City Council - Regular Meeting

Let me Okay, for Is that the guy? No. You hear me?

Good evening. Welcome to your city council. My name is Paul Blackburn. I'm the mayor. I'll be uh convening the meeting. First thing we're going to do is turn off our cell phones. Then we're going to remind ourselves that as we gather today, we respectfully acknowledge that the land on which the city of Hood River sits is the ancestral home of indigenous peoples. This includes the Nespers, Umatillaa, Warm Springs, Yaka, and other tribes who stewarded this land for generations. We recognize the lasting impact of colonialism and commit to working together for a more just and sustainable future. Now we're going to stand and say the pledge of allegiance. Pledge

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Abigail, do we have any agenda additions or corrections? Mayor, I'd like to move our agenda, our last item of the ICE um city's response to ice impacts to the beginning of today's agenda if that's okay. Is council okay with that? Thank you. No other changes.

Great. Now is the time for business from the audience. We have some folks perhaps on Zoom. We're going to start in the room and go through. Ordinarily, as Abigail said, it's three minutes because we have to, you know, conduct business. But if someone's being interpreted for, that seems like the wrong amount. So, we're going to do five minutes if you are testifying in Spanish abandon. No engoom and then Tina Castanaris.

Hi everyone. Hi Nan.

Good evening. My name is Nan Notaboom and I live in Odell, Oregon. I got a call a couple weeks ago from the principal at a local high school. He was sitting in his office with a student and their family. Their dad had just been detained by ICE. He asked for some help with the next steps. They were broken. ICE has become a regular presence in our county thanks to the leadership of stupid, cruel federal officials. I have seen firsthand how this presence spreads fear and hurts local businesses. They do not target violent criminals or even criminals. As we all know that being undocumented is a civil offense and not a criminal offense. It is now irrefutable that they target anyone who has brown skin. It's a sad time for our country and a scary time for our community. People are not living in fear because they are undocumented. They are living in fear because of the color of their skin. You can do more than what you are doing now to mitigate this terror. I ask you once again to declare Hood River a sanctuary city. Inclusive is not enough. This declaration does not change the law. It only sends a message and creates a feeling of reassurance for those who are being targeted, people of color. I first asked this of mayor, our mayor, on November 9th. It was a Wednesday, the day after an election in 2016. The mayor's name was Paul Blackburn. I'm repeating my plea here and now. Second, please make sure that all city property is clearly marked with a sign indicating that entry by immigration enforcement officials is prohibited without a

judicial warrant. This encourages ICE to follow the law, though we know by now that ICE operates illegally in many cases. Finally, please make sure that all city property is clearly marked with a sign indicating Oh, I'm sorry. Please make sure that all city personnel are trained in legal response to ICE. Do not cooperate. Do not interfere. I ask this for those without a voice, those who might be fearful or might be poor or might have brown skin. I ask this for our community. I leave you with the words of Adakus Finch. In the name of God, do your duty. Thank you.

Thank you, man. Tina and then Melissa.

Hello, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is Tina Castinares and I live on Rocky Road in the river. I've been in this community about 40ome years. Um, I submitted written testimony to you all, so it would be in your packet, so I'm not going to read it. Um, and you're going to hear more um descriptions like Nan just shared from the heart of things that have really happened just recently to people in our in our communities. Uh so I want to just echo what Nan said and ask for. Um I do believe too that we need to be a sanctuary city. Inclusive means we welcome you. Sanctuary means we will keep you safe or do our best to do that. And those are different things. So I would really uh recommend and I put that in the written um comments. Please declare Hood River to be a sanctuary city, not only an inclusive city. It's important for emphasis and it's very important for the message it sends to our community residents. Um please make that very public through various media, social media, newspapers, radio, any number of ways in which that word could be spread. And also in the same ways, the same methods spread the word to uh have signs up in businesses, storefronts, schools, churches, and other institutions that say no entry into private property without a judicial warrant. Those signs are professionally made and available and it would mean a lot I think if the city council endorsed them and encouraged entities to use them because some are declining or seem fearful to put them in their windows. But it would mean a lot and we've heard that from people who are employees of some of the

businesses that have been um interrupted by the detentions and arrests and stops in their parking lots. Similarly, I'd like to ask the city council to endorse and encourage the use of the SOS immigrantes, yellow signs at homes. Um, as you've seen them all through, and everybody knows the yellow now and all of that, they mean a lot. And I think again it would send a great message from city council to um encourage their use and to um endorse their use protocols for employees of the city. Uh how to behave, how to act in case of an incursion or attempted incursion by ICE. You may have those. I don't know. if not they are crucial and they need to be updated constantly because we see that ICE has been breaking the rules all over the country. Um so we need to have employees who feel they know staff and volunteers both in in the city offices that think they know have been trained and empowered to know what to do and we need to have the city council encourage other businesses and entities to do the same. Um and finally everybody who's public facing should know their rights and there are there are entities here that will do trainings and will encourage the use of know your rights resources um so that we are all behaving as a sanctuary community. Um something I didn't

I'm sorry Tina you've gone over your time if you could finish up please. I will thank you. I didn't put in my comments. Please, if you can give substantive funding to the U organizations that are now giving financial help to families that have been impacted. They need it and if you can do it, uh it would really help and send a good message. Thanks for your time. I'm sorry I went over. Thank you, Tina, Melissa, and then Kate.

Good evening. 3 minutes is not enough when there's a lot to be said. I will attempt to be brief on a subject important to me. I was born and raised in Hood River, moved away twice, and came back home because this is where my family has felt the safest and considers home. I know that this town is home to all of us here tonight and it is home to more than to hundreds more that at the moment are leaving are living terrorized in their own homes. We see the people in our community. We live with people in our community. But how many of us are actually interacting with people in our community? I don't only see, live, and interact. I am part of this community. I listen to the horror and terrors that they are feeling at the moment. Immigration status has nothing to do with the fear that they are living with. Children are afraid to go to schools. Parents are terrified to go to work or do the store to buy basic necessities to survive. Medical appointments are being cancelled and people's healths are at risk. Many can't even go outside due to the trauma and fear of what they see and hear. Many residents of our community feel that they have to carry a passport or that the children have to carry passports to be able to identify themselves properly just in case as a new daily routine. No one should have to feel that they have to justify our legal status by the color of our skin. We should not be racially profiled by our skin color or the language we choose to speak. I believe in the justice system and know and know no one is above the law. We are all held accountable for our actions. At this current time, I have yet to see ICE to be held accountable for their unlawful actions. Everything from basic transportation laws like illegal U-turns, disobeying speed limits, no plates on vehicles, or the same plate on multiple vehicles to kidnapping and taking innocent community members. The fourth amendment of the bill of rights from the constitution states that the people have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and shall not be violated without probable cause supported by oath and affirmation. Describing the place to

be searched and the person or thing that he sees. ICE, from what I have personally witnessed, lacks all the previously stated. They do not abide by the due process of law. They kidnap and detain people without warrants, without identifying themselves or what agency they are with. Their faces are covered by mask like delinquents. They surround your car. They break your windows. They pull and drag you out. They either don't ask your name or don't care to. The person detained is then cuffed, removed of their personal belongings, and then they are torn away from their family, friends, and community. I know that there are things beyond your beyond and out of your control. Please change what is in within your control. within your control and ability to make your community feel safe. I ask that you consider making Hood River a sanctuary city. Do it not just to see and live in it. We need you to listen, engage, and stand by it. People are severely terrified at this time. And I [clears throat] don't know of another way that would make them feel safer than having them know that their city and their communities behind them. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate. And then Rowan. Hi, my name is Kate Nichols. Um, I've lived in this town for about three years and um, right now I'm teaching at the local high school and a couple of weeks ago many of our students didn't come to class because they were afraid and their parents are afraid to drive to school um, for for several days about every one of my classes had half the class gone. That's significant as an educator. You're not getting your education because you're not there. I I remember going sorry to a Fourth of July parade and thinking how wonderful it was to see people brown people in the parade and saying this is our community. This is our community. All of us here together. It wasn't this summer that I had that thought. Right now we have the illegal thugs harming people, harming people, destroying their lives, destroying their famil family's lives, their kids' lives. Please make this a sanctuary city. Please protect the people that live here. They belong here. They haven't done anything wrong. I would I have heard the statistics that a very small majority of them have have broken the law. as felonies as they say, but the thugs don't even check. They don't check. They don't care if you're carrying your papers. I'm sure you've all heard the news. So, my question for you is, is this the America that we want to live in?

Thank you,

Rowan. And then Melissa. Hello and thank you for letting me speak tonight. Um, much of what I was going to say has already been said by these wonderful people who have shown up. Um, but I want to talk specifically about being a senior at Hood River Valley High School during this time. Um, so first of all, I'm taking political science this year. It's been a little funny and incredibly saddening and frustrating to learn about how our government should work and then see the ways that the 14th Amendment and the things that our country was founded on are blatantly ignored. Um, our school district is 44% Hispanic, um, from what I saw online. And these students are having to wake up every morning afraid when they come home their mothers, fathers, friends, or neighbors will be gone. Families are afraid to leave their homes, go to work, buy groceries. And you cannot learn anything when you are surviving in a constant state of fear. And no child deserves to have this placed upon them. How would you feel about your power and place in the society when people are being deported just because they look like you? To quote Corey Booker, "It's not about left or right, it's right or wrong. It's a really surreal experience to sit in class knowing this is happening around you all of the time and fearing for the members of your community." And I can only imagine how it would feel if one of your close friends or family members was at risk. In history, we learned about the Japanese Americans who were taken from Hud River and placed in concentration camps. And at the time, much of our community did nothing. Now, it feels like we are living through the same thing, and we cannot make the same mistake again. Students are under 18. We did not vote for this and our voices are often ignored. So please hear me when I say I want to see actions over words. This goes for our city council as well as every member of our community. If we turn a blind eye to this, then we are actively helping them take innocent people. Like others have said, I would like the city to officially declare sanctuary status. Additionally, I would like the council to find ways to do more. Some cities have declared a state of emergency when ICE is in town to

provide additional protection resources. I know for a fact ICE is actively breaking the law and committing many offenses, including driving offenses and other things that are unsafe. Um, and I want to know if the police could do something to hold them accountable. I'd like to see recommendations put out for how to protect the immigrants in our community, organize know your rights trainings, and suggest suggestions um for the signs that other people have mentioned. Um, I'm 17 and standing up here and sometimes I feel a little bit like my youth has been stolen as my generation has grown up trying to shoulder the bo burdens that adults have placed on our shoulders. No student should have to fear for their life in this country or wonder if they will ever see their parents again. I greatly appreciate everyone who has spoken out for those who are unable to and the ways our community continues to rise up to protect its people. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Well done, Rowan. Thank you, Melissa. And then I'm sorry it looks like it says Gorge M, which I'm sure it does not, but the person who wrote something that looks like that. But first, Melissa.

Hi, my name is Melissa Benedict. I've lived here in the gorge for my most of my life. I was born and raised here essentially have moved away several times and spent years away. Um just a few of the things that are really standing out to me uh as somebody who knows the gorge uh as a as a 31year-old living here as long as I have. Uh the gorge has always seemed like a collection of small towns. It's rich with nature. There's plenty of hiking trails where you can get out and enjoy what we have here. Um, it seems pretty far removed from Portland, which really isn't that far away, but in times of recent unrest, like the George Floyd protests, the people living here felt like they were pretty far from what was going on in Portland, the scary things that were happening here. And we're not so far away from that anymore. In fact, it's right here. It's right here at our door. And people are being terrorized. community members who are innocent are being terrorized. Children aren't going to school, as people have said. I know for a fact that local nonprofit organizations have had lockdowns in the recent months due to fear of ICE activity in the local area. I know for a fact that there are local meal trains being put together for families who are too afraid to go out and go grocery shopping. And to me, it doesn't seem that far from people being afraid to leave their homes, from people being hidden in other people's homes for protection. And I really hope that uh the members of this council seriously consider making Hood River a sanctuary city and following the recommendations of everybody else who have spoken so far tonight to make our community members feel as safe as we possibly can. Thank you.

Thank you, Melissa. Uh the person put for the topic ICE impacting local business and then followed by Todd Durker. Am I good to go? Yes.

Hello everyone. My name is Gage. Thank you to everyone who has spoken so far. My little sentiment is less about ICE and more about the significance of the Latino, Hispanic, native, Hispanic speaking community in the gorge and their impact in the local economy and how significant they are. I have a local business that services the equipment and tools of other businesses, subcontractors, individuals in a wide variety of industries. everything from agricultural work to restaurants to a wide variety of trades. And at least a quarter, if not a third of my business is directly tied to individuals whom Spanish is their native language, whom are from who either were born here and are first generation, second generation or they themselves are immigrants. Hopefully I said that correctly. I've worked with these individuals for years. They are scared and here are some of my close friends and my business would fail without them here. And I am not the only individual whom their business is in that place. The local economy is down across the nation. But something that needs to be acknowledged is that the local Spanish-sp speakaking community is a key part of our local economy here in the gorge. And the fact that they are scared to show their faces out in public, the same way that they're not going to be working, the same way they're not going to be spending said money in our local community, it is only going to further worsen our local economic downturn that we are facing.

It is going to ICE being here harassing the people that the way they have. It is going to continue to negatively impact our local economy. Is going to impact negatively impact our agriculture and it has shaken up our community as a whole to a point where quite frankly I think that is irrefutable. That's all I have to say. Thank you. and then Celeste.

Thanks for having us here tonight. My name is Todd Durker. I live in uh whatever county. Uh, as a white cisgender male, I have the privilege of walking through life and doors open for me and people help me and ask what they can do for me and they um, and I I have that freedom to just go throughout my life without worrying too much about what is what life is like for a lot of other folks. Um, and I've chosen to step outside of that privilege and to do what I can to be of support to those who who don't have that freedom simply because of the color of their skin. We all see the impacts of ICE being in town. You notice the streets are empty certain days. You see parking lots of businesses that are empty. Uh, places that I volunteer. uh when I interact with Latino staff and I ask them, "Hey, how you guys doing?" Um they're not good, right? Um just this morning, one of the teachers at Head Start, she's just like, "I'm okay." And I have joined the team of the rapid response team driving around in the mornings and uh throughout the day trying to identify ICE vehicles so that we can alert our community and um do what we can as citizens to make their job a little harder. Film them. They don't seem to like that. Um and chase them on their merry way, right? Um, but I don't know how long we can sustain all this. Um, through my previous employment at

the next door, I'm connected to a social worker who reached out and said, "There's a family who has a doctor's appointment and they're not going to go because they're so afraid. Would you be willing to drive them?" And of course, right? So I drove up to Odell, picked up this sweet young couple, went to the White East middle school, grabbed their son, took him down, and they hadn't left their house in eight days. We had a little bit of extra time. And I said, "Do you want to go to the market?" They were like, "Oh, please. Do you have that time? We don't we haven't we don't have food." I did that for that same family again today. The husband had an appointment. And while the wife and I were sitting in the car waiting for him to come out, she lost it. And she I think she finally gave herself the time and space sitting in my back seat to just break down. She was sobbing and shaking. And for me as a white male to dip one little toe into that angst and that pain was just I mean such a heavy load. her kid. That's generational trauma, right? That kid every day comes home not knowing am I going to be see my parents. So what am I asking? I'm asking all the things that they've asked. We can't do this for three more years. We need to become a sanctuary city. And I would love for your first move to be to re to convene a working group with everyone who doesn't know how to create policies around ICE. support them with the signage and lead and show us the way of how to come together and put up bigger borders for these thugs that are in our town.

Thank you, T. Thanks for your time. Sylvest and Jerry Patton. Hello everyone. My name is Celestea Mahia. Um I already have accumulated a big lump in my throat. I get moved very easily. So, good job.

All right. Okay. We could swap you with Jerry and you could come back in a minute. Would you like to do that, Celeste?

