City Council - Regular Meeting

Let's see, can I do a roll call? We've got Rob.

Here.

Indra. Here. Rick.

Here.

Victoria. Here. Seth is not here. Eric.

Here.

Joel. Here. Kathleen.

Here.

And I wasn't going in the order of dice. I was going off the paper. Okay. Right. So we do have a quorum, so we'll get going. Kathleen, do you have somebody lead us in invocation?

Yes, I'd like to invite Margie Wilkie to the microphone. Just pull it down so we can hear you well, and thank you for praying for us tonight. Thank you.

Father God, we come before you this evening with grateful hearts for our city, our county, our state, and our nation. We thank you and ask your blessing on all those who work to make Grants Pass a safe place to live, play, and prosper in. Lord, forgive us where as a community we fall short and help us to improve. I especially lift up the members of this city council before your throne of grace to make wise decisions on behalf of the citizens of Grants Pass and Josephine County. Bless them with your spirit of cooperation to resolve the issues presented to them. May all words be spoken respectfully with clarity, kindness, and truth. We thank you and we give you praise in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

All right, can we all rise for the flag salute? Remove your covers if you have them.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty

Perfect. All right, we're gonna start out this evening with a proclamation, a proclamation celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence this July 4th. Whereas on July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence affirming that all people are created equal and endowed with their creator with unalienable rights, I apologize, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And whereas the year 2026 marks 250th anniversary of that historical moment when the Constitutional Congress boldly declared that 13 colonies were free and independent states, and whereas the ideals expressed in the Declaration have guided the evolution of our democratic institutions and have inspired generations to uphold freedom, justice, civil responsibility, and representative government, and whereas the communities across the United States joined together in the semi-quantum Oh my God, I just butchered that one, I apologize. To honor the voices and sacrifices and diverse contributions of people who helped shape our nation and whereas the city of Grants Pass recognizes the importance of reflecting on our shared past, celebrating the progress we have made, and reaffirming our dedication to the principles that define our republic. And whereas, how do you say that? Oh, semi-quintennial offers, the opportunity for residents, families, veterans, community organizations, and visitors to come together in unity and appreciation of the freedom we enjoy. And whereas it is fitting that our communities commemorates this historic anniversary with pride, gratitude, and a renewed commitment to the work of building a more prosperous, equitable, and resilient future. Now, therefore, I, Clint Scherff, Mayor of City of Grants Pass, Oregon, do hereby proclaim July 4th, 2026, as the 250th anniversary of American independence in the City of Grants Pass and encourage all residents to participate in activities that honor our nation's history, celebrate our freedoms, and strengthens the bond of community that have sustained us for 250 years. Thank you. Sorry about that, that was a big word.

It's above my pay grade.

Okay, we're gonna start out tonight's agenda with a public hearing in regards to Dutch Brothers Les Schwab sign code appeal located at 251 Northeast Agnes Avenue. I'm gonna start with Brad with the presentation.

thank you mayor members of the council members of the public bradley clark community development i'm going to review the staff report tonight for you and then we do have a representative of the applicant here tonight who's going to speak after me and then you'll have a public hearing so subject and summary of this topic this is an appeal of a sign code provision that we have in the municipal code There are two particular sections that we're talking about tonight. One is section 9.21160A1, and that's the maximum height above the grade of the top of the sign, and that is currently in the code at 25 feet. And then the other section is the allowable area of the sign, the actual square footage of the sign itself. So for the construction of a new 80 foot tall freestanding sign is the proposal with two separate four-sided cabinets totaling 400 square feet This is along Foothill Boulevard and Grants Pass Parkway So the criteria that you have to review tonight in order to make your decision is in the muni code title nine point twenty one eight hundred D and As with some other similar quasi-judicial actions that you have before you, your decision is based on the three criteria that I'll show you at the end of the meeting, of the presentation. I'm sure you're all very familiar with the site. Let's get the pen out here. So here is the exit 55 coming off I-5 into the Grants Pass Parkway. with the Walmart being located here on the left. So in this light blue color is the subject property. The proposed sign is located at the eastern, sort of the northeastern corner of that property. It's actually, while the property takes frontage on Agnes, the sign is actually much closer to Foothill Boulevard. So this is Foothill in the purple coming around here. So the applicant tonight is ESNA sign and awning out of Eugene. The property owner is Do-Gooders Properties LLC. The site address is 251 Northeast Agnes. It has general commercial zoning. And if you've been out there recently, you see under construction, there's a Les Schwab that's been approved and then a new Dutch Bros. As I mentioned, the proposed sign height is 80 feet. They submitted the application to the planning department May 13th, and then we have tonight's hearing. So most of this information, all this information actually is in your packet, so I won't read word for word. To go to the second bullet though, Really what's at stake here tonight is your decision about whether to approve an 80-foot tall freestanding pole sign at the northeast corner of the property and then the 400 square feet per side. So the applicant has a very detailed proposal that is in your packet about exactly the type of sign that they're proposing and Nick will be going over that in more detail for you later. So there is an existing freestanding sign on the property that measures 28 feet in height and 55 square feet in area. That was approved back in 2000. So this just goes into a little bit more focus on exactly where the proposed sign is to be located. Again, here's Foothill Boulevard at the top of the screen, Agnes at the bottom, and then the Dutch Bros location here in the bottom left, and then the new proposed Les Schwab Tire Center here on the right that you can see under construction today. This shows the BMX track that is out there. So the sign would be just behind the BMX facility. So here's the existing sign back from 2000. Again, here's the property on the right-hand side of the picture, and you can see the off-ramp coming from I-5 here. Here's a shot from kind of a northwest view from Foothill Boulevard, kind of looking northwest. You can see the Applebee's sign here, and then the Best Western sign. It's not As visible, it's oriented more north-south, and that's over here. So the proposed sign location, you know, approximately in this location. This is just a little bit zoomed in on the BMX site to kind of give you a sense for where that proposed sign would be located. And then this is coming more of a westerly view versus a northwest view from Foothill Boulevard. You can better see the Best Western sign there. And then again in the background is the Applebee's sign. The proposed sign would be just behind these evergreen trees. So here's the proposed sign. And it has the Dutch Bros on the top with the Les Schwab on the bottom. So they are both proposed to be on a single pole. So your decision criteria tonight, there's three of them. Number one, the appeal is required to alleviate unique physical circumstances or conditions such as lot dimension, topography or other physical conditions or to enhance the historic significance of a building located within the historic district. This is not in any historic district. Second criterion that you have to find, the appeal is the minimum increase required to prevent unnecessary hardship or to allow reasonable use of the property. And third, the proposal is not a substantial deviation from standards outlined in this chapter and it is consistent with the purpose of Title IX. The review body may require alterations to the sign or other signs on the property in order to provide a balanced exchange for the modifications. So it's not necessarily a hard yes or a hard no. You do have under the code the ability to work with the applicant to find something kind of a happy medium point. Staff, you'll find in your packet tonight, we did review all three criterion. As it says here on the bottom of this one, we did not find that the mandatory criterion were met through our review. You do need to find that all three are met. You don't have the option to say, well, yeah, they meet the first one, but they don't meet the other ones. All three need to be met. This is not a land use decision, so you don't have the typical 120-day review period. Your alternatives tonight, you can approve the request as they submitted it, which is basically an appeal of the sign code at their 100-foot height and the 400 square feet. Or you can, as mentioned, approve it with conditions, modifications, or deny it. So that is staff's report. I think the only other thing I would add, Mayor, is, and I didn't put this in the PowerPoint, but it's mentioned, The city did about 20 years ago have an overlay zone to allow for high signs around I-5 interchange. That was an overlay that was created many, many years ago. It was repealed in 2005. That got taken off the books. So that overlay basically said you can use existing tall poles, which is exactly what Best Western and Applebee's did. Those were poles that were there for many years. They just went in and put the signs on top of existing poles. That overlay is not on the books, but even if it was, it didn't allow for the construction of new poles. So this is what you have before you tonight is the construction of a new pole. So that's staff report. I stand for any questions.

All right, thank you. Bring it up to council for questions for Brad. Let's go around the table. Rob?

So Brad, you talk about the three criteria and how those, what we're supposed to be focusing on. But in the packet, it also says on the page five, the top paragraph, last sentence, a legislative text amendment is the appropriate process to allow the construction of newly non-conforming signs. It would seem as though, while you say that these three criteria are what need to be focused on, if this were turned down tonight, the appeal was turned down tonight, this would indicate to me, if I'm reading it right, there's still an avenue for this party or these parties to get their tall sign, but it would be through a different means. Is that what that sentence means? Sorry, counsel, you said page five? Page five of the packet, the top paragraph, the last sentence.

Yes, so that is a quote from the previous overlay. But it would still apply. But yes, so a legislative text amendment would be a possibility. That would basically mean coming to the city council as a private party, they can do that, and propose an amendment to the municipal code.

Well, they wouldn't necessarily have to do that. The council could do that, right? Meaning that if we decided that we were looking to bring back essentially a freeway overlay zone or taller signs near the freeway for visibility purposes, if council thought that was pro-business, then that would be another way to handle it so that all future applicants be playing on the same level playing field, correct? Yes, yes. Okay, so that's yet another option council has to consider, even if that can't be completed tonight. Correct. Thank you.

Andrew, do you have any questions?

I don't know if you can answer this, but back in 2005, I'm assuming the council at that time had a workshop and really discussed and did their work and research before this repeal was enacted. Is that correct?

Do you know? I do not know. I'm sorry. I could speak to that, actually. I was at that meeting in 2005, and actually the talk was at that time, you know, there was the balance between do we want a hometown feel with 25-foot signs? And the quote, I think, it might have been the mayor at the time, but the quote was, or do we want to turn into Las Vegas and look like the Las Vegas Strip? And so people looked at it as those two extremes. And what was chosen was we wanted our hometown feel, et cetera. But that was kind of the discussion at the time.

Thank you, Rob. Joel, do you have any questions? Not at this time. Thank you. Rick, any questions?

Yes. So, Brad, do you know the height of the Best Western sign?

Both that and the other, I believe, are 100 feet. They are 100 feet. The Applebee's and the Best Western, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Eric, do you have any questions?

Yes. Can you go back to the slide where it shows the proposed spot for the new sign? It showed that it was this one and also the picture one. that's it's near the freeway correct yep just for the public to see that correct yeah so it's not like in the middle of town it's near the freeway where everybody could see it at the freeway passing by and coming down the off ramp correct that that is correct yeah so it's not like a vegas strip It's not like in the middle of town we've got this 2,000-foot pole. It's a pole that's the same height meant to be able to attract customers coming from the freeway, correct? Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Kathleen, do you have any questions?

Yeah. I was just going to ask you, Brad, to maybe just give a little brief synopsis of what the recommended conditions are.

So the recommended conditions are on Section 7 of the staff report, and there are three of them. number one all applicable permits must be obtained so that's just basically you have to get a sign permit through the building department number two the property owner shall be responsible for any future repair or replacement of signage and number three location of the freestanding sign may not project over or extend into the city utility easement or public right-of-way so those are the three if if you grant the appeal those would be the conditions that staff recommends

Victoria, questions?

Yeah, could you go back to the page that has the three criteria that need to be met? And do we, is there anyone, are there any representatives who, from either Les Schwab or Dutch Brothers, who have been given the criteria and might be able to speak to? to this?

Yes, yes. He's here to speak after myself. Yep.

Would now be a good time to come on up. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Nick Johnson with ESNA Sign and Awning, and today I'm accompanied by a representative from Les Schwab as well, who has a few words to share to start things off.

Hello, I'm Spencer Holland. I'm the manager of Les Schwab on the north end of town, 6th and Hillcrest. Just a couple quick words here. Members of the council and Mr. Mayor, Les Schwab has proudly served Les Schwab residents for over 50 years, investing in local jobs, customer care, and significant community support. This new location continues that commitment. A large visible sign simply ensures that the thousands of travelers who already know and trust our brand can safely and efficiently find our store at the exit, supporting local economic activity without adding a burden to the city. This is not just about visibility, it's about directing existing traffic into Grants Pass where those travelers can contribute to our local economy. We respectfully ask for your support to help us continue serving this community and strengthening its economic vitality. Thank you.

Thank you, Spencer. SO TO ADDRESS THE FIRST ITEM, THE APPEAL IS REQUIRED TO ALLEVIATE UNIQUE PHYSICAL CIRCUMSTANCES OR CONDITIONS SUCH AS LOT DIMENSIONS, TOPOGRAPHY OR OTHER PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OR TO ENHANCE THE HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BUILDING LOCATED WITHIN THE HISTORIC DISTRICT. THE APPEAL IS REQUIRED TO ALLEVIATE UNIQUE PHYSICAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND TO ENHANCE THE HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF TWO VERY SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES FOUNDED IN OREGON, ONE OF WHICH STARTED HERE IN GRANTS PASS, AS YOU KNOW, DUTCH BROS. THE OTHER IS LESHWAB, AS YOU JUST HEARD FROM SPENCER HERE. THE PHYSICAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF ADJACENT DEVELOPMENT, I.E., MAINLY THE APPLEBEE'S IHOP BUILDING, AS WELL AS, NO, I'M SORRY. And the topography in the area block, the topography being the hill and the increase in elevation from the corner of Agnes and Redwood Highway. From that point, heading northeast, the hill really climbs. The BMX park, the trees, all of that block the visibility of both the new Dutch Bros location as well as the new Les Schwab that's going to be built. further down Agnes. It's really going to be blocked significantly. As you can see in some of his photos, and we can go on Google Maps to see more if you'd like, that hill really blocks the visibility. And again, if you're heading eastbound on the highway, Highway 199 or Grants Pass Parkway, the commercial buildings out front on the northwest, I'm sorry, southwest intersection block the visibility of both of those buildings. So their building signs are not as effective as they should be or could be. But this pylon sign should effectively give them just a little bit of a push towards the main path of travel. So as discussed, the project is located on the southeast corner of Grants Pass Parkway 99 and northeast corner or northeast agnes avenue the property itself is relatively flat but does slope up from the northwest corner to the northeast corner along grants pass parkway the slope puts the trees and the bmx track and uh yeah they add to the obstructions that block the buildings les schwab and dutch bros from having a clear line of sight to the primary traffic areas as discussed one other thing to consider is that In any given area, there's a demographic study that's done every few years with the census that says that roughly 35% of people move across country. Not across country, 35% of the American population moves annually. And so that means that 17 to 15% will move in or move out of any given area. So annually you have this population change. So people need to get their bearings when they move into a new area like Grants Pass. So having good signage helps those people who are new to the area navigate the area. We feel that this freestanding sign will definitely mark the space and make it much safer for motorists as well as people that are new to the community or people stopping from the highway. to find where they're going, whether that's to Les Schwab or to Dutch Bros for a coffee, or if they're trying to create a new landmark for themselves when they get to a new community. So that constant change is one of the reasons why we need to continue to get better signage in that area. Les Schwab is set back roughly 450 feet from the primary traffic area. SO FROM THE INTERSECTION, THEY'RE SET BACK QUITE FAR AND THEY'RE BLOCKED BY ALL THOSE OTHER OBSTRUCTIONS THAT WE TALKED ABOUT. THE PROPOSED SINGLE STRUCTURE SHARED SIGN WOULD ALLEVIATE THESE PHYSICAL CHALLENGES AND HAVE THE ADDED BENEFIT OF MINIMIZING THE NUMBER OF FREESTANDING SIGNS ON THE DEVELOPMENT SITE. Although this location is not addressed as historic, in the historic district, Grants Pass is the original home of Dutch Bros Coffee, which is now a nationally recognized brand whose roots are firmly planted here in Grants Pass. This sign will not only help make the entity known and visible, it will also mark the area as a foundational beginning for Dutch Bros Coffee. Currently, if you drive north and south on I-5, as far as Washington and I think it's where's that city Chehalis Washington all the way down to Bakersfield California on 99 there's freeway signs that are displayed proudly for Dutch Bros coffee and this being the home of Dutch Bros coffee it kind of personally breaks my heart a little bit that we don't have any presence on the freeway So this is an opportunity to kind of grasp that because it's the closest property to the freeway where we could potentially have a little bit of exposure, not massive exposure, just enough to say, hey, we're here and this is our home. So that's primarily the response to item number one. So the larger sign helps us overcome the physical obstructions that we have there, both for Les Schwab and more so for Les Schwab than for Dutch Bros, but for both really. And there is a historical relevance, although it's not in the historical district, it does add to the modern history of the city of Grants Pass and moving forward. Number two, the appeal is the minimum increase required to prevent unnecessary hardship or allow reasonable use of the property. The hardship for this project is primarily affecting Les Schwab's project, their new construction project. The physical obstructions create a significant challenge as described above. Strict adherence to the code would allow a pile on on the project site that would not help overcome the obstructions. To minimize the request, approval is sought to reduce the, or to change the location of the sign and combine it and create one large sign that's taller to help overcome the height and topography changes. Number three, the proposal is not a substantial deviation from the standards outlined in this chapter and is consistent with the purpose section. The review body may require alterations. We are open to discuss adjustments to the size of the sign that would help receive approval. What we've proposed is kind of pie in the sky. Really, we'd love a 120-foot sign. That would be very visible to the freeway, but we understand that BEING COGNIZANT OF THE LINES OF SITES THAT ARE BEAUTIFUL ALONG THE FREEWAY HERE AND ALSO STICKING WITH THE CODE AS MUCH AS WE POSSIBLY CAN. WE'RE LOOKING AT REDUCING THE SIZE OF THE SIGN AREA AND POSSIBLY THE HEIGHT A LITTLE BIT. THERE'S SOME THINGS THAT WE CAN DO TO FURTHER INVEST IN THE PROJECT SUCH AS A FLAG TEST TO TEST THE HEIGHTS TO MAKE SURE THAT WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING IS NOT HIGHER THAN WE REALLY THINK, YOU KNOW, BECAUSE REALITY VERSUS WHAT WE ANTICIPATE COULD BE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. SO YEAH, WE WANT TO MINIMIZE THE DEVIATION. I KNOW IN THE STAFF REPORT WE WERE DEEMED TO BE ASKING FOR WAY MORE THAN WHAT'S ALLOWED AND IT WAS SUBSTANTIAL. WE ARE OPEN TO MINIMIZING THAT REQUEST TO SOMETHING THAT'S FAVORABLE.

