City Council - workshop

Council workshop. And we've got a few items on the agenda. We're going to start with Washington Midland Redevelopment Opportunity Plan. And it looks like staff will take over with the presentation shortly.

Good morning, Mayor, members of the council. I've got a short introduction for you to tonight's, or tonight's, it's tonight's somewhere in the world. Today's workshop, and then most of it's going to be turned over to Jason Graff, who we've had, it looks like maybe a couple of technical issues. We have him online today. But just to orient you quickly, the subject and summary today is to give you a progress update on the Washington Midland Redevelopment Opportunity Plan. And this is gonna be from first 40 feet, which Jason Graff is the principal of. And we also have two other sub-consultants on the project, Leland Consulting Group and Apex Companies. And there are two main goals to relationship to the council goals, economic growth and housing and homelessness. So this kicked off last year, June of 25, when the URA board gave direction to proceed with this plan. In December, at your board meeting, you passed a resolution that gave the city manager ability to enter into a contract with First 40 Feet to prepare the plan. So we are well into it now. The total planning process is about nine months. In the contract that we have with First 40 Feet, there were three community forums, two of which have actually already taken place. A lot of stakeholder interviews, which honestly is a huge part of this process. Being able to sit one-on-one in rooms with owners, with developers, with engineers, and just sort of pick their brain. You really can't get a more quality project than that where you have the time and the investment put in to do that kind of conversation work. So that's been a big part of what they have done to date. And Jason will share a little bit of his findings from that. The other piece of the project is the commercial market analysis, and we did send you on Friday a copy of sort of an initial cut of that. There's gonna be another report coming out that will go into much more detail about the potential for this eight acres. you know, to actually deliver on certain types of products, on certain types of services. The report that we sent you on Friday is kind of more of that demographic analysis that sort of shows you, you know, here's where Grants Pass sits, here's where that census block sits in relationship to the rest of the city and the rest of Josephine County. Some helpful information, some more up-to-date information than what we've been able to share with you in the past. So hopefully you got a chance to look through that. And then the site and infrastructure assessment was the third key piece of the contract that the city has on this project. And that's where APEX comes in. They're looking at the infrastructure that's in the ground there right now, both on site and right around the immediate vicinity. So what are we gonna do with the plan? The plan is ultimately gonna be integrated into our comprehensive community development plan, and it's gonna get really two main purposes. One is to provide a guide as we move forward with the project on infrastructure, land use, zoning. And then the second is really a tool that we use to, or will use to attract an experienced developer, investors, people that are interested on the private sector in looking at the site. And so this will be a, you know, the opportunity plan is a document that we'll use to share with them to kind of market the project. End goal is really not changed from what it's been since the beginning. It's an attractive, vibrant, mixed-use hub that will help meet the city's pressing housing needs and serve as an activity and employment center for Grants Pass. The project was also listed in the five-year implementation strategy that the URA Board adopted. As far as cost implications, this is 100% funded through the URA. These funds, we've already had some payments be made, and of course there'll be about a few other payments coming. But this is a contract not to exceed $150,000 for all three of those activities that I just mentioned. So that's all I have. I'm happy to answer questions at the end, but I think we're gonna just jump into Jason's presentation, and he'll kinda review this. So, Julie, we do not have him, he doesn't have the ability to do this on his end, right? Okay, so the original plan was I think that he would do a thing, but we're just gonna pull his presentation up, and I will, click through while Jason talks. So Jason, are you there?

Yes, I am here. I've got the presentation up as well. So as long as we're queued up, if you've got that big orange cover slide ready for council, then let me know and then I'll get started.

Yep, we're on screen. We have the first one that says Washington Midland Redevelopment Opportunity Plan, City Council Workshop number one. Great. Are we ready? I think so.

Yep, we're ready.

