Um because that is that is initially something that we we knew we needed to look at. It's we've been being asked for a while um you know with this vacuum how can so ready step up to the plate and take that on. I have done a a thorough analysis on what our organization is capable of doing and taking that on and what kind of funding is available there to make that a sustainable effort for us uh without it um essentially burdening us on on the reserve side or asking us to to really have communities pitch in to a degree that um I'm not quite sure if we can on a long-term sustainable level. Um at this point the SBDC uh is moving in a direction where uh and I have been in talks with you know the the prior hosts uh the RCC and SOOU um the centers as well as the SPDC network. Uh it is not their preference that's already be the new home for that. They have a channel that they would like to run that through which is going to be direct procurement. So um you know this is something that I wanted to know could we be a backup plan? Um there probably is a world in which we can if if that um uh if if this new model needs to continue shifting. Uh what we are trying to do to the greatest extent we can is create the visibility for that technical assistance so that businesses can still access that service. It was one of the things that ranked very low on the list of things that the community would like to see us step up and and take on, nor is it really within our charter. But it doesn't mean that we cannot be a champion of that service so that businesses can still continue to get connected to it because I think uh to your point, a lot of people are not going to know that that service still exists. They're going to see the shock and we need to make sure that the messaging continues to to remain so that um businesses can still access that

resource. So, I see us playing a bigger marketing role in helping businesses find that access as opposed to directly offering it. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you very much. Um, any last further questions? Okay, so I I forgot to pref Sorry, hold on. I guess turn my mic on too. I forgot to preface this in the beginning. I'm trying to turn these workshops into a little bit more efficient manner here. So all the counselors have received the information presentation packets ahead of time. So they should have the ability to you know review this before it's presented and formulate questions. Um we're going to go into a roundt style questioning today. So basically I'm going to start at one end and go down the other and then back if there's a second question. But I really will encourage counselors to be really um uh poignant in their questions and to the point and uh so we can make this happen in an efficient manner. So V with that Victoria go ahead. I'm looking at the um on your website the uh data dashboard and I see some of the information that's in our packet there which is really wonderful and I was but some of the things that you were mentioning just before uh can I find that on your data like the percentage of um of the loans and things like that can I find that there

counselor so the uh our our data that we're uh we do not have our data on there right now. Right now, what that dashboard is is all public sources. So, 14 different data sources feed into that to show you the regional economy. Um and so, as far as like our own report card, we don't have that online yet. We are working though on being able to produce such a scorecard that we can, you know, hand out. RCC actually had a great one they shared with me and I thought, "Wow, this is this is great." If you're going to ask for your next annual membership, this is a great thing to put before somebody and say, "Hey, here's here's what our impact has been." So, like an impact scorecard. Um, but we don't have that on that dashboard. So, I would say that the dashboard isn't about us. The dashboard is about the regional economy,

right? Would would I be able to contact you then and maybe get access to that information? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, thank you. I'll do that. Thanks.

All right. Thank you. Um, Dana, you want to introduce the next Thank you Blair. That was a great introduction um looking at the broad uh perspective of economic development here for the region. Um so next I would like to invite up um Roa Community College Small Business Development Center. Today we have uh Lisa Parks, the dean of business and workforce development here with us, but we do have Ruth Swain, the director presenting. Um, Ruth has been the director of the RCCBDC for the last five years and she has 30 years of experience owning and managing business services and assisting with business success and regional economic development. She holds numerous awards and for excellence in branding and marketing. And so, please welcome up Ruth Swain. Thank you. Uh, as Dana said, I'm Ruth. I'm here to report on RCCBDC's services and recap our services from 2025. and um also to talk a little bit about the changes that are coming. As I thought of speaking here you today um I thought of Margaret me's quote never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has changed the world. I think of that because of my gratefulness in serving you and with our

partners. Um, Oregon uh SBDC's mission is building Oregon's best businesses. Two services are provided. Confidential nocost advising and very lowcost business classes. Now these classes are not a full term. They are targeted specifically for businesses to make them short, direct and um resourceful. The SPDC and RCC offer services at every stage of your business. whether you have an idea. Uh every year between 30 and 40% of our clients come in with an idea and we send them to glasses and we meet with them. Uh we help people find their certifications and launch their business such as the construction contractor uh pre-licens program. Once they pass the test, then we help them secure their license online and become their own business. Expanding is a big part of what we do. We work with people who need to retool their message. Uh look for a a better marketing plan. Um and renewal, we call it renewal. We during the pandemic and during supply chain issues and during now with the e economy the way it is, we still support people in that process. We don't do it for them. We help teach them how. We also work with people who are preparing to sell their business or want to buy a business. Mike and Jod Appan gave us their

permission. Um, our services are confidential, but Mike and Jod um were came to us uh a number of years ago and made a considerable number of changes in their financial performance, their employee programs and their growth strategies. and they also in the last couple years we worked with them on the transition to cell. Thank you to our funders. Um Rogue Community College, I tried to make the logo a little bigger there because they have long traditionally provided the most funding and the city of Grandpass has been a faithful supporter for many years. Josephine County has also given us funding. Our core funding comes from Business Oregon and the SBA. I want to say I Yes, I've been working in management and business and economic development for 30 years. I have never met a more dedicated city staff. Not only Brad and the community development department, Dana with the economic development department, your city manager, public works director, all y'all really come together to serve small business. And that to me goes back to that Margaret me statement of people, a small group of people who are working together with a vision can make a difference. you I probably haven't listed all the wonderful programs that you offer small business but I want you to know that they are meaningful. One of your programs where it's called micro grants provides 90%

uh re um tuition sponsorship for low to moderate income households in grants past urban growth boundary. Why do we need so many agencies to work together? We get this often. Each of us has a different mission and we each collaborate to refer people to the right type of support that they need. Um Blair mentioned uh so's role in loans and we work with soi and IBCDO. Um a number of the loans that have been achieved in grants pass have either worked with an IBCDO loan or so ready loan and there's also advising that goes along with that. Um Dana and the uh city staff are always responsive to needs and ideas. Um we we also work with early um childhood education and um it's amazing how how it all comes together and we get to know each other and um support each other. I do want to say a special thank you to our advisory council and community partners. Um Dana Pierce has served on our advisory council at the RCCSBDC since she started and Terry Hopkins also. And Ashley Blair served on our advisory council for many years when he worked for Business Oregon. Thank you all. Kevin and Helen Gil came to us 20 years

ago and they were taking over their uncle's business and they went through our training programs. We worked with them through drought supply chain, their employee programs, and now they're second generation, third or fourth generation leadership with Ryan stepping in as I think his title is president, vice president. In 2025, we served 580 clients through advising and classes. We also we don't we don't uh retain the jobs but we support businesses in how to retain them. That $4.2 million in capital likely had some soy and IVC o loans. Um we collaborate very closely with um our partners who provide loan programs to help our clients. You have to have a business plan. Even if you've been in business many years, you still have to have a rationale and factual information in order to get that loan. We helped uh start uh nine new businesses. There are lots more. There are at least four or five that we couldn't get documented because they have to sign a beast paper and uh when they're off starting a new business, they're pretty busy. We al uh we also helped companies with 29 new jobs created. I want to tell you what a joy and honor it is to work with our team. Kenny Halp Kenny Hal came today. I didn't uh he snuck snuck in. I didn't know the

adviserss knew about it, but Kenny knows about everything. Um, these people have spent thousands of hours supporting small business and in one-on-one confidential advising. They don't do it for the money. Trust me, because they're part-time faculty and they have owned a business. They've made all the mistakes business people make. They've learned some lessons and they want to give back to this community. Starting July 1, Oregon advising services will continue to be offered here. Confidential nocost advising. It will be run through the Rogue Valley SPDC outreach center. Um and all types of small business can come to accept those services. People will be able to register online or send email or make phone calls. We don't have the definitive information yet on that those numbers, but we will that contact information, but we will be proactively promoting those as soon as we know. And thank goodness for Lisa Parks. She is dean of business, community, and workforce training. She has been my supervisor since coming here, and she truly believes in supporting small businesses one by one. I was thinking this morning that quite often in a class it's more um effective, efficacious, is that a word? um more

meaningful because you're in a class with other colleagues and you can interact with other uh persons who are trying to learn that same and we're going to continue with how to start a small business. Um we have a program that's called business accelerator and it is basically you come out with your own tailored business plan uh the construction contractor pre-licicens bookkeeping and understanding business financial statements. Many businesses are too small to pay QuickBooks for QuickBooks. They just need some basic understanding as they get started. We also have a human resources um advisor instructor and a marketing instructor to turn your website into customer generation and Google business page. A lot of people don't know that they even have a Google business page and it's free and you can promote it. Um and QuickBooks is also a very popular um program in its short. um 15 hours over several days and it's really kind of a get in and how to get your your legs on the ground with an online quick books program. I wanted to close uh with a quote from couple of quotes from Mahatma Gandhi. We must be the change that we wish to see in the world. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. And it's truly been an honor to serve you

and to serve with my partners in support of small business. I was going to do a joke. Maybe I should have instead of ending that way. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um it it shows the passion in your voice. It shows. Thank you very much for your support. Um so uh questions for council Indra.

Yes. Uh Ruth, I so appreciate you and your passion for what you do and I know how valuable the small business development center is. I've used it many times. I've taken many classes. the passion of the instructors that just go above and beyond, give you their numbers, let you contact them outside anytime and just offering help. So, um I'm I hope to see this go on and and get stronger. Do you know uh where the outreach center is going to be at this point? We do not. Uh locations are being um scouted right now.

Okay. Well, I'm a big advocate and uh I hope things come together with that and certainly as a community all the partners um need to get together because the services provided are so valuable for business. Thank you. Thank you. Questions? Joel.

Thank you, Mayor. Um it's been my personal experience in the business we were in. there was a lack of um interest in a generational thing. They would rather have a 40-hour job than have their own business. And so we had a existing business that was very thriving, was very healthy, and no one was willing to take it over. Um is that is that a trend um in Grant's path for the future um or or not? And if so or not, uh what are the effects of that?

When you uh want to retire, sell a business, it is important to find the right person for leadership who has experience. What we have found is that many businesses, if you want to look like you're not making money on your taxes, then you don't want to show that you're making money. But when you want to go to sell it, it needs to be the other way around. And what we have found is that takes some time to prepare and to identify the right person. I you are absolutely correct that second or third generations often do not want to step into their job because they've seen how hard their parents have worked and they'd rather have a reliable source of income.

Question. Seth, I don't really have a question. I just want to say thank you. Um I I think the SPDC is an invaluable service. Um, I go way back to 2014, um, taking courses, teaching courses. Um, so yeah, um, it's it's upsetting to see the shift and hopefully we can we can uh, get back to where we were at. Thank you. Questions, Victoria. So, I can see where Thank you so much for your presentation. I can see on your website when your classes are available, but this is just for people in the community that might be listening. uh how do they just go to the RCC uh small business development online and sign up or

Okay. Yes, they can call they can email sbdc at roguecc.edu. Uh the contact information will change after July 1, but RCC will still continue to offer those classes. Wonderful. Thank you.

Questions, Eric? Thank you for the presentation. Um I just wanted to see um as we all know Oregon is not the best uh state for for businesses. I wanted to know some of these classes that uh that are offered there at RCC are they do they directly um contribute or do they directly talk about some of the problems uh to overcome in in Oregon as far as businesses go? uh some of the major problems that businesses have and how to curtail or how to um uh fix those issues. In our classes and advising, we do inform what the regulations are and the stipulations. We're not a political or lobbying group. Um we do give testimony uh but we are nonprofit. So we have to walk a fine line. We are aware of those issues that our clients face because we hear about them every day and uh offer sometimes it's important just to have a listening ear and then some ideas on how financially you can approach increasing your revenue and or pivoting some things that you're doing in order to be more efficient. Thank you. Questions, Rick.

Thank you. Uh, today a lot of educational institutions are struggling financially. So, when you're offering these services and so forth, um, what are your sources of funding these days?

I did show sources of funding for now. Uh, our base funding comes from Rogue Community College. We also receive funding from the city and the county uh through this fiscal year June 30. We also have a base funding from business Oregon which comes through the legislature on a two-year basis as well as the small business administration that federal funds that come down through the uh small business administration. Thank you. Thank further questions. Uh Rob,

um nice presentation. Thank you. And everything that uh was on my mind has been covered by the other counselors. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Dana, you want to come up and announce the next?

I just want to say thank you to Ruth for your dedication, support over these years. Let's see. Um, so we were looking at RCC. They um, you know, cover the broader scope of Josephine County and Grants Pass, but also the Chamber of Commerce does. So, I'd like to introduce to you Terry Hopkins. He's the president CEO of Chamber of Commerce, and I'm sure you all know him well. Come on up.

Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Thank you Dana for the introduction and thank you for the opportunity for all of these partners to present because oftentimes it is a bit of a challenge to figure out who's in what lane and make sure that we are being efficient without stepping on each other's toes. And I can assure you uh the folks behind me I communicate with quite regularly to continue to develop uh that level of support defining what economic development is, defining who we are as a city, who we want to attract. Um and we work very consciously to make sure that that vin diagram stays in alignment. Uh so as I look back on previous presentations oftent times you know these economic development partners came to the city to present the programs that you support and I will honor that and do that. But um to just be very clear I'm going to kind of break it into two pieces. The chamber of commerce is very happy to have a contract with the city of Grants Pass to run the visitor center. it uh really makes and empowers much of the work that we do much easier by simply having that uh space that building and the opportunity to connect with our community. Uh but that is the only piece of funding that we receive from the city. The traditional chamber functions are all served by uh income that comes from membership events and other fundraising program. Uh so about well I'm not going to guess at the timeline here but uh the chamber building the visitor center as we start on that piece was originally caveman park. The city entered into an agreement with the chamber who built the building that exists there today. Um and then we have a contract to run those services for the visitor information center. Uh so this is just the visitor center outward facing. Uh we serve just over 3,000 in-person visitors this year that represented 30 states in nine different countries. Uh phone calls to the visitor

center, the front office, not my office, not our membership development or events team, uh over 2,000. We do still, believe it or not, mail out good oldfashioned snail mail and relocation packets. And surprisingly enough, that number doubled this year compared to last year. You figure people are still gathering all that information online. Uh, but we mailed out 85 relocation packets. And then we also provide welcome packets. We don't necessarily call them relocation packets, but quite honestly, it's a lot of the same information. Often times, we'll go to local merchants and find deals to slip in there, too. But we like to help uh be welcoming and accommodating for some of those visitor-f facing events like Fabulous50s, Rotary's District Conference, uh multiple tour buses passing through our area. We did a youth exchange program and a 54 out one 54 outlaw car club this year. Uh so that visitor center remains healthy. Uh we are largely staffed with volunteers. Um we do have paid staff that helps administer that too. We make sure that a volunteer is never left there on their on their own. So we always have two staff members uh present on site at all times. As I move from the traditional uh visitor center operations into more of the chamber operations, um I'd like to just uh start with mission statement. What the heck is it that we do? Uh to promote and support commerce in our community. Uh and this changes and evolves. The chamber's 101 years old and ironically enough, chambers started to help businesses with networking, share ideas. And the piece either were not very good at or we just get in a complete cycle is that over 100 years ago, they came together to talk about how they could battle tax, tariff, and trade issues. And 101 years later, uh we're still working on the same issues. So, uh you can be the judge

there. But uh here locally uh our chamber in 2025 saw 98 new members. We had an 88% retention rate on those membership organizations. Over the years, those have declined. 85 to 90% retention rate is considered very good in my industry. So we had a really good retention rate. Uh I'm not shy to admit that we worry about that a little bit as we move into 2026. Businesses are struggling. Uh our work helps highlight uh business achievements and new startups. We had 44 ribbon cutings. Uh our networking events that happened on Wednesday morning. We had over 3,100 businesses attend greeters. Over a half million clicks on our digital version of the business profile. We also print about 10,000 of those part of the relocation packets and also a local guide here for us to use. um our event calendar, one of the top visited pages on our site. That's not just for chamber members. Anybody can upload their community events. There is a small approval process. We don't just let anything pass through the gates. Uh but a free community resource uh and I think one of the top event calendars uh for the city and county. Uh we send out uh weekly e-news updates. We had 40 over 42,000 reads on those. I mentioned the profile magazine. uh moving a little bit more into that digital and social communications. Our home Facebook page, not the Concerts in the Park or Young Professionals Network or some of the auxiliary pages, but the Chambers page enjoyed 1.5 million views this year. And that's a 95.5% increase over prior years. Part of that strategically, us pushing out a little bit more messaging there. And then part of that's just how the industry is moving and how they consume their information and data. you're seeing more and more uh social media engagement. I'm

sure you're very well aware. Uh some of the work we do is uh not just direct support to businesses, but really making sure that we're building a better community and again oftent times that's in partnership with uh you up there on the dis with the city uh and with the other partners in this room and in this category very specifically visit Grants Pass in Main Street. Uh but the chamber uh puts on these events to make Grants Pass a better place to work, live and do business. I mean we know that retaining employees is a challenge that we're facing today. So our next generation of workforce making sure this is a place that they want to either come back home to or stick around, start their own business or or maybe come work for one of you. Uh so through that work we enjoy doing the concerts in the park wine stroll tap walk and hosting that community calendar lemonade day although it's a fantastic event and and I think beloved by the community that one falls a little bit more under the uh workforce development and then uh the awards banquet just an opportunity to celebrate success in business. The other piece that we do, as Blair said on his slide, thank you for clearly defining that, Blair, is just helping businesses expand their network. What, you know, I heard a question up here previously about succession planning. Maybe it's growing your business. Maybe it's knowing how to source locally and integrate with other folks in the community. Uh maybe it's just picking their brain or having a support staff around you of like-minded folks. So, I I showed the statistics on greeters. I showed it on ribbon cutings. We do business after hours. Perspectives is a learning opportunity. We take that business retention expansion survey that Blair mentioned and we presented to you and find some of the key challenge areas and put on some learning opportunities there. We have a business retention and expansion committee and then of course a

very strong advocacy and government affairs committee. Uh in doing so, we share space with partners in the area uh in workforce and education. Uh we host Lemonade Day, recently launched the Rogue Leadership Training Experience. We have a very strong young professionals network. We help engage both with hosting interns oursel through PY Plus, Grants Pass High School, Boys and Girls Club, and Three Rivers School District, but we also try uh whenever possible to be matchmakers for those youth wanting to do some career exploration. Happy to connect them with our local business community. Uh we show up and participate in several different high school career academy courses. We do a very small amount of our own advising and connecting. And then finally, our young professionals network and ambassadors uh are happy to raise money to give to local kids for scholarships. Those scholarships are maybe just a little bit uh outside the norm. We're not giving kids scholarships to go off to four-year universities, although we support that. Our scholarships will always be focused for kids going in uh to trades that are staying local, maybe uh RCC or a trade school and plan on keeping their skills in our valley. Finally, as we look to growth in 2026, it is of course maintain those pro programs that you're used to seeing. Uh we hope to expand our lemonade day offerings to encompass a little bit more of the county. Uh we are just finishing up a venture hub website that will help connect building owners if there's a space for lease with upcoming entrepreneurs. Uh that platform is almost complete uh almost completed on a small business health insurance program. Often times you know what we see here in our community is we're fortunate to have a ton of mom and pop small industry small business not the big box stores

but those businesses struggle to find access to group health insurance. So with the chamber being a larger umbrella, we're working uh and have identified that as a challenge. We hope we can be part of it. Uh publishing a starter business manual, the city and Dana's department does a great job. This will expand a little bit more depth and also include the county uh looking to expand our involvement in workforce development. I met, you know, you asked questions about the SBDC. I've met with Lisa who's here in the room today, Ruth. Uh this afternoon I meet with the state's SBDC and then Lisa's going to come to our business retention and expansion committee tomorrow to address some of the concerns I heard earlier is just uh first of all I'm very very excited and proud of the fact that RCC provides so much of these resources already. Uh they've been an incredible partner. We refer a lot to RCC's SBDC and we will continue to do so with RCC, but as you mentioned earlier, just making sure there are no gaps. How do we continue messaging and referrals and uh make sure that we're the front door when people need to get those resources? And then finally, I heard up here today uh succession planning. So, there are also a few organizations in the works. I can't take credit for being the tip of the spear because one of our local Rotary organizations is really looking at propping up a mentorship program. Uh we're working in partnership with that Rotary group, the Hive, the Chamber, and some of our members to see what we can do to help launch a mentoring program that would help again as you move through those uh life cycles of your business. And with that, it looks like about 43 seconds left. I'm going to stop and see if there's questions.

Thank you, Terry. I I I You got a lot of words in there. There's a lot. You're a you're you're a good one. You're very efficient. Thank you very much. Um questions to council. Uh Rob,

thanks Terry. 101 years worth of good work. And I appreciate you dividing out the uh the two aspects as far as what the visitors center just a a small part but a very important part. and I appreciate you dividing that out. Um, I just also want to thank you for um, making extremely easy with regards to anyone who wanted to provide testimony for the uh, Spalding Industrial Park uh, grant money. Um, frankly the emails that you sent to council made it very easy for anyone who was interested to provide testimony and uh, mostly because of that is one of the reason well it's one of the main reasons that I provided testimony. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. you and to that point cuz somebody else offered asked Blair earlier you know there are a lot of opportunities we are obviously very fiscally conservative organization or always trying to lower the tax burden but sometimes when that money is already going to the the state or the feds uh it's also our job to help make sure we put it to work here locally so whether it's Widen Mkeley uh Ben's staff you know I I'm hopeful that uh Chief Sanchez has an opportunity to have a community initiated project for the Hillrest Fire Station. I'm always happy to uh be talking about the brick grant and getting that $50 million back to the city that was awarded. Uh so yeah, working advocacy is a lot. I appreciate the recognition, Rob.

