City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thanks. All right.

I'll call the city council meeting on Tuesday, May 26th, 2026 to order. Grant Polson, city council. First up is the cell phone reminder. In case your cell phone is not already silenced, please silence your cell phone. First order of business is standard tradition here of the land acknowledgement. As we gather today, we respectfully acknowledge that the land on which the city of Hood River sits is the ancestral home of indigenous peoples. This includes the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs, Yakima, and other tribes who stewarded this land for generations. We recognize the lasting impact of colonialism and commit to working together for a more and just sustainable future. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Abigail, any objections or reflections to the agenda?

Thank you, Councilor. No additions, but I do have a request. The agenda shows doing the urban renewal agenda last, and I would like, if possible, just to move that up after action items. So we would finish the business, adjourn to cover urban renewal, and then come back for city manager comments, council comments, and other discussion. That sounds okay?

We'll move urban renewal up to just after action items. Done. All right. Next up is business from the audience. Brief script. Now is the time for business from the audience. No person shall be disorderly, abusive, or disruptive during this time. There shall be no audience demonstrations such as applause, cheering, display, signs, or conduct disruptive. or conduct disruptive period. Such conduct shall be cause for immediate termination of business from the audience by me, counsel. No person shall address counsel without first being recognized by myself. Please state your foreign name for the record when it is your turn. I have a list. First up is Chris Bossy. There you go.

Okay, my name is Chris bossy I own my hood barbecue here in town and i'm a food truck, along with the other food truck owners, we would like to revise the hood river municipal code 5.07.050 a four. For the use of tables, along with our future. We have a lot of customers that want to enjoy the Pacific Northwest want to eat outside. And just like the little parklets you guys make in town here for the restaurants, we would like to have them also for our food truck because, I mean, we have, if you bring it home or have to sit in the car, it's kind of defeating the purpose of enjoying the Pacific Northwest. So we want to have kind of revive that or evolve it because we have, like we have the elderly from Hawks Ridge, And I had to literally tell a woman the other day that 98 years old, that she couldn't do it anymore. Because we had the tables up because we were told from Michelle for the health department that once we got our bathroom with hot water, that they could wash up afterwards, that we could also have tables. Well, according to the ordinance, no, we can't. So we got, we, we got the table, we got the bathroom set up, we got everything done. We're supposed to, and then we kind of shut it down and made a lot of customers very angry and very sad and whatever, especially a 98 year old person. So, um, like I said, we just, our sales went up during that little time that we did have it. And like I said, we, here we have the, the Dow's one, um, Ordinance 806-040, License for Provisions, and just passed last September. And you don't have to go with the dials. I understand that. But one or two tables per truck wouldn't hurt, and it would be nice to have. That's all I got.

Thanks.

Yeah, thank you.

Next up is Brad. No problem.

Hi, Bradford Perrone. I have the hotel Thistledown on Oak, and I'm here to talk about the loading zone that I'm trying to get in front of the building. And Abigail has been kind enough over, what, like a year now? We've been working on the process. She's been helping me get through it. And I really appreciate being able to reach all of you council people in person and look forward to maybe having Ben and Doug, if we get an opportunity, because I know you're really busy. But I know that this is the parking issue is probably going to be something that's going to be addressed further down the line. And I'm really concerned about this summer being that kind of when I started the process, I knew we were going to have some issues. But now that the light well is not valet and all their people, Literally every all the parking spots around the building are being occupied with those other with their the permits for the hotels. And so that even puts more pressure on people are having to get out in the double park on Third Street. We try to tell them not to, but they do. And then they will take their luggage in, get their parking pass and then go park their car. But getting out on Third Street, other people in the building that might be getting a tax return or dropping their kids off for counseling or the doctor, it's just a dangerous situation. And so I'm hoping that we're, Abigail kind of has me going through this process where I'm requesting that. And I'm hoping that it doesn't get lumped in with the parking of lieu of, uh, you know, all of the other parking issues because it is kind of an immediate situation because of the, the danger of people getting out there. And, uh, Anna was there and she looks down on the street so she can contest that it gets very busy and it's a hill. And so when people come down third street and they've got their doors open, it blocks it. It blocks people onto Oak street. It's just creating kind of a crazy situation. So I'm hoping that I can, we can figure out the process of it could be temporary until The Council works out a longer strategic plan or whatever, but I'm just here to see if there's a possibility that this might be pushed in a different direction to try to get this to take place. So thank you. Thanks.

Oh, so finally, I just want to interrupt, you know, there's a mystery person on the screen. And I just wanted to note that Mr. Tice is a consultant for and we'll be speaking when we get to this. The utilities. So, Mr. Tice, you're welcome to turn off your account your camera if you'd like, but you're we can see you in the chamber. And I wanted everybody to know who you are. Thank you.

Next up, I don't have a name. I just have a gusto tacos. Yeah. Thank you.

Ready? Yeah. Well, it's the same thing what you said. We just want to have like tables, maybe at least one, two tables outside. Like I said, the place we have, there's a lot of parking everywhere. We have places that can be safe for tables, make sure everything's safe. Poor signs, the people really slow down. or we can have tables, or what I need to do for hot tables, because like I said, Rinconcito is a food trailer too. You have a lot of setting outside, like a lot of setting, like two or three tables outside. Red Carpet is a food truck too. You have tables outside. I want to know what I can do too for hot tables. I don't know what's the difference, what to do for hot tables. Let me know how to do it. I do the same thing. I just want to know. Thank you.

Yeah. And then just, can you state your name for the record, please?

Oh, sorry. My name is Gustavo Delgadillo. Yeah, I own Gustavo's Tacos. Yeah, thanks. Thank you.

Then, Leonie.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Leonie Montenegro. I am a friend and customer for Gustavo and Chris. And the reason I'm here is because I want to support them for the asking for having tables outside. I know that they are doing a lot of effort to have the business and the people are really happy with what they are doing. They're cooking really well. And also we have in the future the opportunity to develop the building for more food. And I want to support them for the asking for having tables or chairs for the people can sit down and having meals there. And thinking about people to come to town that they are from other cities, they really enjoy to be there and having a little time with the families. This is mostly what we're asking for. So thank you so much.

Thank you. That was everybody that was signed up to speak. Thanks. All right. Next, we have a presentation from the fire marshal, Andy Dwyer.

Good evening, council members. I'm going to go ahead and let Katie Skakel introduce herself really quick.

Good evening. My name is Katie Skaple and I'm the new Emergency and Resilience Program Manager for Hood River County. And looking forward to working with the city on our wildfire plan and working with you all. Thank you.

Thanks, Katie. I'm going to go ahead and share screen. Okay. I believe I'm sharing.

It's not?

Well, I see it up here. Okay. Oh, here. Click share. There we go.

That should be.

There we go. Okay.

And if you have trouble with the mouse, use the arrows.

Use the arrows. Okay.

All right.

Thanks for having me. My name is Andy Dwyer. I'm a fire risk reduction specialist with the Oregon State Fire Marshal. I work in wildfire risk reduction across a service district statewide. It's known as District 8. And I serve in Hood River, Wasco, Sherman, Gillom, Morrow, and Umatilla counties. So a pretty wide range of area. I'm also the co-chair of the All Lands Partnership, the Hood River All Lands Partnership. So that is an all lands, all hands partnership of federal, state, tribal, local government and nonprofit groups who have some land ownership or have constituents who own land within Hood River County. So that... That group has been established since around 2023, and they were instrumental in creating what Katie referred to as the plan, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, or as we call it, the acronym CWPP. Within that CWPP, there are priority areas that the past River County Emergency Manager, Charles Young, worked with that all lands group as a steering committee and identified quite a few areas that are high risk to wildfire ignitions. Mount Hood just for context is part of, is in the National Cohesive Strategy as one of the 21 mountains, national forest mountains that's identified as extreme or high risk of wildfire ignitions throughout the country. So there's a lot of values at risk with the hood the Mount Hood forest conditions and the communities at risk that are kind of close proximity. That national cohesive strategy looks at wild landscape resiliency, so that would be like the forest side, and then safe and effective response, and then fire adapted communities or communities that are at risk for wildfire ignitions. So the Hood River All Lands Group kind of worked with the city manager, sorry, not the city manager, emergency manager to kind of list out those priority action items and their goal is for forest health and to reduce the risk of wildfire. So that brings us to Indian Creek. Indian Creek is in, in that, within the, um, there's a bunch of different areas kind of identified. And so Indian Creek's one of the top areas. So, um, when I took this position, I kind of walked through a bunch of areas with Charles as he was departing for Oregon emergency management. Now Katie's taken that position and Indian Creek was, was an area that we walked and, um, for values at risk because of the neighboring communities there's, uh, and, and past history of ignitions in the area and the fuel and topography, the conditions of the area. So it's a, it's a high priority. And so anytime we, any chance that we could get work done in that fuels mitigation work done, we kind of jump on it. It's a challenging area, um, because of the patchwork of land ownership. There's a lot of cross boundary land ownership between local, um, private and, um, utility lines in there as well. So Pacific Power has property. So keyword, big takeaway for this project was partnerships. We worked with, there's quite a few Firewise communities that are in Hood River. Firewise or National Fire Protection Association, US Forest Service program for neighbors kind of working with neighbors and communities to kind of help reduce the risk led by those community members. So One of the Firewise members in Hood River County kind of approached myself and a few others about bringing in a group called the Ant Farm Group. That is a community services based organization out of Sandy, Oregon, and they have a fuels reduction program. So they pull in grants from the state and fed federal grant programs and they have a bunch of uh fuels crews to kind of come and do these projects throughout the air we didn't we didn't think that they'd be able to kind of come all the way to hood river because they're primarily on the west side of mount hood but um because of the area being identified in the cwpp and because um the communities at risk if a fire were to move through Indian Creek Corridor, they were able to kind of come in and say, yes, we'll come in and spend a week here and doing some fuels reduction work primarily for training and for their staff and to kind of help identify or at least showcase a pilot project of what fuels reduction projects could look like. So the first slide you see here is kind of the Ant Farm crew in action at the Indian Creek corridor in parcel 300. And I will scroll down. Let's see, oops, sorry, it's fast. So we had them come out in March. It was in the Indian Creek corridor. The land ownership was the Port of Hood River. Um, and the, so if you see coordinating partners, there's quite a bit, we, the, the area, the land ownership was part of the river, but this, the vegetative management is run by the city. So we needed to have, um, multiple partners bring in. In addition to trail maintenance, I believe is done by it changes, but the, the county, um, the city and Port of Red River all have basically values at risk there. So that's who kind of manages the whole area. Briefly, just for the state fire marshals, when we look at these defensible space areas or these areas with a lot of high density communities, we're looking at what could cause ignitions within a structure. And the three primary mechanisms are direct flame contact, Ember cast or embers kind of landing within and around that home ignition zone, which is about 100 feet. So the home ignition zone is 100 feet out from the primary structure. And then radiant heat. So if something catches fire and, for example, breaks a window pane and then embers kind of go in, get sucked in, that's how we look at what could potentially cause these ignitions. So here's a kind of a good example of, you can see the vegetative line kind of cutting through the two communities at risk. And that red polygon is the area that we identified as a pilot project to bring in the ant farm crew, maybe just primarily because topographically it was easier to have access. It's really steep in there. And the fuels were really dense. I have a few before and afters that I'll show. There have been fires in the past. If you kind of look to the east, the northeast area, so ignitions have started kind of below and kind of crept up. So for response, it's a difficult area just because of that topography and because of the challenging access. So this specific area with the polygon would act as a holding feature for response should a fire start to move through there now that fuels have been reduced. And there's kind of a shaded out area, so parcel 300. And then, just to give you an idea across from it in this this kind of polygon here this land ownership block is the city, these are private private residences and then we have Pacific power. We needed ant farm crews to be able to stage some equipment, so it needed to be able to have contact with specific power to be able to access their land. So again, it took a few months of coordinating efforts, building those relationships, getting buy-in, but not only getting buy-in, but getting, you know, buy-in is to get the crew here. And then now it's to kind of build excitement for this work. This is a brief summary of the crew's experience. I won't read it. I just wanted to post it because that came directly from Ant Farm. One thing that surprised me because of the high trafficked area, I anticipated, we anticipated you know, interaction with the public. We didn't know how that was gonna look. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it was overwhelmingly positive. Once we had, I myself was out there, I set up what's called a trap line. So it's an informational line to kind of meet and talk to the people about what was happening. And then when I wasn't able to be there a few days, we had Ant Farm staff that, and their feedback was that the public was in overwhelming support of this type of work. So that was positive. Here are some before and afters. To the left is the before. There's the historic wooden pipeline. So it was pretty crucial that we didn't disturb this, but kind of expose it to showcase it in a sense. It was buried for most of the area where they were working. some trees had fallen down on it. So they reduced the vertical, mainly the vertical and horizontal fuel continuity. So that means as they limbed up a lot of the trees, there was Ivy that you can see on the left growing up. So they were able to girdle the Ivy, they kill out the vines below. A lot of times in these projects, Chris Goffman- crews will move will kind of move through an area girdle the IV and then move on, but what that does is it ends up drying out all the IV that's on the tree, and that can be a ladder fuel into the canopy so because ant farm has a highly. Chris Goffman- skilled technical crew they did some tree climbing and we're able to kind of remove all that IV. As you can see here, ivy on the left, and then all that removed. And then they dropped all that ladder fuel that could, if a fire were to move through, Picture embers kind of landing in that dry leaf litter so that there were some areas that were, it was like three to four feet deep. So if an ember lands in that, ignites, carries the fuel into the shrubs, into the canopy, that's what could eventually carry it into the neighboring communities. So they were able to kind of drop a lot of that. They spent about four days in this area, so roughly an acre. Yeah, do you want to ask as we go? Or I mean, it's up to you. Yeah, sure, go ahead.

