City Council - Regular Meeting

Yes, Mayor, let's get started.

Welcome, everybody. Thanks for coming to your city council on June 22nd, 26. My name is Paul Blackburn. I'm the mayor. I'm going to call us to order. The first thing we're all going to do is silence our cell phones. And please join me as we say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Next, I have the pleasure of administering the oath of office to a couple of new officers. I understand Lieutenant Shelley is here to lead things. Lieutenant, hold on just a second.

There we go.

Thank you.

So it's my pleasure to introduce two of Hood River Police Department's newest officers. We have Officer Evan Morgan, Officer Noah Linder here, and I'll give a little bit of background here. Officer Morgan, he is from the Gresham area originally. and spent six years in the United States Air Force. And he's in week, I wanna say week 14 of the police academy at this time. So three more weeks, he's gonna graduate and come back and start his training here. So we're excited about that. Officer Linder is originally from Southern Oregon and graduated from Hood River Valley High School. And he has a construction background, been doing that last few years. And he's going to start his academy on July 6th. So these two officers will overlap at the academy for a couple weeks. But we're both excited. I think they're going to be fantastic officers for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, the microphone's here, so come on over. Officer Morgan, we'll start with you.

Okay.

Raise your right hand. Please repeat after me. I, Evan Morgan. I, Evan Morgan. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

And of the state of Oregon. And of the state of Oregon. The city charter of the city of Hood River.

The city charter of the city of Hood River.

And the ordinances and resolutions of said city.

And the resolutions and ordinances of said city.

And that I will.

And that I will.

To the best of my ability.

To the best of my ability.

Faithfully perform the duties.

Faithfully perform the duties.

Of police officer.

Of police officer.

Of the city of Hood River.

Of the city of Hood River.

During my continuance therein.

During my continuance therein.

So help me God.

So help me God. Welcome aboard, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

I, Noah Linder, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Oregon, the City Charter of the City of Hood River, and the ordinances and resolutions of said city. And the ordinances and resolutions of said city. And that I will. And that I will. To the best of my ability. To the best of my ability. Faithfully perform the duties of police officer. Faithfully perform the duties of police officer. Of the city of Hood River. Of the city of Hood River. During my continuance therein. During my continuance therein. So help me God. So help me God. Welcome aboard, sir.

So I'm going to turn it over to you.

And shall we do some photographs? And how do you want this to go?

Yeah, so family members are going to pin this on.

And then we can do some photographs. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh my God.

Thank you. Okay, now is the time for any agenda additions or corrections Abigail.

Mayor, we have no changes to the city council agenda.

We have a couple of public hearings. And I think that some folks are here to speak to those public hearings. We will have folks speak to those public hearings within the public hearings. They are, I have my scripts. One is on a zone change. One is an executive session. So that's not it. What is the other public hearing people?

Mayor, one is for building fees, and the third is supplemental budget.

Is anyone here to speak to us about building fees? Please raise your hand.

How about the zone change? How about the supplemental budget? Excellent. So if you are not here about the zone change, we're going to call you up now. I have Linda Bailey, but you're for the zone change, right? Good. Sunny Simon, would you like to come on up, Sunny? What would you like us to know, Sunny?

Good evening, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Sunny Simon and I serve as the Board President at Columbia Gorge Humane Society in the Dallas, Oregon. I'm here tonight to talk about the power of partnership and to encourage the City of Hood River to consider building a stronger more formal relationship with the Hood River Adopt-A-Dog, similar to the successful partnership we have established with the City of the Dalles. So briefly, we were able to acquire a 501c3 about two years ago. Home at Last was failing. We caught wind of that. A group of us got together, we acquired a 501 and we were able to slide in before that entity closed. But we would not have been able to do that without a strong partnership with the city of the Dalles and Wasco County. The City of the Dalles recognized that animal welfare is a community responsibility. Their partnership with our organization has allowed us to provide critical services while ensuring animals are cared for humanely and responsibly. Our work would not be sustainable without municipal support and collaboration. The challenges facing Hood River are no different. Lost animals, abandoned pets, Emergency situations and pet overpopulation affect every community. These are situations of public safety, public health, and quality of life. They require cooperation between local government and animal welfare organizations, especially now with the near depletion of the Hikari Fund. A partnership does not simply benefit an animal shelter, it benefits residents who need help, law enforcement officers that encounter animal related issues, visitors who find lost pets, and ultimately the entire community. I really want to stress with the Hukari Fund coming to a close, there has to be structural changes to keep the shelter funded and operational. The shelter cannot provide all these services to the community for free. There must be participation from the city and the county to be sustainable. It is not reasonable to assume Hood River Adopt-a-Dog can raise enough money on a yearly basis to remain sustainable. Without this collaboration, the shelter will likely shutter its doors, leaving no services provided to the community and also will likely become a catch-and-euthanize situation in our town. I have seen firsthand what is possible when a city invests in a collaborative solution. The City of the Dalles has demonstrated that working together creates better outcomes for everyone involved. I hope the City of Hood River will consider a similar path in building a sustainable approach to animal welfare in this region. Thank you.

Thank you, Sunny, for coming. Lorraine lines.

Good evening again. I'm Lorraine Lyons. I'm here representing Hood River adopt a dog. Y'all have a one cheater in your packet that I hope will be helpful. I wanted to make some clarify some things based on your conversation. After my last address and that we are not seeking a donation we're seeking a partnership, and I would like to also call your attention to your IGA which is about to expire at the end of this month. And it states in your IGA from the county that the county has the resources and qualified personnel to provide animal control services to the city in exchange for compensation. The county shall provide animal control, shelter, and adjudication for the city. I would like to make it very clear that the county does not provide shelter services to the city, we do. The county and its officers in also the city, when I say the county, I mean, the city is part of the county right now, Gil, one of our meetings. Animal control picked up 16 city dogs last year, 16, and left them for us to care for, to love, to nurture, to train, to spay, to neuter, to bring nurse back to health. The county does not provide these services. We do. And we cannot do it for free. There is no budget for us from the county next year. Nothing. Without the city, we will shutter. It's not a, we may shutter. We will shutter. So we are very hopeful that when you contemplate your next IGA, that your, um, thoughts will be to help us provide services to the city of Hood River. And I think we exemplify your mission. If you are providing services, essential services to your community at the most reasonable way possible financially, we're doing 80% of the heavy lifting monetarily. So I think Hood River adopt a dog service to the County of Hood River, is a great example of partnership. And I hope that as you consider your IGA moving forward, that expires at the end of the month that you will consider partnering with us. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lorraine. Steve, I think you're here about the zone change. First name, can't quite tell, Jordan from Endpoint CIDR. I think that's zone change as well. Patrick Jones, zone change. And Williams, last name Williams, zone change. Great. So you guys will all speak during that public hearing. And that brings us to the end of the business from the audience. Did I flub that on anybody? Is there anybody who wanted to speak to us about something other than the zone change? We will now at this time go into the first of our public hearings, which is the one about Wasco Street. I will read a script that I have. Stand by. This is the continuation of the April 27th, 2026 hearing of file number 2025-32, an application by Ben Dow requesting approval of a zone change from the industrial to general commercial zone in association with proposed planned unit development. Let me describe the order of events for the hearing on tonight's agenda. First, we will hear from the staff. Next, we will hear from the applicant. Then we will take public testimony. And finally, we will hear the applicant's final rebuttal and remarks. After everyone has had a chance to testify, we will close the record, deliberate, and may render a decision tonight. Our decision, however, is not final until it is reduced to writing and officially issued. Here are some basic rules for presenting testimony in tonight's hearing. Only present testimony when called upon and do so only at the podium. Begin with your name and mailing address. Please limit your testimony to the applicable approval criteria. If you believe that other criteria apply, please identify those and explain why you think they apply. That is the procedural introduction for tonight's hearing. Does anyone have questions or objections about tonight's hearing procedure? In the back, please come up to the podium, sir.

I am going from Jordan. I live at 1310 Wasco Street, which appears to be outside of the 250 feet circle that they have drawn around this as far as notifying people. I did not find out about this until the beginning of this year. And so I have done some homework for that. But the attorney for this company wrote a detailed letter rebutting all some of the concerns that we in the neighborhood had identified with this development. And so I asked to have a chance to answer that letter in detail in a continuance request that I submitted this morning. And I don't know if that is part of your package or not.

Thank you.

Okay.

Staff, can you help me with this? How shall I entertain a request for continuance received this morning?

All right. Just take a second.

Okay.

That's really up to you, Mayor. Whether you grant the continuance or not is up to you. The hearing was continued to today to date certain. That is a first evidentiary that's really discretion of counsel whether to grant it or not.

You're not obligated to. We are figuring this out.

Gladys.

Is it possible to understand the reasons why there should be a continuance just so that we have that understanding?

Well, first evidentiary hearing, which was planning commission, you have to grant it. If you need more time to consider the facts or evaluate, you could proceed with much of the hearing and continue it after you started it. Reason really would be, do you have... the necessary details or information to positively respond to the request the criteria in front of you um that that's really why so uh the hearing is the applicant's pitch counsels the receiving body um you're the only adjudicator on this zone change so it's really up to to you all whether you you have the time and necessary or do you need additional information to gather so

This second hearing, we started in April.

We've been, it's been probably so. You can proceed, you can continue at any time.

Thank you for that. That's what I'm trying to understand. You know, we were supposed to talk about this in April and there was a continuance then. We're in June and I'm trying to understand were the gentleman's comments not included the first time around?

And they are now, I think, in response to materials received today. Absolutely. Public testimony has to be a part of this. So there's opportunity to ask questions at the time. Then there is also built in and mandatory. Legations for the applicant to respond so. That that is kind of the required procedure is everyone who received notice every party of standing everyone who heard about it on. The internet has an opportunity to testify before midnight. It was built in place. You are required to hear that. Whether you need more information after they speak or after the applicant has the last word, because that carries the burden, then you can decide during the deliberation. Maybe a good time to say, do we need more time to figure this out?

Thank you. What I'm feeling, tell me what y'all think, is let's proceed. And after the steps that were in the script, if we feel that we want to continue, we can do that. And that would give us more opportunity to hear Mr. Jordan's information. We'll see if that seems like what we want to do. Are we okay with that? Great. So in that case, let's see, I'll get back to where I was, which was questions or objections about the hearing procedure. Do we have any other questions or objections about tonight's hearing procedure? Jen, anyone online?

Okay.

They did submit comments. Oh, they did submit comments.

Great. In that case, I'll invite, we'll start with the staff report.

Thank you, Mayor. As mentioned, the hearing before you today is for a zone change request, file number 202532, submitted in association with a planned unit development for an 11-unit townhouse project at 1225 Wasco Street. The townhouse development has been approved pending a zone change and you've been provided application materials, a staff report and summary from the planning commission. So I wanted to provide an application overview for the hearing and in support of council's deliberation.

There you go, thank you.

A little about the application and the subject site. The site is located on the northeast corner of Wasco and 13th. Originally built in 1996, the site was previously occupied as a windsurfing and kite manufacturing facility, a cannabis processing facility, and then a cake and dessert production facility. Surrounding zones include R2 to the south, R3 to the west, and I to the north and east. The proposed site is 50% vacant and as conveyed by the owner has struggled to maintain tenancy. The site is located along Wasco Street, a collector and transportation corridor within 120 feet of the nearest townhomes, 250 feet from existing commercial uses to the east, including retail food and beverage and other services, and is 0.3 miles from the downtown central business district. As mentioned, the zone change from I to C2 is made in association with the planned unit development consisting of 11 units on an 11 lot subdivision. The proposed development was unanimously approved by Planning Commission pending the zone change, which includes site improvements, 22 onsite parking spaces, landscaping, public sidewalk, stormwater, and street frontage improvements. Council is the only body that may approve a zone change of the property and has the above criteria to consider when making its findings and decision. These criteria are outlined in your application materials and the planning commission findings on page 19 and 140 of your packet. Additionally, the planning commission has the above criteria to consider when making findings in a decision. And these criteria are outlined in the application materials and planning commission findings on page 21 and 141 of your packet. In the staff report and recommendation to the Planning Commission, staff recommended approval of the zone change from industrial to general commercial at the February 17th, 2026 hearing, and found that the zone change request is consistent with the city's housing needs analysis, economic opportunities analysis, and comprehensive plan. Analysis focused heavily on criteria two of the zone change criteria, specifically with an emphasis on statewide goals nine and 10, as these criteria are most impactful and informative elements for the comprehensive plan supporting this change. First, regarding Goal 9, Economic Development, analysis indicates that the City currently maintains a surplus of industrial land of sites of this particular size. Because of this transition, this specific parcel away from industrial use will not compromise the City's overall industrial capacity or our long-term employment requirements. Therefore, the zone change remains supportable from a goal nine standpoint. Next, looking at goal 10 and housing, this change directly aligns with strategy 1.1 of the housing needs analysis. And it fits into the city site prioritization strategy and demonstrates exactly how this parcel can be utilized to satisfy the broader comprehensive plan and housing goals. The housing needs analysis included as attachment D within your packet. As part of the zone change criteria, goal nine of the city of Hood River's comprehensive plan requires that jurisdictions provide at least an adequate supply of sites of suitable sizes, types, locations, and service levels for a variety of industrial and commercial uses. The city's adopted economic opportunities analysis, which is the latest update to goal nine of the city's comprehensive plan, It indicates that the City of Hood River has a surplus of approximately 18 tax lots of industrial land under a medium growth scenario for parcels of this size. The site currently under evaluation is approximately 0.34 acres, and the EOA identified no additional demand for industrial zone sites that are less than one acre in size in a medium growth scenario. When evaluated against the observed growth trends in the City of Hood River, and the actual demand for industrial land since the adoption of the EOA, the Planning Commission found that existing and projected industrial land needs can be accommodated with the current inventory, excluding the parcels as part of this requested zone change. Accordingly, the Planning Commission and staff both found that the proposed zone change from industrial to commercial for residential use would not adversely affect the city's ability to meet its industrial land requirements over the planning period, and is consistent with statewide land use planning goals and local comprehensive plan policies. For Goal 10, the city's 2015 adopted housing needs analysis identified deficits across all housing density types, which within the City of Hood River's urban growth boundary, and determined that 1,985 new dwelling units will be required over the 20-year planning period to accommodate projected growth in populations. The rezoning to C2 to allow proposed plan unit development would utilize a portion of the surplus industrial land supply and address the city's identified needed housing. Strategy one, action 1.1 of the housing needs analysis, which is included as attachment D, focuses on increasing the efficiency of land use within the Hood River urban growth boundary and states that the city should identify residential land to rezone for higher development densities with an intention of providing more opportunities for development of moderate and high density multifamily housing. When selecting land to rezone, the city should focus on land that is vacant along transportation corridors in areas with current or planned water and wastewater services and in a location that will not disrupt existing neighborhoods. While the proposed rezone is for the general commercial zone, the city allows development of multifamily planned unit developments as a conditional use in the C2 zone And staff found this strategy is also consistent with Goal 10 of the Comprehensive Plan as it promotes land efficiency for housing. Although the site is currently not designated for residential use, the policy does not preclude consideration of zone changes on non-residential lands. This type of change in the proposal is evaluated using both the housing needs analysis and the economic opportunities analysis. to ensure it would not adversely affect economic opportunities or the supply of needed housing for economic growth. And the analysis and balance of Goal 10, housing, and Goal 9, economic development, find that there's a surplus of industrial properties of this type and size. And accordingly, the proposed zone change to support needed housing, particularly at these moderate and high densities, is clearly supported by the comprehensive plan, adopted housing strategies, and the economic opportunities analysis. At the Planning Commission hearing, public testimony and written comments focused primarily on the potential impact of the development on available street parking, neighborhood compatibility, scale of the development, impacted views, and traffic safety concerns along Wasco Street. While staff recommended approval of the zone change, the Planning Commission found that the proposed rezone from I to C2 is not justified by the city's 2015 housing needs analysis as it does not identify down zoning C2 land as a strategy for meeting the city's identified housing needs. And as such, the proposed zone change is not in conformance with goal 10. Note that the housing needs strategy one action 1.1 supports rezoning land to increase opportunities for moderate and high density housing and does not specifically restrict rezoning to C2 to satisfy the needed housing Planning Commission did determine that the proposed zone change from industrial to commercial for residential use would not adversely affect the city's ability to meet its industrial land requirements over the planning period as outlined within the economic opportunities analysis. Additionally, concern was expressed that approval could set a precedent for similar requests and potentially allow future uses not contemplated in the proposal. Specifically, the Commission noted the possibility that a zone change could enable commercial uses inconsistent with the development as presented or result in a proliferation of short-term rentals. However, the Planning Commission recommended that if City Council elects to approve the application, it adopts additional conditions of approval that prohibit the use of dwelling units as short-term rental units, require a minimum residential density to ensure consistency with the identified housing needs and applicable comprehensive plan policies, and prevent unintended incompatible uses in the C2 zone. Staff findings supporting approval and the Planning Commission's recommendation of denial are included within your report. As the decision maker for zone changes, City Council may choose to approve, deny, or approve with conditions of the request zone change. Should Council choose to approve, draft conditions of approval are included on page 19 of your report or page 28 of your packet. Thank you.