Yep. And thank you very much, Terry, because that was a great effort from from all from all sides to get that money in. Um questions, Rick. Thank you, Terry. Um you indicated the phone calls this past year have doubled. How was the number of people visiting the center as well?

Yeah, I'm sorry. Uh, it's it was actually, oddly enough, the number of relocation packets that we sent out that doubled. Phone calls were almost identical at just over 3,000. The number of in-person visitors increased just slightly compared to prior year. And uh I attribute that to the work that Visit Grants Pass is doing. I think generally speaking, we're seeing an increase uh in traffic and especially compared to some of our competitors. I won't steal his thunder. Uh but phone calls pretty close to the same as prior year. In-person visits have increased and that small number of 85 was the odd one that doubled. And how does that compare to other chambers in the state?

A great question. I don't know the answer to that. I could certainly do a little bit of research and find out. Thank you. I bet I bet Dan's got all the data on who came to our town. Perfect. Thank you. Uh, further question, Eric. Um, thank you for everything that that you do. It's really um I really appreciate it. I'm sure the community does as well. You are a very busy man and uh it's clear, it's obvious that uh what you and your what the Chamber of Commerce put out is uh is excellent. I don't have anything to to really I don't have any questions, but I just look through this and this is a a a lot of great info in here for Grant's Pass. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Without a question, I'm still going to take a moment to respond and say it's all my team. I get to be a strategic leader, but I have an incredible staff. Awesome. Thank you. Uh questions of Victoria. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate the thanks and I love uh the lemonade day was just so wonderful. It's great to volunteer for that and uh it I really like that you are looking to expand it and uh that will be exciting. Just thank you for what you do. I'll call you for judging again. Yes, I I'll I would love to do it. Thank you. Awesome. Questions, Seth? No. Any questions? No questions. Thank you, Joel. Any questions?

Um, Terry, appreciate what you do as we all do both up here and in the audience. Um, this is an opportunity for you uh to teach us a little bit. Uh we got uh six months left this year. We got another year coming up. What do we need to learn to make Grants Pass even more successful in an economic model and how do you feel about it?

Thank you for that question, Joel, because again that's a lot of the the conversations that this room is having. That's not just me. And you know there's data that I did through the BR& survey. This new platform that Blair just presented is incredible. I'm a data driven person. Dana and her team has been super responsive in, you know, now they're going to be deploying a new tool for data. Uh, but, you know, we've had conversations like when a business closes, who's doing the exit interview, and who knows, you know, uh, the through the city's uh, department, you know, of course, when you start a business, you have to get a business tax certificate, a business license. Um, but when you close, you don't come tell them until you just don't renew again next year. And sometimes the same thing is true at Secretary of State. And so Joel, I think to answer your question, because it is a big big question, we start with the data, right? And then from there, I think Dan's going to talk about this a little bit. We talk about the story of who we are. And whether that's Blair, who might be working a little bit more on business recruitment, and not to say that he doesn't, but the chamber may be working a little bit more on business retention. When we're talking about retention, recruitment, attracting visitors, bringing traded sector to we're bringing more money into our community than we're sending out, it comes down to our storytelling. It comes down to being in alignment with the folks that are both behind me and in front of me. And uh I'm going to just say it. It we need to have more positive headlines in the news than negative.

All right. Thank you. Further questions, Indra? Yes. Hi Terry. I have a few. Um, so I'm just curious the phone calls, a lot of phone calls. What's the major thing people call about, like the top one or two, you know, um, my staff will love the fact, hopefully they're watching right now, they have a book up at the front office of the craziest phone calls they get,

and it is all over the board. I I cannot do this. But I I heard overheard a phone call earlier uh this week of one of my volunteers giving somebody directions that they were writing down on what highways to turn on to get from Reno to here. And I was like, who doesn't have Google Maps, right? There's a lot of people. And so the phone calls might be directions on how to get here, road closures, what's the smoke like when I get there? you know, what what opportunities are there if I've got kids under five years old. Um, they are all over the board and it's I mean, it's fun to just listen to and hear them. Uh, but most of those are just going to be general visitor questions. How do I get to the Oregon caves? When are they open? We get a lot of when do the bears at Evergreen Federal Bank do go out? Uh, you know, what time of the year can I see the bears or the Christmas cards? Um and then a lot of those times, you know, we're referring back to our own event calendar. We're referring to visit grants pass assets, you know, uh huge increase. And I I see Speedo here today, uh in the mountain biking community. Lots and lots of people reaching out about, you know, can I ride my horse on this trail or is it mountain biking, hiking only? Um and so that we've seen a huge increase in people uh talking about outdoor wreck. Great. Um, and then likewise your your doubling of relocation packets. Who do you find out? Are those mostly retired folks coming here or families or it's all over the board?

All over the board. I mean, it it might be uh somebody who's you I will say although it's all over the board and age group, uh there is a little bit of a common thread there and usually it has to do with family. you know, my mom is getting up in age and is retired and I want her to come live with me. Or flip side, you know, my mom lives there and I'm coming to make sure I take care of her. So, a lot of it is um if they're actually looking at moving here, there's a family tie there somewhere. But the number of relocation packets, if I had to guess, steer a little bit older at least on the ones we mail out because all of this information is available online. And then I'm curious also, how do you work together with the visitor center? So they kind of do do they do the same kinds of things? It seems like do you have the same materials? Do you refer people to the visitors center as well?

Yeah. First of all, and again, this is as we work right now with city staff, but you know, eventually hopefully that becomes Dan. uh even getting the naming right because I am the visitor center, they're the downtown welcome center. Um but uh in the past, yes, there have been opportunities when you know there's been customer service training, you know, whether that's just how do you greet folks or we've done downtown exploration tours to where we go visit local stores. Uh so in the past there has been a little bit of uh crossover since the remodel of the uh downtown welcome center. they have a lot less print materials and flyers. I think that the hope moving forward is is that that's folks that I've already got in the door and sent into to town or the county or whatever that maybe they're popping in then to become a little bit more hypo hyper local could stop in and taste some wine. Uh but the the short answer is is yes, the communication is there. I think that we have an opportunity to do a much much better job on both the training and the storytelling between the two locations and that's just been a recent thing. Uh but I've been in uh regular regular contact with visit grants pass and say if they take over that location how can we cross trainin crossromote tell the same story because the visitor doesn't understand which ones the visitor center and the welcome center and the the visitor doesn't understand that the chamber is running this one and the city's running that one and so it's a very exciting opportunity. Thank you for reminding me. I should know the difference. Welcome center.

I bet you could ask my own staff and they'd glad that uh it would be working together. Do do people sometimes go to one or the other without visiting the other one?

I would. Yeah. I mean, so one of the big differentiations is is that the north visit, the one that I have, you can pull an RV or a tour bus, so on so forth. So big group tours I would generally always get. Um but folks that maybe again they've got family living here. They're not just coming in. I've never been here before. Uh and they're already with their family and downtown. Uh they probably bypassed me. And then we'll say, "Hey, we're already here. Let's pop in and see what other opportunities present themselves."

Thank you. And last question. Um you mentioned the county, including the county several times. is are you actively now working with them and would you look to also contract with them in some way?

Oh yeah. And I mean I think it's just by nature of who's hosting this event today, right? I mean you're getting all the contractors that work with you in the city, but a lot of the work that I'm doing out in the county already involved so already of course it involves the SPDC. I mean the partners that you don't have in front of you today by virtue of location, you know, IV CDO or IV can do is an incredible organization. There's an Illinois Valley Chamber of Commerce and even though I'm the Josephine and Grants Pass Chamber, we overlap with them and they're phenomenal partners. Uh, you know, when we're talking with um the Oregon Caves, Greater Applegate, uh, IL or the wine trail, the wine, the food trail, the wine trail, and so there are a lot more county partners that look a lot like this room.

Thank you for your time today. We got further question. I got Rob. No. Yeah. Terry, thanks. Um, so you've got um you know, all the uh the events that you guys um are responsible for, concerts in the park and the wine stroll and all that. Um is that uh all financed just from your uh membership and or possibly sponsorships or how is that f is that are there taxpayer dollars involved with you putting on those events or is that from membership dues?

Yeah, I want to be very very specific in this answer. Rob I mean also very transparent. I mean, some of those events are revenue generators. They help bring me money so that I can keep the membership dues affordable and not raise them year after year. So, in in the sake of transparency, some of those generate revenue that help with the chamber operations. To directly answer your questions, those are supported by membership dues, sponsorships, very very rarely grants, but also in the sake of transparency. the city of Grants Pass is the me a member of the Chamber of Commerce and add a level to where the you guys are sponsors of um concerts in the park by virtue of your membership level. You know, you guys I I'll be back later this week or next week to ask you to wave park fees uh for the use of the park. And so I want to be really honest when I say that I don't want to be overgeneralized when I say no, there's no tax dollars involved because the city does have a chamber membership and the city will wave fees for an event like Concerts in the Park. But to the point of your question, I think the answer is no. This is not taxpayer dollars with those slight slight caveats.

Thank you for that detailed uh detailed explanation. And then um what typically uh you mentioned different levels of membership I guess uh what typically is a um are dues for a uh what levels of dues does it cost to be a member? The majority of our members are at a level that's $320 a year. Our second most popular is $590 a year, but we have membership tiers that go all the way up to $7,500 a year. Great. And then you mentioned 98 new members and 88% retention of old members, but I don't see a number there for how many members you have.

Uh 606 as of this morning. Wow. So that seems Joel's one of the 98 new. Thank you Joel. Indra is one of the 88% retention. Thank you Indra. Seth yeah I mean the dis has you guys are business folks. I I have business members up here. So roughly the number of members now compared to say uh 10 years ago. Yeah, it seems like it's gone up, but I I could be.

This last year, the 98 is a record as far as our database goes back. I'm, you know, we're 101 years old. It's pretty hard for me to say that that's a record of all time. But the current database that we're using, 98 was a record for most new members in a year. Uh but when you say the word 10 years ago, there's a little thing that we all remember called COVID that absolutely decimated our membership base. And so we're really just kind of climbing up to probably where we might have been 10 years ago. Thank you. Yeah.

Perfect. Thanks for all the information. Um very much so. So I'm going to go back to Dana to introduce the next organization. All right. Next, we have uh the Josephine County um visitors association, also known as Visit Grants Pass. Dan Buck. He um is the official official destination marketing organization for Grants Pass in Josephine County and focused on driving tourism and um economic impact. So, let me pull this up. All right, I think you're good to go.

All right. Thank you, Dana. Good afternoon, counselors. Mayor, um, thank you for, uh, taking the time. Forgive uh, my voice and the lozenes. Got a touch of the cold, so we'll try to move through this. Uh, Dana warned me that, uh, the sheer volume of slides I have for this is ill advised, so I'm going to move through them pretty quickly. Um, we'll talk about tourism, the state of tourism and Grants Pass in Josephine County. And then would love any uh questions you may have. Uh, there we go. Um, Grans Pass is a tourism community. Josephine County is a tourism community. That and for some that's a bit of a surprise. Um, for the longest time there were many other economic uh drivers. timber obviously for the longest time and then almost overnight it changed and we had to pivot and so behind healthcare and human services uh tourism is what keeps our community ticking. Um it's important to note for uh for a lot of folks that don't understand how the TLT works, uh our local residents do not pay this tax. It's visitors exclusively from outside a 50 mile radius. and that those TLT dollars um go to uh in per in perpetuity fund public safety and parks and other infrastructure. Um again, just to reiterate the point, 100% is paid from visitors. Our residents do not pay this tax. Uh 76% of lodging tax is paid by out of state. I just thought this was an interesting factoid if you were curious where our people come from. 70% of the Logitech's paid by outofstate uh visitors. Even though our primary markets uh are uh instate drive markets, um the vast majority uh is outside of the state. Um, we work uh at Visit

Grants Pass, which is the DBA for the Josephen County Visitors Association, uh to uh drive attendance to all of the events, attractions, resources that all my colleagues and friends uh work year round to create. Um we promote darn near everything uh in town, businesses. Uh as you can see, we work with over 750 local businesses, regional businesses. Um, and we work with a lot of what they call fam tours, familiarization tours, driving earned media rather than paid media. Uh, it's a big distinction there. If you'd like to talk about that at the end, we can. And then obviously the TLT revenues go back into public safety, parks, and infrastructure. Um, according to the Oregon Tourism Commission, you can see that for every $1 invested into tourism, it generates $237 in revenue. So, um, as savvy business owners, it seems that, uh, you know, that that's a fire that you want to feed, uh, over time. Um, just some details, some stats. $172 million in annual visitor spending in Josephine County alone. Thank you so much. uh a couple thousand jobs supported by tourism uh directly and tax revenue generated by tourism and its activities nearly 8 million uh lodging tax collected uh in 2025 those were our latest numbers couple million bucks and hotel occupancy is the highest since it's uh since about the co era um 78.3%. um occupancy gains. This is kind of fun. Um you know, we're a little bit competitive with our friends, colleagues, and other GMOs uh across the state and in our area. And you can see that um we have this change uh Q1, Q2,

Q3, our lodging tax revenue has been up for 74 and rooms rented 14%. Um and then when we get into campaigns, this is our marketing campaigns. This is just one as an anecdote. Uh this is Datify. It's a company that we work with that um does programmatic advertising. We're buying ads all the time. And uh just on this one uh campaign that we did, uh we generated a what they estimate to be a $9.8 million uh financial impact. 6.5 million impressions delivered. And uh according to the statistics, how they break that down, generated 30,000 estimated room nights. Um we're growing and we're really proud of the work that we've done in the last year uh versus the uh rest of the state whether either flat or down. Grants Pass is actually up this past year. Um as we begin to understand who we are and what we have to offer and as people come to understand what Grants Pass is, not what Grants Pass was or what Grants Pass has been. Uh and so what you're going to see in these numbers as we move through it is a new vigor, a new understanding of the possibilities potential in Grants Pass as a destination. I always love it when you have a 10,000% increase in a thing. Um and so um we have done a lot of work developing our video content, all of our content frankly. Uh but we know that in today's day and age that video sells and creates the quickest, most acute concentrated storytelling that you can possibly offer uh to the average viewer uh and consumer. And so we're pleased to say that we have 10,000% increase in YouTube

views. Um, I just looked at it this morning. We're something on the order of a 100,000 minutes of our video content watched since January. Um, we have more videos watched. We have more subscribers on YouTube than virtually every other DMO in uh the state outside of Portland. Uh, so we're pretty pleased with how we're drawing attention in that way. impressions again uh 10 million conversions that's just having them take an action in case you don't know and the average cost per click only 67% to drive them to further explore what Grants Pass has to offer. Um and you can see the industry average there is over two bucks. Um so we're we feel like we're finding the right audience with the right interests to drive that attention. uh ad reach uh on Facebook uh nearly 5 million um with a again a result of 23 uh 23 cents uh well below the industry average. We spent a lot of time on Facebook. Uh YouTube again, new subscribers, uh 10,000 nearly minutes watched uh 219,000 uh year-over-year. Uh small market, big results, SEO, uh search engine optimization. What we're trying to do is get organic uh interest or organic engagement so that we're not paying for everything, but over time we're growing our base audience. So you can see that we are fifth in the uh keyword rank position for Google search results. Uh which means that behind the expedias the trip advisor that you always see at the top of the returns visit Granch Pass uh is right up there with 229,000 hits at the fifth position. Um there's an old adage that says uh the best place

to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google. And so uh we work a lot uh to uh get in that above the fold top five uh search returns. Uh we have an email subscriber base of 2600. Um and we work on monthly emails uh as well. Again proud to say that uh we're uh per capita we're the number one Facebook page for of all DMOs in the state. uh meaning that we can reach the largest possible audience in the state um via organic and paid. Uh we're second place right behind Travel Portland um for growth in video views. So you can see that there per capita um third place between Bend and Portland um for Instagram reach. And these are some of our strategic partners that we work uh day in and day out with. We do not operate in a vacuum, but rather we require and are grateful for the support that all of these organizations offer us. Travel Oregon, Travel Southern Oregon in particular and Travel Medford have been uh amazing partners um and the OR as well. I'm really pleased with all of these guys. Some of the local businesses that we work with, I'm going to fly through these because we work with virtually everyone. uh we're in some state or another of pre-production, production or post-production uh with almost everyone in town and we can just rifle through all of these companies. Um other local events, we're behind uh most of the local events if not close to all of them. One of the challenges that uh visit grants past has and I've been able to express this to a few counselors over the last few weeks is that because all of our work is intended and actually by mandate uh to

operate outside of the 50 mile radius, a lot of locals don't know what we do or are even unaware of what we do. And so we have some work in front of us because we have uh some internal marketing that we should probably take care of so that there's a better understanding of the work in front of us, the opportunities that we have and uh how we support uh everyone else. Again, more local organizations that we've done work with or for or on behalf of and uh strategic partnerships. So we work with a lot of media. I think there's a common misconception, maybe not common, but a misconception that we focus exclusively online. We only do digital. It's not true. We work with dozens or scores of print publications. Um, and uh, we get a lot of print placements uh, throughout the country and certainly in the Pacific Northwest. Uh so fam tours that's when we bring in media influencers, bloggers, writers, uh any number of media folks. They come and experience our area and we host them. We take them around. We show them what we have to offer and then they go back and they tell those stories in whatever blog or print publication that they may be associated with. Um and these things can go wildly viral. Don't know if you saw Tina Cotek uh picked up one of our stories and she shared it out on her social media and uh we had probably one of our most viral posts just in this past couple of months. Uh Travel Oregon reached out to us on Friday and said, "Hey, we love the content that you're producing. Uh can we use some of it?" Which of course they were permitted to do. Um we're producing thousands of pieces of content every year and the quality of the content I'm quite proud of uh with all of our our vendors and co-creators. Here's some of the placements. Um, we put in Condest, uh, which you've probably heard of. Um, we're really

proud of this one. This was super cool to be featured in Food and Travel with Gordon and, uh, that got a lot of reach as a national publication. Um, Northwest Travel and Life were featured there. Sit magazine, Oregon Wine. Obviously, wine's a big deal in the area and uh there is no shortage of people interested in talking about wine. And then taste and travel, more regional partners, travel southern Oregon, um regional features, travel. This is more uh print placements that we did. The chamber of course um we do a lot of stuff that goes under the radar. Uh big props to to Griffin back here who uh under the radar does so many design layout pieces for just about everyone that needs something from the chamber uh to the city uh to uh oh my gosh the list goes on and on. Main Street and uh he's he's really keeps the the whole thing together. So thanks Griffin. um our own media and collateral. We've been developing a lot of print uh work, itineraries, maps. Um so if you've seen a map of anything to do from art to food to uh boutique shopping, that's us. Uh we're working handin glove with Hellgate. Um as you can see, our newest placement at the airport. Um we have placements at the Brookings Visitor Center and others. Maybe some of you guys have bumped into our video series around food, Saver Grants Pass, um the boutiques, Shop Grants Pass, and then Dollar Mountain, which has been a big boon for the area, and I couldn't be more excited about that. That is a billion dollar travel industry. Uh it will bring countless uh opportunities to us, and we've just gotten started with that in the past six months. So, that one will be awesome. And then uh newest

for us um we've covered Hellgate. Uh they're a great partner. We're about to do some uh content with Orange Topedo. They do white water and they do fishing. And uh we are also in pre-production with uh the experience out in uh Roo uh that does paraglighting. And so we'll be highlighting uh outdoor adventure sports as a thing that um people can use as a destination here. Uh after dark, we're also going to talk about uh to some of the young people, hey, you know what? It's not just um a sleepy town. Uh we have a lot to do by way of music and night life. And so, please come out and enjoy those things. Uh I would be remiss if I didn't bring up some of the challenges that we're going to face this year. You're probably apprised of some of these things. Uh 199 starting next month is going to be shut down part-time. Uh Tuesday through Thursday 10 to 4. It's a big deal. And uh my my knee-jerk was to be really um fearful of this as the way it could impact us. U but it does give us the opportunity to take the reigns and build the narrative. We're going to have captive audiences and how do you take those audiences that are stuck in CJ or want to uh hang out in Grants Pass. How do you use that to benefit the businesses uh in our areas when they won't be able to pass through during those days and times? low water levels are predicted, which will hurt um certainly some of our uh river recreation if that does come to fruition. We're hopeful that uh things uh will get rided, but we have to make plans uh for that and the upcoming fire season. Um, I met with uh the uh Forest Service folks last week and we were advised that there's a fair potential that we could shut down public lands uh later this year in the same way that California does if it stays this bad. So, we have to uh make plans. We have to

take control of what we want to message and make sure that people understand that there's still a great opportunity to come and visit Grants Pass, spend their time, spend their money, support our businesses, and have a great time. Uh, you guys have this in front of you, so I don't need to read it all out, but you know, as look at that Colorado warning. when when we stop funding tourism and we stop marketing, it it really is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so I want to make sure that everyone understands that our small businesses around uh the city and the county, they just can't get by the the through the year solely on our local supporting them. They absolutely require visitors and I would suggest that we need to dictate who those visitors are. We can leave that to the devices and the whims of fate or we can create together the desired outcome and say hey these are the people that share our community values that we'd like to come and hang out with us that we want to have here that Terry might want to develop into businesses and future homeowners for example rather than just waiting for whomever uh shows up to show up review stuff lots and then I think I have One more. There we go. Um, you know, we wanted to reinforce some of these messaging that you've heard already about the division of function and task and how those overlap and how they do not. Uh, and how we augment and supplement and work together. And you can see in this little graph that we threw together this this illustration, Visig Pass operates outside all of those concentric rings with Main Street being the dot in the middle and then the city gets a little bit bigger and then the chamber gets a little bit bigger to embrace the county and then we're outside of all that

helping support their efforts. And uh with that, I would love to field any questions you may have. Thank you, Dan. Um, so we're going to go Rob questions. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Rob. Yeah. So, um, you and I you and I spoke, I think, last week or two weeks ago. It was it was, uh, good good conversation, I believe. Um, just a little more clarification. So um you um part of your presentation you said that uh you work with um 750 local businesses um etc. H how do you define working with local businesses? What does that mean?