Okay. So it's there's a certain rage that you feel when it's taken to terms of this for people to develop empathy. Since I grew up Latina [clears throat] female, I didn't choose for my life to be politicized. It just is based off of how I was born. Um my after 30 years of living in this country, my parents finally got their cit uh not citizenship cuz that's a whole another thing, their permanent residency. And it doesn't make us feel safe regardless. And Todd M. the head of uh US and Border Patrol um mandated that they should all carry their identification. If that doesn't remind you of 1940s Germany, I don't know what else will. Um, back in 2016, I had an uncle who was deported. And I will never forget hearing the cries of my cousins. They were just babies, toddlers, and those cries will never leave my mind. and my uh my dad who is very clearly Latino and drives a beat up truck is always getting pulled over. And unfortunately, of all the races of all the people of color, Hispanics are the leading um have the leading rates of being pulled over unjustly by the police. It's and it's because they know

that a lot of states aren't giving um undocumented immigrants their licenses. So, it's a it's a fast ticket to give. And we know police work on quotas. And so, I would ask to um make our counties, both Hood River, the Dallas, feel safe again. Um, I am tired of texting my mom and my dad every time that there is an instance of an ice uh person being out and about and telling them not to not to leave. That's no way a person should live. Um, and it's Trump won on the lie that thousands and hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants were causing these heinous crimes. I don't know if you know, but the actual number of um 2024 of

If you could finish up, please of of violent crimes committed by documented immigrants was 26. Yes, that's 26 lives lost, but it is not the hundred thousands of immigrants that he swore were ruining our lives. So, if I would just implore that we focus on facts, that we focus on numbers, and that we never let our communities feel um this terrified. All right. Thank you,

Jerry. And then Ubaldo. That's a hard one to follow. I am Jerry Patton. I'm a resident of Hood River. And in addition to what I've heard, I want to speak to three specific pieces of evidence that that let me know that we need to do more for our community. Um, the first is that I work at the food bank and I'm normally one of the people that takes through most of the or the Hispanic um, clients who come because I have some uh, language abilities and I can say from the last month, month and a half that I rarely see Hispanic families come through anymore. I rarely use my language skills. They're just not coming. And I know it's not because all of a sudden they have food. Um, they don't. and they're in need and we're trying to figure out a system for getting food to them when they can't come in. That system isn't in place yet, though. But it's it to me it's direct evidence that we need to do more to make our community feel safe enough so that the most vulnerable in our community still have a place to come and get the food they need. So, that's the first piece of evidence. The second is that um I've spent some time standing in front of the marcato in the last couple of weeks and had a chance to speak with the um the daughter of the owner and she has talked about how how they've lost a great deal of business. Their business is way far down. They feel safer when there are people out there standing there saying, you know, we're trying to protect, but um that doesn't make it easier for them. Um, and that means that they're a regular clientele that's not coming. Not only, you know, not only are they not getting food with food bank, but they're not

getting food from the marcado that we know that our residents need. And the the third happened last Wednesday um at the speak easyy down at the ruins um because it was the the topic was borders and we were hoping that some of our um Latino brothers and sisters would be able to speak and indeed some of them had signed up to speak and had stories to tell um but didn't feel safe enough to come. And so I think those are three really specific pieces of evidence. I taught language and um you know if somebody wrote me a letter wanting me to do something I always asked you know how do you know prove it right? And so I'm I'm trying to give you from my perspective three pieces of really specific evidence that whether making us a sanctuary city makes them feel safer we need to do more as a city to make people feel safer here. Thank you.

Thank you Cherry Ubaldo. and then April.

Hi, my name is Subaldo Hernandez. I'm a director for Communades, a Latino elite uh uh nonprofit organization in in in the gorge. And um so I just want to uh share with you guys about a story of a community that works together and stand together with other members of the community. That community is happening. Uh we've been working with our Latino community for many years and we always advocate for social justice and try to make our communities work together. Fortunately, we have a community that get ups at 4:30 in the morning, make their rides, chasing up uh ICE police cars, making sure our community is informed where where to go, where to stand, and uh and putting a a tag on these cars, documenting what happened because unfortunately, we heard with a lot of members of the community here. There's a lot of injusticees happening to our members of our community and not just only undocumented but also people with uh documented with uh uh green cards citizenships just because the color of her skin. This is one of the things like it's really hard to go outside being a brown person and have to look around before you you step outside or when you are walking constantly be looking around and that's really hard. One of the things that we see in our community and from the work we do is a lot of times we don't feel the support from the city uh that we with that we the one we deserve and also uh last week when we have ICE in our community one of my co-workers at communades called the police department to ask if they have any notifications about the ISB and the area their answer was no they didn't know anything about it when all town knew about it organization that work in that they were aware and then when she called the other uh the other group and called back to

the to the police department there was a no answer that was and they never answer again during that day. So and this is one of the actions that feel us uh left behind or or that they don't care about our community. Um when we talk about the undocumented community, we always look at the at the weak link, right? And probably we are not the weak link that everybody thinks because we are port a lot to this community, a lot to the economy, not just a local economy, but nationally. Uh in 2023, undocumented immigrants households paid 89.8 8 billions in federal, state, and local taxes. Undocumented immigrants households had 299 billions in spending power in 2023. In all cases, undocumented immigrants, they never receive any benefits from their contributions. And this is one of the things that we need our community to help us to spread all these facts and that way we can see our community. We are not the weak link but we are strong when we stand together. Thank you very much

April. And then Jen, do we have anyone online who wishes to speak? Thank you. Um, I'm here tonight because I'm I'm a part of um community members that are doing something about ICE activity. Um, and I came here tonight to see for sanctuary city and I think I got my answer that we are not. And I'm I'm here to voice my opinion that something's got to happen. Um, I'm with Todd that it's this isn't sustainable. Excuse me. Sorry. I've had uh community members cry in my arms. I'm sorry. I had it together. I've had people in the Latino community say we're we're divided. There's a silence. And I'm here to say we got to do something. Like I'm with Tina. with all these folks here. Like I've had push backs on the no ice signs and I don't get it. It's like it ain't that hard. Like we got to show our support. We need our community members to feel safe to go shopping and the silence is deafening. And when we're out there with our sign guar, I get people coming up to me all the time bringing me food. holding, hugging me, saying, "Thank you for being here." But it's it's it's a little thing, but I we need more. We need I need I need to see signs everywhere. I need to know that a Latino community is taken care of. Like, this is I don't know what we got to do, y'all. I don't know what it means to be a

sanctuary city. I'm learning about all of this. But if it means that there's more education on how to keep people safe, that that the schools know what to do, that there's more people out there giving support, like I I I'm learning. I don't I don't necessarily know what this means, but I want to be a part of some action. I'm I'm crying because I'm angry. I cry when I'm angry and I'm angry that people don't feel safe and I'm so I'm here to say what do we got to do like I'm I'm I'm here to give it whatever I got to give and we have a lot of wonderful community members that I have teamed up with. I have chased ICE down 84 and they've committed all sorts of traffic violations. I want to know that our police officers got our backs. Um, I want I want people to know that they can go grocery shopping. Like, how ridiculous is that, right? So, um, I got I put my email down. I don't know what that means. Is that mean I would love to join a group? I'd love to be a part of some action. So, um, please um, let me know. And and I want I I just want to say one more thing. I'm sorry. Um,

okay. Go ahead. I had um a pastor from the Latino community say the the silence is deafening and the divide is deafening and what so what do we got to do to bridge right so thank you April I want to clarify with Abigail and council that brings us to the end of public testimony and we agreed to put this item at the beginning of our agenda so I just want to Okay. Before the presentation from the bridge authority, we're going to talk about this now, right? Is that it?

Excellent. So, it occurs to me that us a next step for us could be we could entertain some motions and decide some stuff or maybe folks want to speak or respond or Abigail, you just made a sign. Tell me. Thank you, mayor. uh before you were to if you were I don't know if you meant you wanted to make some actions based on what you heard or I would recommend uh that you allow me to present to you some options and and then make motions and decide. Shall we do that? Great. Thank you. Go ahead. I don't know if anyone wants to make comments. I'm finding my way here.

Super. Thank you all um for the group. Thank you all for being here today. I'm uh Abigail Elder. I'm the city manager for the city. So these are my seven bosses here in front of you. Uh it's going to take me just a minute to bring up my PowerPoint. Uh so my goal here and uh city attorney is on the line and uh he and I talked uh last Friday. Um, and I hope that he will speak up if I say out of terms because a lot of what I'm going to say today has a little bit of legal implications to it. Um, as well as this is all very much developing. Uh, I've talked to probably a dozen cities in the state about what they're doing and I'm going to bring you kind of a little bit of background about what we what you as a council and as we as a city have done, a little bit about the state um, actions and what it means to be a sanctuary state. And then I'm just going to overview things that I've identified from other cities and then look to you to let me know um what you would like the city attorney and I to work on um for your next meeting or if there are things we can do um in the short term. So give me one second to share here. And just for the audience uh on screen that is Dan Karens. He's the city attorney. Come on. Yes. Okay. Super. And my slides are um uh they're bilingual and I apologize in advance if they are um if the Spanish is wrong. That's um my fault. So, this city has taken a number of actions. Um back in

2017 is when the city declared to be an inclusive city. Uh then in 2020 the city um passed a resolution for racial and social equity in the city of Hood River. Uh this year in 2025 um you affirmed your 2017 resolution as an inclusive and welcoming city. And then on June 9th, in fact, I see some of the same folks here uh that were here when you uh proclaimed Somos immigrantes or we are uh immigrants. [snorts] Um, I know there are probably other actions and certainly you as a council have discussed this topic many times, but those are some of the official actions that are in the record. So, Oregon has been a sanctuary state since 1987, the first one in the country. Uh, that uh law was updated and strengthened in 2021. We call that the Oregon sanctuary promise. It prohibits state and local police and all local government from enforcing federal immigration laws. H some of the things that that means is that the city cannot participate in federal immigration uh enforcement without a judicial warrant. We cannot collect information on immigration status of community members. We cannot deny um folks um uh city services or benefits based on immigration status. We cannot use staff time like I cannot use my staff time to work with ICE. Um, we cannot use city facilities, parking lots, other things for immigration enforcement. However, that does not mean that an ICE officer can't park in our parking lot. Anybody else can park in the parking lot. They just cannot use our parking lots for immigration uh enforcement. So, want to be aware when we talk about public spaces, officer uh ICE agents are available can come into our public spaces the way any other member of the public cannot can, but

they cannot be in the private spaces. And also the city cannot investigate, apprehend, detain or hold individuals. [clears throat] A little bit about police. Um, just ICE does not tell police when they are in the area. They don't tell us why they are here. They do not tell us if they have detained someone or where that person may or may not be held. Um, like I said, the city ICE can't use the city parking lots. Um, but they can use city spaces the same as anyone else can. They can eat their lunch at a picnic table. they can um follow someone into a park, but um they uh can't use our services or our resources for um enforcement activities. Um the also I think it's important to note the city does not have flop cameras. We don't use automated um license plate readers. We've never had those technologies. It's my understanding that a number of cities that have that have turned those off or paused those. Closest to us is Scamdia County, which has paused their flock camera policy.

[snorts]

A little bit about city staff. I have written a staff policy that's currently under review by the city attorney and the um HR manager. I plan to implement that policy um now, but we'll uh bring that to you in your January meeting for um official adoption into the employee manual. So, a couple things. Like I said, ICE may enter public areas, may not enter um private areas. Staff will not provide information without a judicial warrant. Um, and we have a process for how staff would evaluate that, who would be allowed to um, review that information and make the determination of whether it's a judicial warrant or whether it's an administrative warrant. Um, and then processes for in our facility facilities and also for um, staff who are in the field. Um, we however want to note that we cannot harbor or conceal people who are fleeing ice. It's not like I can ask somebody to come into my office and close the door. Um, we'll have to be careful about that. But we will document the interaction and the city attorney will review any of those interactions that happen. A little bit we've done around communication. Here's a sneak peek of our newsletter which is uh comes out um next month or sorry next week. Um and we have uh information about just being what it means to be an inclusive city, what it means to be a sanctuary state. Um we have a video. This is Irving uh our m municipal court clerk. Uh just noting and I think it's good for everyone to know there is no city service that requires you to come to the city in person. You can attend our um municipal court via Zoom. You can attend all of our meetings via Zoom. You can pay your bills um over the phone or using bill express pay. Um you can you know we can mail a permit to you. If folks um are anxious about entering a government space, we can accommodate that. Um we also have an immigration resources web page and have been putting um items on social media um when we have

the opportunity. So moving to what some other cities have been doing just kind of environmental scan of what's happening. I chose these three cities because they're a little closer in size to us. I think um the big cities always get all the media attention, right? Washington County, city of Hillsboro, city of Portland. Um these cities are still twice our size but they are a little more in scale with us. Um so you can see uh city of Cor uh Cornelius did an emergency declaration. Um city of Forest Grove has done a sanctuary city ordinance. Um and uh city of Woodburn has an emergency declaration. You can see all of those have committed funds. Cornelius doesn't have a dollar amount to coordinating with community partners. And I'll go through all of these along with some other pieces. Yes. I'm going to check in. Any um now I'm going to go through every element that I've identified that you could choose uh to take action. Any questions or thoughts before I keep moving? I know I'm bringing you a lot of information and it's kind of dry.

I'm going to use my executive privilege to shout out the elected officials I see in the room. Thank you, DA Matt, for being here. Thank you, Commissioner Ley, for being here. Appreciate you.

Thank you, Mayor. Great. Uh so first thing uh that have identified and a couple of you asked me about was an emergency declaration and what that involves. Um that is by declar uh by resolution although city manager can also declare an emergency and then you can ratify that at a future meeting. The reason for doing an emergency declaration would be it allows you to um work around the normal procurement and contracting laws. So, if you want to um authorize funds to uh for a community based organization for um some emergency services, and I'll go into that in further detail, um it also sends a message to the county and the state that we think that we're under emergency and we think that we need action. Normally, we do this like when there's a flood or you know, a major weather event and we're we declare an emergency to request help from the state or from the the federal government. don't know that that actually would happen in this time but it does send a statement to those bigger um government authorities um and it usually has a time limit um but can be renewed. So if you were on console during COVID or you were uh working you know that you had emergency declarations then you had to routinely um you probably renewed them every 30 days. Next, sanctuary state resolution. That's an administrative action um similar to your inclusive city rec um resolution um and also your um racial equity um resolution. A resolution is an administrative action. You can take it immediately. Um you don't have to have public notice or a public hearing for a resolution. It's generally a statement or opinion and it doesn't have an enforcement power. there's no laws or um fines or or um violations for that, but it can be um you do resolutions. You probably have a couple resolutions on today's agenda. That's a really routine for thing for you. Um some cities, as I

mentioned, Forest Grove, um Hillsboro, and City of Portland have done a sanctuary city ordinance. That is a legislative action that requires public notice and possibly a public hearing. It's generally just considered more binding. It's a bit more permanent than a resolution. Um so for example, when you set your zoning laws or your code enforcement, your tax rules, those things are in your code and they are ordinances. Um you recently overhauled all of your ordinances around um how we rule taxi cabs um and uh transportation network companies. So if you remember kind of the effort that went into that um and then ordinances are they have an enforcement. I don't know how that would you would enforce against ICE, but to know like when you have things in ordinances, they um they can have penalty fines and other um pen uh consequences. H a little bit about just outreach and engagement. So, those were kind of your more legal um policy council pieces. Now, I'm going to move more into like community um connection. Uh outreach and engagement. some of the things that we've seen and you talked about at your last meeting was a request for a town hall um when we can certainly do that. I had an excellent conversation with folks from the next door about what a town hall could look like, how make sure it would be productive, trauma-informed and helpful. Um and they also recommended if we were to do that um but that we also supplement that with listening sessions. The difference would be a town hall would be very public. Some folks might not feel um safe being at a a town hall. Um but a listening session really would be smaller. Um maybe 15 people, maybe invitation only. You could really focus them on employers or children or service workers or you know if you wanted to do something like that. Um, I would suggest if you wanted to do either of these, it would be great to include or invite the county commissioners and the um, schoolboard members because they also

are serving the same community members that we are. And I I'm going to guess that they would probably be open to that. I've talked to the county administrator and the superintendent about that possibility. Abigail. Yes. These are all options that include virtual attendance options, right?

100%. Everything we do has virtual options. It actually that is a great question though. Uh the listening uh sessions would likely be not televised like one the city councelor and one county commissioner you know it would be small so it would not be a quorum. It would not have to be be noticed. Um just to create a better sense of safety for everybody involved. Um a town hall I assume you know would uh apply public records or public meetings laws have to be noticed have to be held inside city limits. Um, and we'd have to live stream that, but we, you and I could work throughout the details on that, but just to know those are two buried two different ways of listening to the community that would probably have two different um, two different feel of how they would work.

Um, other things you could do for outreach engagement are to host or to sponsor rapid response trainings. You heard a bit about that today. Um, meetings with community- based organizations. uh police chief Neil Holstei and I have been meeting with uh community organizations and actually are scheduled to present to that group um uh next week I think on the 16th. Um but we have not met with if there are other groups that we should be meeting with. We have not yet um engaged with folks. And then uh the city of Hillsboro is the only one I know that has created a new community advisory committee um to weigh in and and advise their council on on ICE and on Yeah. just in response. All right, moving on. I mentioned that the um cities that have declared a state of emergency have done so in part to allow for reallocation of city resources. Um and so kind of two categories for this. The first is communitywide support. Um community preparedness would be like um co-sponsoring, hosting um or providing support for um for know your rights trainings or um rapid response trainings um and then helping families or do training around um helping families make their preparation plans for if someone in their family was um detained by ICE, what would what does their family plan look like? So those kind of trainings would fall under community preparedness and then communication support would be um coordinating with others the community safety messaging to make sure that uh as best we can have accurate and consistent information. As I've said, ICE doesn't share information with us. We find out from social media just like everybody else does of whether ICE was in town. We are unable to verify that information. um but we can certainly try our best to coordinate with um others who are working on um community organizations that are working on this.