Thank you, Jacob.

Next we will hear from the applicant.

That. So much technology. Oops, not that way. Yeah, got it. I figured it out. Excellent. I think. It's just an idea. I'm going to buy it. Whoa. Thank you. All right. Good evening, Mayor and city councillors. I'm Zoe Lynn Powers, Radler-White on behalf of the applicant, Benjamin Dow. The case in front of you is a request to rezone 1225 Wasco Street so it can be used for housing. I'll cover three things in this presentation, who the applicant is and the history of the property and the case, what's proposed, And finally, how the project team has addressed neighbor concerns and related proposed conditions of approval. I'm going to try and answer any questions you have, but I also have available the architect and the applicant team if there's anything you come up with that I can't answer. So just tell I'm not used to having my own presentation.

I don't want to add text.

It's okay. No worries. So the request in front of you today is a zone change from industrial I to general commercial zone. The request is paired with that planned unit development that Jacob was talking about, a PUD for 11 townhouses. The Planning Commission already approved the PUD, and importantly, the PUD was not appealed and is not within the scope of today's hearing. proposed conditions approval will tie the zone change approval to the PUD and also limit the extent of short term rentals allowed here to the same extent as in neighboring residential zones. I'll come back to that. I want to start with the history of this property and help explain why we're here and why housing makes sense on this particular site. The applicant, Ben Dow of Capsule Development, he has deep ties to Hood River and to this site in particular. Ben's family ran Northwave, which is a local windsurfing company on the site for many years. Northwave notably has always been committed to keeping all of their manufacturing and production right here in Hood River. But about 10 years ago, Northwave outgrew this very small 0.34 acre property and moved down to the waterfront on Portway. And the family still owns this property. It's been partially occupied here and there, but it's mostly vacant for a decade. So the family asked Ben a simple question. What could the site become and how could it keep serving Hood River in a new way? Similar to NorthWive's experience, other manufacturers and industrial users who considered this site over the last decade have found this property to be too small for an industrial use. That decade of vacancy lines up with the city's own adopted economic opportunities analysis, the EOA. The EOA found that the city has a surplus of roughly 15 acres of industrial land, even under a high growth scenario, and actual growth has tracked closer to a medium growth scenario. More importantly, for the matter in front of you today, the EOA found there is no market demand in Hood River for industrial sites under one acre. As I mentioned, the property is about a third of an acre. Industrial uses simply have changed since Northwave's era in the 80s and 90s. Modern industrial tenants simply can't operate on a sub-acre site wedged into a mixed-use area. Unfortunately, the restrictive zoning keeps this site nominally as industrial, even though the city's own analysis and the family's experience show there's no market for industrial at this less than one acre scale. I don't think I need to spend much time on the need for housing in Hood River. I know you all spend a lot of time and energy on this council thinking about this problem, but reiterate what staff put forth that your own housing needs analysis, which provides the factual basis to support planning efforts related to housing, like this hearing, found you have a significant deficit, about 2000 units needed over the 20 year planning period, including almost 200 units needed in the multifamily or attached housing category. That HNA provides the background facts on things like acreage available and market demand for those different types of housing. And then those background facts were used to develop the city's comprehensive housing strategy, which notes that the C2 zone we're requesting today is critical for the development of this kind of attached multifamily unit. The project's not multifamily in the strictest definition. Technically, these are attached single family units, but they seek to address the same economic need for higher density, smaller housing units that by virtue of their size are more attainable for residents and families. Importantly, this requested zone change is aligned with the housing strategy's top identified action, Section 1.1, identify land to rezone to allow moderate and high density single family detached and multifamily development. So, with those economics in mind, here's what the family decided to propose and how it's designed. The PUD approved development on the site of 11 two and three bedroom townhomes, large enough for families to create comfortable homes for kids to have their own bedrooms, but designed to be more modest in size in order to make these homes more attainable for full year Hood River residents than a lot of Hood River's newer housing. This is the proposed site plan. Rather than one big mass of attached units, material architecture arranged the proposed townhomes in clusters of two to three units. So the project feels human scaled and preserves filtered river views for residents and neighbors alike. This rendering of the project is from the north, looking south at the facade that would face Wasco Street. The design draws from the Columbia River Gorge scenic guidelines with dark natural materials, native plantings that exceed landscaping standards, and forms that echo the region's topography and vernacular. Can you tell the architect told me these things? The result is a development that belongs to its place, quietly confident, community-minded, and rooted in the landscape it inhabits. This is the view from the west looking east, so from 13th, showing the project's defining element known as the boardwalk. The boardwalk is a second level shared promenade that serves as the social and spatial heart of the community. At this level, each home's socially oriented living spaces open directly onto the shared interior boardwalk, encouraging neighborly exchange and outdoor living while keeping the project visually quiet for the surrounding neighborhood. The boardwalk simultaneously offers river views, provides sheltered terraces, and screens the parking below, balancing privacy with openness and community with calm. The design is grounded in how people here actually live. Each home has an onsite garage that's tall enough for a sprinter van and sized for the windsurfing and skiing and biking gear that's part of daily life. Parking and storage are recessed into the grade to hold the height down and respect neighbor sight lines. And landscape walkways connect to both Wasco and 13, prioritizing walkability. The public process on this project so far has raised a number of thoughtful concerns, and I want to address each one of them directly. Before I do so, I want to note, as your staff have done, that these concerns largely pertain to the approved PUD rather than to the zone change. As I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, the PUD is final because it was not appealed. And these two different land use applications have different characters. The PUD focuses on design and development standards, on height and lighting and landscaping and parking and size. Is the project built right? Is it compatible in physical and operational terms? And the Planning Commission already answered yes, unanimously, and that decision is final. The zone change in front of you tonight is not about the building details. It's about whether the zone itself fits, looking at the character of the area and the site suitability for particular uses, and whether conditions have changed such that a new zone is more suitable than the existing one, as conditioned by the conditions of approval. Importantly, the proposed residential use of the site fits in as the missing keystone of existing residential development surrounding the site. Some have asked whether this project fits the area. As illustrated on this map, it sits right at the transition between industrial and residential with homes on three sides. Comparable developments with attached units are located both to the east and to the west along Wasco. You can kind of see them to the east in that image. Dense housing here along Wasco is a logical buffer between incompatible zones. Indeed, Planning Commission found that the project will create, quote, an appropriate and compatible transition, end quote, between industrial to the north and residential to the south. In contrast, a true industrial use on a parcel this size, hemmed in by homes, would bring the noise, traffic, and other externalities that neighbors have expressed concern about. Turning to the first of those concerns and the one we've heard the most, it's important for me to convey that this is not a speculative rezone. Many neighbors have been concerned that rezoning to C2 could open the door to commercial units that uses that do not fit the neighborhood like a car wash or a gas station. However, this proposed zone change is paired with the approved PUD and ties the property to this specific 11 home residential project. To make that tie legally binding, we propose condition of approval one shown on this slide and also provided in our letter last week. It conditions the rezone on substantial conformance with the approved PUD. And if a different project were ever proposed, It must at least provide a minimum residential density and provide evidence it won't include incompatible commercial uses like drive-thrus or gas stations or anything creating trash, noise, light, or traffic impacts on neighbors, especially at night. This condition of approval language that's on the slide here synthesizes planning commission's recommended conditions as well as staff's identified language that past city councils have used in similar situations. Try to kind of meld them all into one cohesive whole. And Jacob can correct me, but I believe staff are supportive of this synthesis of the jumble of proposed conditions that came out of planning commission. Turning to more general concerns, I'll start with traffic. The traffic impact analysis by Lancaster Mobley found that the project generates only 12 net new weekday trips across the entire day. And at the peak hours when congestion matters, the project creates a net reduction, three fewer trips in the morning peak and four fewer in the evening peak. So during the busiest parts of the day, this project actually reduces impacts on the surrounding roads and the neighbors use of them. A related concern we've heard is about parking. The project more than satisfies the city's parking requirements. Each of the 11 units has two off-street spaces in that ground floor garage, 22 spaces in total. And beyond that, the project adds public parking. About 100 linear feet of half street improvements on Waskell create four to five new on-street spaces. So the project not only exceeds compliance with code, it leaves the neighborhood with more street parking than exists today. We have also heard concerns about views. Here, the topography helps the project. The property sits at notably lower elevation than many of the surrounding properties. And that topography, along with the design that doesn't build all the way up to the allowed height, allows buildings to fall below neighboring sight lines rather than cutting across them. Finally, we've heard a concern about short-term rentals, as I imagine you will hear about quite often. Specifically a concern about full-year commercial style STRs that would be allowed in a commercial zone. Let me be clear, there's no goal or intention to create commercial short-term rentals here. The commercial zone is proposed in lieu of a residential one in order to allow the project to have 11 units in that smaller, more attainable size for young families and others who might be priced out of Hood River. Planning Commission plan proposed to ban all short-term rentals on the property. However, that would burden these units in a manner disproportionate to their neighbors. Instead, we asked city council to impose the condition of approval shown here, allowing short-term rentals to the same extent and on the same terms as the adjoining residential properties. So just like the surrounding R2 and R3 owners, homeowners of the project would be required to occupy their unit as a primary residence and could rent no more than 90 days a year. This proposed condition of approval too makes that binding and the restriction runs with the land to all future owners. Banning all short-term rentals, even those that are allowed in the abutting residential zones, is an unnecessary burden on the affordability of these units. The goal of the proposed condition is to address the concern about non-local owners creating commercial-style 365-day-a-year rentals, while also giving project homeowners the same flexibility that their neighbors already have to earn supplemental income to help pay their mortgage or pay their family expenses. Finally, I want to address the concern about creating precedent. A few neighbors worried that this would open the door to rezoning other industrial land. However, a zone change is a quasi judicial decision. Each applicant and each application has to independently satisfy the code criteria on its own record. Approval here rests on the facts specific to this property. it's third of an acre size, its location between industrial and residential zoning, the absence of any market for sub one acre industrial sites, and the homes on three sides. None of that compels rezoning any other differently situated parcel. To close, we respectfully ask council to approve the requested zone change, the two conditions I've described, tying the C2 designation to the approved 11 home PUD or requiring a future project to meet minimum residential density and performance standards and allowing short-term rentals only in a manner compatible with what's allowed in neighborhood, neighboring residential zones. With that, thank you. I'm happy to take any questions or answer them after I come back up.

The next step will be to take public testimony unless council has some questions or comments at this time.

Grant, can you be specific about building specifications? Are you building to residential spec or commercial spec?

I can ask my team that question. I would guess the answer is residential because the intention is certainly that these are homes. But I will have an answer for you when I come back up. Thanks.

I'm not in charge. What is the current height of the building that's there? Just curious.

The current building?

Sorry, the height of the current building that's there.

The existing building that'll go away. Do you know offhand, Ben?

Six feet.

Thanks.

Say it's for the microphone. I didn't hear either. I was told by Can you say that word, please?

Someone in the audience has said it's 26 feet. And I'll confirm that when I come back up. Thank you.

Great. We will now take public testimony, starting with Linda Bailey and followed by Steve Lambert, maybe.

Hi. So I live at 1310 Wasco Street. My name is Linda Bailey. I'm a partner with Guntram Jordan in the Crushed Cider Cafe. So we have one plant on either side of the proposed site. My concern is the fact that I think it's the high density, the high density of the C2 is what they're shooting for. And my concern is the fact that when they talked about the downtown horses, town houses, sorry. that the ones that are to the west of us out of the six townhouses that are there there's one permanent resident and then on you have the C or the R2 houses there's 10 of them over there they are all rentals period so I don't see where having this density is going to help providing housing for our people that we're looking at to have families when you have no yard They're gonna be all tightly done with no yard and they will not park in their garages because of the tight way that they have to get in. Okay, so the Planning Commission, when we had the meeting on the 27th, they recommended that, yes, it would be nice to have that there as a residential, but not with the 11 units to do it in an R3 or an R2 so that it did not, in fact, become a commercial lot, which has been a concern because it can be turned into anything else. If something happens and they don't have the money to build the building, the thing that they're proposing, then it's open to other people to be building something else. And also the one thing that I found in there, which is why I asked for the continuance, was when they did their traffic study, they did it in February on an icy road with snow on the tree and they had no business, they had no traffic at all. And I sat on the corner of Wasco and 13th Street. And I came up with 15 people going east and 12 people going west and 11 people going up 13th Street. And that was from 7.45 to 8 o'clock in the morning. And so there's a lot more traffic on that street than we had claimed there was. That's really all I have. I'm asking you to actually deny their proposal. because I think it'll have an effect on the amount of people in that small area or the neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you, Linda. Steve.

Good evening, Mayor and Councilman. I am Steve Lambert. I live at 1218 Lincoln Street, which is directly adjacent to this property. So I bought it. One of the conditions I bought is because it was right next to a light industrial park, which means my view would not go away. So that's, of course, why I'm concerned as well. It's just the view. I know that's not always. But the 26 feet that is currently in place is I could see if it went across. I know one of my neighbors here, too, that would have a destructive view. I'm not quite sure how tall these things are going to be, but I do know that if you do go to C2, they can go as high as 48 feet. So it's definitely, it could be a towering complex. I've seen the rendering. I'm not quite sure how my view will, there's a slight gap that may give me a river view, but that's really just part of my concerns. So I'm, I'm opposing the request for resigning the parcel for C2 for the 11 townhouses, you know, because it's surrounded by R2 and R3. And that's where I think we should head to. And I think that's where the Planning Commission also thought was a smart move. Because what you're doing is you're creating spot zoning. You know, you're surrounded by R2, R3, and then you have industrial across the way. So this is spot zoning. And I think this will be a precedent for other areas within the Hood River County where they're going to ask for something similar in the future. The scale is obviously, as Sam talked about, 11 units. I'm concerned about the loss. And again, I'm not sure quite how big these units are going to be at this time. The parking is definitely a concern as well. I live right over the parking lot. So I know that there are like five or six cars there a day that park in there. And I don't know how that study said that there's only one or two cars that leave in the morning. That day, right? So he's 11 units. Only one car is leaving. So I really question that the traffic report as the other Samantha had asked about, too. So so there is concerns about the traffic and the safety in that intersection. There's a lot of trucks that come up, the buses that come up. The picture looks like a great, you know, the boardwalk does look nice, but it's obviously I don't see any parking from that angle. So there's, you know, obviously with the dark sky Stonie Cooper- values that we have here, I know that's been an agenda item in the past, where they want to make it dark i'm concerned about the lighting is going to come from these 11 units as well in the corner. Stonie Cooper- So I think overall I would rather go to an r2 and r3 then to do a C to and set a precedence, as well as some of the other concerns I have so that's what I am at this time, then I in their quest.

Thank you. Stonie Cooper- Good drum and then Patrick.