It takes so many different shapes and form for like for for some we're just doing a a simple layout. Uh they perhaps they need a flyer or a map or some sort of advertisement. Uh some we're actually running full campaigns for. One example is Wildlife Images reached out to us and say, "Hey, we have our gala and we're not experts in running Facebook campaigns, for example." And so we did that on their behalf. The Rotary reached out to us and said, "Hey, can you help support our advertising and marketing for PorchFest?" So we did that. Um, and in other times it's just simple consulting and advisement. It doesn't develop beyond that.

Okay. So uh basically businesses would reach out to you. It goes both ways though. We reach out to businesses based on what we think will drive uh broad interest to the community. So we have reached out to plenty of business ourselves and say hey we'd love to highlight you or bring attention to the work that you're doing. Hellgate's a great uh example of that. Yeah. You I guess we talked a little bit about that. And then um when you had a a page about every metric is up and you mentioned the first three quarters of last year, but um we're what three or four months into 26, but you don't mention the fourth quarter last year. What

the Yeah, the Dean Renan reports not out yet. It'll be out later this month. We're waiting for that to have a full year picture.

Okay. Thank you. Um and when you say that um or you present uh strategic partnerships with local businesses, what what exactly does that mean? So for example, I'll point to Hellgate again. Um they were very interested in working with us for the airport placement. um it's cost prohibitive uh to have their own installment advertisement there. And so we've developed a plan to work with them to share the burden um and highlight one of the great attractions of our area and uh have joint creative with them. Um also they've developed a media night that we're heavily involved in that will bring they're hopeful between 100 and 150 media people um to experience the region. And so we're we're co- uh partners in that. We're working with Cycle Oregon. Um we're intimately involved. Uh we're the local on the ground uh organization to develop that. We wrote the proposal and our side by side with BMX nationals to have that event um and and so on and so forth.

So I it's I understand um strategic partnership with uh we'll say a large a large draw. You mentioned a couple of them. Um on this page you've got some that are literally a two or three person operation. Uh what would a strategic partnership look like with a tiny little business? Can you can you um like give me something specific please? Uh let's see. Carson's would be one which um I'm a really good Carson's customer but I'm just wondering they obviously don't have the the uh the benefit to you that Hellgate would have.

So what would strategic partnership look like? Um, in that instance, we would just be talking about advertising, frankly. Um, we have a a huge opportunity, um, locally with food and beverage, uh, being a top three economic driver for tourism specifically. Um, and what we've also not done a good job of is letting uh folks know when we've worked on their behalf, we create content on their behalf. Sometimes they don't even know. Um so perhaps strategic partnership uh would not be the appropriate term there. Uh but certainly uh advertisement uh thank you thanks for the clarification. Further question trick.

Thank you Dan. Thank you for a coffee chat on Friday. Also the question I have on hotel occupancy of 78%. Mhm. Um the perception I get just from this economy when I drive around so forth is that the local hotels are struggling to be at 50%, the national chains are probably running 100%. So if what are you actually finding because 78% looks really healthy.

It is and those are the numbers that were provided by our our data aggregators. I mean, I I could point to our hotel here um sitting right back here and uh he'd probably be able to give you more accurate or more detailed information. Um but everything that we know based on the numbers that we've been provided is that in Grants Pass, hotel occupancy is up uh for the first time in several years. Okay. Thank you. Further questions? I got Eric. Thank you for the presentation. Um I know it says ROI that speaks for itself. there on slide seven, 237 to $1. Um, can you explain exactly how you come up with that that uh ROI?

Those are the numbers that are provided by the state. Um, so across the state on average for every $1 invested in advertising, uh, a municipality can expect to receive $237 in economic uh, fluidity, liquidity, dollars moving around the community. Thank you. Yes, sir. Further questions. Victoria, is there a way in the future to dial that down to um a community level? Uh is there any way to aggregate those numbers out to even regional hope hopefully countywide?

There there are and they're very expensive. Um and so we pay for some of those things. Um but it's in the tens of thousands of dollars um to invest in those. We have some partners and I think the city may be one of them now um where we'll be able to share data. We have some software uh as a service that we use and I think the city has acquired another bit of that. So and I think the chamber may even have their own. So we'll be able to share that data across all of our efforts and get a super granular look. So like right down to the the block and and the date and the demographic uh by triangulating all of those various sources of data. It's really creepy uh because you know you're doing cell phone pings, you're you're looking at credit card swipes. It's all the most awful stuff of marking, but also the most necessary. Um, so we should by I mean for Artalong Road for example, we should be able to tell you exactly where everybody came from, how much money they make, what they were doing there, how much time they spent there, where they spent their money around town. Um, it's going to get real gross, but we'll be able to provide it for the benefit of the community between all of the agencies.

That That's Well, that's really great to hear. So, correct. Tell me if I'm on the right track here. So, you guys are all going to do like cost sharing or resource sharing to get down to that granular level or is it just just, you know, you guys cooperate pretty well together just information.

We work day every day. We're working together. I work with Terry and Dana every single day and Dan. Um, so with everyone's tools and resources, we're happy to work together and share those so that everyone wins. Oh, that that sounds great. I would I really look forward to seeing that. And that kind of And then I had one more question. It kind of leads into um this previous question. The previous question kind of leads into this. I loved on slide uh 45. Uh I love that you did this graphic um that shows where everybody is who's presenting today. And I think that's so helpful. And do you plan to I know you can't speak for everyone else, but do you guys plan to do more coordination or at least getting together to see, you know, how you guys might be overlapping or uh where and where you don't need to.

If not daily, certainly weekly. Um the chamber, the city's economic development department, Main Street, and Visit Grants Pass are working together and coordinating. um no one's doing anything in a vacuum. We're pretty well aware of that vin diagram that Terry talked about and one of the greatest concerns and rightfully so is that that vin diagram is just a circle. Everybody's just doing the same thing and that's not where we're at. Um we want to make sure that we're carefully coordinating, we're complenting the work, we're amplifying its effects um rather than being duplicative. So then lastly that just made me think of one last question then what do you think the uh your coordination with all all four of you um is going to translate into business this is a big question business retention business expansion uh uh tourism expansion

uh if you kind of have an idea of where it was just this last year where do you see it projected the force with the force multiplier of all of you guys working together.

It's a really great question and one that Terry and I actually give each other a bad time about. Um, as a longtime resident of the city, I have told him directly jokingly that my effort is to bring people in, have them spend their money, and then go home. And Terry is like, "Wait, hold up. That's not always the case." And so that's where it's important for us to work together and find the right people and bring them into town and have those folks say, "Hey, you know what? I would like to start my business here. I would like to raise my family here. I would like to have a home here." And that's why I would I will never work to a shotgun approach just to bring as many bodies as I can here. That's not the goal. It's not the task. It's to bring like-minded people val whose values are similar to Granch Passes broadly and hopefully support all of our businesses that already exist, maybe make a go of their own business, maybe have their kids here, and I I think it would all be a win. Um, to the specifics of that, I'd say I'm not your guy. Talk to Terry. um how that could look for for business development.

Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Seth, any questions? All right. Thank you, Joel. Any questions? I just need to know what I'm looking at here. And it may be a case of you providing too much detail. Sure. Um we have a a statement here of uh activity from the Josephine County Visitors Association. What is that relationship to visit Grants Pass? So Josephine County Visitors Association is the formal organization. The DBA is Visit Grants Pass. So that is our nonprofit profit loss.

Okay. So then when I look at it, um, and I think I understand why, but the, uh, total operating revenue is a minus $154,000, but it's for the period July 1st through April 9th. Mhm. Um so you must get u uh quarterly payments from the Yes sir. Uh okay. And then uh the expenses um that you have listed here are they for the full year or or they only for three quarters? That's for the fiscal year to date. Fiscal year to date. So So you will have more payroll expenses, salaries, uh the uh promotional items, are they are they all covered? the the marketing campaign and that kind of thing.

Yes, sir. They're all I'm that's just a one time bill, I would guess. So, so the bottom line is without getting into the detail when I turn over to the last page. Mhm. And uh the uh net revenue uh will be zero at the end of the year or maybe a carryover. Hopefully a carryover. Yeah. The the goal is to be at zero. What's that? I'm sorry. The goal is zero. Zero. Okay. Okay. So, you anticipate then the uh revenue coming in at uh an increase of over $143,000 over your last quarter expenses. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Andrew, do you have any questions?

I do. They're going to be a little scattered, but um thank you. This is a very detailed presentation. I really appreciate that. Um first question. So, I see you represent all of the businesses in Grants Pass, not just downtown, because I see a lot of coordination with Main Street, which is great because we we're promoting our downtown, and that's probably

where visitors come to to events there, but we also have destination businesses outside of downtown. And uh can you tell me a little bit about your goals to reach them? because when I look at the strategic partnerships, I don't see a lot that aren't like right downtown or in the general area. So, what are your goals to reach businesses outside?

So, in the just year and change that I've been working on this, it was important for us strategically to focus on the top drivers for tourism and that's food and that's music and that's historic buildings and experiences. So we wanted to take full advantage of what we already had since it really hadn't been done in a in a strategic scalpel like way. So in this first year we did exactly that and I think you'll see that and the content that we we've uh produced. Um, uh, as I briefly brushed over, uh, this following year is really about moving outside of the the downtown and not just into wine, which would be an easy go-to, but with the uh, the advent of Dollar Mountain, now we can start moving from Dollar Mountain to the Rogue River, up the Rogue River into the Illinois Valley. I'm already working with the chamber and the leadership in the Illinois Valley to talk about unique lodging experiences. Uh, Dark Skies is going to be an amazing opportunity for us to advertise the caves, of course. Um, and then we can get back into the Applegate Valley and we can talk about some of the things that aren't wine like paragliding and hang gliding. Um, we have a a a Perry creator out there that is awesome. We'll have a new uh a new brewery out there that will be great for uh for visitors. We've got the Lindsay Lodge that sits on the border. Um so we'll be moving outside of downtown. Um but in uh with respect to moving quickly and taking full advantage of the resources uh that Grants Pass has that are attractive statistically uh to travelers, we moved really quickly to focus on that. and now we'll have the opportunity over the next 10 years to develop the rest of the stories. Um we're just a team of two and so it is a little bit linear about how we can move through things. It does take time.

Thank you. And I I'm glad that that's your goal to move out beyond which brings the question that I don't know. So the TLT dollars that are for lodging is that lodging throughout the county and how does do you contract with the county too because your visit grants pass and h how does that work?

Well, without getting into like the political specifics of everything. The county has been in disarray for a bit. Um and we lost our liaison uh to our board. um we have a new one that's just getting ready to start and we'll be able to develop that support. To date, the county does not contribute um to our TLT rake. Um and it's unfortunate. Uh we still promote them obviously because uh they have a great deal to offer and people come here to go to what was the number two wine region in the country, USA Today. Um, and so we use we use that to bring people into town. Dark skies, the caves, Illinois River. Um, they're very important part of our community and we'd love to have a closer relationship and share um some of those financial responsibilities.

Right. So, the TLT dollars that come from the city um is it separate? Did does the county receive their own TLT from lodging outside of the city or No, it's all together in I we received no funding from the county. So I can't say what they do with theirs. Can you do you know does the county receive TLT dollars for lodging outside of the city limits? I'm just

uh the county receives economic dollars from the state, but uh the county currently right now there's a a 12% tax on lodging. That's all initiated by the city and the county in my understanding does not lo does not levy its own lodging tax against uh lodging agencies. Oh, thank you. So, it's only the city that levies the TLT dollars. Is that correct? For the city for within our organ within our boundaries, right? Okay. I didn't know that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, J. Thanks, Andre.

And then um so I agree. It's a little scary when you're tracking people that come in and it's difficult and I would just it's why I use cash a lot and not a credit card. But I don't blame you. Do you also um track business revenues? It's like when you're talking to businesses, I'm sure you do, but is there any kind of formal how are they doing? Are their revenues up? Because to me that would show that they're getting more tourism, more business do you?

Um, we don't only anecdotally in our work because we are so concentrated in our efforts beyond that 50 mile radius. I rely on my friend at the chamber honestly um to help understand what that impact is and then we look at the data aggregators um across the state. Travel Oregon is a a big help. Dean Renan Stars report um datafy. Now we have access to a platform called Placer. Um and then we just start trying to uh deduce what things look like broadly. Otherwise for us in our organization it's just anecdotal.

Okay. Thank you. And I I've seen your advertisements at the airport. Very nice base camp. Right. Thank you. Um, and then the I saw in here the datas from data. Datafy. Yeah, I wrote it. Is that a software program that you

It's a software as a service. Um, they call it I mean we get technical here, but it's programmatic. Um, which is to say that um we run they run millions of impressions in banner type ads based on online activity. Um, so I mean, I hate to break it to you, um, but you're being tracked on every click, every scroll, the amount of time you spend not scrolling, it's all being tracked. And so, Datify will be watching your activity and then we'll serve you an ad that it thinks it's appropriate and the most likely to engage.

Okay. And then there were two others. Dean, I'm sorry, Dean. Yes. What did they do? That's an annual report. It's not quite out yet. Um, this meeting actually the timing of it gets a little weird. So, we're waiting for it in the next couple of weeks actual that will close the end of the year that Rob was talking about. So, we'll have that full calendar year, but we just don't have that those numbers yet. And that's the big um detailed report.

Are they local or is that just okay? It's they're experts in doing that, I'm assuming. And then there was one other I wrote it down but I don't see it. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's okay. Um advising. You mentioned advising. Uh what what do you advise at?

Well, sometimes we're just not able to do work uh for a business for example. We might be approached um and they'll have no budget. Uh and we can't really call it a tourism attraction, but we're happy to spend hours, countless hours, infinity hours working with small businesses on how to best maximize um their marketing practices because in the end, we just want everybody to win. Um, and I work with plenty of experts in in this field and in a couple of hours we can advise a mom and pop on how to manage their socials, for example, at no cost. It's just something that we think is a community service,

right? Okay. And then lastly, um, thank you for the statement of activity and it's very detailed except for one 6150 the marketing campaign which is the bulk of your dollars. If you could, not now of course, but if you could break that down for me, I would really appreciate to know where the bulk of that money is is going.

I mean, I can tell you right now, um, it's passed through. We work with dozens or more vendors um and content creators um influencers, writers um so that's a lot of it but the bulk of it is passed through to the actual campaigns. So what you're seeing here is when we pay AAA for example to have an ad or an editorial in their magazine or we pay tens of thousands of dollars to Meta um for ads across Facebook and Instagram. Um, and it just goes on and on and on. Google's the same. Um, Reddit is the same. Um, YouTube is the same. So,

if it's not too difficult, I I would actually like to see a list of who we work with and market to if it's not trouble. Okay. And then, thank you. You're absolutely right. Um, being in marketing for many years myself, it is a downward spiral. It's one of the things you have to spend money on in order to grow business or grow tourism here. And when you it's you're right, it's the first thing to cut because it's a lot of dollars. You say, "Oh, I need to cut dollars." But um then you do see the impact of that. So I appreciate what you do and and the coordination with the other groups. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan. Appreciate your time. Thank you, brother. All right, Dana, who's next? All right. Um, our last presenter today, back in the end of uh, last year, the council approved some funding to help um, Main Street Grants Pass get off the ground and to hire an executive director. So, today we have Dan Small, executive director for Main Street Grants Pass.

Thank you, Dana. Um, hello, Mr. Mr. Mayor, counselors, thank you so much for having me here. U want to start with gratitude. Um it's not lost on me that um we are relying heavily on the city currently for funding for Main Street and it's largely in part to uh your guys's advocacy for uh what you believe in as a as a strong strategic partner for our community. Um so I just want to say thank you to all of you who had the opportunity to vote for uh our funding in October. Um, and thank you very much for the opportunity to serve this community in a meaningful way. I'm very honored to be here. Um, and I couldn't do without you guys. So, thank you very much. Um, Main Street Grants Pass technically f formed in uh, 2024. Uh, but we have not had a whole lot of activity until I was recently hired. I've been on the clock for about a month and 10 days as of today. Uh, and so, um, what I'm excited to talk to you about is the work that we've done thus far over this last month. uh briefly touch on the work that had been done uh prior to me being started and then give you a quick six-month outlook. Um as the work is just beginning um I don't have a full year's projection for you. I can't reflect on uh dollars spent in the last year. Um but we can uh dream together and we can be in a really exciting place um of optimism as we look towards uh the rest of this year. So, um I will start with that six-month outlook. Um and for what's going to look like for Main Street Grants Pass, um is establishing relationships and growing our membership base. Um, as I've been on the ground for the last month, um, meeting business owners, hearing their story, spending a lot of intentional time, um, understanding what challenges that they're facing currently and how their challenges might be different, uh, being a brick-and-mortar shop downtown as opposed to, um, maybe a a mobile store or somewhere that's, uh, um, in a more um, traffic driven, uh, district. Um, and so it's been a really wonderful

opportunity. That's something that I am excited to do and to continue to uh that that work um as long as I'm privileged enough to serve in this capacity. Um building those relationships, growing our membership bases, ultimately just talking about what it is that Main Street's intentions are and how we need uh downtown business owners and uh property owners alike um and community members participation in order for us to be successful. Um engaging our subcommittees and committing to the Main Street model. Main Street is a nationwide organization that exists in 2,000 different um communities nationwide. Um they have been in practice for 40 years. Um and they have a four- tiered approach. Um and it is economic vitality, its design, it's promotions and it is uh organization. And so um as we are engaging our subcommittees which are those four arms that I talked about um we are getting together and committing to that model because it is when each one of those is given the opportunity and the attention uh equally that we're able to see uh community transformation um communications improvement um specifically uh slick text deployment uh a text communications platform that we're really excited to deploy. um as I've been boots on the ground, we had a town hall uh meeting uh up at the hive on the 24th of February. Um and then it has been echoed ever since that one of the greatest uh pain points for the folks who are downtown, the folks who have uh rely on regular communications, whether that be from Main Street to understand um updates on promotions that are coming through or whether that be updates from the city. um they feel like their uh maybe being left in the dark, pardon me, maybe uh in the in the dark and um understanding too that there are uh mailers that go out and that we have emails that go out and still it's just not enough. Um so we're wanting to meet our vendors and our merchants where they're at. Um and so creating a text platform that allows uh Main Street to

communicate directly to those merchants uh or members for uh Main Street. Uh we have uh our phone number approved and we will we are currently in the deployment phase of Slick Text. Um and then strategic planning for 2026, the rest of 2026 and into 2028 uh will be taking place over the next few months as well. Um so understanding that I really only have job security for this year. There's quite a bit of work to be done. Um and then we also having our first Friday enhancements. Uh we have a downtown fashion experience, Cruise the Rogue, and the Living Room Invitational, which I'll touch on later. So, let the work begin. Um touching on the four pillars of the the Main Street model. These are our four subcommittees. As you'll see, um our kickoff meetings just happened last week. Um it has been a two-year process to get these folks together in the same room. Um, our promotions committee has been diligently working um really since the the foundation of uh of Main Street back in 2024. Um, with a lot of that work happening over the last year in terms of taking over First Fridays um and really um working on the um staple uh events that we're going to be doing like Cruise the Rogue that's coming up this year. uh living room invitational which partnered with Gates Home Furnishing was an indoor uh mini golf uh event where we ended up giving $62,000 to the um children's museum. Uh so Promotions has been working really really hard for that. Uh and I actually will shout out uh Danielle Glam who's our committee chair for that. She it is her birthday today. Happy birthday Danny. Um but also uh her and her husband John have been um actively uh working on keeping that promotions committee going as well as a group of uh five other community members who I'm very grateful for their work. Uh but the design the economic vitality and the organization committee um just had our inaugural meeting this last week. Um

really that was a tone setting meeting for us. It was uh creating expectations of what we hope to see from them and their participation in those committees. uh and then speaking uh specifically about what the next coming months are going to look like as we engage in the strategic planning process and long-term vision for Main Street Grants Pass. Um which also I will just mo take a note to say that our goal is to have that completed by 20 or uh July of this year. Briefly touched on the four pillars of Main Street. This is a rip directly from their website. Um but just so the uh group as a whole has an understanding of what each arm does um within the main street model. Um promotions is what we look at as almost the marketing arm of Main Street. So promoting our assets, promote and creating uh opportunities for the community to be involved uh in fun and exciting new um events uh around town. Um, we want to make sure that we are promoting the work that the other arms are going to be doing as well as promoting uh the work that our strategic partners are are doing. We we rely heavily on Visit Grants Pass and the Chamber of Commerce. Um, and we we want to make sure that the efforts that they're putting into the community, we're able to promote as well. Um, design committee is all about beautifification projects around town, whether that be wayfinding, uh, green space creation, murals, um, opportunities for us to take direct ownership in beautifying our city. Um, specifically the downtown uh, district and wanting to make sure that we are preserving historic buildings. Um, working closely with the historic building uh, society to make sure that any work that we're doing is uh, preserving the the rich heritage that we have here. Um economic vitality is building a diverse economic base. Uh cataly catalyzing smart new investment. So leaning heavily on our strategic partners to make sure that we are finding uh the right uh businesses to