So that's at the big community level coming down to family support um incident response. So these are uh categories that I found from um and I have the scope of work for each one of them for uh Washington County. Um incident response is are activities that support the person and the family during and after detention or arrest. Um outreach workers to connect with impacted family members and referrals for legal and wraparound services. Post incident support are the things that families would need after um after ICE has impacted them such as food assistant, rental assistance, um referrals for legal assistant, mental health support, other um support like this. uh legal support, of course, immigration um services for people at risk of detention or deportation or to help people try to finish up their citizenship applications or other pieces to secure. Um and then vehicle support. I didn't have a good name for that, but um city of Beaverton has set this up to support residents whose vehicles are impounded or damaged due to a ICE enforcement response. So, uh, if a car is left in the street and it is now to towed to an impound lot, that that city not have to financially cover that. All of these things would be things that we as a city are not equipped to do. We don't have staff or expertise in this, but it would be if council chose to do this, it would be providing funds to community- based organizations that can provide those services. So, you would be contracting with them. And then my last piece is just a little bit of um legal considerations. As I've mentioned, the city has limited authority over actions that are taken by federal agents. Um, so, uh, like the fact that, um, if ICE officers are wearing masks or they're not identifying themselves, if they are, um, driving

without license plates, all of those pieces are things that the, um, where we could try to apply a local or state law, but the federal supremacy clause would probably, um, cause ICE agents to not actually comply with um, with those rules. Um, and I guess I don't have it written down here, but I have a I think there's a couple things that I'm anticipating that the state legislature will try to work on. Um, and that would be masking requirements, release of DMV data, family notification rules, um, other pieces like that that um, no city in Oregon has been able to work on or pass um, but is more likely to be successful at a state level. So that might be a piece that you um if those are important to you, you might consider how we can communicate back to Governor Cotch and our elected officials. Um other pieces when I think about um the city's responsibility and what we can do, we also have a duty to avoid creating legal liability for our employees. So any action policy action you would want to take that directs our staff, I would definitely want the city attorney to review all of that, ensure that we're not creating a um situation for our staff. And then I know there's a lot of considerations regarding recording Um, and I just want to be aware that, uh, if we were, um, you know, if I went to, if I in my official capacity as city manager were to film someone and ICE were to say I was impeding, um, that is a concern for us as a city. Um, but then also, if I have recorded it, um, and I don't turn it over, you know, uh, to the DA or someone else, then, um, I could violate Oregon's, uh, sanctuary law. So there are a little bit of a catch22 for um city staff in their official capacity if they were to record. So I don't this is definitely a piece where I'm still learning and I don't know a lot but I wanted to highlight those just a couple of those issues for you. So with that that is the very long list of things I just talked about. Um, and I'd like to

I'm going to leave that up and uh ask for you, mayor, if you can help with a uh just a temperature check on what things you would like the city attorney and I to focus on and bring back to your next meeting. Um, and then any other comments you might have for me. Thank you. Thanks for putting this together, Abigail. Nice work. Uh, so many things I could imagine saying. I'm sure that some of us have something we'd like to say. I will open that up first if anyone would like to speak at this time. Glattus.

Thank you. I just want to thank everybody for being here today. I want to thank everybody that's been a part of the rapid response. Um, as many of you have mentioned, this has a public health and safety impact in our community. So, I thank everyone for being here. Recent analysis of ICE data has reported by as reported by the New York Times found that 30% of people arrested in recent ICE operations had no prior criminal convictions and even smaller had violent convictions. This means a majority of people being picked up are our neighbors with no criminal record despite public claims that enforcement is focused on violent criminals. HR1 includes over $30 billion in direct funding in for ICE through 2029. This is for hiring, for facilities, for transportation, and for enforcement operations. Advocacy analysis estimates that more than $75 billion in total immigration enforcement and surveillance funding, an additional 45 billion for detention and 32 billion for enforcement. The federal government is massively scaling up deportation infrastructure and handing billions to ICE while local governments are the ones dealing with human, economic, and public safety fallout. More than 800 individuals have been kidnapped in our state, 12 here locally. And when I mean kidnapped, I truly mean kidnap. National commentary is already warning of the harm from aggressive enforcement and the escalation without local protections. Cities like ours will be forced with those impacts most acutely. We know that there is a lot of illegal activity that is taking place and I agree with all of you that we have to do

something about it and that we should be a sanctuary city and that we should have funding available and that we do not know all the needs and wants that our families and our community members need so that we need to continue connecting with those folks to find out what it is that they need from us and want. So, I appreciate Abigail's um time and effort into doing a lot of research around what has already what is already taking place at a local level. The city has a responsibility to uphold the rule of law and this includes ensuring constitutional protections, due process, judicial warrants, protections from unlawful detention as respected. uh growing concerns in the gorge that immigration enforcement are not constantly are not constitutionally following those legal processes and that the city needs to clear uh create a toolkit to respond within that authority. [snorts] Federal authority does not suspend constitutional protections. Our role is not to enforce immigration law, but to ensure that the city resources, policies, and silence are not complicit in practices that undermine due process with civil rights.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you everybody for being here tonight and for for all the comments. Um, for everybody that's out there really fighting this on the front lines. Um, [clears throat] couple things I want to discuss. One, I want to speak directly to some of the things you put up, but also I want to speak uh about a call that councelor Rivera and I had with uh the city of Hillsboro, Mayor Beach Pace, as well as another counselor um Kepler and Sinclair, some some city councilors from Eugene were there. Uh also, uh Diana Perez from uh Vancouver. Uh so, thank you for councelor Rivera for organizing that with her. Um, so one of the things that we really have to do when we're organizing uh these types of endeavors is is to look to other cities that have a lot more money, a lot more funding, a lot more staff, uh, full-time city councilors, etc. to see what they're doing. So, because they're more than offer more than happy to offer their assistance to smaller communities like us. And um, spoke a lot with them about what came out of their special work session on on the 24th of November. on uh November 18th, Hillsboro City Council declared a state of emergency. Um I think we should do that today and work to ratify it. Um they took 5 hours of public comment on ICE. Um there's obviously a lot more people that live in that community, but um you know, I think we should be able to keep taking as much public public comment as as we possibly can and working with community groups. Um when it comes to things like a town hall or a listening session, you know, I think those are great ideas. I think the listening sessions are uh especially important to make people feel safe, but also that that they're you know we we are listening at these these meetings, right? So this is where we're getting information from the public. Uh we discussed a lot about signage on on public property, right? So uh Abigail said earlier, you know, public versus private like like the council chambers are public right now and anybody could come in here but could not go back into the offices for example. I've already seen signs going up in the city about

that. Um they've had a lot of staff training, warnings about ICE interactions. Um you know, recording is considered a threat to ICE. It's a it's a joke and they're cowards, but um having some real good training for our staff to ensure that they're safe. um they had kind of gone back and forth in Hillsboro about whether or not they should be directing people to record or to not record and sort of arrived at that catch22 that you mentioned earlier which is we don't want to I I would be in favor of not mandating but not disallowing. Um, I I think, you know, I I heard in the news the other day, for example, you know, JP Morgan Chase did not uh give any funds to build this ridiculous ballroom, right? And and the reason that they said that they weren't going to do that is because people are really starting to understand that recording what's happening right now is going to be useful at a later time. So, you know, we talked a lot about how uh you know, the attorney general Dan Rayfield along with uh Molt Noma Washington Clackamus DAS sent a letter to DHS and uh the US attorney general about how these counties are are instituting active monitoring of ICE activities. I think that we should be assisting in that in any way we can. So, we talked a lot about what police do in in cities uh as well. Um, I think we should have a social media presence. Um, speaking uh, you know, showing solidarity with uh, the city council and and the police. Um, I know our police are not complicit. Um, it's difficult for a police officer to go out to these because if they're there, they're they're complicit. If they're not there, they're ignoring it, right? So, I know that we have the right policies under Oregon sanctuary law. Um, I think we should also be a sanctuary city. Um if if we should do a resolution first and then an ordinance, I may be in favor of that. Um I think ordinance feels better. Um it's nice uh that we've we've been able to have the protections offered to us from the state level, but I think in the show of solidarity, we need to

become a sanctuary city at this time. Um, and I I think um also something that Abigail mentioned last time about police on our city in our city council meeting, you know, they they offer a bilingual pamphlet, for example, in in Hillsboro about how to identify our police officers, what kind of cars do they drive, what types of um uniforms do they wear so that we can distinguish them between them and uh uh someone that's a masked um incernible individual in the uh the area. um uh when it came to things like um you mentioned uh working with uh local organizations to do things like towing, right? So, Hillsboro, for example, works uh with with someone that's offering um it's a Latino owned business that's towing for free. Their police officers are instructed to respond. Um usually by by the time that their police officers respond, they're gone. These are very quick sort of rapid they get in get out sort of scenarios. Um but to be able to for you know uh for the benefit of our district attorney be able to document that this has happened uh be able to work to get people's uh belongings or their cars inform their family about what's happened. I think we should be supporting that uh from a front line from our police but also working with community groups that have uh funding to maybe uh work with that. Hillsboro also released like $200,000 in grant funding to help affect Latino businesses. And I understand we're not Hillsboro. probably, in fact, I know we don't have $200,000 to do that, but work to figure out whatever it is uh you know, whether it be staff time or funding um uh to to be able to support those endeavors that are already going on in the community. Um and uh one thing that also um piqued my attention that you were talking about about working with say the school board and the and the county. Something that they had done in Hillsboro that I thought was a good idea was their their PTO was assisting affected children getting to schools uh by sort of lining

um you know routes where people would usually take um and because ICE hates when there's people around, right? So, you know, working with community organizations to support those types of endeavors that are largely volunteer- based, but but support in any way that we can to to get people out um to do that. Um and uh yeah, um just want to thank everybody on staff for working towards this. Abigail, I know you've been working a lot of hours on this. I want to thank Councelor Rivera. We've had a lot of hours of conversation about this and you know thank uh you know Mayor Beach Pace, the city of Hillsboro, Eugene, City Council, Diana Perez from Vancouver. Um and again everybody here for let's all let's all work on this together.

I just have a a more brief question for our city attorney. um sanctuary city ordinance. Um if we were to pass one, what are the legal teeth we could place in it? Are there any is there any effectual things that could be put in that that we could actually use or not?

I don't know what you mean by legal teeth. Um you know, these are federal federal agents uh that you're dealing with here. if if you're looking to exert local uh control over federal agents, I don't think it's going to happen. There's preeemption plus also uh ICE agents appear to be quite lawless. So, uh legal teeth um in in these sort of instances, I want to avoid direct confrontations between local police and federal agents. Uh and um you know you could city of Portland has struggled with prosecuting ICE agents for egregious traffic violations. I haven't heard that they Portland has done been able to do anything. They've threatened. Um so legal teeth we're we're in a different situation than uh we lawyers have ever been trained to deal with before. If if I could speak to that, I think um having looked at uh Hillsboro and Forest Grove being two cities I know have in uh incorporated an ordinance. I don't know that they have any particular penalties. City of Portland is still working on their sanctuary city ordinance. I don't think they're finished um but they are um doing some work around zoning um particularly because there's a ICE detention facility inside city and so there might be some um fines or some kind of action they could take against the facility under their zoning code. you answer my question in a different way. Thanks.

Yeah. Although that's not necessarily about penalties, but it is what can you actually right enforce against? Yep. Correct. On the on the zoning side, that's the only avenue I've heard that may bear fruit and it's applying pressure to the land owner, the landlord of the ice facility. The uh result of a successful enforcement there is that detainees will be transported to Tacoma. I don't know if that's an outcome Portland wanted. Our DA would like to speak. I welcome this. Thank you, Matt. You could introduce yourself for the group. Sure. And make sure to stand close to the microphone. Absolutely. Thank you.

Uh I for those who don't know me, I'm District Attorney Matt Ellis. I technically am a state employee and work with the county, but we work very closely with the city as we have we have get a lot of cases from uh the city police here. Um the as as uh city attorney point out that prosecuting an ICE agent is very difficult. Uh it's it does there's immunity under the supremacy clause that basically says that the only way uh that immunity applies. I can't prosecute somebody uh who's an ICE agent when the act in question was authorized by federal law and I probably have to read this one twice. The person subjectively believed the action was justified and that the belief was objectively reasonable under the existing circumstances. I know that's a mouthful so I'll read it again. Dep immunity applies for an ICE agent when the act in question was authorized by federal law and the person subjectively believed the action was justified and that belief was objectively reasonable under the existing circumstances. So that makes it

go ahead. I have a question. So I'm glad that you're here. Thank you for for being here. In Wasco County, there is video evidence of an ICE vehicle hitting a public vehicle of a of a community member. Right. Okay. So, let's say that happened here in Hood River. What is the process? What do you need in order to prosecute that even if they take it away from you due to supremacy clause? Let's say that happened here. help us understand what is the process that this individual would go through. What is the type of evidence that you feel that you need if video is not sufficient?

So, you forgot to add to that story that the ICE agent also called into dispatch, reported that there was a hit and run with them being the victims.

Correct. Um, so what I would need, so essentially any other case that comes to my office, I will usually get a report from one of our uh, law enforcement agencies, whether it be the city police, whether it be OSP or the sheriff's or intertribe and I based on that, I would review it and believe and I have to make the determination, but it's more likely than not that a crime has been committed to to and to to charge. So from on that aspect, I would probably need to know the person's name. So I have a defendant to put on the state of Oregon versus this defendant. Um along with a witness to that to that event. So if we had a witness, and unfortunately um anonymous witnesses aren't going to be good enough because I have to have somebody that's going to be able to testify for me in court under oath uh what they saw as evidence of of that crime. And uh then I I mean we don't we need to get that person whoever that person is we have to have that person identified as uh so we can get them into court and have them arraigned on that uh that particular crime. And to be very clear if there is a crime that's happening in our community, I I will charge it. uh that under the supremacy clause it might I might they they'll probably get a defense attorney that will file a motion to say they have immunity or they can have this removed to federal court [snorts] which means it would take take my jurisdiction away but uh I I I will charge something if we do have a crime that does happen here but as we find out in Portland like it it is very difficult to get these things done because we are not getting identifications on people there's uh there's issues with um with with finding enough evidence to actually have these cases charged. So, it it it can be difficult. But as far as teeth go, one of the other things that we were finding out that is happening, we do have citizens of this community, uh we had an instant Cascade locks last about week or two weeks ago where there was somebody that was driving around their own personal blacked out SUV without

plates on it to scare people. So, we can have we can have our local law enforcement uh responding to those. So we are we can't charging people that are in our community that they're that are specifically doing these acts just to terrorize people, make them think that they're ICE.

I want to put a pause on that and I want to follow up. I'm sorry. I'll let you after this. This next question is for Dan, for Abigail or for our chief who I I saw around here somewhere. So let's say in that incident, a Hood River police officer witnessed that taking place and is has recorded that in through their body cam. One of the bullet points, Abigail, that you brought up was around staff and recording. How does that I mean, Puddter police are supposed to be recording, right? So, if that was submitted and that I'm I'm assuming is something that you would subpoena into evidence, is that sufficient? Can a police officer who is witnessing an illegal activity uh happening, can they ask those officers or unmasked individuals to identify themselves?

I believe if they're doing their their duty through the course of investigation, that's absolutely appropriate. So what I'm hearing you say is that or I think I'm hearing you say is if we have police officers present who are recording such illegal activities that that would be something that would be really beneficial to you when you are prosecuting these individuals.

The more evidence I have the better. So, does our current policy, Abigail or Dan, is that something that would cause any sort of issues based off of that one bullet point that you provided around staff recording? Because there are people that are witnessing illegal activity taking place. I know I personally told folks, call the police if you're witnessing that. Are police responding to these incidences and following a process? What is that process?

If you call 911, police will they will respond um at this point probably verif attempt to verify and I'm looking at Dan and and Chief is attending via Zoom as well. So if I'm in um at this point verifying that it is indeed an ICE agent if they are willing to give them identification and then leaving the scene probably not staying because we're not cooperating with ICE. We don't want to be um you know party to the enforcement. Um the question of if they were turn on their body cam and provide footage to the DA. I don't uh have a good sense maybe city attorney does if there's a Lexiple policy that would provide help. What I'm trying to understand if if someone is reporting a kidnapping, how is that any different to what we're witnessing taking place right now? So, do we necessarily need to have this specific language in any sort of ordinance or any sort of additional updating of our policies and procedures to ensure that it is very intentional alignment and that we're not treating it any different than if anyone reported any sort of a kidnapping taking place? It was uh my one thought is there's RS I have the number somewhere uh just about excessive force like if if an officer saw uh you know a state um trooper or another police officer or someone you know using excessive force they have a responsibility to report and there's a process for that. Federal agents are not I don't think covered by that OS, but that doesn't speak to the video question, but it does um a little bit about what does state law say about a police officer witnessing another officer?

Dan, do you want to weigh in? Um this might be a piece that we need to research and bring back to you because it's changing so far.