So do I need to reintroduce myself? No. Okay, good. So the reason I asked for the continuance is that a number of these issues were raised by Zoe here in her letter on the 15th of this month, which I didn't see until the 18th of this month when a 456 page report was dumped on the website. And that was like the evening before a three day holiday weekend. I don't usually read War and Peace in one weekend. It's very dense stuff. I look through it and it's like, oh my God, you have to understand all these terms, all these codes, all this stuff. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a real estate expert or a developer. But I do have concerns with the way things were described because Zoe answered some of the points that I had raised in a letter to you guys in April. And she answered those which I thought overall was very vague. in general, it was like not to commit to specifics. For instance, what is the current height of those buildings that are proposed? Nobody has mentioned that. So, um, the report, her rebuttal is full of that kind of stuff. It's very vague. And I made all kinds of notes here, but I was hoping that I could write you a formal letter with all that stuff and my concerns. And, um, The traffic study that Sam did was another one. And there were like three semis in 15 minutes going up Wasco because they hauled stuff out from full sale, all that. It's a commercial route. And that's not really a place where the letter makes it sound like it's going to be wonderful for families and all that. I wouldn't want to raise my kids at an intersection like that. I've lived there 20 years, and a while back, a four-way stop sign was created because that intersection is so busy. So anyway, those are my concerns, and I would love to be able to write a more detailed letter with all of this. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Patrick, and then Billy.

Hello. As an overt, it's not an overt bribe, but congratulations, Mayor, I voted for you. Well, I would just like to, nothing personal, but, you know, object to this meeting going on also because of this document that was dropped on us. And plus, I live at 1301 Wasco Street. It's right across the street directly to this project. And right on the corner, on the little house that could between the six townhomes on one side and the 11... townhome proposal. And if you went to my house right now, you would see that both Wasco Street and 13th Street would have cars lined up around my house, and they're not mine. And I can only imagine when this project gets there. But anyway, the main thing about the objection to the deal is I haven't gotten an email. There's nothing been in my mailbox. about this meeting. Fortunately, my neighbors walked by on their way to work and they let me know that this was going on. The last time we were here, we were stopped out there and we were told that the meeting suddenly wasn't going to happen because the developers asked for it to be extended or a continuance. And they got it just like that. And so we had people that had left their homes up in Seattle and everything that have homes down here as well. And it is true, only one person out of the six units there live full time. And so they're empty most of the time, which helps a little bit. But come weekend, there's a million dollars worth of Sprinter vans uh, over six, um, projects, but mostly out in the street. Everyone parks out in the street. There, there's this whole thing about off, off roads going to be, uh, underneath the project is going to be something, but also, um, what else we got? Okay. Everything's R2 on that side of the street, uh, all the way down to, uh, down the street. Everybody got R2 and I'm in support of, uh, of them staying with that. If it's too small for industry, although I've lived there long enough to see the building really packed after the windsurfing deal, I saw it packed from other businesses in there. And I don't know if it's the price of rent. I don't know what the problem was for people to leave an empty out, but I think it's pretty generous to let them have a zone change and an R2 change at most. But still, I have no idea what these 400 pages have to say. And nobody else does either. But thanks a lot for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Billy.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. Billy Williams, I live at 1223 Lincoln Street, so one block up and behind Steve and Kevin, who's over on the corner right behind the existing building. My wife and I have lived there full time since May 1st of 2015. We bought the house in 2014 and we're finally able to move there for my wonderful commute into Portland every day. And it's what made our decision to buy the house was walking in the front door, turning left, looking out the kitchen window and seeing Mount Adams and the river. And we thought, literally, I turned to our agent and I said, this is it. And then go upstairs, the view is even better. And so part of this is, I do want to state for the record, I'm opposed to the requests like others have to the rezoning proposal. Two different statements were made this evening, one by staff and one by, I'm sorry, Zoe, correct? Okay, thank you, Zoe. One is that it wouldn't disrupt the neighborhood. And secondly, I clearly don't understand the notion that this is a logical buffer. This is the terminology that's that we use. So I haven't had time to read through the hundreds of pages either. Not that I don't enjoy reading, but I do enough of it for other reasons. But I find the choice of those terms troubling because they're not accurate. It will disrupt the neighborhood. It's a wonderful neighborhood. Getting to know our neighbors. You know, the neighborhood was disrupted for about two years, the last two years, due to the construction of a new house further down the street. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. A lot of trucks, good workers doing hard work. That's why that street needs to be repaved badly. But nevertheless, I understand the need for housing. I grew up in Goldendale and Centerville, so I understand the need for affordable housing. I don't want to, I don't criticize people who want to develop properties, but I do think you have to look at what the impact is to the neighborhood and the livability of it, and to suggest that it wouldn't impact the livability in the neighborhood is just not accurate.

It will.

So I hope you'll take those thoughts into consideration. I appreciate the request for a continuous. So everything can be examined, especially if neighbors are talking with a lawyer. So thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you, sir. And thank you for your U S attorney service. Now is time. I think for the applicant's rebuttal. Is that right? Check out the nod from Dustin.

Thank you, Mayor and Councilors. I'm gonna respond to the questions that you all gave me earlier first. So yes, the building will be built to the residential building code and the existing height is 26 feet. The four new buildings range in height from 22 feet, nine inches to 30 feet, six inches. So some shorter than the existing buildings and one a little bigger. And that's on page four of the PC decision. It's also worth noting that if it stays zoned as is with industrial, someone could build a 45 foot tall building. So in many ways, this zone change as it's tied to this PUD will bring that down. I thought I'd talk about that as well. There's this concern that if you approve this zone change and then this project doesn't go forward, then that's when we get the gas station on this corner that no one wants to see. That's the goal of condition of approval one that I proposed. So it's got two parts. One is... You can have this own change, but you can only build there either the thing approved in the PUD, substantial conformance with what was approved in the PUD, or if something else happens, and these are verbatim the language that planning commission put forth, it's a minimum residential density of four units, and then a set of considerations about noise and traffic and light that a different project would have to come back and prove that they have met those standards. which normally those are standards you can actually impose on the housing project because state law requires clear and objective standards. So through this zone change, you're sort of protecting against both scenarios, right? We want to build this project, but if this project doesn't happen, you don't end up with a gas station. There's those conditions from city council, from planning commission to city council. Regarding the traffic study, it's really a matter that was considered in the scope of the PUD and by the planning commission. It was also reviewed and accepted by staff as compliance with the city's standards for traffic engineering. Also, even if there were a traffic impact, if this project created more trips, say, during the congested times rather than reducing them, the remedy would be adding additional transportation infrastructure like a light or a stop sign or a turn lane, not denial of the application. Here, the traffic study didn't recommend and staff have not recommended sort of extensive transportation infrastructure be added. And that busy street is actually a reason this project makes sense in this location. So that buffer development that I was talking about. You've got to the north, more intense industrial uses, and to the south, single family homes on single lots. And in planning and zoning, we think about sites like this as creating a bit of a wall between all of those trucks on Wasco and all of those single family homes that are to the south. That's the buffer that you can create through townhouse development on a big collector street that actually protects the residential zones from those more intense uses to the north. I'll also note that planning commission conditioned the project on using fully shielded dark sky lighting, so all of the lighting of this project will be face down and compliant with dark sky standards. And then I'll turn to address Mr. Jordan's and others' request for a continuous. Before I get to that though, are there any other specific questions or things that'd be helpful to talk about?

I just want to make sure that I captured this correctly. So one of the units current or what is being proposed is 22 feet in height. And there's another one that is 30.6. 22 feet 9 inches to...

And 30 feet six inches and that's on page for the planning Commission decision and it has to do and that's based on the code definition of height, which seems like you've experienced is like a whole world of how you calculate that.

and

I'm wondering, just for the folks that weren't able to read the 400, and I will admit I skimmed through it, the 400 and how many pages, can you briefly describe why C2 zone was the preferred zoning rechange as opposed to an R2 and R3? and why that wasn't going to work.

Yeah, absolutely. Let me actually start with the 400 pages comment and then I'll get to why C instead of residential. So the 423 pages or whatever that was your packet is almost entirely the record from planning commission. So it's not new information that just came out before this record. There is a letter from me last week that's six pages long. That piece is new. But otherwise, everything there is something that's been available on your website for quite some time. So even I don't want to read 400 pages, but it's not as if staff just dropped this on the public without giving them the ability to review it. As to the commercial versus residential, it has to do with residential density calculations. And the applicant actually worked with staff and said, hey, one of the criteria for rezoning a site asks about, is this in compliance with our housing production strategy and all of these comprehensive plan goals? And the housing production strategy in particular looks at the efficient use of land. And Hood River's got a problem with their urban growth boundary where there's really nowhere to expand it, right? You've got farmland and a river and national scenic area. And so when we think about housing in Hood River, we have to put as much density as possible into the existing urban growth boundary. And that's why the housing production strategy looks at efficient development by using sites for as much density as makes sense on a site. Here, if you were in an R2 or an R3 zone, you wouldn't be able to get the 11 units that they're able to put on this site. That's why staff suggested that we go through this PUD process and use a commercial zone. The goal there is not to try and create a gas station, but to achieve that higher level of residential density.

Very on.

Okay. So, you know, the request for a continuance, as I said, the 400 pages is mostly the Planning Commission record. And that letter, which was posted early last week, doesn't really present any new facts. The letter is what I presented tonight. It's drawn from the facts that were in front of Planning Commission. I think there are two new pretty pictures. Other than that, it's all the same stuff, the same content you heard tonight. You know, whether or not to grant a continuance is obviously your choice based on whether you think you have the information you need in front of you to make your decision tonight. I would say that the public's been provided with the opportunity to comment on this both at Planning Commission and with public notice a few months out ahead of tonight. And there's nothing particularly new in the summary letter that I've sent. If you would like to hear additional information from the public, I'd ask that you do it in writing. You've heard the oral testimony from folks who wanted to come tonight. You could have a 777.

Thank you. Can you help us understand the second suggestion that you made that we follow the same STR regulations that we have with everyone else as opposed to no STR? So can you help us understand like the financial impact on if we were to say yes, if that was a restriction, why is it important that it have some short-term residential versus no short-term residentials?

Yeah, so I think there's two financial realities that are at play there. One is what I talked about in my presentation that for families, homeowners, being able to have the flexibility to rent out a room allows them to help gain income to pay their mortgage, helps with the city's ability to house all the folks who want to come visit here, creates short-term rental taxes. But for the family, it allows the same flexibility that their neighbors have to generate income from their home as they would if this was a residential zone. The other piece is about financing a project and what restrictions on a project look like to lenders or particularly to investors. And if you're saying to someone, I know this is a weird condition of approval on our zone change, but it's okay because it looks just like a residential zone. So a buyer will understand that they can have short-term rentals the same as in a residential zone. That's very different than we're being treated differently we're being not allowed to do the same things as in a residential zone. That's likely to bring down the sales price of these units and it might even make the project infeasible because you start getting too much hair on a project and financing becomes much more difficult.

Anna. I have a question for Dan actually on that. Will these kinds of conditions of approval legally enforceable and can they honestly run the land is that something that we can do.

You can do that. Yes. I usually am not a big booster of conditional zone changes, but this has come through as a package development. So there's no question about what's being proposed here. And so if you condition the zone change for that particular purpose, then you do it. And it doesn't really get recorded with titled property. It's in the city deed record or city records of this lane is proceeding. So the PUD gets approved that way. It's tied to this property. It's really, if it's an express condition of a zone change, that's the only thing that can happen on this property. So it's a real problem if they don't do it. So that's what they're asking for. And I think what they're trying to do is to make it congruent with your previously stated policy objectives. And one of those is you know what's going to happen on the property. And that's the problem. If this was just an open-ended zone change, you wouldn't.

TAB, Since we're on that topic, the first condition, would it be, do we have to include the or a minimum of 11 or could it be like this project only. TAB, As see to and then just stop there, like do we have to say a. If not this project, then kind of thing.

This more of a land use question, but what you would like to do is not force the applicant back through the land use process. It's a planning commission rather have something that's consistent with already approved. Maybe an up to sort of thing. If that makes sense, this may be Dustin.

I think the one piece on that is we have a project that's proposed. That's what's intended, not foregoing all other alternatives that may be suitable and meet the intent of the residential is that baseline. They wouldn't, I don't think you're what's intended is to go back through a zone change process, but if you have a commercial use, as you know, commercial uses still go through land use processes. So. First order is tied to the PUD package appeal. If not, then there is a minimum density requirement that you must produce four units that is built in there. And then the commercial zones right now would, would trigger a land use review for a site plan review. Just like if you were to build a building in the industrial zone, go through a land use review, build a building in commercial zone, go through land use review. So it, It targets the intended and approved land use. It provides an opportunity for something similar. And then there's a process in which we go through. It still would require to go through that. If it's not the PUD that's approved, it would have to come before, at this point, planning commission through a formal land use notice process.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like, opening it up to something that we didn't want. Like, but I, you know.

Yeah, I think that's the intention is to, you know, the spectrum of C2 is from residential exclusive all the way through, again, drive-through gas station, fast food. I think this is intended to narrow that spectrum of what is pretty wide to kind of a narrow lane. So the justification here, the justification here from staff is, you know, strategy one, identify parcels for medium and high density zoning under these circumstances, along transportation corridor, access to services, close to other areas. That's the intent. It's not to rezone for high-end commercial uses at intersection locations. So to stay true to that, this is the condition that narrows.

Thank you.

One of the commercial uses that seems to be quite popular in our, Dustin, this is for you, in our city is a boutique hotel. So I want to make sure I'm getting this right. This is an application for 11 units of housing, but what's being considered is If they don't do that, then four units of housing and the rest could be a candy store or a boutique hotel, right?

With a minimum of four units of housing, long-term housing.

I like the 11 better than the four.

Well, so I think what we looked at and the reason why four comes up is... C2 residential requires 11 units per acre minimum. That's not the ceiling, that's the floor. So in order to maintain that floor, four is the floor.

I get it.

So that's where we came up with that number. It's nothing magic about it, but it would be, if you were to do residential on this parcel, in a C2 zone, it must be four units to comply. You wanted to raise that. I'm sure that's up to discussion, but for disclosure why we ended up with that number, that's to meet the minimum residential threshold.

Thank you. Anna.

So just for the sake of clarification, this is for you too. Including that proposed condition of approval one doesn't necessarily alleviate the neighbors concerned that if this was approved to be c2 and the current proposed pud does not pencil out and for whatever reason this plan is abandoned then the zoning doesn't change back to industrial it stays c2 but with the requirement that any future project have at least four residential units on it And it could end up being another allowable commercial use, correct? Like we, the city wouldn't have the authority to say you can't do particular things.

Yeah, we would. I mean, just like a site plan approval criteria for boutique hotel may come across as incompatible because of its size, location, orientation, we have discretionary powers there. So again, not only is the four units identified, there is another caveat saying inconsistent use. So if I saw a 24 hour drive-through use right there, I would have the opportunity to go back to the record and say four units, condition of approval, and this runs totally sideways with the land use decision and condition here. And I'm gonna rely not only on the zoning code, but this too for my grounds to make a recommendation.

It's a discretionary decision to the city or whoever's in the position to make the decision what that commercial use might be.

Correct. Well, that decision for the condition would be first staff. If it's a mixed use development under the current code, it would be the planning commission and then upon appeal, city council. You would be the final arbiter. So neighborhood notice, a council would essentially have as approval of the condition, you would have the ultimate discretion at the end if appealed. So if the neighbors who were noticed felt like, this condition is not being held to, that even if there was no condition there, that if this use, commercial use on this property was injurious to them or incompatible, they could also take that. They would be able to have a voice here. They would be able to appeal a decision to planning commission and up to city council. So absolutely, it's a discretionary piece, just like any other commercial use. So I think it's, even if the condition wasn't there, You still have commercial standards. I think this is just really more of a, it highlights the intent. So in your commercial land use zones, you have discretionary standards for compatibility, noise height obligations. They are discretionary standards, whether it's industrial, whether it's commercial, no longer residential. But this is just like a highlighted version of that.

Other questions of the applicant or the staff? The next step is gonna be us closing the hearing and deliberating, so just things to come. Zoe, have you completed your presentation? Great. Okay, in fact, in that case, I will advance. We will close the hearing and gavel. We will now deliberate. Gladys.

Staff, can you help me understand how many STR licenses we have in that area? Just like a general.