Thank you. Any further questions? Victoria?

So what would be the minimum height and minimum area of the signs in your estimation, or have you thought about it at all? If people were wanting it to get closer to the deviation, have you thought about it?

I have. I actually brought an alternative drawing that might help with that. What he's showing on the screen now is At my estimated height at 75 feet, this is a very rough estimate. I think that was, yeah, the one with the elevation drop. Thank you.

Is this one the same square? Or is it smaller?

We're proposing to reduce the square footage from 400 square feet down to 200. So that would be 100 for Dutch Bros and 100 for Les Schwab. So it's more in sync with the code. And we also are proposing to reduce the height from 80 to 75 feet. And that can also be negotiated some, of course. I'd like to make sure that we do a flag test regardless so that everybody's comfortable with that. Are you familiar with what a flag test is? Okay. A flag test, basically we take one of our crane trucks, park it at the site, lift the basket up, to the proposed top of the sign directly overhead and drop a plumb bob so we know it's right where we're proposing it. And then we take pictures from all the avenues of approach. And then I would take and superimpose the signs just like we did on the photo overlays that were up previously. I can superimpose the signs. It's kind of close to scale because we know the size of the basket that's up in the air. So we can use that as a point of reference to scale the sign. We can get really close. I've done this at several locations along the I-5 corridor and Highway 99 all through California and Washington and a few spots here in Oregon as well. So we could present that as well during permit issuance if we're so lucky.

Yeah, in Arizona we just threw the big balloon. That's a great idea. They call it a balloon test. Just like you said, a flag test.

We own our cranes. Well, there you go. It's a little bit more visible, right?

Any further questions? Eric?

So you mentioned that if this sign goes up, the other one's going to come down that you have near the Dutch Brothers. Is that what it was?

Of course, we would prefer not to do that, but it's definitely something we can bring back to management and get their approval.

I'm just asking. I thought I heard you say that. If not... You know, I'm not against it. I'm just asking for the knowledge of everybody else here.

Of course, they would love to have both, but I think that they would be amenable to losing one for the other. The taller one is definitely preferred. Further questions? Rick? Then Joel?

Thank you.

Have you... I like your idea of the balloon test or whatever you call it, but have you already... driven up I-5 northbound and looked out to see how visible the sign would be?

I did. I spent four hours one day literally driving up and down I-5 both directions as well as Foothill and as well as all the other avenues to see what I could see. And I have a plethora of photos and some of the items in the original application included that. So at 75 feet, you can still see it northbound? You won't see it as well as at 120 foot would. But you would see it a little bit. It's subtle, but it's not completely gone. You will see it as you're approaching and more so as you come off the off ramp. Yeah, off ramp. As you're heading south, it would be more visible.

and it's and it's more going to pick you up as you're coming off the off ramps than it is at the actual freeways unfortunately okay at 120 feet we would pick up the freeways very much so okay thank you further questions joel um brad could you put that uh visualization of the sign from the interstate it's amazing is that the one you're referring to council yeah um i I'M JUST THINKING ALOUD WITH THE YEAR TREES GROW. AND THEY GROW PROBABLY A FOOT A YEAR.

I'M NOT SURE HOW MUCH THESE TREES GROW. I WAS TALKING ABOUT THAT MYSELF EARLIER.

THEY'LL GROW A FOOT A YEAR.

THAT PARTICULAR TREE?

I'M NOT SURE. YOU LOOK AT WHERE THE WORLDS ARE AND HOW FAR APART THE WORLDS ARE, THAT'S ONE YEAR'S GROWTH. I'm just wondering, even with the added height, how well is that going to be seen five years from now?

That's always a consideration for sure, and I appreciate that. This is only one view from one angle. The key thing is that as you're moving, you're never seeing the sign from the same position.

It seems like as you get closer to the trees, they're going to even obscure the sign now. Because the angle is going to be higher to the top of the tree. Right.

And that's, again, this is from the one angle. If you're on Agnes, it'll look different. And if you're coming downhill from the off-ramps, you'll still see it, even with the trees another 20 feet tall.

I was just applying simple geometry.

Oh, no, I totally agree. And as you can see, the trees, they have points, right, all three of them. And as you're further west... on Redwood Highway approaching, it comes around a bend. So as it's coming around the bend, you'll see it poke through between the trees, even in 10 or 15 minutes.

The further away you are, the lower the trees are going to be below the sign.

Correct. Can you put up the view that you have in the packet, anticipated view on coming off I-5 southbound? Because it has an additional sign in there that's already...

Mayor, are you referring to one that was in the slide deck?

No, it's in the packet. It says anticipated view coming off of I-5 southbound. It shows a relationship to the Best Western sign. I just think that's a pretty prevalent picture.

Do you have a page number? 31, 2, 3, 4, 37.

page 37 in the packet sorry that would have been a good one to include in the slides um we we don't have that in the slides uh do you have it one of the ones you have yeah so for council i'd be referring to page 37 in your packet um it's just showing coming down the off of I-5, but it just shows a relationship to the existing Best Western sign there. I think it's pretty prevalent to your conversation. Got it. Thank you.

Okay.

One more. Right there.

There we go.

That's the off-ramp for southbound I-5. Drove it about six times that day. It's really hard to pull over there.

I just think that gives you guys a reference to what's existing there right now. I mean, the Best Western sign is in place.

Questions? Rick? Brad, I think you already stated, but what is the square footage for the Best Western sign that's there in that photo? Do you know?

If you could go on to another one, I can look. I don't think I stated that, the actual square footage. The height is 100. But I don't know the square footage. Maybe...

I don't either, but I would imagine it's probably 250 plus square feet.

As we view the photo, would you say it's about the same as what's being proposed? That's hard to say.

I would guesstimate in my years of experience in this industry that the Best Western sign will be smaller in total square footage as the two combined signs would be. And also the perspective is different. From this perspective, the Best Western sign is probably 150 yards closer, so it will seem much larger.

Any further questions? All right, seeing no more questions, thank you. My pleasure. At this time, we'll give you guys an opportunity to, opportunity for public comment. Anybody in the public audience want to come up and have conversations in regards to this hearing right now? Come up to the podium and state your name. And it is per this topic that we're discussing right this second.

Rika Brown, Grants Pass. In 2005, it was when I started attending city council meetings, and I was kind of appalled at the low height that the council wanted. But this was the administration of David Frazier. And sometime down the road, in that general area of town, there was a business that wanted to have a sign on their roof because their competition was right in front of them between them and the parkway. And they came in with a slideshow of 100, and they wanted to put it on their roof, just on their roof. And staff said that, well, it's a vertical sign, but only signs that are parallel to the wall can be, you know, are under code. And then they showed, yeah, 100 signs on roofs around town. And they got their appeal. In this case, I'd say they've got a real point about the height of the trees. And it'd be difficult to, I think, took down the smaller sign at the Dutch Bros, I think it would be difficult for people maybe to find Dutch Bros because it's such a long distance between one end and the other end of the property. So I would not recommend getting rid of Dutch Bros old sign for the new one. Just let them have two. Thank you.

ANY FURTHER PUBLIC COMMENT IN REGARDS TO THIS COUNCIL ACTION? AGAIN, STATE YOUR NAME AND YOU HAVE A COUPLE MINUTES.

YOU BET. JAMES LOWE, 3149 SOUTH RIVER ROAD, GRANTS PAST OREGON, NATIVE. enjoyed Les Schwab and Dutch Bros immensely. The Active Club and Oregon Cavemen, Boys and Girls Club, we've all enjoyed their community support. I think that this is a great idea. I really think so. For those that have lived here forever and know about the Redwood Spur, nobody ever came off of that exit back in the day because you just couldn't see what was down there. And we've been able to get the Applebee's burger in and out. They've got a nice big sign up there where Tetsuko used to be. I even pumped gas there. But I would highly recommend that we want people to stop into Grants Pass and use our facilities versus going to Roseburg and to Medford. So I highly would recommend that you guys find a way and get this done because this is a community supported businesses. Sidebar, 1977, Bill Lowe, my father, was on the sign committee when it first started. for 30 years they couldn't figure out what to do uh so i mean it's been set clear back in 1977. so uh it's a hard thing to do it's not going to be vegas it's not vegas baby this is grants pass home of the caveman and we'll keep it that way thank you thank you any other public comment in regards to this council action item all right see you none i'll bring it back to the council for further discussion and or action

Victoria.

I'd just like to go ahead and make a motion to approve as requested and would be open if somebody wanted to amend that to the lower height and to the lower square footage.

All right. We have a motion on the dais to approve. As stated, is there a second from Eric? Any further discussion? Rick?

I would actually like to see a balloon test or whatever you call that thing. Because if we're proving something, I would want it to be effective. So I guess I would be more uncomfortable reviewing it if we could see actually what it looks like. Thank you.

Any further discussion? Kathleen?

Well, I just want to say that these two specific businesses, anybody would come off the freeway for. And I think especially travelers for Les Schwab and for people that need to stay awake and enjoy coffee. So I think for tourism, it'd be excellent. For your businesses, it would be excellent. And because of the tree line, it appears to me that it needs to be that big. So I'm pretty in favor of this.

Further discussion, Indra?

And that's exactly what my concern has to do with. I love Dutch Bros and Les Schwab. It's nothing to do with the businesses. They are favored businesses, obviously, in our community, and I worry about unfair to other businesses by picking and choosing who to grant appeals to or to not. So I don't think this would be the place to decide that. Some council long ago decided that they wanted to put a limit on the signs. It wasn't our council. Maybe we would decide something different. So I think the place TO DO A CODE CHANGE. WE HAVE CODES FOR REASONS AND WAY BACK SOMEONE HAD A REASON FOR THAT. SO I WOULD PREFER TO SEE A CODE CHANGE SO ANYBODY, SO IT'S FAIR ACROSS THE BOARD TO EVERYBODY. THAT'S WHERE I'M AT.

ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? VICTORIA.

BACK ON THE SLIDE THAT HAD THE THREE CARACTERIA, I DON'T THINK I don't I don't think we are would be making a special I mean I think they fit pretty much all three criteria it's possible that they don't with the with the variation of the change and that's why I said if people wanted to entertain making it the the 100 feet or I forgot which you said. But I think it would be better for them because of the trees and everything to make it higher. So I don't think we're making a special, we're not giving any special treatment to anybody who wanted to do this, any business who wanted to do this could come in and do the same thing. This is not giving special treatment to particular businesses. And I think they meet the criteria.

Any further discussion? Rick and then Rob?

Rick? As Andrew mentioned, if we have different businesses down there that want to have a sign the same height, what limitations do we put on if a T&T has a phone company down there and wants to put up a sign and Walmart and so forth, where does it stop? So there's an aspect. I don't know if those individuals would want to come forward and do that. I just think we need to decide is this appropriate in the different aspects. Thank you.

Further discussion? Rob?

Yeah, it's interesting. So, you know, it's, I don't know how often it happens, but in this particular case, I'm in complete agreement with staff that they don't even come close to meeting any of the criteria. That's pretty obvious. The question is, do we want to grant a variance to this? Maybe times have changed and maybe it's clear from some of the pictures that and some of the depictions that it would seem like it makes sense to support business that we want to grant a variance. I think I'm agreeing with Indra that a legislative text amendment to essentially bring back the freeway overlay zone is probably the way to handle this in the future. I'd probably be willing to do this as a, we'll say a variance tonight, but it's completely clear that none of the criteria have been met and that's what staff's assessment is as my assessment is um but i also would probably want to revisit this at a council workshop to amend this so that any other business could avail themselves of similar um you know similar um restrictions or allowances but um you know i would probably vote in favor of this tonight it will say as a variance but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fool myself into thinking that the criterion have been met because they they're not

Further discussion. Joel. Well, you know, further on what Rob said, I think it's dangerous ground for us to approve a variance based on, and I like, I mean, I buy all my tires at Les Schwab. You do a great job. And Dutch Brew's coffee is fantastic. I mean, my wife, we don't go buy those, you know, because we go broke. But I think it's dangerous ground for us up here to say whether we like a company or not. We would permit them to do that. I don't think that's the way you want your city government run. And I think we would, regardless of the company or whatever. So I would agree with what Rob said to maybe go back to the overlay for the interstate that would allow all businesses to have the same standard because to do otherwise is a slippery slope.

Further discussion? Eric?

Yeah, some good points were brought up here, but I would say that a lot of the businesses like In-N-Out and all the businesses that are along the freeway, they all have the big signs. We've got Dutch Brothers and Les Schwab, which is moving into that area right along the freeway. Where are they supposed to put the signs to where it's going to be visible with the freeway as massive as it is? And the trees. So are they supposed to have a sign that is meeting that criteria of... AS SHORT AS IT IS AND NOBODY CAN SEE EXCEPT FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS, DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. I THINK WE NEED TO GO WITH COMMON SENSE HERE. I'M FOR THE MOTION AND I'M FOR FRIENDLY AMENDMENTS ON THE MOTION IF WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO THE FLAG TEST PRIOR TO approving it, so that's all I have.

Further discussion? Were you offering that as a, were you pushing that with, as an amendment? A friendly amendment?