bring downtown uh that will be continuing to drive foot traffic and to be able to continue to keep those dollars local. Um and then the organization committee is what I look at as uh the uh guard rails essentially of the organization. And so they are going to be strongly uh responsible for any future funding that will happen for Main Street, but they're also going to be the keepers of our strategic plan. And so as we develop uh initiatives through the other three arms, uh we'll be running it through the strategic plan and really through the the organization uh committee. So, uh, our main street events. So, um, first and foremost, our our monthly event that is recurring, um, and that is a Grants Pass staple that we have a lot of downtown merchants are excited to participate in is First Fridays. Um, there are some exciting new developments that will be coming that we can talk about that later. Um, the downtown fashion experience is coming up on June 13th. It's an opportunity for us to feature 11 different boutiques from the downtown district. Give them a moment as they all have their own sense of style and brand. We want to make sure that we are being inclusive uh for all of our boutiques and give them a moment to shine. Um Cruise the Rogue is uh a call back to an old classic. Uh we want to pay homage to the um the classic cruisers and the work that they done with the fabulous 50s event. Um but also step into this new uh um I guess generation as Main Street starts to take over that event and uh bring that into the future. It is now going to be a multigenerational uh multi-re uh car cruise that's going to be taking place over 4 days. I mentioned briefly the Gates Living Room Invitational. It was a massive success for us last year. We plan on bringing that back this year. We also have the Monster March, the trick-or-treating event that happens downtown um during the first Friday uh or right before sorry rather the the trick-or-treating event that happens on Halloween or the weekend for and then the Cocoa Crawl. and we're excited to

identify opportunities um for uh other events coming up soon. Um a massive win that we can point to that Main Street had uh participated in recently for First Fridays is the leprechaun activation. U big shout out to Terry at TLC Creations for creating um these wonderful little leprechauns that business owners hid throughout their uh their their business and they had a little QR code. Uh it was an basically we they were provided a map. They could go around, they search for the leprechaun, they scan the QR code and they were entered into a drawing. Um we saw with this activation alone 2,000 scans for those QR codes and an average of 90 scans per business. Um so as folks are going around, they're searching for these leprechauns. It's just a fun way for them to be engaged in the first Friday um activities and also for us to drive that traffic maybe down a little bit farther. You know, we're seeing that folks tend to stay in that G Street to 8 Street area. We want to make sure that we are engaging the businesses that are farther down the block and up the block as well. So, they were all placed on a map and then everybody had to go inside those locations and look for those leprechauns. Um, the Glass Forge Easter egg hunt, uh, we partnered with them mostly to just boost what they were already doing. Um Lee over there is a is a really generous man and uh over the the week leading up to Easter was placing five glass blown eggs in uh businesses all around Grants Pass. But we tried to specifically focus on uh downtown businesses as well as uh really specifically G Street businesses as they were experiencing the closure during that time. Um, and it was similar to uh what you would imagine um being the um the glass orb hunt that happens in Lincoln City. Basically, if you find the glass orb, you get to take it. Um, and so Finders keepers type of situation, but the business owners would hide the egg in their uh in their business, give a a little clue and a close-up picture

to not fully give it away. Um, and it was a great way for folks to engage in uh going exploring new stores downtown. uh future state for first Fridays. Um really excited to partner with John Glam who's taken a lot of uh ownership in creating this the first Friday experience um in creating an online app uh to enhance community engagement. So specifically the um activities that I just briefly mentioned um as well as future activations um will be able to take place in an online app setting. So, uh, folks can have, uh, interactive maps. Maybe whatever event, uh, that we're promoting for that particular month can be housed in there. Um, and then professionalizing systems and processes to enhance the event. Um, wanting to make sure that we are able to curate uh, an event. um making sure that we are partnering well with our our friends at the city um to have um applications for vendors who are going to be out on the street um and that we're strategically placing them throughout the the downtown um so that we aren't having, you know, four, you know, uh food carts or or things right in front of a restaurant, things that might be an actual detractor. How are how are we uh able to strategically partner to curate an event so that it drives traffic uh all the way down the block? The downtown fashion experience I briefly mentioned is happening on June 13th. Um we're projecting 150 to 200 people in attendance. We're going to be capitalizing on a lot of the uh Saturday market traffic as they as they start to leave was when we're going to begin our festivities. We're having uh up to 15 local vendors. Uh we're in the jury process for that currently. Um, we're also going to have a VIP experience for the boutique owners and as well as sponsors um and uh driving businesses and new clientele for those boutiques. An opportunity for them to showcase uh their uh apparel and also in our program be able to feature um a a coupon or a

discount that they might be able to take and then spend in their stores. Cruise the Rogue I talked about uh being a new a new twist on something that we're trying to capture the nostalgia of uh but also step into a new a new age I guess for uh the cruise downtown. So it's going to be a a 4-day uh experience multigenerational uh cars of all makes and models. Um we're going to have uh celebrity guests at the VIP dinner. Um car clubs from all over the West Coast. Um, we have car clubs coming all the way from Seattle and as far south as, uh, Reno and California. Um, we're expecting 20,000 people in attendance for this and, uh, have room for up to 500 cars. We're anticipating 400 cars on our inaugural year. Um, with a projected impact for our community of about $2 million. Uh, the Gates living room invitational gate uh, date to be determined uh, sometime probably early October. Um, I briefly mentioned this last uh last year was very successful. We were able to donate $62,000 to the Children's Museum. Um, we are looking for more strategic partners um other nonprofits that we might be able to u boost their efforts and so we want to um be able to give back in another quality way uh this year. So, we're look currently looking for those partners and have a goal of uh fundraising this year of 70,000. Uh we want to continue to strengthen our strategic and community partnerships. Um I briefly mentioned Slick Text earlier. Uh we want to make sure that we are able to partner with the city. We don't want to be um so we don't want to be uh duplicative duplicitous in our in our efforts, but we also want to be able to boost the um the communication efforts that are taking place currently. we've identified a gap and an opportunity for us to partner strategically with our friends at the city as well as our other strategic partners um to make sure that we are pushing out uh quality

communications in a in an accessible way. Um so we're in the part in the process rather of deploying Slick Text. Uh we want to connect uh businesses and local resources and with uh existing city support um and we want to continue to advocate for local businesses also. um had the opportunity to uh sit on a kind of improv 2 uh roundt um town hall style format I guess uh for the 8th Street food and beverages as well as the other uh business owners that were on H Street from between uh 6th and 4th and was an opportunity for them to come together and express uh concerns for the owl lot as well as concerns for and strategic um deployment of food trucks downtown uh at city events, so specifically Art Along the Rogue. Um through that process, there were several action items that came out of that meeting. um getting them together to create a unified voice to uh write letters um and be able to identify what it is that they would like to see with these uh new city developments as well as creating a database of uh reliable communications both of emails and phone numbers that we might be able to reach out to those business owners, keep them apprised of information as it comes available um and also share um correct addresses. I know that there's a lot of um uh outreach and mailers that have gone out um and oftentimes they're sent or sent back uh and so we have an opportunity to go out and do some data collection on behalf of the city to ensure that our communications um are are locked in and uh and accurate. Uh we want to continue to support small business networking events. Um recently had an opportunity to present at 1 million cups. Uh and through that process, Main Street has become a supporting um sponsor of 1 Million Cups. Um and then we're also going to be promoting business education events

looking specifically into 2027 opportunities to create um more leadership style events. Um and but this year in particular, we were recently approached by someone who is creating a um social media marketing uh course uh for business owners and small business owners specifically in the valley. Um and that's going to be hosted on the hive at the hive on uh June 22nd. And so having opportunities to partner with those folks. Um last thing we want to do is u quick membership update. Um I briefly mentioned the the time I've had over the last month. Uh spent a lot of time talking to business owners as a whole uh and and wanting to understand their story, their why, their struggle. And through that process obviously um was able to hear a lot of stories of uh struggle and hardship. Even though people are feeling um like they are in a place of of hardship, there's also a lot of optimism around the momentum that's happening uh between I would say the the efforts that are happening between these community partners in the room. Uh but we also uh heard that the main street um membership uh platform the way that it was originally created uh was a tiered membership. We never wanted to give the um appearance of favoritism or a pay-to-play type situation. I never want somebody to come to me and say, "Dan, I would love for you to to promote my business." And have my response to them be, "Well, for $100 more a month, you could get on our gold plan and I'd be happy to boost your business." Uh and so we removed that uh by creating a flat rate across the board, whether you're a community member, it's $100 uh $200 for downtown merchants, and $300 annually for property owners. And um what that does is it it lowers our barrier uh for entry. So opportunity for business owners and property owners alike and community members who want to be involved uh or to donate to the main street cause to get in at a reasonable

level. Um what that membership affords them is an opportunity to have a seat at the table. Um access to the uh committees that I I referenced um as well as uh first opportunities for participation in our uh future events. So, if you want to have um ownership in the direction of Main Street, this gives you an opportunity to do so. Um our current membership count today is 34 members strong. Um that is comprised of uh 28 business owners and um three property owners. And we also have the remaining uh bit being um community members who are just believing in and are supportive of um the main street mission. Um, I know back in October there was a lot of, uh, talk and rightfully so, um, and a call rather for the community to kind of put their money where their mouth is. Um, and I think that, you know, in a in a single month of me being boots on the ground, we've been able to, uh, drive and even in the last week had nine members um, sign up to be a part of Main Street. They're excited about the momentum and the direction that we're going. And uh councelor Pel, I know that you said when we got to two dozen members that you would become a member and so we're happy to get your membership today. But that's all I have for this moment. Um and I'm happy to take questions um if you have any.

Thank you. All right. Uh question from council Indra.

Yes. I just have to say um this has been a great meeting. I'm very uplifted. Marketing and uh the things that are being done sound so encouraging and great for our city. I would just uh caution that um talking, you know, we want action and data to show that what you're telling us is actually occurring. So, just keep that in mind as you go through these. But the events sound really good. Um and it and your membership is is going up and that's what we asked for. Prove to us that that membership's going up. I guess my um main thought going through all this are the TLT dollars. So a lot of your events are bringing people from 50 miles plus. So, I'm wondering uh why you wouldn't get a share of the TLT dollars Main Street and and as you all work together and we increase tourism and the TLT dollars, there should be enough to go around. I know right now if you get some, someone else doesn't get as much, you know, so there is a little bit of competition, but I think as uh the water rises, all boats float, right? And so you may be able to even get more money without general fund taxpayer dollars ever with the TLT. So that would be my hope um for you all

and I'll speak specifically to that. I do think that there is a um a lot of examples nationwide of cities who actually have incorporated the main street model into their economic development uh plan. But the other uh I would say probably 60% of Main Street uh that are successful, they do have a vested interest from the city because it is a uh a community development um incentive for them to have these districts be protected and to be well represented. Uh speaking to TLT dollars, Dan and I are are very collaborative in our efforts. Um and we work really hard to make sure that we're not uh duplicating efforts but we are um boosting whenever there's an opportunity to do so um the efforts of the other. Um so there are a lot of overlap opportunities for us in in these um in the events that we're doing in particular. Um I can't necessarily speak to the strategy and the deployment of the TLT dollars. I do think that uh Main Street's initial focus is to keep our dollars local. Um and so we don't we are more so promoting the and if you go back to um Dan's presentation with the concentric circles and and what our focuses are. We are focused on Grants Pass as a whole. That's where we're going to be promoting. Uh but we will lean heavily on our partners. Um and I don't necessarily think that that uh means that we have to take from their funds. However, I happy to engage in those conversations in a strategic way. Uh,

so you're saying that Main Street is going to promote just local, not outside the area. The focus of Main Street is to boost downtown districts in particular. So our region, the way that we we have uh worked out our district is um basically Ca Street to the bridge between uh fourth on G and H, but primarily fifth to 8th Street and that would be the downtown district that we're promoting. feel that bringing people in from all over would boost business downtown? Absolutely. Yeah. And and there's no there's no um

there's no uh cap on on the people that we want to participate in the events. However, we understand that we have a strategic partnership with visit grants pass and that is their outreach already um as well as the chamber of commerce to to promote in the community as a whole and so or sorry the uh county as a whole. Um, and so of course it would be a a win for us to bring in other folks, but that is not our um general marketing position. Okay. I I just see it going hand in hand and a way to to boost downtown to

I 100% agree with you and I think that that's something that I mean he talked a lot about it, Dan did about how we're we're in lock step and um and we want to make sure that we are uh working together to to promote each other's things. So Okay. And then just a um a thought as you the events sound amazing and I know they'll grow and what great ideas and I just know from experience in marketing it's great to do the events and fun and the marketer you're great you know you're very personable. I've met you a few times. You go out and do all the talking and then where the ball drops is when it's time to record notes and data and stuff. So, um I know you'll be on top of that, too.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Joel, got any questions? Uh, no. I just appreciate the energy and look forward to another cup of coffee. Thank you very much. Me, too. Also, uh, we you owe us three memberships as well, sir. Okay. Okay, that sounds good. Thank you. We're happy to take them. Seth, you got any questions? Victoria, you got questions? Hi, thanks for your presentation. Hi, Victoria. I'm really excited about the the cruise the rogue and the projected um money into the that was an amazing number and is that going to help fund Main Street. So you'll use that to grow to grow Main Street as well.

Absolutely. Yeah, it'll be it'll be a driver financially for us uh basically to continue funding for subsequent years. We are a nonprofit though, so we want it to be we want it to zero out at the end of the year. But absolutely, there's a lot of opportunity for us to to use those dollars and I think that there's a lot of partnerships that we can identify uh in the in the community at large to give back to as well.

Okay. Thank you. So, uh good I mean I just that just sounds like a great time for the community and so thank thank you for putting that all together and having the just what you're talking about the cars that are coming from all over. It just sounds really great. So, uh, you said you had 34 members as of today. And that's that's up from what? And you said you had nine new members this week. That's amazing. Good job. And uh, so 34 is up from what? Cuz I don't remember the last time. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. And then what is your goal uh for next month or or do you have a a tiered goal or whatever?

Yeah, I appreciate the the question. Um, I would say we there are potential for 220 businesses within the district that I defined. Um, and that is we would love to represent uh all of those businesses. We understand when the town center association was most thriving, they were upwards of around 170 businesses. Um, and so if we can get to, you know, those numbers, I feel like we have a really good representation for what our downtown district is. Um, I would say, you know, goals for the next three months is to just duplicate, you know, the works that we've done in the last month. And so, um, when I started, we were at 19. And so, quick math is is hard for me, but I will do my best. That sounds like maybe 15, uh, members that we gained in this last month. Um, and so if we can continue to build those efforts, I think that we would be, uh, well positioned by the end of the year.

So, Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Eric, you got any questions? Yeah. Thank you. Hey, this is uh this is great. I thank you for the presentation. Um the Gates Living Room Invitational. Yes, sir. Um can you explain a little bit about that maybe to promote it more I guess for the um for the general public here? I mean $62,000 that is that is excellent. Uh could you can you go more into detail about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, we we partnered with, uh, many sponsors, uh, to put together a a mini golf experience inside of Gates Home Furnishings. Um, he cleared out an entire display room for us. Um, and I believe it was 18 holes. Um, and so that was all money that was generated by uh, people who were in attendance who wanted to give to the um, uh, organization. So, in that particular promotion, we were partnered with the Children's Museum. Uh, and so that was marketed for the event and folks that were there were able to donate to uh to that cause. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. You bet.

And I haven't been to coffee with you yet, but I I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Rick. Do you have any questions? Yes. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate the fact um you're expanding the audience you're looking at and the market and type of thing. What is the Cocoa Crawl? Yeah, the Cocoa Crawl was a it was a fun uh community activation where business owners were out front of their businesses and giving out uh cocoa to the community. So, it was a there was an interactive uh a map or there was a map for all of the the different businesses that were giving out cocoa uh downtown and um just a a fun community activation there. So, is that done once a year or once a month or how does that function?

That's done annually. Yeah. And I and from uh memory and and I didn't participate in the in it last year, but from memory it was uh the first Friday that took place in December. The group can correct me if I'm wrong. All right. Thank you, Rob. You have any questions? Yeah. Um I thought the Cocoa Crawl was a chamber event. Was it not? The way that I was told about it was that it was a Main Street event. And so I may be misinformed. Terry, you guys did Lemonade Day. We gave it to Main Street to help support their fundraising efforts. Okay. The first year though, you did it, right? Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Um, so a question on um, uh, the cruise. Yeah.

So, the last few years of the cruise may may have been when we were moving into CO, I can't remember. Uh, I don't even know where the cars went and I don't think anybody else did either because nobody really watched it. So, is this cruise actually going to be

engines on cars driving around up and up sixth and seventh? Is that the plan? Yes, sir. That is the plan. We're going to have uh I believe two separate cruises, one on uh Friday and evening and one on Saturday. And then uh the end of the event uh we'll also have 200 cars that are going to be taking over Riverside Park as an opportunity and an awards ceremony that will happen on Sunday morning. So, opportunities to inter interact with cars. There will also be other activations that'll be happening throughout the weekend. Um we're identifying uh parking lots for these car clubs to meet. I know uh there's a low rider group as well as Rat Rod Ruckus that they want to do a bounce uh competition and those types of things. And so um lots of other little micro activations that will be happening around town, but there will be Yeah. a large cruise.

So you're saying that there's a cruise uh a cruise up and down sixth and 7th on Friday night. I believe so, sir. Yes. And on Saturday as well. the main cruise is Saturday where where it would be historic like what you were talking of what you were thinking about the community thinks about where we would be looking at closing down Sixth and Seventh Street. They've already had discussions with the city and the chief about what that would look like. So that would be on a Saturday. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Perfect. Go ahead. You got another question?

Okay, go ahead. I'm not sure how this round table works, but it's some of your comments sparked a question for me. Um, so the city events, the the the a couple events the city put on, the city gives money for that. Are you anticipating that those uh the city would continue to give money to those events that we already do now, or would you eventually not need city money for that? Are you specifically referring to Art Along the Road and uh the Christmas tree lighting? Yes.

So, we are in current conversations with with the city as well as my board of directors for taking over those events, but those have not been officially been handed over to us. We would love to have continued strategic partnership with the city. Uh, but those conversations are ongoing. Is that something you all would like to take on or I think that that would be a huge a huge opportunity to do so. I would be I would Yeah, I would relish the opportunity to do that. Be great. Okay. And then my last question, uh, we talked about net zero, but you do save money in reserve, right? Of course. Yeah, absolutely. What what percentage do you have in reserve?

The the uh budget planning and the strategic planning for the organization is ongoing and so we haven't set aside or earmarked a dollar amount at this time. Um, but the hope is to have at least 6 months in reserves uh at any given point uh to kind of float us through any any hardships that we might experience. Okay. I I didn't see it on the the list, so I wanted to make sure you weren't I can't speak to super specifics on it either, which is why I chose not to include it. Yeah, with the organization being so new, there is a lot of uh groundwork that we're trying to lay right now. Great. Thank you. You bet. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you.

All right. Uh, next on the agenda, we're going to council meeting protocol. Or did you switch it? Doing we switched it to Reinhardt Volunteer.

Okay. So, we're going to have um some discussion in regards to Reinhardt Volunteer Volunteer Park Pump Track. Serious. All right.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. Josh Hopkins, park superintendent, here to talk about pump track options. This is in relation to Reinhardt Volunteer Park, fly fishing pond, and everything else that goes with that. So subject to summary review pump track options for development and locations within city parks. This is in relationship to council goal of infrastructure for the background at the January 5th, 2020. Sorry. Sorry. Hey guys, can you uh can you come through the door and then uh we're trying to have a hard time. Joel Joel conversations need to be out the door or in here like just you're kind of interrupting. Sorry.

Go ahead.

Thank you. Uh, at the January 5th, 2026 city council workshop, council reviewed the parks advisory committee motion for repurposing the fly fishing pond at Reinhardt Volunteer Park into a natural playground based on results from a community survey. The survey listed other as the top response followed by natural playground. The majority of people that chose the other indicated a pump track or some variation of pump track as their write in preference. City Council reviewed the material and provided direction to bring back natural playground options. Shortly thereafter, some councilors expressed interest in revisiting the discussion and evaluating the development of a pump track at this location. So, here's an example of what a pump track looks like. One of the questions we keep getting asked is what exactly are these types of tracks? And I've been describing them as being asphalt, some of them are modular, some of them are DG. This is an asphalt pump track in Erie, Colorado. It's got rollers, bumps, b turns, and then straight sections that you can ride on. The idea is it allows kids to basically race on these on any form of pedal craft as well as just practice so that they can get more advanced to go into the actual type of uh racing circuits they have for these types of activities. This one is about 20,000 square ft. staff did contract or contact a number of companies that do specialize in pump track installation and design. Pump tracks cost vary greatly based on the magnitude of scale and the experience desired. Basically, if you're using asphalt, DG or modular. Each one of these all come with a different cost associated for the material, but also the size alone really increases cost and the type of experience you're wanting.