Just a quick question of how often do you recommend this kind of work be done? Because it looks really good.

Yeah, good question. And maintenance is a huge topic. It's great to kind of have an initial fuels reduction project, but then that maintenance period is pretty crucial. And It depends on the fuel type, vegetation. In here, you could re-enter three to five years, just to keep that. For here specifically, because you had a lot of ivy and invasive species, so keeping that weed pressure down. early applications to kind of hit it hard. And then over time, it starts to get longer and longer. Part of my work prior to the state fire marshals, I did restoration work and fuels reduction. And it really was about, you know, that first initial phase, that first project phase, we were getting rid of a lot of fuels. And then three to five years is called the establishment period. So we would reenter every year within three years to kind of keep all those weeds from coming back pretty prolifically. And then over time, it starts to get your entry levels start to get lower and lower. That's a great question. So to answer your question, it does depend, but typically five years is what we'd like to see, you know, That way it's not like forgetting about it 10 years and this can happen often. I'm not saying on these properties, but I used to do for Oregon Department of Forestry, I was a community wildfire forester and it did fuels prescriptions for these, for forest land. And if you wait 10 years, especially in Hood River where there's some precipitation, it can grow back and you're kind of starting over again. So having a maintenance period or some sort of funding mechanism to have maintenance re-enter these areas is really crucial. Some more before and afters. This one specifically, what was interesting is the acoustics opened up. So if you stand up on the hill here, the river was actually kind of muddled a little bit, but after the fuels reduction project, you could hear it a lot better. So it was kind of neat. So this is an example of the trap line we set up. So we just set up information. We were trying to, we're working on getting, The was it called the heights that neighborhood. I Firewise community Firewise can have a minimum of eight residents up to 2500. So we have a polygon drawn around that entire community looks like a goose so we call it the goose. So we were trying to gather interest and hand out information about local folks who are using the trail to to get involved in that Firewise establishment. Adrian Holovaty, Katie Skakel had just recently gotten the position and came out to visit that was great to see Katie and see some of the work what this fuels reduction work looks like on the ground. Adrian Holovaty, And i'll kind of stress it again it's that relationship building that's the most important way to move these types of projects and fire risk reduction work forward. Katie is now working on some grants to get Ant Farm or other crews to re-enter because the neighboring communities or the neighboring households that saw this type of work liked it so much that they want to have that work. Ant Farm is willing to come back but we're being somewhat strategic on where we're placing them because they are offering us a free service through their grant program. They have those grants till 2027. So we're working with county, city on where those priority areas that we'll have them come back next. But if we can get grants or some sort of funding, durable funding to come in and start kind of spreading out and sell that quarter of all that vegetation to kind of start reducing that fuel load, or have even trainings for the current people who do that just to kind of start getting those fuel pressures down, it would go a long way.

Andy, could you take a minute and just explain what a Firewise group is and who attends and what they do?

Yeah, so briefly, Firewise, again, it's a program that's through the National Fire Protection Association and the US Forest Service. They came together to kind of figure out how are we gonna address this wildfire crisis? And they kind of lead the program up to the states to delegate that work. So Oregon Department of Forestry is the lead for the state that runs Firewise program. But it's really neighbors helping neighbors. It's not for the state agency or federal agents to kind of govern how that work is. We just guide these groups to get them communicating, talking together. You need eight households or eight residents to come together to say, yes, we want to go seek firewise recognition. It is $25 per resident a year or one hour of volunteer time to work on mitigations type stuff. A lot of times it's clearing leaf or litter deposition around the house, screening vents with proper screening, It can be simple stuff like that, or it can be somewhat advanced. What Firewise has done, specifically in Hood River, is it allowed for an established, recognized Firewise community, Hess Road in Upper Valley, to seek grants. They got a state fire marshal grant for, I think it was $75,000 to do a bunch of FUELS REDUCTION ROADSIDE FUEL BREAKS EGRESS INGRESS WORK WITHIN THEIR COMMUNITY. THEY WERE SO PROFICIENT AT IT THAT THEY HAD A SURPLUS ABLE TO GIVE 7500 TO THE NEIGHBORING FIREWISE COMMUNITY. SO IT WAS A REALLY SUCCESSFUL PROJECT AND THIS IS HOW A LOT OF HOME IGNITION ZONE MEDIATION WORK we believe is gonna move forward is through neighbors kind of working with neighbors and a ground up approach, kind of understanding what the local need is, a pulse check on where they're at with wildfire and meet them where they're at. Thanks, good question Abigail, thank you. So I just added this bonus in with communicating with Pacific Power, they were able to bring out their, remote controlled masticator. So they have crews that kind of, they contract out with the city and they bring out and they masticated, I think it was 10 feet off center line of their poles. So they went and cleared through in close proximity to where the ant farm crew were working. So that's kind of the strategic approach we're looking for, cross boundary work, right? Where it can kind of tie in, these features will help trip or slow down if a wildfire were to ever move through that area, these fuels reduction projects allow those fuel breaks, as you can see here under the pole lines, that fire to kind of slow down and then allow for the response folks, Chief Rogers is here with whatever fire, thanks for being here, to kind of come in and do initial attack on those fires. So when it's in close proximity to urban areas, these are really crucial spots to be able to get this work done. I think that's it. Questions?

I just wanted to mention that we are interviewing this week for what's referred to as a wildfire mitigation coordinator for the county and cities to pursue firewise neighborhoods. The person will be going out working with city neighborhoods, county neighborhoods. It's a five-year BLM grant funded position. There's a lot of interest in the city. All Lands put together a talk at the art center and there's over 140 people there. So, you know, people are aware and they're very interested in this and it's really implementation time. So we're excited to get a person working with our community on this.

Yeah, and that person, the hope is that person works closely with the All Lands group. Right now, that group has... regional, I'd say regional people kind of leading it, myself included, but if we can have new leadership over time that's more localized, that's kind of what these all lands partnerships, that's when they really start to take off is when we have local leaders that are involved in it. And then they can have direct contact to what the citizens in the area, their needs are and understand the community wildfire protection plans, update those consistently so that they can inform us and we can help support them. That's kind of why those all-lands partnerships work really well.

Thanks everybody for filling in. Sorry, I'm late. I was stuck on the bridge.

Thank you so much for being here. It's really interesting. I live about a block and a half away from where you were situated. I was gone for the week for work. I came back and I was like, what happened here? I imagine where you were situated, you got to meet the dogs that were on the roof over there, possibly. There's a local... three or four dogs that hang out right about there on their roof and kind of, you know. Is that the trailhead? Yeah. Oh, okay. But yeah, super encouraging. I mean, there's, there's a lot of residents in that area that have come to us before to speak to us about their concerns. You know, the retired former chief Damien had been looking into grants and really coming up short for, for, you know, what we could do with Indian Creek. So this is, this is encouraging to hear that there's, ways to do this, even though it'd be a pilot for now, you know, in these high risk areas, it sounds like there's a couple more things that are coming. Is there anything that we can do as the city to be able to work with you more, to be able to identify these types of grants or, you know, bolster your support for these types of grants?

Yeah. Um, and we've had, so participation within those all lands partnerships, they meet twice a year, but there are like subcommittees. Um, there's one that's a community wildfire protection one. Um, there is a engagement and education committee. Um, and then there's a fuels committee and those are kind of, um, they have like sub leads that they help run that. So getting involved in that, we host them at the Hood River Fire Station. So, and we have had Chief Rogers show to those. So just active involvement, understanding where the directions and being involved in those community wildfire protection plan updates. We typically like to see them updated every five years. If they go out of that five-year period, then they can't go after those large federal grants like a community wildfire defense grant. But we have maintenance cycles through them. So one of them is coming up and those subcommittees look at the CWPP and they're always working on building plans on how to... implement these projects. Who are the landowners? What would be the cost to implement these projects? All that takes time and planning so that when dollars do come in, we can have shovel-ready projects. That community wildfire defense grant, the county went for it last year and was unsuccessful. So there will be, there was four rounds throughout four years. We're still waiting on the fourth notification of funding. It hasn't been released yet, but being involved in that from a local standpoint to be able to come up with a competitive application, that's up to $10 million to bring in for this type of work. the language from that was pulled and put into a bureau of land management community assistance grant because there's a little on the east side there's a little patch of blm land that's like 130 acres or so because you have that patch in there we were able to go after this community assistance grant which then is the funding mechanism for the community mitigation coordinator so getting creative right having Having that access to the Hood River All Lands group and those partnerships to have thought partners and get creative on how we're going to pull in funding from different areas. I mean, that's critical. Without durable funding, that's how we have to do it, is build those relationships and partners and get folks excited. I will be presenting this to the Port of Hood River board next month. Um, just to kind of continue the momentum, spread this word and, and let folks know that we're, we're working on this stuff. We're, we're planning all the time. Those groups are meeting some monthly. Um, so it's, it's important for the community to, to know that agency people are, are, um, actively working on this stuff and we're trying to reduce the risk, you know, because we're year after year, it seems to be getting drier and drier. And so we, we want to make sure we're getting ahead of it.

Thank you. Yeah. Chief Rogers, if you ever want one of us to attend one of those meetings with you or anything like that, or debrief, I'm sure one of us would gladly, you know, spend some time to do that. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Councilman Paulson. I'm so used to calling everyone chief because I'm used to dealing with chiefs a lot, but anyway, yes. Councilman Paulson.

Sure. I'd, Regarding scale, how much is it comparatively to go into an area and clean up an area versus maintain an area?

Yeah, so the ant farm crew, they gave a few cost breakdowns. I asked them to separate out arborists because that's not always what's needed in fuels reduction. Sometimes if there's trees within a falling of a structure, you need arborists, but when you're just falling trees and reducing fuel continuity, so that's continuous fuels, it's more cost-effective. it was roughly without the arborists, it was like half the amount for that initial fuels project. And then as you kind of do the maintenance period, maintenance can look differently depending on the area, right? This is Indian Creek Corridor, so this topographically challenging, access was challenging, but the maintenance period, once you have some establishment in place is often less expensive.

Or are we talking like 10% of what it costs to clean it out?

Couldn't put a percentage on it. Rough numbers, the one acre was about $2,500 for their crews to come in and do it. But if you have, say, like public works to come in and just cutting down that ivy, girdling it, reducing some of those small caliper trees, you could do it for less than that, I would say. But that's part of what the all lands partnership group is looking at. Like they're taking these priority areas within the CWPP and saying, we're trying to use pilot projects like this to say, okay, if we can scale this up, what's that going to cost to do over time?