Go ahead. Excellent. Thank you. I want to thank you, council and city staff, for allowing us to work in Grants Pass. I absolutely love it. I love the setting. I had an opportunity to work in the community in 2014 on a couple of projects. Really excited to come back. This site, I think in particular, has a lot of potential. So let's get into it. Our agenda today is just to review the project progress, summarize what we've learned. Bradley's sort of tuned you in to sort of who we've been talking to, but I'll give you a little more clarity on that outreach effort. And then as we get near closure at the end, we're going to look at a variety of preliminary concepts. So there's really some some feedback that would be helpful for us in terms of development directions and infrastructure improvements. And so I think just getting a pulse of your interest and priorities, I think, will help us too as we move forward. So let me get into a project area. I think most folks are really well attuned to where we are in North Grants Pass between Highway 99, Washington Boulevard. That's basically from the fire station in the north down to Midland Avenue. The work scope Bradley covered with you, so I won't get into what we're working on, but effectively we're trying to figure out what type of development seems to make sense here from a market perspective. What level of commitment might the URA put into the project to incentivize development? That's really kind of the bottom line. And then how do we get informed about What are the right metrics for what North Grants Pass can absorb? So we've been learning that from market analysis, but also talking to developers and others who are building in the community. Our timeline looks like this. Bradley mentioned nine months. We're well into that, probably about two-thirds of the way. Our project is being guided by a couple of things. One is a project advisory committee, which includes a list of about seven or eight folks who OWN BUSINESSES, REPRESENTATIVES OF ALL CARE, FOR INSTANCE, DEVELOPERS, AND FOLKS WHO ARE INVESTED IN NORTH GRANTS PASS AS WELL AS YOUR CITY COUNCIL MEMBER IS ON OUR PROJECT ADVISORY COMMITTEE. WE'VE HAD TWO TOUCH POINTS IN TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT. WE MET IN APRIL. SOME OF YOU WERE AT THAT COMMUNITY MEETING DOWNTOWN WHERE WE WERE SORT OF LEARNING ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR THE SITE. WE CALL THAT VISIONING. aspire to see on the site in the future and what are the things that might be limiting that and what types of things might be supporting that effort. So we learned a lot from that meeting. We had 12 stakeholder interviews sort of every 45 minutes, every hour. We rolled in interviews and meetings with folks, some of which we did online separately. We did a survey at the community workshop as well as an online survey that lasted for a month So we gathered information during that April event. We came back in June, June 18th and 19th, to do a second go around. So we learned a lot about what people would like to see in the project area, what might be viable. And then we brought preliminary concepts to folks to review as the opportunity for what might be future development. And so similar thing, number of stakeholder meetings. We had a community workshop. We have an online survey that's going to be ongoing for another month, so about July 17th. We'll close that survey and then we'll have some good information about some ideas of elements for development that people are interested in. So just putting our project area in context for all of us, I think what makes the Washington Midlands site so unique is its proximity and its location within North Grants Pass. You have a neighborhood to the south, strong employment to the north. You've got a working commercial corridor with great access from Highway 99 on the east. And I think that's what makes this site distinct and unique from any others along the sixth and seventh corridor. It is that sort of that knuckle between a variety of different uses. That allows us to look at a variety of potential development types, which I think is great. So we're not focused purely on commercial here. Housing is a great, great opportunity Some employment, some commercial can all play sort of a role in creating a mixed-use district. So those key drivers of what makes it attractive are that drive-by traffic, proximity to existing employers. This is already a known commercial corridor and, of course, those neighborhoods. With the urban renewal area as really a tool to help with infrastructure and incentivize development, this is an amazing, I think, opportunity. So when we look at the market potential from a high-level perspective, Clearly, housing, affordable workforce, middle housing, those are attainable. There is certainly a housing need. We'll look at some of the analysis that came out of the market study. From a commercial perspective, sort of neighborhoods, specialty, local, retail seems to be room for addition. I know there's some excess commercial citywide, but I think there are certain types of products that might be able to fit here. And then employment, certainly around health care, continues to be strong in this quadrant of the city. And again, I know there's some ambiguity about health care from a larger perspective, but I think here there's still some strength in that market. So the market findings then, if we think about housing, we look at that housing column, certainly there's housing need. You've got approximately 4,000 new units by 2040 that you're targeting, but your production, your absorption is about 100 UNITS PER YEAR. SO MAYBE THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO INCREASE THAT YIELD ON THIS SITE. AFFORDABILITY IN THE COMMUNITY DOES REMAIN, YOU KNOW, THAT IS A MAJOR CHALLENGE IN TERMS OF COST OF CONSTRUCTION, THE ABILITY TO AFFORD RENTS OR THE ABILITY TO PURCHASE HOMES. SO WE KNOW THAT COST IS A FACTOR LOCALLY IN THE COMMUNITY. BUT WHEN WE'RE SEEING PROJECTS THAT ARE BEING BUILT, WE'VE TALKED TO DEVELOPERS, MUCH OF THAT IS AFFORDABLE HOUSING. THERE IS SOME you know, market rate, townhomes, condominiums, so there's some room in that market as well. But we're generally seeing right now with the cost of construction and the ability to pay rents that affordable products tend to be more marketable in the near term. Doesn't mean we can't aspire for longer term goals here. It's just getting a sense of the reality of where we are today. That commercial column, you see locality and specialty retail, that seems to be still a a point of access and maybe an opportunity to recruit some of those types of uses from a community perspective, they would love that. So we'll touch a little bit on what we heard from the community side about what neighborhood serving retail is and how that might be beneficial to the folks who live nearby or work nearby the project area. This idea of a grocery store, certainly North Grants Pass does fall out of that one mile service area. Groceries are difficult to pull off, but it's something that should be explored In North Grants Pass, if it isn't this site, it may be other sites. But in any case, that seems to be a potentially attainable use to pursue down the road. And then, as I mentioned, the medical office remains still a strong employment use. Projections anticipate you see their employment growth through 2034 of around 13%. The URA then becomes this amazing tool, really, to allow for potentially infrastructure costs to share as incentives for development. The fact that you own the land allows you to be able to extend the market in a way where you can try to target users, maybe not necessarily on near-term financials, although you do want to phase development, but you can think a little bit longer term and strategically think about some of those community benefits that can be accrued through your relationship and owning the land and partnering with developers. So what we learned from the community when we talked to folks either in the community workshops or the one-on-one meetings from a community resident and owners, they consistently supported this idea of housing choice, both townhomes and some apartments. So we saw folks were potentially interested in both of those. This idea of improved walkability, that as we rebuild infrastructure, that it have decent sidewalks, street trees, the buildings are oriented to the street. Folks value quality development. The types of development they'd like to see, a grocery store was number one, but neighborhood serving retail, something you could walk to or bike to from your house, drive as well. But just that convenience of having things close to home, especially in a location here where people already live near schools, they live in great neighborhoods, employment's nearby, and this is just an added amenity that they see the potential for. Our project area stakeholders, if you talk to folks who are in the project area, addressing the homeless issue is one of the critical things that they'd love to see some forward movement on, just because of the vandalism and some of the instances of folks hanging around the project area. Moving in a more positive direction would be great. There are some parking conflicts. People own buildings, but they don't know the parking. So the planned unit development, which is an overlay, on the project area, there'll need to be some work to sort of determine sort of how we can help with that issue of parking and building ownership. And then everyone is excited about encouraging investment. So I think this is the positive aspect from project area stakeholders that they're really excited about this opportunity and the city leaning in this effort is a good thing. With the URA, we know public investment incentives can help attract private development. I mentioned this. Phasing over time is definitely a possibility. Near term, maybe housing. Longer term, maybe some other uses. But we have an opportunity also to think about infrastructure that people are really proud of. And we create an area where investors want to be. So it's a lot of upside. So I want to hop into, as we dissect all that information, we want to share with you SORT OF THREE CONCEPTS THAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED HERE. WHAT COULD HAPPEN ON THE SITE? AND AGAIN, THIS IS KIND OF A FANTASY, BUT WHAT WE'RE DOING IS WHAT IS THE CAPACITY FOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE PROJECT AREA? AND SO CONCEPT NUMBER ONE, WHICH WE CALL THE MIDLAND MARKET DISTRICT, SAYS, HEY, What if we lean into more increasing our employment and commercial development as a key focus for development? So orienting, expanding the health care suites along Highway 99 and some commercial development there, the visibility of drive-by traffic. And then on the west side of Bunnell, Bunnell's the north-south gray street through the middle. FOCUSING HOUSING THERE BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND MIDLAND. FRANKLIN MARKETPLACE LOOKS AT A MORE BALANCED PERSPECTIVE WHERE WE INCREASE A LITTLE BIT MORE THE HOUSING DENSITY. WE STILL MAINTAIN SOME OF THAT COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. WE EXTEND FRANKLIN BOULEVARD IN BOTH CONCEPTS. SO TODAY THE SITE'S ISOLATED. THAT EXTENSION IS GOOD TO PROMOTE DEVELOPMENT AND ACCESS TO THE INTERIOR OF THE BLOCK. THEN THE THIRD OPTION, THE WASHINGTON MIDLAND COMMON SAYS, Let's lean into housing because that's really the strength of the current market today, still maintaining some commercial viability and healthcare suites oriented to Highway 99, but really using Bunnell as kind of that central location for housing on both sides and then housing oriented to Washington and Midland. So that's the range of concepts that we looked at. Bradley, are you keeping up? Yeah. Brad, I want to make sure. You're on Midland Market District? Yes. Okay, great. Because I haven't been saying next slide, so thank you. So let's look at a development summary for the Midland Market District. And again, what we're talking about is we've got Dr. Heidinger's office. We have some underutilized buildings to the south. The city's purchased a property just west of that. This is the idea of saying, hey, if we lean into the health care suites, we already have Planned Parenthood and AllCare offices up on Franklin Boulevard, but look for an opportunity to expand that and create kind of a node, if you will, of healthcare-related development. So what you see is a new building in those blue squares in the middle of the page in the upper left. That's a new two-story office suites where now you can have clinicians or care providers could then be in kind of a single facility. But you've got those complementary uses in and around in the blue. And then you take advantage of Franklin Boulevard being extended through to add commercial storefronts along the north side of that extension. So you've got that drive-by visibility. And then we looked at the building at the lower right-hand corner, the one that's been vacant for such a long time, 10,000 square foot footprint. That's not bad for a specialty grocer. 10,000 to 15,000 tends to be the sweet spot. We've had some initial discussions about the potential for that. Again, some of these properties are not within the city's ownership, but we're looking holistically at what future development might be. So when I say this is a fantasy, that is exactly what it is, but it is giving us a sense of what the site could hold in terms of the amount of development and the types of development that you might want to encourage in the project area. So you'll see the housing units here we've mixed between apartments and townhomes, so You see the 78 multifamily units, that's in three buildings, and then the townhome units oriented to Midland and then portions of Bunnell. In the Franklin marketplace, what I mean by that balance is we've added some additional housing. There's some existing senior housing that you see in the center of the page there just south of Franklin Boulevard. That's the eight-unit senior housing that exists today. and then continuing to create that neighborhood along bunnell street again with apartments and townhomes that's really the two mix of housing types that we're looking at that meets sort of the density threshold that you have for zoning on the site and then franklin boulevard comes that kind of walkable commercial street we have existing uses um with planned parenthood and all care but we add some additional commercial storefronts this is a great location for RETAIL OR SERVICES THAN THAT CAN BE ACCESSED FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD IN A DECENT WALKABLE SETTING SO THIS IS MORE BALANCED INCREASE IN RESIDENTIAL DENSITY FROM THAT FIRST OPTION BECAUSE WE'RE MOVING FROM COMMERCIAL TO A LITTLE MORE HOUSING AND THEN OPTION THREE THE WASHINGTON AND MIDLAND SAYS HEY LET'S GO ALL IN ON HOUSING LET'S LET'S TAKE BUNNEL IS THAT CENTRAL SPINE AGAIN TOWN HOMES AND MULTIFAMILY APARTMENTS ON EITHER SIDE You can see the unit count then moves up. And we still hold those commercial properties along Highway 90 and 9 with good access and visibility, continue to encourage commercial development along that edge. No extension of Franklin Boulevard in this concept. So those three then we arrayed and shared with the community You know, the first one that's leaning in more maximizing economic development and commercial investment. The middle one is suited for kind of a balanced approach for supporting housing and some commercial development over time. And then the third option really best suited for meeting housing needs and building, you know, that strong resident base in the district. And so what we heard from the community around development in particular, The grocery store tended to be something that people really leaned into. And you can see then, from a holistic development perspective, this idea of good walkable infrastructure was important. From a commercial retail perspective, retail storefronts were desirable. Who doesn't want to have retail or dining close to your home? And some of the aspects of the public open space that's incorporated with the housing, that was also deemed pretty important from folks. From a housing perspective, you see senior housing tended to get a lot of votes there in terms of who you'd be recruiting the district for. And then if you were to rank the Midland concept, Franklin or Washington, the Midland Commons, then you can see sort of the community was leaning more toward that balanced commercial and residential concept. So it's really sort of leaning into two different things here. If we go in strong with housing, let's say, and we focus that as our efforts, and we know there's near-term access for that market to take off and allow for the commercial and employment to take a little bit longer, but you've still got great visibility, but you lean into the housing part, that's really going to respond strongest to the current demand. And not only from a market perspective, but then also addressing your housing need Anecdotally, more people living in the project area is going to support your commercial development down the road, so there is some benefit to leaning into the housing early. I think the goal here in maximizing housing is it's market ready to bring that in. Balancing housing and commercial, it will support a greater mix of uses and will have as much as housing is benefiting the whole community. having a node along North Grants Pass where you can get to goods and services close to your house, there's some level of employment, and housing is also a really good mix. So you're not leaning in primarily into housing, but you're allowing that variety. Either one, I think, generally offer the variety that's a little more balanced on second option. So we have a few questions for you all in terms of what we should be thinking about as we begin to land on kind of a preferred concept. And so I'm going to let these questions sit here for a moment. I think it's time for me to pause and take any questions from council. But I think I'd like to come back to these questions if we can. And maybe there's a council member who wants to lead that discussion. I'll open that up to the group. But thanks for your patience, and I'll pause for questions.

Thank you. That was a lot of information really, really quickly, so anybody got questions, obviously. Victoria.

Hi, thanks for the presentation. When I was able to go to one of those public meetings, and I know that in that meeting the traffic on Washington was discussed by a lot of people who lived there in the neighborhood, and One of the ideas that just came out of a short conversation was closing Washington on one side. Did that make it? I'm not saying it's a good idea or I agree with it. It would need to have a lot of having looked into. But the speed on Washington is of great concern to people who live there. So did you have anything to add? to say or respond to about that?

Sure. A couple of things. Because Aaron Kubik announced that the city would be interested in putting a camera out there, which they did. And so an initial count and measure of speeds was done. And I think generally the street isn't, yes, people are exceeding the registered speed limit, not in an astronomical amount. but there's certainly some increased speed on the street. So I think there was some good justification that that is happening. What we're suggesting as a part of future infrastructure improvements is looking at Washington and Midland to do a few things. Think about curb extensions over time so you can narrow that distance for crossing at the intersections, and if you do that in multiple locations, that causes a bit of a narrowing of the roadway. You all notice that the curb to curb along Washington is really wide, much wider than it is to the south in the neighborhood and even further north. There's a two or three block span between us and Hillcrest that's really wide. So these curb extensions can help with that. Improving the striping and colorization on the crosswalks is another key improvement. And then with build out of the project area, that frontage along Washington and Midland, we can increase lighting and and things that improve visibility for pedestrians. So I think that would be the recommendation moving forward is use some traffic calming additions to the roadway. And some of that can be paid for by the developer over time. So we weren't talking about closing Washington or any pieces of that street.

Well, I think generally the concern was, and I'm looking at some of the numbers on the... preliminary concept of you've got a lot of units 170 and then 50 units that that not just speed but uh volume of traffic um and as you said you did find that people are speeding there the people were pretty concerned about that so uh Was there any study done about the increase of traffic on the surrounding neighborhood, either Franklin or Washington or Midland, that surrounding area?

Yes, we will do that analysis. So we're going to take the numbers from these three concepts and look at what the potential impact would be on traffic and intersections, in particular at Midland. Obviously, in Highway 99, Washington and Midland, those are the key locations to look at how traffic might be impacted.

Oh, thank you so much.

That's to be done. We're working on it. Thank you.

Traffic studies to be done. Okay, thank you. And then I don't know if there's a question for you or a question for Aaron, but the survey is closing on July 17th. I'm wondering if there was any neighborhood outreach done to people so that they would know, people who are living around there, that this survey is open and so that they can comment on it.