More advanced tracks cost more money. Uh more, you know, unadvanced tracks are less. The recommended size from one of the manufacturers that works on these throughout the nation was 20,000 square ft. This would allow for a beginner track section along with progressive elements for more advanced riders and competition. The cost estimate for one around 20,000 ft they put at $750 to a million. $750,000 to a million dollars with that 10,000 square foot is the minimum required for the competition level tracks. So, if we are looking to build one and we're wanting it to be a track that draws tourism or anything like that, we'd really want to build it to that competition level so that there is things that draw people to this location. Anywhere we put one of these pump tracks, it's going to bring people into it. It's just a matter. Is it the type of size and skill level and uniqueness that's going to bring in people from over 50 miles away or is it just a local attraction? So bigger the better for tourism. Just a couple examples. In Redmond, Oregon, they've got a 20,000t pump track. It's the one you can see right off the road. It is very used and very popular. The one that kind of I think spurred a lot of people wanting a pump track is the one that was built in Crescent City about a year ago. That one is 18,000 square ft and it costs just under 600,000. Culver, Oregon was originally planning to do a 12,000 ft pump track for about 430,000. They just decided to do a 10,000 ft one and put 365,000 on it. I saw a couple of other examples and they're all kind of around that range for that. you know, 10,000 to$7,000. It tends to be around $400,000. 10,000 like 15,000 is kind of going up to around that 500,000 600,000 range. And then once you get over that 18 to

20, that's when you really start seeing the cost increase because that's when you're adding more technical features at that point. So, here's the location from the survey in the orange square. This is the fly fishing pond itself. It's about 7,500 square ft and that's what was reported in the survey was it was a 7500 foot area. The red is what we could potentially do if you wanted to build a 20,000 ft pump track in this location. With that, we would need to remove several memorial trees, benches, and it pretty much takes over the entire grass area in this section of the park. It is also really close to the Reinhardt Memorial Grove and we do have like tree protection zones and things like that. So if council was interested in this, we'd need to really look at that. The other issue we have with this is this whole area of the park turns out is in the floodway. And with the way FEMA is funded right now, there's not a lot of stability and we're not really sure if we're able to submit the type of development documents we would typically do to allow for this in FEMA because we don't know if there's anyone actually working on these right now. So, if council was interested in this, uh the FEMA issue would probably be a good workshop topic someday because there's other options council could look to do because if we're running into this, other people in our community have to be running into it as well. Uh if council was interested in moving forward with this project at this point, I don't know if we can even do a natural playground here because we don't know what's going on with FEMA. Uh council could do a text amendment and basically say we're not going to use FEMA guidelines until after they stabilize. Here's some of the other park areas we've talked about for pump track locations. This one is the west side of Riverside Park. We have a lot of room out here to potentially build a pump track. It is in the flood plane, but not

the flood way, but it's less of an issue with the FEMA side. We' simply just go through a mitigation process and work with a fish biologist on that, similar what we did with the Riverside Park stage. This would allow for over a 20,000 foot pump track. Additionally, one other issue that we hear at Riverside Park a lot for our special events is a lack of parking. We could also include a parking lot into this location as well to help with the other special events that occur. Uh, this would require some tree removal and likely the removal of the disc golf course which has been moved around three or four times since it was incepted. This particular location does have URRA funding as a potential. There was 1.2 million identified in the URRA budget to go towards Riverside Park improvements. Some of it is being used for the Riverside stage. I'm not really sure what type of balance we have at this point, but there could potentially be some funding available through the URA for that. And the other thing with it right on the other side of the bridge next to Sixth Street, you know, it's right down the highway there. It's pretty easy access no matter what exit you're getting off of the freeway to come to this location. Gilbert Creek Parks Ballfield is another location that the parks committee talked about back in 2019. They've been talking about pump tracks for many many years with that. At the time it was being used about 200 times a year and they didn't think it was they thought it was enough use to not really explore this option. The uses of this field has decreased drastically. Part of it's because of the drainage in the outfield makes it so it's kind of not usable for half the season, which we talked about addressing in a different project, but also people really are enjoying using RVP for little leagues and the other teams that used to frequent this field. The field usage at this point has decreased to the point to where last year there were 18 reservations. Uh the

year before there were 54 and in 2023 there were 109. This year it looks like we have 14 people that have reserved the field so far to this point. This location has the school district lease. So we'd need to work with them to get agreement to repurpose this for a pump track. One nice thing about this location is we'd actually be able to extend out fencing to make it so it's a fenced in area. It's at the part of town where Dollar Mountain is as well. So it kind of creates that biking circuit up there. It is adjacent to a school property. So children would still be able to use it from the school if they'd like to go over there. And in general, it's uh right in a nice centralized neighborhood type area. There's, you know, homes all around this that could benefit from this. Fruitell Park has two potential locations. Uh again, one in the red square is about 15,000 square ft. This would be an option. It's right next to Fruitell Elementary School, which would be nice for them programmatically for what they do with their kids. They use our field quite a bit. And then in the orange square is where you could potentially build a larger 20,000 ft pump track. This location used to be called a practice field for like little league uh football and things like that, but it's not really used for that anymore. And that would just require some tree removal. For the red square area, we would need to look at doing some sort of fencing around the playground itself to provide a little bit of a separation. Then there's Beacon Hill Park. You guys talked a lot about this at the last meeting. Beacon Hill, since it's a blank space, has plenty of room to develop any size pump track you'd want. So, for cost implications, we've got potential revenue from the lodging tax. And to me, that really depends on the size of pump track you'd like to build as well as the location. I'm of the mindset if we're building a large pump track that's going to be able to be used

for national and international events and things like that, definitely we could say TLT is something that would be eligible for it kind of regardless of location. However, if we're building a small 7500 ft pump track somewhere, that's going to be mainly a local use type of a thing and it's not the type of feature that's going to draw people in. There is the potential to use URRA funding at Riverside only. And then we've got park specific LB funding through our different LB codes that we could look to shift around if council so chose. There's always the option of council deciding they're really engaged in a project and trying to find additional general fund resources to support that. And then staff resources are kind of mixed into everything we do. Expenses council's discretion. It really depends on size and experience you're looking for, as well as, you know, some expense based on location. So, at this point, we need direction on whether or not you're actually interested in continuing to review pump tracks right now, if you have a preferred location or if you got a couple locations you'd like more information about, the size and experience council would prefer, and the amount council is interested in funding, as well as alternative funding options. for alternative funding options. You know, if council decided you wanted to spend x amount on a pump track at this location, but only if a community group fundraised or sponsored or things like that to bring in extra dollars to help support the development of this or potentially state park grants and things like that. Uh Gilbert Creek is not eligible for state park grants because the lease term is 10 years and not 25 years. Something next time we look at that lease we should work on getting addressed. uh alternative would be to move this to an additional workshop, assuming you've got more information you'd like to hear about contracts from us. And yeah, that's what I've got for you. Thank you, Josh. Uh questions from council. Rob.

Thanks, Josh. Um so if we're looking at uh the Beacon Hill site um to bring it up just to the we'll say the uh initiation level the other the other park sites all have infrastructure in place and they have some degree of parking etc etc. So what uh would it cost to bring the Beacon Hills site up to the initiation level if you understand what I mean? We talk about a pump track being

$750,000 or maybe a million dollars, maybe less. Um, but that's an that's on a site that is already basically um ready to go and it's got infrastructure. So, where how much extra does it's does it cost to get Beacon Hill started on that and bring it up to that level?

So, if I'm remembering the numbers from the last meeting two weeks ago or so when we talked about Beacon Hill, we talked about phase one costing somewhere around a million dollars. That would be for like instituting the pathways, the parking lot, as well as, you know, like irrigation, site furnishing, things like that to go along with it. So, you'd have that million-doll kind of estimate for the upfront cost plus whatever size pump track you guys would like to go forward with as cost, too. So, you're looking, you know, 1.5 to potentially two. So, so an additional million basically if it was that site, Beacon Hill, but in addition, we'd potentially be getting walking paths and things of that nature in addition to the parking and possibly bathrooms or whatever.

Yeah, you'd basically be getting a fully functional park at that point, just less amenities. Uh, if you went that route, your main amenity and draw would be the pump track. As far as restrooms, that would probably be a phase two. If we were to build a facility like this, we'd probably start off with like a portable toilet with like a surround type of a thing like other communities do. And on the uh the Fruit Dale Park, I think you mentioned the orange uh rectangle was I think you said 20,000 square ft.

Uh it's a little over 20,000 ft. This was just measured through our arc site, but yeah, you do have the ability to build up that location as well. And then there is a smaller parking lot on one side and then street parking. And yeah, and the red the red triangle was how many square feet?

That one was about 15,000 square ft. And that's a spot where we don't have anything developed. We've talked about putting sports courts and things like that back there cuz it's very level. Uh, another option that we haven't really looked at would be like a modular pump track. They're just typically a lot smaller. That could potentially go there. They are just a lot cheaper. uh they range from like 50,000 to 100,000, but they're made out of plastic and so they've got like only a 5year warranty. So So regardless of where it goes, if if we were to decide on a a competition level track that would potentially be attractive for uh tourism. Uh but regardless of um uh on a track of that size, how many parking spaces would we need? I don't know.

That's that's pretty critical, I guess, right? I think it just depends. I don't know if there's even a metric for saying if your pump track is this size, you need this many parking spaces. I'm sorry. Say that again.

I'm not sure if there's a metric that says if your pump track is this size, you need x amount of parking spaces. Generally, for parking spaces, we're looking at like restrooms and things like that that kind of dictate the minimums. Well, I guess I guess my point is it's not a question of any kind of mandate from the state or city ordinance. I'm just saying realistically we need parking at a track like this. So, I'm just because I don't know I've never been to a an event, so to speak, a a competition event, how many people would show up. Uh I'm sure that most of them would be arriving by car and I'm just wondering again how many parking spaces we would need. So, I guess that's a consideration that we'll have to get the answer to. Thank you. Uh Rick, you got any questions?

Thank you, Josh. So, I'm used to the old rules on FEMA where if you did not import any material, but just move material around that was on site and it had an engineer, then you could do your project that you wanted to do? Have the rules changed substantially now that make it much more difficult? Uh yes, counselor, they have. Yeah, there there's uh a lot more stringency right now and particularly as Josh in the flood way um you would have to under current rules give a no rise certificate which means that whatever you put there you you're not causing any rise in the base flood elevation um which you would not be able to do with virtually anything uh because any any object that is put on top of the grade is going to r is going to rise to some degree Um now you you know there's obviously opportunities within the rules to kind of work with those things but um this uh this is it's much more challenging to work in the floodway.

And was fish and wildlife now part of that as well? Um I'm not aware of fish and wildlife being involved with that particular rule. That's very much FEMA driven. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Eric, you got any questions?

Yeah. Thank you. um insurance depending on the size of this uh pump track. Uh does can anybody speak anybody on the staff speak to um insurance and how that's different than being in the park? I being that there's going to be a lot of children moving around on their bicycles. Uh there's more of a potential for people to get hurt. How is that all tied together? I mean, is that a factor? Is that something the city needs to worry about? So, in the state of Oregon, it's kind of recognized there's an inherent risk of anything you're doing in a public space, especially in municipal parks. We typically claim recreational immunity for those types of things, which doesn't cover us if we're negligent as property owners or leaving hazardous conditions. But if somebody does have an accident, you know, trips, falls for a non-hazardous like issue we weren't aware of, then that would be the legal defense we typically use as recreational immunity. Thank you.

Thank you. I have one other question. Uh so it seems like I think uh the community was wanting this in in the Reinhardt Volunteer Park. Am I mistaken in that or are we looking at uh is that what we're that's obviously what we're talking about here to try to figure out where we're going to put it? So yeah, the original thought was we were going to be repurposing the fly fishing pond itself and the survey we put out was focused on that and then the community members organized themselves and did a big campaign for pump tracks and so that's what got brought in. Uh, so we looked at Reinhardt Park and basically when I saw, oh, it's in the floodway and there's not a lot of wiggle room with FEMA right now, we decided, well, where else could we potentially put one of these since we know the community is really interested in it? And these are kind of the park locations we have outside of Reinhardt Park that have open space areas that one could be installed in. I do want to take a second. One of the things council did ask at the last Beacon Hill meeting, I believe it was, was for committee members to come talk about this as well if you had questions for them. We've got some members from the tourism advisory committee as well as from the parks advisory committee here if you have any specific questions for them. We did invite bikeways, but they both had conflicts today. So, so with that being said, I I I wish you would have said that earlier because I would have had them. Um, let's get let's get Okay, let's do this. Uh, can you guys step up and give a little spiel a couple minutes each in regards to um your committee's favoritism or not? Not non not favoritism. Just I'll give you like two minutes because I want to make this real quick. Sure.

Then we'll get back to our line of questioning. Thank you. Is this on? Yep, sounds like it is. Well, I am Doug Bradley, uh the chairman of the touris advisory committee, mayor, council, thank you for allowing me the time. Uh we had adopted the pump track as one of our goals for the upcoming year and it talked about it being at the Reinhardt Park. We thought it was a great idea, great use for that property. Um we've had a lot of interest in cycling type activities in the city and county. So, we thought that would be a good idea. And then, um as we presented to council, it moved to Beacon Hill. I think because of some other reasons, we kind of withdrew that real quick as a goal at least or at least to put on a back burner till we get more information about infrastructure budgeting um you know how long is it going to take. We had a lot of questions that had not been answered to allow that to continue as a goal. Um and I think we're kind of still in the same boat. So I'm glad to be here today and look at some of the options that we have ahead of us. Um but once we can get those cleared up, I think the tours advisory committee would be happy to make a recommendation as to what the council should look at. We would keep that uh in the lens of uh visitation. How is generating demand for visitation? That's typically what we like to look at things through. Um any questions while I'm here?

We'll we'll let you give your statement. We're going to every statement then we're going to go back to the round table and we'll have we'll call you up. Thank who else?

I'm Ree Bomar, also known as Speedo Reto. I'm on the uh city uh park advisory committee and I'm also a member of the RVNBA. I uh been wanting to I'm born and raised here in Grant's Pass and I've been kind of like an advocate or someone that's been stoked for and wanting in the future one day to be have a pump track and now we're kind of a spot to where it's possible and weighing options and learning the information about Reinhardt and being the flood plane and then the proposed plan of the past for Beacon Hill and already having a conceptual plan and seeing that with also the the development of like the bike lane up on Beacon as well as on I think it's norththeast Hillrest that the new bikeways going up there. I think it makes total sense for a bigger pump track up on Beacon Hill. Also for the huge thing for tourism from I5, me being a biker and going up and down I5 in the past and being able to see jumps from the freeway was just like, wait a second, like we got to stop there and if we don't stop there this time, we're going to come back later. So, I think that just the visibility from I5 is a huge factor in for the pump track and as well as the space up there is going to create it for we can have a bigger, more appealing pump track that's that's also going to play a big factor and role into Grants Pass and this huge mountain bike destination and outdoor recreation that we've created here. It's it's huge. It's crucial. So, I think Beacon Hill weighs out for the best option.

Well, thank you. Thank you for your input. Uh, okay. Perfect. So, we're going to go back in the line of questioning. I had Victoria. Do you have any questions? Um, yes. I have a question now for the gentleman from the tourism advisory committee. So, you were thinking about this and I imagine because you saw in his way of bringing in tourism and uh I'll ask Josh the same question, but you can you can answer um later or after this. What is the possibility for economic um income to the city for something like this? Um that's the first question.

Well, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but but cycling and outdoor uh just the trails alone, I think it's 1.5 billion in the country and something like 10.5 million around uh just southern Oregon. Um, so what as we we develop these assets, it just gives us the opportunity to compete for the dollars that are being spent in our region. Um, Dollar Mountain is no different than that. We have all kinds of people that come to Southern Oregon specifically uh to engage in outdoor adventure sports. So by having Dollar Mountain, we now have an asset that will bring them specifically to our region. They won't have to go to Medford or on to Ashland. It will keep them here. And as we add those assets, it will just allow us to take bigger chunks of that money that's already coming into our region that we know of.

Thank you. And yeah, Josh, you mentioned Redmond and uh the need for a pump track to be 20,000 square ft to be a tourism draw or if I remember exactly. So, I would say 10,000 square ft minimum for tourism draw cuz that's what's required for the competitions. Uh, that being said, kind of the bigger the better you go. In general, people have talked about it today. Mountain biking is like almost a $300 million tourism industry in the state of Oregon. Cycling in general is a billion dollar industry. This pump track is out of Erie, Colorado. And let me pull it up on my phone real quick. Basically, they use Placer AI, which is a tracking software for like visitation for one of their events that they did at this pump track. In it, it showed that, you know, they had a large uh UCI, which is like United Cyclist International competition there. They had 36 or 3,800 people attend the pump track. And essentially during this time frame they estimated it brought in $47 to $51,000 in economic output for this one event because it was so well attended and it had cyclists coming from all over, you know, the nation to be it. That's obviously a large extreme of that. Locally, we would probably reach out to Bike City to see what type of impact their regional event has when they do theirs. And I know that's coming up and that could give us kind of a more local idea of what type of impact this would have. Then there's other impacts with all things kind of going in parks and recreation. Uh it's weird to live in a world where we have to think of tourism instead of community well-being. But in general, all of our park features have a large impact in community health and well-being. a feature like this that's such active play and active

participation does play a large role in just the vitality of your community through health and you know mental health and everything else along those lines. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I didn't mean to dis diminish that.

No, it's just now the city spending money and being able to get a return is is in my way of thinking probably a good a good way to go about things. And then the extra benefit is all of those great things too cuz our parks are so wonderful and you are a reason for that. One of the biggest reasons for that. So, thank you. So, um then my next question was it's it sounds like what I'm hearing is it's going to be virtually impossible to put a pump track in Riverside Parker. Is it going on a a a difficulty scale? Is it like I mean is it possible? Would would it be ill advised even to try to go that way because of FEMA and all those things or

Do you mean Reinhardt Park? Oh, that's what I meant. Sorry. Uh it's definitely possible. I think the issue we have is not really knowing how long it's going to take to get through any sort of FEMA processes at the moment. uh speaking with the planners, they're not really getting a lot back when they're sending things to FEMA and you know, I think they're supposed to come back and reertify us in some form or fashion. We're still waiting to find out when that's going to happen. So, it's just kind of the

delay if Oh, okay. So, if it's still possible for me, it seems like that's where we put the community survey. So, it seems like that's where the the community thought it would go. So, it would be worthwhile looking to put it there because we already have the parking and the restrooms and all of the things, the infrastructure there. You'd probably maybe eventually have to put in restrooms, but yeah. So, okay. So, maybe uh Bradley, you could speak a little bit more to that about the FEMA difficulties or time frame. No, I I hear you, counselor. Um, and it's it is it is really challenging for us to at this point speak on any kind of permitting in the process. You know, the the state of Oregon is is dealing with this endangered species act lawsuit. Um, so we are unique in the FEMA world as a state. Um, because we're having to address that and the mitigation that's required with that. Um we uh you know anytime you start talking about adding anything uh with mass into a flood way um you know you're also adding engineering dollars um because it's you know it's there's a lot of studies that have to go into the modeling of what exactly would happen. Um, all this to be said, um, if this is where council's direction is, I mean, we'll continue our research and we'll make phone calls and we'll pursue the rules and and we'll we'll we'll check and bring you back as much information as we possibly can.

Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Seth. You have any questions? Um, I don't know. I guess Doug, this is kind of you. guys walking back in, but you mentioned that it'd be potential to kind of give this back to the TAC and parks and bikeways and, you know, you come up with a recommendation. I mean, that seems I don't know if that's something you guys be interested in, but

yeah, we we'd love to do that. Um, I think we need more information, too. And and I mean, every time we talk about the pump track, I feel like I get a little more information. So, we're kind of at a place where I kind of need it all at once and and all in a big pile so that we can kind of digest it and look at it. Um, yeah, we do have some ideas about what our uh recommendations would be and I didn't know till today that, you know, Reinhardt Park's a flood zone. So, it doesn't really sound like that might be a pretty tough option for us. Um, so again, that kind of removes one of the things we were thinking about till just now. Um, so yeah, that's kind of where I just need more information and then we'd be happy to make a a recommendation and it is going to be centered around I think what we feel would be best for the community when it comes to not only serving our locals but also uh being a demander for visit a demand generator for visitation. So

okay and I don't know what the answer to that is just right at the moment. Yeah. And then I was actually curious about the flood zone. This is not for you. Sorry. Thank you Doug. Uh is this something that we just overlooked? Was it something that didn't come up? I mean, yeah, cuz this is the first time I think any of us are hearing about this. And this does change things, it sounds like. So, I was just curious. Uh, I wasn't aware the floodway came up that far until I was making the slides for this presentation and I randomly was like, "Oh, I should check the floodway layer." And then when I saw that, I was like, "Wow, this is very surprising. This map goes everywhere all over this town and I don't like the way the map is." So, if we could just get rid of that. Good. Okay.

So, just a a quick clarification. When you look at this the the exhibit that he had up there, the flood plane is where water will saturate when it comes to flooding. A flood way actually is kind of defined as actually moving water. So there is more stringent um restrictions from FEMA within the flood way. And you look at the Rogue River, its flood way is very big. So that's just a little careful. Go ahead. Uh on speaking of the projects, we've talked about the survey that we did for Rhinard Volunteer Park and trying to figure out a use for that old fly fishing spot and that kind of thing. That was primary was let's find a secondary use for that. If council wants to have a pump track that is ultimately going to make a difference and be an economic driving engine and be uh you know corresponding with what we're already focused on. That's probably the approach that needs to be looked at with a new perspective. if if are we wanting to bring in a 20,000 ft pump track that is going to bring in opportunities for competition etc. and where's the best fit for that instead of the question which was how do we repurpose a location in the park they're two totally different questions and so I think if you uh I I think starting fresh if if council now one of their goals is let's try to ride the wave the community wants to have a pump track well then let's look at it from that perspective and then you'll get a better product in the end

yeah yeah no I definitely think that makes sense I mean coming from the economic side of things um yeah and that's why I think you know bring to some of the committees would be great, too. Thanks, Josh. Joel, do you got any questions?