Right.

Yeah. Just for implementation. And then, you know, then we kind of come in with a maintenance plan.

All right, I was just trying to consider implementation of reducing fuel load versus maintaining that reduced fuel load and saving that as a risk reduction cost benefit.

Yeah, so if you can reenter the site you know, within a few years after, you save costs versus taking time to like let it regrow and then reentering.

Redeploy, re-mobilize, re-coordinate between all the agencies, get into all that whole process from scratch.

Exactly. Okay. Yep. Thanks.

Anna.

I'll ask one more question about your Ant Farm crew. You said they were a group out of Sandy.

Sandy.

who are these wonderful people? Like, what does it take to create a franchise here? And like, is this something that we, I was at the high school today talking to their environmental club and they, I'm sure this would be something that they'd be interested in. It's not like you wanna give a bunch of high schoolers some chainsaws and go, go for it but um you know talking to folks in our community college or um the high school level or just getting out there and creating a similar organization here what does it take to make something like that happen yeah i mean they they they um they have kind of like a workforce development group so they bring in people that are looking to gain these skills and then work for uh

like Asplund or some company that does tree limbing or tree work. So, and they get some wildfire mitigation experience. So it, You know, I can't answer for them what it took to get them lifted up, but it typically takes, you know, a funding mechanism. And then that's kind of something that the All Lands Partnership is exploring. How do we build a sustainable fuels crew system? that the county could utilize the city whoever right in this in the gorge area that we could tap into and potentially use for a response to so those are ideas those are things that we're exploring but it takes kind of like putting those applications together getting a grant a good proposal a competitive proposal um and then it takes agencies to say like yeah we can we'll take that on and we'll kind of explore what um hiring on seasonal staff so mid-columbian fire rescue They bring on seasonal wildfire, defensible space crews. They have had grants through Oregon State Fire Marshal. They also have, they were successful in the community wildfire defense grant, 5.9 million. So they are able to hire seasonal fuels crews to come in through Mid-Columbia Fire Rescue and then When it goes over, there's funding reasons that they need to kind of switch them over to the soil and watershed conservation district so that they can transfer them over. But because of those partnerships, all that money flows through them and is able to kind of be flexible with where they put these crews. So to answer your question, it takes funding. Really, good question though.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for the good work.

All right, thank you all. Cheers, thanks. Do I cancel this or is it not?

Next, we have Jessica Mehta from McKed.

Welcome, Jessica.

Thank you so much City Council for letting me be here today to give you an update. It's been about a year. So I'm the Executive Director for Mid-Columbia Economic Development District. Our mission is to promote the creation of family wage jobs, the diversification of the economic base, and the growth, development, and retention of business industry within. This slide needs an edit because we are now six counties. So it's a five-county district. As of late March, we include Gillom County, which is something that had been in process for years, actually. We are federally designated by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and so changing the boundaries. One is something that the MCCAD board wanted to take a lot of time with to make sure that it was the right decision, and then also just took time with the EDA. Okay. But now we do include Gillom County, which is only another 2,000 people. And it's really far. I've driven out there. It's very far away. So our board of directors, I guess, just to say in general, I'm just giving you an update on what MCAD does in general and the ways that we interact with the city. I'll try to highlight some things that are new or different over this last year. Our board does include a county commissioner from each of the counties, as well as a representative of the cities of each of the counties. And so in Hood River County, Since there's only two incorporated cities, it rotates every two years between Cascade Locks and Hood River. And right now it is a Councilor Gecki is your representative. We also have a representative of the ports from each side of the river, the chambers from each side, and then we have eight private sector representative for things like healthcare, high-tech, ag, forestry, just our key industries. We... group our work into three focus areas and I'll go into details on each of those. So under business assistance, primarily we have our business lending program, which I'll share some details on. We've been able to, through some grants that we've gotten from Business Oregon in particular, we do a lot to focus on supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. We have a very fun event on Thursday called the Gorge Pitch Fest. This will be our 34th one. It's at the Granada and the Dow's and you do, we do provide dinner for free, which I believe is from Lake taco. So it's, you know, it's going to be good. So if you want to go, you can still register. Um, and there'll be about, I think there's five businesses that are pitching to a panel of judges. So kind of like shark tank. Um, and they'll walk away with a grant that we've raised from local sponsorship. Um, so it's just a great opportunity to invest in the local community. We do monthly what we call hub talk events. to bring entrepreneurs and innovators together to just kind of learn and grow together. On the business lending side, so that's where we are able to step in and support businesses that are not able to qualify for a commercial bank loan for one reason or the other. We're there to help them get their feet under them, show that they can be successful and then graduate to commercial lending. This is a selection of borrowers in the city of Hood River. We also have a little bit of money for what we call attainable housing, so up to 120 percent of area median income, and the leeward apartments shown here are one of those that we have. We're actually about to just push out a press release to remind folks that we do have these funds available and reminding them that they could be partnered with your urban renewal incentive for modest income housing. I think I might have that later, but I definitely feel like those could work well together to just basically to show how all the ways that our entities are working together to support the need for more workforce housing in the Gorge. So we've been, our business lending program has existed since 1980. So you can see we've given out $24.3 million. So as folks pay us off, then we're able to loan those dollars back out. We have a microloan program, so up to $40,000 where you don't have to have full collateralization. We really pushed that in starting in 2021. That's been a very popular program. We did some analysis last year and saw that we – One, we were really promoting that as something especially for women and minority-owned businesses. And we do have about 75% of the microloans are women and minority-owned. Our full lending portfolio, so larger loans included, is still more than 50% women and minority-owned. We actually operate three different lending boards. The only difference in them is the geography of where they lend. Okay. So under technical assistance, this second bucket, this is kind of where we are able to have professionals, economic development staff that can do whatever you need to help keep you going. We especially fill in a lot for our smaller cities, special districts, whatever of course is our second largest city within our district and has a lot of staff compared to folks compared that have, you know, one and a half or just a half of an FTE, but they still have a water system that has a well that's failing and now what. And so that's where we can step in and help support with that. We can do grant writing once you get the grant, grant administration. Under this, the pictures here, the Lyle Market, we helped with grant administration for a Washington Department of Commerce grant to put in an EV charger, a couple of commercial EV charging stations there. And then this is the city of Cascade Locks a few years ago replaced their wastewater treatment plant. So some of the ways that we have been supporting the city, or I would say not necessarily the city itself, but within the city of Hood River, we helped work to write the grant, a housing infrastructure support fund grant that benefited Big River Community Land Trust for their parking study or their transportation study for the property, the larger property that they're working on. Of course, I know you hear regularly from the Hood River County Energy Council as an example of It's a project that the county and partners started and then said, now what, McKay, would you help continue to run this program? And so we said, yes. And so for years now, we've been keeping that plan going and helping move those projects forward. We more recently have been supporting the Area Commission on Transportation, the Hood River County members, which includes Commissioner Paulson, um to just make sure that we're well coordinated in terms of how we're advocating for hood river county projects with odot's region one area commission on transportation kathy fitzpatrick on my team hopefully you all know she does a lot with safe routes to schools in active transportation she pointed out i was asking her for some examples and she HAB-Masyn Moyer- pointed out all the work that she had been doing to try to make sure that pedestrian and bike routes to get onto the new bridge makes sense and so. HAB-Masyn Moyer- that's just one example, she also has been doing a lot to support Columbia area transit with some of their construction projects that they're working on so she's helping right the rfp and help push out you know procurement information and make sure that they're following all the rules so. On the third bucket, we call regional coordination. And that's where if there's an issue that's affecting more than one jurisdiction, how can we bring people together to help solve it? On one example, this is our Brownfields grant, which Abigail has been serving on our team for that. So we have an EPA grant of a million dollars that can help people determine if they have contamination on their properties, which can even just be lead paint, asbestos, It doesn't have to be a leaking underground storage tank. And so for free, we're able to just help people determine if there is any contamination on their property and make a plan of what to do, how to fix that. It doesn't actually fund fixing it. And I'll just point out, we do still have some funds available. We've been able to support quite a few projects within the city of Hood River. If you do go through that process, HAB-Masyn Moyer- You aren't forced to clean up so just to say it's not a terrifying thing where now somebody is going to knock on your door and say you have to clean up the property that is that is not the case. HAB-Masyn Moyer- On the the transportation, some of the regional coordination that we do this is where we actually manage gorge transit.com and help bring the five. county, now six county transit providers together to make sure that our services are working well together. We do operate the link public transit in Wasco County, but that's something we've only been doing since 2018. And meanwhile, we've helped encourage things like the Gorge Pass and marketing and travel training to encourage people and teach them how to use the transit system. On the terms of regional economic development planning, kind of the core of what we do through our relationship with the EDA is what we call the SEDS, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. So every five years, we have a large region-wide process to update the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy and set that vision for where are we and where do we want to go over the next five years. As you can probably see from the dates on this, we're about to start the process for our next big five-year update. I do have a draft schedule here. We're hoping to have our first kickoff meeting in July. I think it'll probably be in Skamania County, hopefully. So I'm hoping very soon and definitely within the next week to have some announcement of, you know, Markers calendar reserve your seat right now. So these will be that's usually a two hour session that all of you are invited to hoping that they really build on each other. And so we're hoping that the more people can participate throughout the series. Each session will include an opportunity for the partners within that county to really kind of give you ground you and what does the economy of River County or Skamania County really look like, and then ends with an optional industry tour and those are always so fun. One of the Most fun things that we ever get to do is tour a facility like Cardinal Glass or frame or so anyway that's that's in the works and we'll have that hoping that you can all participate. We one of our large annual events we do is called the economic symposium. And that's usually, that's the first Friday in November. This year we'll be kind of using the SEDS process to, as part of that event, to feed the vision and goals section of the SEDS. Every year we do update an appendix in the SEDS that has your key priority infrastructure projects. And that is a process, so hopefully you've heard about that, where we work with your staff to really say, what are the infrastructure projects you're hoping to move forward in the next year with? grant applications or legislative advocacy, and we make sure that those are on our prioritized list as a way to show how important they are to the region. And it can be very useful. In some cases, it's actually required to be on that list for an EDA grant, for example. I was going to point out, so this is actually the list from March of 2026 that the McKed Board adopts. So we receive a top 10 project list from each county, usually a top 10. This year, the Hood River County list had 12 or 13 projects. There was just so many. And from there, we come up with a list of key Oregon side and a key Washington side projects. We on our regional list this year, we have 11. So just say you can be flexible. The bridge has been number one, either on our Oregon or Washington list for a long time now. It'll be so great when it doesn't have to be on the list. Because it's going to happen. We also have included the The elevated sewer line for Hood River for quite a while. That is such an important project. But as you can see, many of our small cities are really struggling with water. Wastewater is a key issue across the region. Broadband. Yeah. We do have a county courthouse as well, since that's so important. So just because I know housing is so important to the city, some of the ways that I do see us overlap, Dustin had suggested I kind of highlight some of these. I mentioned our attainable housing revolving loan fund. We do have about $2 million available right now. The whole fund is only $2 million. But just in terms of revolving and interest that we've earned, we do have about $2 million available. which is why I'm going to send out a press release to see what kind of interest we can earn as people are paying off the loan and make sure that the either the rent or the sale price on the home is affordable for folks earning up to 120% of AMI. Unfortunately, once it's paid off, it doesn't have any kind of deed restrictions to like permanently assure it's affordable. We also have been exploring ways this could work with the MERL program, which I know that you've been looking at. I think that those could work really well together. And also with the Westside Housing Incentive, As I mentioned. Housing is actually does show up in within the comprehensive economic development strategy, one of our key goal areas is infrastructure and under that there's a housing specific one because. Housing is so essential to a strong economy. And as we see the lack of available and affordable housing is one of our biggest economic issues. And so as we are building the SEDS, it'll be a good opportunity to check in on what are we doing as a region and what more could we do on it? Grant routing, for example, as I mentioned with the Big River Community Land Trust project, and then just information sharing. We do, periodically we've held um kind of different opportunities to share information either with employers or with planners across the region for example to just make sure that we're all staying in touch as much as we can on ideas to address the problem i would say i mostly am asking dustin to tell everybody else what the city of hood river is doing because i do think you're a lot farther ahead in addressing the housing problems So that's everything, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thanks, Jessica. Anna?