Sure, if Rick wants to do that for a friendly amendment, I'm willing to do the friendly amendment with that for the flag test.

I would accept the friendly amendment that this would be contingent upon doing the flag test.

Okay, Rick, did you want to add that friendly amendment? It sounds like it's being accepted. Friendly.

I would like to hold up. Yeah, I would like the flag test to be done just to make sure, as Joel mentioned, the trees and everything else, that it is. if we're approving this, that it's gonna work. I also like the idea that we could be looking at a new overlay that allows other people the opportunity. But I guess for an affirmative response, I would like to see the flag test, yes, thank you.

Okay, so we have a motion on the dais currently to approve the appeal for construction of an 80-foot tall sign at 400 square feet with contingent on a flag test. And that has been friendly accepted by the motion maker and the second person. Any further discussion? So you will be voting, when we go to a vote, you'll be voting to approve the appeal as stated for the proposed construction of an 80-foot tall standing advertisement sign at 400 square feet, which does not meet current code. Yes, sir.

I think staff has a question with regards to the requirement for a flag test. balloon test or whatever not quite sure where that falls into play with the approval of this who's going to make the call on whether or not that's acceptable um we're not sure what that how that fits the criteria if i mayor yes sir go ahead one one option maybe instead of approving would be to table the decision and do the test and then come back and make your decision well the the

what is on the table now is that the approval would be contingent upon the test being done so in effect that's the way it's going to happen yes so the motion should probably be that a flag test needs to be done before action is taken on this measure that that is the motion that's on the table the motion as i understand it is to approve the appeal tonight contingent upon the flag test being

The flag test being done and there could be issues that came up with that so so my understanding is if we vote this motion forward then the appeal will be approved tonight, but will not be solidified until the flag test is done and you guys relook at it and And I'm sorry if I let off in a question there.

I would imagine so. Rick just wanted to make sure the flag test was done and a few other people did too. So it would be completed.

I think the best course of action is if council has an appetite to see a flag test, that is a very visual representation, an actual visual representation of the future look and feel from different angles. I don't know if you could go forward with an approval with that contingency because you've already approved it.

I think the implication is, at least it was for me, is that after a flag test was done, maybe the height would be reduced and the square footage would be reduced. So I think that's kind of inherent in this. Yeah, go ahead.

I don't think that your outcome would be supportable under the findings that would be necessary. The reason being a flag test isn't a pass fail. It's not a test. It's what it is. It's a visual representation. So then somebody would have to make the call about whether shortening that height is appropriate or not. So then it would not be council making a finding related to the height that's being approved. It would be staff or someone else. So I think that you wouldn't be able to have supportable findings if you go that route.

so it may be appropriate i think that yeah i think we have someone who might want to come up and speak about that one thing we may be able to do is complete a flag test and include those findings with our permit application for the sign so if 75 or 80 feet is the maximum height permitted and 400 square feet is the maximum area permitted that doesn't mean we have to apply for that many square feet we can have up to that much square footage. So if we find during the flag test that, oh, the sign's way above the trees, we can scale it down. Or we could remove the flag test from being contingency and just offer to do that anyway and provide that as part of our application, our permit application for proof of concept.

so council if a flag test is important to you it should be a separate item from approval of this tonight you should make a motion that a flag test needs to be observed and that you would postpone the decision for either date certain and then you'd come back after that flag test with that information and you'll have that this discussion again after well i i why is i just

that's fine if that's what council wants to do, but why are we being told that we can't make a motion?

We're not telling you you can't make a motion.

Because it was made and it was seconded, so we do need to vote on it.

Correct, correct. What we are trying to do is get clarification on your friendly amendment. When you add the friendly amendment of the flag test to your motion to approve, it doesn't actually make sense is what we're trying to get. So I would, my recommendation to you is to, if you feel adamant about going forward with an approval, a motion to approve as is, I would keep your motion to that. And feel the council's appetite whether they want to, majority wants to approve it tonight.

Well, Rick did want to see the flag test. So just to make it clearer, it could be if the flag test shows the lower height is sufficient, then that's what will be, and the square footage is, smaller than that's what they would be putting forth. I mean, this isn't, it's not rocket science. I mean, this is making sense. If, if they do the flag test and they see that 75 feet is fine and the smaller square feet is fine, that's what they're going to propose. This is not a complicated thing.

That's putting the applicant as the decision maker. That's council, you need to be the ones making that decision.

Yeah, so that's what I was just saying is then that will be if they find that it is sufficient. And then if they don't, they're going to come back for a different, they're going to say, no, we don't want to do that. And they'll come back again with something different.

I think the best course of action is for you to table this hearing, not finish this hearing, have the applicant do a flag test and bring it back at a date certain, and then if the portion of the council that wants to see the flag test to see a very true and accurate visual representation before they make their vote, then that leaves it, I think it's just a cleaner way to do it. I don't know if your motion with the friendly amendment is going to hold up.

All right, well.

Or you can just say, I want to make the motion to approve it and we'll see if the council has the appetite to approve it. I mean, it's your choice.

I don't think they do, so that's why I made the amendment. So, well, let's just go ahead and vote on the amendment and show where people are on it.

Okay, so we're going to go back to the original motion to approve?

Let's just go ahead and vote on it as is.

So to clarify, we're gonna be voting on a motion to approve the appeal as represented without the friendly amendment.

No, with the friendly amendment. It makes sense to me. So I think it probably makes sense to a few other people too. So let's just go ahead and vote on it and then we'll make the second, we'll do another motion if this one fails.

I GOT TO CONSULT WITH YOU GUYS.

WE'RE NOT SURE HOW STAFF WOULD BE ABLE TO IMPLEMENT THE MOTION AS IT CURRENTLY STANDS WITH THE FRIENDLY AMENDMENT BECAUSE THERE'S TOO MUCH SUBJECTIVITY AND DECISION MAKING ON THE APPLICANT WITHOUT COUNSEL MAKING THE FINAL DECISION ON WHAT YOU'RE APPROVING. SO TRULY IF YOU NEED THAT OPTICS OF A of a flag balloon test, then it should be a separate item that's motioned to move forward with, and we'll continue this to date certain so you can make a decision after you've taken in that additional information.

It looks like the applicant might have a great something to add.

We have a representative from Dutch Bros Coffee who would like to add to this.

Good evening. Sarah Resnick, Dutch Bros, the construction manager for the West Territory right now. I feel, I hear what you're saying and I love it. We want an 80 foot pylon, we want 100 foot pylon sign. If we can table this to appease, I hear what you guys are saying, to appease doing a flag test, getting our research done, re-presenting that to you guys at 100 foot and an 80 foot and a 75 foot, and then have the motions passed or not passed, I think that's gonna be in our best favor. I'm scared right now that we're gonna send this through and you guys are gonna fail us and we're gonna have to try and appeal again and come up with a better solution. So I think getting the flag test done, getting back on your guys' calendar is gonna be the best way to handle this. You and I get what we want, we get what we want and everybody's happy and whatever company wants to come up against us next is gonna have their option to do that. I don't think that we're getting special treatment because we're from here and because we started here. I just feel like it's gonna be on a case by case scenario and we're willing to do whatever we need to do to get our sign.

I APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS AND I HAVE TO REMIND US WE HAVE ACTUALLY CLOSED THE PUBLIC HEARING PORTION OF IT AND WE WERE IN DELIBERATION SO IT WAS A LITTLE UNORTHODOX TO ACTUALLY PULL YOU GUYS BACK IN. I APOLOGIZE.

IT WAS A GREAT COMMENT. LET'S JUST VOTE ON THE FLAG SO I'LL ACCEPT THE FRIENDLY AMENDMENT THAT THE NEW MOTION IS JUST THAT WE ARE GOING TO DO THE FLAG TEST AT THE DIFFERENT HEIGHTS.

So procedure-wise, I think you have to, I think you have to pull your original.

I'll rescind the first one then and make the new motion.

Okay, so your new motion is, can you state it one more time, please? So we've rescinded the original motion.

I propose that we do a flag test at the three different heights that were mentioned and then bring it back to council.

As part of your motion, we would be tabling the public hearing until we receive the information and then we would revisit at a date certain, okay? All right, so the motion is on the table to, the motion on the dais is to table the current hearing. Pause. Ask the applicant for a flag test at different heights to be brought back at a date certain to add information to the public hearing and restart the public hearing at what time? Do we have a date certain?

we would need to know when the test could be accomplished and then we could set the date after that.

Okay, so we will put it with an open-ended date as soon as possible. Does that clarify? Sure. Okay, thank you. And do we have a second on that from Kathleen? Okay. Any further discussion? Okay, we're going into a vote to table this hearing, request a flag test, and revisit this hearing at a later date. Victoria, how do you vote?

Yes.

Kathleen.

Yes.

Eric. Yes. Rick. Yes. Joel. Yes. Indra. Yes. Rob. Yes. All right. Motion to suspend has passed. Thank you.

Yes, sir. A question for staff. So if council wanted to bring back the freeway overlay situation, a legislative text amendment so that all businesses would be playing on a level playing field in the future, approximately how long might that take? And could we give you direction tonight to initiate that process?

Well, what my department would probably do is pull up the language on the prior one and then bring to the council that language as well as a couple of other example model codes. So I couldn't tell you. I mean, six weeks to do the research and get a good presentation together.

I can tell you that in 2005, Jim Huber actually got data from Anchorage, Alaska, all the way to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He literally went 3,000 miles with comparative codes, but you probably don't have to go that far. But to me, that would make this real clean in the future. We'd never have to go through this again. It would be fair for everybody. So I'd like to get direction from council to proceed with that as well, so we can deal with this in the future in a clean manner.

did you need clarification no i just wanted to add to your conversation if our public hearing's over so actually we don't have an opportunity for you i just if you had a question in regards to what you were doing okay thanks um yeah i would encourage you rob to bring that back up in matters for mayor at the very end so we can get that scheduled moving right along um item 1b is legislative hearing for Okay, I need to, at this time I will be opening a public hearing to consider Ordinance Amending Development Code Articles Two, Procedure Type Three, Development Permit Procedures, 12, Zoning District, 17, Lots and Creation of Lots, 27, Access, and 28, Utilities Related to Middle Housing Land Division. We will begin the hearing with the staff report followed by public comment and then the matter will be discussed and acted upon by the council. Is there anyone present who wishes to challenge the authority of council to consider this item or this matter? Seeing none, do any councillors wish to abstain from participating in this hearing or declare a potential conflict of interest? seeing none in this hearing the decisions of the council will be based upon specific criteria all testimony and evidence may be directed towards those criteria the criteria which apply in this case are noted in the staff report it is important to remember if you fail to raise an issue with enough detail to afford the council and the parties an opportunity to respond to the issue you will

Not be able to appeal to the land use board appeals based on that on the issue We will now begin the hearing with our staff report Thank You mayor members of the council members of the public Bradley Clark community development tonight's presentation is primarily going to be provided by MIG consulting and We have with us on the The team's Matt Hasty, he's one of the lead planners with MIG, and then also Keegan Gulick, who has done a lot of the research for MIG on this project. The city hired MIG to help us work through the middle housing land division process. Just to clarify for particularly the newer councilors, so we already adopted middle housing rules a few years ago. What the city did not do at that time is adopt middle housing land division rules So tonight's the focus is on the actual dividing of property not on product if you will I think Matt's going to touch on what those products are just to clarify that but so the other point that I'll make is that you know that you appointed the development code task force fairly recently and They've been meeting for about six months. Their work is focused on streamlining development, on getting the development code language modernized, if you will. So that group is chaired by Justin Gerlitz, who is here tonight. MIG did present some of the proposals that you're going to see on the screen tonight to the Development Code Task Force. They made a few comments. Some of those got integrated. Since that time, Justin has had an opportunity to look at it, and we spoke before the hearing, so there may be a couple of comments on that front. And I just want to say that we're open to a continuation if you need to go there, but I think at this point we'll just have MIG present. and then see how you respond to Justin's comments, how you want to handle those, and we'll take it from there. So I would turn it over now to Matt. Are you able to hear us okay, Matt?

Yep, I can hear you great. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Excellent. Okay, well, I will go ahead and share a presentation and kind of walk you through it. So give me one sec to do that. All right. Can everybody see that presentation?

We can. Thanks, Matt.

Excellent. OK. So as Bradley said, middle housing is something the city already allows. I'm going to give just a little bit of background on that. And then the rest of the focus, as he said, will be on middle housing land divisions or the process of dividing the property that the middle housing development is on into smaller pieces of property. Grants Pass is required to allow middle housing in all its residential zones per previous legislation, and that legislation has been updated since then to make some changes, but the basics of it are pretty much the same. When we say middle housing, we're talking about duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, row houses, and what are called cottage clusters, which are basically smaller homes typically surrounding a common sort of courtyard area The city adopted its middle housing standards in 2024, I believe, and has seen an uptick in middle housing units develop since that time. But the proposed amendments that we have in front of you this evening, they don't really alter existing middle housing standards. Again, they're really just focused on the process of dividing the land under the middle housing development. So that would be what I'll focus on for the rest of this. SEC. So essentially, Senate Bill 458 requires cities to allow these middle housing land divisions for any of the types of middle housing that they allow and that are built in accordance with the standards that they apply. And so the city secured a grant from the state to help address this issue and to have our firm assist with this. And we work closely with city staff to prepare these code updates that are basically meant to essentially locally implement the state requirements. There are some places where you have some flexibility to do certain things, but a lot of the language in here is coming fairly directly from the statutes that drive this. So some of the, you know, really the intent behind adopting or applying these middle housing land division standards is to improve opportunities for home ownership, because if you can own not just the unit, but the land underneath the home or the housing unit that you're in, it increases the chances that you can have home ownership of those units. So that was really kind of the main reason for doing this, I think, at the state level. And just to note that we've met with the planning commission several times during this process and had a public hearing with them and they've recommended approval of the proposed code amendments. So just very briefly, we've been at this for just a little over a year, starting in March of 2025. And I've gone through this iterative process first to take a look at which sections of your code would likely need to be updated to implement locally, implement these state rules and then draft proposed updates to the code, and then review those with the planning commission and with the code review task force, make some changes to those, and then go through the adoption process. So that's where we are now. I should probably say July over there, but we were, So we're just a little past that. So as you saw in the packet, we've identified amendments to several sections or articles of your code. I'll go through these in just a little more detail in a moment. But Articles 2, 3, 17, 27, and 28, so there's places sort of sprinkled throughout your code where changes are needed to implement these requirements or these standards. Some of them are pretty brief. So really article two, the only thing there that needs to be done, you have a table in there that lists all your different application processes, and we just need to add middle housing land divisions to that table and be clear about what kind of procedures are used to approve a middle housing land division. Article three, kind of a similar sort of thing. We're just referencing middle housing land divisions in that section of your code. and noting that these are not technically land use decisions. They're expedited land divisions or middle housing land divisions don't go through the same kind of public notice processes as other land use decisions. So we just clarify that in that section of the code. And then the bulk of the changes here are in Article 17. So I'll talk about these just a little bit more So in terms of applicability, these apply again to any middle housing development that has been approved. And in terms of the timing and sequencing, these can be done at the same time. or before or after a building permit review process. But in fact, to approve a middle housing land division, you do have to show what's gonna be built and that the things that are going to be built are consistent with state building code requirements. Also there's criteria for approval of a tentative plan. Mostly the approval criteria are that you're consistent with the various sections of the rules here. Submittal requirements are pretty much similar to what you require of other types of similar types of land use applications. And I will note that this section of the code describes the procedure type that an applicant can go through and it is a shorter, it requires staff or the city to review these in a shorter time period than the state standard which is 120 days this is required to be reviewed in 63 days doesn't mean it has to even take the 63 days but it's a shorter or an expedited process however an applicant could choose to go through your standard subdivision process rather than this kind of shortened process and then the final plat requirements are also addressed in this section and they're basically just the same as the requirements you have for other for final plats as part of other land use application processes. And so again, this is kind of where the bulk of the stuff is, and it's on pages 74 to 80 of your packet. It's all the red-lined sections there. A couple other sections of your code that are being updated. Article 27, which really has to do with access, and this is just being clear that the requirements for frontage and access relate to not what happens sort of internally within the development, but to what's accessed from a road or a street. And so that's sort of the main thing there. And then I'll talk just a little bit more in the next couple of slides about utilities, but there are some provisions here related to how water and sewer lines essentially are built to serve properties that go through a middle housing land division process. So, And I've got a couple of slides that talk about this. So, and I will say that this is a part of these requirements that we had a lot of discussion with folks about. We talked to the code review task force about this, but also the city's public works department and city engineer. And we're really trying to kind of make sure a couple of things, one that we're meeting state requirements, not just from the state land use agency, but also DEQ. DEQ has some fairly specific requirements related to this. And then that we're also just making sure that this is done in a workable way to avoid confusion for folks who own these individual units down the line in these individual properties, because there ultimately will be in a lot of these cases, some kind of easement across multiple properties that result from a middle housing land division. And so there's a few things that we wanted to be sure were in place. One is that if one of these things occurs, that if there is a water or sewer line that's traversing multiple individual properties, they're called child lots, there's the larger parent lot and the child lots, that that be built to city standards and be within a public easement and be essentially a public water or sewer main. And that's to make sure that if there's no confusion sort of down the line about if something happens to one of those lines that's going across multiple properties here, that everybody knows who's gonna be able to fix that and it's built to city standards and can be repaired by the city. But there still need to be these individual service lines from that shared public main into each of the homes that are part of this middle housing development. This diagram just shows you sort of one way that could occur and then this diagram shows you another way that could occur. In this case what you're seeing is these individual water sewer lines that are coming across or within a commonly owned area and they're going to each of the homes whereas the public sewer main is in a public main in a public easement and then there's individual sewer lines going to each of the homes from that public main. That's just a couple of ways that could occur. And that was the subject, again, of quite a bit of conversation with a variety of folks around that. So I'm going to stop. That's kind of it for the presentation of what we've got in front of you and see if there's any comments or questions. And Bradley might have something to add here. So I will just stop talking and turn it back over to him.