I don't have an area. We've gone from about 206 within town to about 150 total of that. Probably I would say 60 to 70% are now in the commercial zones. So in your residential area, you have about 60 all from all across the city, from Sievert crop to the West side to downtown. So I don't, I don't have a number. I don't have a map right there to pull up. But there's your global, readily accessible public information on licensed SDRs.

I think we were asked fairly directly if we would do a continuance, and I guess the subtle way to do that would be I could wait to see if someone moves to do that, and no one does, then we will not do that, but we could talk about it a bit more openly, or I'm reminding myself and ourselves that that was a request. I understand under no obligation to do that, and we've heard arguments for and against. But we are deliberating towards a motion here. Grant?

I'm just going to talk about the elephant because we can. If the intent is to create residential units and we have a condition regarding STRs doing so, if the intent is to actually create residential units and we have a condition to either allow STRs or not, um then we should follow up on the intent to create residential units and condition those units to be residential units and not commercial units as stated in testimony the plan is to build them to residential spec not commercial spec everything that goes along with that um So if we are to effectuate residential dwellings in the city, I encourage us to go in that direction as opposed to commercialized residential units.

I really consider that restriction quite dramatic because in the hashing out that we did to create our STR restrictions, we got to the place of STR is a commercial activity, therefore in the commercial zone it's allowed. I'm pretty impressed that we're getting a residential standard of restrictiveness. I mean, I can do it at my house to that standard. That's a pretty big give in my view.

Doug. Dustin, if they were to, say, make a height change to the current site plan for the PUD, would that have to go before you? So if they wanted to make it 31 feet instead of 30.9 inches?

Rather than 22.9?

Well, at the highest point.

Yeah, at the highest point. We would go back to 35 as exclusively residential within the commercial zone is 35 feet. 35 feet.

That's the max.

That ties with the PUD.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

So if they were to come back and abandon the PUD and they were to go exclusively residential within the zone, 35 feet is the max height under current code.

I want to understand this point. They could change the PUD and come back with 11 units still, but taller.

Still go. That would go through the public process.

Again.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you.

And for the continuance, Dustin, if you can just clarify for those who are here today, the 420 some pages, there is no new information in there that wasn't already discussed at the last planning commission meeting.

Your cover sheet was updated, which is three pages. The six pages from the applicant is new. A vast majority beyond that has been available since February in the notice of decision, then also required to be available before your April 27th hearing, which at time and place right here, you continue to this day. So none of that information, that information has been available the whole time and advertised that didn't, it did, reappear again with your packet because we introduced it there, but that's not its debut. It continues to travel with the record.

But since we received this for the April meeting, only about 10 pages have changed of that.

Estimate, yeah.

Would now be the time that we would maybe deliberate versus ask questions? I'm just wondering if anybody else has any other questions.

I think we're deliberating already. Yep, thanks.

I mean, where I'm, you know, I hear folks write 400 and some pages is not a fun read, but it also sounds like there haven't been major changes since our last meeting, given maybe some of the updates by Zoe, I apologize, I forgot your last name. So I just want to maybe have a discussion about that. Like I understand that there is a continuance ask on the table. What I'm trying to understand is how much of that information has changed since the last time folks had an opportunity to go through it.

Anna.

um i also appreciate the request for continuance and i think that being equitable and fair is really important but it seems like the concerns that would be addressed if a continuance were allowed are more related to the traffic parking views some of these things that are not part of the issue that's being presented in front of us um that that was that was part of the pud that had already been approved And so what we're supposed to be thinking about right now is whether or not the zoning is supposed to be is is is should be. approved to be changed from industrial to see to. and i i don't know i i appreciate the proposed conditions of approval but i'm not hearing based on the answer that we receive from staff and legal counsel that um those particular conditions of approval would necessarily protect against the concerns that the neighbors have risen that um you know having uh you know if we went from industrial to c2 and the pud changed that they then the property would still be c2 zoned that um that any future proposal would have to require only four residential units and then a compatible use at the discretion of staff planning commission and then us. And then the second thing is that if the proposed condition of approval two of allowing, short-term rentals on the C2 property, which is an outright allowed use in the commercial zone, should be restricted to be similar to what residential zoned properties would be allowed to do. That's not going to be something that will run with the land. And it doesn't seem like it would be enforceable. So 20 years down the road, if we have these 11 units and somebody comes along and buys it and decides they want to do short-term rentals, I don't know what mechanism we can go back to because there's no deed restriction. There's just a record in the planning note that said, well, they were only really supposed to use short-term rentals in comparison performance with residential use so i'm i'm not sure i i need a little bit more convincing that either of these proposed conditions of approval actually meet the concerns that the neighbors are presenting about these particular issues amanda i was under the understanding that the str thing did go like

forever, I guess.

That's what it looks like based on the proposed wording. But what I'm hearing from Dan is that there isn't actually a mechanism by which that would be a deed restriction. It would just be something that would be a part of the record of approving this particular zone change.

It's still legally binding. I mean, the recording with title to property is not the only way to restrict use of property. It's not the only way.

So practically, how is that enforced?

Through our STR licensing program. I mean, we have permanent records. We can find out what is allowed or not allowed in terms of short-term rental licensing on a particular property.

So, sorry. So, yeah. If 20 years from now, somebody comes along, buys that property, two or three owners down the road, and they say, this is commercially zoned, I'm going to apply for a short-term rental license, then there's a mechanism within the city records for us to say, oh, yeah, that isn't allowed use, but because it was a condition of approval for this particular property, your use of short-term rental is actually restricted or limited. And so we have the mechanism to track that and implement that.

Right. The notice goes to the, that's recorded with title to property, that's notice to future property owners. But people are obligated when they buy property to investigate, know what the zoning is, what's allowed or not allowed. what licensing requirements, you could change your licensing requirements at any time. People are obligated to figure that out before they buy property, if that's a material term for that.

Amanda? And as far as the first condition goes, like I would be open to raising the number from four, make it higher, or like I said before, just like not even making an or, like... this is it, and then I don't know, we figure it out from there, I guess. I don't know what that looks like exactly, but just so that we have more certainty that it will be residential housing.

Dan, could we do that?

You could. This is sort of a dilemma for a property owner that if it's, you know, if you say, for example, You take this condition, but chop off the last part and just say that the only use allowed is what's approved in file number 2025-32, unless you come back to the city council or something out of the normal process. That's a tough one for the property owner. They worked hard to get the PUD approval. It's a very specific plan. And so this starts out with it is required to what's allowed on the property is in substantial conformance with what was approved in that PUD. And then it talks about if a different project is proposed, you could eliminate that part. And that if there's a different process, you could say that the change would have to be elevated in process to come to the city council for determination. More process is always acceptable.

I'm personally in favor of keeping. The. condition of approval to code so that, you know, that's four to 11. If we were here talking about four, I'd be very happy with five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. Those are all good things. It's part of our housing needs analysis, part of the comprehensive plan. We have a housing shortage. To me, if they come back and said, well, we want to do 10, are we really upset about that?

You're good with the current condition.

I'm good with the condition of It has to conform with C2, which is for based on the acreage personally. Short-term rentals, since we're talking about that as well. I find the whole C2 problematic because every time we up some, we talk about this. So I think we should talk about If we don't want to have full-time short-term rentals in any zone, whether it's been up-zoned in a residential area or downtown, we should discuss that at some point. Every time we, whether it's, you know, every property we've ever talked about this for, more we're talking about going from R3 to C2, everybody gets concerned about, well, can they be all short-term rentals? And we have to do a condition of approval just like this. So future consideration, I would suggest that maybe during work plan next year, we talk about that as a change. because we run up against it all the time. As to the other concerns, I mean, personally, I used to live on 13th and Columbia, lost my view. It's terrible. It was within code. And I mean, it was right in front of my picture window, lost the view completely. But townhomes were built, people were able to live there and whatnot. And yeah, I feel for anybody that has to go through the same thing, but it's within code. I'm okay with it. So I'm in favor of doing this with the conditions that were suggested, you know, being the four to 11 and the way that that's written and the suggestion about conforming to residential requirements for STRs.

Would you make that motion?

Once others are done.

Go ahead. I don't want to rush.

Yeah, no, I thank you, Councillor Supina. I appreciate that and wholeheartedly agree. And we'll agree with we've had discussions about STRs for quite some time. I know that later in our packet, we're going to have a comprehensive plan update. I know that we're also doing work around updating our code. And that is absolutely an item that we really should clearly have a discussion about and be really clear about our intention moving forward so that we don't continue having this discussion time and time again as these continue to be presented here. Um, because we were asked about a continuance, I will say that I would, and I'm only one person that I would deny the continuance given that a majority of the information was provided prior and that there were about 10 pages that were changed since then. And, you know, I understand that you all disagree, but that is the factual information that we have been given. Uh, so I will go ahead and deny and would support a motion with the two conditions.

Yeah, I agree with Councillor Stepina and Rivera on everything you said, particularly about the STRs and commercial zones. This is coming up time and time again, and it seems to cause concern, not only among council, but also in the community. Also, I live 13th and Lincoln, and I have to say, I don't share the concerns of my neighbors on this. I don't frankly understand Why? You know, you have land that is industrial and you could have like a tannery on it or any other sort of manufacturing that I think that we all would find unsavory in that community. And instead, it's being zoned to C2 with, I think, pretty strict conditions on what can be there that takes care of both a lot of the concerns that residents put forth. They may not agree with that. I can see if they don't. but certainly address a number of my concerns as well. In terms of the compatibility of that area, I mean, We already have a bunch of commercial uses. They're on industrial land, but they're commercial uses that are right there in that neighborhood. We have dense housing right in that neighborhood. I really don't see that this is a dramatic, terrible thing that's happening in this area. I walk by that area all the time. I walk on the street. I see tons of open parking spaces all the time. I don't have an issue walking there. I take Lincoln, I go down 13th and go down Wasco and I've done it all different times of the day. And I don't share these concerns living in that area. I am, you know, this seems to come up time and time again that anytime that we're doing housing, anytime, and I've said this before, I've said this back you know, when there was the Brookside development that anytime there's housing, people will say, like, I'm in favor of it, but when it's near them, it's a problem. Well, I live near that area, and I think that this is a great use of our land. I think this is a great development. And I'm fine with approving it with the conditions that are outlined in the packet. on page 28. And also another point that I'll make. For the Planning Commission's recommended conditions of approval, it mentions specifically the conditional use and zone change shall not permit the issuance of short-term rental licenses. I don't know that it makes any sort of nuance about per know current residential standards as i'm reading it that it looks like that says no short-term rental licenses period doug i think that can be rectified by making the motion with saying the applicants recommended amendments versus recommended amendments which seems to indicate the city well i i mean personally i would be rather inclined to not have any short-term rental licenses on that property, but I guess we have a conversation about that.

That's really up to whoever makes the motion, whether you accept the conditions provided by the applicant or something else, you can make them really in a lot of different ways.

I just want to make sure that we're talking about STRs and banning it completely, like not allowed at all, because we are essentially treating this different than what is already around. Do we have a Luba appeal after this? Like, are we going to get sued for doing something different in one side versus what is already allowed in others around? That's why I'd asked the question about the licenses earlier.

Yeah, I think if it's based upon the zoning, we would have that backdrop. Whatever comes out of it, whether it's held to residential standards and restricted to primary occupant or primary resident caretaker 90 days, or whether it's out altogether, that would really come down with the zone change. So that is... and then we would implement after that. So when it came down to license, whatever comes out of your hearing, we would react to that. The applicant has stated, you know, planning commission recommended denial of the whole thing, but it said, however, city council, if you're going to approve this, make sure you put in this condition. It's just like that last thought. The applicant has said, you know, They have issue with concerns about that. However, they're willing to say, we want to have equal application against residential. I think that's just a concession.

That's not a necessarily like a legal binding remedy.

So as saying, we understand the concern. We don't want this to become a full, you know, a moonlight as a hotel. You know, here's the conversation with you that we would like to be on par with the residential neighbors, not government more strictly than the residential neighbors.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Amanda and then.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, yeah i'm good with keeping it fair and like equal to residential because I don't think it's fair to like beat them harsher than anybody else. PB, Lupita D Montoya, That we've you know come up with these guidelines and again if we want to change them in the future, we can, but for now I think just making them the same as the people who live around there seems fair.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that a lot of us are maybe concerned about what the current policy is on short-term rentals. I don't think it should fall to this particular development. We have concerns about the number of them, or we have them at all, or whatever it is. That should be a more pointed plan. Say if someone wanted to suggest that for the next two-year work plan, we look for short-term rental updates to say C2 that were being up zoned for housing to include it, to ban STRs, anything along the gamut, maybe it's time to speak about that more holistically or change nothing, right? So I'm okay with that because I do understand that it can be difficult when you're getting financing in that argument. I think that argument is sound.

That's fair enough. I was, my comment, when I say no SDRs, I'm like, great, sounds good. That was the condition that was laid out, that was laid out by planning commission. That was a planning commission recommendation. And so that's why I specifically brought that up. So I was like, that's what it says there. If we're going to do something different, then that would need to be amended. I don't know if that was their intent to have it be a residential letter or excuse me, residential in line with what is allowed at residential at this time, or if they were like, no.

That was not planning commission consideration, but also I don't think we've ever, I think typically it was, we met an all or nothing, you know, something or nothing. I don't, we've never had a circumstance where someone agreed to take their C2 to the residential standards. So I'm gonna say, I don't think the planning commission intended to have hold them to the residential standards. But I just don't think we've ever talked about that before. It was the first time that someone's ever just willingly pulled back that right to be on par with their neighbors. I think the Planning Commission had said, if you do want to approve it, don't do the, don't allow that.

Also, to the extent there's a, to Jess Ann is concerned, you can require that to be recorded, that notice to be recorded with the title of the property. You can always do that. So that would put everyone on notice, including staff 20 years from now.

Another aspect of the PUD is we often require a covenant for maintenance of common areas, landscaping, make sure some of these water bill to have it embedded in the covenant would also be a useful way to lodge it in there. And that runs with covenant. But it is another kind of the bootstrap of having this appear periodically.

Anna, go ahead.

That makes me feel better because I, having looked at a lot of real estate transactions and reviewed title documentation, if you have actual notice of something that you'll see in title, that's much more likely to be noticed by a property owner than check with the city records to verify if you have a license. City Council Chambers, That I think having having it either incorporated in the CC and ours or as part of the deed record, I think that would alleviate the concern I have about the actual applicability of residential and I appreciate what grant said earlier to have like. the developer has agreed to construct this PUD to residential standards. So it makes sense for us to be consistent in applying residential requirements to that. The other thing that makes me feel a little bit better about proposed condition number one is that Dustin has said in the event the 11-unit PUD does not get developed as proposed, and the C2 zoning is done, the minimum requirement of at least four units and a new commercial use, that would be noticed to the neighbors, and they would have an opportunity to come and hear what that proposed commercial use is, and then it could be challenged on the grounds that it's not compatible or something like that at that time. So, I, i would be willing to move forward and make a motion that uh let me see i'm gonna have um thank you um all motion to approve the zone change along with the appellant's suggested proposed conditions of approval one and two as presented um and direct staff to prepare the final ordinance for approval moved by cavalier

Second. Second by Stepina. Further discussion?

Do we need to add that we have a notice recorded to the property as well?

Hold on, Dan. You've got a red light. Thank you.

The proposed condition number two says this restriction shall run with the land and shall be applicable to the owner-developer and each of their successors or assigns. So that would have to be incorporated into CC&Rs that assumes runs with title. So we would make sure it happens.

Further discussion? I'll call the question. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Nope.

Let the record show nay from Polson. Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you all. Next on our agenda is a schedule of building fees, rates, and charges. Dustin.

Thank you, Mayor. As you've done for the past three budget cycles, this is an opportunity to hold a public hearing. I believe you have a script.

I do. Is it time? It's time. Thank you. I call to order a public hearing relating to the modification of building permit fees. A quorum of the council is present, and I will now ask all councillors to disclose any bias or conflicts of interest and bias in this matter. Amanda.

None.

Grant. None. Doug. Nope. Gladys.

No.