Yeah, I'll let the city give you the insight on that. I know a few things they're doing, but it's probably good if Bradley or others give you the full deal.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Council, for that question. Yeah, we have done outreach. We did send direct letters to all of the immediate residents and invited them to the meeting as well as gave them the QR code and link to the survey so that they can access that we do have signage posted as well up on the site all along there where people can see it and hopefully walk up to it it has information about the survey at this point so they can go ahead and do that we've done on our social media we did a blast and so that it's been posted on all of our various social media and then we have it is on our web right now, so anybody watching this can go to the website and take the survey.

Do you have, and maybe you won't have it until it's closed, but do you have any feedback that shows that the people that are in the neighborhood are responding? Do you know any of that information?

We have been receiving responses. I haven't looked really closely to see who the respondents are.

Oh, but we could do that? Yeah, we could. Yeah, that would be good to see. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and that's all I have.

Perfect. Just You can go in future-wise. We kind of go through a round table of questions, so if you guys could limit it to one question each, then we're gonna go run back through it. That kind of gives everybody a chance to weigh in. Eric, question.

Yes, thank you for the presentation. I've got a question regarding the what we heard portion there on, I don't know what slide that is. It looks like maybe 13. But it shows that it's heavy on the housing, looks like, apartments, senior housing, and then retail storefronts. And then healthcare is kind of, At 36%, maybe a third. So I guess my question is, looking at all three options here, in my mind, it looks like it would be number three would be more accurate to what it is that we heard. So I guess what I'm asking is, why did they come up with the first place as Franklin with such a heavy amount of,

Looks like health care on that when it was only 36 percent health care and then the rest majority was housing and storefronts Yeah, let me let me help with the numbers here a little bit some of it is who we surveyed So and this is from our community workshop because we haven't we haven't sorted through everything from the online survey the majority of folks that are meeting are they own residents in North Grants Pass, or they didn't say exactly where they live, but they tended to be more on the owner-resident side. And they were interested in a grocery store and some commercial development close to home. I think, ideally, those are your highest numbers if you see on the upper right here, 91, 82, 73. It's all around some of that commercial development. So I think there is a desire for some commercial close to where people live. Then on the housing side, senior housing came up as like what they felt is the most important need in terms of housing here. And so I think that's where you see that number. I think in some instances from a community perspective, having, for instance, let's say too much housing, they were less inclined to have that. They seem to be more excited about neighborhood serving retail than how much housing there might be. So I think that's why one sort of landed is the, as the winner because it was offering that neighborhood serving retail or commercial at the same time some housing, so.

Okay, thank you. In terms of, obviously we're talking about this right now, this can obviously be modified going forward in the future if we see that there's a discrepancy somewhere.

Yeah, you should look at these as like not pick A, B, or C, one, two, or three. It's really what elements from each one are potentially performing the best so that ultimately you probably end up with a hybrid. And that's sort of why those questions we have at the end of the slide here sort of get into should we be fully aggressive toward housing or should we take a more balanced approach? Should we extend Franklin Boulevard, for instance, to improve access for the internal of the site, or if we're leaning on housing, maybe that isn't important. So I think there's some things still to sort out, I think to your point here, in trying to figure out the best mix of uses and the amount of those. But then we have to balance that with how much infrastructure the URA might be able to help support in some fashion. So a little bit of work on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kathleen, you have questions?

Yes, I do. Thank you for this wonderful handout. It's very clear and visual and it's easy to understand. So I'm catching on that language is changing. And there's been terms used in the past that might not mean the same today. So I'm wondering, what is your definition of workforce housing in comparison to affordable housing?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, affordable housing tends to be in the 60% median income and lower. Workforce housing tends to be around the 80% of average median income up to 120%. Both of those are challenging, as we know, certainly from a home ownership perspective. But with sometimes rental rates being as high as they are, it's just difficult to find housing. So that's generally, I think, that's the range. I think your affordable tends to be in the 60% and lower, and then your workforce tends to be in the 80 to 120 of average median income.

And what are you determining would be the senior housing? Would that be bottom?

We haven't looked at that yet, but yeah, it could be. Yes, it could fall within either one of those ranges. If I'm going to be blunt, about where funding sits today. It tends to be in the 60% more affordable realm. That's where you tend to get grants both from the state, federal government. So it seems to be easier for those types of developers around affordable housing right now to do projects because the cost of construction is still pretty high. And the available rents because the income levels locally, it's just not a good balance between market rate and what people can afford, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah, totally makes sense. Then I guess what I'm seeing in other projects around town is that the ownership housing seems to kind of go by the wayside as these developments get going. How much would there be emphasis on the ownership percentage-wise as it goes forward? Are you saying that it depends on the funding?

Right now, we're sort of looking at a 75 to 25 percent in terms of rental versus ownership. I think you could probably go up to 30 percent on the ownership side, 70 percent on the rental side. There hasn't been a ton of housing built, so it's kind of hard to say what works and what doesn't. We've heard a little bit from town homes in some areas, oh, they were originally started out as for sale and they've turned into rental. Some people are using that as income generating. I can purchase a townhome and rent it out knowing that people need a place to live. So it's a little bit of speculation in the market. Some of the products that have been built from the townhome side aren't in an environment exactly like what we have here. And I would say that the North Grants Pass, this location, would be far more desirable from a townhome perspective than some of the other sites where townhomes are being built, partially because it sits within an existing neighborhood, it's close to schools, and it's already close to a lot of services, both from healthcare to just daily needs in a pretty short drive. So I think proximity, this location is going to have some advantages that other sites have not, and it's likely to perform better. But these are just, I'm licking my finger and sticking it in the air and the wind's blowing, I think there is something to the site here that gives it some advantages.

Okay, thank you.

But from a developer perspective with the URA, you all can offer some incentives that can make projects pencil in a way that they can't otherwise. So I think that's we can look at what those tools are and how we might be able to calibrate. For instance, if your goal is to get more ownership versus rental, I think there's things that we can look at to try and achieve those goals.

Great.

Thanks. Okay, so to re- I think this might solve a few recurring questions that keep coming up this presentation is basically you need to think of it as a brainstorming informational gathering session with community engagement to give you ideas on what to go forward with this is not putting forth a plan of action these are ideas on the on the board here so it is up to councils purview to do whatever they want going forward you could go through this whole exercise in the end, say, screw it, I'm gonna make it a mill. It's up to your guys' purview. So all the questions about actually how this is implemented are kind of a little bit misplaced at this moment in time. This is basically, like I said, an informational gathering community engagement process to give us an idea on how to actually develop this going forward. With that, we'll continue with questions. Rick?

Thank you, Jason. I appreciate the concept plans you put forward. It opens up good discussion points. One question I have, has there been any communication with ODOT concerning Franklin connecting with 6th Street?

Yeah, we have. Our public way with public works is, you know, has those representatives lined up. So, yes, we will fully... integrate ODOT into these concept reviews. And so that's on our list. We haven't done that in our in-person stakeholder perspectives, but that's part of our checklist as well as looking at our infrastructure needs here. The multimodal study is happening as well. It's kind of good news, right, that ODOT is kind of paying attention to the corridor now. I guess that could be good news or bad news, depending on your relationship with ODOT. But I think it is good that we have those representatives that are already thinking about this area. We've been trying to, as we extend Franklin through, to show some access management that we're doing. So for instance, we're integrating the new Franklin extension with Dr. Heidinger's access to his facility so that we're not adding additional connections to Highway 99 where we have the same or conceivably less. So that's our goal is to reduce that impact on 99. Okay.

Thank you. Yep. Further questions? Indra?

Yes, as you're laying out the multi-family apartments and townhomes, are you looking, we seem to have a problem or a change of parking. It seems to be a problem in some areas. When you lay that out, are you using minimum parking spaces for high density?

You mean like the actual size of the parking space or just like what are our numbers? Like is it two spaces per unit?

Right, the numbers so that there's adequate parking and not a lot are going to be out on the street.

Right. Well, we've targeted 1.5. So what you see here with the buildings and the number of units and the parking configuration, both Bunnell Street sort of acts as a... is a parking lot in several of the concepts because we're doing head-in on both sides it's just a typical two-lane road today so where these designs that are looking at 1.5 parking spaces per unit except for the townhomes where there's two unit two parking spaces per unit because that's built into the to the building itself So I think that would meet sort of what the developers would anticipate they want to develop. Certainly anecdotally seen some other projects where there's a lot of vehicles and people are trying to find places to put those. So the housing number and the parking number, those can all be calibrated to suit what the desire is. If 1.5 isn't enough, it needs to be 1.7 or 1.65. That can be calibrated.

Thank you. Rob, you got a question?

Yeah. Thanks, Jason. So a couple things. While it is slow moving and sometimes cumbersome, getting funding for low income, whether it's 60% median income range, can be slow. It does seem like there is a pipeline through state and feds to make that happen. We've got at least four of those projects right now that are either completed or actively working towards that. But as far as, so we know that there is a way to get funding for, again, and it can be slow, but there is a way to get funding for low income. So if council were to decide that we valued workforce housing, and I know that I think you just used the definition of maybe 80 to 120% of the median income, Doug Walker, who used to be the chair of the Housing Advisory Committee, feels that that maybe should be 150%, you know, 80 to 150% as workforce housing. Have you spoken with any developers as to what it might take yet to incentivize housing like that that would not necessarily be able to get federal and state help, because that typically is for the 60% and below, Have you spoken with any developers as to the kinds of help they might need if council wanted to incentivize workforce housing?

I mean, we've been talking to a number of different folks, and I think what Chris Zahas with Leland Consulting will do will say, okay, this is what I've learned from generally the cost of construction. This is what I know from income and, you know, comparable rents and can begin to look at, okay, the cost of, you know, a building with 50 units, let's say, multifamily, what it's going to cost, and then what the potential income stream is for that product. So there he'll be able to understand a gap based on, okay, the cost of construction is X amount and, you know, monthly income from rent is this, and so what's our return rate? So we'll be doing that, a high-level analysis from that perspective. If there are directly workforce housing developers, I think we've talked to some who probably do workforce and affordable and kind of all of those, but I think coming back with what we've learned from running the numbers to sort of truth test those, that will be a good next step.

Okay, so you haven't done that yet. I guess when you're talking about that 80 to 120%, those would be people that would be making, what, somewhere between 48 and $90,000 household income so that you'd know exactly really what the rents would have to be so that they wouldn't be rent burdened. So we know exactly what the rents need to be, but you haven't really even begun that part yet. So far, everything that you have on the page right now is, I guess, almost just like fantasy stuff.

It's just what the site can bear. Does that make sense? But from a true market perspective, like you're creating products, commercial, you've got them in the right location, good visibility, access to 99. So those things aren't arbitrary. But to your point, yes, we don't know. which one of these pencils out better than the other.