No, thanks, Matt. I don't have anything else at this point. I think it's better to just turn it over to the council.

Thank you, guys, both of you. And I'll bring it back to council for any questions for staff or applicant. Rob?

So this may be really, really easy to answer, and maybe I'm being obtuse here, but I'm not sure. On pages 49 and 51, both places under proposal, It says, this application requests adoption of state middle housing and land division regulations in the Grants Pass Development Code as required by the Oregon legislature via passage of Senate Bill 458, 2021. So if this is required, why are we spending so much time on it? We have to do it anyway, and we've already been, and that is the law of the land, regardless. Why is it taking so long?

Okay, so I'll Do my best to answer that question and Bradley may have more to add. So you're required to implement, you're required to allow for middle housing land divisions. You're not required to update your own development code to include these provisions within your development code. You can choose to simply implement the statute and people would have to go look at the statute to know how that's going to happen, your staff would have to always be sort of referring to the statute rather than your own code. So you can, and most cities around the state have or are implementing these within adding these provisions to their own development code so that somebody doesn't have to go out and look at the state statute if they want to go through one of these processes and your staff is administering its own code rather than just administering a set of state rules sort of directly and so that's why the city chose to go through this process and again got a grant from the state and yeah it has taken it has taken some time because putting this stuff into your own development code we've got to figure out how best to do that and again where there are some is some flexibility, are some things you can do, you can make some decisions about. We just need to kind of highlight those and talk about them. So, I don't know if that answers the question.

Yeah, so I think, so what you're saying is it will make it more customer-friendly for our local developers regardless. I would say, yeah.

I would say more customer-friendly for your local developers or property owners and easier for staff to administer as well. Thank you. Yep.

Joel, do you have any questions? Rick, do you have any questions?

Yes. Thank you for the presentation. The middle housing requirements have had quite a bit of impact, especially on not requiring parking. So is there any promotion for multimodal paths in here because that would help balance pedestrian transportation?

So I guess I'd say a couple things. One, we're really not changing or updating. the standards that apply to middle housing, but there are some requirements within the middle housing land divisions that say you need to have pathways from the street to each of the units that are on and each of the housing units that are part of the middle housing land division. So you do have some standards there and that was sort of the main purpose of updating section or article 27 of your code was to apply sort of similar standards like that, but we're not, Apart from that, as part of this process, providing additional requirements related to multi-use pathways as part of this set of amendments. I don't know, Brad, anything to add on that?

Go ahead. Part of my reaction to that is that developers, many developers today are not promoting or even aware of multimodal paths. And unless there's some promotion, it's not happening. And I think as different methods of transportation are coming forward in the future, now would be the time to promote it. And that would help possibly alleviate some of the parking concerns.

Brad, did you want to weigh in?

Thanks, Mayor. Yeah, I would just echo the last point that you made, Counselor, that the importance of that is probably more citywide. And what we're seeing is most of the middle housing land divisions are just working with infill properties. It's kind of one here, one there, which is, of course, how all development happens. But I think if I hear your point that we want to foster you know, the ability to do multi-use paths, that's going to require a more holistic look at the whole code and including subdivisions, including partitions, not just middle housing land division, which is the only thing on your docket tonight. Because I think to integrate some kind of transportation piece like that only into this would be a challenge implementing it, you know, because you're going to you're not going to get connectivity. So I think we should look at our transportation plan and our whole development code is my opinion.

So you just got told not the time or the place. But bring it up later. Eric, you got any questions?

Yes. I don't know if you have the same slide as ours, but slide number 91 and 92 for exhibit one There's two different scenarios, and I'm wondering, does this, do any of the changes lock in one scenario over the other, or both, or are there other options, or am I digging too deep on this?

I just want to make sure. Yeah, I think you mean this slide I've got now and the next one, is that correct? The two scenarios for the water and sewer connections, is that what you're asking?

Correct.

Okay, yeah. These don't lock in one or the other. What these basically say is in either case, you need to, if you have a water line or a sewer line that's serving multiple properties within a middle housing development, that it be within basically a public easement, that it be built to the city standard for public mains. But you could also have, instead of that, individual service lines that are kind of going across the property in a common area or an Eastman area to each of the individual properties. That's kind of what the second one shows for the water lines at least. So either of these would be possible, either this configuration or the configuration above. And there might be other configurations possible. These were the ones that we kind of talked through with your public works department. And the more important thing is really just the things that are outlined on this slide here. You know, that you, if you've got a line that's cutting across a middle housing development and serving multiple homes within it that needs to be a public main, And then there also needs to be an individual service line from that public main to the home. And that's really the main thing. And that it's built to city standards. But it doesn't, I think there is some, there's probably some further flexibility around that. I think if somebody comes in, these are the standards they gotta meet. And if they present something that meets these standards but looks a little different than the diagrams, but it's consistent with the standards, then that's probably okay. So that's what I would say anyway.

Thank you. That's what I was looking for. Thank you.

Kathleen, do you have any questions? Victoria, do you have any questions?

Yeah. I just kind of wanted to hear maybe from the committee. I don't know if you, if Mr. Gerlitz would like to come up. And I don't know if the committee was able to go through this, but it would be helpful for me to hear what locally the committee was, anything that you had to say about this.

I ASSUME THAT'S PART OF PUBLIC COMMENT, YEAH.

DO YOU HAVE THE BANDWIDTH TO WEIGH IN ON THAT? YEAH, BUT I THINK WHEN WE GET TO PUBLIC COMMENT, YOU'RE GOING TO STEP UP? OKAY. SO WE WILL GET TO THAT. THERE'S A PROCEDURE THAT WE HAVE TO, BECAUSE THIS IS A PUBLIC HEARING. So we can only address applicant and staff at this moment in time. Is there any further questions?

Yeah, Bradley, you mentioned in your presentation about our committee that's already working on this. Could you just repeat then what you said about that?

Sure. So about six or seven months ago, the council established the Development Code Task Force. The task force has been meeting generally about twice a month over the last several months. They outlined about eight to 10 topics in the code that they felt were really important and kind of the priority topics to address. Middle housing and middle housing land divisions is one of those. And so my comment was that MIG did attend one of their committee meetings, talked about these recommendations. They made a few comments. Since that time, they've taken a little deeper look, and my understanding is that's why you're going to hear from Justin tonight.

Oh, okay, great. That's more or less what I said. Gotcha. Does that help? It does. Thank you very much. Okay.

Any further questions? All right, seeing none, thank you, Brad, and thank you. At this point, we open up the procedure to public comment. So at this time, we have the opportunity for public to come up and make comments in regards to this procedure. Come up to the microphone and state your name and your

Patrick Rooney, Josephine County. I just wanted a clarification. Is this middle housing zoning, it's a type of zoning, is this required all through Oregon on any type of zoning? In other words, if you have a single family residence, lot, are you required to kind of superimpose that zoning on top of that?

Quick answer is yes.

Yes? Yes. Wow. That's crazy. Secondly, if you have a common area and you have delineations of where your property is, is there a clear delineation for a homeowner to know, is there a property line delineation so they know how much they own versus their neighbors? That would be a second question. Can that be answered?

That's a little bit outside of what we're doing tonight, so I would encourage you to get with the city manager for further clarification on that.

Okay. And I guess my third question would be, if you own the property, are there limitations? Clearly, if you have one property that's taking care of a bunch of houses, you have just one greenery, I guess. I'm going to assume that you can't do certain things. You can't put a hedge up or something like that on your own property there.

be my third question a lot of those are going to be addressed in the code but i encourage you to reach out to staff and get the they can point you to the right sections of the code that you'll be wanting to get those answers from thank you

Good evening, Councilor, Staff, Mayor. Justin Gerlitz, Chair of the Development Code Task Force. I appreciate the time tonight and I appreciate all the work staff and MIG has done to get this together. Middle housing land divisions have been a very difficult thing for all agencies, all large agencies in Oregon to adopt because it came out of a Senate bill. So we've been kind of playing with that and trying to figure out how the rules work. As mentioned, MIG and staff, Brad specifically and Laurie, have been attending the meetings, the Development Code Review meetings, and MIG participated in the one specific to this topic, asked a lot of questions. We had a lot of good discussion on it. As mentioned, Planning Commission also has provided their input. So we got this kind of recently. So I did have just a few comments tonight, clarification points that I think I WOULD RECOMMEND MAKING SOME SLIGHT MODIFICATIONS, TOO. BUT OVERALL, EVERYTHING THAT I'M SEEING TONIGHT IS LOOKING REALLY GOOD. SPECIFICALLY, TWO OF THE CODE SECTION CHANGES REFER TO MIDDLE HOUSING LAND DIVISIONS AND PARTITIONS. 17.4182E SPECIFICALLY HAS A RESTRICTION ABOUT MIDDLE HOUSING LAND DIVISION LOTS AND PARTITIONS DONE IN THE SAME CALENDAR YEAR. My understanding of middle housing land divisions is outside of cottages and townhomes is you should be able to split them up to four middle housing lots within a parent parcel. Parent parcel is a legally created lot or parcel. so uh and my understanding of that is there shouldn't be a restriction if you do a partition and then you want to do a middle housing land division within a partition lot there shouldn't be any restrictions that calendar year on having one less lot to be able to do that on so that's one recommendation i would have SECONDLY, RELATING TO PARTITIONS 28.0527. RIGHT NOW, THE WAY THAT THE CODE LANGUAGE IS STATED, IT SAYS THAT EVERY MIDDLE HOUSING LAND DIVISION LOT IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A PUBLIC WATER SERVICE. IT'S MY UNDERSTANDING THAT PUBLIC WATER IS NOT A REQUIREMENT FOR THESE MIDDLE HOUSING LAND DIVISIONS. SO, FOR EXAMPLE, IF WE HAD AN OUTLYING LOT WITHIN THE URBAN GROWTH BOUNDARY, WHETHER IT BE CREATED RECENTLY THROUGH A PARTITION OR IT'S AN EXISTING PARCEL, AND IT IS MORE THAN 300 FEET AWAY FROM A PUBLIC WATER MAIN, YOU CAN DO A PARTITION AND YOU CAN USE WELL WATER FOR THAT PARTITION. SO MY UNDERSTANDING READING THROUGH THE LAWS AND THE CODES IS THAT A MIDDLE HOUSING LAND DIVISION SHOULDN'T BE RESTRICTED IN THE SAME FASHION AS A PARTITION LOT TO HAVING TO USE PUBLIC WATER. SO I THINK THAT WELL WATER SHOULD BE ALLOWED IN THOSE CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES. And then finally, 17.4184D discusses whether, when you're doing a middle housing land division, what level of building permits you're supposed to be submitting. And Mayor, if I can have just another minute.

Yeah, you can definitely have.

GO AHEAD. THAT SECTION SAYS SPECIFICALLY THAT FULL BUILDING PLANS OR APPROVED BUILDING PLANS COULD BE SUBMITTED OR A COMPARABLE DON'T HAVE THE LANGUAGE RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME HERE BUT COMPARABLE INFORMATION AND I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT IT WAS CLEAR IN THE DEVELOPMENT CODE THAT COMPARABLE IS NOT A FULL SET OF BUILDING PLANS OR BUILDING PLANS SPECIFICALLY BUT COULD BE MORE OF A PLANNING LEVEL DOCUMENT THAT SAYS HEY THIS IS WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING HERE'S THE BOX THAT WE'RE PROPOSING WHERE THE BUILDING'S GOING TO GO HERE'S THE SETBACKS HERE'S THE UTILITY SERVICES AND THAT THAT WAS GOING TO BE ADEQUATE SO Those were the three points that I had. Again, I think staff and MIG did a really good job integrating all this information into the code. And I would just like to recommend that we make changes to those three particular sections. And happy to take any additional questions if you have them at this time.

Since this is public comment time, we did extend your time because you are representing that task force and we did want this information. I believe the council had purview to get this information from you. So I just have to explain that's why you got extra time in the public comment section. And I'm going to give you the bandwidth if a councillor does have a specific question for you. Victoria.

So would it be fair to say that you would that this, a yes vote with the three modifications, would that be kind of a fair assessment? Just from your, I'm not.

Yeah, as a member of the task force, that would be my recommendation this evening is just with these three section modifications that the rest of the code amendments are appropriate and have definitely received the input I think that they need.

Thank you. Joel.

I was trying to stay up with you.

I know, three minutes is fast.

The third one, what was the number on that?

17.4184D. And that's the one that had to do with what level of building information is submitted with the Middlehouse and Land Division.

Thank you. All right, thank you very much. All right, appreciate it. So I will bring it back, that concludes our public portion comment of this hearing, and I'll bring it back to council for further discussion and or action, but before we do, I know they're gonna ask if a motion is made with the recommendations from the task force, are those three recommendations viable, able to be done out of turn? Be honest, we're trying to make sure we're within procedure here.

Yeah, no, thank you, Mayor. If I could just ask Matt, he was looking into the first item that Justin brought up and its relevance in the Oregon administrative rules. Matt, are you able to answer that or not?

I am. Yeah, I did look at that. And that language that Justin cited that comes directly from the statute, the enabling statute. And so that's one that I don't think the city really has much flexibility to alter because it is required by statute. I can't say that I know why, like what the legislative intent was with sort of that limitation of partitioning something into not more than three parcels if it's been, if the original partition was in the same calendar year. I think it's, I just don't know, you know. And it doesn't mean that, and it really is specific to something that was done in that same calendar year. So I think that's how I, that's one thing I would say it's kind of a qualifying thing. But it's directly from statute. And so in my opinion, I don't think you have much really a way to change that one. And then I can sort of generally speak to the other ones if you'd like me to. Brad, do you want me to do that or do you want to take the other two?