Ben. None. Anna. None. And I have none. For audience members watching, would anyone in the audience like to question any counselor on any disclosure, bias, or conflict of interest or otherwise challenge the participation of any member of council? For audience members watching online, please use the raise hand feature in the webinar controls if you wish to speak. I see the shake of head by Jen. In tonight's hearing, we will use the following order of presentation. First, we will hear from staff. Then we will hear from anyone wanting to comment. After everyone interested in this matter has had a chance to testify, we will close the record, deliberate, and render a decision. Staff report, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Unlike the rest of your consolidated fees, which you heard, and I believe were approved in May, this is a fee set that you heard in May. But even any adjustment of those fees, even if it's related just to inflation for the sake of your building department, requires to go to Salem. The Building Codes Division evaluates those fees, whether they're appropriate with the administrative rules, consistent. They notice that fee out to the state, allow people the opportunity to comment on it. require us to hold our own public hearing on those fees, provide the opportunity for those to comment who are interested. Again, we've done this for three years in a row now. Every interest or adjustment based on interest rates or modifications or language requires a public hearing. Here we are, your public hearing. The fees were submitted to... The state, they did have some minor modifications predominantly in the language. So they didn't really adjust the rates. They wanted the words changed. Interesting enough, they got the same fees last year and they didn't want the words changed. So, but we honor those requests because we appreciate their willingness to help. So the fees are all included. They are included in attachment. The fee rate is approximately, or the adjustment is about 5%. That's on par with Hood River County. Also going through this process, we're looking for a motion to approve. Go ahead, Adam.

I have one nitpick question. In the actual resolution, it says that the adopted changes will apply starting July 1st, 2026, and hereby repeal the old ones effective July 1st, 2026. I would like to see that be June 30th, 2026, because somebody could come in and say, it's July 1st. I'm still under the old fees. So that's my little nitpick. I'd rather it be And on one day, sir.

As long as they don't come in on the 30th and say, I'm in between and there's no fee.

So end of business on June 30th or however, but I just, one of my little nitpicky little things that I, that's it.

Great. Um, this, I'm not wanting to redo these right now. This is a question for council for later. Um, on, for example, the structural permit fees, as the valuation of those fees increases, the per dollar amount of the fee decreases.

That that's correct.

Do we understand what that means? So as the value of the property increases, the per dollar amount of the fee decreases. The more expensive the project is, the relative value or the relative cost of the permit decreases. Does that make sense? So the more... bougie, the building is, let's say, the less relative fee that fee will be. So if somebody is, say, building a small extra bedroom on their house for their extra kiddo, their fee is going to be proportionally bigger than somebody who is building a palatial mansion for their racquetball court or whatever it is, for example. This is a council policy question for later if we choose to discuss. That's all I wanted to highlight for folks.

I hear you. Thanks for bringing it up. And in our last meeting, we were also looking at other cities who have like ADU that are free essentially. So as we talk about policies for price and structure that, yeah, we loop that into the mix. Could we get to a point where we are offering like free designs to smaller housing.

Jen, is anyone online wishing to comment? No, I believe no one in this room wishes to comment. We will close the record, deliberate, and render a decision. Close the hearing. Deliberate.

I'm in favor and agree with Hannah's minor correction should be included in motion.

I move that the city council adopt resolution 2026-14, adopting the building schedule of fees, rates, and schedule charges for fiscal year 2026-2027, and that there be an edit to the July 1st, 2026 to read June 30th, 2026.

Moved by Rivera. Second. Second by Stepina. Final discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Next, we have the supplemental budget public hearing. I have a script. I call to order a public hearing for Resolution 2026-13, a resolution adopting a supplemental budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Let me begin with the description of tonight's hearing. First, staff will provide an overview of the supplemental budget. 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 tonight's 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 present. Do any counselors have any conflicts of interest to disclose in this manner? Matter. Hearing none, may we hear from staff?

Thank you very much. So, changes in revenue expenses and operating conditions regularly require appropriation adjustments for the fiscal year budget. This is the Q4 supplemental budget closing out this current fiscal year. The changes outlined before you and in the resolution, again, relate to this existing fiscal year closing June 30th. In the general fund, adjustments to general fund departmental operations were offset By contingency key for updates included increases in fire department expenses for subscription services and a one time setup costs. For software supporting management of public safety policies and procedures, in addition, non departmental increases non departmental fund. The increases for additional bond preparation expenses are part of this supplemental budget, as well as a small adjustment for unbudgeted property annex payments to Westside Fire District. Again, these changes are offset by contingency. The interdepartmental transfers are reduced to $150,000 from the original $300,000 that was originally assumed in support of the building fund. You'll also see in the supplemental budget there is a similar adjustment in the restricted fund relating to the opposite side of that transaction. For the road fund, the cancellation of the elevated sidewalk construction contract eliminated the Oregon Transportation Infrastructure Bank financing and the corresponding capital project costs. Those are reflected in the road fund adjustments. Road Fund contingency was also adjusted downward to account for elevated sidewalk expenses incurred, but not to be financed under the OTIB loan as a result of the contract and the financing cancellation. Additionally, there's a small adjustment which corrects actual fund debt service within the Road Fund. The Water Fund makes an accounting adjustment, an upward adjustment for a non-cash accounting entry, recognizing bad debt expense. for previous account receivable balance. Additionally, the Interfund loan, the Water Fund had originally assumed the Interfund loan for the Dehydro Water Project. That has been eliminated from this budget. It is not required, but the project has been completed and is eligible for the grant reimbursements. Sewer Fund makes a small adjustment for a I-84 sewer relocation project required by the Oregon Department of Transportation. that is adjusted by an offset in contingency within that fund. The restricted revenue fund, we discussed the adjustments to the building fund for the reduced transfer required. There are also some adjustments in the building fund to reflect lower operating expenses that are also accounted for in this Q4 budget. Mariposa Village loan balance was paid in full through the Affordable Housing Reserve Fund during the fiscal year, as discussed with Council, so it is removed from the CET fund, where it was originally budgeted. There is a typo correction in the resolution. Certain restricted revenue funds were mislabeled in the previous supplemental budget. Those have been corrected in this resolution, and this is a correction, and there is no fiscal amount for that. Internal service funds. There is a $40,000 increase in administrative expenses related to unplanned remediation and repair. There is, again, an offset in contingency for that work that was in city offices. And in interfund loans, there was an assumption for a potential $750,000 interfund loan from the vehicle fund. This has been removed as those loans are not required. Reserve funds. There is reallocation of appropriations within the affordable housing fund between capital improvements and operating expenses. Again, this is primarily for accounting purposes and the appropriations, but there is no fiscal impact. That service is also adjusted to reflect the actual Mariposa Village land loan repayment. And lastly, in the fiduciary fund, there is adjustments in revenue and expenses. to balance the measure utility revenue receipts and remittances. Each of these adjustments is outlined in the resolution, which is presented for your approval. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, has anyone signed up to speak? I will now close the public hearing and open the council deliberation. Of course, that includes questions of staff if anyone has. Hearing none, we could also make a motion.

I move that City Council approve Resolution 2026-13 to make appropriations and adjust the adopted budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Moved by Paulson. Second. Second by Gakey. Further discussion?

I just want to say thank you for doing this accounting cleanup, and I appreciate the way you presented it to us. It was very clear.

All in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

Let's take a couple minute break. Going again. Next on the agenda is the consent agenda, which I'm going to modify because it had been six months since we passed our emergency on the federal immigration raids. And everything was going so quietly. And now there has been another raid. So I'm going to take it off the consent agenda to discuss at least because it was sort of seeming like the right thing to do. And now I am not sure. Gladys.

Yeah, I would support number four, and then I want to make a comment about number two, the extension of the IGA.

Great, go ahead. Good, so two and four are off. I would entertain a motion to approve the remaining consent agenda.

I approve to approve items number one and three on the consent agenda.

Moved by Paulson.

Second. Second.

Second by Cavalieri. Any discussion on those two items? All in favor?

Yeah.

Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Item two, animal control.

Yeah. I want to thank Ms. Lyons for some of her comments. I had similar comments with the current IG that we have now. And now that I'm trying to find it, I can't get to the specific piece.

It I mean, she quoted it correctly. I'm sorry.

Give me one more minute. Let me see. That's why I don't like computers. Okay. Um, the city requires ongoing animal control services and the county has the resources and capacity to provide those services and then We have a copy of the current IGA. And so I want to better understand some of these specifics. I know that we're going to have another discussion. This is just to extend what we currently have, but I really would like to better understand what the county capacity and those resources truly are to be able to provide animal services. So something for staff, if we can just clarify like what that, truly means. And during our budget meeting, I know that we were talking to Chief Holstey about the amount of FTE or the cost of the Hood River Police covering those, I think it's like three days, like Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, when the current animal control officer is not on call. So being able to fully understand our cost versus the county's cost and the resources and the capacity to provide these services.

Go ahead, Doug. I'm not sure if this is, I don't know how to ask this question, so I'll just ask it and tell me if I'm off base. So when the city and the county have had a chance to discuss the IGA, et cetera, you'll come back to us and discuss what options are. Can we have a formal presentation from Wood River Adopt-A-Dog at that time? I feel like we've gotten a lot of comments from them, like in emails and like three minutes here. Like if we could get them to sort of present, I think that would be helpful. Is that something that we have to like motion or? Yes.

If four of us want that, All right, same mantra. That's my mantra. Four of us want to allocate time on the agenda for a presentation from Hood River Adopt-A-Dog. I see one. I see four. Yes, please.

Thank you all. I will coordinate that.

Thank you.

Do you also want presentations or information from the county?

Yeah, I think just covering the, I want to better understand on page 30 of our packet, it says the city requires ongoing animal control services and the county has the resources and capacity to provide those services. so when i look like what are the resources and capacity i looked at the ig and i don't think the two align and so i would like to better understand what are the resources and the capacity because if they did have the resources and the capacity we wouldn't be in this position right where folks are asking for ongoing support and partnership which i'm open to having that discussion but just want to better understand the current resources and capacity

I'm not sure. Oh, excuse me.

I just wanted to acknowledge, I will work with Hood River Adopt-A-Dog to allow them some presentation time when we have this conversation. Then I just wondered if you also wanted to hear from the county on their work and how I can, we can certainly do some research on what their resources are, but I didn't know if you wanted to hear from them in addition to Hood River Adopt-A-Dog in this early stage.

Do folks want to hear also from the county at that time?

Well, they just finalized our budget, too. So I feel like as far as some of the resources, we might have some of those answers.

Do folks want to hear from the county also or just adopted? County? Thumbs for county, yeah. Great. I will invite folks.

Thank you. Got it.

Amanda. Thank you, Amanda.

And I'm assuming or what I would hope that the presentation is like, clear on an ass, I guess, because I just don't even know what they need or want or like I know they need help, but what does that look like specifically? And so that would be helpful.

Something I really heard in the brief comment today was that the county shall provide animal control services, but in fact, it sounds like Adopt-A-Dog is providing those services and outcome is my temptation.

Well, and the other information that I received was that what we heard tonight was that the county has picked up 15 or 16 dogs from the city and delivered those to the shelter. That does not count the 40 dogs that the city has delivered to the shelter directly because the county wasn't HAB-Masyn Moyer- Available or you know they weren't doing it so adopted dog has accepted 60 some in the last year 60 some dogs out of the city and only 16 of them were delivered by the county provided you know services. HAB-Masyn Moyer- The rest of them were delivered by our officers that go back to the county to deliver a dog, so I think that that's like that that's kind of the stuff we should. what value is our community really getting out of this idea? But that's where I do appreciate having the county's input too, because if we're going to make any kind of a decision, I appreciate what Amanda said of like, hey, tell us what your ask is, but also let's have all the information so if we make a decision, we can make an informed decision.

Yeah, on page 33 of the contract or in our packet of the IGA, it states that the city is paying them, you know, over $60,000. And so during our budget meeting is when I had asked about FTE of our officers, right? So in addition to the 60,000, there's also more financial support given our officers time. So I feel like I'd like to better understand the specifics of here. And then as Councilor Gatey mentioned, what is the ultimate ask? And then how could all three parties figure out some sort of agreement? Is that clear on that topic, Abigail?

Yep, I'll get started. Anything else on that topic? Thank you. Should I make a motion to... Abigail, shall we approve the IGA extension? Yes.

Okay. I move that we authorize the mayor to sign a letter of understanding with Hood River County to extend the current intergovernmental agreement to August 31st for animal control services.

Moved by Stepina.

Second.

Second by Gakey. Any further discussion on animal control? All in favor? Aye. Yes. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Item number four, the emergency declaration ratification regarding federal immigration enforcement activity in the city. Abigail, we talked about this in leading up to it and decided to put it on the consent agenda because it was fixing to expire. And in my opinion, conditions have changed.

Right, and so... Because in the past, when you have done extensions to your emergency declaration, they've been on consent. So I just added this to consent as well as I didn't have any new information about what has happened in the last couple of weeks. I did extend it or my recommendation to you is to extend for a month to give us a better sense of where we are, if we have any new information. Hood River Latino Network has been helpful in providing some information, but we haven't had a chance to really connect in depth, so. I would also want to note one thing we had prepared when things quieted down was a postcard that we had prepared to mail to all homes in Hood River, in the city, explaining that the city is a sanctuary city and what that means. Now that it seems that things have ticked back up, I'm planning to send these out. So I've brought copies for you all to take home with you today or to view, and then we can inform our community through that.

Abigail, it's also my understanding that we will have this as an agenda item in a July meeting?

If you would like. I mean, I don't know if I'll have more information, but certainly I can bring this to you for more, just an overview.

Thank you. What I think is still important for us to discuss, which we haven't fully fleshed out, is if this will continue to happen for, you know, until we have this administration at a federal level. So even if it Six months from now, things can drastically change. So I think having a discussion about what do we do moving forward? Do we add any additional language? And then two, we did some listening sessions with community members who told us what they needed from us. Right. And that was the highest one that I heard was there needs to be more support for mental health for adults and for youth. And so that was a clear ask, like, thanks for having this. We appreciate it. It's so important to get involved. So I think that we are, we owe our constituents a decision around finances. So if we don't discuss this tonight, I would really appreciate it that we have this at an agenda after Abigail's had time to meet with Deepa to figure out any additional specifics that the city can do, because there are pieces that the city, can do as far as like adding additional language that has now been added at a state level. And then there's also a lot that the city cannot do such as we are not a mental health provider, but we could potentially financially support organizations that are. So I would entertain a motion for us to have this as an actual agenda item within the next meeting or two so that we can do outreach to our community members so that they understand what the city is and isn't doing or can and cannot.

Do folks agree with that as a suggestion that we have this as a discussion item soon? Yes.

Great.

Yes, we do.

I'll get it scheduled for the next meeting.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you. I think, therefore, the original intent was She's suggesting we renew for a month.

The language in your packet is for a renewal.

I was going to suggest that we do it for more than a month. If you look at certain things that this administration has said about uptake in ICE agents being in the community, When asked directly about possibly sending ICE agents to voting locations, Trump said, you know what, I'll do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections. Also, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said, I can't guarantee that an ICE agent won't be around a polling location in November. And also, Presidential Advisor Steve Bannon has suggested that we have ICE agents at all the polling stations in November. I just contend that ICE activity might continue to uptick until then. Another six? I would say another six would be... Yeah, I mean, another six would be better than another month.

Yeah, that we should continue. And then, you know, I also think it's really important that we understand processes. And I know that our district attorney isn't here, but... making sure that we're all really clear of like, what is the action of, again, what we could do, what we cannot do so that we are letting our community members know, here's what's happening. We cannot guarantee anyone's safety, you know, all those pieces that I think is still really important for folks to hear it directly from us.

Thank you. Thank you all. And I would note, we continue to put messages on our social media when we otherwise have opportunities to communicate. And I continue to join the group that The Next Door put together, the collaboration group, and that has been a very useful, productive group. There has not been a lot of immigration conversation in that group lately, but Definitely a focus on migrant workers, immigrants, just generally not. So I think that group will continue and I'll continue to coordinate with them.