I mean, I assume that the federal agents are subject to their own uh uh use of force policies. Uh again um you know I am not confident that these ICE agents even know how to read but um whether they'll comply with the law. I mean you have seen uh the reports and videos from around the country same as I have. I have not seen or I'm not aware of any instance where um uh ICE agents have attempted to detain local police officers for obstructing ICE activities or uh having their body cams on. I would not recommend the city change its body cam policies um but rather the police officers use them according to our adopted policies uh because there are a lot of good reasons for having that kind of uh record.

So I want to give time here. Ben has been waiting but Glattus this is so important. What should we do? I think it's just important for us to recognize that we are in unusual circumstances.

Amen. We have not been here before and in general this community has come together during fires, during COVID and together we have gotten through this. We are going to have to lean into some really uncomfortable spaces and conversations policy update. What we decide today is not going to be fully flushed out and we're going to have to revisit this information constantly because everything is constantly changing. But if our community members are witnessing illegal activity, I believe that we should treat this as such as a kidnapping as legal activity and ensuring that we are getting our district attorney all the information that he needs to prosecute. Now whether that takes 5 years, 10 years to have a docket like we need to be ensuring that there is a paper trail that is being created because we need to hold people accountable. Right now, there's no rule of law and we know that these are different times that we're in. These are different times and we're just going to have to continue updating information um on a constant basis.

And I would agree with that. We have if I if I get a report on a kidnapping, if we don't have a suspect, if we do have a suspect, I have something that's at least documented that I I could potentially charge on a later date. Um and if we do get a suspect down the road, we have statute of limitations on a felony is three years. um administration has changed. So if something happens in a couple years and maybe that that that would that would there would be a different person defending this this this ICE agent and may not be too keen to look into like uh the immunity and and then Anna

yeah um I find it ironic that we're talking about you know ICE agents and like the um you know enforcement element of it where how do we even know that we're interfering in a federal investigation. When these people do not mark their vehicles and do not have uh readily visible identification or can see their faces, they can be anybody to the point that you mentioned that there was somebody who went around uh being like, I'm going to pretend to be an ICE agent. Well, that's really easy to do if you don't have any markings on your car. All you have to do is have like a I don't know, Dodge Durango or a Charger and just have no plates on it. So, seems to me that if uh you know uh ICE just readily identified themselves, then um you wouldn't have to worry about uh police accidentally interfering in a federal investigation because we would know who they are. Anna,

um I this is this is a difficult I I agree with what you're saying, Councelor Rivera, that this is unprecedented times and that we're dealing with people that are not following the rule of law, but as attorneys and what I I want the community to understand is um because of the federal immunity piece and also because of our own state law that says we can't um you know, we are a sanctuary state and we can't interfere That's what creates this catch 22 of if our police respond to a kidnapping incident, they turn on their body cam and it looks like they are in somehow um either you know um impeding the efforts of a federal agency whether or not those I don't agree with what the federal agency is doing but with what those efforts are or it looks like they're helping them from somebody else's perspective. like I I just the the part that makes me really really nervous is um you know we we first and foremost want to protect all of our community and I know that that's important but what we don't want to do is put our our community at further jeopardy because we are um you know encouraging people to go out and and videotape or be vigilantes or or disseminating misinformation. Um, I I just think we need to be really really cautious here about that. And I don't think we can create an ordinance that's going to be contradictory to federal law or state law. And so I just think we need to be cautious here. And I'm really leaning on Dan's insight here um too because I think it's it this is just a really really tough position. I am absolutely in favor of the listening sessions and town halls. And I want to repeat what I said at the end of our last meeting of, you know, if we want to hold people accountable for this, if we want to hold

the federal level accountable to this, we need to be talking to our like and as a community we can do this and individually we can do this. Talk to our federal elected officials. And that was something else we were talking about last time too of let's get links to being able to communicate with them so people know how to reach out to them and say this is not okay. you are our elected officials at the federal level. You're the ones that are allowing this to happen or encouraging this to happen. You know, we will not vote for you. You will lose your jobs if you allow this to continue. Um but I I think we need to tread really carefully here with, you know, what we're trying to say we can or may try to uh prosecute.

Just I think I'm I'm definitely hearing that there's lots of questions and interest in what uh looks like body cams. Um, no. I do not I'm not aware of a city that has been able to adopt a policy yet, but between now and your next council meeting, perhaps there will be information. So, I'd like permission for the mayor for the city attorney and I to keep researching this, can reach back out to um other cities, uh, other police chiefs, you know, maybe the police chief association and the city attorneys association that we will keep researching this and and try to bring you at least maybe a status report if we are able to find any new information.

Two quick points of that, Glattus, and then Doug. I've been in elected office for 20 years. We were not designed to like fight against the federal government. Like they have tanks and hundreds of billions of dollars. It's unbelievable and absurd. And I'm so reluctant to bring a popsicle stick to a gunfight. Like they have the US Marine Corps and now that is the funding for ICE is greater than that. And secondly, we elected this guy. Not me, not the city, not Oregon, but until we're willing to put up a wall between us and Mississippi, he is elected president. So,

I am at no point stating that we should have our local police physically be involved with any sort of kidnapping that individuals may report. What I'm trying to understand is if we have that happen if a police officer asks, "Can you identify yourself? I'm a Hood City police officer." Is that enough to be considered

intervening or trying to prevent? Because I'm not stating that I understand I'm not encouraging any community member to put themselves at risk at all. Right? I'm not stating that our police should do the same. What I'm trying to understand is why would we treat this any different than a kidnapping? We would follow the same process. Someone would show up, try and capture information. What did you see? Identifiers. I'm trying to just better understand that piece.

And again, not I'm not I'm neither a police officer nor an attorney, but I think uh you know, police can often use the soft power of asking someone nicely, can you show me your ID? uh if an ICE agent does not you know comply I don't know where we go with that but absolutely we can always ask and yeah in our discussion with you know the mayor of Hillsboro and what they're doing their police officers are asking for identification

I can now whether or not ICE feels like they have to provide it I feel like the insanity of all of this is that you can do whatever you want out there and you got to get out of jail free card cuz Donald Dre Trump says so, right? So, I don't know what we do with that, you know, but we at least can respond. We can take, you know, you know, record of what's happened, not intervene, help the people that have been affected, get their car back, ask where are you taking them, report it to the DA, see if the DA can find out where they've been, that sort of stuff. Thank you. I I will check with Hillsboro to see if they've adopted a specific policy or if that's just a, you know, the chief's direction. um and get back to you.

Just going back to what first year criminal in law school they or criminal procedure is that when a law enforcement of officer deputy trooper believe believes a crime has been committed, it's a pretty low standard. It's reasonable suspicion to stop and detain somebody, not arrest somebody, but detain somebody so they can do a brief investigation. I think every one of us has been subjected to that at some point in our lives where you get stopped for a traffic violation because the person had reasonable suspicion that you committed you were speeding. So the officer detains you for a reasonable time to investigate that. Check your check your ID, run your drive run your driving record, see if your your license is valid, have license and insurance and your car is registered to you or you're borrowing it from a friend like they have that they have that they have that authority and it's very low standard. And then if somebody refuses to give an identification and they don't they say I'm an ICE agent as council counciloman Rivera said that we that that there's there's no way to know if this person's actually kidnapping somebody and what policies that we want to put in place for our law enforcement for their protection is it's a very difficult decision at that point because on one hand we do want to stop a kidnapping but we also want to not put other people in danger. um including the community or our officers if this person decides to run and we still don't know if they're an ICE agent or if they're just some some yahoo who want who's thinks that they're that they don't have to follow the law now because of what's going on in the country. Anna. Oh, excuse me. Grant and then Anna. My that was my mistake. Grant and then Anna.

I think that's the point that Council River was getting is we don't know at all. Right. So, how do we find out? How do we identify? So, without responding, let's say none of this is going on at all. None of anything [snorts] is going on right now. It's just another day uh and none of this is actually happening. and the police get a call that there is without context of what's going on today, there is a group of people running around town uh snatching people up outside of restaurants or in the movie theater or whatever. Um police I assume would respond to that and find out who these people are, detain them, right?

Yes. So, how would that situation differ from this is is I believe the question that councelor Rivera is asking from from a prosecution perspective and I'm and I'm not the one going out there. Yeah, I'm I'm the one who gets to sit in my office and then read the reports afterwards. Uh but I I I agree. I think that that that there should be reason if if there's enough evidence to investigate a crime and detain somebody while you investigate that crime. I would like to see law enforcement doing it. I think I think uh council right would like a better answer around that.

I want to get to making some motions. Anna is next. I'm not quite ready to make a motion, but the other kind of thing I want us to consider as council though is, you know, we we had an incident um a month and a half ago or whatever where local law enforcement did go to investigate what was going on and then the outcry from the community was why was local law enforcement at this incident. So, I mean, I I think it's a really hard tight rope to to walk because on the one hand, you know, we're we're saying, should we consider a policy where we're requiring law enforcement to respond to these things and film things or not film things? And then we're also saying, well, if they do, they need to disseminate this information. I don't know. Like I I I feel really bad for for our our law enforcement or for any law enforcement because I think it's a a tough um you know I'm just I'm trying to look at it from all sides here which I think we need to do.

Madison then Doug I don't think at least I'm not asking to require a policy because there's already something set in place and that we should follow that.

Right. I also think that as a mother to a 16-year-old brown boy, I worry every day that child leaves my home and that we have had many conversations about what he is supposed to say should that take place. So there are people in our community that are terrified about what is happening right now. I will personally create any sort of video messaging and there's plans to do that already to ensure that our community understands the conversation and the outcomes of today and that we are ensuring that folks know we want to make sure that our police is present to ensure that there is evidence that is taking place should illegal activity happen. Our district attorney has what he needs. That is why I am asking the question, what is it that you need in order to prosecute even if it takes X amount of time that we do that? I'm not asking for an additional policy. We should already be following what is already included.

I would love to uh make some deciding here. Can you pull up that slide a couple of slides ago? Excuse me.

Sorry, Dan. parents, we're gonna and my idea is there's a very nice list of items. The eloquent testimony has recommended and requested a number of items. I'd like to see if we can get to yes on some of these. Does that please the group? Go ahead, Doug. Um, I would like to uh make a motion that we in that we make an emergency declaration this evening. Uh, that we will be uh drawing up uh ordinances, resolutions, policies related to ICE activity in the city of Hood River uh for to be ratified at a later meeting uh as it's um developed. Moved by Stina. I'll second

second by Rivera. Discussion. A couple of slides back there was sort of fleshing out what some of the emergency declarations our neighbors passed looks like and maybe that would help us clarify or go ahead Glass. Well, I think what I'm hearing is that we're not going to finalize anything tonight with the exception that we're declaring an emergency declaration because it is important that we continue to hear from our community members about what they need and want so that we're not presuming assumptions and that is my understanding of what we're doing. So, I don't think we need to dictate everything that needs to take place other than that we're declaring an emergency declaration and that there will be more to come and it will not be finalized today. This is for uh the three lawyers I know who are in this room. There's probably more. Um I mean, how much should we specify? Like we're not declaring an emergency declaration because of snow. Like is it an ice emergency? Like what do we say? I I think one uh shortcut um I'm looking to the city attorney to correct me, but um in your charter you authorize the city manager to um declare an emergency and then you affirm that resolution at a for future meeting. I think that way would be a way that like I can um put something together immediately and then you could you know because it's got resolutions have whereases and actions and then you would be able to see that um before your next meeting. So if you wanted to give that authority to me, I could work on that and then bring that to you.

So it seem to me if attorney has a different thought on the best and most expedient process that that would be most expedient. What I would like to do though is uh at the next meeting which I think is the beginning of January like the uh 5th or no the 12th 12th uh providing commission. You don't want to miss that one. No, that's that should be a barn burner, too. But the uh provide the council with uh kind of a menu of options uh to uh how that uh you can decide uh whether you're comfortable for your community or not to include

that would also give me an opportunity to talk with community um based organizations on maybe some recommendations and um talk to all of you in the forming of that. Uh Doug and then Abigail. Yeah, I mean Doug and then Glass. Excuse me. I'm sorry if you don't and and specifically ma made the motion. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You It's a little further away. Amanda. Amanda, you can also say, "Hey, um I just wanted to ask or clarify also the um sanctuary city. I thought I heard you say we could do a resolution with no public notice or can we do that tonight or does that have to be at the next meeting?

That would I mean it's also something that um that you need a written document for. Yeah. But um I don't know attorney if there's a and then what I was thinking if we could do the resolution faster than an ordinance we could do that and then in the meantime work on an ordinance.

Yeah. And I wasn't resolutions can happen quicker. I don't recommend official action tonight. It wasn't noticed and you don't have a specific proposal before you or nor does the public have a specific proposal that they might want to comment on. Um, we can do an emergency declaration under the charter by the city manager that can be ratified subsequently and at that subsequent ratification the council can have before it something that actually spells out the details of what this means, what policy provisions you want to include um, in this thing.

So, I think the motion on the table is authorize the city manager to declare a state of emergency. Is that yes? That is the motion. Any discussion on that? I think that motion also contained uh ordinance resolution or other policies for later RAM ratification. So I would say maybe perhaps a resolution for January 12th and then if you wish to work on ordinance we could work on that at a later date. I'm sorry to speak for you councelor Stpina but no and and just if you could put the list back up. Oh, yep. My thinking was um emergency declaration to do exactly what you just said, the city manager authorized to do that. I felt like that that needed a motion.

Uh I thought next going down on this list, you know, sanctuary city action. My thought would be direct staff to prepare a resolution, ordinance, etc. Yeah. And that's So that's we're not That's why I was I wasn't baking it all into one thing. Uh uh uh Grant and then Glennus, you already have authorization to declare an emergency declaration. Correct. You do not need a motion to do that, right?

In this case, I think a motion is really good because I think the declar the emergency declarations I have done in my four years here have all been around fireworks. Uh so this this feels a little bit different than that. So, I think a motion would be I don't know if the city attorney has a different opinion, but I think a motion was helpful. It shows the intent of council and there is no and there is no policy formed yet. It's just a declaration of emergency.

Yeah. Yeah. I think if uh if that's council's direction, I would say, you know, authorize me or, you know, ask me, direct me to uh do emergency declaration. And the reason for doing that for most cities has been to um uh expediate uh procurement and contracting laws so that or process uh so that they can talk to community based organizations and figure out if there are funds that you wanted to allocate and I would re I'd come back to you with a recommended amount

I was a little bit of that and that it's so important that during the fires during COVID we had countywide partners that were on, you know, weekly calls that we treat it as such. Right now, as we know, 12 individuals have been taken out of our community. That number will only increase because there's $30 billion behind these efforts. So, they will only get worse and we've been promised that by the borders are himself.

Thank you. Um, thank you, councelor. I want to note I over the weekend I met with um Cascade Lock city manager. I also met with the city a phone call with the city of Dallas and then I met with the county administrator today. So, um it hasn't happened in a in a joint phone call, but I'm certain we are all very very connected. Anna,

I just want to be sure that we all understand and our community all understands that the purpose of the emergency declaration then like what that actually means is you will bring us a proposal for um the allocation the potential allocation of funds. That's what an emergency that declaration will accomplish. Um, there were just a couple of comments um during the public comment that I think are are worth noting. Um, I really appreciated the woman that said, "Let's focus on the facts." Um, I also think that we should take a moment to clarify like to my knowledge there are no quotas that the police have to pick up, you know, or ticket people or stop people. So, we want to make sure that our community knows that that's not what our police are doing. Um, but I also um really appreciate the comment of, you know, I don't necessarily know what a sanctuary city is, but like let let's say what that is. And my understanding of what a sanctuary city is or what the sanctuary law is is following the the OS that says um that our local law enforcement and our local government will not provide resources, will not provide um assistance. So if if we're you know I what I really appreciate about the idea of the listening sessions and um the town halls is you know I'm hearing the community say we want you to do something and I I want to understand better what we can do. When you say I want you to um you know we want the city council to uh create a resolution or ordinance that says we are a sanctuary city. Um, I recommend that you go back and look and and read what our resolution already says. And the language in it says, um, that we will continue to be a place of sanctuary and safety by nurturing a culture of trust. How we can do that, if we can do a better job of that, I am all for that. But if you need us to retitle this resolution so that it says we are a

sanctuary city instead of an inclusive city, if that's what you're asking for, I guess that's okay. that and I appreciate you Matt, you know, like words are our business. Like we want to be very um specific about what we're saying, but it's also semantics and actions do speak louder than words. So um you know, what can we realistically do? So I I just wanted to put that out there. There is a motion on the table, Glattus.

Uh any further discussion on Oh, excuse me, Amanda. Thank you. Um, well, I just wanted to say it's not really so much a discussion on the motion, but since we're on this topic, like uh a couple weeks ago or a month ago when we were sitting here and it was like, yes, we need to do something, but what can we do? I just want to thank everybody for coming out and helping us know. I the sanctuary city action to me was just like we're already sanctuary state and we're doing all the things but I heard from all of you that it's important and so I now it's important to me I want to do that. Um and I really appreciate Abigail and councelor Rivera and Stina's efforts to find out what more like concrete things we can actually do actions we can take. Um, it's just the beginning and I totally get that, but I am super having this list and um, I feel better about where we are and where we can go from here than I did a few weeks ago. So, thank you.