Okay, so I think this might be a question for Brad, but maybe for you also, or maybe for both. So, you know, I have an idea of a few, but what, okay, we know with federal or state, you know, they're going to get certain benefits for the low-income housing or certain help, certain subsidies. Can you just name a few of the tools that council might be able to use to incentivize if we, because I guess the burden for workforce housing would probably come from council, come from the city. Can you just mention a few of the tools that we may be able to invoke to incentivize for a developer?

Yeah, I mean the primary one because it's an urban renewal area is building infrastructure. Generally, the site is about maybe 70% infrastructure coverage. There's portions of Bunnell where utilities don't extend all the way to Midland. And then you've got storm sewer from the old parking lot of the hospital clinic that's running diagonally through the bulk of the housing area between Bunnell and Washington. That stormwater needs to be removed and moved and relocated so that you can build development on that core area. So typically, being able to build the initial infrastructure is a huge incentive from a development perspective, because it takes that initial cost burden away from them. You can still recoup that money over time, but it's typically in the infrastructure side where you can fill the gap. The other is land. I mean, if a developer even A workforce housing developer, if he's getting land for free or at reduced cost, those are the things that change the metrics and allow projects to pencil out, whereas they might not otherwise. So those are the two main tools that I know of. There may be others out there that I'm not knowledgeable enough to direct you toward, but those are the two I know.

So the first one is like... And correct me if I'm stating this incorrectly, but so SDCs would basically be backfilled by URA dollars or something like that. Is that an accurate way to say that?

Because you've got to – You could manage your SDC costs to try and calibrate to help fill the gap. That's another tool. I didn't mention that, but that's a direct tool that you already have in place, right? People are already paying – system development charges, but maybe there's a reduction for workforce housing, for instance. Thank you.

Thank you. Joel, you got a question? I just have two. First, I have a compliment. I thought the package was very well prepared, and I thought the economic and social assessment was superb. So I thank you for that product. It was really high quality. It seems like among those three options, Each of them would take, given the market analysis, run a different risk or a timeline of being accomplished. For example, if you went with a market business-heavy alternative and there's already a lot of vacancies in the city on that, that might take a lot of time to accomplish. With the housing, depending on the type of housing, that may be different. So I was wondering if in the future as you go through, if you could have some kind of risk rating on chances or whatever of finishing it within five years or getting the partnerships and the accomplishments for a particular alternative done within a certain time frame.

Yeah, I think I'll talk to Chris about that. I think being able to couch in those terms will help with evaluating both the risk and what direction you want to go to because I think that that's our next That's our next phase is to lean in to try and come back with a recommendation on the mix of uses to your point so that you can move forward. I love what you mentioned about a five-year timeframe. What's achievable across these three within a five-year timeframe? Maybe it's a mix. It isn't one or the other. So I think the other thing about risk is the cost and building of infrastructure. So Franklin Street, seems like a really important connection because it improves access to the interior of the site. And it just allows people and customers to get to the product, whether it's home or whether it's a business. But if you're doing mostly housing, maybe that isn't as critical. And you save some money by not building Franklin all the way through. And you focus housing development around a portion of Franklin and Buttle. So I think those are sort of trade-offs I don't have a good answer for yet, since we're sort of wanting to see from a market perspective, and then from you all as the decision makers, what you think is important. That's going to help us, too.

Well, you certainly have more experience than we do. The other couple things, the social assessment, you talked about the surrounding neighborhood and the per capita income and the demographics, the age. You did that for a reason. The reason being, I would guess, is to look at social acceptability and service to the neighborhood. In terms of the type of housing, how does that relate to that social assessment that you completed for us? So for example, you have a, fairly wealthy neighborhood next door with single family homes and the social acceptability of different types of housing. Is that a consideration or not?

I think, well, you know, everything's political, isn't it?

Yes.

And everyone's like, they're like, people are going to say, hey, this is an urban renewal area. And so we as citizens, we pay taxes and, you know, we need to be heard. And so that gets into maybe the compatibility question. And there's things that we can tell a story about future development as a part of this project that leans into concerns about compatibility or good neighbors. We can't change anyone's personal belief about change. And what I mean by that is most people don't like it. And they're going to tell you every horror story there is about it. All we can lean into is what is the need in the community and how can this site contribute to that? One of the needs is housing. It's desperately needed, not just in Grants Pass, all over the state, everywhere I work. It's really important. Quality of development is also a good consideration. Having a good neighbor is important. I mean, I like that neighbor, but I like what they built. And we can control that. to a certain extent with the URA. So I think the best bet is to try and say, hey, we're going to try and work toward building a nice asset to the neighborhood, a little bit of walkable retail commercial. Hey, you can walk or bike with your kids or drive over there. Either way, it's close by. And you're going to have some new neighbors here. But hey, it's quality development. We've got windows and doors facing the street. We've got some open space for people to mill about. We set buildings back a bit. And we try and address some of those concerns. But we're not going to be able to address everyone's concerns. There's going to be change here. And the city is going to play a role in stimulating some of that change. Maybe we can do some things to improve safety on Washington. Boulevard, we certainly can do that, curb extensions and then painting the crosswalks and making it safer and accessible for folks who are already in the neighborhood walking dogs or walking with their kids to school, whatever that is. There are benefits that the community can gain out of new development. So it's all about telling a really, really good story and hoping there's enough there for everyone that they can support it.

You know, I appreciate your answer. We're going through some of that right now out of Allen Creek in the implementation phase. It's interesting. The last question I had, and it's basically a worst fear that wouldn't come true, but we have some economic sectors where there's a high vacancy rate. or at least some vacancy rate. And it seems to me like we could have an urban renewal area where we incentivize and all we've done is move a business from one part of town to another. Address my worst fear that we really wouldn't increase economic or the amount of businesses, but we just relocate them.

Um, no way to know for sure whether you're doing that. I mean, a lot of times you are moving things around, right? You're creating a more attractive area for someone, or maybe someone was starting here and they want to go there because they think they can do, they can do better. Um, so at least that's not making businesses leave. So, but to your point where we're not adding new, um, you know, growth and markets, they, they, They tend to work on a national level. And I'm thinking in retail in particular. We're just not seeing growth in what we would say national retailers. We're seeing a ton of compression. And some of that has to do with why you're seeing vacant spaces or you're seeing turnover. So let's say that you used to have a grocery store in North Grants Pass. Now that's tractor supply. OK, well, you lost a grocery, but you got a tractor supply. So some of that is moving around. Some of it is incremental new coming in. But I think not doing something isn't the answer either. What you don't have control over is multiple other sites owned by private developers that are putting money into their property or not. And so it's hard to manage that except for through storefront grant programs and things like that to incentivize folks to do things. So I wouldn't say let's not do it because we might just be shuffling chairs on the deck. I think it's really important to change the perception of North Grant's past so that it is attractive for more people to invest. And I think the upside is, as you see improvements on this property, it will leapfrog across the street over to 6th. It will jump up Washington. And we all know this. Your neighbor paints their house, and then suddenly two other neighbors are like, dang, I need to fix this thing up. So I think we're going to see positive momentum partially purely by just investing in this vacant underutilized area, because it's not doing anyone any good right now in the current state.

Thank you.

Victoria, do you got any more questions? Eric, you got any more questions? Kathleen? Rick, you got any more questions? Andrea, you got any more questions?

Yes, just kind of going back to what Joel's question was, you don't have any data for like a small town because there's a lot of mixed use going on, but a lot are in larger cities or the suburbs of larger cities where you have many more people. So you don't have any data showing as you open a new mixed use what happens to like downtown or older areas. No data on that?

Well, I think it's all comparisons, OK? If we're adding some commercial development to this site, and we're in the range of 10,000 to 15,000 square feet of commercial or retail, that is not enough retail to create, let's say, a new epicenter of downtown retail, if that makes sense. So G Street has this amazing quality and the surrounding streets there, which make it really attractive, primarily around food and beverage. That's really strong in that area with some retail as well. So this isn't creating enough energy to compete with that. So that's not something I would be worried about from a downtown perspective. I think the issue of having excess commercial in a number of places around the city is really challenging. But I don't think the amount that we're putting here is having a major impact on those other areas. I guess that would be my take on it. If you were creating a new lifestyle center here where we had a block or two of retail on both sides of the street or we were adding 50, 100,000 square feet of new retail, that would be a direct competitor to downtown and your other commercial corridors. But we're not... creating something of that nature here.

Okay, and then one more. Dana, you mentioned surveys went out to the immediate area. What's the immediate area?

There was mailings, yeah, to the immediate neighbors, yeah.

Yeah, so any of the residents that are immediately on that block so that they can see, it's actually within the 200, we did a 200-foot radius on that block, That is the easiest way, I guess, to explain it. But it's everybody that's directly impacted around that block.

OK, so not very far. And those tiny signs are so tiny, I can't even read them. And I go by every day. Is there a way to put up more of a larger sign or billboard where people can actually read it as they drive by? Yeah, we can work on that. Thank you.

Rob, you got any further questions? Yeah, a couple questions and a couple brief comments. So Jason, you just reminded me when you talked about people walking their kids to school, there was a question at the second public forum about whether or not you had reached out to the school district about any possible impacts that development could have on North Middle especially and possibly Highland Elementary. Have you done that?

We have that on the list. That was a great comment on our June 18th meeting. So yeah, we have them as a stakeholder. We haven't brought them these preliminary concepts, but to your point, we need to do that. So we're going to add that, make sure that we touch base with them.

So in other projects that you've seen of this size, typically would this parcel be divided up and would there be multiple developers involved? who might specialize in one part of this or another, or typically would a city be looking to find a one size fits all developer? How many different, how do you see that?

Yeah, I think if you talk to Chris, he does a lot of these developer offerings. He likes to have one developer do it all. I think the size you have here is, is generally within the reach and realm of a single developer. But if we're talking about apartments versus townhomes, sometimes those are unique development types. And so you could break it up into those. You could have a multifamily developer and then a townhome level developer, which allows you to spread it out to a couple of different groups. The commercial is likely to be a whole other thing in itself. I doubt a housing developer is going to take on that commercial. piece along Highway 99. So it could go either way. I think once we sort of understand the mix, then I think you'd look at how you might want to target either all or, to your point, breaking it up into multiple development projects. In any case, because of the parking issue we have with the plan unit development, we're going to be sort of making up some new parcel lines in that existing buildings don't have parking, we wanna show where that area could be, you know, given to the, or transferred over to those businesses, and then let's look at what are the development blocks we have here, and then to your point, whether we go to a single developer or multiple to be determined, but we could go either way.