Abigail, I think you're doing an incredible job to keep up. I know that you've done a lot of work around what is the state doing and LOC. So I appreciate so very much that you have taken this and that you have done a lot i know it's been a lot of work your community is very very grateful for this um so i i don't mean to intend that i don't think the city or that we were not doing anything right but this will continue even if we extend it for a month it will continue past that so i think just acknowledging that totally it will continue

And I just want to acknowledge that my intention of saying let's move it to six months or something longer is not to create additional work for Abigail. It's just to extend the toolkit that she already has available to work with organizations like the Next Door and whole town halls should we need to do something like that. There's an uptick in activity. So that's my intention is to just allow her that toolkit to If I were to make a motion to approve this, I know we have a resolution. Do we need a different resolution? Do we? Thank you for that question.

I think that you can just make the correction in the motion and we'll fix that.

Right. Renew the resolution for X amount of time.

Is everybody okay with me making a motion at this time? Okay. I move to amend Resolution 2026-15 to extend the declaration until the end of the year, December 31st, 2026.

Moved by Stepina. Second. Second by Rivera. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Next, TNC.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This is a long time coming. Thank you all for your time today. So you have touched the TNC, Transportation Network Company, or I just call it the Uber question. Many times over the last couple of years, we set the regulatory framework to allow them to operate in the city. Since that time, staff have had a number of conversations with Uber, kind of moving back and forth We had kind of a negotiated process back in February, and then we lost contact. Not sure exactly what happened, but they re-emerged in June. And so let us know that the details that you have in front of you there is kind of their best and final offer. They also indicated that they are trying to work. at the state level. In most states where Uber operates, they have a state framework in which they work. In Oregon, they have to negotiate with every city. So if you chose not to take what they or adopt what they have offered at this time, I think they would focus their energies at the state level, and then you might have an opportunity if and when something were to pass in the state legislature. So what we had originally was the city had suggested a tnc license of $1,000 to kind of just a business fee. And then $100 per driver. Uber was technically not operating in the city before we started this conversation, but they actually, there was some business and they were able to pull up their data. And they, I think as you saw in the memo, they felt they had a large number of drivers doing very few trips. And so they thought the fee would be very large in their estimation, almost $19,000. So they have come back with an offer to you. kind of, you know, you have it in the packet there of reduce the corporate fee, reduce the driver fee, but ultimately, Uber is willing to pay the city $800 for the ability to do business in your city. So today's question is, do you want to engage at that level? And if so, then the action that Chris and I would take would be to update your fee schedule to reflect that. And we would bring that back to you for in a future meeting.

I'm so of mixed feelings about this. I don't like the fact that this big bad company gets to dictate, but I'd like for there to be transportation. So I'm inclined to approve this Gladys.

Yeah, same. Um, thank you again. So much work. I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. I'm trying to understand, you know, this is really based off of the city of head river. Doesn't include the county. Was there any conversation or did they make any comment of like, if, if the county was also incorporated. here's what the fee would look because we're now going from, you know, less than 9,000 to 27,000 people.

Yeah, thank you for that question. That's an important point. I've repeatedly shared with Uber that we would be doing, that the county is interested in kind of a reciprocity so that any driver that was approved in the city would automatically be approved to pick up rides in the county. I think that Uber feels that the rate that the $800 is appropriate for a city size of 25,000 people. So, um, I don't think that was that changed their offer to us.

And my last question is if, if we went ahead today and said, yes, let's waive, you know, or reduce the fee, waive the fee for other businesses. Um, but then Uber said, I'm, we're going to go talk to the state anyways. Um, we would then just have to update or amend our code to align with whatever state code could potentially happen in the future.

That would depend on how the state fashioned their code. You know, it could be that they say those who have preexisting code can keep their code. Or it could be that they say going henceforth, you know, cities are preempted from doing this. And now the state code would, you know, would be supreme. So I don't know what the state would decide on that.

I think the whole point of it would be a good thing, in my view, to have a comprehensive approach. Washington has this. But I would assume that the whole point would be to make the state program, if it gets adopted, to be preemptive.

So today my question to you is, do you wish to limit your transportation network dollars at 800? And then I have some thoughts on how you might do that. And if the answer is yes, then I do also want to talk about taxicabs.

We received a comment from a local provider and he brings up a good point about like part of the reason why we charge $107 for local taxi cabs plus the $67 permit fee, I think, or I have to look at the $107 is per vehicle and then the $63 is per driver driver. is to, part of that is so that we can do, the staff has some resources to do background checks and do that kind of stuff to ensure that this is safety, this is safe. The rate that Uber has come back with, is that give us, give the staff, and is that enough to cover the cost for, like if we end up getting inundated with 50 or 60 Uber drivers, do we have the time and the resources to, vet all of them and make sure that our community is safe. And I just, the other couple of questions that I had were, you know. Can I answer that one first? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Thank you, because I think that was a big point that we talked about with Uber. In fact, when we were writing the code, not the fee schedule, but the code itself, was that they do vehicle inspections and background checks. And we went through that to make sure that the criteria they use in their background checks reflected what we had put in our code with the idea that If Uber says someone is approved, that they are meeting our criteria. So they have done the background checks and the vehicle inspections.

That's good. I know that we do need additional transportation options, but I think it's important for us to consider and deliberate whether or not reducing the fees for larger corporations actually harms our local businesses. And does it bring a benefit to our community overall?

I think we've discussed that at length. If I felt that maybe reducing the taxicab fees would somehow give them some sort of local advantage, I mean, we could discuss that. I think that the taxicabs made it pretty clear that they don't want Uber here, that sort of thing. I feel like we've been down that road. We've discussed it for months and had lots of testimony and everything. So I don't want to continue that discussion. I think we've been there.

I want to understand, Doug, you're not you're disinclined to continue that discussion. And yeah, just about when I have Uber and or do you have no.

No, no, no. I don't want to debate whether or not we should have Uber here anymore is what I'm saying. I think we debated that quite extensively. It's that piece that, you know, bowing to corporate interests sort of thing. Like I think we've discussed that time.

And so to Abigail's question, would you vote to allow and take the 800 or to continue to disallow them to act?

No, I want to pass it.

Thank you. Anna.

I've, I mean, it is a negotiation strategy, but basically we came back and said, we don't want to change the rates that we as a city adopted. And then they were radio silence for many months. And then they came back and said, we're going to just keep it at what we told you we would pay, which is the cap to $800. I don't know that that is, I mean, I'm not against expanding our transportation network and having different options. We also received public comment from somebody else that said they were charged $50 by a local company to go two and a half miles. And that's a total bummer. So I think it warrants, I appreciate that we don't want to belabor this, but at the same time, we're addressing this right now. And I think it's important that we at least say, why we would be in support of allowing big corporations to pay a lot less than our local companies would if we were gonna support this.

Amanda.

I think it sucks for sure. I'm definitely, I own a local business. I am anti-corporate pretty much everything, but this is like such a unique thing and they don't care about us. but we want them. So we really don't have an upper hand here. Like we, there really is like no room to negotiate. I feel like our best, most hopeful thing is that they figure out something with the state and that benefits us more than what we have had agreed to. But yeah, I think we need Uber and Lyft if they ever get on board. And I, it sucks that we have no like really power in that relationship, but it is what it is. And I'm, willing to accept that, I guess.

I'm very disappointed, as Gladys has said so eloquently so many times, we have inadequate rides home. I would like to have rides home for folks. Doug.

And I think we attempted for a long, long time to try to work with the taxicab providers about trying to understand what the demand is, all that sort of thing. It came and went. It was like a week of data. wasn't taken seriously. I want the taxis to be successful and be able to coexist here. I like a lot of the operators. I like what they have to say. I like what they do for the community. So if there's anything we can do to work with them to make it less burdensome in some sort of fee, I'm open to hearing that. But the public outcry for, as the mayor was talking about, the city council outcry has been consistent for a long time now about having more right options having less people getting behind the wheel when they're impaired, all these sorts of things. We've debated this so, so many times. So yeah, I think it's like sucks is a great way to put it. It sucks that they could say, hey, you know what? Based on our calculation of what a city of 25,000 should be, this is what you should do. that doesn't take into consideration that we have less people driving, uh, because there are tourists and all that sort of stuff. I don't think it makes all that sense. Abigail and staff tried, they spent countless hours trying to make this happen. They said, no, we're not going to do that. So we have to make the decision. Um, Do we want this or not? And if it's a few thousand dollars, like the mayor said, it's not something, or like we've discussed today, it's not like we lose the revenue to be able to enforce it or any of that sort of stuff. We're not doing the background checks, these sorts of things. I just kind of feel like it's, I'm ready to vote yes on this.

Grant.

So, to me, it sounds like there is a broad direction of going along with what has been proposed. If we go that direction, I would be in favor of leveling the playing field for all the players. If, hypothetically, we were to agree to just a fee of $800, hypothetically, then we should, I believe, my position would be level the playing field for all players. Uber in this case does a background check at their cost. We do not charge for that. Uber shoulders that burden. We should level playing field and expect that of all participants. as an example of leveling the playing field. That is a standard operating cost of doing business for many participants in many fields. A lot of businesses just roll a background check into the hiring process. standard procedure at a number of places. So we wouldn't necessarily have to do that as just a qualification for a taxi cab company. They would just do that and provide that to us, for example, just as Uber does as a standard practice. So if we chose to go that route, I would be in favor of having a straight, flat expectation for all TNCs and companies that offer this type of service. That would be my position.

Thank you, Councillor. I think that would be doable. I think just a quick look at your code today is that TNCs have to, upon request, provide proof of the background check and proof of the vehicle passing. And so we could make that for both taxi cabs and for the transportation network.

That would be my expectation for all participants in that type of service. Go ahead.

Thank you. I agree with Councillor Polson. As Councilor Gakey mentioned, this really sucks because we tried for so long to have local options to figure something out. We listened to a lot of testimony and we saw factual information that the current local drivers that we have right now just do not have the capacity. And so, yeah, I do feel that we don't really have this upper hand. We want them here and hopefully... If we can get this rolling sooner rather than later, we can observe what it looks like throughout the summer, throughout the fall and make adjustments as needed. But I'm in full support of moving forward and making it equitable for all drivers.

Got a lot of business to conduct tonight. Go ahead, Ben.

Yeah, same for me. I mean, it's kind of been touched on a little bit here and I know this started before my time, but, you know, this isn't necessarily even about like a matter of convenience. Like, as I understand it, this was a public safety conversation is how this started and why you, you know, read your, you know, statement before liquor license approvals. And, you know, I, I, very much agree with everything that everybody said about corporations and the amount of money, but also be to not have the service here over, you know, for what amount to maybe a few hundred dollars in fees or $700 in fees, I think constituents would not be pleased with us if we made a decision over that. So I'm definitely in favor with having them here and in favor with Grant's proposal of leveling the playing field.

If I may, the action I'd be looking for tonight is for you to direct us to come back with adjustments to the fee schedule. So we would bring those back at your next meeting. We do want to check in when you say equal. Right now, the taxi cab, your local taxi cab companies have a much lower fee than your TNCs. So I just want to check in when you say being equal, do you mean that they would be charged the same or like 800 and 100 or something? Yeah.

I mean the exact same dollar amount is what I mean.

Not per driver, but per corporation.

Not per driver, flat amount. Debate. I'll debate.

I don't want to do that. Seems punitive.

Yeah, my understanding was like maybe we can, if we're reducing it for a larger company, then maybe we would reduce fees for driver. That's what I understood. So I just want to clarify that. Like if there's an opportunity, yeah, to- Do we waive one fee for the local taxi cabs versus, I think, if you can help us, give us some options of what we could do.

What about the option of a flat rate if the taxi cab driver company provides the vehicle inspection and and background checks, or they can pay the per car and per driver fee that we have, because we do have some local folks that are just a one-man show or two-man show, and that might be less expensive than an actual flat rate. Are we getting too complicated at that point?

Yeah, I was really trying to not complicate it for everybody, but

And I'm sorry that police aren't here to talk about, do they conduct the, I don't think they do the vehicle inspection, but I think they have done background checks in the past. But there are other places where they could do the background checks. They wouldn't have to come and ask us to do that work.

I would assert that Uber will have at least 10 drivers. So I would be in favor of an $80 fee for a local taxi operator. Gladys?

Well, I mean, it sounds like you still need to talk to Chief Holstey anyways. So can we direct you to draft a motion and that trying to understand timeline due in a month from now?

Certainly, I can bring you back something to consider at your future meeting. Or if you gave me direction today, I could bring you an amended fee schedule that you could act on at your July 13th meeting.

How does that sound to folks? Doing that the next step? Yeah. Amanda, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I would prefer to have the amended fee scheduled at the next meeting. That would be great. But do we need to tell you what those fees are or?

I think you can decide. But what I heard from Councilor Pulsum that I think would work for us as staff was a flat fee, you know, that loses the per vehicle or per driver and is just a flat corporate fee that could be charged.

Okay. Well, I don't think that should be $800. Okay. For a one car taxi cab, you know, I don't think that's fair. I would say more like $100 or something.

It's currently $107 per vehicle, including safety inspection and permit of $63 for a cab driver permit, correct? Correct. Okay.

So for the little operator, it's $170 right now.

Yeah. And, you know, I don't want to make Jason, for example, who is signed up to do this and is largely just giving people rides home to pay more. So if we see an explosion of taxis in town competing with Uber, I'll be stoked about that, but I don't think that's what's going to happen. So I don't want to increase the fees for the operators. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think there's anything we could do to lower the fees for it to make it extremely worth it to them to be like, well, now we're, we have a competitive edge against Uber. It's just not feasible. I think they've, they've been trying to get us to get Uber to play by taxi cab rules. And there's, it's, it's a different sort of thing. And it would, it would, I mean, the way we've been trying to talk about this, this has been limiting the ability for us to even get this in a town that's this small. Right. So. I think we should consider keeping the way we do it with taxi cabs today. If the taxi cab operators come back with other feedback and they're like, it would greatly improve my business if I got a reduction, I think we could discuss that. But I would recommend that we make a motion towards accepting what the fees are proposed by Uber. And then we would have discussions with the taxi cab operators to see if there's anything that could be done for the fee schedule.

Sure. They could certainly come to you and ask for a reduction if they wished.

So do we need to make a motion or do you just need direction?

I need, today I just need direction and then I can come back to you. So, and since we've been talking about tax cabs, I do want to note that I sent emails to all the tax cabs, visit the river and the county that we were having today's meeting. Oh, and we did invite Zoom to the, we did invite Uber to the meeting, but they never requested a Zoom invite.

Grant and then Amanda. Amanda.

So right now we have a per car and per driver fee. Could we just do a flat rate?

I think I heard Mayor Blackburn suggest $800 for Uber and $80 for taxi cabs.

But then that, does that cover our expenses? Like, I don't know.

I don't have a sense of how much money we spend on it. I think it's a minimal cost regardless.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And do we issue a permit for the driver before we just pass that state?

I'm going to turn to the city reporter as she actually handles the administration of this program.

Yeah, so the business right now, they apply for their application and they do not provide any driver information to us unless we ask it. We can audit them up to two times a year, I believe.

So they just tell you, I have this many drivers here is what I'm paying for, but we don't actually say like...

Yeah, we used to do the background check. We used to have applications for each driver. We no longer do that. We just get their business application and then inspections no longer happen as well. But they're supposed to have that documentation on file. So we audit them. they have proof that they've done everything with their drivers and vehicles and all that.

If I may interject very quickly, because I want to just for everyone's understanding. So the change to the municipal code treated taxi cabs and TNCs the same as it relates to driver approvals, vehicle inspections, and sort of the ability of the city to audit it. So previously, as Jen mentioned, previously where the inspections were done internally, either by police or background checks, that has all been now sort of through municipal code enforcement, right? So we've pushed all of that responsibility to the driver of the company for both the TNC and for the taxi. The other thing I want to make a note of is that unlike our other fee schedules, the tax cut fees run on a calendar year. So adjusting fees Adjusting fees for existing taxi drivers really doesn't do anything for this current fiscal year. What I would suggest is that when we come back with a fee recommendation, it would be for TNC specific and it would be for this calendar year that would run with the existing fee schedule for taxi cab companies. Understanding that when we do the fee schedule for next year, We will address both TNC and taxicabs at the same time, but we would have one fee that would sort of address just the TNCs for this calendar year.