I have I have two questions, Josh. Um, first off, appreciate your preparation. It's thorough as usual. Um, when you look at the high demand, the high competition, the one that would bring in tourism dollars. Um, I also heard there's a lot of other pump tracks being built, supply and demand. Do you have and I know that's an uh intuitive subject. Um and it it might be just the opposite. If you have a lot of them, maybe more even more people come. I don't know. But if Crescent City has one, I think there's another one in the southern Rogue Valley.

Us now Ashland is looking at building one as a part of a new park design that they've got going. I've heard Central Point is also looking at incorporating a pump track. And then the closest one regionally after that would be the one over in Crescent City. From a tourism perspective, I think you would probably just do the same thing we're doing with our mountain bike trail systems and market as like a regional circuit.

You know, in general, we've got mountain bike trails everywhere over the Rogue Valley and now we've got this circuit of people that want to ride them. Additionally, depending on where you want to put one of these locations for a pump track, it may tie in nicely to mountain biking as well because it's kind of on the route to our mountain bike. Uh large scale pump tracks for competition definitely do great for bringing people in for the day. But any sort of large scale, easily, readily accessible, invisible pump track is going to get people to pull off a highway and stuff. That's what you see at Redmond frequently because you take 97 right by their pump track and people whip around to go say at least I did.

So, so given the options and the other um supply of pump tracks, you know, just by itself, it's very intriguing to um build a highquality pump track. And um I I think we would all support that. the worst that would happen and and this it could be a fiscal mistake because if we build it and and it's one of five or 10 or whatever that it dilutes that economic impact. Well, and that's hard for you, I would guess, to forecast that.

Yeah, not knowing the sizes of the ones that they're planning in the lower part of the Rogue Valley, can't really say. Crescent City, you know, I don't think anything we do is going to impact them at all because people are going there for the beach and the pump tracks just a reason to take the kids out. So, Sure. Well, if it's worthwhile doing, it's worthwhile doing. Well, um the other thing I I wanted to ask you, um there's some sites that have some funding advantages obviously uh with the urban renewal area and Riverside Park. um what is the probability and likelihood of grants?

So depending on which park you look into, this is eligible for any of the grants we typically go out for for parks through the Oregon parks and recreation department. Uh so we've got the same ability as anyone else to do something like this except for at Xeen Park. You know, it's not listed as an option, but we wouldn't be able to use XE or Gilbert Creek for those grants because of the lease term. Uh, but outside of that, it's eligible for any of those grants we typically go for. Well, I wouldn't hold you to it, but we think a 50% chance of getting grants to help fund it or

they're highly competitive every year for grants. There's no sure thing. Uh, so far, I don't think we've not gotten a grant that I've applied for with the city here, but in other places, sometimes we get them, sometimes we don't. So, it really just depends on the amount of funding the granters have at the time that your application's going through because every year it's a different amount. and then the other proposals going up as well. Yeah. Well, you do a good job, Josh. Thank you.

Uh thank you. Uh so the just just to re remind you, the intent of this workshop for the pump truck was kind of explore the idea and get some more feedback in regards to that survey. Um we don't want to go too far in depth in it. If you guys do decide to go forward to explore this topic, we can do that at a later date. We really didn't slot the time for that today. So I'm going to finish up with Indra if she has any questions and then you guys can make a decision if you want to pursue this topic further to push it to a different workshop. I do have questions. Um so the the park specific LB funding how much do we have?

I don't know off the top of my head. We have a bunch of LB project codes for park development for different things. And with those codes, depending on council, you know, preference, we can move dollars around if we need to to make, you know, goals that council set happen. Uh, most of that funding comes from like SDC's and things like that. Some of it's restricted like the land acquisition SDC's. Some of it's less restrictive. So, so would we have the million to start phase one or no? Do you have any general idea for taking it away from other top priority things?

See, okay. Again, I think we're we're getting a little bit expanded off of this topic. We just this this workshop was kind of slotted for only about a half an hour for this topic to see if you guys wanted to proceed forward. I love your point in questions, but it's kind of going to go into a more in depth so so Josh and everybody and all staff can be more um fully presentable on the topics at hand. So,

okay. But Clint, I don't know if I want to go forward until I have my questions answered. Do do you understand that? So, right now, if we end, I would just say no, not to go forward because I have questions that I need. Just trying to make sure that Josh has been very prepared, but I want to make sure that we're not going over the depth of what he's prepared for. So, if he can answer the question, great. If not, then we're going to have to push it on to Okay. I'm just asking for general information. So, when you said phase one, are you talking Beacon Hill development? Beacon Hill. Yes.

Yeah. So, right now for Beacon Hill, it has its own L or LB code. There's like $575,000 sitting in that. We could do the milliondoll phase one if we applied a grant to it and used match funds. Now, if council wanted to say, "We don't want to go for a grant. We want you just to figure out how to fund this," then park staff and finance would sit down, look at all the LB codes and all the projects we already have planned and see where we're going to shift funding from in our LB codes to meet the goal of council. uh that would mean that some of the projects we already have planned just go on the back burner. But again, you know, we're kind of up the council's discretion on how and what you want built or, you know, if JC magically waved a wand and found some extra zeros somewhere lying around, council could move general fund dollars in to help fill that gap as well. So,

what Josh said is correct. It's sort of the way public works sometimes works with road and transportation projects. If you make this a high priority and if council wants to look at what that looks like financially, we would need to have your direction and at a future workshop, we provide you with, okay, here's how we would fund, including potential grant resources, a 20,000 square foot pump track and so we could get you that information with all the different funding sources available to you,

right? I we do go on I mean we push things down the road because we want all the information but sometimes if we have it up front we we wouldn't push it down the road and we would make decisions. Um so phase two it it phase one is not the track. Correct. So phase two on Beacon Hill I'm talking would be the track.

So basically phase one could be whatever city council actually wants to incorporate in phase one. If you told us we want to move forward with Beacon Hill and we want phase one to incorporate a pump track development as well, then we'd come back with our plans and design for phase one with the cost for that with the plan of how we can actually fund that with available resources. And at that point, we definitely need to be looking at grant resources and the timeline.

Right. Okay. But, you know, if council said phase one, we want the parking lot, we want the walkways, the site furnishings, and a pump track, then, you know, on the books, that's just us saying, okay, we need to estimate for how much of a pump track you want, $750,000 extra. So, now we're looking at, you know, $1.75 million for phase one instead of one point or 1 million,

right? Or more around two. Okay. Thank you. And then I just would like to comment. And I I really think uh I'd never heard of a pump track and um I've learned a lot about it recently and I I agree with Joel. If we're going to do it, we might as well do a good one uh to attract and and I had no idea it would attract tourists, but I'm told and we need to trust our committees who are more expert in tourism um what they think about uh how it would attract people. So, I just wanted to say my preference. All right. Thank you. Um, any last minute questions,

Rob? So, um, quickly, in the same way that we've run into trouble with, uh, uh, maintaining our swimming pool and our skate park and so forth. uh how what is the life or if you don't know today you can bring it back the life of a pump track and uh what is a major overhaul cost and uh or how much annual maintenance would also be pertinent pertinent question.

So some of that depends on the surfacing you're picking. If we're going with asphalt it'd be similar to the life expectancy of our walkways and pathways which is generally about 20 years. Uh with that you know they are designed and built and engineered so they are really wellmaintainable. Uh, at that point it'd be just like what we do with our sidewalks. If there was an issue, we'd be doing overlays and patchwork and things like that to get it back to the level we need. Uh, you know, I think we budget, I don't know, 14 grand a year, 12 grand a year for multimodal pathway repairs. And some years we spend it all, some years we don't. We got a lot of work we need to do still. But, you know, it's just one of those things we just incorporated into our budget cost. if it isn't an existing park as opposed to a fully developed park. You know, one way to look at it would be as an existing park, it's less of a large scale budget hit because all the other features are already developed. Whereas, if you're developing a park, you have a larger continuing cost for that park.

So, so if you so, so if you were to ask if you were to ask one of the designers of the park, um they would tell you it's got a 20-year life before it needs a major overhaul or you're just you're just kind of winging it. Pretty much any park feature has expected 20 to 30 year life expectancy. And similar to, you know, our pathways in our parks when we build asphalt multimodal trails, we kind of anticipate a 20-year life expectancy, but those get really heavily impacted by things like trees and things like that that really cut into it. So

yeah, I I just it just concerns me that a path in a park that's flat to me looks like it's completely different than dips and curves and banks and things of that nature that are going to get in the same way that u the sidewalk in front of my house last way longer than the skate park did. I way way longer like like 10 times longer. So I don't know if your analogy is exactly correct. I just want to make sure that you're considering that. That's that's all. Yep. and I can bring you everything from the people that do this so they can provide. Rick,

I would also like consideration of looking at the aspect if we have to do a no-rise certificate, what would be a ballpark cost and also what would be the timeline cuz for a study like that it could be quite time consuming. So if we are willing to move forward and I would also as as Robin said like to know the lifespan and maintenance costs. Thank you. Eric, you got another question?

Yeah. Um, so I I think what what you brought up, sir, um, that it's visible to the from the people driving on the freeway, I think I'd be I'd be u interested in in moving forward with Beacon Hill. But, uh, that that would that would be obviously what we already all talked about with, uh, um, the maintenance, all of that, um, would be into consideration. So, that's all I have. Victoria, you got another question? No. No, not at this time. Thank you. Seth, you got any more questions? Joel, do you have any more questions? Indra, do you have any more questions?

I do. Thank you.

Josh, what do you estimate the annual for a new park at Beacon Hill? What would be the approximate maintenance? I mean, we'd have to spend money then maintaining it annually. What would you say? So, we've got a couple of metrics to try to hit in our parks master plan. Park maintenance really depends on features as well as what level of service we're looking at providing at a location. For a standard level of service, I think we try to keep the cost under $12,000 an acre for developed parks. For a lowle, I think it's like 6,000. And then for the highest level, which would be like Reinhardt and Riverside Park, where we have a lot of features, amenities, and a lot of community events, our park master plan estimates us to be below, I think it's $16,000 per acre. With that, across our park system right now, if you're to take all 200 of our developed acres, we're just under like $13,000 per acre for the entire 200 acres that we maintain as an average. If you were to take all of our park properties, including our uh reserve land that we still have money that goes out towards, it drops it down to like $4,600 an acre. Beacon Hills 9 acres. So, if you're looking at a range, just go 5,000* 9 to, you know, 12,000* 9. And that's kind of the range that we probably land in.

Thank you. you give such thorough answers to um I would definitely be forgoing for a grant uh for it, but I I would be remiss if I didn't say some uh residents in the area have written to council about concerns about a park in general. And I get it. It's because of our problems with the homeless in the park. And the concerns are that it would just be another place um to attract homeless. and they have a concern about that. So, I would also ask um that a reach out to that area too. Um maybe a survey like we did or ask you know we we would need to alleviate those concerns I think before we went forward with with some of that.

So, as a part of the Beacon Hill Park discussion, we were told to go back out for surveys and things like that. So, we'll make sure the residents have their voice and everything like that heard. Perfect. Thank you. Are you serious? Like, okay, I need like five bucks for questions now. Okay, go ahead. I'm already I don't have that. Thank you. No, what I wanted to ask and I kind of got off track was for Beacon Hill for Beacon Hill. Are all those grants available for that that you that you showed on slide uh 11? Is that is there a potential? Yeah, for the full development of Beacon Hill, it's eligible for all the standard grants we typically go for.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Yeah, I was going to address this during agenda setting, but since two things have come up before this, I'll just say it really quickly is uh there have been community members who are really concerned about a Beacon Hill Park at all. And so I was going to uh we had talked about moving forward with that but now there are even different plans for that. So or possible that we're discussing not to anything to do with what you anything you did wrong Josh or or or Bradley or anyone but we definitely must go back. There was a 2019 survey that was done for the Beacon Hill Park and uh that's quite a few years ago. So since many things have changed in the community since then, we would definitely have to and have to go back to the community, not even just for a pump track, but for a park at all. Uh because we've since the last workshop, I have had a lot of feedback. That doesn't have anything to do with your presentation now, Josh, but since others have brought it up, I didn't want to let it go by without mentioning that. and then I'll bring it up again during agenda setting. Thanks.

Okay. I believe I feel that um there is council sentiment to continue this question or to continue the topic of establishing a pump track within our city limits within our parks. So I just want to get a true census from with a thumbs up to proceed forward with exploring the pump track within the city limits on a further workshop. Perfect. Okay. So within the presentation today, you guys were offered about five different locations. Um so for that future workshop where we'll actually get into the nuts and bolts, do you guys have a preference on reviewing the five different locations that were presented today or narrow narrowing them down a little bit?

But we going to turn it back to the committees. the concept that we put a really good one and we're going to get there. No, I feel I feel that that's just a little bit that that's going on to a further in-depth workshop. We got the opinion of the committees that they are for it and then they were offered the question. So I I think that's kind of where I'm kind of leading is building a new a workshop to go into this in depthly. So I guess the question the question to you guys is do you want in a future workshop you want to entertain all the five um locations that Josh presented or a smaller number of them. Victoria I think it would be good to look at all of them.

It doesn't seem like it would be too much more work. Let's get a council rather a council consensus with a thumbs up if you want to entertain in a future workshop the review of all five that locations that were presented today. Thumbs up yes or no. Okay, I only got two thumbs up. So, uh is there a n is out of the five that were presented today a smaller number or a few parks that you want to review for the a future workshop? Mayor, could you just go through the different parts?

Sure. So, basically, it was presented Reinhardt Volunteer Park, which was the topic, the original topic of this discussion. Um, Riverside, I believe it's West. Um, Gilbert Creek Park, where it would be the old ball state, the ballpark. Um, Fruit Dale Park, it looked like there was two available spots. And then to continue the future conversation of putting it in Beacon Hill. Mayor, could we go through each individual name? Thumb up, thumb down. Sure. Okay. So, council sentiment on um pinpointing a location for a future pump track at Reinhardt Volunteer Park. Thumbs up or thumbs down?

The Reinhardt Park. So, I got three to one, two, three, four, and three down. So, Reinhardt Park will stay on the list. Um Riverside Park West, which is basically the Frisbee golf area. Thumbs up or thumbs down? I got one, two up. All the rest, one, two, three up and four down. So, Riverside Park West will be excluded. Gilbert Creek Ballpark up or down? Down. Down. One up. All down. Okay, that one will be excluded. Fruitdale, Fruitdale Park. There was two locations on Fruitdale Park. Thumbs up or thumbs down? I got one, two, three, four thumbs up. So, that one will stay in. um and the continuation of uh putting something in Beacon Hill. Uh 1 2 3 4 5 up. So we'll proceed forward with a future workshop in discussion of Fruitdale, Beacon Hill and Reinhardt. Is that correct? Okay. And within that future workshop, we will build into that um a further discussion of uh size and scope and funding and funding options.

Okay. Yes, Victoria question. Well, along with the uh Beacon Hill, there also needs to be the community um survey. That might be a bigger the future work that we need to re uh survey the community. Understand that the future workshop that I am going to be building right this second is to is on the discussion of a pump track only. So that would be basically expanding into Beacon Hill to have council discuss whether that would be a future for that not the whole of Beacon Hill Park just whether we put a pump track in it or not. Okay. So does staff have direction? Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Moving on in the workshop agenda we have um council meeting protocol and Aaron will start out with a presentation. And thank you guys from the committees for your your participation.

Well, thank you guys. Appreciate it very much. All right, Mayor Council, thank you. I'm I'm very excited today for council's interest and my opportunity to talk about something that is really foundational to how we operate as a governing body. Today's conversation is about meeting the quorum and protocol, how we show up, how we work together, and ultimately how we serve the community. Our goal is to strengthen our teamwork and our culture of governance and the professionalism of the organization. This conversation is about building a shared understanding of how we conduct ourselves before, during, and after the council meetings. This framework will help us get to the fundamentals and reflect well on the organization, the community. This isn't about adding rules. It's about maybe a small review of our own current rules and looking at how we may want to implement those to build public trust and make our jobs easier. Uh you may have seen a little bit of that today uh with the mayor going through and sort of doing a a different concept of providing public comment. Uh this presentation has been narrowed down about twothirds of its original size uh in order to try to keep this quick. I'm not going over a lot of our already procedures that we have in place. We did have a presentation on that a little while ago. This is just a general framework to start an open discussion on how we would like to uh perform as a council and as a team. I think we've all been in a meeting where things have started to drift where people have maybe gotten frustrated with each other um maybe made snarky remarks and all of a sudden people are starting

to get a little tense and they start to withdraw from the council meetings. What decorum does is decorum provides an opportunity for us to protect the integrity and ensure that everyone gets heard and helps us provide for good decision-m when it comes to your policies. Our behavior here sends a very clear message on how we lead and so people see how we interact together. When decorum slips, the impact is immediate. meetings take longer and become less productive. Trust begins to erode between members of the council, with staff, and within the community. And over time, these issues can damage the reputation as a city. We all have roles in providing good governance in a meeting. Council focuses on policy and does so with professionalism and respect where the presiding officer is responsible for making sure that they maintain a fair process and the staff comes forward to you with factual expertise to support your decisions. When these roles are clear and respected, the entire meeting runs more smoothly. Strong meetings really start with preparation. Reviewing packets ahead of time means we spend time deliberating towards direction and decisions instead of using workshops or meetings to try to catch up and get fully informed. Asking clarifying questions in advance helps avoid surprises. And following the agenda along with the presiding officer's guidance keeps us organized to ensure fairness. These are the basics, but they're incredibly important. I see this as a another as a a team example. I know I used Michael Jordan before in in being an effective council, but if you've got a team that has done their homework in advance of the game and then

you've got just a star player, uh you know, Heisman Trophy winner, but they didn't do their homework in advance of the game and they come into the huddle and you do your first play and they're like, "Okay, we're going to run 24B." And they're like, "I don't know what 24B is." Hey guys, can we talk about 24? Time out. Time violation. and five yard penalty. So doing your homework is really important because then when it comes to game day, which is every one of your council meetings, every one of your council meeting should be treated as a Super Bowl. People are watching whether it be a workshop or a business meeting. So coming prepared is extremely important. And that's from a staff perspective and from from a council perspective. During the meeting, the goal is to stay on topic, keep things concise, and remain professional. One thing that really helps is avoiding some of these items that are listed here. They seem small, but they can make a big difference. And after the meetings, respect the decision of the governing body and move forward. Respect isn't about agreement. I'm not talking about everyone having to agree. It's about how we handle disagreement. Consistent respect improves the legitimacy of our decisions. Up here, I've got a list of of behaviors that ultimately undermine decorum. We've probably all seen these type of behaviors, whether it be interrupting, uh, mocking, uh, providing public criticism. They make people feel unsafe and they don't want they make it where people don't want to speak up. And then ultimately it it does put a strain on good decision- making. We're not talking about efficiency from a standpoint of running a meeting through and getting it done as quick as possible. Efficiency is not about

rushing. It's about focusing discussion where it adds value. The public appreciates discipline, well-managed meetings. A good conversation has a rhythm. We build on each other's ideas. We avoid repeating ourselves and we ask clarifying questions. And we keep an eye on the outcome and good policy decisions. Working effectively with staff. Uh staff is here to help make well-informed decisions for council. The more predictable and respectful our communication is, the more confident and efficient staff will be. Performance and morale are strongly influenced by our interactions with each other. Professional engagement supports better work products. From our perspective, a number of things that we've talked about in one of our agenda setting meetings that I've talked about with the mayor are a few things that we're looking at considering to help make things more efficient. our presentations coming forward. We're considering making them as short and succinct, 10 minutes or less, using slides when necessary and focusing on policy decisions for council on items that require more than a 10-minute presentation or that would normally require more than 10-minute presentation. We will provide a memo with the presentation. So, the majority of the background information will be in the memo. The presentation will highlight the more complex issue. So when it comes to a meeting, we'll provide a short succinct presentation and we'll be asking for additional clarifying questions and then council to ultimately be focused on policy questions that we can help provide information for. Streamline business meetings and that would be for workshop. For a business meeting, we do the same. We would streamline our our presentations, especially if the presentation was already done in a workshop. We'd make it

relatively succinct in what action we're looking for from a council perspective. So from a p staff perspective, we will not be occupying a lot of council's time. The time will be spent on council deliberating and making a decision on the policy itself. Most of the questions will have been answered whether through be through the memo or through questions and a memo at a workshop in advance. Moving on from a standpoint of legal framework of things, I just wanted to put this in here. State law does give you the authority to adopt rules that keeps meeting fair, orderly, and p participatory. And there's a breakdown where we have lateral responses and it all depends on what that is. But council does have the authority to adopt rules to regulate your meetings. You'd ultimately have the authority to uh adopt rules with corrective actions also like coaching, informal warnings, council discussions, and other formal actions as needed. One of the things that's lacking right now and that we're recommending and it's on the DIS for you is a code of conduct, a signed code of conduct. a code of conduct that every council member would sign every year reinforcing and reaffirming the the group norms and the values that hold true to yourself. That that code of conduct establishes shared expectations for decorum. It reinforces ethical and respectable behavior. It provides the tools for conflict resolution. It ensures consistency in public communication and ultimately it builds trust among council staff and the residents. When all of these things are done well, meetings go a lot easier, decisions get better, and the community sees a council that leads together even when we disagree. That's the standard we all want to be known for. Together, we can build a culture of

professionalism, respect, and effective governance. We want to be the example on how government can work when people listen, respect each other, and stay focused on community we serve. That's what builds trust more than anything we put in paper. So, thank you for leaning into this conversation. Whatever direction you choose, adopting procedures, setting the norms, moving towards a code of conduct, we are here ready to help you and keep building the kind of governant culture that really reflects well on the value of Grants Bass. With that, I'll turn it over to you, mayor, and it's really an open discussion on sort of where we want to go with our meetings.