Thank you, Councelor Glattus. I just want to say for everybody that's here, please know that we're looking at this at a local level. A couple of us are involved of what this looks like at a state level and also what this looks like at a federal level to ensure that we are holding those that we've elected into these positions and that we're holding them accountable to ensure that the rule of law and the constitution is being upheld. Now, this is all background work that you may not see, but please know that as a brown woman, I am very committed to doing this work and that I have personally spent a lot of time outside of these chambers ensuring that we're doing just that.

Thank you, councelor. In fact, I would note that Congresswoman Maxine Dexter was at your meeting uh two weeks ago to talk to you directly about ICE and what's happening at the national level. So, you definitely have an audience.

Thank you, Mayor. Not I know we have a motion and I don't want to keep dragging this out necessarily on a motion but I think that what I'm hearing is if we you know other than declaring the emergency um I think all of the actions that are on this list I would be in favor of doing and I think part of the the declaration of an emergency is to direct staff time to work on everything that's on this list unless people feel differently that I don't want to work on a community advisory committee specifically or something like that I feel like all these things need to be done and I feel the emergency declaration is is a way to get things in motion to be able to do these things and if resolutions ordinances come out of that if there are changes to city policies that have to do you know anything to do with that those will come subsequent to this declaration of emergency

I just got a lot more nervous why because I need Abigail to run the city and so if we're passing one and we get 10 for one I'm concerned I haven't heard from Abigail to say yes, she can accomplish that. That's why I was hoping we could like, can we agree on the first one? Can we agree on the second one?

But I think it's that Abigail is going to leverage what is already taking place because no one entity can do everything on their own. And so she will continue to coordinate to see what is already happening to ensure that we do have a lot of this. Do we need to create a community advisory committee? I don't know. We already have your equity group. Does is that enough? athic there are already groups that are doing this work now so we would not need to reinvent the wheel but it is so important that the city continue to show leadership because I'm not seeing other governing elected officials at a local level that are doing this to ensure that we can do everything that we can to ensure our community members know fact from fiction and by doing something it shows that we're not complicit in the behavior

Doug and and to that point I think that we see things like community support, um, meet with community- based organizations. There are people out here that are on the front lines that are doing this, that have funding, that have volunteers. Let's empower them to do that. Let's make sure we hear from them what they need from the city. Obviously, the city of Hood River doesn't have $200,000 to just give out. You know what I mean? I wish we did. I think we I would be the first to say, "Let's authorize the distribution of the funds." Uh, I know we're asking for staff time, but in in my mind, this is working with the community to support what the community is already doing.

Does that need to be part of the actual emergency declaration or can we like line item? I mean, some of this, I think, is like this is an emergency declaration. this is sanctuary city and then some of this is just like direction to staff that doesn't need to be like directly included in something like that like working with the community it's like well that's you know we're some of that's already happening so I don't know if it's helpful to go through these things one by one because there's a lot of things on here and I kind of thought that that was what was going to originally happen tonight or you know parse out the things that like, well, you know, we need to really direct staff for emergency declaration because that's a little bit more than like meeting with community members. And same thing with declaring ourselves a sanctuary city. Like I don't know if this should all be done in one motion. I don't know if that's what you were you were saying. Um that makes me a little bit leer because I think things could get a little bit lost in the shuffle and confusing.

Well, I would like to know what Abigail would need from us, right? So, thank you, counselor. What should we go down like that kind of thing?

As I'm following the conversation, I think um the motion on the table right now emergency declaration and then work uh and then I think probably can get a resolution a sanctuary resolution for your next meeting, but keep working on the other pieces. I think in the emergency declaration um if at this point knowing like an emergency declaration has a really short timeline, right? That's probably 30 days and then you will probably need to renew it. So there's lots of opportunities to amend and evolve as the situation changes and as we want to respond. So, I would say right now the emergency declaration could be um work toward a resolution um meet with community partners, you know, and find opportunities for the city to support community- based organizations without necessarily at this moment having to pin down a dollar figure or specific community support. The emergency is we need to act and council gets a report at their next meeting and then perhaps you might have another emergency declaration to continue and to add as we go.

Good. I got less nervous. Thank you. I would like to vote on this. All in favor? I I opposed. Chair votes I motion passes. Great. Now, given that sort of last little 90 seconds, do we want to discuss any more of these line items or wait till Abigail gets back to us with a little bit more of an outline? Doug, I I think I think Abigail that if you feel like you you know other than the bullet point and I know you've expanded a little bit, but you know just a layer deeper into the onion, this is what I think a listening session could be when it could be you know here here are the community based organizations um

counselors I would like you know um a volunteer from the council to work on this and that and that whatever whatever you need. I think that's where you should come back. That sounds great. I know we're headed into holiday holiday time, but I will send you lots of emails in the next couple weeks and you can uh work with me on that and I will continue to work with um other governments, local governments and then of course with other cities uh and counties that are doing this work. So if we can it's always great when we can borrow from other places. So thank you very much. I appreciate today's conversation and thank you council uh community members for being here. I I want to check with council. Anything else? Did we did we cover this topic? Is there anything else on this topic tonight? Ben, just wanted to confirm that uh sanctuary city was part of that.

Yeah, I saw I heard emergency declaration and uh bring you a a sanctuary city resolution at your next meeting, possibly an ordinance in the future.

Thank you. I'm going to reserve the right at that session to uh make the argument against sanctuary city because I care about what's best for all the residents of Hoot River and like the prairie dog town in Fort Collins where I used to live. Is it smartest to stick your head up or stay safe in the hole? Like we were on a list one time of sanctuary cities with like Eugene and Portland who have like sorry Dan like a lot of attorneys. Like are we just looking to get hurt? I don't know if that's what's best for our residents. I will work with the city attorney to kind of give you a a brokon of what the issues might be. The other part of course is the city receives some a very small amount but we do receive some federal funding and that I would want that to be part of your analysis as well resolution or ordinance mayor or both.

I mean that's I don't think we've talked about that yet.

Okay. I would just like to ask each and every one of you here, if you were a person of color and you are having to educate your kiddos around what they do, would you be saying, "Should we be a sanctuary or city or not?" I understand where you're coming from, mayor, but this will only worsen and it is not fair that people will be profiled because of the skin, their color of their skin. We know that a six-year-old kiddo is missing from Florida. We know that a 17-year-old high school student from McMminville was taken who is a US citizen. I think if you were all living this that you would think a little different and you would feel absolutely compelled to do everything within your power to ensure that the rules are being followed.

I think it might be safest for my neighbors to not draw the attention of the monster so that our people are safer rather than is here. The monster is here. you all can run for mayor and then you can talk in the meeting and an

um I just want to say that it's also not fair to think I mean you know it appears that part of the issue at the federal level is lack of empathy and I don't think it's fair to say that just because some of us may or may not have brown skin we don't feel this pain and I appreciate very much the extra you know the the time and energy. Um, but this is this is hard for all of us. Um, Councilwoman Rivera, and I I don't I I don't want I don't think it's fair to imply that this is not as difficult for the rest of us. I mean, I have a child, too. I have friends and neighbors and people that I care about in this community, too. This is directly impacting. We're all on the same team trying to do the right thing here. Um, so I I totally appreciate where you're coming from, but I think that we're we're all trying to do something proactive here. Um, so I mean, please keep that in mind as well. And I appreciate what the mayor is saying also of like, you know, are we inadvertently I I talk about a lot like unintended consequences. Are we inadvertently inviting more activity here by being too vocal? I just I think we have to be cautious about that,

Doug. I'm going to speak directly to that. So, um, one of the things that I got out of that meeting that we had, um, which again, thank you so much, Councelor Rivera, for working with other cities is we're not alone. We're not the tallest tree that's getting the most wins. Cities are banding together, counties are banding together, district attorneys are banding together. So, we're not the only city that's doing this right now. I kind of feel like if if if we don't do it, you know, you're going to see a long list of cities that will. Um, and I agree with the mayor, like I don't want to be I don't want to be a target for ICE because we're the only city that's that's doing this. I feel like a lot of Oregon cities are working on this. A lot of Washington cities are working on this uh in areas even though in the city in the state of Oregon we have sanctuary state law.

Anything else? Caut

my we're we don't always have to agree on everything and that's okay. People's white fragility isn't for me to take care of. But what I will say is that we all have different lived experiences and we are in a time where people are being villainized and all that. And I'm not stating that anybody on this council does not care. I Let me clarify that. I'm not stating that anyone doesn't care, but it does impact some of us different than the others. And I think that we can all agree on that. And my plea is around that because it is impacting me personally. It's impacting my children. It's impacting my community in a [snorts] different way. And so I will always advocate on that. This is a time for true leadership. As counselor Stpina mentioned, there are other cities that are doing just that. We're not the only one to do. So, [snorts]

we are going to wrap this up. We're going to take a break. I spoke to the folks at the Bridge Authority. They are going to postpone, so we're going to come back from a break and continue with our business. DA Matt, go ahead.

Um, I wasn't planning on saying this tonight, but just uh what Councilwoman Rivera just mentioned, I I am not a person of color. I have my white privilege. Um, but not everybody knows about me, and I'll say it publicly tonight, that I am the child of an immigrant. My mother came from what was Czechoslovakia, born in what was the Sudatan land, which people may know of was run over by Nazi Germany in the 30s. My grandmother was born of a Jewish mother and a Christian father. I lost a lot of family in the Holocaust. My greatgrandfather housed a Jewish doctor and was married to a Jewish woman. He got caught housing a Jewish doctor and spent a year in Awitz for his pro for his troubles. Was put in a room where he was in a cell that was not large enough to lay down in for an entire year and it had all his fingers broken. I am deathly afraid of if I have to prosecute a case with an ICE agent, wanting to make sure I have sufficient evidence to do that and then feeling the wrath of having Fox News come down on me and then putting my own life at risk. I'm also a single white man right now, so I don't have a family to protect. And that's but it still scares the hell out of me. But knowing my family's history, even though I didn't have that lived experience, because I just had the experience of growing up a white male in the United States, but hearing the stories from my grandmother about my f family, I just don't want to be on the wrong side of history.

agenda. I'll hand the devil to chair stina. That's good. Camera went on right during that. Okay. Thank you everybody. I'm going to call to order the Hood River Urban Renewal Agency uh board meeting. Um first thing is to check if is there is any business from the audience. Uh I'm assuming not. Thank you, Jen. Um, so, okay, the first thing that we have uh for today actually will there's there's no agenda corrections, right? No, there are not. Um, first thing is uh approval of the mill the meeting minutes uh via the consent agenda. I would entertain a motion or any discussion. I move to approve the consent agenda. Moved by Pollson. Second.

Second by Rivera, I think, by by a nose. Uh, any further discussion? All those in favor? I I I those opposed. Chair votes I. Consent agenda has passed. Regular business items. Will amendment number one to MIG contract extending the term?

That's right. Uh Chair Stina, uh members of the urban agency board, this is very narrow action. uh just increasing the term of a con uh contract to not expire at the end of this calendar year and instead extend all the way through uh June 30th to give us just leeway to continue on with 30% designs on Taylor Avenue and enhanced crosswalks um across 13th. Um you may remember that we were surprised um by the width of the rideway on Taylor and so that uh required some uh additional alternative analysis and got us behind schedule. Um, so, uh, we are not asking for any additional funds, just an extension of the contract length. Uh, so there's a, um, uh, contract amendment in your packet and a suggested motion.

Any questions for Will on this, Grant? Not for Will, but for the rest of the urban renewal agency. We made a change to the TSP last time. Is there any interest in revisiting that structural change from my peers? Refresh my memory.

We changed uh the structure of the cycle track to not be a cycle track and instead be a shared use path which yeah on on on Taylor. Um, so that was that was a that was a change which was a recommendation to us based on technical discovery information. Yep. Thank you. I remember now. I'm okay with it. It's not what any of us want, but given the surprised nature of the narrowness, I'm I think it's the the the lesser of the two evils. Um well, I'm I'm assuming that whether this contract extension happens or not, this this this is probably Should we discuss this now? Should we discuss it later? And business from, you know, the the the members of of the board. What's the best way to discuss this?

Yeah. Um well, it's about the transportation system plan. That's a city uh policy. So, that's maybe best uh handled by uh city council. um you know the transportation system plan and you we adopted the high streetscape plan into it but um not to any you know 30% level designs or 60% level designs it was on a conceptual basis and so I don't believe that we um necessarily deviated from the transportation system plan by uh making it a two-way uh uh making it a uh making the two-way cycle track like part of the sidewalk versus being protected on on the street isn't necessarily deviation from TSP. Okay.

Um, do you want to further discuss this at at council or Nope. I raised the issue? No. Anybody anybody else have any comments on that note, Lattice? So, will I'm hearing you say that I mean this would have to take place at a city council meeting. I'm trying to better understand if we're going to extend the contract. I know that we're we were all assigned homework items to think about what our uh work plan or work session is going to look like in February. Is that would that be a time to potentially discuss TSP and how would it impact any any of this work?

Yeah, and I'd say, you know, planning director uh Dustin Nielson would be best to speak to it and where um how to approach a transportation system amendment if you wanted to engage in that. Thank you for raising that though. Um, anything further? Uh, if not, there is a motion. I'll move to approve the amendment number one to the professional services agreement with MIG extending the contract term to June 30th, 2026. Second. Motion by Cavalary, second by Blackburn. Any further discussion? All those in favor?

Any opposed? Chair boats eye amendment one uh to MIG contract uh is approved. Uh second item is the urban renewal advisory committee appointment also will

uh thank you. So uh we have a upcoming vacancy on the urban renewal uh uh agency advisory committee. Uh Clint Harris's uh position is up for um reappointment in the in 2026. We uh advertised um for the vacancy and received three applications. Um the applications are in your packet. Um uh consistent with past practice, uh Chair Stina and I interviewed um the applicants and have a recommendation. Um Clint Harris, I'll just go uh kind of touch on the high points of the applicants and then explain our recommendation. Um Clint Harris applied for uh reapplied um for his position. He expressed that he was um happy to continue to serve but also very happy um if uh for if someone else wanted to take a place and um that there be transition uh on uh on the committee. He uh has been on the advisory committee since 2019. I'd say has been um you know a extremely valuable member of the committee as being a Heights business owner uh but also just in his um general positivity, his ability to communicate um his ability to work cooperatively with the rest of the committee members. He's been really a standout uh advisory committee member over the past um about six years. Um and while he was um committed to continuing to serve, he also noted that uh with other commitments that he has, uh he would be uh challenged um to uh up his level of time commitment to the advisory committee if we u became more active in the future. Um Lindseay Arvin also applied. Uh she is a relatively new uh resident to Hood River living near the Heights. Um but she emphasized that she's uh really here for the long term

and had a strong uh desire to become uh part uh to start contributing and getting involved in the community. Um I was impressed by her um existing knowledge but also her questions and identification of issues. Um so she understood tax increment financing already which is not something I think is common knowledge and noted

and also I um really impressed that she identified uh and asked questions about maintaining affordability while we also do significant investment into these districts because that's really one of the big challenges. Uh and thirdly uh David Glassman uh so he brings a highly relevant uh background as a retired architect. So he has worked in the development process for many years and understood it. He also had a really good understanding of the um public process and um how policy and decision policy decisions are made. Um and he uh is retired and currently serving on several other fords. He's a very um volunteer um community oriented individual um but said that he would have the time and attention to also give Iraq um everything that it needed. Um so with those uh three very um very qualified, very good candidates made the decision uh hard uh for counselor and I to make a recommendation. I think very much up to the board as to if you want to go a different route than our recommendation. And I think they're all we would agree they're all very good candidates. Where we came to recommend uh Lindseay Arban is that she was uh her background is most dissimilar from the other uh committee members. There's um we do already have another retired architect and there's um several retired professionals um already on the committee. scope. We thought that um Lindsay brought um the most um diversity of viewpoint and background and so that was ultimately essentially a tiebreaker uh in her favor. Uh so with that answer any questions that you have or I don't know if there if you have anything to add.

Yeah. Yeah. The only the only thing I would I would just reaffirm that I I thought all three could really do the job very well. Um it's usually that we have maybe one applicant for three positions, not three applicants for one. So um you know um while recommending um you know you know Lindsay for for this goound you know we made it clear to David that you know there's a lot of opportunities to contribute um I'll also say you know um you know just want to thank Clint Harris for his application you know it definitely got the sense of if you don't find somebody qualified I'm will I'm willing to keep doing this but if you have qualified applicants like I'll step aside which which is also went into our decision. So [clears throat] with that any questions for Will and I about the interview process or any of the applicants? Glattus, please.