I'm good with that. So we're in the middle of the year. We don't change anything for the taxis, and we take the 800 for Uber. I like that. We got some nodding on that. Yeah.

Okay. Great. Then we will come back to you at your next meeting with an adjustment to the fee schedule that reflects that.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Overview of the city's comp plan. Dustin Nielsen.

Yep. That requires a burrito, Mr. Beck. It's 855. Here we go.

I don't know what happened with the screen watch here.

Just like triple checking.

Know that Uber has no rides available, and they do not.

Yeah.

Ooh, real low on bandwidth. Okay. No one will miss this. Thank you, Mayor. As a quick overview, I was asked that staff come present. This is a little bit of a level setting for your comprehensive plan. The city's comprehensive plan first acknowledged and was completed in 1983, and it provided an overview of the 14 statewide planning goals to be implemented locally. The goals express the policies, actually the state's policies on land use related topics such as citizen involvement, natural resources, housing, the comp plan provides the basis of your land use and development regulations, the zoning map and policies that guide future development. Since the state acknowledged the plan in 1984, several components of the plan have been updated to address, again, items such as economic development, transportation, housing, natural resources, historic resources. But again, most prominently in the past 10 years, it's been focused on housing. The plan itself... is really comprised of 3 documents of the comp plan the background report which is a series of data and all the analysis that goes into it and really the the zoning or comprehensive map. Notably the city does not have a comprehensive land use map and that is only map we we are one map system to where the zoning map and from playing that sort of the same. Not completely unusual in the state of Oregon, but it's a little bit of a departure and it has some consequences to it. It's always been that way. It's the way that we've treated it. However, it does have some consequences on how we manage and communicate growth. Getting into the document itself of the 14 goals, the first one kicks off and the state is always first to notice. The first goal within the statewide planning program within the city is citizen involvement. This goal, and this is direct excerpt from your code, is to maintain a citizen involvement program that ensures the opportunity for citizens to be involved in all phases of the planning process. Little diagram up here. Originally, that comes from your 1983 first acknowledged comp plan. And then, and it's, Interesting, we have two dates, 1995 and 2005. The city initially updated its vision in 1995. 10 years later, it came back, and actually incorporated that document plus some new additional information in 2005 into its comp plan. So that vision lived for about a decade on its own. 10 years later, it was thought that it should actually go into the comp plan. So it did go. It's the latest update to Goal 1. The name of that document is Keeping Hood River on Track, Hood River 2020. Moving into land use program, second goal, establish a land use planning process and policy framework as the basis for all your decisions and actions related to the use of basically land use development request to ensure you have factual basis for decisions and actions. This sets up the framework of your zone changes, your quasi-judicial planning commission actions, staff decisions, and how you permit and manage everything. It is the framework in which decisions are made. Third goal, and really that has never been changed since its initial adoption. Third goal, ag lands for reserve. Third goal, When this application was made, farm and forestry were the number one and number two industries in the state. And in a large part, the statewide planning program is based around their preservation. That is the hallmark of the workhorse of the state of Oregon and its industrial powerhouse was around farming and forest. Slowly, technology creeps up there, but still farm and forest are two and three in terms of state, current state economy. However, in the city, The comp plan actually mentions this goal really is a very little impact. And the comp plan says this goal does not apply. However, it is important with planning within the urban growth boundary to consider surrounding and adjacent lands so that we don't, basically so we don't adversely impact the agricultural economy of this county. Similar to the forest use goal four, HAB-Jacques Juilland, Excuse me, not an applicable goal, however, and the coding knowledge is there's no real potential forestry activity within the urban growth boundary some forested spots within the city really those should be considered and connected to a natural resource goal yeah. And jump in anytime, please.

So goal three talks about agricultural land. Does the Hannard's Orchard not count as ag land?

Not to the point. Actually, when we get to housing, the Hannard's Orchard is not really considered agriculture for the sake of the comp plan. And when we get into, this is one area that we really disputed had dispute with the state. And when we did the housing needs analysis and buildable lands inventory, that land, although it's an act, very active, very, um, I mean, it's an agricultural use. It is a high value orchard and with no end in sight, you know, the, um, the Henders family and their successors and generations where they'd never stated any interest to redevelop it as something else, the state counts that in the buildable lands inventory as developable. Even though it's committed to ag, they 100% assume and that data goes into how much land do we have available to develop within the next 20 years. So although we disputed that, that is an acceptable to be counted as vacant land. So- On to really where things start kicking off for us. Goal five, open spaces, scenic, historic and natural resources. I left all those ands in there. intentionally i did not write it that way that is a quote the goal is to conserve historic and scenic resources this goal kicked off 1983 with the original plan was updated in 94 to acknowledge the downtown and the historic resources of your central business district it put in place the landmarks review board created the historic inventory of buildings that were on the National Register, as well as the locally recognized buildings got updated again in 2003 for a local wetland inventory also riparian. This is a part of the riparian or areas between some of your waterways and wetlands it's a natural resource protection. Again, gets updated in 2004 to update landmarks and 2005 update to consider this is the consider the Columbia River infill waterfront area. So the The trail, the trade-offs between environmental protection along the Columbia River are incorporated in this and offset with certain, we call it the EZ program, which is an EZ analysis, E-S-E-E. It's a trade-off of environmental, social, economic, and energy benefits. Goal six. is intended to maintain and improve the water quality, air quality, land resource and planning area, and provide a relatively pollution-free environment. This section, actually, I found very interesting from 1983. It's the first place you can probably read about the inversion. So it talks about the climate of Hood River, some of its air quality issues, and it describes without using the term inversion, all the circumstances that lead to inversion. Talks about air pollution, talks about noise, regulations, how we should treat our surface water quality and domestic treatment water quality. Never been adopted, never been amended. Goal seven, natural disasters was the term to protect life and property from natural disasters and hazards. Big update 2018 after Eagle Creek fire. This is the big push and some resources from the state to look at the natural hazard mitigation plan here in the city and county. This was a collaborative effort. We, other than the tornado, we really have a really, I would consider it the full house of natural hazards. We have seismic issues, fire, wind, ice, volcano issues. and pretty much everything else other than a tornado. Flood hazard, all is available here. So actually this plan is very useful. The county was the lead on it last time in 2025. That was not updated to the comp plan, but it is in the background documents. This year on the horizon, we were notified that FEMA is back in business. They have a floodplain and ordinance update and a map update that they prepared that you will have to adopt by November 14th. We were notified that on June 17th. So we will be anxiously and exciting preparing a post-acknowledgement plan amendment for you for this year. That'll be an update to goal seven, not on your work plan, but now on my work plan. recreational needs analysis originally adopted in 1983. That really came from the 1978 inventory that the city did before there was its modern comp plan, satisfy the recreational needs of the citizens and community and visitors to the area. This one has some interesting twists to it because there's a bunch of information that was never included in the comp plan. HRV Parks had a capital facilities master plan in 2005 that you'll find in some of our background documents not included in the comp plan. Seven years later, another master plan did not get included in the comp plan. Seven years after that, the multi-jurisdiction master plan that we worked with City, County, Parks, and Port was acknowledged by the city and adopted as a part of its comp plan. Although it's not actually it's not in the COMP plan, but there's a resolution accepting the findings generally consistent spirit of intent of what we want to do. And you'll see that theme quite often work policy issues not going into the COMP plan but kind of living out there in the. In the kind of sphere of policy documents. Goal nine, economy, diversify and improve the economy of Hood River planning area while preserving and promoting the quality of life and small town atmosphere. You also see small town atmosphere a lot from the 80s and 90s. Original adoption, 1983, 1999, economy of state. First, update to the comp plan. And then last, 2011 economic opportunities analysis. Heard about that earlier today. That really focused on, is there a sufficient land area within your urban growth boundary to satisfy your needs? And some early analysis of trade sectors. Goal 10, housing. You know this well. We talk about it a lot. provide an opportunities to meet all housing needs of all residents at all income levels 1983 adoption 2005 market analysis of real estate not adopted into a comp plan but really some of that first forte into population growth and housing needs. 2015, buildable lands, inventory, housing needs analysis. That is the big hallmark that we still work from today. 2019, affordable housing strategy built on top of the HNA, not included as a part of the comp plan, but used really to develop some targeted strategies that really is not based around how much real estate is needed and what the conventions of a housing needs analysis So another example of us wanting to look at affordable housing strategy, wanting it to build in our likeness and our circumstances and not being bound to the state conventions. And you'll see the list. I can tell you, talk to some of the strategies that came out of that, how they were implemented and how they are still relevant today. Goal 11.

Justin, just on the housing piece, if you can go back to that slide. Goal 10. How do these plans relate to each other? Do they build on each other? Or are they connected in some way?

That is the quote, actually, from the 2019 plan. Page 11. If you go to your comp plan background documents, it says the affordable housing strategy is built on 2015 plans.

And so it found in 2019, the 2015 findings were still seen as legitimate. I mean, they're more than 10 years old at this time.

2015 buildable lands inventory is very land centric. It is all housing needs across all income spectrums. 2019 is based exclusively on affordable housing, capital A affordable. How is that, um, What are the particular nuances to affordable housing production? What are the unique issues that it's faced that differentiates from market? 2015 buildable lands was all markets, multi-million dollar housing townhouse, all forms. 2019 exclusively looks at affordable, capital A affordable. And they generally harmonize. One didn't replace another. They sync together. Goal 11, plan and develop timely, orderly, and efficient arrangement of public facilities and services. to serve as a framework for urban and rural development with the city. 83, original adoption. 2002, your first modern capital facilities plan that really brings up-to-date water, sewer, and storm deliverables. That was updated again in 2011 and incorporated into the comp plan. 2011 was a busy year for updates. Favorite, transportation. Transportation is interesting because it has seven sub-goals, which I've Tom Ozden- truncated here to her the sake of not making this slide anymore wordy than it needed to be your transportation should be a balanced system to infant enhanced livability. To be efficient, that reduces the number of trips and limits congestion, becomes accessible to all members, provides sufficient movement of goods. That's really kind of a commercial aspect and works with the federal, state, and regional, local governments, private sector by creating a stable, flexible, and financial system created in 1983. First TSP transportation goal started in 1983. The first TSP system plan becomes 1999, you see a 1983 update, a 2006 update, 2011 update to include the Interchange Access Management Plan, 2012, a major update and a really reinvented plan, 2021, TSP is updated to acknowledge the work on the west side, 2024, acknowledges the work in the Heights and brings all the Heights plan projects created by Urban Renewal into the TSP, 2026, 2027, on your work plan, on my work plan, TGM, Historic Highway Integrated Transportation Plan to run from Westside through 13th and Oak.

So that's an update on Cascade Avenue, like a Cascade Avenue streetscape.

Partnership with the state through its Transportation Growth Management Plan. Builds on top of urban renewal. One of the three pillars, urban renewal on the Westside, housing, parks, transportation, and infrastructure. Energy conservation, goal 13, to conserve energy and encourage the use of renewable resources, originally born in 1983, never been updated since. You really work outside of that with the with the Energy Council. That's really been kind of the work that has been really fostered and invested in this area. Really the comp plan hasn't changed. And really when we do findings, I think some of the background information will say this goal has never really been evaluated in annexations, in zone changes, and shows up with very little in case law. 14. Last goal, urbanization. Provide an orderly and efficient transition from urban or rural to urban land use. 1983, original adoption. Only update somewhere between 1980 and 1992. I had a hard time finding the UGB amendment. We brought in Hood River sand and gravel and work on the east side from the original UGB. Therefore, and that's really the only update that's ever happened on the city's plan. Here's the single timeline. And I call out a couple pieces here. This is a little bit of a comp plan plus starting from 1895 incorporation. Actually, you start off with a building code and your first design standards occur within the first year of incorporation. 1902, first localized land division. We were doing land division before that. However, your first local ordinances for subdivisions come into effect. We were really trying to make sure the streets lined up and everyone was mapping this orchard land. in a consistent way. 54, first zoning code, very similar to a lot of other zoning codes. Looks like it was bought and paid for out of a catalog. A lot of it still exists today. 1958, preliminary development plan. This is the city's first effort to really start looking at decisions beyond just the immediate land use decisions. Starts to look at what are we gonna be when we grow up? 1973, big year in the planning world. That is a Senate Bill 100. That is Tom McCall rallies and introduces Oregon statewide planning program, which then starts to build some of these modern goals and this really state-centric plan, one of a kind within the United States. And you become the implementing agency on the local level. um our first foray uh into that really looks like the 1980 west side area concept plan funny enough uh it's a joint plan between the city and county to look at the wild west side its future growth area and try to manage how this unincorporated area that would someday become the ugb how did the city and county work together in managing this and building it in the future 1983, your first comp plan is acknowledged or is adopted and signed by the governor. And really, we start jumping in the 90s and things that I've talked about before. Landmarks Commission, Community Vision, 1995, 10 years later, it's adopted. TSP amendments, Economies of the State, as we've talked about, coming into, again, 26, 27, Historic Highway and FEMA updates upcoming. on your post-acknowledgement work plan. As I mentioned early on and throughout this, there's really two amendment styles that comp plans go through. They're known as the post-acknowledgement plan amendment, otherwise known as a PAPA, or a periodic review. PAPA is generally more common. This is really kind of the workflow which happens. It's a narrower scope. your housing needs analysis, your economic opportunities for single feature updates to where you identify the issues, you conduct the analysis, you have participation within the work, you send notice to DLCD saying we will do this and we have planned to have a hearing, you share notice with the public, it may impact their properties, you go through the legislative process, otherwise it's a type four, send the notice to the state, we've done this work, we've updated our comp plan, you wait for the appeal period Other piece to that, a more broad-based piece is the voluntary periodic review. This is a process that used to be required. It's really more of a housekeeping issue. It used to be required every 10 years by the state, but because of how rigorous it became and litigious in a lot of ways, the state stopped requiring cities to do a voluntary periodic review, cities under 10,000. And then to some extent, I think cities over 10,000 are now supposed to do it, but really don't. And I don't think there's a rule. I don't know if they've actually suspended doing it. I'm not sure if that's actually consistent with the administrative rules. But periodic review, it seems to be... a thing of the past. Um, some agencies have started looking at it, um, again, with these agent comp plans. Um, when do we look at this? Why do we want to look at this? Um, coming up with programs, unlike the pop-up periodic review is not, um, You don't necessarily have the right to do it. You have to demonstrate there is a need. You have to demonstrate that before the LCDC. So the state will say, yes, you are eligible and we will allow you to proceed, but you will prepare to our satisfaction of work plan and scope. That usually takes about a year for them to come up with that scope. That's evaluated by an outside third party known as the PRAT team. It's basically a periodic review team. They evaluate your goals. They evaluate your timeline. You start on the work plan, and you are supposed to finish usually within three years. So that's periodic review in a nutshell. Any questions?

Help me understand this last little bit because, you know, this plan was created far before I was born. And I'm trying to understand we're doing some work right now to update pieces in the code and whatnot. I mean, when I look at like some of the economy goals, it, in my opinion, might be too restrictive to some businesses. So how often are these supposed to be updated given that, you know, There's also other plans that have come since then to ensure that it all truly does align.

It really now, as a city of 8,800 people, you update them as need be. So there is no cadence that you must do it every so often. But for housing, housing has become really a bigger issue at the state level to where cities are now being compelled to update that work. And as witnessed by resources dedicated to housing, also mandates, that if you don't update your housing plans and you don't get it right, there's enforcement issues. But for that, it's really at your discretion. Periodic review starts to identify things saying, are you making bad choices? Are the choices that you have to make to support your comp plan or the law starting to become at odds? Are you starting to see a conflict of things? That starts to trigger the conversation of maybe you need to have a periodic review. The economic opportunities analysis is 2011. That was a voluntary process. We just wanted to do it. We felt it was time to do it. There was a need around it. It was 2011. The world is starting to come out of a, bit of a economic recession. And really across the states, that's where we're looking at it. You know, in 2000 miles away, we were looking at the same thing. What businesses are we leaking? What sectors are we attractive to? How do we get good paying jobs? That was just, it was just trending. It was a trendy thing to look at at the time. And it was because it was necessary. You're seeing the economy struggle. You see the push to invest time and energy and understanding that. And what role do we play?