I appreciate that. Thank you, Aaron. Um I want to add to that is the objective of this topic of this workshop is to re-emphasize everybody's participation and preparedness. Um, I'm going to be encouraging and hopefully council will like this that um to encourage staff to make sure that all information for workshops is provided in a t with with a time ahead of time. I'm saying that right. So I'm encouraging staff to make sure that the presentations for workshops information is available ahead of time. So you all have time to digest it just in the same format as you as we do for the um public meetings at the evening time is when the packets are published 7 days ahead of time so you guys can digest it. We're going to try to do not the same time frame but going to give you guys a little bit of time to um digest the information that's going to be of each topic within the workshops so you can be prepared and have your questions ahead of time. Um, I would like to start implementing

Yeah. to to expand on that, mayor. So, what we're when the mayor and I talked about is we from a staff perspective, we'll try to get you the presentations and or supporting memos Wednesday and not Friday. That provides a number of additional days for you to review the information and ask clarifying questions. So when we come to the council meetings on the dis you have the ability to maybe ask that you have if you've got like seven questions out of that memo andor presentation you got in a number of days to contact staff and say hey I've got these nine questions and get those answered to then the time can be spent on the dis with real uh deliberation and decision-m when it comes to the policy that's at hand and not not a full information gathering during the workshop or andor business meeting. Yeah, the the sentiment is to make sure everything is a little bit more efficient because realistically the premise of a workshop, the premise of the public meeting is to do city business. Um, you know, there's nowhere in the charter that says this is your opportunity to speak to your constituents, to to air your grievances. Um there is time in matters for mayor and council to bring up new topics and ideas and you know to air some stuff. But realistically during these workshops we should be coming into the workshops with the appetite to digest the information and have be a little bit prepared so you can actually have poignant questions back at the staff. So it's it's it's giving them an effective timeline. It's giving us an effective timeline. Same thing that we already do for the meetings. You guys do very very well. So we just want to keep keep that. I just kind of see the workshops specifically example today we had set aside an hour to get all of our local organizations to present and you council can ask questions and get some more clarifying information and that hour turned up into almost two and a half hours. So, it's it's just seems I

personally don't have the bandwidth anymore to to to spend all day in this chamber kind of going over stuff that should have been prepared for. So, that's kind of the sentiment that I'm trying to get across with this workshop um topic today. So, with that, I'll bring it back to council. Um and Rob, do you have any questions? I'm sorry. I was going to start the other way. Andrew, do you have any questions? I have comments but not questions. Do we want to do that? We can go into discussion a little later. Just curious if any questions at this moment in time. Joel, do you have any questions?

Seth Victoria, does anybody have any questions? Dick. So on that Wednesday, would a hard copy of all the presentation be available? Because I'm a hard copy person. If council desires to have our hard copies on Wednesdays of the presentations, we can definitely have those hard copies available. Okay. Thank you, Rob. Any questions? Okay. Uh, thank you very much. All right. I'll bring it back for discussion. Andrew, you had discussion.

I did. I I notice I don't notice that any of these council members, including myself, come unprepared. I think we all spend a lot of time on the things. I think the round table while worth trying was kind of wa a waste of time going down cuz some people don't have comments. I I don't know where I mean it's fine to try new things. But I I don't think that we come unprepared and I think we ask questions that are pertinent to making decisions. And then I would say I do think it is a time to let our constituents know why we're voting certain ways or um they certainly can come give public comment. It's twice a month we get that and I think all of us spend a ton of time going out and talking to constituents um researching things. I mean, I know this is like a full-time job. And so, I have one workshop, two a month, and two meetings a month to actually convey to constituents because a lot of people watch our workshops and they watch our meetings on uh to ask questions and get the full information. And I get there are some things I could come um to staff and ask prior and I will try to do a better job with that, but sometimes there's just not time to do that before the meeting. Um but I'll try to do a better job. So um I don't I just think maybe you we put less on the workshop.

Thank you for your discussion, Andrew. I do want to clarify. I'm I'm not I didn't set this workshop up to be accusatory towards anybody. I've actually had this on the agenda for months and months and months and months and we finally got around to doing it. This is just another attempt for us to be a welloiled efficient machine. That's it. I'm I'm not up here accusing anybody of any anything that you're not fulfilling your duties. I'm we're we're working as a unified body here to try to come up with an efficient manner. And that's that's that's all this is. This is just to hopefully better ourselves. That's it. There's hopefully don't take anything accusatory. We're not I'm not personally bringing this to you to accuse anybody of being lack of being preparedness. This is just more of us trying to work as a team in an efficient manner in a professional manner. That's it.

Yes. And I I'm not accusing you of being accusatory. So, just to make that clear. Oh, yeah. I know. We're just we're just airing it out. Um, so any further discussion, Rob?

Um, a couple things. One, I think that um uh the length of time that was scheduled today for the presenters, for presenters for uh um economic development and tourism and such was just probably unrealistically short. That just was to say that that was a any kind of fault or or that council was dragging it out. I just think that if you schedule an hour for that, that just was unrealistic. But that's my opinion. But the thing I have a little more concern with, um, and this actually is just, you know, really borderline as far as, uh, you know, quasi, uh, meeting law violation stuff. Um, while it wouldn't be a meeting law violation by letter of the law, uh, realistically, I think it would have that effect. when uh Aaron talks about making short presentations 10 minutes or less and then giving the council memos to backfill that information. Um now we come to a workshop and the public hasn't heard the backstory. Public hasn't heard the back discussion. The public hasn't seen the memo necessarily that the council has seen and that we're basing our decisions on. So, while we have not um uh you know, we haven't collaborated uh behind closed doors, the fact is we've got more information than the council has. If that all gets presented, even though it takes more time and all gets presented at a workshop, the public then has a chance to understand what we understand and why our decision might be being made. So that to me is uh uh that's a red flag to this concept or at least that part of the concept of giving council more information than the public necessarily understands or is or is exposed to.

So I'll have to address that and Stephanie can correct me if I'm absolutely wrong, but we're the the premise of actually getting the council more information ahead of time before a workshop is so they can be better prepared during your workshop. We are not making judicial decisions. We are not actually making decisions. We're directing staff into certain directions. So realistically, you're not withholding any information from the public whatsoever. Is am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. And in addition, those memorandum would be public records that would be available um upon request and potentially we could even just make those available upfront since they would be public information that you're making your decisions upon.

Yes.

Yeah. each each council throughout the state of Oregon and throughout the nation operates differently. They all have different personalities and that that changes between the councils when they're elected and sometimes the the protocols uh are totally different. Also, there are some communities where um in the business meeting they provide public comment during public hearings. The public hearings that are by state law have to have public comment. Their council action items are council action items. They are brought in front of council. Council makes the decision, moves on. They don't take public comment. We treat council action items as public hearings and they get public comment. It's just personality changes and protocol changes. There are some councils that that would maybe uh and it all depends on what you want as a council and what your meetings will feel like in the in in the wrong. And some councils don't even have presentations at business meetings unless council asks for the presentations at business meetings. Council action line item will come up. Council, do you have any questions? Do you have a request of a bit of a presentation? No. Okay, then uh discussion. Um so it all depends. There's no right or wrong. It all depends on just what you feel is right for your community.

Any further discussion, Victoria?

Yeah, these workshops and uh the business meetings aren't for any of us here. They are for the public and uh that's what everyone is here for is for the public. And sometimes maybe we uh lose sight of that. So I wouldn't be interested in reducing presentations because I think that the public the public goes back and watches these and uh that's how they learn what's going on and they wouldn't be getting the memos. So unless the memos were public, uh I I I don't think some of this feels like a a solution to me in search of a problem. And so although I understand our our meetings go really long, but I also think that our public is being able to comment a lot more on the workings and happenings of the city and I think that's a good thing. So I would not personally be interested in reducing that time for the public to be able to see that information. I will say however there have been many times I I know that I if I don't uh have the packet in hand at home I'm reading it online and before the meeting I I know that I have every meeting since I've been elected and uh and I look at all of the all of the emails for the presentations that we're going to see in the workshop too. They're not always identical and I understand that that is it just it's not possible. Things need to be added and taken out. Um but again

we need the public needs to see what we are how we are deliberating and maybe that is different than the way other cities do it but I think that I would like to air on the side of the public getting more information in our uh workshops and our meetings and so I wouldn't be interested in reducing it and uh and So maybe that that's enough. I I I'm not sure that I this has been since we got elected when right when we came in there was a a lawsuit. Things were up there was upheaval. There was a lot of chaos and uh working through that might have been a little messy and I I I don't care. So that's the uh messy government is is that's the way it's going to be in a democratic process. And uh and there are times that people can be pointed and and quite rude, frankly. So uh maybe we could all just be reminded not to be that way. So, and that's fine, but I I don't see uh it to be necessary to sign a code of conduct because I'm not here for anyone else on the dis although I would like to strive to work with those people. Um I'm here for the people that of the city. So those are just a few thoughts off the top of my head and after having thought about it after looking at the the draft code of conduct. So it's not something I would be interested in doing maybe in a different way a different form but um

yeah so maybe that that's just my comments. Thank you. Any further discussion? Indra,

I think too I would just would like to follow up and point out that we're we're here at every meeting and workshop, but a lot of our presenters or people come once a year and so we do take time to thank them for what they do for our city and that can be redundant, but I think that's really important to show appreciation to people. I too, there's a lot of I I mean, we should I'm okay signing a code of conduct for how we treat each other, courtesy and respect. Um, but I wouldn't want it to be pointed back if I took an extra moment of time to ask a question and oh, you sign this and and you're talking too long. Like, I wouldn't want it to be used in that way.

Any further discussion, Joel? Well, I Excuse me. I really enjoyed uh where we took turns talking today because we didn't have to fight for airspace. Yep.

I've been elected to two terms and a lot of times I'd raise my hand and I wouldn't be called on till the end and um that uh perhaps wasn't intentional. Perhaps it was. I don't know. But uh to not have to fight for uh space to speak is um a very polite thing that that lowers the intensity and and gets to the substance. So I applaud what you did today. Um and I encourage you to continue to do that because everybody will know then that they have a time to speak and they know what it's going to be. Um in terms of the code of conduct, I'm okay either way. Uh there's always a code of conduct whether it's written or unwritten. Um, and we need to respect that.

Um, yeah. And just one second, Victoria. Um, the code of conduct is is is there's a draft in front of you guys and it doesn't really talk anything about your time limit. It's just basically kind of good governance to work together as a team. Um, so comments, Victoria. Yeah. I also neglected to mention that I really did like the way that you went down the line. I mean, not fighting for being able to be called on is a good thing and so I do agree with Joel on that matter. I like the way that was done. It is more efficient that way. Any further discussion? Uh, Indra?

Yes, and that's fine. I respect that. I would ask maybe it's not starting at each end every time like maybe it starts you know well you normally you do the round table you go like right to left and then you go left to right that's that's just kind of the way I' I'd seen it done before actually it was done that way when I was a counselor for two years a long time ago.

Yeah. So I mean if you want pick in the middle I I believe my sentiment on using a roundt style going left to right to left is it does give the onus on all counselors the opportunity I used the wrong verbiage there sorry it gives the opportunity for everybody to speak out without having to fight for it and so and we could set protocol to say that we're going to go left to right to left and then you know like I say go go go one time through have a question or two and then come back through again that's not a problem of just again working for efficiency.

Okay, I get that. Yeah, I just it's not that you wouldn't go through but some a lot of times people's comments spark another question. Well, it helps me from writing them down starting every time and then I don't want to like have to well I mean honestly whatever's easier to be very transparent. I'm the guy that's looking here and I have to sit here and pay and be full attention to you guys as well as digest everything happened because everybody's raising their hand. So, if we have a protocol where we're going left to right or right to left, it's it's just a little easier for me to manage. I guess

I'm I'm fine with that. I was just saying I think we did it like start with Rob the first time and then start with Rick and go around and but maybe that's more confusing.

Any further discussion, Rob? So, I I thought actually we were discussing the content of uh of Aaron's presentation. I hadn't really even gotten I didn't realize we were discussing the council code of conduct at that point. But, um again, getting back to uh I'm not sure where we left it with regards to the concern I guess that I brought up about um the public not necessarily knowing the background that our discussion is being based on. if much of is being based on a memo and and I said early on I don't think it's a violation of public meeting law but it bumps up against it the fact that we know things that we're not sharing with the public and I don't think that we need to engage the city attorney's opinion on that because it's not a violation of public meeting law but the fact is do we want to have the question becomes or is do we want the public to have the same information that we have so they understand our discussion and that to me is I guess still not addressed or we haven't really uh in no consensus on that anyway but um and I hadn't even really started regarding the uh the code of conduct. I don't I don't know if that's a a separate discussion. uh there's a line by line thing if if it was going to be. But um anyway, still the the the concept of what form are we going to take and how much information are we going to publicly um air uh as background for our our discussion I guess is still still up in the air.

Correct. And the sentiment is not to withhold information from the public. The sentiment is to basically during the workshop is to get staff presentation and your educational packet to you a few days ahead of time that gives you more bandwidth, more time to digest it. We're not talking about withholding information from anybody. We're basically talking about getting those PowerPoint presentations, the bulk of what's going to be talked about in the workshop in your guys' hands a couple days early so you can digest it. that we're not talking about withholding any information. Clint actually then we have a completely different understanding of what the words on this page mean and what Aaron said today when he talked about keeping presentations short. That's what it says here. Printed material in front of us. 10 minutes use slides if necessary and advanced memos um would be given to council to essentially fill in the gap that would normally have been in a longer presentation. that in fact is withholding some of the information from the public. Now, you know, could they request background information? They could. That that's getting to the point of ridiculousness. So, really, what we talked about, what Aaron talked about today was shortening presentations and and balancing that with a memo prior that would fill in the rest of the information that might have been in a longer presentation. So, you know, you and I or the whole council needs to understand what it is specifically we're talking about or going to agree to or disagree to.

So, you'll have to clarify that for me, Aaron, because I understood it as and this was kind of goes back to our essential conversations when we started this to build this workshop is to provide the presentation information to counselors in a timely manner ahead of time. So if they were to actually have questions that were generated that they could reach out to staff and then they would pre be presented answers in a mayor council email email or such a memo. That's kind of the way I understood it.

Yeah. our discussions that we had like at some of the genocide meeting and stuff was how do we that the idea was and and some of those recommendations that I had on that one slide on what staff could do was in direct relation to trying to have a meeting to where we used to have meetings regularly uh years ago that the workshops were from 11:45 to 1:15 and I think that's where the mayor sort of going from from here and the business meetings there's a reason why we have at 9:00 make a motion to extend because after a certain amount of time things get a little wonky sometimes when you're s when you've been sitting for a long time. And so recognizing time limits was important. And one of the things staff could do for that is to with council's preparedness, we could uh be more succinct with regards to what policy decisions are in front of council, what decisions or deliberations are needed and discussions for you to have uh that policy issue defined and not necessarily let's come to a workshop or business meeting to gather information. the information's sort of been gathered in the proposal that I had versus uh like a memo in advance with a brief presentation. the and so I my presentate my presentation and that the slide was trying to to suggest if you want to shorten the meetings one way we could do that is not be so expansive with the information about information gathering but uh at the workshop where we're giving you everything but to focus it it down and say here's here's the subject matter here's the policy implications here's the question at hand all the background stuff like square footage of a of a of a pump track or this that kind of thing that would have been in the memo. We wouldn't have been talking square footage of a pump track at a workshop. And so that shortens those workshop items because council

already has that information. We're not delivering that information because it's germanine to it, but it's not pertinent to that policy decision that you're looking forward to. And then so that would be shorter. What I'm hearing from councelor Pel is if we shorten that then the public doesn't get all of that because we're not saying it in a public meeting. The other part of this to expand on that was I I dealt with also the business meetings shortening the business meeting present pres presentations. If we've already had an hour and a half long discussion at a workshop about a topic then at the business meeting when it comes for council action do we need another 25m minute presentation by staff or since you already have all the information you need it's in front of you council action do we narrow that down to 10-minute or less presentation I'm just saying here's here's the it's what here's what's in front of you here's the policy decision here's the implications it turn it over to you council those are things that we could do to shorten the meetings make them more succinct from a staff perspective. It and so the question is what I'm hearing though is what is your priority from meetings? Would you like to have them more succinct from a business perspective? How can staff participate or do you want to keep them sort of as they are where they are providing not only an opportunity for you to do business but also you're also utilizing your business meetings and or workshops to provide information to the public also which is a correspondence of both but how much how much detail do you want to have in advance. So my proposal was shortening the presentations both at the workshop and at the business meeting in order to try to accommodate those shorter meetings that I thought was one of the things we were trying to address.

So in in hearing that you are a little bit right Rob I I misunderstood that the opposite way but um that can be of a discussion and Rick did you have discussion? Another aspect I hear Rob stating is that let's say I have a half an hour discussion with Aaron on technical subject on something that's here unless the whole council has that unless the public has that I think a way of addressing that I don't think the council wants to hear word by word for the halfhour discussion technical discussion but maybe it could be shortened into a very short paragraph of what occurred there the question and the issue and how it was disced. just and not only distributed to the other city councilors, but it could even be just as the end of our meeting, we say, "Do we have any emails from anybody?" That could be part of the presentation, just a short summary of that event so that the public knows what goes on behind the scene is just part of the information. That's just an idea. Thank you.

Any further discussion, Joel? Well, it's been my impression that when we have long meetings, it's not because we had long presentations. Uh I I think we um I think the staff does a pretty good job of condensing that. Uh Erin, you went to school to study that. And Stephanie, you've done the same thing with your presentations, JC. And the presentations have been pretty concise. I've been really happy with them. I think where we um uh run into lengthy meetings is a controversial subject that has a lot of public interest. Uh perhaps some polarization um perhaps some um polarization here on on the on the dis um and I'm not sure uh shorter presentations is going to uh cut that short. Um but but I um in terms of uh why our meetings are long, it's not because the staff has prepared long presentations because they've been very responsible in what they presented. That's my thoughts.

Any further discussion, Rob?

I going to say oh you know the other thing to keep in mind too is that you know you do reach a point of diminishing returns. I mean, when Aaron says that, you know, workshops used to be, you know, an hour or two, well, the fact is it used to be four workshops a month. So, when you cut that in half, okay, um, and then you if you're then going to trim that down some more, again, you get to the point of diminishing returns. So, we have actually diminished the number of workshops by 50%. So, you know, that's something we can keep in mind how much more we want to trim things down. Uh you got to wonder if um uh it's it's just um it gets to be counterproductive. Further discussion. Victoria.

Yeah, I would also like to reiterate that I think staff is always prepared and does an amazing job uh giving us presentations. So I don't have any complaints there and just would like to take the opportunity. Thank you for that.

Okay. So, I'm going to go down through the list of alternatives we have, call to action to see if we can get some sentiment, if you want to continue this conversation, if you want to do anything that we've discussed today. So, the first was um adoption of a council code of conduct. I'd like to see what the council's sentiment is on that. There is a draft in front of you. Um, and you know, if you had a second to read it, it realistically kind of just goes over the professionalism and the business style that we need to to work together as a team and and basically common courtesy and stuff. It it doesn't really talk about um, you know, limiting your time limit or anything like that. It's just kind of like something to kind of build a cohesiveness on. So, I would just bring that back to council to see if there's any sentiment on adopting this, further discussing this, or trashing it. We'll go with sentiment on adopting as is. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Nope. Anybody want to go into further discussion in draft in modifying this draft and implementing it? Thumbs up. Go ahead, Joel. No, I'm just I'm just getting your sentiment if you want to continue the discussion on um I don't see the appetite to adopt this draft as written. So, I'm asking if council wants to further discuss and modify a draft for adoption. Well, any group that I've been involved with, and I've been involved with a lot of them, as have everybody else up here, we always had a um uh teamwork rules or code of conduct or whatever that that the team would agree to. Uh and it wasn't confining at all. It was um um

it was just a a a reminder. Um, it wasn't uh wasn't something that you get branded if if uh you inadvertently leave something out or you uh attack somebody cuz that still happens. Um so so I don't you know every group I've been involved with had had something like this. So the question is is do you want to further discuss and uh formulate a draft for a code of conduct for adoption? Thumbs up. I got one, two, three, four. Four out of three who didn't vote. So we will put this to further discussion at a workshop to modify and for uh a possible future adoption. Okay. Second is adopting meeting decorum and procedures. Uh we already have some of that but estab basically I would basically want to extend the decorum procedures and entertain setting a time limit on workshops just as there is a time limit that's already on the public meetings. My suggestion would be set a workshop time limit of two hours uh which would require a motion to go past two hours once that was put in forth. With those parameters set forth, then we would have a better opportunity to really tailor these workshops down um by not overloading them. So, the question at hand is, do you want to add um meeting decorum and procedures by putting a two-hour time limit on workshops with a motion to continue? Thumbs up or thumbs down.

I got a question first. So, each one of the stars on the workshop indicates how many minutes you 10 10 minutes. Correct. Wow. So, like for instance, the pump track was was predicted to be 30 minutes today. council protocol was connected predicted to be 30 minutes. So basically we put the stars on there to as a recommendation from staff on how long that would actually take their presentation and then we try to um estimate what a discussion period is but we're pretty loose on that. So,

I guess if if I if we had a like I said, if I'm pushing for a workshop time limit, it's just going to help um pinpoint those workshops a little bit more efficiently. But then again, you already have a public meeting with a 3-hour time limit, which we proceed past that with a with a quick motion. So, I'm asking for that for the workshops with a two-hour time limit. Council's appetite for that. Thumbs up or thumbs down? I got one, two, three, four, and one down and two not votes. So, that's a procedure to go forward. Yes, sir. Yes. Sorry.