No questions. Um, I appreciate you both taking the time to do this and just based off of what Will presented. It sounds like Lindsay at the same time, new perspective, which is also beneficial. Um, but that also wasn't going to have any time constraints as some of the other two had mentioned. Um, so I I support to appoint Lindsay.

Yeah. Um, I also am inclined to go with your recommendation and appreciate everybody applying. Um, I also appreciate that you said you mentioned to Mr. Glman that maybe you could consider other opportunities. We still have one vacancy on our planning committee and I would be I both um Clint and uh David seemed to be great fact that they would be willing to to contribute to their community. I' I'd encourage them to maybe consider that. But um I'm I'm happy to go with the recommendation, Amanda.

Um yeah, having served with Clint on your I was surprised to read the recommendation of like why aren't we recommending him again? Like what should he do something like wouldn't think he would, you know, whatever. So I was surprised, but I appreciate that he's willing to step down, willing to serve, but also so thank you for sharing that information with us. So, and yeah, the support support the the nomination. Um, any further questions or comments? No. Okay. That with that, there is a motion for uh appointing Lindsay to the rack. I move to appoint Lindseay Arvin to the Hood River Urban Renewal Advisory Committee.

Second. Motion by Mitchell, second by Blackburn. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I I the opposed. Chair votes I and uh we hereby appoint Lindseay Arvin to the Hood River Urban Renewal Advisory Committee. Um Will, anything further for the administrator in terms of comments or you know

two small pieces of news. Uh first one is disappointing. Our um $100,000 uh grant application to the state for the housing infrastructure support fund was unfortunately unsuccessful. We're going to use that to continue on uh with um the Mount Adams roundabout uh design uh process. Um that uh they let us know that um they had 18 only eight of 18 applications were funded and that they had $2.4 million in asks for only $700,000 of available funding. Um so uh um but we'll continue to look for additional um grant funds for that as well as I think the um TGM grant that uh will be paying for a full look at the all of Cascade Avenue can probably pick up some of the um roundabout um work as well.

Um I know obviously there was a bunch of applicants and that's one of the reasons. Was there any reason other reasons stated as to why we weren't selected? No, those were the only. Okay. Thank you. Uh, and then also just let you know that the um general obligation bond polling um that was the contract that was approved I believe last council meeting that work is going to begin um towards the end of this week or um the beginning of uh next week. That's it. Any questions for Will? Yes. Um with that um I'll ask if there's any items from agency members. I won't go all the way across but if there are any speak now forever hold your piece. Hannah,

one quick thing um just for Will and as kind of a heads up, I attended a conference last week. Um and one of the presenters uh presented on the impact of bully application of prevailing wage rates on public and private partnerships. Um it was a really really good uh presentation. Um prevailing wages can add an additional 10 to 20% uh to project costs which can really kill a project. And so I just um wanted you I'm sure you're already well aware of this and just something that we want to be um kind of in tune to and if we want to connect later to talk about I would be happy to tell you what I learned.

Yeah. Wonderful. I'll connect with you for that additional information. It's something we uh uh are aware of and have some strategies to avoid like donating land rather than donating money as a way to um help not trigger those things. So um yeah, very much topic of interest. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Well, if there's nothing further, then I'll go ahead and adjourn the Hood River Urban Renewal Agency meeting on December 8th uh and hand the gavl back to Mayor Blackburn to reconvene city council.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Back to the agenda, consent agenda. We have uh repeal some rates and accept some money, a wave of fee from someone who has given us a bunch of money. Excuse me. I would entertain a motion. I move to approve the consent agenda. Moved by Gakei. Second. Second by Stpina. Discussion. All in favor? I opposed. Chair votes. I motion passes. Action items. [clears throat]

You uh Mayor Blackberry members of the city council have anou um to ask for your approval. uh to help us apply for some grant funds from another state grant, the housing uh infrastructure financing program to support the Big River Community Land Trust um project over on Avalon uh Drive. that's um an uh expected to be 42 unit um development and um as a community land trust and nonprofit entity. Any funds that we can help uh get to them means that they can achieve deeper levels of affordability and um generally improve the um likelihood of their project. So um there is a um program that the um state has uh offered has um low interest loans, forgivable loans and also grant components. We were applying for the grant component of it and um for that per for that reason the city would essentially just be a pass through um similar to the state appropriation that we received that supported Mariposa Village for their water sewer storm. This would be a grant program if awarded um we would be a pass through entity to help Big River Community Land Trust um pay for water, sewer, storm or road improvements that they may be required to do. Um one of the requirements if applying for a a specific project with a partner is to have anou between uh the grant applicant which would be the city and the entity doing the work and responsible for the work which would be Big River Community Land Trust. So, um, we have aou in your, um, packet. This is all moving very quickly, and we have a, um, it was announced quickly, had a short, uh, turnaround time, and, uh, applications are due on December 17th. So, thisou, um, since being put in your packet has been reviewed by the city attorney. We have questions. We're going to continue to, um, massage it. Uh, but,

uh, just had to get in your packet as is. So the motion is is to approve theou uh in substantially the form provided tonight subject to city attorney recommended edits and approvals. So just let you know we are doing that. We'll make sure it's um uh eliminating any liability for the city before we um sign it. But um wanted to get your approval tonight and I see folks from Big River came tonight. Thanks y'all in case we had questions. Appreciate you questions on this topic. Glattison and then Anna.

Thank you. So, while I have looked at theou and I see that the city is not financially liable for any reasons, I'm still having a hard time. Um, in our packet, it says that the financial impact is still being calculated and I'd like to know how much money we're talking about before this application is submitted. So, I'm wondering if that's something that we can have a little bit more clarity given that this is technically our our last meeting and that the application is due on the 17th.

Yeah. And I'll ask Alicia if she has anything to add to what I said, but um I talked to the um Big River Community Land Trust developer uh Edund and Co. to ask do you have any ballpark or said essentially it's still being developed. Um we're really building the plane as we fly it. Um so they're going to ask for I think as much as they can. Um but they don't know. uh still doing cost estimation for the water sewer storm and um frontage improvements they may be required to do. But I think she's asking like is it going to cost us a bunch of money? Maybe under no circumstance will cost.

No, I don't see anything that it would cost us. I'm just trying to understand like the infrastructure cost because then I started sitting on one. We know it's 42 units of housing but I'm trying to better understand like what is going to be the pricing for units? What are the income levels? Is this rental versus ownership? So, I'm trying to understand the type of housing that these 42 units will have. Even though it says permanently affordable for sale homes, like I don't understand what that means because Yeah. What are the numbers? I'm trying to figure that out. Yeah. Um, you know, Sure. Yeah.

to interpret. Thank you very much. Yeah. um to answer that question. So we Alicia

oh sorry Alicia Sherburn, executive director Big River Community Land Trust. So this particular um site plan is still being developed but we did get to about 42 units. We are targeting um 80 well probably 60 to 120% AMI. Um we are going to do lift funding through the state for a portion of this. So we're looking at doing half of the units about 80% probably 70 to 80% and then the other half will be um 80 to 120. And it will all be ownership. It's going to be kind of a mix of town homes and standalone units. So, it's kind of what we're looking at. As far as um the numbers, like Will said, we don't quite have a solid number yet. We're almost there. We're kind of strategizing with this in um submitting an application that is more likely to get funding. They really want to see that this grant funding is going to complete the infrastructure for a full project. So rather than applying for the we're trying to decide if we apply for the whole project or just a portion that we're applying for lift funding. So we can say hey we're doing these this half of the project with state funding this infrastructure capture that and split it up a little bit. So it's we're still strategizing a little bit but we're almost there. Um would you say it's correct statement that the more money you can get from wherever source it comes from means the more affordable you'll be able to make the purchase price of the house?

Yes. Um if we can get you know maximize out our funding we can hopefully go below the 80% on some of those. Um and also right now we're having to hit the higher end of 120% AMI units and we'd like to do a little more mix um so that we can just serve more people. So this funding will make a big difference in being able to do that.

Go ahead again. Go ahead. Again, um this question is for Will. I have three. Um with that being said, what sort of matching funds or commitments does the city um ha do we have to provide anything just because I see it's lottery funds? Wondering like how competitive this is going to be. Should we partner regionally for this? Like, do we have to show that we're ready to fiscally provide something? Is that going to help the application?

Yeah. Well, we're trying to put together the the most competitive application we can under this very short turnaround. I think the plus of that is everyone else who's applying for this is under the same time constraints. Um so uh this I believe this program was initially um requested at $und00 million and it only getting it only ended up getting allocated 10 million. So essentially it's almost being thought of as a pilot. Um and that 10 million is going to be spread out over the entire state of Oregon. So uh this is I'd say equivalent of a Hary pass. We're um we're just hoping to get something but it is not there's very little to go around. Well, my next question is, you know, could we apply again? And what other projects like Mariposa 2.0 could this funding apply to or any other sort of multif family? But it sounds like it might just be be a one-time deal given that it's limited funds. The one thing I will say is that in talking to several people um because this is run through business Oregon and I also talked to Nate Stice about this in particular and he's really pushing people to apply because if they get an influx of applications they're hoping it'll continue. So that's another reason

Anna uh I just wanted to give notice of an actual conflict of interest. I have the privilege of representing Big River Community Land Trust and I support the work that they do. So, I'm going to recuse myself from this convers this vote. Thanks for that work and for that mindfulness. Uh, any other questions on this topic? Y'all, there is a motion. I move to authorize the city manager to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Big River Community Land Trust for the application and use of housing infrastructure financing program grant funds in substantially. The form provided tonight subject to any city attorney recommended edits and approval. Moved by Pollson.

Second. Second by Mitchell. Further discussion. All in favor? I I. Elevated sewer. Randy. Thanks for hanging out during all of that other stuff.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of council. Um, in February, uh, you authorized the, uh, uh, signing of the contract for the elevated sewer final design. This is amendment one to that contract. Um, the contract was awarded based on preliminary work that was done. Uh, let's spec a lift station down at the Big Seven building on not on city property. And then the the pressure line was going to run along the railroad tracks. Um and there is early on in a first couple of meetings we had to to do the final design. We were able to to work it where we could put the pump station on Industrial Street, which is in the city right away, and then run the the pressure line down Industrial Street, keeping everything in this city right away. Um which is just always a good idea. that instead of having the lift station off, we would have a a smaller private lift station for to service the Big Seven and the U Wacoma building. Think of another project. The I'm sorry about that. uh the big seven building and the the uh the union the the the ports building and I'm drawing about Pasquali's building. Sorry about this.

Anyway, the amendment is for uh $58,666. That's the ready for questions except for names of Uh-huh. Any questions on this? Seems like a kind of one of those operational tweak things. There is a motion. Oh, go ahead, class.

Yes, operational tweak. But I'm just wondering given some of our other sort of sewer projects. Um, and I can't remember off the top of my head, but like what sort of contingency funding are we potentially reserving for any sort of additional items that might need to come down the road? The engineering budgets usually don't have contingency in them that they're it's a very hard thing to do contingency for the design. So there is no contingency. These these are

these are time and material contracts though. So the possibility is that not all the money will be used entirely. um they built monthly based on the hours they they put into it and this project doesn't have like similar impacts like in the last one I remember that um DQ DEQ had uh stated that you know when we grow a 10,000 plus that we were going to have to make some sort of updates is that would this have a similar impact? No, that would be so that was a storm our stom storm water project um completely different okay scope from the se project one is

we will go through approval um and several state agencies but the the ultimate goal is just the elevated sewer running along the highway we just need to get rid of that it's a it's been a liability for a I would entertain a motion. I move that we authorize the city manager to sign amendment one to the design contract for the elevated sewer replacement project in the amount of $58,666. Moved by Kiki. Second. Second by Cavaleri. Any further discussion? All in favor? I I

opposed. Chair votes eye. Motion passes. Thank you. will. Thanks, Randy.

Thanks, Mayor Blackberry and members of the city council. Uh, tonight we have a next step on the, uh, city council action item of pursuing another affordable or mixed income housing project. Um, so if you recall, um, we're doing some preliminary, I'd say, preparatory steps, um, towards what could be, um, referred to as Maripos Village 2.0. you know, even though what we do next may look nothing like Maripost Village. Um on September 8th, city council reviewed um a list of publicly owned properties that either may uh could support h housing either through citing housing or through their sale and liquidation to create funds for housing invest investment elsewhere. Then on October 14th, um, as the urban religency board, you received a report on different types of housing models that are not just low-income housing tax credit. Um, uh, kind of conventional affordable housing like Maraposa Village was. Um, so tonight I have a followup on, um, making use of some of our existing publicly owned parcels um, for your uh, approval as to the strategy as well as taking a discrete action on some pre-development steps. Um, so, uh, what I'm not recommending now is doing any work on, uh, our city- owned parking lots or taking any action on, uh, those publicly owned properties that we don't own that, uh, we discussed before. The reason for that being one, we don't have site control over what we don't own. So, there is no real next step there. And um as far as um creamy development plan or utilizing our downtown city lots, that's um say u monumental uh in scale uh as far as time, attention, resources that that would take. So, um, as far as addressing the critical urgent need, um, I think the Sherman, um, Sherman Avenue lot and also the lot over on West Cliff, I have visuals of those if, um, people need

reminders, um, will be, uh, the quickest way to make some meaningful steps towards, uh, funding and creating some more housing. Um, so what I'm recommending, um, as we've discussed, um, before is partitioning partitioning the unused portion of the, um, city-owned parcel that has the state street lot. Um, taking the unused portion and separating that from the city parking lot, which would then retain in its unaltered use. The city um, acquired that parcel in the mid 1980s, and it was solely because to hold that parking lot. There was no intention to have the rest of the land just came with it in one package. And in fact, the next year we sliced off about 150 foot strip of it and sold that off. So, we have a history of um selling the unused portions of that parcel that are supporting the city need of a of a parking lot. Um it was likely that that upper um steep section of that lot was probably thought to have little to no value for a long time, but economics of Hood River had changed drastically since the mid1 1980s. And so um it's uh proximity to downtown as well as its excellent uh river views u means that it likely has a substantial market value now. Um although still the the terrain makes it unsuitable for um affordable housing itself. Um so that's why we recommend um partitioning that uh and selling it. Uh the first step we have a um uh we're asking for approval to use well to use the urban renewal agency to use bell design uh to um do the partition application. basically representing the urban renewal agency as the applicant and then having the city review and approve as it normally would. Um so it's going to require a survey. Um one of the uh key pieces is we want to draw that

partition line where there will be no uh danger to the large retaining wall of the state street lot. And we think Bell Design is in a uh uniquely qualified position to do that work as they designed and built that retaining wall. Um so uh so that's what we recommend there and that's actually an action uh uh requested that uh you contract the urban goal agency to contract with Beldine to do that work. Um and then over on West Cliff Drive um we suggest uh using uh looking at a land trust model uh for that site. uh Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation uh expressed some preliminary interest in that lot if it could be served by sewer. So this is the if you're going back past Morrison Park underneath I 84 and then you loop around past the Jar site. It's the wooded area that probably most people don't know is publicly owned. It's just wooded. It's never had any development. Um it's relatively flat with the only about 10 feet of difference between its low and high uh elevation and it's for any um perfectly developable uh except for that it doesn't have sewer. And so we're suggesting that uh the next steps would be uh to have gringling engineers who um have been the contract city engineer for the city of Hood River. So they're very familiar with our standards as well as they just generally have a specialization in water and sewer uh engineering. uh asked them to provide us with a cost estimate to extend uh sewer um to that site as kind of a preliminary feasibility step. Um I was hoping that Grling would have a cost estimate for providing that cost estimate by tonight. Uh they're seeing a little bit more time on that. Um so wanted to bring it to you as a an approach, but I'll actually have the the number at a future meeting.

Um with that, I'll answer any questions. house.

Um I don't have any issues with the West Cliff and and Sherman Avenue properties being sold. You know, in your recommendation, you said to provide feedback on proposed development strategy, and I'm trying to figure out what is our strategy, what sort of metrics are we going to track on an annual basis, whether that's the number of units delivered, the length of the affordability preserve, like what are our key performance indicators that let us know that we have been successful with our overall strategy. So, I'm wondering if that's the type of feedback that you were looking for today or if that's maybe um a conversation that we have uh at a different work session or even our um upcoming retreat.

Thank you for that question, Council Rivera. No, uh the strategy I was uh referring to in this is the strategy to uh kind of back burner um the downtown properties and focus on these two properties taking these discrete actions. Uh, Amanda, I see a motion about the partitioning. Do we need a motion about the sewer, too, or that we can just say or you're just going to do? I'm gonna have to bring that back because I don't have the cost yet. Oh, okay. That'll be a different day. Yeah. Okay. But feedback is appreciated.

I think we should move in that direction. Uh, similar to councelor Cavaleri, it I don't get paid, but I am the chair of CCHC, so like seems weird to not say that. So, there is a motion. We'll make the motion. Um, okay. I move to authorize uh $26,000 $26,534 for the agency to manage the partition of the lot 5900 property avenue using Bell Design. Moved by Stpina. Second.