I think you can go ahead.

Okay, I'll go ahead. So the second one that had to do with the requirement for public water, I think that's a really good point. And I think I would agree that That's not something that's in the statute. There are requirements around having how the resulting lots from the Middle Housing Land Division are served. And again, that's something we had a lot of discussion with Public Works and the engineer about. But we didn't really contemplate that situation that Mr. Gerlitz described. I personally think it might be worth just a quick check-in to make sure they think that makes sense if you were wanting to hold off on a vote tonight, because I don't have a good answer to that question. And then kind of the last item that relates to information associated with what's being proposed. So for, I guess, good or ill, the state requirements do say that if you're coming in with the Middle Housing Land Division, you do actually need to provide specific information about what you're proposing to build on these properties. And it's not enough just to say what the envelope is, but it basically says you have to show that what you're proposing to build will meet building code requirements. And so that's why that language is in there. It basically says, If you're going to be able to do that, you're going to have to either provide building permits or building permit applications or other information that shows you're going to be able to meet the state building code requirements. So that's why that's there. It's, again, implementing one of the state requirements. It doesn't mean you have to go through the building permit review process at the same time. You know, you could hold off and do that afterwards, but you still have to show that, you know, you are going to be able to build something that's going to meet the state building code or the local and state building code requirements. So that's why that's there. So I'm not sure that one. that there's a lot of leeway to make changes there. We might be able to use some different wording there. I don't know exactly what that would be, so we could change the wording. But I think it needs to be something fairly similar to what's in there to be consistent with the state requirements. So hopefully that's helpful. I think those are all really good points. But that's my reading of the legislation and the statutes.

Thank you for your input, Brad.

Yeah, cognizant of the fact that you have more items on your agenda tonight and that we are not under any statutory obligation to adopt this by a certain date. One suggestion would be that given these two items that Justin just brought up and the fact that public works and fire are also involved and need to talk about this, that we just continue so that we can get staff together, get the task force together, talk with MIG, and bring back to you some resolved language. Because you could wordsmith this for quite a while tonight.

THAT SOUNDS GREAT. SO WITH THAT, THE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND THE COMMENTS FROM BRAD, I WOULD BRING IT BACK TO COUNCIL ADVISING, I BELIEVE BRAD, STAFF IS RECOMMENDING THAT MAYBE WE TABLE THIS FOR THE NIGHT AND HAVE THEM DO SOME WARD-SMITHING. SO I WOULD, UNLESS COUNCIL WANTS TO FURTHER DISCUSS THIS, WE CAN, BUT I WOULD BRING IT BACK TO COUNCIL FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION AND OR ACTION. ROB?

I'd like to make a motion to table this tonight until staff has a chance to go over Justin's recommendations.

It looks like we got a second from Rick. So we have a motion on the dais to allow this to be punted back into staff's hands for further wordsmithing and bring this hearing back at a date certain. Any further discussion? All right. We'll go into a vote. Rob? Yes. Joel? Yes. Rick? Yes. Eric? Yes. Kathleen?

Yes.

Victoria?

Yes.

All right. Motion to table has been passed. Brad, do you have full understanding of what's been asked?

We do. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right, we will proceed forward with next item on the agenda, Council Action 2A, Ordinance Adopting Grants Past Municipal Code, Chapter 6.48, Civil Exclusion and Declaring an Emergency. Stephanie.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Backed before you as requested, I think just over two weeks ago, regarding a downtown exclusion zone ordinance. This ordinance would adopt a brand new chapter, chapter 6.48 on civil exclusion, and it would declare it as an emergency, which would mean it could take immediate effect upon signing. It would support council's goal of public safety by amending the city's laws to address emerging issues and increase accountability of offenders. So as noted a couple of weeks ago, council requested that we fast track this exclusion zone ordinance for the downtown area. An exclusion zone protects the public health, safety, and welfare by excluding individuals who commit crimes or violations within that zone. And then once they are issued an exclusion order, if they go back into that zone, they can then be arrested and charged with trespass if they're found there. So that's the basics on how an exclusion zone works. The proposed zone area before you tonight It would be from A Street on the north to the river on the south and 4th Street to 9th Street. We originally looked at the, I'm drawing a blank on what it's called, the commercial business district as it, but it's got a lot of odd lines on it. It goes much further north. It didn't really seem to encompass the areas that I know we've talked about before. We thought this streamlined it a little bit, and so that's what's being presented. We can't always modify those boundaries if you wish. So what the ordinance before you has is section 6.48.010, which would establish that civil exclusion zone. It would define the downtown zone. There's a lot of words that defines what's shown on that map. And the map would be attached as an exhibit to this ordinance so that there's the clear visual instead of trying to figure out based on the language. But essentially it goes from the right-of-way on the outside of those streets. So the furthest away right-of-way towards the inside is what's included. And it would give the chief of police or their designee the authority to issue exclusions. Qualifying offenses, and this primarily I looked at Medford and Ashland for guidance. Theirs seem to be fairly well established. They've been successful with their exclusion zones. For qualifying offenses, Medford and Ashland approach it very differently. Medford has a page and a half long list of very specific statutes and municipal code sections that can trigger an exclusion. Ashland has something more like this. I think actually some of this language was taken from Ashlands directly. It's a lot more simple and straightforward and I think it's more easy to enforce. So that's what's proposed for you here. Essentially a person charged with a felony or a misdemeanor level person charged within that downtown zone can also then be excluded. And if you have two or more non-person misdemeanors or code violations, you could be subject to an exclusion. Two exceptions to this, you could not be issued an exclusion order for sleeping on sidewalks, streets, alleys or within doorways or utilization of city park space. And I know that seems a little bit counterintuitive. Medford and Ashland both have this provision or a comparable provision in their codes. One thing to keep in mind with the ordinance revisions that we did a couple of weeks ago, we did include that if you're sleeping and refuse to move, you can be cited for trespass. So there's still provisions in there to make sure that those laws are enforceable. Another thing on this is that for those two misdemeanors or violations that are required, they cannot happen at the same time. So just because your conduct, you know, you might litter and commit property damage at the same time, that's not two violations that can trigger an exclusion. They have to be separate courses of conduct. They can't be part of the same call or incident. It has to be two different contacts with law enforcement. You also cannot be excluded for exercising your free speech or other constitutional rights. That doesn't mean that if you're exercising your free speech and constitutional rights and you do something that's not protected, you can't be excluded for that unprotected activity, but you can't, just your constitutional rights cannot result in exclusion. Under 6.48.030, this is the kind of guidance on how to do an exclusion order. It is issued in writing to an individual, and it has to make clear what the area of exclusion is, which we now already have the definition, so we'd be able to easily provide that. What the length of exclusion is, this language I took straight from what we're doing with the parks exclusions. Your first violation within a year is 30 days Your second within a year is 90 days and your third would be six months. So making those consistent. We did not look at putting these ordinances in with the parks exclusions because the parks exclusions are limited only to parks. They're in the chapter for parks. And so we wanted to make sure that it's clear that this is not about parks. This is about protecting the downtown. When we do the code overhaul that I told you was coming when we talked about municipal court, That code overhaul is going to include probably consolidating those two sections, but for now we're just trying to make sure that they stay consistent. It would also, the exclusion order would also note any exceptions to the exclusion, and we'll talk about some of those with a different section here, as well as indicate what the offense committed was. So that it's all contained on one document so that if there's an appeal we have all that information. Which leads us to section 6.48.040. This is regarding appeals and variances. Once issued an exclusion order, an individual would have a right to a hearing if they request one and have the hearings officer determine whether that exclusion should be dismissed, whether the length of that exclusion should be reduced, or whether a variance to that exclusion should be issued. It has to be made in writing within five days of the order. This is slightly different than what we do with parks. With parks, we do two days because it's a lot easier to get here filed that exclusion because all of our parks exclusions come from across the street. And so it's been much easier to deal with the two days. With the downtown we were thinking that a five-day appeal period would be a little bit more reasonable. It would include that the hearing would have to be held within 10 days of the request, although it could be rescheduled out up to five days past that if that was reasonable. And the order would remain in effect until the hearings officer made their decision. So it doesn't go away just because you file an appeal. Just like any other protective order, you would see the protective orders in place until a judge decides that it needs to go away. And the burden would be on the city to prove the validity of the exclusion. And the validity of the exclusion would be that it was issued pursuant to the ordinance and for one of the reasons that's indicated in 6.48.020. A variance would be able to be granted by the hearings officer if there was a reason why there had to be some very specific need to go into that zone. So there would have to be a legitimate compelling need to engage in non-criminal activity in the exclusion area. If the person resides in the exclusion area, they should probably have a variance to be able to go home. If they had a specific or compelling need to obtain essential goods or services that they couldn't get outside of the exclusion zone reasonably or the typical catch-all of or in the interest of justice, public safety, or public welfare. And that would be up to the hearings officer to determine whether or not one of those variances should be issued. If so, it would be issued in writing and it would have to be very specific about what the exception is to the exclusion. The next piece of the ordinance is 6.48.050, which addresses violations of an exclusion order. And again, almost all of this language is taken from Medford, Ashland, or both, or kind of a combination of the two. Violation of the exclusion order would constitute trespass. An individual could be arrested at that point if they are found in an exclusion zone with an exclusion order in place. However, it is not considered a violation if they're in the area in order to file an appeal to the exclusion order. As you know, City Hall is within the downtown area based on that map. So being able to come to City Hall to file that written appeal, they would be able to do that. If they needed to go to the courthouse to address criminal charges, they'd be able to do that. attend court hearings, meet with criminal justice personnel. Um, the community corrections is within that downtown zone, um, attending religious services. We do have at least more than one, at least one, more than one within that downtown area to perform official government business or attend public meetings or to actively obtain services not otherwise available outside the area. Um, if they are employed downtown, there should probably be an exception for that or at least a variance. And if they're actively traveling through the area using a necessary street or highway. So if they're traveling down 6th or 7th, they should be allowed to do that. They're just not allowed to stop and window shop and linger and things like that. So there are some, a number of exclusions that would apply that keep it reasonable, but also hopefully protect the public safety. The final section is 6.48.060, which would be revocation of an exclusion order. The city would be able to revoke an exclusion order if the underlying charge resulted in acquittal or a dismissal for lack of probable cause. This is consistent with what we did with the parks exclusions as well. It's not any dismissal because as we know, as we've talked about with the municipal court discussions, a number of cases do get dismissed for lack of resources. That does not mean lack of probable cause. So a lack of resources dismissal would not necessarily trigger the revocation of the exclusion order. It would have to be the DA or the court saying there's not enough facts here to prove this case. If we determine that the exclusion order was issued in error, we would be able to revoke it. If the conditions for exclusion are no longer applicable or if they have demonstrated that they no longer pose a threat to public safety or property. So those are the proposed sections of the new chapter 6.48 for your consideration. Call to action is Council's discretion. It can be tonight or we, if you ask for additional, we can move forward there. There is no cost implication to this. It's essentially just creating a zone that would give officers another tool. Your alternatives tonight are to adopt the ordinance, adopt the ordinance with amendments, not adopt the ordinance. And based on the discussions we've heard, it's recommended that the ordinance be adopted. That'll take questions.

Thank you, Stephanie. I'll bring it back to council. Do you guys have any specific questions? Rob, do you have any questions? No. Joel, do you have any questions? No. Rick, do you have any questions?

Yes. Stephanie on the violation of executive exclusion order. So is there any conflict if performing, well, let's say attending a religious service, if somebody

goes to that church they can still go to that church but if the church has an incident where that person is in violation then that would not apply if they're there for the purpose of attending their religious service that they can absolutely attend that service if they commit another offense while they're there then we they would probably be taken into custody probably issue the trespass for being in there and committing more crimes while in our exclusion zone. Because you can't, committing crimes is not attending a religious service.

So when I'm after, like at the court hearing, if the person has already been cited previously because they disrupted the court hearing and they don't want them there, then this does not give them the right to be there.

With a court hearing, we would not be excluding them because you have to be able to go to court to deal with your matters. Even if the court has held you in contempt, even if the court's had you kicked out previously, at some point you still have to be able to attend your court hearings to deal with your court situations. So whatever the court requires, we're not going to exclude somebody from being able to do what the court needs them to do.

Thank you. Eric, do you have any questions?

Yes, just asking for, like I did last time, you probably, obviously we consulted with law enforcement on a lot of this, on all of this stuff and see if there's any major problems that came up or any concerns, anything like that. That's the question I'm asking.

None that I heard of. I did pass the language. I think a couple of officers were the first ones to look at this. I think even before I sent it to Erin, I wanted to make sure that we had law enforcement's backing on what we were looking at doing.

Thank you.

Kathleen, you have questions?

Yeah. Okay, Stephanie, so if we're not going to address commercial zones right now, how would that be incorporated if it was needed?

Essentially, we can always expand our zone. We can always add additional zones if we needed to. what my understanding of what council was looking for was a downtown business district zone and so when we looked at the commercial district business district that's in the development code i think it is it it seemed a little bit bigger and net more nebulous than what council was looking for so we we brought it down if we ever need to expand it we can do that victoria do you have any questions all right uh any further questions

All right, seeing none, thank you, Stephanie. All right, at this time, we'll open up to public comment. Anybody in the audience want to weigh in on our ordinance that we're proposing? State your name and you got three minutes.

Yeah, Del Aldridge, city resident. I'm late to the party here, and I want to thank the counselors that actually pushed this up. And I think the words were, we're moving all these people, so we really need to move this exclusion zone up. But I look at the map, and I go, my god. I'm nowhere near that. I'm right in the middle of it. We're dealing with it. You guys moved it from, not you guys, the previous counselors had moved it from a disaster at the water plant to downtown, a disaster downtown. We're moving it over there. We're getting some cooperation, but it's not perfect. why don't you add it up a little bit more since you the whole idea of moving this up was moving people and we're out of the zone we're not included we should be included take that thing up to buy mart please that map scared me late to the party please help me keep that place right i'm out there cleaning it every single day three times a day i need to get some clarification i know you're working with my landlord but there's a lot of open questions still i'll shoot them the emails to you guys POTS SHOULDN'T BE SMOKED IN PARKER, BUT IT CAN BE DONE IN OUR PARKING LOT. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT ALL ABOUT? AND THEN THEY GO BACK IN. YOU KNOW, CAR CAMPERS, THEY'RE IN THERE CAMPING EVERY NIGHT. WE GOT BUSHES, WE CAN'T GET THE PARKS DEPARTMENT TO CUT DOWN WHEN THEY'RE DOING DRUGS BEHIND HERE AND I'M PULLING CHEMERIFERNASIA EVERY SINGLE DAY OUT. We can't cut those bushes down. We've cut all our bushes down. We put fences out to keep them. Even though we had the bushes cut, an OD happened right next to the tent planet just a week ago. Please help us help you make this work. Parker's Place is a great idea. Not everybody is, again, for it. Bernie is definitely behind us on Park Watch. Help me get this right. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further public comment in regards to this? Come on up. State your name. You got three minutes. Please stick to topic.