I think Doug beat me, but I'll. I have a couple of, one's kind of a silly question. Just kind of, I wonder if there's an easy way you could describe the distinction between MCED's role in economic development and the port, like ports generally, their role in economic development. So that's one question. Well, I have two more, but go ahead.

Okay, so economic development is really a team sport. We all have our little pieces, MCED, the chamber, the port, sometimes like the city of the Dalles has an economic development employee. In general, I feel that the ports are focused on developing and maintaining their industrial land supply. And to some extent, they're involved with business attraction, which is not an area that we focus on. We tend to focus a little bit more on that infrastructure development and those regional coordination pieces. And the business lending program is unique.

Okay, that kind of goes into my second question about the infrastructure. You had in your presentation mentioned potential economic opportunities to support workforce housing. One thing that would help us get housing moving along a little bit is we had the money for the infrastructure for like the wine country roundabout and that kind of stuff. Do you guys also help with like infrastructure infrastructure, I can you help us with some of the road we like causes that something that began does to.

We can we. The roads actually do show up sometimes on the sets list the roundabout is on the. the county's top 10 priority. It just didn't make it onto the regional list. So from that standpoint, you know, we're writing letters of support. We're helping share information. Your staff is really well informed in that. So yes, we are here. If there was like labor standards or grant administration, we could do that for that type of project as well.

All right, my last one. Do you have any advice or tips for the city on how we could leverage collaborative relationships to drive development more global.

I just went to a presentation that I was going to include some of the pieces on. I think there's things like related to buy local campaigns. I think just in the ways that you've encouraged local Wednesdays with free parking downtown. So ways that I think that you're encouraging people to invest in their community, I think is really helpful. It also talks about just like you know, ease of permitting and like flexibility on, you know, bringing, using historic buildings. So all those things that I know that you're thinking about and I can, I'll share with Abigail a list of some other things that were in a slide from a presentation I went to. There was a wealth works, like a wealth creation summit of like, how do we encourage more local wealth development? So I'll share some of that to us.

Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate all the work that you are doing. Thanks.

Thank you for being here like you are every year. I'm starting to get used to you being on the other side over there. So welcome back. One thing that piqued my interest is you mentioned a couple times, you know, your incentive programs for attainable housing and whatnot. So it'd be nice to sort of get together. I chair urban renewal with Will to possibly talk about ways in which our affordable housing bond could maybe have some synergies with matching funding or some funding that would be coming from a CAD.

So I actually just had coffee with Will last week too, that he asked to just make sure that we're staying up to date on what both of us are working on related to housing. And we did talk a little bit about the bond and happy to keep in touch about that.

Yeah, I'll follow up with Will and we can discuss for sure. But yeah, thank you so much as always.

CoB, Jay Sugnetta, Thank you for being here, and thank you for the work that my cat does. CoB, Jay Sugnetta, I was just curious, you know, one of the issues that you know we have and it's not just for the city of head river, but you know. CoB, Jay Sugnetta, I think there's a lot of desire to build housing out there, but it's not really happening so much right now, at least the housing that we really want to see in the city, because of. you know, economic restraint, you know, constraints and interest rates and stuff like that. I'm curious to know, are you seeing, how much interest are you seeing in terms of those loans, housing loans that you mentioned in terms of people, you know, actually utilizing these? Because, you know, we also have a bunch of incentives directly in the city of Head River, but, you know, for a lot of that, we haven't seen a lot of movement in the last couple of years just because of the economy and being regional as opposed to city. I'm just curious to see if people are utilizing these, where is that happening? And if you're seeing any kind of dip in that utilization over the past, like, you know, two, three years.

Yeah. And I should have mentioned that your, the urban West side, urban renewal housing incentive is actually something that we've are half in on as well through the Oregon investment board, which is one of our lending boards that we manage. It's been slow. We actually haven't made a new loan in two years on the housing. And it's usually, we don't have a ton of interest in that program anyway. I don't know if it's just, maybe we don't do a great job of getting the word out. With 2 million, it could go really quick. The last one was a duplex that we helped build in the Dalles. But before that, it was the Leeward. So it's been really slow. I know the Dow's also has, I haven't heard it more recently, but at least a year ago, it was, you know, if you look at the number of units that they had permitted versus what had been constructed, it was drastically different. I think that's also somewhat true in Hood River as well. It's just been slow.

Very true.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anything else for our colleague? Thanks again for the great work, great report.

Thank you. Thanks for your time.

That takes us to our public hearing. Am I right, Abigail? I'm going to read the script. This is a public hearing relating to Resolution 2026-10, adopting a new monthly rate schedule for water, sewer, and stormwater utility customers of the City of Hood River for the 27th fiscal year. Let me begin with the description of tonight's hearing. First, staff will provide an overview of the water, sewer and storm water utility fee schedule. Then we will take public testimony. And finally, we will close the hearing, deliberate and render a decision on the proposed resolution. Final adoption may occur in the regular portion of tonight's meeting. That's the procedural introduction. If anyone has any questions about the process as we go forward, feel free to raise your hand and ask them during the public testimony portion of the hearing. A quorum of the council is indeed present. Do any councilors have any conflict of interest to disclose in this matter? All right, we'll hear from staff, Chris.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council. So the FCS had previously prepared a five-year rate study that provided the basis for water, sewer, and stormwater rates through this current fiscal year, which was the last year of that rate study. The new budget does provide for a consolidated long-term rate study, which would be effective for fiscal 2028, but that does require a one-year rate, the one-year rates be established for fiscal 27. The documentation that was provided as part of the council materials is a one-year sewer, water, and stormwater rate recommendation, which addresses the best practices and utility fund requirements the upcoming fiscal year. This utility rate schedule that's presented is informed is the informed product of two concurrent studies. The first was Bell Design Stormwater Master Plan and the associated impact study by FCS, which was presented to council earlier this year. And then the Oregon Association of Water Utilities, OAWU, provided consulting services with City of Hood River as a member organization and a associated rate study And I want to thank Tim Tice who was on screen previously at OAWU for his assistance and direction on that study and as well as Haley Ellett within our public works group. Thank you both of you. So each utility rate for each fund is a function of a similar methodology in the packet that was associated with this resolution. So there's a discussion of the existing rate structure and the current revenues. There is the fiscal 2027 budgetary fund requirements. And then finally, there's proposed rates and then the anticipated revenues. For each utility, the city of Hood River seeks to develop financial policies and strategies around utility rates which provide adequate revenue to meet the operations and maintenance costs, including for all capital improvements, distributes the costs equitably among the various types of consumers, and then are consistent with established best industry practices and are simple to understand and simple to communicate. Working backwards through the packet, starting with stormwater, Tom Preston- stormwater rates are currently charged as a fixed dollar amount per equivalent dwelling unit, the bell design master plan which presented to Council in December. Tom Preston- address the needs of the stormwater system which will require significant capital improvement and they also prepared and provided a 20 year implementation plan. FCS then followed that recommendation, utilizing capital to develop a rate study recommendation based on the capital plan, which was also presented to council. While the improvement plan will need to be fully diligence and prioritized, there's no question that the system will require significant investment. And staff recommends implementing FCS one-year rate increase currently from $11.03 per EDU to $13.24 per EDU. The revenue from stormwater after these adjusted rates are estimated to be about 1.1 million, which compares terribly to the fiscal 27 operating requirements. On the sewer side, the city currently services just under 4,000 sewer customers, both inside and outside of city boundaries. User rates are a combination of a base rate based on meter size and a commodity rate based on volume and a user class or sewage strength. There is no commodity rate charge associated with residential use as residential users only pay a base rate. Sewer rates currently do make a distinction between users inside and outside of city limits. With outside of city limit customers paying rates that are 25% premium to those inside of the users or 1.25 multiple. The utility rate recommendation for fiscal 27 is to retain the existing rate structure increased only for an inflationary factor for both rate base and commodity rates, which generate revenues sufficient for budgetary requirements. The other distinction is that OEWU identifies a CPI specific to water and wastewater maintenance, which is averaged about 4.26% over the last four years. This rate is recommended to be used as the CPI for the inflationary increases to base and commodity rates. That's the only change for sewer. For water, water services, just over 3,500 customers, again, both inside and outside of city boundaries. They are categorized into residential, commercial, industrial, multifamily, and then irrigation classifications. Similarly to sewer, your user rates are a combination of a base rate of meter size and a commodity rate based on volume and a user category. The residential user base rate currently includes a usage allowance, which is 5,000 gallons per month, with water above the allowance charged at the residential commodity rate. The recommendations for the water fees include a base rate and commodity adjustments, as well as implementing a rate distinction between inside city and outside city limits, similar to that that exists for sewer, and an adjustment to the residential allowance. For base rate inflationary increases, again, staff recommends the CPI for water and wastewater maintenance, which is 4.26% for all users except for residential users. For residential users, staff is recommending reducing the allowance from 5,000 gallons a month to 3,000 gallons a month. Based on statistics, 50% of all residential users only use 3,000 gallons a month at any given year. And 80% of users only exceed 3,000 gallons during the irrigation months. The average residential user uses about 6.36 thousand gallons per month. So the reduction in this commodity, one, is conservation sort of initiative, as well as being recognizing that water usage generally is above 3,000 gallons a month during the irrigation months, and so it is more of an elective use than that of necessity. Outside of city limits, base rates currently make no distinction, I'm sorry, between inside and outside. We are looking to extend the same methodology in sewer with an outside of city limits base rate and recommending a 1.2 times multiple to the associated inside rate cost. Outside city limit costs are higher for servicing and supply as the infrastructure is generally older, service distances are greater and more costly on maintenance costs. Lastly, commodity rates are adjusted by user class to reflect the overall water delivery costs. Combined, these changes are anticipated to provide $3.9 million in total water revenues, which compare favorably with the fiscal 2017 bill. Lastly, the memorandum looks at affordability and comparables. The average residential water bill increases from $47.29 to $54.45 per month, and the average sewer bill increases from $67.68 per month to $70.56, which remains well within comparables for water and sewer, both regionally and for municipalities of similar sizes. And affordability was provided for, affordability analysis was provided for both water and water and sewer combined. And it was done to the 60% of AMI, which equates to the utility assistance income level in order to test affordability. In both instances, utility rates remain affordable to the average residential user under each measurement. Staff presents the complete rate schedule as exhibit A, Christopher F. To the materials and as exhibit a to resolution 2026 10 and recommends adoption for the 2026 2027 fiscal year. Thank you, Chris.

Christopher F. Any counselors have questions of staff before we take testimony. Christopher F. Hearing none. Jen. Has anyone signed up to speak on this topic. No one has. Is there anyone in the room who wishes to speak to this topic? It appears no. I will now close the public hearing and open council deliberation. Emmett.

I just want to say that Chris took some time to explain this to me last Thursday, and I really appreciated him walking me through this so that we could have an informed discussion or decision about it tonight. And just based on what he explained to me, HAB-Masyn Moyer- What you just read it still sounds kind of complicated, but at the end of the day, I think that while it's it's a difficult time to raise costs it's a reality of our environment of things cost more and. As we were discussing it last week, I remember saying, you don't ever hear anybody say, good news, we're lowering the costs on things because it just doesn't happen anymore because the services that we're providing to our community, it costs us more to provide them as well. And so this is necessary in order for us to keep the level of service as it is. And it's not because we're electing to do this. But yeah, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to talk me and walk me through that. Thank you.

It's a fairly substantial policy shift to do 3,000 instead of 5,000. I'm excited that we're moving in that pro-conservation direction.

Doug. Yeah, I just want a second. Thank you so much, Chris, for the prep in terms of meeting with all of us individually and making sure that we understand the basis for all these changes. I'll echo the mayor's sentiments regarding the change regarding water. I think my first question about that was how much of that is people watering their lawns in the city and seemed to be pretty substantial. I can definitely remember some years back when people were putting signs in their yard when we were in a drought and saying, don't waste water on that. So I think, you know, having an incentive that's monetary to do that is definitely going to be very helpful in that. And also great to see all the work from the stormwater project, being able to inform what we can do there as well. I know stormwater has been an area that's been definitely changing in terms of utility rates and all that. So I'm just glad that we're modernizing and thank you for all the work that you've done.