Second by Pollson. Uh any further discussion on this? All in favor? Oh, sorry. Ben. Okay. All in favor? I opposed. Chair votes eye. Motion passes. And then we didn't need a motion for the the the the uh Westcliff. Great. So we we we did all that. Uh Capital Facilities, Annie, thank you also for you know the long preamble.

Good evening uh council members and mayor. Uh I am Annie Robinson, your city engineer. Uh I am here to actually just introduce uh Bel Design who is going to present the um storm water master plan that has been in production for many years with there is a long history that Stoner will uh give you a little brief history a little bit on you know back from 2011 I think is when it originally started. Um we are hoping to actually this tonight is just a draft just give a presentation on the storm water master plan and just the state of our storm water facilities and looking at capital improvement projects. Um the following uh meeting we are hoping or next council meeting we're hoping to provide the uh rate study or at least as uh councelor uh Pollson noted that oh when he thoroughly read that appendix K was not attached. It's because it is actually going to be presented. It's currently being worked on right now and actually may have some changes based off any discussion that might happen tonight. So, um, we we are just hoping for you to just enjoy and listen to and learn a little bit about storm water.

Thank you. All right. And this is, uh, Stonerbell and Corey Brown with Brown, uh, Belind.

So, we have a PowerPoint presentation. Yes. Yes. know which one it is. I download

this one right here. center.

Yeah. Okay. to this presenter.

Okay. Well, thank you very much, city council members and honorable mayor Blackburn. Uh we're excited to uh be here after uh such a long period of time with this project and present it to you. And I know you're super going to be super excited to hear all the little details about this. We'll try to get through this. Um so uh as um Annie mentioned uh we're we uh this two parts. Part one we're going to be going over uh just the background the methodology for modeling how we develop the projects uh the cost and prior prioritizing the projects and then the implementation schedule. Thanks. And then um and then part two will be in January where uh FCS will come and present their findings for the rate analysis, the SDC's um funding recommendations and how to implement that. So um this facilities plan was commissioned in 2011 along with a water system plan and a sewer system plan. Um it was awarded to Janet Corsel of Salmon River Engineering. Janet had done the original 2001 storm water plan. The idea was just to update that plan to show you know the new developments that had happened and probably uh implement some uh new technologies, some LI uh no net increase. Uh there was a lot of push back on the old plan. We had huge pipes, especially along Cascade, like five foot in diameter, and yet uh the um developments weren't allowed to add new any new water than what just was going into them. So it, you know, there was a disconnect there. Um, so anyways,

Janet worked on the plan, got it about 30% done, and then, uh, got ill around 2013 and eventually died from that that illness in 2014. So, um, we looked around for somebody that would pick up that project, asked a few different consultants. Nobody really wanted to build on somebody else's work. Um, the city asked if we'd do it. We said, "Yeah, we'd be happy to complete that project." We're working on that project and then about 20 thou I don't know it was the December 2015.

Okay. So December 2015, we had about 10 year of storm event hit this city. A lot of flooding and um public works went out and documented a lot of these areas of flooding. So uh you know public works director came and said, "Hey um does your model show that these are actually problem areas?" And uh we said, "Well, I'm I'm sorry, uh, Mr. Public Works Director, but the the the update to this plan was was based off of back in 2001, uh, the term that the computing power wasn't that great. So we would skeletonize systems um which is basically kind of uh you know creating a a model that is tries to duplicate things without actually modeling exactly what's there. Um so we only had trunk lines in the model and the resolution and the granularity were weren't anything um what current technology could do. So we said we don't really even we don't have models that go up into the basins up in there. We haven't modeled those uh pipes. So there was a scope change and there said uh city said no we we want a more complete uh comprehensive hydraulic model. So in 2017 we went back and redid a lot of the modeling. The draft was completed in 2018 went to the city to review. um I think was about 2019. Will, you may remember, um the city decided to go out on um for a comprehensive 10-year u rate study and SDC study for all of its utilities. So, that portion was taken out of our contract. We supplied information to FCS who was selected for that. And then that's kind of as far as

we knew about the rates, but we were still waiting for the city kind of to review the plan. Um, time went by, 2021, a COVID had happened or was happening. Uh, Oak Street came into the ownership of the city of Hood River, but they also took on some pretty outdated storm water system with Oak Street. Also, um the the full implementations and ramifications of the collapsed um corrugated metal pipe down in the waterfront was u we fully understood that. So those items were uh included into the storm water master plan in 21. There was an update to our scope and then um so that was updated and went back to public works. There was I might also say there was a lot of personnel overturned at public works during that time. Uh so anyways, uh then Adam called and said, "Hey, what's it going to take to get this storm water master plan completed?" And so we we updated him on uh where we were at. And um basically the 24 was just to finally do the financial component. Although there were a few more little, you know, additions to new projects for the plan. So hopefully this plan's going to get adopted and we're hoping early 2026. So the the objects the objective of this plan was to to solve flooding, ponding and other in inadequate storm water collection system features for the city. Um, also to develop in the 2017 uh scope modification, a much more detailed hydraulic and hydraological model that could be used um so the city could more

easily evaluate changes and impacts to the system that might be brought by developers or other project changes. um also be used as a guide for uh both for the city and for developers for future extensions and how the city was going to handle storm water as development primarily out on the west side occurred. And then finally, develop costs and then to prioritize which project should happen first based off their severity or uh the potential of damage that could happen with a big storm event. So I'm going to turn this over to uh Mr. Brown who uh has been involved in this project from the beginning and did most of the technical work as far as creating the models and getting the data put together. So, I get the boring part. I'll try to be quick here. If you have any questions at the end, go ahead and let me know. Um, so what you're looking at here is the drainage boundary. Um, any water that falls within the these bounds will go through the city, whether it's through a stream or part of the city's uh system here. Um, the green area is the study area. That's where this plan mostly focuses on. Um next slide here is what we kind of put together ba uh for the the existing system map. Um which is the first step of doing this. Um so the data that we used to create this map or to update this map um came from the city's provided mapping. It came from uh record drawings, inspection reports, and even some failed investigations by ourselves and the public's works department. Um the data

the data then was uh imported into GIS and then it that GIS was used as the base for the the model. Um next map here is the known problem areas. Uh there's 40 different problem areas throughout the the city of Hood River here. Um these are delineated into five different categories. There's failure, flooding, inadequate pipes, maintenance concerned, and ponding. A lot of the maintenance concerns were plugging a catch basins, and they weren't necessarily addressed in this plan. Um but there are a few that were uh most of the problem areas here were addressed directly in the plan or indirectly through the projects. Next here we've got a a map of the basins and how we delineated the the different basins. So the model was limited that we were working on. Um it only had the ability to uh use 200 nodes at a time. Uh so we had to kind of break up the the system um and bring it into different models. Um so what we're looking at here is what we kind of broke it up into um by water course or receiving water. So, we've got Phelps Creek over here in the purple. We got the green area, which is Henderson Creek. Uh, we've got Indian Creek down there in the red. The yellow both flow into the Hood River. And the blue and the light green there both flow into the um Columbia River. So, we did have to because of the limitations, we

did have to break up the Columbia basin there. So you get the two um each of the six basins we did model separately as I mentioned for both um the existing conditions and the future conditions. Um spa each of the basins I mean it's really hard to see on here. I don't know if you guys can zoom in on yours or not but each of those basins were um broken up into individual catchments. you'll see gray lines around those that indicate the the catchments. So the runoff was calculated in the model using several parameters and then applied to each of these catchments. Um I'll do next is going to go over the parameters we use for the runoff. There's five parameters. First is the slope and geometry. This affects the time through the catchment. Um greater the slopes the uh and shorter the catchment the faster the water moves through. Next is the soil. So this influences the volume and the rate of the runoff infiltrating into the soil. Um we've got a map here. So the blue area up in the heights area that has pretty good infiltration. As we move down we get not so good infiltration. Once you get down on the west Cascade area um that's got the worst infiltration there.

What about the light green? The light green and the red. So they're going to be more of a moderate infiltration kind of right between there. These are actually broken up into four different groups. You got an A group, B group, C group, and a a D group. D is kind of a a clay. The the A group is like a sandyish soil. Um and then you got those B and C. So the I believe the red there is the B group which is a lot of the a lot of the basin here.

Can you I guess I'm trying to I see the orange but I'm trying to understand like from street to street where the orange um is and the orange is the worst, right? Yeah. So the orange is the worst. And that's actually not a D. This is a CD. So, it's kind of a mix. Um, let me see if I can look that map up and see if I can get it.

Allive parameters. Yeah. In real life, you still have to test and find out. Exactly. So, we're looking at probably can't see it very well, but probably about um what is that about 18th west on Cascade?

Yeah. I don't know if people can. No, it's not going to let me

keep going.

Okay, so next is the impervious area which affects the volume of the runoff water. So we took um aerial photography uh basically it's the the city's mapping um the aerials and we looked at them and uh measured all the different impervious areas for different land use. Um once we got that information um we calculated the average percentage off of those um different areas and applied them to the the correlating uh land use type. Um so that average percent is then brought into the model to kind of indicate I mean basically runs the model to for the amount of runoff um here surface roughness. So the friction increases the travel time and this is usually based off the surface type and ground cover. uh the frict friction coefficients again were applied in general to imperous impervious surfaces. Last one is the tension and infiltration facilities. These decrease the volume of the runoff to the storm water system. This map here is showing you the the detention and infiltration facilities at um I believe the 2017 update. There could be a couple more on here. Uh the green and magenta are the ones we're looking at. Um yeah, so if these are designed

appropriately, if they're constructed and maintained correctly, they will reduce storm water to the system. Um, but these systems also fed, which we've seen in a few spots. So, since we're kind of working on that, this plan focuses on the conveyance of the system, um, we still want to provide pipelines out to these locations. So taking in cons into consideration that some of these might fail, we're sizing the pipeline at about 50%. The runoff amount is 50% going into these pipes rather than the full 100%. Um this one is going to show you the kind of the modeled conveyance system. It's basically the same map you just looked at earlier, but in that map you'll see the um different lines in there. The blues, the greens, greens are the pipes, the blues are the channels, um streams, things like that. Um at each end of the nodes or the links, there's some nodes. Um those represent kind of the manholes, the inlets, the outlets to the to the pipes. Everything happens basically at the nodes. You got the inflows coming into the the nodes, the outflows going out. Um yeah, and then the we we watch the lighting at each of those nodes or the search charge and that's where we can tell if a pipe needs to be replaced or something. So with that, I believe this is Stoner's turn. Thank you, Curry. So, we uh we have this model and we're running a 10-year storm

event through it. Um and so, how do we determine what the projects are? Um so, I'm going to talk about some of the project criteria and methodology. First, uh, you know, we could size the pipes to where, uh, they're they all have capacity for ste what we call steady state flow, which means that the pipes that the amount the pressure on the pipe would just be the water would come in right at the top of the pipe and flow out. Or we could design this system under kind of a searchcharge system where the amount of water is actually above the pipes, but that that weight of the water helps push the the water through the pipe. And so that's a searchcharge condition. It's a little bit more advanced type method because you don't have to replace as many pipes because, you know, if a pipe's 10t down there, 15t down there, who cares if it's flooded, but it doesn't ever reach the surface. and that actually helps push the water through the pipe. So we had a model that could actually uh calculate that solve those very complicated third order partial differential equations. So uh the criteria we use is okay if it gets within 2 ft of the surface then if it gets higher than that we're going to call it flooded and we're and we're going to replace the pipe. Um of course it has to be searchcharged. That's the other another criteria on a replacement. But then what size pipe are we going to put in? Are we going to just put that pipe right down to whatever that design flow is or we going to give it a little bit of headroom so that if there's I mean there's some through all these uh assumptions that Corey was talking about that we used to create the model. It's not going to be 100% uh correct. We may overestimate in some areas. We may underestimate some areas. So uh we use the 80% capacity. It's the

same um assumption that was used on the westside concept plan uh I think with ODOT I mean not OTAAC I think did the storm water on that and the city we worked with them on on this criteria. It's an iterative process. So you know you run the model and you got flooding all over the place it looks like. And so, you know, we start in by upsizing pipes where the flooding is, but that just puts sends the problem downstream to the next pipe that didn't have a problem. So, it's a process of increasing pipes. Eventually, get to the bottom. And then you realize, oh, well, all these pipes upstream now are only running half full. So, you got to go back upstream and and reduce the pipes to get the optimum size. After the iterative process, we looked at our whole system and said, "Okay, well, that's great. We got all these pipelines we have to um rebuild or replace." And a lot of them we realized were going, you know, they're par parallel pipes going down from south to north going down the hill of the Columbia. And we thought, well, gee, if we if we shunted the water over to this pipe system, yeah, it's we're going to have to make it bigger than than what our model showed. But we save having to tear up streets and do you know two times we can just do it once. Uh and then we also kind of looked at like what streets would be easier to shut down and not cause as much much problem. Uh so that was another uh thing that we looked at to create these these plans. Also, there were some systems that were running through backyards and uh so pipelines in backyards or depending on storm water through backyards is is not good. So, we were like, okay, we can shunt water over to get it in the system that's in a street.

Um and then for new infrastructure, we use the the 50%. So, as we're going the the development code says no and increase. So, a development has to work and and try to deal with their water on site. But, um, if that's the case, then we would have and and that's what we designed our pipe system for, we would have very small pipes out there because basically we'd just be conveying what would naturally run off under un undisturbed area before development. Um, so our development code's very good. This no net increase is is what we want to do. But as Corey had mentioned, uh we have seen failures. Most of them are privately owned and maintained. And so sometimes these systems fail and then we were dealing with water that we didn't expect to. Um the way we determine the slopes of the pipes for sizing them was just based off whatever the general slope was out in the area. So we came up with our capital improvement projects. Turns out for ex the ex existing conditions uh about 25% of our system was insufficient uh for capacity resulted in about 32,000 ft of pipe that needed to be replaced about 13,000 ft of pipe uh that we needed to add. Some of this was our shunting over pipes. Um, and also Henderson Creek had many areas that needed to be uh will need to be rechanled a little bit better to convey um to con to convey the the flows. Mostly it's in the shallow area. There's an area there in Henderson Creek that during that 2015 flood, they called it Henderson Lake. We have pictures of people in uh boats out there and then water right up two sliding glass doors.

Um, so I mean it was a thing. Um, 37 projects with a great deal only $39 million to do those projects. Also development projects. So these are are kind of conceptual because we don't know exactly what the development's going to look like in all the areas that still need to be developed to full buildout. And that was our f our future condition was full buildout. Um so resulted in um some pipes that was existing that we knew were going to have to be replaced to convey the water that's going to come off those new developments and about 32,000 guess estimate feet of new pipe that would be put on developers and about 33 pro projects. uh about a third of the cost and even though it's the similar projects and similar um somewhat lengths is just that it's a lot cheaper to build new on undeveloped areas than coming into a developed area ripping things out and then replacing pipes. So also we had one little maintenance project. It it didn't need to be upsized. it just was the pipe had deteriorated. Um, and that that was $165,000 for 265 ft of replacement. So, this is our um capital improvements program and I apologize because uh well, we were practicing this presentation. We could zoom in and out within the slides, but we we can't figure out how to do that with this program. So, I can't zoom in, but um it is colorcoded and uh the pipes are colored depending on if it's a rep if it's capital improvement replacement or if it's a c if it's a new pipe that needs to be done with capital

improvement. There's also a color designation for the uh reaneling and then also for develop develop projects to be done by developers for both new pipes or or upgrading the pipe, upsizing the pipe. There's uh color designations for that. And then we have some area out at Frankton where we're going to need to get rid of the ditches and put some pipelines in. Uh so that's a channel to pipe and um and our replacement project. The uh there's also shading going on in that u schematic. And the shading kind of represents uh who will be doing the projects and what kind of project they are. So there's a a shading for uh maintenance type project which we only had the one and then for capital improvement project that's the solid shading. Uh then we have uh two kinds of capital improvement projects that we're going to link to other type of work in the city. One is uh pavement replacement projects. So they will happen uh where there's places for the storm water system to be upgraded that also is slated to have pavement pre replacement going on. We'll do those projects together. So the timing is based off the um pavement replacement and then there's some pipe also that's in urban renewal project areas and so those CIPs are slated over for the urban renewal and then we have another uh hatching shading this for developer projects. So, uh, part of what we were doing here was to

just for So, any of these, um, these maps here are in the plan that you should have received. Um, you can look at them. This map specifically is a figure 51. Figure that's probably important for you guys to take a better look at. Thank you. Yeah, don't forget.