So I guess the point I was getting at there is that the people in the development community that I've spoken with about this project don't feel that there's any local developer that would be able to bite off a project that large. While they would probably be using local subcontractors, so we would have some employment benefit there. To me, my guess is it would probably be more attractive to council if it was possible to have local developers have a bigger piece of that action. rather than just some of the subcontractors. But again, that may be details down the road, but I don't know if you've given any consideration to that, but I've been told that there's probably no local person that could handle that whole thing. Have you gotten any sense on that, speaking with anyone in your?

I haven't directly, and I don't know if Chris has or not, but I think the great thing is once you have a plan, you can start marketing it, in which case you may find that you know, local developers could do, you know, a couple pieces of it. So I think we can leave that open to where we land ultimately. And sometimes these things go out as a larger developer and you don't get the interest that you wanted. And to your point, you find that if you break it into smaller pieces, then you might have more folks engaging the process. We want to get ahead of that, obviously, so that we're not, you know, creating a plan that doesn't, sort of kickstart right off the bat. So we'll be looking into that. I think that's a great question that you pose and something we need to think about as we're moving forward.

Thank you. Any last questions? Victoria?

Well, I don't know if it's the correct time for this or not, but on the very last page you have asked us to look at five different issues and I was just going to address that a bit, or do we want to do that when we come back to council discussion?

So this is kind of an informational gathering session, trying to get everybody on the same page, so I think it's an ample time to start going through those questions if you want.

Okay, great. So just based on what people have said, and looking at the council feedback, first of all, it would be really great if the city could let us know if there are any developers who could do any one local, who could do any one or all of these, or if there was any interest in it at all, given the incentives that have been discussed, like infrastructure and land SDC costs and things like that. So maybe there was nobody who could probably take it on before thinking about those kinds of things. But it would be good if we reached out to local developers, given these opportunities for incentives. So I would like to see that done. But as far as one through five go, well, no, I'll say one more thing. Before anything's done, I would love to see a traffic study done, because I know there were concerns about that. And I just, another thing that I think is important is number four, the Franklin Boulevard extension. Like you mentioned, I think that's gonna be really important and especially to traffic. So I would think that would be important for us to make sure is addressed and it looks like talks with ODOT have been happening, so that's a good thing. And I just prefer, personally, and then lastly, so of all the choices, one or two leaning more towards one. Because I would like to see more opportunities for business to expand. And I just don't see that 170 units up there of one type of housing and 50 of the other, if they were going to be, I just think that's going to be way too much. So that would be why I would lean more towards one or two. And so I think that's it. So outreach for developers with the new incentives, the traffic study, Franklin Boulevard being extended, and then I personally would lean towards one or two more. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so you guys have any last questions? None? Okay, cool. So we've been asked to kind of give some feedback in regards to the information that they've already gathered and the kind of the multiple directions that they've kind of laid out in front of us. So I guess council needs to decide, I guess first and foremost is, are you guys intending this development to be housing driven or mixed or commercial driven?

Rob. Well, I just gotta say that I was a little disappointed today that the 30 page document that was sent to us isn't on the dais because I frankly got a really, by reading it, I got a much better feel for what we're trying to do here and the the situation that the city is in right now as far as different types of development throughout the city. And that really helps put in perspective what we might want to do in the northwest section there. So I would like staff to provide the 30 page printout to all the counselors so they can easily read it because there's a lot of information in there that directly affects and impacts decisions we would make on this in the northwest. You know, it's, I mean, I have a couple of pages noted here that I was gonna bring up, but since the packet's not in front of us, I'm not gonna bother to do that, because people aren't gonna know, be able to reference what I'm talking about. You know, I have some ideas for sure, especially after speaking with people who are in the development community and have to make something like this actually work, what they actually, what they think about it, but I think that there's so much information in that 33-page document that really puts in perspective what we should be, and I think we should be considering all of that when we go to make a recommendation. So I'm just not, I'm not comfortable without being able to know that all the counselors have actually looked at that and have a good idea of what's in it.

So does the council as a whole feel that they need to have more digestion in regards to what Rob just brought up, having to actually go through all the information that's been provided? We can get staff to do a printout for you. Is there an appetite for that? It looks like we got majority of council that would like to do that. Rob?

Yeah because things like what the saturation of retail space is around town and they mention in that document that retail is stagnant and has been for 10 years. So things like that, what's actually going on in the rest of the town I think is really important to consider as far as what we wanna potentially try to encourage up here. Not just encourage but in some cases incentivize but to really know the status of what's going on around town to know exactly where the reach is for different businesses and supermarkets and things like that. It's all in that 30 page document. So that would be helpful.

Okay, and it sounds like the council has an appetite to get a paper copy of that version and digest that. So any further discussion before we kind of table this? It looks like Indra and then Joel, Indra.

Yeah, I'd just like to comment that I lean heavily, heavily towards the housing option, although I don't agree, and just speaking with people in the area, that the appetite would be for super high density housing with limited parking, so I think housing is a need, workforce housing, and I think it would go over better if it wasn't so high density, and that's where I'm leaning.

Julie, you have further comments? I just had a quick question. It seems like it's kind of premature at this stage to identify a preferred alternative given the process that was outlined for us. Is that correct?

Yes, you don't need to pick a preferred alternative. I think aspects of development you think are important would be better than picking one.

Right, so there'll be more information forthcoming that will help us choose and select which one we want to do and to do it at this point in time would be probably premature. The one thing I look forward to is your risk assessment of being able to complete it within five years. If there's a difference between the alternatives, that certainly would weigh in on which alternative I would select.

Could I come on, Mayor? Absolutely. I just pulled up the timeline. I just wanted to underscore that point. There's five months left in this process. The only reason that we recommended bringing it to you at this point was to get some of the feedback that we were already hearing, but it by no means was there an expectation coming into today that you're going to say, yes, this is number one or number two. That was not an expectation on the consultant's part, on staff's part. The remaining five months, you can see a lot of refinement happening, a lot of, and at the end of the day, when we come out of this, it doesn't even mean that this is exactly what, you know, is gonna be pilled. I mean, these are concepts that reflect a community conversation, and can the councils and the urban renewal agencies' priorities. And so those are gonna be very carefully laid out, and to Councilor Pell's earlier point about the incentives I think you will definitely see in the opportunity plan some recommendations on how is it best going to leverage future development. Is that actually completing a water main? Is it moving the storm water so that that parcel can be more effectively developed? Is it giving the land away for free or at a low price point? These are some of the more detailed conversations that will be in there, but yeah, In terms of how you end today, I mean, our expectation was just, you know, the ideas and the high-level feedback, I think, is super helpful.

So thank you very much for restating that, Brad, and I don't think we were trying to go down that road of actually making a final decision. So I guess question back to you, Brad, and the consultant is from the initial feedback that you've gotten from all council today, is there one of these five items that was listed from council feedback that we have not necessarily given enough information or feedback for? And I'd ask both of you guys if there's any... I kind of just want to wrap this one up, so I just want to make sure if there's any missing information or questions from your guys' side for council, that we address that now. If not, we will say thank you and move on.

I'll start, and I appreciate... the feedback and no, I don't think there's, I don't have any additional questions beyond this five. And I think the fifth one, which is, are there additional issues? I think some of those came up clear from council, certainly around traffic impacts, outreach to developers. So I appreciate that, that there is some more information that needs to be gleaned. And to Joel's point of, yeah, being able to provide an assessment of the feasibility, looking at a five-year time frame is a good one too. So no, no additional questions from the consultant team. And thank you very much for your feedback today.

Thank you. And I would echo that. I think we'll take the conclusions of the survey, which is still open, take those comments, give you a more detailed report back on what the survey people said. You know, how many did we hear from? Where are they from? We heard from Councilor Marshall on who is it that took the survey. So we'll do that. Go through today's workshop and kind of piece all that together. And then, yeah, we'll be coming back to you. So I think we're good.

And you have full understanding what the council is requesting in regards to that 30-page document? Just getting a copy out to everybody?

Yes, yes, we'll get that. You should have received the digital copy, but we'll make hard copies and get that to you.

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks, Bradley.

Next on the agenda is water incline rates, and I will hand the podium over to Jason.