Yeah, I really appreciated the analysis. I think a lot of times that, you know, people feel frustration, myself included, is when something goes up and you have no idea why. Like my internet bill, just like, why is this going up? There's no reason stated to why this is going up. And this is a really sound methodology in here that as much as I don't like to raise rates, and especially right now when everything is going up, the strategy behind it and the reasons for doing so are pretty clear. So I appreciate having that laid out to all of us here on council.

Eventually a motion, but no rush. This is an important topic. Thanks, Chris, for a good presentation.

I move that City Council adopt Resolution 2026-10, adopting the water, sewer, and storm utility rate fee schedule for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

Move by Paulson. Second. Second by Cavalieri. Further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

This takes us to our consent agenda.

I move that we approve the consent agenda. Moved by Stepina.

Second.

Second by Cavallari. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you. JT with Will. I don't see Will. Hi, Will.

Hi there. I'm here. Joining you from Northern California tonight, but very excited for this item. It's been a long time coming for the jurisdictional transfer of OR 281 on 12th and 13th streets that pass through the Heights. So in your packet, you have the full jurisdictional transfer agreement. Just as a reminder of the background, I think everyone knows very well, but for the public, this really started with the Heights Streetscape Plan. And the four years of planning that went into that high streetscape and the broad comprehensive vision that it includes requires us to have jurisdictional authority over the roadway. That will make the process go much quicker and easier and be much less costly to not be working through permit approvals with ODOT. Additionally, you know, we will take over management responsibility and maintenance costs with this jurisdictional transfer but ODOT did not have any upcoming maintenance projects budgeted in the next five years for this roadway and we already plow it, sweep it, and have even been fixing potholes occasionally. So essentially, you know, nothing operationally changes much with this being under our control. So some of the big points on the transfer is one, getting compensated a little over $4 million for taking over management responsibility. That includes $2.3 million as a direct reimbursement, and that is based on the value of a grind and overlay, and that was the same methodology to calculate the transfer payment for Oak Street when we took that over from ODOT in 2020. And then there is also compensation for replacing ADA curb ramps that the state of Oregon is required to do under a settlement agreement from a lawsuit, I believe, back in 2016. But there's a link in your report. So we are going to... complete ADA curb ramp upgrades on Taylor and also along 13th Street from Taylor to Belmont. And we chose to take responsibility to install those ADA curb ramps because we'll get to those as part of the first three projects of the Height Streetscape Plan. But ODOT is retaining responsibility for installing all the other ADA curb ramps along the roadway, the same way that they did for Oak Street. There is a deadline that we need to get all the ADA curb ramps that we are going to do installed by December 31st of 2028. So that puts quite a bit of time pressure on us. But we think that we can get that done. But if we didn't, ODOT would then install the ADA curb ramps to meet their settlement agreement and then bill us for the cost. The, I guess, last thing I would point out is that ODOT will continue to operate and maintain the signal, traffic signal at 12th and May and charge us for the actual cost of doing that. And that is estimated to be between $3,500 and $4,500 a year. So that would be a responsibility of the road fund. So that's the highlights, but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Oh, I'm sorry. One correction to the suggested motion would be to authorize the mayor to sign instead of the city manager. That's in line with how the contract is constructed. And also it was the mayor McBride who signed the jurisdictional transfer for Oak Street back in 2020.

Any questions, Joe?

And I think I'm trying to find it in here. One of the components, uh, correct me if I'm wrong of this is, uh, we have to have the work. Somebody has to have the federal highway authority administration sign off on this transfer. Is that correct? But I saw that in there. I have missed approval from FHWA is required under trans transfer contingent upon approvals.

Yeah, ODOT is handling all that for us.

Okay. Do we have any idea of what the timeline would be on them signing off on that? Are there any concerns, I guess, in terms of the deadlines that we have? Okay.

Yeah, no concerns. I should have mentioned that this will have an effective date of July 1st at noon. And everything I'm hearing from ODOT is if we approve this tonight, we will be on track. We'll be on track for a July 1st transfer. And I actually just got a pop-up message from our contact at ODOT, which is really nice that he's watching. And he said FHA has already approved.

Oh, great.

Thank you.

As you say, a long time coming. How exciting to arrive at this day. Well, good job, bird dogging. A motion.

I move the city council authorize the mayor to execute a jurisdictional transfer agreement for the Heights section of Oregon 281 with the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Moved by Paulson. Second. Second by Stepina. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye, motion passes, thank you. Ray, July 1st, big scissors. Interim hospitality pass options, Will.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor and City Council. This is a follow-up from your prior meeting where the hospitality pass and specifically the light wells increased use of it was brought up and you received testimony from businesses that were concerned about the parking impacts and wanted to see some changes. The three options that were discussed at your last meeting was either to eliminate the program keep it unchanged or do something in the middle to regulate it a bit more. And council directed staff to come back with something that doesn't eliminate the program, but does dial it back somewhat. And also we're directed to use existing parking data from our 2019 comprehensive parking study. That study had... uh, on four, uh, different days of the year, uh, hourly parking counts for every parking space in the city. So they did, um, one weekday and one weekend in the peak season and then in the off season. And we have, uh, there was enough, um, consultant staff out here. They, um, counted every single parking space, every single hour on those four days. And so, um, got us fairly detailed data about when parking demand is and where. And the peak demand is generally from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. And parking and geographically, it's kind of centered actually around the light wells where parking demand is the highest and then along Oak Street. and then becomes a little less in demand as you move towards Columbia, but it is, it's a little, it's not, it's a little, there's hotspots for parking kind of dotted throughout the downtown. But the, and that data is in page 149 to 150 in your packet showing the time of day and the location of the highest parking demand. So with that data, we have three options for making changes to the hospitality pass in your packet, ranging from most restrictive, and then a moderate, and then a most permissive option for you to consider. All of them play around with those basically building blocks about off-peak and on-peak demand, as well as high-demand areas and low-demand areas of the city. So the most restrictive would just restrict hospitality pass to the Columbia lot during off-peak hours, so from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. And so this option really minimizes the impact of the hospitality pass by regulating it to just our Columbia lot, which is our largest lot, and the one that the parking study found continued to have capacity even during the peak hours of peak days. Option number two is to provide two different hospitality pass types. One would be a full day pass that would be limited to the Columbia lot where the parking study showed that there is generally always parking available, but then still offer an on-street pass during the off-peak times. So again, it would be good overnight from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m., And option number two would limit this to areas north of Oak Street and west of Third Street. Right now, the hospitality pass is just prohibited on Oak Street, but will allow you to park anywhere else. So the moderate option also tries to geographically push the demand to the northwest corner of the city, which is the least parking impacted. And then option number three continues to offer a full day pass limited to the Columbia lot and then an off-peak on-street pass from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. and would just say you can't park on Oak Street, which has been the policy since the beginning of the program. So we have those for your discussion and happy to answer any questions. I'll note if you choose an option that includes a Columbia lot pass, I talked to the owner of the Lightwell and he thinks that he can get a valet program up and running within a month of securing a place to park overnight guests if we end up providing that option. So I'm here to support your discussion. Thank you, Will.

Anna. I just want to tell you thank you for putting these together. One of the things I remember Mr. Littworth saying to us when we discussed this at our last meeting was that when he provides these passes to his guests, a lot of them leave during the day to go do other things anyway, like they'll, you know, drive up to the county and check out Fruit Loop stuff or go to other places around our community to see things. So out of the three options, I have to say that I kind of like option number one because it does move folks into the Columbia lot, opens up more space around the other businesses that are near where the light well is currently. I also want to note that we discussed that this program is available to other hotels, but it just hadn't been utilized in a long time because the other hotels in downtown have figured it out. So I think that for the one particular hotel that is kind of the reason why we're talking about this again, they were going to do ballet, they were going to have other options figured out, so this just kind of puts them back in the position to do what they said they were gonna do when they were establishing their business and getting the permits through the city to get that done. So personally, I'm grateful that we have a couple of different options in front of us and I've put some thought into this and I'm kind of for option number one.

Thank you, Anna.

I had a I'm honestly not particularly married to anything here I can be swayed on this my initial thought was to go especially because this is an interim solution was to go with option number three in part because the chief complaint that we heard from businesses was particularly around time and not necessarily the geographic location and so the 5 p.m. until 11 a.m. I think actually is in Riverdaze's testimony, they specifically mentioned 11 a.m. is a time that this, in terms of an interim solution, addresses that. But I'm certainly open to, if council feels strongly about going another way, I'd be happy to support that as well.

I guess I have a question for maybe Abigail or Will. So, you know, we're definitely seeing not necessarily capacity, but raising use of Columbia. The farmer's market is in the summer in that location. We've not seen probably, you know, full capacity at Lightwell yet. I guess the discussions with the farmer's market, is there an intent to continue with that location for a long time? Are they looking at other locations? I know they moved down to the waterfront for part of the year, et cetera. So what status do I have?

Thank you, counselor. I did recently meet with the farmers market just as a check in before this issue came up, but they expressed satisfaction with the Columbia lot that has worked well for them. And I think they will continue to be there, certainly for this whole season. If we're talking about an interim solution and for the hotels and longer term, I anticipate that they'll probably stay there for a while.

Will, how difficult, so let's say we start this, we start, we decide an option and we start seeing negative impacts. Let's say it's the Columbia lot, for example. How difficult is that for us to course correct?

Yeah, this is, you know, can be any city council meeting. We can discuss this again and make changes. Our parking enforcement officer is taking account of how many open spaces there are in the Columbia lot between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. every day that he works. And he started doing that a couple weeks ago, and he's going to continue through the summer. So I think we'll have good data to support any considered changes to this, you know, in the next month or two.

As I've been going out, as we've been having this discussion, I've been speaking to patrons and people working at places downtown. Everybody is super, super, super tuned in to parking at the moment. People feel that it has become a bigger problem to find street parking. So I'm inclined to try to divert as much off-street parking into the lots as we can with these options. However, I do see some issues potentially popping up as we've not had a chance to test this. So I would go with leaning more towards moderate or restrictive to push into the lots, but I would like data and continued improvement engagement from the hotel operators, the downtown business district, et cetera, to see how things are going, because I don't think we have a really good way to test this out. without having summer being completely captured with Lightwell in operation. And I'm not picking on Lightwell, they just happen to be the largest hotel we've had downtown. So it's gonna change things. So that's my only concern, but I think we should try to move as much parking off the street for hotel as possible, but have to course correct. And some of these are larger policy discussions that we need to be having as we move towards our next work plan and whatnot. see this as interim, but in progress working as we get data coming back. And I'm not sure beyond tracking the Columbia lot and that timeframe, what other data we would need to support that. I don't wanna get into, I mean, parking is so subjective. So as much hard data as we have to make these decisions, I'm not sure if staff has any ideas about what that might be, but I don't wanna just go off of, I can't find parking Yeah, sometimes I can find parking, it's fine. That's what we're hearing a lot of. And I want to make a data-driven decision when we start to make Columbia lot changes.

So my bingo card so far says one, three, one or two. Yeah. Did I make a typographical error? Seems right. Great.

Anybody else? Grant? I'm the last one here except for the mayor, so I may as well chime in. On street parking has generally been used or viewed at as a relative public resource, more or less, allocated or dispensed as the city allocates or views it as such for public enjoyment. and our policies shape how it's used. We as a city have elected to allow people to park there for, quote, three hours, unquote, as a time, but, extend their time electively by extending their time on their phone. We could, as a council, if we wish, choose to hard cap it at three hours, encouraging turnover of those spaces. That's a policy choice if we choose to do that. And that is if we choose to encourage turnover of those spaces, which I believe is what those spaces were policy-wise designed to do economically from the business standpoint was to encourage vehicular turnover, thus customer turnover to visit the shops and engage in commerce. That was the intent of having pay spaces downtown was to encourage vehicular turnover, thus customer turnover, if we wished to do that. We don't do that right now. Another thing that was in the strategies from 2019, strategy number 10 specifically was to price our on-street permits at a premium. We don't do that right now. It's priced at the same as the on-street parking just during the day. That's specifically called out that we actually do not do as policy. So if we were going to do anything, I would suggest we follow what we've been recommended and laid out as policies and do what's been recommended to us as policies. So that leans us or guides us towards following option number one in my estimation, if I were to choose one of these three options. supplementing it with the other ones that I mentioned.