My name is Peggy Hopkins. And I didn't know anything about the exclusion zone until just now. I live right off of 10th Street, so I'm a little concerned. I wish it was another street over, to be honest with you. There's a lot of questions that I have about it. I think in reality it's a good idea because I know business owners that are just having a horrible time with the homeless people downtown. We have housed these people for how long? In the middle of town. We've given them a place to live now for at least what, two years? Right in the smack dab in the middle and now we're gonna tell them you're not allowed here anymore. A lot of these people aren't going to get it, number one, because they have other issues. The other thing is we're talking about trespassing. As an officer of the law, I don't think that's all the way up here on things that we have to deal with. Who's going to keep track of these people who are getting trespassed? I mean, you can't look at somebody and say, he's one of them. He's got a trespass on him. We need to give him a ticket. I mean, are they going to have a badge on? How are you going to keep track of these people? It just doesn't seem like it's feasible. I think it's a great idea to try and somehow take care of downtown. I love it. I'm not sure this is it. I'm not sure it's something that the police want to have to deal with with everything else. And... I don't know. That's just my concern. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further public comment? Come up to the microphone. You've got two minutes. Three, sorry. I've got to get used to that one.

DON'T TELL ME. I HAVE AN OFFICE IN THE EXCLUSION ZONE. I SPEND ALL MY DAYS DOWNTOWN IN IT. AND I COMMEND THE COUNCIL FOR TRYING TO PUSH THIS FORWARD. I COMMEND PUBLIC SAFETY FOR ALL THAT THEY DO EVERY DAY TO HELP DEAL WITH ALL THE PROBLEMS THAT WE'RE ALL EXPERIENCING. WE HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCING FOR A LONG TIME. SO I SUPPORT THIS. I DID HAVE ONE QUESTION OR JUST COMMENT TO STEPHANIE. is I saw, I think, in the slide that trespassing for sleeping in doorways was not included in this process. And I think that's one of my biggest issues that I have. I have people that trespass in my office probably three to five times a week after hours. I have cameras to see them, you know, sound sirens, things like that. But I recommend that repeat trespassers, if it's not included in this exclusion zone, on private property are added to that. So thank you.

Thank you. Any further public comment in regards to this? All right, seeing none, I will bring it back to council for further discussion and or action. You have a potential motion on the screen, further discussion? Rick.

Stephanie, I thought you already commented about that trespass.

There are provisions in the code, in the new revised code that we did a couple of weeks ago that sleeping in doorways, et cetera, you can be moved along, and if you decline to do so, you can be arrested for trespass.

And how does that piggyback in on this so that there's not a conflict?

There's not really a conflict. This ordinance excludes those mostly because that's what Medford and Ashland have in theirs. They did a lot of research into it and thought that it was a little bit risky to the sleeping on property, especially when you're talking public rights away and things like that with the sidewalks, places like that. It was a little bit riskier from their perspective. Um, so that's why they excluded the sleeping provisions from their exclusion zones. Um, if council wishes to test that waters, we can do that. But, um, I left it the way that Bedford and Ashland had done because it is, um, has been tested to some extent.

So what you're saying is one ordinance takes presidents over the other.

No, they, they operate separately, completely separately. All that this is saying is that if you're found sleeping in a doorway, you can't be issued an exclusion order for that. You can still be cited for it, you can still, if you decline to move, you can still be trespassed for it, you just can't also have an exclusion order for it, for that particular offense.

All right, thank you for that clarification. Further discussion or motion? Kathleen?

I just wanted to speak to Mrs. Hopkins here, who has concern over how things are going to be taken care of, and I just want to come back to, the police here that you pretty much, what I've been hearing is that you pretty much know who's who in the community and you know very well how to track people, keep track of who's doing what, especially with multiple cases that do the same behaviors over and over. Could you speak to that?

Yes, thank you, Ms. Hopkins. So yes, we do. Unfortunately, we do know most of the actors within our jurisdiction and there's a lot of communication that takes place. And when we do trespass individuals, those go into our system. And then if we come in contact with them again through the system, it'll tell us that they've been trespassed previously and then we would take action. So hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you. Further discussion and or motion? Victoria?

And if you would, I believe that this is a tool that the police feel would be a positive tool. That's it from up here when we've been going through that. That seems to be what I have heard. Can you just clarify that it's another tool that would be positive for police?

Yes, we support this. We've worked with Stephanie. We've had input and feedback back and forth with her office, so yes.

Any further discussion or motion? Oh.

I had one more. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. That's OK. But you can come back. OK. But my question was it had to do with what Del said is this exclusion zone, can it be extended to go down to Redwood, the beginning of Redwood Highway easily? Or can we add that tonight? Or does that have to be done later?

So I'm not going to speak out of time for you, but currently we're presented an exclusion zone that has been defined. But as Stephanie, I did believe, said that we could entertain other exclusion zones in the future. If you want to parse that out.

Yeah, that was my question to Stephanie. Could this easily tonight with what we're voting on, could it easily be extended down to Redwood Highway? Okay.

would say easily extended tonight no it it would take some crafting that for one reason the streets aren't nice as nicely clear-cut and grid like for another the intention of the business district was the businesses in the downtown area once you cross the river it's harder to they don't kind of keep they're not as connected to that downtown area. It may be something where we should probably be looking at separate districts at a later date as opposed to trying to capture large swaths of the city in one fell swoop tonight. Okay, thank you.

Further discussion and or action? Kathleen and then Joel.

I just wanted to remind everybody that there is a municipal code change that we did a couple of weeks ago that is covering a lot of the behavior and that is going to expedite these exclusions because that's in place, is that correct, Stephanie?

Those new offenses and the way that we've reworded them would primarily be, would trigger exclusions if they happen within the exclusion zone.

Further discussion or action, Joel?

I JUST HAD A QUICK QUESTION. IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY IN OUR PREVIOUS DISCUSSION ON THIS, WE STILL HAVE THE POSSIBILITY IF SOMEBODY VIOLATES THE LAW OF THE EXCLUSION ZONE IN THE PARKS, CORRECT? THAT'S STILL IN PLACE?

YES. THAT'S A TOTALLY SEPARATE SECTION. IT WILL REMAIN AS WE AMENDED IT THE LAST TIME WE DID SOME AMENDMENTS. IT WILL REMAIN AS IS. PARKS ARE A SEPARATE EXCLUSION TYPE.

Yeah, okay. And then if somebody was staying at Parker Place, that would be classified as their home?

That would be, yes.

Yeah, okay. Thank you.

Further discussion or action? Kathleen?

I move to adopt the ordinance adopting Grants Pass Municipal Code Chapter 6.48, Civil Exclusion and Declaring an Emergency and have it read by title only, first reading.

ALL RIGHT, WE HAVE A MOTION ON THE DIAS TO ADOPT THE ORDINANCE AS PRESENTED FOR FIRST READING. AND A SECOND FROM ERIC. ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? JOEL?

I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW THAT THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SUPPORTS THIS AND SO DOES THE COMMISSION, THE HISTORIC COMMISSION FOR DOWNTOWN. SO IT'S GOT A LOT OF SUPPORT FROM THOSE TWO COMMITTEES.

Thank you. We have a motion on the table to adopt the ordinance for first reading. Any further discussion before we go into a vote? All right, seeing none, Kathleen, how do you vote? Yes. Eric? Yes. Rick? Yes. Joel? Yes. Rob?

Yes.

Victoria?

Yes.

All right, ordinance adoption passes for first reading. an ordinance of the Council of the City of Grants Pass adopting Grants Pass Municipal Code Chapter 6.48, Civil Exclusion and Declaring an Emergency.

Thank you. I'll bring it back to Council for further discussion or action. We'll be looking for a second reading. Rick?

I'd like to move to adopt the ordinance adopting Grants Pass Municipal Code Chapter 6.48, Civil Exclusion and Declaring Emergency.

Have it read by title only. Second reading. All right. We have a motion on the dais to adopt the ordinance and declare an emergency for a second reading with a second from Eric. Any further discussion? All right. We'll go into a second vote. Rick? Yes. Joel? Yes. Rob? Yes. Victoria? Yes. Kathleen. Yes.

Eric. Yes. All right. Passes for second reading. An ordinance of the Council of the City of Grants Pass adopting Grants Pass Municipal Code Chapter 6.48, civil exclusion and declaring an emergency.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is a resolution supporting modification or repeal of Senate Bill 48, 2021 to enhance public safety. We'll hand it over to Erin for a slight presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. I'm just introducing the subject matter for your consideration of today's resolution supporting modifications or repeal of Senate Bill 48 to enhance public safety. This does support our goal of public safety by supporting stronger public safety measures, protecting residents and victims and restoring accountability in the criminal justice system. So just some general background, Senate Bill 48 passed in 2021. It aims to create a more consistent and fair pretrial release system in Oregon. The bill makes some changes, directs the Chief Justice to establish guidelines to consider both types of crimes charged and individual factors related to the defendant, promoting a risk-based approach to pretrial decisions. There have been some expressed concerns with regards to Senate Bill 48. Some of those issues that came up was some public safety risks, citing examples where individuals Accused of serious crimes were released quickly under pretrial guidelines that have now been established. Concerns that rapid release could increase victim intimidation, witness concerns, or the likelihood of reoffending while awaiting trial. And law enforcement leaders have noted operational challenges in balancing immediate release decisions with thorough safety assessments. So policy options. It was discussed in 2026 with Initiative Petition 2026050. The Oregon Crime-Finding Act, sponsored by Chief Petitioner Kevin Mannix, seeks to require that persons charged with felonies and Class A misdemeanors be held until arraignment for judicial review and empower cities and counties to enact local ordinances addressing crimes, including public use of federally illegal drugs, and shift certain pretrial incarceration costs to the state as one of the pushes. Council's expressed interest to make a statement in repeal or reform of Senate Bill 48. That resolution is in your packet in front of you. And there's a potential motion.

Thank you. Bring it back to council. Do you have any specific questions for Aaron in regards to this resolution to support the repeal or reform of SB 48? Joel, questions?

I just had one quick question, and it's probably for Stephanie, though you may know the answer, Erin. So do they still have the flexibility if the accused does not pose a flight risk and does not pose a hazard to the public or themselves or their family? Do they still have that flexibility?

I don't know the answer to that. I don't know anything about what's being proposed for the modifications.

Okay.

YEAH, AND JUST TO CLARIFY OUR RESOLUTION IS JUST TO SHOW THE CITY OF GRANTS PASSES SUPPORT IN REFERENCE TO THE CITY COUNCIL IN SUPPORTING SOME KIND OF MODIFICATION OR REPEAL OF THIS BILL. IT'S NOT TO GET INTO THE WEEDS OF IT.

ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS?

Thank you, Aaron. Bring it to public comment. At this time, we'll open up the microphone to any public comment in regards to this resolution. Come on up and state your name, and you have three minutes. Geez, I've got to get that one right.

Three minutes.

I know.

Patrick Rooney, Josephine County. I thought that you guys had already voted to... to go for approval, change it, or repeal it, but perhaps I'm wrong here. But in any case, it was a seven-to-one vote except for Councillor Pell, who wasn't quite sure about it. That would be great. I obviously want you guys to, I think it would be fantastic if you guys did do that. I do want to point out that Representative Mannix was trying to get signatures for this, and the due date for that is today. or tomorrow at the latest, I think it was today, they're not gonna get the signatures, so they're not going to be able to have this on the ballot for people to vote on in November or whenever it's gonna be. So this is gonna fall to, we have to take the next step here. The next step I think would be legislation at the state level, and it would be, I think, fantastic for everyone to get behind that. I don't know a reason, honestly, why any all of us want less crime we want people that we're just talking about exclusion zones here the exclusion zones don't mean anything or parker's place as much work has been done to do parker's place and i really commend bernie and for all the people that are working on that but realistically if you're going to have a mess at the bottom of town here unless people are If they're arrested, the police are arresting them, doing their job, but if they're arrested and they're just catch and release, they're right out on the street. I read in the Courier almost every day, it's incredible how many times people are being arrested and let back on the street. We're going to have a mess here unless we stop this and close whatever the loopholes are, whatever it is. So I would think everybody, I don't know why anybody who loves this city would be against doing something about SB 48, either a repeal or somehow fixing it. And I would think that if we could get We've got the council behind it, hopefully the mayor as well. I haven't heard you weigh in on it. I hope you would. I don't think the police can weigh in on it. The chief, because he's an appointed position, he's not in an elected position. But if we can get as many people statewide behind this who are representatives, also the business community, we have the chamber. The head of the chamber is for this. If we could get chambers around the state to be for this, we can get the public involved, the media, or at least the citizen media involved, and we can really push this and we can close all these loopholes and have the safe city and state that we all want. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Any further public comment?

I'm sorry. My wife made me promise not to talk to you guys ever again. And I did it once. I should have said that the first time. This catch and release thing, we had somebody show up at a restaurant, whacked out of his mind, laid instruments all over the place, argued with not only our 17-year-old girl on a Sunday morning, which we were watching on camera, and then started arguing with the restaurant next door and customers. Cop showed up within 10 minutes, thank you very much, arrested him. DA sent us a letter, because there was no harm, we're gonna let him out. When I looked at his record, he had been in and out of jail, or excuse me, arrested at least seven times in the last five months. I'm sure he's back. And then the report they sent me had everything except for the probation violation on his record. All the other ones were just being trespassed, trespassed, trespassed, violence, meth in his hand, drugs. We've got to stop this, and this is great. I just wanted to add that couple comments. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Any further public comment?

The reason that so many people get released is because they don't have the money. They don't have enough help in the DA's office. They don't have enough money to hold them in jail. There are rules about how many prisoners there can be, you know, supervised by a single guard, for instance. And, you know, you can go ahead and pass the resolution, but it probably won't change anything.

Thank you. Thank you. Any further public comment in regards to this? All right, seeing none, I will bring it back to council for further discussion or action. Victoria.

Yes, because it's an important step for elected bodies to step up and make a statement that this SB 48 must be modified or repealed. I move to approve the resolution for the modification or repeal of Senate Bill 48 to enhance public safety.

All right, I have a motion on the dais to approve the resolution with a second from Rick. Any further discussion? All right, before we go into a roll call vote, I want to bring your attention to the resolution. As it is stated within the resolution that the city manager and the city attorney are directed to transmit copies of this resolution to the Oregon governor, members of Oregon Legislative, representing Justin County, and the chief petitioner of the initiative petition 26050. Any further discussion? Eric.

I think a lot of good points have been brought up by the public. I think the public is tired of everything that's happened here as a result of SB 48. There's just so much evidence out there of repeated offenses. And this law is not helping that. It is, in fact, encouraging it. And it's demotivating the police force. It's demotivating the public. I think this is an excellent opportunity for us to show our disgust with Senate Bill 48. I think this is the least that we can do as a public body. That's all I have. Thank you.

Any further discussion before we go into a vote? All right. Victoria, how do you vote? Yes. Rob, how do you vote? Yes. Joel, how do you vote? Yes. Rick? Yes. Eric?

Absolutely yes.

Kathleen? Yes. All right. Resolution passes. Thank you very much. All right. Next on the agenda tonight is appointments. So we have an appointment for the Historical Building and Sites Commission for one member. And I believe that member is Ward Warren. So I would be looking to council if you want to discuss this to go into discussion. If not, I would be looking for a motion to appoint Ward Warren to the Historical Buildings and Sites Commission.

Rick? I'd like to make a motion to reappoint Ward Warren to the commission. This evening.

Is there a second? Second from Rob. Any further discussion? All right. Seeing none, I'll go into a vote. Rick? Yes. Eric?

Yes.

Kathleen? Yes. Victoria? Yes. Rob?

Yes.