Did you not get a chance to look at that document, the 33-page document? Nope. There's so much in there.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. I have a brief presentation for you today and then would look for more direction if you want to move forward with any changes or potential changes. But it's basically just an explanation of our utility rates, both on the water and the sewer side. Find all my buttons. So this is strictly informational to let you know how we got there and what the rates are and why they are where they are. Your relationship to your council goals is both physical stability and infrastructure, because as you know, our rates are generated and built around the ability to provide infrastructure services as well as operation and maintenance costs. So by way of background, the last major update to the utility rates was in 2016, and city staff contracted, or that's when it began, contracted with FCS Group to evaluate the utility rates ahead of major upcoming capital projects, both on the water and the wastewater side. In the months leading up to November of 2018, staff and FCS presented multiple rate scenarios for council consideration before finally landing on a single scenario. At Council's direction, refinements were made both to minimize the amount of increase and ensure that costs were equitably distributed amongst the customer classes. So when we do a rate study, this is the process. This one was stormwater specific options that were kinda out there to the side since it was a new utility altogether. But what we do is we take together our fiscal policies, our operating budget, our capital improvement goals, and any SDC analysis, and we put that all together and that becomes our revenue requirement. Then we perform a cost of services analysis, and that is who is paying how much and for what services. That helps inform what the rate design will look like, and that's why we came back to council multiple, multiple times with different rate designs. The revenue requirement piece stayed the same. We had the same revenue requirement, operation costs were fixed, capital costs were pretty well known, and so we had to build the rate to meet those goals. We then present that to council and take their feedback and then bring it back for implementation. So out of that cost of service survey, several things changed. Initially, as an example, standby rates decreased for most classes. What we found was by doing the cost of service, the costs were not being applied appropriately to all of the meter sizes. So in 2018, you can see that they started out at $27.89 and went up to $2.87. When that was done, they still started, they started at $34.55, but the two inch dropped off the charge. So two inch standby meters are now at no cost for monthly fees. But the three inch went down by $4 per month, and the 10 inch went down substantially. So we made a bunch of changes there. Other major changes were we changed the tiers and the way that the water was charged out. We had a three tier system and that went to a four tiered system with the bottom tier being designed to provide that lifeline water use. How much water does somebody need in their household at the bare minimum consumption? And at that time, council also added the water treatment plant replacement fee, which was to partially cover the debt service. The fee is tied to the debt service, so it will sunset at the conclusion of debt service. And it is not tied to the consumer price index, which means that it cannot increase without council action for the life of that fee. And that's just a brief look at our fees for all meter sizes and the treatment plant replacement fees that are available on our website. So why inverse block rates? These are often used to encourage some level of conservation while ensuring that basic water demands are met affordably and that costs are distributed equitably among the water usage classes. So you can see our water tier rates, but to get into a little bit more of why we use inverse block rate tiers, So water treatment plant capacity, as you have recently found out, is incredibly expensive. So by encouraging some level of moderate water usage, we can defer future treatment plant upgrades, we can put in smaller pipes in the ground, and basically reduce the capital costs that the citizens will incur in the future years, saving our citizens money. Also, the Rogue River is a precious resource of the city. While we have water rights to support much more water usage, the Rogue River should be one of our primary focal points, and we should encourage some level of responsible water use to protect that resource. Also, inverse block rates are one of the primary tools required by the Oregon Water Resources Department to comply with water management and conservation plan goals, rules. So one of the other questions that we frequently get are why are sewer rates tied to water consumption? We always had a flat rate, we should still have a flat rate. Well, in general, there is a direct link between the amount of water that you consume in your house and the amount of water which makes its way into the wastewater collection system. So if you use more water in those winter months, you put more sewage into the system. The more wastewater that makes it into the collection system means bigger pipes, bigger treatment facilities, and leads to higher operating and capital costs. So to make sewer rates as fair as possible, years ago a detailed cost of service study was performed and it showed that flat rates were disproportionately charging low water users for their amount of sewage that they produce as opposed to the high water consumers who were paying the same fee because it was a flat rate, but contributing far more sewage to the system. So that system was changed. To tie it to, your winter average consumption. The water that you use in the winter is pretty much all indoors. You're not out watering your lawns. You're not out watering your gardens. And so by taking that winter average consumption, we can assume that that's the amount of typical water usage that you will use year-round. Each residential customer sets their own winter average consumption or their WAC and you pay that amount of sewer volume charge year round. If you are a sewer only customer and don't have a water account, so we can't measure your actual usage, you're charged the class average. So there's a residential class average, a multi-family class average, so that we're able to assess those fees. And then of course commercial customers pay assuming that all water consumed does end up in the collection system with very few exclusions. Brewery is one where there is a brewery rate because we know that a lot of the water that the brewery makes ends up in their final product and therefore not down the drain. Also irrigation meters at commercial will offset those sewer costs. So in response to the increasing rates, one of the things that council did direct us to do was to look at a rate relief program to help as we started to see the default rates increase a little bit, but not significantly. I'm looking at JC who can correct me. It's gone up quite a bit. The rates have gone up. Default rates have gone up. So since that time, we have contributed .25, so one quarter of 1% of gross revenues is now set aside to assist those struggling to pay the bills. That program was previously administered through non-profits and churches here in town, but has since moved in-house and that is now administered by our customer service group. And it is paid out on a first come, first serve basis. and eligibility is limited to once per calendar year. So if you do use that, you only get it once in the year. And it also is important to note that all funds have been expended in the past, I wanna say four years that this program has been up and running. And this is just a look at the numbers that were adopted into the FY27 budget. And so this was intended to be informational only. If you have desire for us to evaluate rate changes or something, I would need more specific direction and we would likely want to bring on a rate consultant to further evaluate that. We do believe that the rates have been very fairly apportioned as it is. I think the numbers that we looked at today, it's roughly 60-40 where 60% of the of our income comes from the base rate and 40% from the variable portion of the rate, which covers the majority, almost 100%, probably 98% of our operating costs for the two divisions and the rest being covered by the variable. And with that, I would love to take any questions.

Thank you, Jason. Knowing that this was an informational only presentation, there is no council action that is needed. I'm gonna bring it back to council for questions, Joel.

Thank you, Jason, for the information. On the utility assistance, I applaud the previous council setting that policy along with staff. The general program operations for $3,000, that's everything besides fire rescue and police street operations? Does that include the parks and their irrigation? Yeah, go ahead, JC.

So no. So the general program operations is a $3,000 carve-out, and we didn't find when council initiated that, but that was just an off-the-top flat contribution from the general fund. oh that's from the general fund that's not from the water budget it's not from any of the other utilities um that we charge or bill so how we have pegged the remaining of the utilities is it's a quarter of a percent um that goes back to those operating areas but that three thousand dollars uh that you pointed out that's just has been that way for years and they're small amounts i understand that so just to make sure i understand that then this isn't water fees that

that uh... pay the water bill for the fire rescue this is what the fire rescue page the water fees this is the s the public safety utility fees so so there's assistance isn't to help fire rescue pay their water bill this is how much they receive from the fire correct because i really have billed the community members we are uh... using a portion of that bill to go back to you so this is what will be given any idea what it is for the parks irrigation so that

The dollar value for the parks irrigation? I don't, but it's a reasonably large number.

Yeah. I would guess so.

To be quite honest, I think at the year end, they come out as the number one customer. In the city? In the city, correct. Really close to it, if not.

Okay, thank you.

Yes. Victoria, you got questions? Eric? Kathleen? Rick?

Indra. How does that assistance program work? So if someone gets a notice and they call, how does it work?

Kimberly, do you want to talk us through that? Her team handles this so well. We greatly appreciate it. You have to be quite a far ways down before I believe you qualify, but go ahead.

So you have to have an imminent termination of services in order to be able to qualify for the program. So if you get a letter that says we're going to shut you off on this date, you can call us and we will do an assistance voucher for the for up to $400 on your account. But you have to be in imminent danger of going to shut off. And then we'll use that on shut off day. A lot of people don't call until the day it goes to shut off. We go to shut off, they come in or they call, they say, look, we can apply this assistance program one time annually, and that will get your water back on, and we'll take care of a portion of your bill.

And so do we know if the same, residents, customers use this over and over or are new people? So once people know about it, they continue to come back?

Yeah, you can use it once a year. There's no rules that say that you've had it one lifetime. You can have it annually. So you do have customers who use it annually. You have customers in the community who struggle annually. and that are having a difficult time paying their bills. And this is an opportunity for us to give them a little bit of relief. So perhaps they can, I always talk to customers and say, you can breathe a little. We're going to pay this utility bill. And maybe you can pay your power bill. Or maybe you can buy groceries. Or maybe you can do whatever else. The hope from us is to get you potentially to a zero balance. So when you walk in the door on shut off day or courtesy notice day or you got your late letter, if we can get you to a zero, that gives you an opportunity to perhaps pay other bills. Yeah.

I think it's very worthwhile. So it's funded starting at the fiscal year and then first come, first serve till it's gone. Absolutely.

That's how it works. July 1st, it's funded. This year, we ran out at the end of March.

Thank you. Rob, you have any questions? Thank you. All right, thank you for your presentation, thank you for your answers to questions, and we will move on. Next on the workshop agenda is council procedures for workshop. So do we have anybody that's presenting, or are we just gonna go into discussion?

No presentation, this was really more council driven, wasn't fully sure exactly what breadth you wanted to go into, but we're more than willing to answer any questions.

All right, so in a previous workshop, I don't know, I don't really remember how it worked out, I have a suggestion to reschedule workshops to 3 p.m. in the afternoon on the Mondays that we have them scheduled. And this is basically just an ask back to council to see what council's appetite is to change the 11.45 workshop time to 3 o'clock in the afternoon. My argument is that it makes it in the afternoon so you may have the possibility to have more community involvement in the audience, not that community is involved directly, such as a council meeting, but you could have more community participation and it might give a better opportunity for people that actually have nine to five jobs versus people that own businesses versus people that are retired. So that's my spiel. I'll bring it back to council if you want to have minor discussions, but realistically, I would push this to a vote immediately to see if you guys have the appetite to do it. or not, and move on.

Rick. You used the word appetite, and fortunately that drives my thought process as well. So if the meeting goes past 5 o'clock, is dinner being furnished?

That could be something that you discussed. I don't know if that's a joking or a serious question.

Well, it's a little bit of both because I could see, in many cases, we could be sitting here until 6 or 7 o'clock at night.

No, I understand. And basically what's kind of driving this for me is the fact that we're almost two years into the new council. We have seasoned council members here, but I do feel that... We stray a bit during workshops as well as during meetings on staying on topic. The intention of these workshops as well as your council meetings at night is to do business that the city has jurisdiction over and so forth. So I look at it like if we had a workshop in the afternoon, then it wouldn't be so incumbent on me taking two hours out of the middle of the day and I can't continue past two hours because I've only taken that two hours out of my day for my job. That's kind of where I'm just kind of leading the discussion. But realistically, I just kind of want to see if you guys want to do it or not. And if not, then we move on.

Well, one other thing I think we should consider, if we want to terminate every workshop at 1.30 or 2 o'clock, that we now go back to where we have a workshop every single Monday. So that would be one of the alternatives.

I... I respect your statement on that, but in watching the performance for the last almost two years in this council chamber, I think it's absolutely just a waste of time. I think that the workshops need to be run more efficiently and everybody needs to stay on topic and get the things done. This is taking up staff's time and they're here to serve and give you guys the information, but It seems like if we decide to talk about one topic, it just broadens too much, and I feel it kind of gets off topic. Victoria?

I move to move workshops to 3 p.m. every other Monday. And if I would entertain a friendly motion, if Rick wants to say if they go past 5, that dinner will be served.

Okay, we have a motion on the table to reschedule workshops to 3 in the afternoon instead of 11.45. There's a second from Eric. Is there any further discussions before we go through a vote? Rob, go right ahead.

Briefly, I won't be able to make workshops that are in the late afternoon if they get changed.

Okay, Joel? One of the things that strikes me when we ran for election, we knew what time things were planned for. And I know that it affects different people different ways. And if you change it later in the day, it affects some people adversely. If you keep it where it's at, it affects people adversely. And that's true. But I hesitate to change it at this point in time because we all knew what it was when we ran. And we made that choice.

Very good. Further discussion? Kathleen?

I think we should hear from the people that work, just like Rob made his request. I think we should hear from other people that work to see how it affects them.