So, what do we do when we're halfway through a workshop and that we hit the 2hour mark? Just the same thing you do in a meeting. You just call for a motion to extend. It gives the people opportunity that are taking time out of their day such as Eric and myself and Seth who actually have full-time jobs and Rob and Rob who runs a and yourself too. You run a business but Rob I think Rob has a lot of facetime in his business. Seth runs a full-time business. Eric has made comments that he has to take time off work for these. I obviously have to do the same thing. So, we're just trying to be like more efficient. I don't think we're No one's against that. Can we commit to not putting so much on the workshop? Yes, that is what we're working towards.

I'm trying to set parameters. Here's what I would say. We we keep pushing things to workshops. So, like now we're going to talk about the decorum thing again at another workshop. I don't know why we can't I mean we should make decisions when we have it in front of us but we ourselves are push things a lot and that's what bogs up the agenda. So maybe that's something we could work on as a team is how to maybe not do that.

Well, we we are see we're having these full breasted conversations about this and I said the wrong word full breath conversations. Sorry. Jeez Louise. Um, basically I'm trying to simulate conversation so we are all mentally getting to the same aspect of being efficient, businesslike, and to the point. That's that's all this is. So my question is instead of making a decision on the decorum, because I agree with everything but number four, like I would get rid of that. Yeah.

And we could vote, but instead we're bringing it to a workshop. Why don't we just bring it change it bring it to a meeting and be done with it?

Well, I feel that there the council has already had said that they want an appetite to go through it and change it a little bit, modify it. So, that's that's what I get your guys' sentiment. I got a majority of you wanted to go forward and and digest it and and and add some two cents to it before you adopted it. But, there was a sentiment to adopt something like this. So, we're going forward with it. I think one of the things with the time thing too, we talked about this briefly at the at the agenda study meeting is if there is a target time of closure for meetings, just like a target time of closure for a party or or gathering or whatever, all of us in this room have an impact on that closure time. If we don't have anything a day a time at all, then it's just it's, hey, you stay until Oh, great. Cousin Eddie is staying overnight. I didn't know that. I thought every I thought I should have had on there everyone has to go home at 9:00. So the we all have a part in how long the meetings go. And if say you're in a workshop and you're like, I still have nine more questions, but it looks like everyone else is pretty much okay. Maybe I'll pause my other questions. I'll wait until after the workshop and I'll ask staff those additional questions before it goes to a business meeting or something along those lines. Or you can start it. You can start uh filtering what comments or questions in order to try to respect the time frame that council's adopted of we're going to try this is our target end. So we all could have a positive impact on that if we had a target to close.

And I just bring back the example our Wednesday night public meetings. We Rick is the hound on it. He's like it's 9:00. Do we do we we need a motion to go forward? It just kind of it keeps us on target. So um the other part of the adopting meeting decorative procedures um I did feel that council has an appetite to do a roundt style which we would go left to right or right to left or middle to center if you want to make that a procedural thing that at least gives everybody the opportunity to have an open voice. Um I'd look for a thumbs up to add that to all right thank you very much. Um, there was a question about uh scheduling governance training. Anybody have an appetite for getting more training in regards to Robert's rules and so forth? But where did was that?

Yeah, that effective teams uh whatever additional training we could try to get something special in here where we can facilitate some additional um trainings based on council's desire. Does council have an appetite to try to have staff set up uh some additional trainings for us. Go ahead, Seth. I mean, I'd be interested in the Robert's rules at least at a minimum. Okay. Um, anybody else in regards to Robert's rules? Go ahead, Rob. Well, um, you can Google a copy and read them. Okay.

They're they're clear. They haven't changed much. they are applied a little bit differently in different but I mean if you read them and I'm not I'm not I'm not attacking I'm just saying when I've read them um and I haven't read them in a really long time I understood a lot a lot of it and we don't do all of it and actually Clint just decided that on part of it I shouldn't say Clint decided we just decided that by going down the aisle here we're actually I don't even know if we're that's not necessarily even going to be doing Robert's rules that's actually going to be doing our own hybrid aspect if I remember correctly so just I would say anyone anyone wants to know more about it, read it and then at that point um you know if we still have questions we can move forward.

Okay. I didn't see an appetite for council to proceed with or or to proceed with any more governance training but I would encourage you if you had some questions you definitely reach out to Aaron and they could direct you in in online training courses and so forth where you could get that information. So, at this point, we've got um to finish out this topic on the workshop, we will proceed forward in um reviewing a draft of a city council code of conduct and maybe adopting in the future. Um, we will amend procedures to put a 2-hour time limit on workshops with the ability to continue with a motion and we will proceed forward with um a roundt questioning to give everybody opportunity for to weigh in with that. I don't think there was any other actions. We do you understand where we're going? Okay, cool.

I have clear direction. Thank you, mayor. Okay. Uh, now we're at uh agenda review. We have a public safety advisory committee motion and I had it but I don't know where it is. Sorry guys. Okay. So, there's a white piece of paper here. Did everybody get a chance to read that or do we want to have that read aloud? Public safety advisory committee meeting. Does everybody have this white piece of paper? I read it already, but I can't find the paper. Thank you.

Go ahead, Joel. Well, um, just for everybody's benefit, this is a call to action to support the public endorsement of support for the Josephine County Animal Control Animal Shelter operating levy renewal ballot measure on the May 2026 ballot. And um, I would take action. So Joel, if this is if you are a little bit ab breast on this is this this levy is Could you explain the levy a little if you are up on it? I I'll read the paper that's in front of me, but the animal shelter uh and animal control, Josephine County Animal Control, they have responsibility both within the city limits and the county. Um and it's a critical function that the city police rely on as do uh citizens of Grants Pass. Uh the animal control officers will respond to a call like for a rabid dog or whatever. Um, and if the service is weakened and could not be relied on, city police would have to go and chase down a rabid dog. And if they could find him and if they had the officers available, uh, it would increase the tax rate from 11 cents per thousand to 16 cents. This would result in an increase of about $15 per year for a homeowner with an assessed value of $300,000. In other words, I would have to pay out of my pocket $15 more a year. Right now, they're spending slightly more than they're receiving from the levy and other revenue sources. New rate of 16 cents would balance the budget and would allow approximately the same level of operational service as we have today.

So, the call to action on this is for council to support this endorsement or take no action. And is there further discussion, Rob?

Well, I I will be personally voting for this personally, but as a council, I don't know that it's appropriate for us to do it. And I would I would be against the council doing it. Well, I would personally support it. And I think that um in years past when we had a I think a sales tax on the on the ballot, it was county sales tax. I believe there was an issue there with uh people who were against the sales tax not necessarily wanting to be uh represented as the entire council being for it. So to me that's a that's a that's complicated whether or not the whole council wants to support this. I personally support it. I don't know that the council it's appropriate for the council to do it. I agree with Rob on that because you do have to take into account as a council member, as a council body, as a mayor, we we are representing 37,000 people plus or that that number is not right, but you know, in that range. So you if you're as a council saying that you are endorsing it, then you're basically stating that your whole constituency is also endorsing it. So it is a it's something to think about. V Victoria.

Yeah, that actually my sentiment exactly. I would not be comfortable uh passing something like this without vast community input and then that would be and I don't even know if that's appropriate for us to do because that would be a a poll for the measure and I don't I don't know if we should get into doing that either. So, uh, whether and I would absolutely not be feel comfortable at all, uh, as a body supporting a new tax for for the public without having asked them about it first. So, I I'm not for this.

Thank you for your input. Anybody else? Uh, Seth and then Eric. Seth. Yeah, I wouldn't be um in favor of taking action on this just because again I think it's it's a little odd coming from a um a body of counselors uh that represent the city of Grants Pass. So Zach or Eric.

Yeah. So uh I'm on the uh public safety advisory committee and uh u yes the um this is a valid concern. Uh, I would want more information from exactly how they came up with these figures. Uh, but I also agree with the rest of the council that it's probably not appropriate for the for the city council to uh to support this. But I think the rationale behind it was that the city is affected greatly by uh by the animals, the dogs uh and every basically our police force is is uh being overextended because of these things. I mean we see over here 119 calls. Um, but I'd be definitely interested in seeing what the public thinks or if the public should know where this uh extra money is going to. Um, an 11 cent extra from last year. From what from what I understand, u there was a big donor that uh donated to the to the animal shelter. So that's why that donor is gone now. So that's why they're having to do the the major increase. But again, um it is affecting our uh police force and the amount of time that they're being pulled away from doing their normal job. So that is something that for the citizenry to to uh understand. Um and it is an increase in our taxes. Uh so bottom line is I feel the same with what everybody else said there as far as uh

the appropriateness of of uh voting on this here as a council body.

Thank you Eric. Any further discussion? I feel that the sentiment of the council is to take no action on that because they have acknowledged at least uh half the members in the council here have acknowledged that uh this is not a true representation of their constituents. So um I will take the sentiment of take no action and ask for a thumbs up for that action to take no action. All right. Thank you very much. Um so next is uh anything in regard any questions in regards to the upcoming business meeting? You would have had your packets last week physical copy and or um digital copy. Do we have any questions in regards to that Rob? So, I sent an email to Aaron and I copied the uh mayor council with regards to specific concerns that I have on the um the RFP for the um non-bargaining salary and compensation. Did you get that, Aaron?

Yes. Okay. Well, I didn't receive any uh acknowledgement of that and I'm just wondering the concerns that I have before I would vote yes on something like that uh were specifically stated in there and I don't know if that's going to be covered Wednesday night. Are we going to have a live uh uh presenter from or a live representative from that um from that company to potentially answer those questions? Is staff prepared to answer my questions? Um, I just and you can either tell me, you don't have to say now, yes or no now, but I'm just saying I I sent that to you a few days ago because that's what I'm going to need for Wednesday night. So, one way or another, um, you can take that in under advisement.

Thank you, counselor. That was on my item to discuss today. Uh, and I did get the email. You sent it Friday, and I saw the email this morning before I came into the meeting. So, um, I had it down as a note to have council determine whether or not they would like to have the a representative online from um from the low bidder to ask any discussion to ask any questions. So, do you want us to try to get synergize online? some of the questions uh we definitely would not be able to answer because this is an RFP for uh for the services that are specific to the consultant. So, if uh you have additional detailed questions like what you suggested, councelor Pel, uh I would ask if council wants to have them available and I could see if they could they're available Wednesday night. If it's imperative that they are available and those questions are answered, um we may need to reschedule if they're not available, but I can check their availability.

So, does the council have an appetite to have the a representative available for Wednesday night's meeting? I got I'm okay. Three thumbs up. Four, five, six. Yes, please. Can you reach out to them and see if they can be available? Certainly. And if they're not available, do we look at scheduling at a time where there are are where they are available? Because some of the detailed question were very detailed and so if that's a decision maker in that then um so so Rob would it suffice if we could get those questions answered directly like via email or anything if they're not available?

So it would suffice for me those are just the questions that I had. I mentioned that I mean you know seven other counselors may have their own questions that staff uh doesn't have the ability to answer but that for me I I don't want to go back and have the same process we had with McGrath with them coming back and saying guess what it's a proprietary formula we can't tell you hey we came up with that so you know I'm I'm trying to avoid that by asking my questions up front before I hire them so if they can be answered that would satisfy me I don't know about the other seven counselors

okay so if uh staff reaches out and can get participation for Wednesday night's meeting, that would be great. If they can, if there's a scheduling conflict, does council have an appetite to postpone? We would likely maybe need to move it to a workshop because I think there's a response deadline that we have in the RFP process, but that would be that would be what we'd shoot for. So, I mean, excuse me. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

So, um I I I don't really know what's most appropriate here, but let's just say that um and I'm not trying to speak for seven other people, but let's say that uh the the email that I sent was forwarded to the the uh um uh the applicant. Um, you know, they may be able to answer those questions, send them back to staff, they may be able to get the answers. It may be really simple. I'm not trying to over complicate it, but I am saying that I don't want to go down the same road that we went down with McGrath and end up with a a mystery a mystery result. So, that's all I'm saying. However, however I get those answers is fine. Whether they're here Wednesday night, I think would be the best thing because everyone can ask questions, but I I just for me, I need to have those answered before I would um risk going down the same path we went down before. So,

okay. I think uh staff has direction on that, so we'll go forward. Any other questions regards to the Wednesday meeting? Um, Victoria? Yeah, I would like to start item A on the consent agenda for a a short um presentation. That was something that Kathleen asked. Um, yes. So, I did acknowledge that Kathleen asked for that and I asked Kathleen back the question on and I'll ask you is um why because it's a simple resolution to uh procedural to actually extend a timeline. So, is there a certain p

I don't know I was doing it for for someone else so I don't know if she's had her question answered or not. That's why I'm bringing it up. Um, yeah, I did uh reach out to Kathleen and ask her that specific question cuz I don't understand what more information you can bring. So, I guess, well, definitely if she has a specific question, I'm I'm I I believe we could probably answer it in lines with the actual action on this. As you said, mayor, it's a very simple procedural issue where we're just making a a small amendment to that um agreement. But, yeah, it's just amending the the the end date. Yeah. has no financial obligation to it. It just it's so um I guess we'll do the due diligence and see if um yeah, if you can reach out to her that

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I I did address that with her last week though. I just didn't get a response. She probably was traveling or something. So, thank you for bringing that up. Anything else, Joel? Um I just have a question. It's on the consent agenda again and it's um the tourism advisory committee membership. Um we don't have a chamber of commerce. We don't have visit grants pass. We don't have Main Street. Um, and on the consent agenda, it's a motion to add somebody from Main Street. Um, and and there must be some logic to this. I don't I don't understand what it is.

I believe what you're talking about is that we have exeicios in essence for those committees where you don't actually appoint the person, but the chamber has a representative that they send to that group. And so, do they vote? They shouldn't. No. So, um I would I would, you know, if they're a non- voting member of the committee and they attend, I I think that's great. Um it it does state liaison, which is the definition of that is a non- voting participant. Okay. Okay. Yeah. If it's a non- voting member, uh we ran into some issues with that with the housing committee before. Okay. With some conflicts of interest.

Okay. Thank you for bringing that um Indra and then Rick. Yes. So, I don't know if this affects uh Wednesday's meeting, but I do uh want to bring up the meeting on March 30th on the consent agenda. Item A, a reconsideration. Is this a time to bring this up or after you finish? Um, let's go through the business meeting first and make sure everybody has their questions answered for Wednesday and then we can bring that back. Thank you, if that's okay. I'm not. Sure. No, sure, Rick. So, I have a calendar question. Okay.

Um, we were going to get more information on the swimming pool. Do we have a timeline on that when it might show up? Josh is not here, but you can just follow up later. Okay. Fine. All right. Uh, anything else on the Wednesday night's business meeting? Uh, Aaron? Yeah, I just uh mayor, we'll need to pull council action 2B. Okay. And I'll not sure if we'll reschedule, but that one needs to be pulled. So, that would be uh council action 2B.

2B. It's the for the 124 Northwest Midland Avenue property. So, we'll basically pull that for a future date. Okay. Anything else for Wednesday night? Wednesday night. Once, twice, done. Okay. Keep going. Remember, we have a we have a executive meeting scheduled here, too. And we're freaking almost at Sorry, we're almost at 5. So, go ahead, Andrea, first and then Victoria.

Yes. So, the last meeting I was traveling, and so I apologize. It was a little hectic for me. I did not realize on the consent agenda I missed the resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with Josephine County Visitors Association including the addition of downtown welcome center operation. So, I had a lot of questions on the agree. I called Aaron early the next morning like, "Oh my gosh." Because I did hear from uh some people that was on the consent agenda. And uh I have a lot I'm surprised it was on the consent agenda. To me, this is a a workshop item where we should um be able we could ask questions in front of the public for transparency. I just have a lot of questions and I would ask um that we do take this to a workshop presentation. I do understand that time is of the essence. But one other thing I did um come across is that the we learned today the Josephine County Visitors Centers Association is the registered um uh DBA visit Grants Pass. It's DBA visit Grants Pass. And when I looked up in the business registry, the corporate division, Josephine County Visitors Center Association is showing as inactive, an inactive entity. So I don't know how we can go into an agreement until that's taken care of for one. And I'm not saying that it's not going to be a great thing. So I don't want to say that I'm against doing it. I think we heard a lot. It's very it's positive and I think it could be a great thing, but I just would like a lot of questions answered. And I I didn't go directly to

them because I thought they were questions that the whole council would maybe want to hear or ask questions of their own or that the public would want to hear as well. And so that's why I don't I didn't go to the source and get all my questions answered in advance. And so I would like to have that reconsidered and taken to a workshop presentation. Okay. So your request was was heard and um the DMO actually signed the contract. I actually signed the resolution. Um but Aaron held off on signature so we could bring it forth for any questions. And and thank you Aaron. I appreciate that.

You're welcome. So any questions that you have in advance, we're more than happy to try to answer those questions so we don't have to go through that process. If council uh does desire to do a re if a council member desires to do a reconsideration, you can do a reconsideration on a on an ordinance and resolution. Um it's at the next regular meeting which is defined as business meeting. So at Wednesday's meeting you would need the process would be you would anyone who voted in favor of can ask for reconsideration. Therefore you can under matters from mayor council and staff ask for a reconsideration on that action item and then council would vote and if twothirds of the council agrees with you we will do a reconsideration at the next regular meeting. If not it will your your reconsideration will fail and then I'll go ahead and sign the contract. at the next regular meeting.

That's that's Wednesday night. So Wednesday night meeting under matters from Mayor Council and staff ask for a reconsideration of the contract and if there's two/3s vote in favor of then we'll do a reconsideration at the following business meeting. It'll be put on the agenda for reconsideration. Okay, I understand that and thank you for clarifying. I wasn't sure if it was workshop or meeting. If it goes if it passes and goes to the next business meeting, can we dis would we be discussing it then or then it would it would be discussed? Yeah. And not at a workshop which So we would you would put it on for discussion at the next meeting? At the next business meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any and I had uh Victoria Oh, sorry. Sorry. Rob has a question on the same topic. So, uh, if Indra and it sounds like she's going to bring it up for reconsideration, there's, uh, then discussion as to, uh, why someone wants to bring it up for reconsideration or it's just a vote. We get to discuss it or it's just a vote. Will there be a motion on the table and you can discuss the motion?

Great. Thank you. And I would encourage you to formulate your questions and reach out to staff ahead of time so they're actually prepared because I I mean this not that you guys have discussed this, but this has been in your guys's purview for months. This has been lingering out there and it was actually on an a on a previous agenda, but then was pulled because we had some new um TLT dollar legislation that came out and Stephanie actually pulled it. So, this has been in our mirror in our purview for for a long time.

Yeah, I know it has been. I was just surprised it wasn't an action item where we would actually discuss it or I would have pulled it out for discussion at that meeting. So, I just missed that. But, um, yes. Okay. Thank you,

Victoria. Yeah, there have been many people who have contacted council about the Beacon Hill Park, not just the pump track, but that even complicates it more. So, uh because that's a whole bigger um scenario, but there were people who were concerned even about the parking lot and the walking trail. and I had only previously heard from members of the public who uh really were in favor of it and I really appreciated Valerie coming and talking about it as well. But now it's come to my attention that there are many people who are concerned. And so the the survey went out um in 2019 and so that's seven years ago and I think we're going to have to so maybe it's the same thing. I we need to revisit this decision. And uh but it might be a moot point also because if we were going to also consider putting a pump track there, then that definitely would have to have a survey going out to the public. So I don't want to make more work for people, but I don't want to let this go either because I was thinking the public was but but there are there are people who have uh talked to me who are concerned about it. So, I wanted to make sure that those were addressed in the public.

Okay. So, um uh we as what I recall and it was Aaron reminded me is is um council already gave staff direction to actually reissue the survey or another survey to re to do a new survey to do a new survey. So, that is that is so well already it's so good very efficient. Thank you. Thank you. So, it's good that the Yes. Thank you for doing that because of the public concern. Thanks. Sure. Thank you. Beautiful. Ask questions and and you get answers. It's awesome. Um Eric.

Yeah. I just wanted to remind everyone on the council if they haven't already done it, the uh statement of economic interest, SEI, is due on the 15th to OEX. So, don't forget to get that done. Oh, you'll get emails. Oh, I've I've got it right here. Uh, I get harassment, but uh um I just wanted to remind everybody that it's due. I think they call that gentle nudging. Okay. Any anything else? Cuz we do have an executive session to go into here, but anything else? Okay, Erin, I just need three volunteers to sit down with me with regards to the city manager evaluation process. Three volunteers, Rob,

for the what? City city manager evaluation review. So like a little brainstorming session. So I got four people uh three people. Okay. So Andrew bow out. So we got uh Seth, Victoria, and Rob. Good with that. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Um, if that is good, then we will go into executive session and I call for basically we're going to adjourn the executive session. Do I have to read our protocol? Oh, yeah.

I'm looking for it. There we go. Okay. So today's workshop will be adjourned and the council will now meet uh meet in executive session for the purpose of discussing those subjects previously noticed in this executive session. The executive session is held pursuant OS192.660 and more specifically under the subsections of that statute which have been publicly noticed for this meeting. Representatives of the news media and designated staff shall be allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience are asked to leave the room. Representatives of the news organization, which we don't really have any, um have specific directions to report only on the topic only and not deliberations during the accession. Um no decision may be made in executive session. At the end of executive session, we will adjourn for the day. And who we who we got speaking with us? Wait.