I'm interested that none of these changes the price, which if I were holding all the votes, I would have voted for as well, but I'm glad that they're changing the location and the duration. That makes sense to me. I'm pretty flexible on, on, on which exact way. I think the blur of the future is a little bit difficult to overcome. We're going to rise. Oh, that meant all of a sudden too much on fourth or. Yeah. Anna.

I kind of remember that conversation of like the price was $10 and that allowed, it was for all day, which was our parking meters are monitored are supposed to be from eight to six and $10 was more of an eight hour workday amount. So it's actually less than the cost of having to pay.

Small bulk discount.

Yeah, plus, I think, anyway, the other thing that I remembered, kind of the justification for this was, you know, hotel guests wouldn't have to get up early and, you know, move their car, you know, before checkout. And I did look and check out for most of the hotels downtown, including the one that is, we're not picking on, but it's just the one that is the one that brought all of this to light again is 11am. That's what time it is. So I appreciate too what Grant was saying about previous councils, the city has made policies about what is the purpose behind having paid parking downtown and who are we trying to support by having these parking meters. And I think it's important to be consistent and to actually stick to the policies that, unless we wanted to make a policy decision, a policy change. But yeah, I really appreciate you raising that

and just a reminder that this is an interim uh solution here so we will be discussing this again i very much agree with your i very much agree with your comment mayor about the price um and i'm assuming that's going to be something that's talked about down the road i you know this past to me is like uh it's an added benefit above and beyond what uh a non-hotel uh parking person would be enjoying and should be maybe priced accordingly. But if council feels strongly about number one, I'm also happy to support that for the purposes of moving along with something this summer for an interim solution. So if we're feeling like number one as a council, I would support that.

You know, I mean, it's a balancing act because, you know, we certainly want those that are staying in town to shop. We want to encourage, you know, the people that are staying downtown to stay in town to shop and, you know, conduct commerce in the city. This does, for me, elevate the importance to have a conversation about revisiting a parking structure. if we had a parking structure, it would be a no-brainer for me. I'd say, let's just go ahead and put them in the lot, right? So I think that is just something that I'm keeping in mind as we look towards all of these. I recognize that's a down the road sort of conversation for next year, should we decide to have that, but it would be a no-brainer for me at that point to say, yeah, we could do that. You know light well could institute a valet program for those that would choose to use that that maybe aren't able bodied or something like that. We could even you know, whatever but let's let's not lose that as we continue to speak about this, but you know I could I could definitely see my. You know, going going for option one as long as we can revisit it should we have some unintended consequences that are not data driven for this particular summer.

Thanks for your thoughts and careful, careful analysis. Oh, I will. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Grant.

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure you knew if you do go with option one, that may not facilitate getting a ballet program up and running because it would only be during the nighttime. So just wanted to make sure that was in the mix. If we wanted to facilitate getting a ballet program going sooner rather than later, that option one doesn't do that.

The city isn't putting together a valet program. It's the hotel that it needs to use this, right? Just to make sure that we don't need to make, we're not doing a valet program.

But if we're hoping that they will come up with one.

I am grateful that we have hotels and visitors and everyone is welcome to come here. And our community that lives here also likes to be able to park downtown when we need to. But I just want to say that's a business issue. And I know that they are smart, capable businessmen that can figure out how to figure out their parking issue. I'm fully confident that they can take care of that.

So is it option one? Everyone can live with that? It sounds like we can all live with one. We'll make us live with that.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Thanks, everybody. I think next we adjourn for urban renewal. Am I right? Yep. We will now pause my meeting and give it to Doug.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll open up the Hood River Urban Renewal Agency meeting for Tuesday, May 26, 2026. Any agenda additions or corrections? Well, I assume not. Anybody signed up to speak to a renewal, Jen? We did receive some testimony via email for this today. Also, Councilor Gakey is not present, but she did send an email to me to make sure that I could speak towards some of the things on the agenda today on her behalf, so I'll do that. Okay, so with that, We have the consent agenda, which is simply just the approval of the meeting minutes from March 30th, 2026. I'd entertain a motion. So moved. Moved by Grant.

Second.

Second by Ben. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Consent agenda passes. Regular business items. The first one is Taylor Avenue open house and survey feedback.

Thank you, Chair Stepina and members of the agency board. So we had our open house to show off the 30% engineered designs for the Taylor Avenue shared use path, as well as enhanced crosswalks at key east-west intersections of the Heights. And I'll share my screen real quick. Just get everyone on the same page of what we're looking at. So these drawings were what was at the open house. And we know not everyone could attend that. So we also had a survey that was up, I think, for about a month. And we had really good results. Attendance at the open house think about 40 people signed in but I think even more than that came and Didn't necessarily sign up And then we had also a lot of feedback from the survey. So the written comments are in in your packet and Some of the the highlights are concerns over reduced parking so the 30% Designs or the Taylor Avenue has a bike pad connection that will connect Pine Street to Taylor Avenue and create interim bicycle lanes on the east side and west side of 12th Street. So there was all the business owners that were losing parking right in front of their building, particularly on the west side of the street, shared really strong concerns about that they believe that that would negatively impact their business. And then we also got just comments around the bike lanes with concerns about aesthetics. uh there will be a line of jersey barriers protecting bicyclists when they are contraflow when they're um when they'd be biking south against traffic and people were concerned about the look of jersey barriers and then there was also concern that um these this bike uh connection would not be used until the entire height street skate plan was built out um So they thought that we shouldn't do bike lanes in the interim. Other feedback received was I'd say near universal support for the enhanced crosswalks with the pedestrian operated rapid flashing beacons. And then also, let's see the other feedback. Oh, this was not written, but the person from Art of Community had talked and expressed some interest in maybe adding a public art component. And so I wanted to pass that along as well. So, cognizant of the input that we received. My recommendations are in the packet and I'm sorry, I'm working with a lot of windows open on a small screen. But Yeah, so my recommendations were to retain the interim bike lanes, but monitor whether or not they are actually used. Even though this is just a small little strip of bike lane, it really does connect Two major bike connections on Pine and then also on Taylor Street, which are outside of the Heights, low volume, very bike friendly routes. And that connects to other safe routes to school routes that would make the Taylor Ave an alternative to bikes and PEDs using May Street. which I think you have probably heard about the car accident there a couple weeks ago and just generally how unfriendly to bikes and pads that May Street is. So this could create an alternative east-west route if people choose to use it. But if they don't choose to use it and we see that, we can take out the bike lanes easily. They're just jersey barriers, so we just pick them up, move them off, unscrew the candlesticks, and we can return the parking if it truly is not used. Also recommend just returning with options, no decisions, but options to include public art at the next level of design. And then just continue to prioritize this project and improvements and consider other possible interim heights improvements after the construction of this in 2027. So we got a lot of input about people wanting to see other improvements in the heights. So getting this construction project done is essentially going to take all the agency's focus and bandwidth while it's happening. So I recommend setting aside other ideas for improvements for now. I discussed this with the Urban Renewal Advisory Committee at their meeting last Thursday. They endorsed my recommendations and added three additional recommendations that were to look into ways to improve the aesthetics of the temporary Jersey barriers on 12th with paint materials or finding alternative ways to create a safe barrier. um they suggested installing signage or some other notification to people that the bike lanes are temporary and will be part of a larger implementation plan and also to work with the school district and other community partners to really advertise and promote the pine to taylor connection as an alternative to may street um and so uh with that uh We have a suggested motion, but also just happy to hear your feedback.

Thank you, Will. Questions or feedback for Will? Anna?

One of the things that you put in the memo that I really appreciated was under the other input, you said that much of the feedback concerned the Heights streetscape plan overall. This indicates many do not perceive the Heights streetscape plan as finalized, or at least believe it is open to significant revisions. And when I read that, I just was like, man, we're, you know, it kind of goes to the other, the UREX recommendation of signage or something about, you know, this being interim bank lanes being temporary. And I know we talked about in the past, like maybe putting up some signs or trying to get some more communication out to the community about what we're doing and how long this process has been in the works. And that a lot of these things are, you know, have been, carefully thought out over a long period of time with lots of input from community and from, you know, consultants and people that do traffic studies and all that kind of stuff. So I just, I just wanted to, the feedback that I wanted to give you is, yeah, we're, we're not doing the best job of getting people to pay attention and understand what it is we're working, the work that you've already put into this and that the city's already put into this and where we are in the process. And I just, one of the ideas I had for that was just kind of, thinking about how we can engage maybe the business owners that are up in that area make sure that they have the information so that they can let community members know where we're at i'm glad that we did have a decent turnout but 40 40 people signed in is is not awesome but it's it's it is by most standards but i mean it'd be greater you know there's a lot of families that live up there there's a lot of people that go to the businesses up there um And it is hard to get people to engage, but I just wish that we could put more effort into communications. That's the one thing that really jumped out. But I do think that your recommendations and your recommendations are great. I especially like the including public art. I think that that would be amazing. And not street signs, but art.

Ben? I understand what you're saying. I disagree a little bit with the comment about communication, but I do agree with your comment about that particular line in there about people not being aware of this despite all the noticing. You know, when this process started first going on, I want to say back in like 2021 or something like that, You know, I wasn't on council. I wasn't on the news. I wasn't working for the newspaper at that time. And I saw so much about this. And I, you know, as a civilian filled out the, you know, survey, you know, picking the different options, one, two, and three. And You know, to this day, I have meetings with Abigail say, like, I have never seen anything since I've lived in Hood River that has been noticed and had as much public involvement and desire for public involvement as this project. Like, I feel that we have very much, and I felt this way again before I was on council at the city, really did their due diligence to try and get as much feedback as possible. I will say, however, in part because that, and I think this is maybe what you're touching on, in part because a decent amount of that process did happen a while back, that maybe that now as we are starting, this is starting to feel a little bit more real, especially with this jurisdictional transfer. And as we start to actually move forward on these different, you know, like the ADA curb ramps that it is probably worth having, you know, if this wasn't already on the books already, something, More outward facing in terms of I don't know when we talk about videos, but a video or something where it's like okay we're now about to start, you know. Moving forward on height streetscape project like here's you know what you can expect obviously with the idea that timelines change as construction always does. um but you know having that uh a little bit more of an announcement to be like all right this we're really starting to move forward on it but i did i you know wanted to counter a little bit on that in terms of communication because i do really feel like the city has done a tremendous job making people aware of this thank you ben either of the two of you to my left or right have any comments

Separately. Moving forward, this is a great opportunity to actually give us the freedom and opportunity to move forward on these projects. This is something we haven't had before. After jurisdictional transfer, the city actually has the opportunity to do something with 12th and 13th that we have not had the opportunity to do in the past. So moving forward from now, we actually have the opportunity to do these things, whether it's Jersey barriers or whatever it is. So people will actually see these things happen now and they'll actually see them happen and they won't be as temporary or not happening as they've been in the past to actually see them. So it won't be projects on a whiteboard or not happening or in their imagination. It'll actually be a real project. So that will give more permanence perhaps or communication as perhaps you're both alluding to, to this project and give the people that concrete thing that they're looking for. As often we can communicate about this project all we want, but people may not believe it until there's actually a shovel in the ground. um so that that's that's that's what i really appreciate with this integer integer skills transfers it really gives us the opportunity to make this thing happen um so that's that's why i'm really pleased about this roger so that's it anna

Just two other quick things to bring up. One, I wanted to acknowledge the public comment we received from Matt Pope and et al. And just to say thank you for that input and that feedback. I read it, it's an interesting proposal. I do think that... My inclination is to go towards the plan that has been in the works for a really long time and instead of pivoting because I don't know, I did not really appreciate until I was on council how hard it is to it's not easy just to pivot when you have a plan that's been in place for a really, really long time. And every time somebody comes up and says, hey, but what about this? I mean, what goes into these projects is years of planning and studying. But I appreciate the ideas and I think it's great that folks are coming to us with these ideas and presenting them and I value their input as well. So that was one thing. And the other thing I just wanted to share with you guys that I thought was really interesting is I had the privilege of talking to some folks that are like fourth or fifth generation, grew up in Hood River. And one of the things that they told me was, if you're newer to the community like I am, I've been over here over a decade, but we all notice how crazy our streets are and our intersections and how funky the traffic patterns are here. And for the very first time, this one gentleman who has a lot of history in our community told me that The reason behind that is because there are so many streams and waterways and that when the roads were originally constructed in this community, it was around natural waterways and paths. And that context just really kind of helped me realize why our town is so nuts. And also like, you know, just that we've kind of tried to adapt around that. Plus I think it should inform some of the work that we're putting into the you know, making our community a little bit more traversable. I don't know if that's a word, but I just, it's always great to understand the history of stuff as well, and I really appreciated him sharing that with me.