We're in full discussion before we go into a vote, so the opportunity is available. Victoria?

Yeah. This is a new council, and we do take longer in workshops. I guess I somewhat agree. disagree with the mayor that we get off topic there important issues that shape the city so maybe another way to put that as we get into a lot deeper discussions about larger issues and so it's I wouldn't characterize it as a waste of time but there have been people we wanted to do this early on and there there was appetite sort of to do that then And then I would hope that everyone would be able to be here. So I know that I would move around and change my schedule. I mean, we all are going to have to do that, not just one or two people. If we do change this, everyone will have to. So I would just say it shouldn't depend on one issue. but it is a different council. This council has a different need, and so I do think we should consider moving it to three, maybe even just for a pilot program. We could say that it's for six months or something like that, and see how it goes.

Further discussion before we go to a vote, Eric? And then, yep, I got you all written down here. Eric, first.

So yes, we all knew what it was to, when we got elected, that we knew that the time was Mondays for the workshops. Everybody knows that already. I understand that argument. It's been numerous times where I had to take paid time off from my full-time job to make these volunteer schedules work. So we were discussing, like Victoria was saying earlier, that we can possibly change it. And so here we are. And I'll be in favor of moving it to three. It'd be a lot better for my schedule. And it's been quite a while since we entertained that. I'd be in favor of it.

Further discussion? I have Indra.

Yeah, I think it's worthy to entertain. However, I think there's a difference between it being a sacrifice, which it is for all of us, I think, to come, versus a veteran council member that's been over three years that cannot come period and so what you're voting for if you vote to move it is saying we're okay with you not attending any workshops and i just don't think that's right further discussion joel well i think a viable option too would be to say hey we don't go past 2 30.

period, unless the council votes for it, and then if there's some topic we don't discover or we don't cover, we put it on the next workshop.

Further discussion? Indra, and then Eric?

I support that, and I think you all, in agenda setting, have been doing a much better job of putting less on the agenda for the workshop, so they are ending earlier, which is nice. I think the two-hour limit is...

good eric i mean we have a council member that's not here today i don't know if that's the reason that he's not here because of his schedule but i would think that judging by that more than likely yes victoria yeah um each council member is as valuable as the other council member and uh so

there have been council members who for years have uh well like counselor schlogel said um but he's going to continue to come and do it and and he makes it work i have to believe that all council members would be able to do that and so i still continue to believe that it would be a good thing to do as far as what Councilor Nicholas said. Essentially, you're voting for the way you're putting it, which Councilor Nicholas put it, which I don't necessarily agree with, is that you're voting against one council member. But you could flip that around and say that then you are, if you aren't for this, then you are voting against a councilor or two. It would work either way. I think it's worth a try, and so I continue to be for it.

Any further discussion? There's a motion on the table to reschedule Monday workshops to 3 p.m. in the afternoon with a second. Any further discussion? Okay. And then, Victoria, you made the motion? Yes. Okay. How do you vote? Yes. Eric?

Yes.

Kathleen? Yes. Joel, I mean Rick?

Tradition? No.

Indra? No. Rob?

No.

Joel? No. All right. Motion does not pass, thank you very much. I would like to bring, just so you guys are aware, in a further workshop, I will be bringing more council procedures for us for discussion. Since we did not have the appetite to change the start time of the workshops, I would like council to go into full debate in regards to detailing out structures of the upcoming workshops to come to a

little bit more of an efficient manner but I'll bring that further in a future workshop so we can have a full-throated discussion in regards to that Eric we do have a one more major thing we got to get through tonight so okay yeah going back to the vote here we have one council member that wasn't here today who knows how he was going to vote but I would think that he would be in favor of it which would bring it to a tie between And so, yeah.

I understand that, and I respect that. But we do operate under Robert's rules, which is basically whoever is in the house makes the majority vote. So I respect what your opinion is. I brought that up to the council president. And so he was fully aware that we didn't have a full house before we went into this. So yeah.

Interesting. Thank you.

OK. We could go through agenda review very, very quickly because we do have an item to go for. Does anybody have any questions about Wednesday night's meetings? If you could make it quick, we do have one more item on the agenda we're trying to get through. Any hands up? Rick? In regards to Wednesday night's meeting.

No, it's a separate subject.

Okay. Wednesday night's meeting first. Any questions? You guys have had the packet for about seven days now? A little less than seven days? Okay. All right, Victoria?

It's for calendar.

Okay, excellent. Okay, so moving on to calendar items. Rick, did you have a calendar item or something else? Okay, Victoria, you have a calendar item?

Yes, I was looking at the back of the schedule, and I wanted to see what I brought up last council meeting, looking at nonprofits in the community. And so I want to see that put on the back of the schedule. And if we want to talk about what the parameters of that would be, that would be all right. But we don't need to do that now. That could be done in emails or whatever. But I want to see that put on the back of the agenda.

OK. so your request was put on the back of the agenda it was discussed during agenda setting meeting if you would like to consult directly with stephanie or aaron on that we will not be bringing it forth for the council to oversee because the non-profits within this area the council has no jurisdiction over so it is not a point of discussion that would be brought i didn't want to have jurisdiction over the non-profits i want

counselors to know how many are operating and what their what their budgets are this is for information for the citizens they need to know so understand nonprofits within the area if you go if you have an organization that wants nonprofit status and or wants tax exemption for nonprofit status that is at a county or

some is at a county level majority if not all are at a state level we have no purview over that and we have no jurisdiction to actually give you budgets or anything like that so that is public information that's outside the sphere of what the council's jurisdiction is i personally as well as city manager and city attorney believe that that is outside the purview of the city so we will not be addressing that on the dice okay so you're uh

Just to be clear, for the public who wants this information. Then the public has the right to go out and get it. We don't have the information. They are saying that the city of Grants Pass, the citizens of Grants Pass, don't have any right to have that information.

Nope, that's not what I'm saying. You didn't listen to a word I said. What I said was we have no purview over that. We have no jurisdiction over them. That is public record outside of our jurisdiction. So for us to provide it to the public, they can go out and get it on their own. Since we don't have any jurisdiction over it, I don't see it prudent in us actually divulging that information because we would be employing staff to do something that's outside of city business.

It just seems like then that puts the city into a position where you look like you're keeping information from the public. And again, I'll just say one, and then I won't say anything else. I'm not looking for jurisdiction over the non-profits.

absolutely just to clarify one more time the city doesn't have that information that information is that the state held level because that is how a non-profit gets its status or it's gets its tax exemption is through the state so we were to employ our city staff to go look that up they're going to go through a state website or contact state employees which is actually any public citizen can do that uh... calendar items

I'd like to request a meeting with downtown building owners to meet with staff regarding vacant storefronts. And then I'd like that to be brought back to council.

For the purposes of?

Regarding vacant storefronts. I'd like there to be a meeting with the building owners downtown to meet with staff and kind of have a I don't know if it's a negotiation or it's just a educational meeting about why storefronts aren't getting filled or... We need to address this problem and I'm not quite sure how and maybe we can start there with a conversation with staff.

I understand what you're trying to get at. What I would recommend is if we would request maybe to see if we have jurisdiction in our code. to actually do something like that? Because does that? Does our blighted building code cover that?

It would all be voluntary in nature. I think the spirit of where Councilor Cronin is going is they, I think you want to see if there's any specific challenges associated with the the buildings that are unoccupied. And if we could gather any kind of information or knowledge on how we may assist or something along those lines, it will require some staff time because we all need to take a look at what buildings are unoccupied and or continually not being utilized. Not necessarily blighted like urban renewal, but just underutilized or buildings that are not used and have a history of not being used, contacting, getting a list of those property owners, getting those contacts. And in some situations, we may not get any kind of responses. And the only contact information we may have is the mailing address on the tax assessor's records. And then setting up a meeting with those individuals, having that general forum with them talking about obstacles and then reporting back to you. So that does, the reason why I went into those details is it does require a bit of staff time to do, and we would want council to say, yes, staff, go ahead and utilize your time to make that happen. If that's what council wants to do, we'd be more than happy to gather that information for you.

Okay, so one last question, one last statement at this, I'm gonna look directly to you, and you, is, again, do we have the bandwidth within our code that a business owner will not come back upon us and say that they're being targeted? I guess that's in layman's terms.

Couple things, as part of the information gathering that Erin mentioned, we could look into the code and come back with what provisions are in there. The concern I would have about any additional codes is that they would not apply retroactively, most likely to currently existing, so it would still be voluntary for those that are already vacant, because as soon as we start regulating those from the past, we start running into regulatory takings and constitutional claims where we would have to provide funding. So there's a lot more pieces to it than it might seem on the face.

So does staff feel comfortable in Putting out an olive branch style engagement, I believe. I guess basically what I'm trying to do is make sure that we don't get set up for a failure or litigation opportunity.

I think we would be careful recognizing that, the legal aspect of it, that we're there just as information gathering to assist in how and why buildings are unoccupied and if there's any roadblocks associated with city regulations or policies.

Perfect. Okay, so does council have an appetite to direct staff for that? Go ahead, Indra.

Yes, I know there are a couple of organizations, including the chamber, that are currently putting together a list of vacancies and buildings in storefronts downtown, and I think throughout Grants Pass. And then there's another project a private of putting together a list of vacancies. I think downtown, the Small Business Task Force is almost ready to put out a survey. It'll go out after our final check that addresses that. and the vacancies, and it's just got a bunch of survey questions. So I would encourage just to wait till that information comes out before having the staff dig into it, because I think it'll be a lot of the same plus more information.

Are you good with that? Yes. OK. Any other calendar items? Joel.

I had a question. The budget committee passed a motion on the wastewater debt service from the URA and we have a executive session scheduled on July 15th Which kind of surprised me? You are a wastewater debt service is that is that the topic of dealing with that motion?

That is correct

And, well, I'll talk to Aaron about why it's an executive session. We don't need to discuss it here. I don't quite understand that. The second thing I had was, well, you guys have been busy at the agenda setting meeting, which I appreciate. We had the unimproved alley maintenance put on the August 17th workshop. which is just a policy discussion. Along with that, we had the sewer laterals ownership and maintenance. Both of those seem to be fairly... structured and wouldn't take a lot of time on either one of them. I was wondering if we could combine those, or is that, Jason, you know better than I do.

I think they're far more complex. There's a lot of issues related to that, including some legal liabilities as well as just some big policy decisions. We believe they would be better handled separately, and that's why we also allocated 50 minutes, I believe, for the unimproved alley.