Joel? Yes. All right. Ward 1 has been reappointed to the Historical Buildings and Sites Commission. Next on our agenda, we come into general public comment portion of the night. This is an opportunity for the public to address the city council on items not related to a public hearing or council action item for the council. The intent is to provide information that is pertinent to the city's jurisdiction. Each speaker will be given two, not two, three minutes to address the city council as one body, not two individuals. At the conclusion of general public comment, council will have the opportunity to respond. This meeting will proceed in an effective and courteous manner. Citizens and council members will be allowed to state their positions in an atmosphere free from slander, threats, and other personal attacks, signs or placards, outbursts of applause, campaigning for public office, or other disruptive behavior will not be tolerated. If you have a question regarding any government provided services or a current city policy, please contact the city manager's office in an attempt to resolve the matter. Okay, so I have a few blue cards here and Justin, I put them at the top because I think he already spoke. So do we still have an online participant? No, thank you. Or, thank you, but he's not there, sorry. I wasn't trying to be rude. Luke Matthew? Luke Matthew? Come on, Luke, please restate your name to the microphone and you have three minutes.

Hi, my name is Luke Matthew and I lived here for all my life. I went to Hidden Valley High School. I love this town. This town's my home. I did want to bring up something about a contract that was approved. I don't know how long. It's pretty new, but it's about the flock cameras that are around. So flock cameras across our city and the Rogue Valley, to be exact, 15 in Grants Pass, 92 from Cave Junction to Ashland. So flock safety is a license plate reading company. This isn't only what they do. LPR, or license plate reading, use an AI model to also identify people, vehicles, animals and bikes, enabling searches using languages such as white sports car with a racing stripe or red pickup truck with a dog in the bed. This is much more than license plate reading. Their patent for object-based query of video content captured by a dynamic surveillance network under 507B in their patent is configured to identify different classes of people such as male, female, race, height, weight, or clothing. This is something their cameras can pick up, their video cameras. They're not just taking pictures. So what seems harmless today will be incriminating tomorrow. They also are selling Flock Nova, titled Search Once, See Everything. That's used on citizens without a warrant. They say their LPR are used only to identify vehicles, which is false. In early 2025, the company stated these LPR cameras will be turned into video cameras. These cameras are funded by our tax dollars or grants. Grants bypass the need for the city to hold a public meeting to vote on whether or not to allot money to and to install these cameras. I believe these cameras are an invasion of our privacy and unconstitutional. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Rekha Brown.

Rika Brown, Grants Pass. The best fire insurance is a green yard and misters. At our last meeting, a counselor asked me how I liked my water bill. I said it's good. But that answer was incomplete. I like using our water for any beneficial use, but I don't like the cost our city and most other cities place on such use. The best insurance against wildfire is a green yard, and that doesn't mean plastic grass. When Paradise burned, the McDonald's burned, but their signs surrounded by real green grass did not burn. In Santa Rosa, huge subdivisions burned for lack of defensible space, but young trees and grass across the sidewalk did not. Just outside Grants Pass, about a decade ago, a large pine tree burned in an unwatered yard. Their vehicle also burned, followed by the neighbor's fence. But that is where it stopped, as the adjacent yard had six inch tall fescue, which stopped the flames from reaching the house. Fine fescue goes dormant for lack of water readily and cannot be revived until fall. Tall fescue grows roots 18 inches deep. When not watered, it slowly loses outer leaves until only the innermost leaves survive. It does not go dormant. Water is the death of fire. Any plant with water flowing through it is safe from wildfire, particularly with other watered plants around it. surprisingly cheap to use, even at our present high unit rates, which are made to make poor and lower middle class people not use as much water as they need, while wealthier and more determined gardeners use what they need regardless of price. Rock doesn't stop a gravity wind driven fire. Blowing embers cross everything except watered plants, sprinkler water, and mister vapor. Everyone should be able to water their yards at a price that pays for the true unit cost of cleaned water. Normal cost accounting for utilities puts all their infrastructure, employees, and office costs in base rates to pay overhead. Costs that are steady over the months of the year, while unit costs rise and fall with production.

sewer is base rate only because its volume cannot be directly measured thank you thank you all right i had next up uh patrick rooney but i think he already spoke and he's not here anymore so lastly we got holly christensen

Holly Christensen, Grants Pass. I'm here to voice my concerns to the public about the press release that was given to the public from the city about the Beacon Hill Park survey slash project. I've been working very hard to spread the word that the survey is available. It is very frustrating that several people over the last week have contacted me saying that they feel like like we have already lost the battle due to the press release that was given. They believe the decision has already been made. I want the public to know that we still have till July 12th to do the survey and voice our opinion about not wanting a park at that location. The survey isn't just about features people are wanting at the park. It is also to let the council know if people support a park, period. Question number seven on the survey, do you support developing a public park in this location? This park is being advertised as a wonderful, beautiful place, which I truly wish it could be. But because I live here and I'm paying attention, I know that that park will eventually be just another resting area for the homeless. Since some of the resting sites have already been closed lately, we are starting to have more movement from the homeless in that neighborhood. We do not want to give them more reasons to be up in the northeast part of town. Also, I wanted to bring up another point. As Seth mentioned at the last meeting, Our public restrooms are becoming a big problem. We have people pass out with needles in their arm. If we add another public restroom up at the park, you think we won't have the same problems up there? There were a couple of you on the council that even said you would never use any of our public restrooms. If we won't use our current public restrooms, we probably shouldn't spend more of our tax dollars building more. The last thing I have to say is every problem that this gentleman mentioned that he is experiencing will be exactly what our neighborhood and that park will be experiencing. We have a problem and I understand we're trying to work hard to fix it. And like I said, the last time I spoke on this subject, I am not anti-park. I am totally here for it. But the bottom line is we have such a problem with what we're dealing with. We do not need to add more to it. I love Grants Pass. I absolutely love the Northeast part of town. I was born and raised there and I still live there by myself, not with my parents, which was mentioned at a parks committee meeting, which I found very awkward of a comment that was said. but all I'm doing is trying to do my part, and I hope that everybody realizes that we need to get our parks figured out before we spend the money that we do not have to build another one. Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes our general portion of the night, general public comment, and we'll move on to consent agenda. I have a request from a councilor to star item number eight, and the request came from Rick. What do you wanna do?

number a is to approve four vehicles for the police department and i would like some consideration if one of those four vehicles could be a hybrid electric or full electric vehicle to start introducing the transition to more efficient vehicles statistics show that you can save up to ten thousand dollars a year over a five-year lifespan of that vehicle and it so the advantage is not only of the vehicle itself would be the cost savings. I would like to know if the rest of the council would be supportive of that idea. Thank you.

So Rick has posed a question in regard to consent agenda item A to the council. Victoria?

I would think it would matter what the vehicle, if it's a cruiser, I mean what type of vehicle are we talking about because So I would need to know what the purpose of that vehicle being used for the police would be before I would be interested in that.

Yes, it would be a police cruiser, although it could be used by the K-9 people. But basically it would help introduce an alternative method of providing a response and also cutting back on the cost to the city.

i'm gonna question back to city manager aaron does staff have the bandwidth to discuss this in more detail or should we take another course of action with this item it's our recommendation that we continue with the request that's in the packet for four vehicles as stated these are patrol vehicles they're heavily used patrol vehicles electric vehicles and bringing those in is something that we're always considering along with different makes and models of cars to see what best fits the department and our needs and the community's needs. I don't think at this point we're in any situation to be able to provide a cost benefit analysis of an electric vehicle versus the requested patrol vehicles here. Jason may have some additional information and we'd be more than happy to provide that

I think there's also a... We did manage to get allocated four, which is why we really need to get this purchase order in on time. As you recall, two years ago, we came to you with an order for six Tahos, and we only received three of those. The market's kind of stabilized a little bit better, but that's real important. The other thing that's real important about this, there are newer EVT PPV, which is, remember, is... Police Pursuit Vehicles. Mayor, I've got your tongue tied earlier in the meeting. But they are very new on the market yet. And I know that we do not want to be an early adopter of this technology. We would like to see that settle in, see how other agencies are using those vehicles, and then kind of come along behind. We do have a long range plan for conversion of the fleet to electric vehicles. But it is not starting with the police pursuit vehicles. We would like to leave those as gasoline. And Justin could probably speak to it a lot better than I can.

Yes, thank you. The other thing we need to think about is obviously police vehicles or police officers, they get a lot of wear and tear, to include the daily driver, and they run 24 hours a day. So we talk about public safety and response time, and that might start to be dwindling if we have to continue to charge these and not be able to go with a gasoline-type vehicle.

Okay, so with those comments, Do you have any more questions or concerns, Rick?

I guess I would like to hear from the rest of council if they would be supportive of that consideration for one vehicle. Kathleen?

I, for one, would not be in support of it. I think that what Jason brings up is a valid point, and I think we should proceed as the recommendation.

Any further discussion, Eric?

It's a valid concern that law enforcement brings up. Obviously, they need the vehicle 24-7, and to sit there and have it charged for X amount of time would be kind of unrealistic, to say the least, when you could just gas up a vehicle. The vehicle's going 24-7, as it was stated. So I don't know if it's a good idea. Well, I know it's not a good idea at this point with the current technology. but so I don't think it's a good idea.

So I would have a question in regards to charging in regards to fueling, as a government vehicle, as a police vehicle, wouldn't we have to have an independent charger on site to charge that? So that would be an additional expense because we don't have current chargers at this moment in time. So you wouldn't be just buying an EV, you would be actually installing and purchasing a charging station as well as maybe even upgrading the grid to get it to there.

So all of the above is true. We actually already have studies in place to show how to roll this out at all of our facilities, public safety station being one of them that was studied. I did run some brief numbers while I was sitting here. The overall plan calls for four level two chargers there. They're not calling for fast chargers, although in the future, if we are going to go truly to patrol EVT, we would likely want to install fast chargers, which would raise these costs even more. But to kind of cut that in half, we would be at about $30,000 to install two level two chargers there. Because we have to add new services, we have to add new electrical wiring plus two chargers. And there's a certain amount of those costs that are sunk costs. We have to do all the engineering up front, right, for the complete system. and then install the electrical service for all of them up front, even though you may only be adding two chargers initially or even a single. So that's why I say there is an additional charge that would have to come with that.

Then there's also the unknown until you actually do the design of putting it in there if the actual grid in that current location would have the capability without having to upgrade the grid.

that was actually part of the studies that were already done so because we did look at this we have four studies completed one for the municipal building here the police station and two of the fire stations as well as the parks main offices okay so that was and that included the grid plus any electrical system upgrades so we have looked into this in quite a bit of detail okay perfect i'm bringing it back to you rick

HOW DO YOU FEEL? I CAN DO A THUMBS UP TO THE COUNCIL IF THEY WANT TO CONTINUE TO ENTERTAIN THIS.

GO AHEAD, AARON.

YOU KNOW, STAFF GREATLY APPRECIATES COUNCILOR REICHER'S COMMENTS AND DESIRE TO MOVE FORWARD, AND WE ALSO WANT TO. WE THINK PROBABLY THE APPLICATION OF A PATROL VEHICLE IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE ONE OF THE LAST TRANSITIONS IN OUR EV EXPERIENCE. WE COULD BE LOOKING AT LIKE MAYBE A CSO VEHICLE. WE CAN BE LOOKING AT A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT PARKS MAINTENANCE AND OR ADMINISTRATIVE carpool vehicles, et cetera, that would make more sense. Building inspector vehicles, that would be EV. So I think we are starting down that road, but we wouldn't want to start down that road immediately with a patrol vehicle. So in the future, you will likely start to see transition from gas, but this probably is not the best application at this time.

Rick? So there are various police forces in the United States that have already converted or they have electric vehicles. I don't have the information to say how successful it's been or not successful, but I guess I would like to float the idea that when we look at vehicles in the future, we would check out the information to see how close we are to moving forward. Thank you. Okay. Kathleen?

Did we take letter C off of the consent agenda? Because we're still grappling with that one.

Motion to approve development code text amendment.

It's the findings of fact. It's the findings of fact. Yeah, we'll have to review that.

It's not the actual ordinance change. It's all the information that they gathered to present to that. So it's called findings of fact.

Yes, sir. Chief. If you wouldn't mind, Mayor, I'd like to comment a little bit about this. As a package from an EV standpoint, there's plenty of studies out there in terms of the fire departments right now, too, from the risk of it as well because they're actually putting diesel motors in the fire trucks because they have to be able to pump on scene for at least eight hours and the electric can't keep up. But on the police side, too, from a performance standpoint, with our weather swings here and where you have cold days and extremely hot days, I like EV, I like it, I'm not against it, but we have to think about this as a whole package. On a really extreme day, you're going to lose your performance in heat or your car won't even work, which we experienced not too long ago here in the state of Oregon where vehicles, and I know manufacturers, but vehicles were not working in certain cold days or their batteries were severely deficient on really hot days. So it would make it, from a public safety standpoint, it would really, really... make it difficult for us to maintain the level of service that we currently have if we move to that now, but based on the technology. And there's also a risk too that the batteries in them, the way that they are, as we saw with the local bus fire here, those vehicles are used and we're in certain situations where there is contact made with things. And when those contacts made, there's a risk that that battery, that lithium ion battery will self oxidize and catch on fire which puts a greater risk public safety as the for our employees as well as The interdiction and everything that we're doing and and or when we go just outside of the city to respond in our wui area That creates the infrastructure is not there and we may have to maintain that scene for a long time for evacuations for fires for Criminal process and stuff. So I wanted to just put that out there as a whole we're not there yet for technology and safety and

Any further comments in regards to this? Victoria.

It is in regards to this, but it's back to C. And C on the consent agenda reads, motion approving the development code text amendment article 2, 3, 12, 17, 27, and 28. So it is on the consent agenda to approve it, and we need more information on it. So I would like to... just remove item C from the consent agenda.

You need to read the text in full. The very end of it, it says findings of fact.

Well, but...

So you're not, this is not approving the ordinance resolution, this is approving the findings of facts only.

Approving the presentation tonight that was given us.

The information in the presentation only.

But... Is there a particular reason why we need to do that? Brad, go ahead.

Mr. Mayor, yeah, I think that the counselor is actually correct because the way that the findings are drafted, it has the language in those three items that Justin Gerlitz brought up. And so if we adopt the findings and we're adopting that language, and the motion was to postpone, so we're going to come back to you. So we'll bring back both the findings that reflect the new language as well as the new ordinance.

So if you approve the findings of facts for the previous one tonight, then you're gonna have to reprove the findings of facts of the new. Okay, I see the redundancy in that. So we'll basically just remove that from the consent agenda. All right. Are we done with item A? Rick, are you satisfied?

Yes.

Thank you. I would be looking back to the council for... Somebody to read the consent agenda. Eric, would you like to read the consent agenda tonight?

Well, if I'm being voluntold, sure.

Voluntold.

You can exclude C. Excluding C. Okay. Resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement for the purchase and upfitting of four vehicles for the police department, pages 289 to 350. B, RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO ENTER INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH THE WOMAN'S CRISIS SUPPORT TEAM, PAGES 351 TO 356. D, MOTION APPROVING THE MINUTES OF THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING OF JUNE 17, 2026, PAGES 363 TO 366. Motion, acknowledging the minutes of the Public Safety Advisory Committee of March 31st, 2026, pages 367 to 368. F, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Public Safety Advisory Committee meeting of May 19th, 2026, pages 369 to 374. G, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Committee on Public Art meeting of May 12th, 2026, pages 375 to 376. H, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Parks Advisory Committee meeting of April 9th, 2026, pages 377 to 378. I, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Parks Advisory Committee meeting of May 14th, 2026, pages 379 to 382. J, motion acknowledging the minutes of the development code review task force meeting of March 19th, 2026, 383 to 386. K, motion acknowledging the minutes of the development code review task force meeting of April 2nd, 2026, 387 to 390. L, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Tourism Advisory Committee meeting of April 7th, 2026, 391 to 394. We got more. M, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Urban Tree Advisory Committee meeting of April 13th, 2026, 395 to 398. N, MOTION ACKNOWLEDGING THE MINUTES OF THE BIKEWAYS AND WALKWAYS COMMITTEE MEETING OF MAY 12, 2026, 399 TO 402. O, MOTION ACKNOWLEDGING THE MINUTES OF THE URBAN AREA PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING OF 403 to 406. P, motion acknowledging the minutes of the Urban Area Planning Commission meeting of May 27th, 2026, 407 to 430. I move to approve the consent agenda.