Yeah, and for me, you know, a couple things. Number one, this is a slow-moving process, unfortunately, right? There's, and I'll echo what Ben was saying regarding how impressed I was at the time on the planning commission to see the amount of public engagement, the amount of engagement from the public that resulted in that, to be able to build out some of these plans. Some of the critics of what we're talking about are businesses that did not exist when that happened, for example. I think people are frustrated that they want to be able to see this implemented as soon as possible for their children or for themselves living in the community. Myself, I live Off Pine Street, I have children that go to May Street and the middle school. I'm a cyclist. It's something that I wanna see sooner than later as well, but it has to be programmatically executed. And I feel like we have set the wheels in motion to do that. I will say also things regarding the jurisdictional transfer, like Grant just said, Will and I have had discussions with Megan Ramey about grants that we could not apply for because that was not our street, for example. So hopefully there'll be more opportunities to do things like that, like apply for grants because it is our street to be able to do that with. So I echo that sentiment as well. As it pertains to the feedback, at the session, I think we will continue to see that. And I think we should do what we can to be able to continue to inform the community, hold sessions like that, signage, videos, all that sort of stuff that we've been discussing. But I think it's to be expected that probably we'll have feedback with every single project of the Headside Streetscape project. And it's really important for us to focus on executing the plan. that being said for you know the discussion around um the the alternative option proposed by matt pope and shane wilson and megan ramey you know will and i had discussions with them counselor geiki also did counselor geiki wanted to voice her support for that that that alternative um street uh lane closure uh because essentially what we're talking about in in in the current proposed plan is taking away parking that eventually getting to the point where that parking will be restored when it's a one-way i don't think we've done any studies or analysis to see what it would look like if we closed a lane prior to having two-way traffic on 12th and 13th, which gives me great concern. The only way I would feel comfortable with doing that or pivoting to that is with some data, right? So my question to you, Will, is you alluded to, we'll do some analysis regarding how often people are utilizing what's proposed in terms of crossing over to Pine. if that were to have low usage and we didn't see people utilizing that, how difficult and costly would it be to pivot to something like understanding what it would be like to implement a program sooner than later prior to 12th and 13th being two-way to do the parking on either side with just one lane going down 12th? And you might not have an answer for that now. It might be, you know, but what's your sense on that?

Yeah. Well, I guess what I would note first is that we did study that, and it was one of the design alternatives during the creation of the High Street Skate Plan. So we had one alternative that turned both 12th and 13th into two-way roads going north and south. We had one alternative where they keep 12th as the northbound and 13th as the southbound, but take it down to a single lane. And then we had design alternative three, which was the hybrid where 13th becomes two way with the center turn lane and 12th becomes one lane with the bike shared bike path. And so we absolutely studied all taking 12th to one lane and it had a really much, much higher level of congestion than the other alternatives. um and we uh in uh when we had our stakeholder meetings with um sheriff uh department police and fire there was significant concerns around emergency vehicle access with that alternative and then ultimately when we did the open house and the survey um the one lane in each direction was the least um least popular option so i'd say in that way you know we have very much considered and studied uh uh you know evaluated and dismissed um going straight to a single lane on 12th um but if we wanted to you know re-look at it again it would be basically going through that same process um with additional traffic studies and meetings and

Thank you, and thank you for permitting me a bit of dialogue back and forth just so that we get this into the record about that. But yeah, my major concern is that I do like the idea of it getting done sooner than later. I like the idea of retaining the parking, everything that the opponents of the plan has proposed. have said, but I just don't see any data that supports that it would be safe to do that because of what Will just mentioned. So because of that, I would like to monitor what we have in play. And if it's not being used, revisit that and see what the impact might be for an interim solution where we go to the other plan. I don't know what that looks like because what was studied was sort of like the option one, two, and three, not an option where we have a longer interim period because there will be an interim period during construction where that's like that and whatnot. But if it were longer, what the impacts might be. But my concern as a cyclist and someone that's up in the heights is safety. It's difficult to lose a couple parking spaces on that side of the street. It's difficult to have a strange connection, but I'm glad we're making progress for something that is the most safe, viable, and celebrated option by the community based on tons of feedback that we got. So I'm all for myself going with the administrator's recommended response to the input. Anna.

I move to accept the report, the Taylor Avenue open house and survey feedback and endorse the administrator's recommended responses to the input received.

Question by Cavalieri. Second. Second by Paulson. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Thank you, Will. Appreciate that. Now moving to the second agenda item and also Will.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair and members of the agency board. We have a contract, a proposed contract for your approval to continue design work on the Taylor Avenue shared use path and enhanced crosswalks that we just discussed, but then also to add the ADA curb ramps that we are committing to upgrading as part of the jurisdictional transfer with ODOT and also the third height streetscape project which is redoing the east sidewalk on 13th. That would be completing all the projects in the implementation plan that can be done before the roundabout is essentially what this contract will do. It takes all those projects to full construction documents and provided construction support from the design team. So we put out this solicitation back in March, and we had a really strong response. I believe it was about seven proposals, and all were from qualified engineering firms. We selected a short list to interview. So the interviews or the selection committee consisted of me, the city engineer, our capital projects manager, and construction right-of-way inspector, and our Heights owners representative, from SOJ. So all of us reviewed the proposals and we have now a recommended negotiated contract with MIG supported by DKS for traffic engineering and Klein & Associates for construction oversight and civil engineering. So essentially the same team that did the Hyde Streetscape plan. So the contract is for $974,125, also suggesting an additional approval of $50,000 in contract contingency that would only be able to be accessed after agency approval for this work. And so that comes to a total of $1,024,125, which is slightly less than the $1,090,800 that is budgeted for this design work in next year's approved budget. So that'll answer any questions. Questions for Will?

Straightforward enough for a motion, perhaps?

I move the agency board authorizes the agency administrator to execute a contract with MIG for ongoing Heights streetscape implementation design services in the amount not to exceed $1,024,125. Moved by Polson. Second. Second by the mayor.

Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you, Will. I think that's it for everything that we have on here. Any further comments from any of the agency board members?

Public's gonna start to see this now. Yay.

That's good. I just wanted to echo what was said earlier by Councilor Cavalieri. I appreciate the feedback given by Shane and Megan and Matt. definitely people in our community that are very passionate and really want to see more cycling. And I really respect everything that they do. If that is not utilized, then I look forward to us revisiting that and seeing what else we can do in the interim. Thank you. Okay. I will go ahead and adjourn the meeting from the Hood River Urban Renewal Agency and pass the gavel back to the mayor for city council to be reconvened.

We'll reconvene. City Manager comments, Abigail.

Thank you, Mayor. Just one quick thing is to welcome and appreciate our backup city attorney. Kristen Campbell has joined us here today. And you haven't asked her any really tough questions. So maybe actively. Thankful that you are here today. Appreciate it. And I don't have any particular news or updates, but do want to note that you had public comment on two topics before you got here, Mayor. One was... request for i i believe it was for a kind of loading zone or a dedicated spot in front of on third uh and then the other were several comments about uh changing the code for food trucks so just didn't want to get those lost in today's discussion thank you thank you uh committee reports we'll start with anna

I don't know if this technically counts as a committee, but I did connect with Nate Stice from, he's the current chair at the Columbia Gorge Community College. And then I attended the Columbia Gorge Community College board meeting last Tuesday, just quickly in the very beginning to see the facility and introduce myself as as a city councilor and contact for them. Before I was, provided my comment, there was a gentleman who is a professor at the college that, that just was addressing, and I think he's part of the teachers union there, that was addressing the board. And he noted and provided this handout that said that in the last five years, there's been almost a 60% drop in enrollment. And he had this handout that shows there's 402 less students than there were five years ago or six years ago, five years ago, I think it was. And I just wanted to say that we are super fortunate to have an institution of higher education in our community. And if there's a way that we can help as a community help support Columbia Gorge Community College reach out engage look and see what classes they offer because we're lucky we have them here and I'm definitely gonna put some energy towards knowing a little bit more about that particular amenity within our community and I would encourage everyone else nothing for me but very much agree with that a while back I

did like adult community ed classes there, some photography and writing. And it was a really enriching experience and they offer a lot of cool things there. So very much agree.

The Saruta board meeting was tonight, but Gladys and I could not attend because of this. We had several other members that were also had conflicts as well, so it may have been canceled. So we'll report back if there is anything that was discussed, though I don't think there was quorum to meet tonight, but certainly looking forward to discussions on the next visit. That's sort of what's in the planning queue at the moment. VHR, Visit Hood River board meeting is bi-monthly. Next month's June 24th. Just wanted to thank Katie Cadlib and Visit Hood River and all the downtown businesses that weighed in on the discussions we had around the hotel parking permit. And yeah, that's it for me for on committees.

Great. Region one act meeting is next week on Monday.

We had the Housing Authority Board meeting today. A couple things there. One, I'm the chair of the development portion of that. The chair of the... Our regional housing authority was Phil Brady. So we worked closely together and we have all lost such a friend and ally in this community with his untimely passing a couple weeks ago. Just let's take a moment to celebrate that fundamentally decent, generous, committed service of Phil Brady, thoughts with his family. And I asked for an update from staff at the Housing Authority. It sounds like 23 folks have gotten to the point in the process where they are signing leases at Mariposa Village. So, so exciting. It's like actually happening. There's gonna be many more steps to happen, but that's a real one right there. So just wonderful. Did anyone want to sort of advocate for either of those business from the audience items that Abigail called out? I would like to have kind of loop them into the mix, Anna.

Um, yeah, I, I, for the tables for the, um, food trucks, I'd like to have a better understanding. And actually I didn't get a chance to jot down the, um, the code section that they, that, um, one woman referenced. Um, do you have that by chance?

Yeah. Thank you, counselor. Um, let's see, it is, I'm not sure exactly what she referenced, but it is, um, in our code chapter 5.07 transient merchants and special events. I will note that, and I've just done a quick review, so this is not thorough, but we last reviewed this code in February of 2023. At that time, we were focused on changing the code to allow food trucks to not move locations. Previously, they had to move every six months. So that was the focus. At that time, tables didn't come up. They have not been allowed, I think, since the entire time since we've had a food cart code. So when we looked at it in 2023, that issue didn't come up, so we didn't touch it one way or the other. I am guessing, but I am not, again, not sure. I anticipate that that was maybe a compromise in the last 15, 10, 10, 15 years of a There were early concerns about food trucks competing with established businesses and restaurants. And so that might've been a compromise at that time. I don't know if that's still true or if that was the reason, but the folks who were here shared, they left me a copy of the code from city of the Dells. And I promised I would follow up with them tomorrow if you had any direction.

Yeah, I'd like to explore that a little bit more and understand that because I think It does make sense to allow that if it's, I think we should look into that. The other thing that was brought up was the loading zone. And I, as Bradford mentioned, my office does look right down Third Street and I see people double parked there all the time. And it's not just about his particular hotel business that's there. He's got several businesses in the two buildings that he owns that, you know, people are coming and going and HAB-Masyn Moyer- I, I would like to better understand the location of loading zones in our downtown area how they're determined and. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Abigail and I talked briefly about just like there isn't actually a process or for how to determine where those might be located, and this means. HAB-Masyn Moyer- That two spots that were authorized by oh got one second. for the new hotel. It's interesting to me that ODOT authorized a two parking spot loading zone.