Yeah, I saw there was a lot of stars. There's a lot of little pieces that are involved. Okay, okay, thank you.

All right, anybody else with calendar items? Seeing none, okay. So we're going to go ahead and adjourn this workshop and convene an actual... Okay, I looked at you like three times there, buddy.

It wasn't a calendar item. I just wanted the current status on the HR director position and wonder if staff has looked at the possibility of an HR consultant as an interim.

We're doing quite well. We're in recruitment. We have our first review coming up here in another week. And our understanding is, just with my correspondence with them just today, is that we've got some quality candidates that we'll be able to consider.

Thank you. Okay. You good? Perfect. All right. Let's adjourn this workshop, and we're going to convene a city council meeting in regards to a council action item. So, with the council meeting...

I don't have to do anything special. I'm just going to call it over for this date.

Okay, so we'll call to order a special city council meeting on June 29th to address council action items as notified. We'll start with a roll call. Joel?

Here.

Victoria? Here. Eric? Here. Kathleen? Here. Rick? Here. Indra? Here. Rob here, so we're only minus one council member. We have a quorum and We have council action item a motion authorizing the city manager to amend the franchise agreement with Southern Oregon sanitation authorizing an extension of the temporary rate increase for green waste at Redwood transfer station Jason

Yeah, and I don't have a presentation for you, just a brief discussion, and Mr. Carpenter is here to answer any additional questions. Councilor Nicklaus brought up that she thought that that rate should be expiring very soon, and it turns out she was correct. It is July 1st. They have not collected what they feel like is enough data to really support. I want to say the numbers were pretty low as far as how much green waste they had collected. They would appreciate an additional six-month extension until January 1st. to continue collecting that data through the leaf collection season, which is the busiest time for green waste hauling. And with that, I would answer any questions, and also Trent is here to talk through that. And that is just an extension of the temporary rate. And also, I believe, Trent, maybe you could speak to that most of your customers are already paying just the minimum fee. Yeah, please.

I don't think anybody's gonna rush up here. Yeah, thank you very much. I was really trying not to come back anytime soon. But we do have that temporary rate that is expiring. What we have seen is a dramatic drop off in the number of people that are utilizing it. We went from year to date from 500 in 2025 to 80 this year. So quite a few people are either finding a different location, either that's Republic or they're doing direct hauls, or what we believe they're doing is actually just putting it in the garbage. THE RATE HAS GONE UP. PROBABLY THE IMPORTANT THING FOR THIS COUNCIL IS JUST WITH THE DIRECT COST, WE HAD REVENUES OF $2,000, WHICH AGAIN IS NOT A VERY BIG NUMBER. WE HAD COST OF $5,000. SO IT'S COST US TWICE AS MUCH THAN WHAT WE'RE TAKING IN FOR THAT SPECIFIC LINE ITEM PROGRAM. THAT'S WHY WE BELIEVE IT'S IMPORTANT TO KEEP THE RATE AS IT IS. LET'S STUDY IT THROUGH THE FALL LEAF SEASON TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. We also can get some data probably from Republic to see if they've seen an uptick in individuals coming in or what's going on in the whole system. We believe taking the rate back down and then back up is just not a good idea. We think public outcry when it goes down and back up would be a lot. And of the 80 customers that utilize the transfer station for yard debris, 70 of them fell into the minimum. So even if we bounce the rate back down to $6.25 a yard, they'd still have to pay the minimum, which is $25. So they would not feel it at all. They would still have to pay that minimum, which is the minimum for any transaction at the transfer station. But we thought the best thing we could do is to see another six months of this rate, see what it does, especially when the bulk of material that we see happens when all the leaves start falling. That's when everybody starts bringing in material, not necessarily the spring. There is an uptick for a spring clean, but really, as we all know, when we drive around the streets in the fall, leaf collection is...

Extremely important and that's when we see the most of the material coming in Okay, thank you any counselor have any questions questions time Rick So Trent have you had the opportunity to do a survey of those people that dropped off to see why they dropped off the service No, this isn't this isn't a curbside service.

These are the individuals coming through the transfer station to And it would almost, I'm not saying it'd be impossible, but they're coming through mostly on a Saturday or Sunday on days that we see two or 300 people coming through there. So we couldn't necessarily do a survey of the people that are there and or why they decided to do something different with the material.

Okay, thank you.

Any further questions? Joel, questions?

Well, Rick, I just had a question for you. Was this discussed on your committee that you're liaison for, and was there a committee recommendation?

So there was not. This just came up. We followed up on Councilor Nicholas's comment that, oh, wasn't that set to expire? And to be quite honest, none of us set a tickler on our calendar, and it was set to expire, so we did not have an opportunity to get it in front of the Solid Waste Agency ahead of this. Questions? Indra.

Are you able to use last fall's numbers to collect data as quickly as possible?

We can certainly look at last fall's numbers but what What the concern is, is the dramatic difference between last spring and this spring. So last spring, in those five months that we did the study recently, there were 570 people that came through the transfer station with yard debris. it dropped down to 80. So I can go look at last year's fall numbers, but I'd have to extrapolate, well, is it going to be consistent? What's going to happen? And those are some unknowns and why we believe the best thing would be to just stay, keep the temporary rate there and see what happens. Will we see the same number of people not use the service? And again, it's a service that we're going to offer It's part of our DEQ permit to be out there. We just didn't want to see a dramatic decrease and then have to increase the rate again. Or what's actually going on right now is it's being subsidized by the garbage hauling. You know, the transfer station, garbage, people bringing the garbage in is subsidizing the leaf collection. If we were to bounce the rate back down to the lower amount, it just means it's being subsidized more.

So when council approved the temporary Because the idea of the temporary was that there was no data to say what the permanent rate increase might be asked for. So how did you set the temporary fee?

And that's why, and that's a great question, that's one of the reasons that we had this temporary rate, was we were extrapolating out what we thought our costs were going to be to transport this material all the way over to White City. And we said, what we probably want to do is let's do a temporary rate until we have some actuals. Now we have some actuals for the first five months, and that's showing that the rate isn't anywhere near where it should be. And we're not suggesting to raise that rate right now beyond garbage because at that point everybody would just dump it as garbage, but to not go down because the day end of the rate. So we did the study and that came to We had revenues of 2,095, and we had direct costs of $5,000, $6,000. So the rate as it is right now with the cost of transportation was the study that we did. That's the data that we collected. When we came before you, I believe it was in December or November. December. We didn't know exactly what that was going to do. We didn't know how many trips we were going to have, how many people were going to come in, what was going to be the fluctuation. Now we know. And what it's telling us is the rate's not even close to covering the cost. But because the rate that you guys approved is temporary and it sunsets, it would even be worse. So instead of having $2,000 in revenue, we might have $1,800 in revenue. But all those costs would still be there.

So does the usage going down, as you just mentioned, affect that rate? Wouldn't have to be as high.

The usage going down does affect the rate because what we still have are the fixed costs of the boxes sitting there, all of those. The transportation, it directly affects. So if we have less coming in, we have less trips going over there. But we just didn't know what our times were going to be getting to White City, being able to dump, drive the truck all the way back. Now we know what those costs are.

Further questions? Joel. Trent, just a quick question because I'm ignorant. You know, we drop off yard waste. I don't pay attention to the name. And so we go out to on Upper River Road. Is that the facility that's closed down now?

Yeah, so really the crux of why this all came about is Southern Oregon Compost completely shut down, taking from almost 95% of the commercial customers, and I believe all the residential customers completely. And to be perfectly honest, because they don't have an outflow. They don't have anybody who wants to buy the material anymore.

So the rate increase then that you're proposing is for the Redwood Avenue site? Where you take debris?

The rate we have is for the transfer station on Redwood Avenue where we take yard debris, where we used to be able to take it to Southern Oregon Compost, which was here in Grants Pass, now goes all the way over to Jackson County.

And it seems like it affects a very small amount of people and that the minimum charge remains the same. That's what I heard you say.

Correct. So, yeah, for the last five months, we've had 80 people come in with material.

And the minimum charge is the same as what it was before?

The minimum charge was 24, just recently went to 25 because of the CPIs. Of the 80 people, 70 of them still had the minimum charge. So I can't tell you sitting right here, standing right here, did they only have one or two yards a year of debris or did they really have... for five yards, but no matter what, if we rolled the rate back to the original, which was the $6.50, they would still have to pay that minimum. So those 70 people would still pay that minimum.

So it's the major commercial ones that the fee would affect.

Right, but we're not seeing those here because we don't get the major commercial individuals because they don't want to hand unload into our drop boxes.

Sure.

They're doing direct hauls to some location.

Okay, thank you.

Any further questions? All right, seeing none, thank you guys. Thank you. I'm going to ask the audience if there's any public comment in regards to this issue. No, you're not acting with decorum, so I'm not going to call on that person. All right, I'll bring you back to council for further discussion and or action. You have A couple alternative motions listed on your paper. You guys all should have this on your dice here, I believe. No?

Well, I'll make a motion to keep the fees as is for an additional six months and then study it from then on.

OK. So there's a motion to keep the temporary rate increase for an additional six months for study. I'd be looking for a second. Second by Rob. Any further discussion? Joel.

At the end of six months, I'd like to see it go through the subcommittee or the committee and have it come to us with a recommendation. Okay.

Indra, further discussion?

Yes, I'm just disappointed that temporary means temporary and now we're going to be going out a year I just think this should have been already dealt with with the data when we voted yes before We were expecting data to come forward and and probably we would do a permanent rate increase but without seeing that figures I'm just gonna vote no just because I think This isn't temporary and I think it should go down and And then go back up when it's permanent.

Any further discussion before we vote? All right. Seeing none, I'll go to Joel, who made the motion. How do you vote, Joel? Yes. Victoria? Yes. Eric? Yes. Kathleen?

Yes.

Rick? Yes. Indra? No. Rob?

No.

All right, we got five to two. Motion passes. Temporary increase is extended for an additional six months for study. Thank you. That takes care of all of our council action items for this special city council meeting. I would look to council for a motion to adjourn. Joel, thank you for the motion to adjourn. Second? Thank you, Kathleen. Second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, Joel, how do you vote to adjourn? Yes. Victoria? Yes. Eric?

Yes.

Kathleen? Yes. Rick? Yes. Indra? Yes. Rob? Yes. Thank you very much for participation. See you next time.