We have a second from Rick. Thank you. How does council vote? Rob?

Yes.

Joel? Yes. Rick? Yes. Eric? Yes. Kathleen?

Yes.

Victoria?

Yes.

Thank you very much, Eric, too. The consent agenda is approved, excluding item C. Matters for mayor, council, and staff. I'll bring it back to council. Anybody have any discussion points or problems or concerns in regards to life? Rob.

I'd like to go back to that possibility of reviewing a text amendment to looking at the freeway overlay area. Right now we've got, I guess, In-N-Out, we've got IHOP, Applebee's, Best Western, and tonight we had Les Schwab and Dutch Brothers wanting taller signs, and I I'd like to go back to possibly just taking a very close look at reestablishing the freeway overlay zone so that businesses that are along the freeway can all have a fair chance of getting the same tall signs.

Perfect. Thank you, Rob. And that will be so put on the back of our agenda to be discussed to put in. And we'll try to get that in as soon as possible because I know we actually have more development coming up in that area, which would be prudent for us to get that in place. if council desires. Anybody else? Victoria.

Yeah, in the workshop, I asked that we look into nonprofits that are operating in our city. And I want that put back on the agenda. As you know, I sent to Aaron and Stephanie and Mayor, and I actually looked this up. during the workshop and emailed it to you during the workshop. It took me about 10 seconds to find this information that the City of Portland, Bend, Salem, Eugene are all cities that have compiled this for the public and they do it for many different purposes. So I would like to have put back on the agenda. There's no legal reason a city cannot gather this information So I would like to have that put on the, or it could even be a memo just that these be compiled so that they can be distributed to the public. And I'd like to see if there are other counselors who are interested in seeing that happen.

Okay. So I've had a thorough conversation with the city manager and the city attorney in regards to this topic. Two things that I will point out is the examples that you sent. The cities were directly in partnerships with nonprofits, which we are not in a direct partnership with any nonprofit at this moment in time.

Nonprofits are- I'd like to interrupt you, Mayor, that why a city may do these things, how many nonprofits operate in the city, what services they provide. whatever is their duplication of services or gaps, whether the organizations have the capacity to perform the contracts, whether they receive public funding from the city. So it is not just for nonprofits that we are in contract with, which was in an email that I sent to you. I don't understand the resistance to this, so I'm asking that this be given back to us in memo form or put on the back of the agenda to be put into a workshop so that council can talk about the parameters of what they would like to see. And I'd like to see if there are two other councillors that would like to see this happen at least so that we can get this on the back of the agenda.

Okay, as I've stated before, we do not as a city have jurisdiction over the nonprofits. So they are public record. They are established through the state level and or the federal level. So as you stated in your email, there are websites where you can get this in public knowledge. It would be the purvey of the council, which we would have to have a majority vote to actually employ city staff to do this public records finding. So that would be meaning spending our staff's time and our money to actually pull up this public records that are viably available as you stated in your email on GOVERNMENT WEBSITES. IF THE COUNCIL WANTS TO ENTERTAIN THAT, THAT IS FINE. WE WILL GO THROUGH COUNCIL VOTE FOR THAT TO ESTABLISH STAFF.

WE DON'T NEED A VOTE TO PUT SOMETHING ON THE AGENDA. WE NEED THREE COUNCILORS WHO WANT IT.

SO YOU'RE ASKING FOR PERTINENT INFORMATION. SO THE OTHER THING I THINK THAT EXISTS IS WE DON'T WANT TO DUPLICATE INFORMATION THAT'S ALREADY OUT THERE. ALL CARE HAS A LIST OF ALL THE NONPROFITS THAT ARE SERVING PEOPLE. You can. I know as a medical office, we had a patient home under Judy King's, and there's several medical offices here in town that are patient homes. And as part of that, we were paid to have a list of all the nonprofits that can serve the unsheltered people. And so there's several lists that already exist out there. At our workshop, I think we had a list of over 120. So rather than refixing the wheel, I think it's fairly easy just to look at what already exists out there.

Thank you, Rick. I understand. I'm not looking for a simple list. In fact, the city already has it, so I don't understand where all the resistance to this is. But it was other information. And, again, I'm not asking the council to vote on anything. I'm asking for it to be put on the back.

Can you explain more what the workshop would be doing?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to extend our meeting past 9 o'clock.

Motion to extend past 9 o'clock. Yes. Second from Eric. Rob, do you want to extend? Yes. Joel? Yes. Rick? Yes. Eric? Yes. Kathleen? Yes. Victoria? Yes. All right, we will continue past nine o'clock. Victoria, if you want to discuss this in a workshop, I'm not clear on what you want to discuss in the workshop because your email was asking for the city to provide you with very detailed information. So what would you like to have discussed during the workshop so that we can be prepared?

Well, the bullet points, the nonprofits, we already have that, so that's not difficult. what services they provide, whether there are duplications of services or gaps, whether organizations have the capacity to perform contracts, whether they receive public funding from the city, county, state, or federal government, whether multiple nonprofits are working together or competing for the same grants. That's a start.

Aaron, do you have an idea of how long that would take you guys to put together? And then secondly, I have to have Stephanie weigh in. Do we have the purview to get this information or all the information that was requested? Do you feel that that is all within the public records realm? First, Aaron.

Yeah. It will require likely hundreds of hours. It would require quite a bit of work. in order to accomplish and gather all the information that you're requesting based on the nonprofits that we have that serve Grants Pass. And if this was something that you would like to do, Council, we'd be more than happy to do that. If Council tells us to do so, it may come with a recommendation that we hire someone to help us with that process, as we don't really have anyone specific that has the uh maybe expertise the time and availability to to do this in any kind of timely fashion but this would be a heavy haul with regards to the list that council marshall requested stephanie do you feel that the items listed for request are all within public records realm that we could easily obtain some of it is some of it isn't and the the funding sources for a non-profit should be we should be able to assess those

services that they provide. That should be a matter of public record. But whether there's duplication of services or gaps, that actually is going to require evaluation and analysis. That's not just documenting information. That's actually doing comparisons, whether organizations have capacity to perform contracts. It depends on what kind of contracts we're talking about. And it also requires some assessment of what their capabilities are and whether they'd be able to do that that's a lot of staff time involved in that whether non-profits are working together or competing there's no way that i can tell that we would be able to gather that information without them voluntarily telling us that so i think there's there's some things we wouldn't be able to gather some things that would be more of an analysis and some things that would be public record with uh and i also mentioned that

I think Monday and I think I mentioned tonight too that an initial memo would be acceptable too. And just with you could just say like what time it would take or how you would go about getting this information. So if that seems like something that is a better way to start than just a memo that will come back to us about the general information without going into doing the research would be fine as well.

I would look back to council for discussion or the appetite for this.

Okay, Rick. Through AI, a lot of that information can be attained. The thing that concerns me is the complexity of trying to evaluate maybe the validity or the value of a nonprofit, whether they're doing the job or it's duplicating and so forth. I think that would be an impossible task. Basic information, I think, as Joel already said, it's out there. So I hesitate on using staff time to do that. And so that would be my position. Thank you.

Any further discussion? Rob? Yeah, I'm not sure if I understand to what end. How does that benefit our city government to have that information? Without a clear understanding of how that would benefit the business that we're doing, I wouldn't be for it.

So I would just like to begin with a memo about Well, the benefit would be to the citizens. This isn't coming from me. This is coming from citizens who want this information. And it's a great benefit to the citizens to understand where their resources are coming from. And also for, I mean, it's a myriad of benefits that it could benefit but the knowledge base for citizens to be able to understand the scope. As you mentioned, it would take hundreds of hours, you said. So the public understanding the scope of the framework of nonprofits that are working within their city would be of great value to them. because they affect the lives of every citizen. So it's information that people need to have and it's information that people want to have and it's something that kind of has worked in the background when it's publicly funded and it shouldn't be working in the background. It should be something readily available to the citizens. That's the motivation behind it. Again, it did not come from me. It's coming from citizens who want the information. So to answer some questions that I heard just now, that would be some of the benefits. And just the fact that the public wants this information I think is enough reason to do it. So that's what I have to say.

Eric? Is it public knowledge? Yes. Are people going to look it up? Maybe. We're talking about one or two people, but I think if the city has the list and provides the list, then that would make it more visible for the public to be able to see exactly some of the concerns that Victoria and the public are asking for. I don't think that, you know, Rob asked to what end. I don't think we have to do a deep dive, 100-hour research with your monocle and whatever, looking into various things. I think simple things were asked in terms of a list, and then, you know, are there duplicates? If it's going to take longer to do the research on it, then maybe we don't do that specific one, but we give at least what we can in the small amount of time that staff has. So I think the memo is a good first step. I see Rob over there sighing, but I think this is a positive move forward to be able to give the public more knowledge. So that's my standpoint on it.

Joel? So a simple Google, there's 500 to 630 nonprofits and 501 organizations in the Grants Pass metro area. There's duplicate services. There's 92 churches. There's 12 mental health organizations. There's 12 youth development organizations. There's 18 foundations in grant making. There's 13 botanical, horticultural, and conservation organizations. Critical service providers like Options for Southern Oregon, Grants Pass, Habitat for Humanity, and the Oregon Law Center. You can explore the full searchable business directory on the City of Grants Pass portal, which is interesting. If you're looking for information on specific local nonprofits, want to know how to donate, or you're searching for volunteer operations, there's other clues there. So I'm not sure why we want staff to duplicate what's already out there. Eric?

Is that on the city website?

Um... I'LL SHARE IT WITH YOU. I JUST GOOGLED IT. PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN IT. I HAVE NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT.

I DON'T KNOW IF IT WAS A SIMPLE GOOGLE THING, THEN WHY CAN'T IT BE PUT ON THE CITY WEBSITE?

I'M NOT SURE IT'S A CITY FUNCTION. IT'S NOT A CITY FUNCTION.

WHY CAN'T IT GO ONTO A MEMO, I GUESS?

So at this moment in time, the three councillors have expressed a desire for city staff to provide some sort of information. We will work to get a memo out in regards to a list of nonprofits in the area and start with that, and then we will go from there. And staff will basically come up with an idea of how long it would take to do more research.

Can I take a clarity there?

I'm trying to get to an end here.

My interpretation of what the memo was was for us to try to provide you with additional information on how much resources will be required to gather the information. We will not use AI in this situation. AI is not reliable. You recognize that when you get AI emails and they're quoting certain citations or court law that is incorrect. We cannot use AI. So if you want valid information that you want for your constituents, we're not going to be using AI. So if you're wanting me to make a list of all the nonprofits, I would like to have a council approved vote because that's gonna take time in itself. So my initial thought on this was you were wanting me to provide you with a idea of what kind of resources will be required to gather the information that's been requested.

was my request was a memo with some of the general information and then information about how much time it would take to do the rest. It's a start and I think there were three counselors who would like more information on that. So if it's on the, and a memo form is just fine.

I'm still confused.

So to clarify what I've got, I think, from Council Marshall is staff will provide a memo based on this discussion on what type of resources would be required to gather the information for council. We'd be more than happy to do whatever council desires. If this is something that's important for council to have and to distribute to the public, we're behind you 100%. If you believe it's not the appropriate use of our resources, we're behind you 100%. we'll just ultimately need council to tell me what to do.

Well, I think I read all the bullet points to you already, and you have that in an email, but then you mentioned it would take hundreds of hours, so then I set a memo format about how much time it would take and some general information about the bullet points would be a great place to start. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, we can definitely do that. I've got clarity from that perspective if that's the direction council wants to go.

I would like to call for a vote on that to see where the council supports that as a group. Okay. Is that permissible?

I guess. Okay. Yeah, I'm in uncharted waters here. So basically we have a councilor that's requested for a memo for some information. Then we have another councilor that wants to have a full council vote on that request, right? Okay, so let's have a vote.

So I guess you would, we want- Wouldn't that motion require a second? I'm just maybe a point of order possibly.

Okay. If you want to make an official motion then, Rick?

I'd like to make a motion that the council vote on the concept of or the idea of collecting information concerning the charities in Grants Pass and Josephine County and other details that's been promoted.

Okay, so there's a motion on the table to direct staff to collect information in regards to nonprofits. Is there a second for that motion? Second by Rob. Any further discussion? Okay. Rick, how do you vote?

So please restate the motion again.

So you made a motion to have council approve staff to provide a memo in regards to providing information on doing research and providing information on nonprofits within the area, starting with a memo on staff's Interpretation or estimation of time and materials that it would take to do this.

So a yes vote would commit staff to proceeding with that. Correct. With the memo. Correct.

Okay. With a second on that, any further discussion? Eric?

I'm unaware of needing to make a vote for just to get a memo. So I don't understand why there's a vote on the table. just to request a memo from a standard procedural thing.

There was a request for a memo. There was two other counselors that showed desire for that memo. Another counselor said that he wants full council support before directing staff. That's where we're at. Any further discussion? Rick, how do you vote?

No.

Eric, how do you vote? Yes. Kathleen?

Yes.

Victoria? Yes. Rob?

No.

Joel? I'm just looking at all the lists here in Josephine County. It's already existing, so I'd say no.

it's a timer 33 okay so as I were as I understand the original request was for for staff to evaluate time and research time and associated man-hours to provide this information that was a starting point for memo and You were fully understanding of that, so I would break the tie in going that I believe that staff can provide that. So staff, will you please provide that memo?

Certainly, Mayor, Council.

And again, this could be a starting point for further conversations, okay? Yes, Kathleen. Oh, awesome.

So, um, I would like follow up for the exclusion zone to be extended up to the beginning of two 38 and one 99 as hearing from a public comment tonight.

Okay. So would you like, um, uh, does council have an appetite to bring a discussion of establishing further exclusion zones? TABRI BROUGHT FORTH TO DISCUSSION IN AN UPCOMING WORKSHOP. IS THAT KIND OF WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?

WELL, SPECIFICALLY THIS ONE, FOR SURE. BUT, YEAH, I'D LIKE TO KNOW HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO THAT WITH THE COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES AND HOW IT WOULD EXTEND INTO THOSE AREAS.

I SAW AT LEAST TWO OTHER COUNCILORS PUT THEIR HAND UP SO WE CAN PUSH THAT FORWARD TO AN UPCOMING WORKSHOP. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?

YES, I DO, MAYOR.

Give me one second. Anybody else? Go ahead, Victoria.

So I'm interested in, I didn't get this young man's name, but I'm interested in finding out about these fog cameras. But that might have been a county. I'm not sure. But I would like to see about finding out if we have cameras that are working and are using AI. i believe we've already had a memo on that but we can probably revisit that okay we can provide council memo with our our camera systems thank you and then i also uh last thing um the press release that i want some further clarification on the press release that was uh released for i'm just not clear i i want to know if COUNCIL COULD HAVE THE PRESS RELEASE THAT WAS GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT THE BEACON HILL PARK, IF THAT COULD BE E-MAILED TO US.

YEAH, CERTAINLY. IT'S PUBLISHED ON OUR WEBSITE. WE CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH THE SURVEY AND THE PRESS RELEASES.

THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT. WE'RE STILL IN MATTERS FOR MAYOR, COUNCIL, AND STAFF. ANYBODY ELSE? I SEE ANY STAFF. Okay, we do not have an executive session scheduled or noticed for tonight, so the last item on our agenda would be to entertain a motion for adjourning this meeting.

Eric. I make a motion.

I make a motion to adjourn.

All right, with a second from Kathleen. Anybody oppose? All right, we're adjourned. Thank you.