Without consulting the city.

Without consulting the city, but the city also meters spots on that same road. So that's weird to me. And then across the street, there is a taxi cab right across on

I escaped there. Right. Which council, council granted. Okay. So that through the conversation in 2024.

And then I'm not, I think there's also a loading zone in front of the river hotel. And I just like, it'd be really helpful to see a map of where our downtown parking, where the loading zones are, and then maybe have a conversation with all of us about how we figure out how, how, how those are determined and are they located in a place that makes sense.

Anna is in favor of this. Does Anna have three friends who would like to allocate our scant agenda time to this topic? Okay, so this is truly where I now get into people because now we're discussing it like at the, you know, sort of later hour about whether to put it on the agenda. So maybe that's how it goes. So Ben and then Doug.

Oh, I was just asking a clarifying question since there were two different entities brought up. If that was friends for all or friends for one. I very much, the food cart, that thing kind of took me aback. I never really thought that tables weren't something that wasn't permitted. So I'd be interested in learning more about that, especially as to really sure about the loading zone situation and assumed that perhaps that was going to be part of a longer part being studied for dissertation. I don't know. I would be intrigued to learn more about that and a little bit, Larry, about businesses having ad hoc loading zone requests. Does it feel that can get

interested in talking more thank you i didn't feel like there was a lot of discussion about tables when we we made the changes uh however there were some discussions um one thing that was brought up was you know health health code right so i recall dustin informing us and grant making you recall as well um that one of the big differences was at the time people that were you know sort of exploring that or just doing it without having code established. Once we had code established, we were asking them to take tables away. It was kind of loose before that once we had code, but I think the basis was you need to comply with the same health code standards that a brick and mortar business would have. so uh when uh the owner of mount hood barbecue brought that up that we had talked to the health department and we had a bathroom established and we had hot running water and these sorts of things that's my recollection around that i certainly wouldn't be opposed to discussing how within health code we uh those businesses could have uh if they're landlord approves tables and those sorts of things. I know historically in Portland, you know, there was a lot of, you know, discourse regarding that sort of issue, right? Like there's a lot of food carts that once they got sort of going and bigger in Portland, that a lot of them were growing outside. The pandemic sort of exacerbated that as well. But now if you're in Portland, you can see that there's all sorts of infrastructure and crazy amounts of money spent building out facilities, bathrooms, secure seating that's not just like a table sitting there. So there's a lot that can be done with that. I do think that it would require some staff time to be able to revisit that. Perhaps Dustin could give us a memo sort of reminding us about what was discussed then and give us an idea of what he thinks. permitting tables would entail. I'm certainly not opposed to it. I think it would be if it could be done within code and done properly. But I also want to protect staff's time. And if it's something that Dustin thinks is going to be a huge amount of time, I wouldn't be in favor of doing that now. Maybe when we set a new work plan. Personally, not opposed to it, health code. And if it's minimal staff time to sort of do that, I'm fine with it. But if it's something that Dustin thinks is gonna be significant, then I don't think it's wise to do it at this time. Regarding the other one, We definitely had a lot of discussions around parklets on Oak Street. And what if we moved the loading zone here or the loading zone there? And every single business objected to where the loading zone was going to go. So loading zones are difficult, right? Loading zones are also, I think, Abigail, correct me if I'm wrong, at the end of a block, not in the middle of a block. And I do get worried as Councilor Mitchell said, ad hoc requests. I know Abigail gets requests all the time. I want a loading zone in front of my business and it would be not just a hotel or it could be someone that's dropping off children or buying a sandwich. Every business will want to have a loading zone is my concern around that. I think that the greater hotel parking issue is already something that we are discussing. And I appreciate Brad coming here and saying, I don't want to wait for this to be a larger sort of thing. But I kind of feel like the argument he's making about, oh, it's not safe, people are double parking, any business could really make. You know, Lightwell, I think it was unfortunately passed right by us, you know, from ODOT. I'm frustrated that they did not consult us to do that in our own city. I feel like the amount of traffic that that location receives could theoretically be more than the other hotel because it's a larger size. But I don't know. We haven't done studies about the other businesses that are in that building and whatnot. So I'm not really in favor of loading zones. If Lightwell, if that was brought to us, I think we could have had a discussion. That wasn't our decision. So I'm not trying to pit one hotel against another, but I'm not really in favor of the loading zones without a more comprehensive study, or I guess study is not the right word, but more comprehensive look at this as we look into parking within the city. But yeah, I appreciate the feedback and I appreciate Abigail. Brad had said that you had been working with him and spoke a lot. And I think we're at the point where it's more of a council sort of discussion. So appreciate all the time that the two of you have spent together on that.

As I alluded to my earlier comments, when we were talking about parking, I was discussing it as a public, resource of sorts, trying to not get into too much of it being a policy discussion. Unfortunately, it's treated as a public resource and I think we need to get ahead of it. We have a reactionary policy stance in terms of parking. We don't really have a really well fleshed out policy in terms of how we use that space, allocate that space. And I think we as council need to take a more proactive stance in how we use, allocate the space. quote unquote public space that is parking, or at least that space that we allocate to parking. So I agree with Anna that we should allocate some time at some point to have a actual proactive policy discussion in how we allocate that space.

That's all. All right, so there's two topics. I'm gonna try this. I would entertain a motion to place voting zones on a future agenda for discussion. I would entertain a motion to place the other topic on the agenda for discussion and see if we actually have a majority with interest in that. The result of such a motion would be, as you indicated, Dustin giving us a one page of reminding us how thing works, something like that.

Can I give comments on just both of those topics really quickly? First for the food trucks, I'd want to note that that would be an ordinance process. So that would be updating the code and require a public hearing. I would also recommend that you do some engagement with other businesses because I think, as I said, that may have originally been a restriction that was placed based on concerns of brick and mortar restaurants. And so I'd want to at least inform people that you were having that conversation so that a limited public engagement around that one. And then with the loading zone piece, I do want to recognize that the 2019 study actually had some recommendations not about the placement about the loading zones, but that existing loading zones not be dedicated loading zones all hours, all days. So there was a movement away from dedicated loading zone to making them more flexible and being able to be used by more people. And that is the policy and practice that I have been applying. So it has not been completely arbitrary. I mean, I do have some policies I've been reviewing or I have been... Yeah, been applying, which absolutely you can look at that, but I wanted to recognize that we do, that the 2019 study did talk about loading zones and really moved us back from dedicated loading zones and more toward trying to make them as flexible as possible.

Two thoughts on that. One is it's a little bit of a potato-potato on the loading zones where I know that every hotel, as Doug said eloquently, every hotel would love to have a loading zone slash guest parking in front of their hotel. And I know that there's been negotiating with staff about who gets to have those. And so now we're, oh, it's not a hotel loading, it's a loading zone. So And I hear Abigail saying it's an ordinance public engagement process to talk about picnic tables. So that's not a light thing to put on the agenda.

It can be done. You just recognize that there are several meetings that you will need to touch that multiple times.

And we have the full. a buffet of council goals that staff is diligently working on. So I'm reluctant to grab the new shiny thing to cut in line.

Anna. I would like to make a motion that staff spend some time to provide council with additional information on loading zones and picnic tables for City Council Chambers, food carts just you know not a ton of time, but just a reasonable amount of time, so that we can have some information about this and then at that point make a decision based on the information that you provide us to decide, we want to discuss it further.

City Council Chambers, move by cavalier.

motion dies for lack of a second i believe is the correct phrase and just to say you put them both in one so we could each hate them for one or the other just just saying uh doug and then ben i feel like it doesn't require a motion necessarily to achieve you know point to where in the parking study you've been executing from that's you know that's an email um for example like

Oh, thank you.

I was going to ask for your exact amount of saying, so go ahead.

I was just going to note that I think a map of loading zones is pretty easy, and I've actually already asked for that. The history of where loading zones got put, I'm not sure that anybody on staff that is here now would know that. Okay, that I can do, or that our GIS technician can do.

All right, we got a map.

Great.

Thank you.

And then on the other one, I mean, I think Dustin, were he here, he would be able to answer some of that information about, you know, what that looks like. I do agree though, that it's, you know.

Yeah. And I think that is some limited public engagement, you know, the city attorney working with staff to write code that then comes to you for consideration.

Yeah. Just more or less, did we talk about it? If we did and if we didn't talk about what his thoughts are on it. In 2023.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the great news is we can go back and watch that meeting again. I'm probably the biggest user of our YouTube channel.

It's on my greatest hits playlist somewhere.

I can go back and watch that and we can definitely update you on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Anna, for doing what I suggested. I think people, you got some positive feedback for the outcome of that. Doug is now suggesting, oh, it's no big deal. We'll just get a YouTube. Do we want to spend, I mean, just or to contrapositive, do we want to waste agenda time on this item? We have so many things that we're talking about. So do we wish to allocate our time on the picnic table thing? I don't, I hear from one. I don't, not sure I got four people saying yes, picnic tables.

I don't know that it would amount to agenda is really more of just like getting a memo to learn a little bit more about it. And then.

Getting a memo. Everybody okay with asking Abigail to spend time on a memo. Thank you. Great. Okay. Where we were before all of that was those were the two pieces of public input. We have, we have agreed that we would like some follow-up on both of those testimonials, right? Great. Thank you. I've had some conversations with Abigail and I know Doug a little bit about general access to the agenda. It is, I'm not feeling like a plus satisfaction with that where it's nine o'clock, we never have enough time and there's a lot of things to talk about. So that hence the energy about that. I think we're going... We did committees. Have we done comment? That's my mayor comments, I think. Council comments, grant.

We, from the bridge story, we had a career day down at lot one. Had a bunch of heavy equipment. The fire department was there. A bunch of students from the area high schools came down, got a pretend to drive heavy machinery in simulators, weld things, so they got to sort of test out various jobs and play with heavy machinery, not actually play with it, but simulate playing with it. So yeah, it was a good day last week on Thursday? I think it was the last week on Thursday. So yeah, yeah, and I answered a bunch of questions. That happened and it was a good time. Hopefully we can do it again after we secure full funding and actually get a bridge built. That's it.

Doug. Yeah, just one thing. I did attend, as Councilor Cavalier did a filming last week for, I believe, right? You did it for the fire station. So yeah, maybe you'll speak to that too. But I went to Mariposa Village to film for the affordable housing bond and I got to go in So one of the under construction units, super cool. Like we're talking, there are refrigerators and electricity and countertops and everything, like we're getting pretty close. Throughout that process too, just a couple of facts, just to remind you all of us as we start working towards an affordable housing bond is, as Will and I were sort of preparing what we might discuss when I was interviewing One of the things that sticks out to me is, you know, just as we think about how we can use affordable housing dollars, that Mariposa, though it may not be matched again, you know, we want to look towards things that we can do like Mariposa, where we had $1.7 million. you know, get matched with $55 million in funding, right? So like I asked the question earlier about McKed, you know, that's the kind of thing I think we should be thinking about. Another thing that I talked about in that is, you know, four out of five workers in the city do not reside here anymore. That's terrifying to me about, you know, maintaining a community. Another thing is that, you know, about half of the renters in this town are rent burdened, right? So paying over a third of their income So just being there, standing in Mariposa, hearing stories from the construction workers about how things are going and everything, it's awesome to see it in motion. And I just want to advocate for all the work being done towards the affordable housing bond to figure out how to have other success stories because sorely needed in our community right now. I think we all know that, but just wanted to reiterate.

Ben. Nothing from me. Anna.

City Council Chambers, i'll be fast, first I want to congratulate the hood river valley parks and REC district on the success of both of their ballot measures. City Council Chambers, And thank you to our Community for investing in that amenity in the programming that truly benefits all of our residents, so I just wanted to say congrats to them. and to all of us, because I think we're all going to benefit from that. And then the other thing I just wanted to note was that the Hood River American Legion and other local organizations hosted a Memorial Day service at Idlewild Cemetery yesterday with nearly 300 attendees who honored the veterans who had served our country's armed forces. And it was pretty amazing. If you have the opportunity to attend next year, I would highly recommend it.

Thanks, Anna. I think that brings us to the end. Anything else for the good of the order? See you in June. We are adjourned.