So I think I'm hearing you say the housing section portion of this is what is updated most often. But the other piece is you don't really update it unless you like have to.

Yeah. And you could see, are they liabilities? Like, are they compelling you to do something that your community feels necessary? misaligned with. In the name of the comp plan, we're doing X, Y, and Z and we're feeling this tension. That to me would signal you should probably look at this if you feel like it's drifted. It's also good to look at them because to be aware how they impact those decisions. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're out of alignment. Just because they're new doesn't mean they... The world can change very fast. Just because it's... air and water quality from 1983, a lot of the virtues are still there. We want clean air. We want to manage stormwater. We want clean drinking water. We are taking the rules into effect that help kind of embody that. I think the policies are there. The rules may change and the laws may change, but I don't think it's necessarily because the backdrop and the underlying policy is needs an update and so a lot of times you will update like we do a whole lot more rules updates than we do comp plan updates and and so like for example 2015 housing needs analysis you go through and you do a middle housing code you do an adu update you do a townhouse code you do a further affordable housing production study off it you do str regulations that you're hopefully going to get out of federal court within the next year on i mean like those are the things that like That propels you to a work, you implement this and it takes time. So at some point... Yeah, that's what I'm trying to understand. You have a lot of things to do, to implement.

Totally. So the intention is that this stays broad and isn't too specific. And then the updates that we make along the way are... you're going to create energy efficient housing now moving forward, right? Like this stays broad, everything else that we do specifically to housing, that's much more specific, but like this is the foundation.

It's the policy. It's the broadest policies with the farthest lens. So sometimes it can be very specific, like you should implement doing this. And I think over time, we've gotten much more specific. Like when we did H&A, or the housing needs analysis and buildable lands, we had a strategy document to say, you will do X, Y, and Z. increase the efficiency of housing, manage short-term rentals, partner with something to affordability. Those are really specific outcomes for implementation that we had locked in there so that when we got into situations where like, this is a difficult situation, we said, listen, this is the backstop. This is how we got here. So it can be very useful to have some pointed goals on certain things that you really wanna achieve. But I think we went into that saying, we have a goal that we wanna address and it wasn't just we're here because we don't have anything else to do. We had an agenda and we heard from people and that became important to embody within the plan.

Thank you, Justin. 14, didn't know there were 14.

There's 19, five of which don't apply to you.

Oh man, thank you.

But I guess for this, there was... that is kind of your launching point i'm assuming you have future discussions on it happy to raise answer questions manage where we are um help facilitate your discussion however much you want to and talk about it moving on okay goal one around the public input i remember when i first started on council we did like a yearly survey

I don't believe that we've done that survey recently, but I know that we do have like a housing specific survey that just went out. So how do we inform the community of like, here's our comp plan. Here's what it says. Like, how do we achieve goal one now?

Can I jump in on that? At our, I'm hopeful our next meeting might be later. One of your goals on your, or one of your projects on your work plan is community engagement framework. Our community engagement coordinator, Jackie Vander Poi, will be, she's met with each of you individually, have talked about this, gotten feedback, and she is coming back to you to talk about community engagement work. at a future meeting we'd hope to do it tonight but she's actually at the um housing bond measure focus group uh that's being done by the next door in spanish tonight so um if i can just punt that question to jackie we'll bring that to you as a fuller discussion in a couple weeks i think it uh on yes and um goal one has changed quite a bit um

And I think this is where I find it most interesting and in call it troubling sometimes, you know, some of the modifications at the state level and things that you will do, uh, such as in your development code are not things that we've had participation in some of those preempted changes with state. You shall city shall, you shall not do this. We shall, um, there, a lot of them are in the name of housing production and what the city will do. Um, they have tension with goal one, you know, the, the idea that, you know, some of the affordable housing products and residential products are no longer citizens are not going to have the opportunity to weigh into those, that those areas it's hard. And this is, you know, I had this conversation when we were at our housing strategy with the state is we have to figure out how to message to people saying, you know, it's easy for the state to do that from Salem. It's hard for me to say, this is how we're living out our goal one. And you don't have a place. There's no place for you to talk about this right now. And that's a tough thing when it comes to implementation. And some things I've talked with our folks at housing accountability, it's, you know, understand the goal. It's the goal 10, but sometimes that goal 10 and the housing really has that it grades on goal one and expectations. And that's part of the communication, I think, is to help explain to people what happened here. How do I not have a say anymore?

This is kind of what I was curious about because I'm assuming that these goals are not – this is not like a ranking. It's not a hierarchy. They're all equivalents more or less, but they also come in conflict with one another at times. Looking through these, it's like, well, that can impact that one and that can impact the other one.

Yeah, I think they – They definitely bump up against each other. So there's the balancing act, we call it, of like, at what point are you trying to accommodate both of these things and find that harmony between the need for more transportation And at the same time, they need to preserve some of your natural resources. Like finding that sweet spot is really, that's the art of it. And that's where sometimes on the local level, we have the opportunity to find that.

It's getting very late. Without objection, I've, oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. Thank you, Grant. I didn't see your hand.

That might be a problem, because if I start asking questions, we'll go for a very long time. So it might be a good idea not to call on me. You received my questions. It might be a good idea just to answer those and send them to the rest of council. Would that be OK? I could talk about it, too.

I mean, part of it is your discussion. I could answer these questions straight away.

I think part of it is, again, the level set. In the interest of time or whichever would be best for you. That's all I was going to do was just ask you some of those because you just mentioned that a bunch of our comp plan is disjointed, disconnected to each other, conflicts with each other. A bunch of the development code update that we're going to do is not connecting necessarily to the code or comp plan.

Right. Yeah, and it can't be. I mean, the state has not asked for your comp plan. So, and to push back at the state, I've actually, you know, resisted saying, listen, you didn't ask, don't act like you're consented. Like, I don't want to amend the comp plan to all of a sudden harmonize with the development regulations. When those aren't development regulations that came, we're born out of this city. So, I mean, some of that tension and conflict is a bit of like resistance, you know, and I'm And as much as I appreciate it, and the development code will line up, but I don't want to act like this city all of a sudden said it was okay. So that's the full disclosure on some of those. Conflict-wise, again, there's trade-offs. So again, there are policies, there's overlap, they're supposed to kind of bump off each other. I don't think there's these clean, discreet lines that all of a sudden I expect to stand in the lanes. So I don't think all of a sudden one policy, again, they're broad, they're flexible. I'm not concerned about that. Timelines, they can matter. I think in terms of time and budget, it's also what is important and what means something here. So do you use the comp plan as... You know, I think we've found ways to work around it because, again, because of the the rigors and the time it takes to do this. It's part of my job is to try to make expectations and make the most of the time I have. And what's going to help here? What's going to be the best for the residents? Is it going to be to spend my time to have a principled discussion on goal six or is it going to try to be we just need to work on what the gaps are out there? So I'd be happy to respond to all the questions, send them through your one-on-ones and, and that have full responses to all of them. Some of them are just philosophical though, but maybe what's the most important thing to me. I think, you know, you ask him the planner or you ask him somebody who listened to the city. I think I go with the progress of the nation and it's moral wellness based upon how well they treat their animals. You know, I'll go Gandhi on that one. it doesn't really relate to the comp plan.

So thank you, Councillor Polson, for truly did your homework and sent us some comments and I don't know, maybe 10 questions. If it is okay with Council, I will just forward, well, first I want to forward the comments that you have provided with us and then we can try to answer the questions that are kind of straightforward, the ones that are bigger policy philosophy questions perhaps are not appropriate for staff to answer, but we can share kind of the more factual answers. And then you as a group could decide if you wanted to have an additional conversation on those bigger policy questions, or if you wanted to revisit this comp plan overview at a later date, once you've had more time.

Some of these could err in law. Like I could, I could,

Yes, I understand. Since our comp plan is what it is, there are a number of embedded assumptions in our comp plan, which we should all understand. There are consequences to those embedded assumptions. They reflect in policies or budget consequences that we live with every day. We have to make decisions every day in that. We should all understand what those are and be making policy decisions and having policy discussions about what those are and decide if we're going to address those in a comp plan and have those kind of policy discussions. Thanks. Great.

So we will do some factual answers and share the comments and get that back to you probably early next week, if that sounds okay.

City of Hood River website, complan.gov. First link, 47 pages is your comp plan. There's 25 documents as part of the background report. If you want to become familiar, peruse them. They're all there. They're all published digital format. We have insomnia. It's a good cure.

My suggestion is we move directly to the urban renewal agenda. I don't want to argue about that, but does that suit the group? Councilor Chair Doug?

I was just going to ask, is Will out there? There you are. Okay. I will call to order the Hood River Urban Renewal Agency meeting. Any agenda additions or corrections, Will?

Yeah, Chair Stepina, we will not have an executive session tonight.

Say that again? I think there was an executive. No executive session. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Any business from the audience? Jen, anybody signed up online? Okay. First action tonight is the consensus agenda, which is the meeting minutes approval of June 8th, 2026. I'd entertain a motion.

Move to approve the minutes. Second.

Moved by Grant, seconded by Gladys. Any further discussion? All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Chair votes aye. Agenda passes. Regular business items, ODOT prepaid account, Mount Adams review, Will, please.

Yeah, thank you. And I've heard that maybe my volume might be high in the chamber, and I don't know how to address that. So I don't know, Jen, if you can turn me down. That's fine. She's adjusting it right now.

Yeah.

Okay, I'll go ahead and move forward.

Go ahead, Will. Yeah, you're not blowing our eardrums. It's okay.

Okay. So the first item here is authorizing payment of $115,640.56 to ODOT to establish essentially an escrow account that will be drawn upon as they continue to review and inspect the Mount Adams roundabout. You know, I know That's not a new project for anyone here in the room, but I'll just note that it is our primary bottleneck to unlocking the development potential of the west side. And because of that, it's been the west side urban renewal district's top infrastructure priority. Even though it's our priority, it is a state facility, and so the Urban Renewal Agency can fund and will be required to pay for ODOT's review work. This is a common practice for The realignment of our second and Oak required this. And just anytime we're doing a developer funded or a locally delivered project, ODOT wants to have the funds in hand before they will do the work. And they have to do the work because it's on their facility. This is, I think, one of the benefits of the jurisdictional transfer in the Heights that we get to avoid a process like this, but not on US 30 on West Cascade. So we have $150,000 budgeted for professional services for the roundabout in next year's adopted budget. This will use most of that, and I think will prompt some exploration of the roundabout. assessing and accessing debt capacity to continue to move the project forward. But under any case, this is a required next step before we do anything else in the development of the roundabout. So with that, I'll answer any questions or there's also a suggested motion. Oh, I will note this request from ODOT came in too late for me to discuss, to have it as a packet item for URAC, but we did discuss it verbally and at their last meeting and URAC unanimously recommended setting up this escrow account.

Awesome. Questions for Will, Anna?

so the order that came with our materials actually includes a 25 contingency and the total is 144 560.70 which is below what we have budgeted of the 150 that you mentioned but what i'd like to know is your suggested motion is that we approve only the service estimate not the contingency are is odot going to accept that and are you just going to come back to us for the contingency amount if necessary What's the plan there?

Yeah, we'll come back. If when they run, if when they run the escrow account down, they'll request an additional deposit before they continue work. And so it'll be funded as needed basis. But we have specifically, ODOT has specifically at this step waived the contingency amount. So they'll get moving with the 115K. And, you know, I think all is the better to have the money sitting in our own bank account earning interest for us in the interim.

Did you tell us that in the memo and I just glanced over it?

It might be hidden in there. Like one sentence, but.

Okay. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions for Will? I would entertain a motion.

I move the Urban Renewal Agency Board authorized payment to the Oregon Department of Transportation in the amount of $115,640 and 56 cents to establish a prepaid account for Mount Adams Roundabout intersection review and inspection costs.

Moved by Gladys. Second. Second by Amanda. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Yes. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye, motion passes. Second regular business item will resolution 2026 URA-04 appropriations transfer.

Yeah, thanks. Won't belabor the point on this. This is just adjusting $156 of appropriation in the budget to accurately reflect interest costs for a loan that's due to the city for the Westside area formation costs that the city incurred. And now that the Westside district is paying back with interest. And I think if we're a dollar over on our appropriations, we get a nasty gram from the Secretary of State. So this will hopefully keep us off that list.

Okay. Any questions for Will on this? If not, there's a suggested motion on page 11.

I move the Urban Renewal Agency Board adopt Resolution 2026-URA-04, an appropriation transfer for fiscal year 2025-26. Moved by Ben.

Second. Second by Grant. Further discussion? Those in favor?

Aye. Opposed?

Chair votes aye. Passes. Any administrator update today, Will? Nothing, Dad. Okay. Any items from agency members that you'd like to discuss? Okay. We're not having the executive sessions. It's stricken from the agenda. Therefore, I will adjourn the urban renewal. or the Hood River Urban Renewal Agency meeting and pass it back to the mayor to reconvene city council.

I will reconvene city council and we will now meet in executive session pursuant to ORS 192.661 E Edgar to conduct deliberations with persons designated by the governing body to negotiate real property transactions. Representatives of the news media and designated staff are allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience are asked to leave the room and we will end the public broadcast. Representatives of the news media are specifically directed not to report on any of the deliberations during the executive session except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made nor final action taken in executive session. The executive session is anticipated to last 20 minutes. At the end of the executive session, the city council meeting will be adjourned and no action will be taken. We will now discontinue the live feed and recording.

And we skipped over Council comments. Yes, I did.

City Manager update, which Yes, I did. But you can do that at the end. Okay, just one. Thank you.

I think.

Sorry, go ahead.

I'm going to stop the recording and go offline and I can't go back. So you may want to do it. Now, and then

Shall we do it now?

We can make it quick.

Let's make it quick. Okay. We are about to go into executive session. We are not quite yet. We will proceed as ordinary city recorder, nothing city manager comments, Abigail.

Yeah, I have a couple of very quick comments. First, we have a housing town hall tomorrow night, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Tuesday, tomorrow, here. Hope to see folks here. I think we've got a great panel lined up. Will Norris has done a great job organizing this. Next Monday, the 29th, we will have a police open house. So if you've ever wanted to see inside our police station, this will be your chance. Also here, that's drop in from 5 to 7pm on Monday, June 29th. The Oregon Transportation Commission met last week and have allowed us to cancel or they are willing to cancel the elevated sidewalk construction project, so this means we'll be able to take that sidewalk back to some remediation and we it's our goal to open that sidewalk back before school starts. cat our Columbia area transit and the Columbia gorge Community college both are recruiting for board members right now they've had. Oh, I saw your update. They both have midterm board members leave for various reasons. And then, so contact them or our liaisons here. Council Cavalieri or Councilor Mitchell, if you'd like more information. And then finally, just something I thought you'd be interested in. You have a data center moratorium that goes till December 31st. The state has a moratorium that started on June 6th. or I think so, of a state moratorium on property tax breaks for data centers for the next year while the governor has a task force studying that issue. So you were a little bit ahead of that curve. Ours is a true moratorium. That one is just on property taxes, but I knew you would be interested in that. Thank you.

Thank you. Any combined committee and council comments? Cavallari.

I have no city, sorry, committee reports or council comments.

Mitchell. I went to the CAT meeting. Abigail stole one of my updates. The other one, as Cat said, there are free rides on the Hood River City route on July 4th. Nice.

I'll save mine for our next meeting. Nothing pressing.

I just wanted to acknowledge, thank you, Councillor Mitchell, for having the guts to speak in front of people that were kind of being... saying things to themselves out in the crowd and everything, they're your neighbors, you made a difficult decision and it takes guts to do that and I just wanted to acknowledge that, thank you.

Grant. None.

Amanda.

I missed the McKed meeting and I'm having trouble accessing the notes and minutes, so I'll report next meeting on that, that's it.

I went to the housing summit down in Redmond, it was quite interesting, I have a little report I will submit to you guys digitally. Okay, now all that stuff I said about executive session is still true. We're going to suspend the recording.

Ready?

All right, Abigail, you ready? Oh, excuse me. Thank you, Jen.