Yeah. Okay. Um so the part of part of this uh criteria method methodology and developing these programs the next thing is to prioritize them uh to uh determine what you know what should be the first projects and why. So um the first priority was for existing conditions those areas are actually flooding with uh our design storm that we've actually observed a flood. So those have the the highest priority. Um the second priority is um areas that um maybe they flooded but um they didn't really create any the the the damage potential is is pretty small. we didn't see any damage from that 20 uh 2015 storm and or our model showed that it's flooding and you know whether it actually flooded or not we you know not all flooding was reported. Um so that would be the the tier two and then the the last set of projects as far as priority are just ones where we show we got problems but it's at buildout conditions. So they they go to the uh the end of the line so to speak. So, um, we split all these projects over a 20-year period into, uh, four different five-year periods. Um, capital improvement projects one through three, uh, since this plan took, uh, 14 years to get to you. Those projects have either been completed or already done or are in the process of being completed, represents about $10 million worth of out of that 39. Um so then um so we kind of start here with our our CIP 4 through 11. Uh that represents about 6.5 million worth of projects for the next five years and

then moving on in fiveyear chunks. So starting in roughly uh 2030 uh we move on to the next projects. Uh each project after going down uh all the way to the end of the 20-year horizon is roughly five and a halfish type million dollars per project. Um then um and then the uh urban renewal the the CIPs that are linked to the urban renewals will be when those urban renewal projects happen and as I mentioned the pavement replacement projects will be linked into then them. Um so um detailed descriptions of each one of these projects of that are in this uh you know colored map of the city that looks like a bunch of colored worms laying all over it. Detail details of each one of those projects is in chapter five of the draft um storm water capital facilities plan. has exact boundaries from here to here, exact links and the reason for each actually each project. Um and uh I think that in your packet you have this link uh to the draft facility. So with that um we are open for questions.

Thanks. Thanks Doner. Welcome back. Thank you. Can you go back to slide 25, please?

I think so. Let's see.

Uh 25 right here. Um okay. So, in two slides prior, you showed us uh the areas that were the worst in orange, right? And so I wrote down the address like West Cliff, Hope, Cascade. And what I'm trying to understand is like how how um how does the plan prioritize the most vulnerable neighborhoods first? Now, a couple slides later, you go through where we're at. And I'm trying to understand when I look at this map um and if I'm following it correctly, this little circle where I saw orange, I'm trying to understand what here has what has already taken place.

So you're you're talking about the going back right hereward forward forward forward. Talking about the soil, right? Yeah. Oh, the soil. Yeah. So this place right here. Yeah. Right here. So the orange is like the worst. And so I assume that's the area of highest priority. That's what I'm trying to understand. How does the plan prioritize the most vulnerable neighborhoods first in in all of this?

So So these this is a soil map. It comes from the um soil conservation service natural resource um agency, USDA. Um and this is a a a soil classification map. So, it's only showing how imperous the soils are. So, uh like the blue is a very open sandy uh type soil. So, it it takes a lot of water before it runs off. Okay.

And then the the orang-ish, that's kind of the worst soils in town. And what what that means is that there's a lot less not much water goes into the ground. most most of it runs off just naturally. Okay.

And so it's not necessarily where the worst flooding happens. Okay. It's just kind of you would think, you know, per square foot or per acre that will generate under natural conditions uh more runoff than say the blue area. The blue area under natural conditions won't generate hardly any flow off of it. It'll all go into the soil. I guess that is what I'm trying to understand like out of all everything that you're showing and thank you for being here. What is the area that we need to pay attention the most like that needs to be replaced sooner rather than later like how are we prioritizing that? So when I looked at slide uh 25 that talks about the methodology, I'm just trying to understand how are we prioritizing the most vulnerable neighborhoods that have already been identified as an area of potential failure.

Yeah. And the failure one, there was only one failure that was the subsidi subsidance under Hood River Distillers. Okay. That pipe was completely understood. Okay. Um the other stuff is ponding, flooding, and those are failures of the system too, but not structural failures. So that's the worst spot. That was the worst. Yeah, that's the worst spot. Okay. And and th that that project um is already well underway. It's actually kind of being finished up.

Okay. But they in 2015 during that roughly 10-year event, the city did go out and identify problem areas. Now, some of those problem areas were just caused because catch basins plugged and then it flooded. So, that wasn't anything that needed it just needed on and m you know, maintenance, uh, but not new piping necessarily. but other areas and that's what we used to to prioritize which project should happen first were those

physically we saw them we documented and we have pictures um projects but but then again like you can see how you know the the city is higher in the south and lower in the north and so a lot of the pipelines are going north to south so we could we could we could actually have areas where those those stars are shown all along the line. But if we determined it was that that was a horrible road to tear up, you know, say that was 13th. It's like we don't want to tear up 13th,

you know, then we shunted flows over to a road that was had less traffic on it and wouldn't be it would it will still be a pain for that neighborhood, but it won't for the general population will have less impact on it. Okay. Okay. Um so slide 10 is where we know now current problem areas and this is what is being addressed now actively. Slide 10. Yeah. So um Corey, how many of these were are do we think would be addressed in the first five years? Put you on the spot.

I'd have to go back and look at it, but I think a lot of them are addressed in the first five years. Um you could get that to us later. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to just better understand is how are we prioritizing these areas? And then um slide 27, you talk about new development. And then this is a question for staff as we work through um module number four of the code audit. Is that something that we does this plan intersect with module 4 work? and will we need any sort of code changes to fully implement? Thank you, council. I don't know that off top of my head, but we will research and get back to you. Okay.

Thank you. Um my next question is around slide 29. So, if you can go to 29. Yeah, right here. Um Oh, no, I already asked that question. That was it. Thank you.

So, real quick for priorities, um just kind of reiterate here. Um so looking at the map here there are different uh numbers associated with each project of course the lower numbers are going to happen first. So when we were looking at these projects we try to um look at the ones that had issues first. So like Stoner mentioned earlier the highest priority was given to the projects with failed pipes. So like the waterfront area that's uh that should be CIP3 u but that is almost done and then after that would be the history of flooding that has caused damage. Um so those would be at the next highest priority. Then we go from there to the the modeled facilities that are showing any of the flooding or searchcharged those come next in the priority. And then the lowest priority is anything that um has flooded or searchcharged at buildout condition but not at the existing conditions.

Does that help? It does. And what I was trying to figure out is for new development like in Westside right there may or may not does this work take place for that let's say non-commercial builder for example. um where they're ch you know what is their water retake going to be like I'm not not a water gal so I'm not sure I'm asking the right question but for west side and there's new development like what sort of process would they go through I think I can help answer okay [laughter]

so um we are currently updating our Hood River engineering standards and chapter 8 is our um storm storm water uh I guess management and requirement. And so part of that is that single family homes typically still have to provide on-site storm water and as well as other developments. Um there are thresholds, you know, 300 square feet uh sorry 3,000 square feet of imperous um area will trigger storm water management where you're going to have to provide to 5 10 year 25 year. Um so all of that said uh this the west western side this work is important for providing a continent a a a conveyance network as buildup occurs and so you know the west side there's a lot of people that are just are there and if you're mimicking natural conditions with your development then that's great let's keep doing that but you know that's not always achievable especially in areas where there is uh no infiltration and you'll have to provide a way to safely convey the storm water to the safest route, the Columbia, the Hood River, or you know, making sure we're protecting our natural resources like Henderson Creek and Phelps Creek, and we're making sure we're not taking away flows from those basins. So a lot of um this work is very important to also update our development code and our engineering standards and so everyone can be in alignment of you know making sure our environment is safe and protective.

Yeah. Other questions? Grant

might not want to go too far. Um I have a related question to that exact explanation. Um earlier So you say that um a bunch of the capacity increases over underestimated what the capacity will be eventually um based on the capital improvement program. Um there's assumptions uh in going in and sizing it based on estimates and whatnot. Do we know based on those areas mentioned what those maximum capacities are based on per area? might maybe a different way of an phrasing that question might think about how you're saying that.

Yeah. Uh in in each different area they have different catch basins, different sizes. Yeah. Yeah. Different catchments, different size pipes in there. Do did we map that in GIS to say this this is the maximum capacity for storm water in this particular catch basin area? I I think I understand that. So, uh, saying that each catchment has a limited amount of impervious area, amount of runoff that it can go that can be based off of our system that's there. And and going to be put in. Yes.

And I think that's kind of what the flooding aspect is. Like that's what the results of the model. And let's be honest, a hydraulic and a hydraologic model, an H&H model that these that Belle has derived um and modeled is a model, right? It's not perfect. Um, so say let's for example today you're witnessing a a storm. Uh, we were just looking up right before this presentation how how many inches in this 24-hour period have fallen and it was like 1.2 in which if you look back in our code that's a little bit more than the water quality storm. Water quality storm is always like a mandatory this is what we are treating for development. So imper any water that's growing on impervious surface uh that water will be captured and treated. Um and so when we're looking at like a catchment I think um the areas that are that are in a way undersized are probably the conveyance.

So um there's two thing there's two components to storm water. One is volume and one is capacity or peak

peak volume. So um so each catch catchment with the zoning we basically have say we can say this is the amount of runoff that we're estimating is going to come off for per acre for this zoning. But that still doesn't tell us what the pipe sizes need to be because that depends on the slope and some other factors because that affects the hydrograph and it's that peak flow that we have to convey through our pipes. So even though you could have two subcatchments that have the same amount of impervious, you know, same amount of roads and roofs, but if one's steeper, one's flatter, the steeper one's going to need a bigger pipe to actually convey that um that flow without unless it has detention or something that can, you know, we call it cutting off the peak or attenuating it. So I I don't know if that was what you were asking. Yeah, it's related. So, as as we are going through development code update and potentially looking at zoning or development or anything related to that, are there technical requirements about storm water that city council is going to need to know building standards, lock coverages, etc. that will affect storm water runoff and capacities that are built into this plan that we would need to know if we're going to touch any of those other things related to this plan.

Um, changes could affect yes could affect don't need to answer now but that that's something we might need to know in the future more impervious area and and capacity constrained spots should be something that's noted um as your kind of takeaway development technically how much and where

uh speaking of flooding I know that um you know this process has been going on for Uh the storm water uh management plan has been going on for a while. Um and I know that you know FEMA just was going through updating their flood maps and was wondering if that was a component of of this plan at all. Yeah. Um, we did look at, um, FEMA's, you know, their latest stuff, uh, which is based off LiDAR is much better than the, uh, the old maps, even though it affected people that weren't affected. And then there were winners and losers.

Um, we we did look at those plus we looked at other independent studies like SOP for Phelps Creek for example. Uh there was extensive modeling done when that Walmart tried to go in down there. So I mean we looked at those, you know, hydraulic calculations. We looked at our own. Um it really didn't affect most of this plan because most of this is all well above those major water courses. And so whether they're a foot higher or lower or whatever doesn't really affect how you know our flow into it. But there is a covert there on uh um Country Club. Well, it's actually on Frankton, I guess, along Country Club that it's some some uh studies show it under capacity, some show it over capacity. it was um so we kind of chose the middle ground and uh but other than that I'm not aware of any of I mean we did look at all of those but you know Indian Creek is way down there doesn't really affect our model except for the fact we know we can put water down there has it has capacity

um we did look at the studies for Phelps Creek that was one of the um plans that we can uh we did our own analysis to try to figure out how much runoff's going through Phelps Creek. We compared it to their analysis and we were pretty close. Um we were a little bit less which indicated their plan said that that Colbert needed to be replaced. Our plan is putting it right under replacement. We did make a note in our plan that that should be looked at in the future. Um, so we're so close, but we didn't do anything with it. Thanks, y'all.

Annie, can you just talk for a minute about next steps? This topic will come back to council and at some point they will adopt this plan.

Correct. Uh so next uh council meeting will be the rate study which I believe will incorporate the uh capital improvements dollars into our uh utility rates and um I don't not so much SDC's but utilities. So that is something that um you will get to hear a presentation from FCS next month. And so if there are any if you get a chance to I think look further into this potential plan um if there are any changes in terms of you know financial changes that we see that we don't want to be incorporated you know that's I don't I think that's something that we can discuss after the the rate study comes out but now that you know and see what are what are we looking at in terms of the the veins of our of our city and how water flows throughout our city and where we have problem areas. I think that'll help give you some understanding of, you know, why we need to do a lot of upgrades in our storm water. And um, you know, personally, I really want to see a lot more treatment of our storm water. Um, this is only talking about advanced capacity. I'd like to see more um, incorporation of storm water treatment, which will go in, you know, kind of two birds, one stone situation where you get some creative, you also get some. So yeah,

thank you Annie. And I just want to note as Annie said when we started that this has been a really long decadesl long process. This is a generational project. Um and so uh today was your first blush at this first time you had seen this gigantic packet. So um please review stuff before the next meeting. You know um over Christmas when you're you know when you're stuffed uh and you need to sit on the sofa, take that packet and take another look at it. Mark up the pages. bring the questions to me so that Annie and team are prepared um to respond as things come up. Um and I've already let Dustin know that you've had questions about how this intersects with code update. So, we'll be able to share that information. Um and then you will see this again uh sometime in 2026. Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you, Annie. Moderate income revolving loans.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. I have uh one more housing uh related uh project to bring to you. Um this one also to support the Big River Community Land Trust. Um you know any uh funding that we can bring to them uh to help their project pencil uh means less money that they need to get through the sale of those homes and so it loses affordability. Um the state's moderate income revolving loans fund uh is essentially like a builtin single parcel urban renewal district financed through the state of Oregon. So um uh eligible projects which can serve uh incomes up to 120% of area median income. It's really unique in that that it serves that moderate income. Uh can receive grant uh funds towards their project. Uh those grants are financed by the state of Oregon at 0% interest and then the loan is paid back by the uh essentially the tax increment or the taxable value that's generated from that property. So, um, long story short, essentially it's an urban renewal district with a single property in it. Um, so Big River Community Land Trust looking for any, uh, you know, all the sources of, uh, uh, funding that they can, uh, obtain has asked us to look into a moderate income revolving loan fund program here locally. Um, tonight is just an introduction of the idea. Um, I'll bring you back and enact if you want to move forward with it. I'll bring you back an enacting ordinance which will have all the details. Um, but mostly I'm just asking is this something broadly in concept the city council is interested in pursuing? Uh, if so, um, dissimilar from the last grant program I was talking to you about, which would be very low burden on the, uh, city and the agency, this one is actually pretty

administratively burdensome. Uh but there is an al uh there is 5% admin over overhead for the sponsoring jurisdiction and another 1% um that's allocated to the county assessor to help with the mechanism that's involved as well. Um so the idea is to have the urban renewal agency it is essentially the cash flows are just like tax increment financing uh administer this uh on behalf of the city and um and in return receive that um overhead uh compensation um so that this isn't become a burden on the um taxing on the uh on our urban renewal districts themselves. the program income will offset the cost to administer this. Um, so I'm uh all I'm asking today is does that sound generally good and um should we uh work on an acting ordinance and bring you more information in January?

I'm trying to get a sense of the scale of this item like I could ask what's the 5% going to be or like single parcel like is this is this tens of thousands of dollars a year in TIFF or Yeah, this is significant. Um, so we've estimated that for Big River Community Land Trust project on Avalon Way probably will be about 845,000 to 945,000 um in a grant that would be financed from the tax increment that it's going to generate. And that's for 45 units. That was Yeah, I think I at that point you were estimating 45. So, and now I think they're looking at 42. So, it might be a little less.

So, like 20,000 a unit. Am I doing that math right? It's a little bit too late for me to do that math on my I mean that's real thing. That's a million bucks. Yeah, it's real money and 5% of that uh would be sufficient to uh offset the urban renewal agency for I think going through this process. Uh not to mention uh once we set up the structure um you know uh other entities could take advantage of this as well. Now like our other urban renewal activities does this beggar the library and the parks and the

Yep. Yeah. Um but where you know an urban renewal district like the west side has a bunch of existing development and all those overlapping districts are on day one forgoing what would be their 3% increase. This is truly if this if if this project doesn't get the money, it's not going to exist. And so it's truly a a pure but for but for this uh or this um investment. Yeah. the tax the tax you're going to be zero either way. Great. Thank you. Yeah, Amanda.

Um, yeah, I'm kind of similar to Paul having hard time like understanding the numbers of this like how much is a loan and then the tax increment. I'm thinking like it's going to take a really long time. Like taxes aren't that much to pay off this loan. So, like do you have like an example loan number and then like payment rep and like I don't know. It just is confusing to me.

Yeah. Let me um so 945,000 uh divided by 45 units. It's about 21,000 uh per unit. And so that is and how we estimated that dollar amount was each one of those homes is going to um create tax increment that will pay be $21,000 over 10 years. So it's a 10-year repayment period. But does do taxes go up that much? Like so it's not 21,000 every year, right? Over 10 years it will cumulatively equal 21,000.

Yeah, that still seems I mean I don't own a home. I own a partial property, but my property taxes don't seem like it would take it seems like it would take a long time to get Anyway, if it works, that's great. Um, I just Yeah, a hard time wrapping my head around. Yeah. So, 20 21,000 divided by 10 obviously 2,100 and it and but also keep in mind it goes up 3% every year, right? So, it's like total tax is not just like here's the tax base and then the extra. It's not just the extra division because it's a brand new thing. It's all going because it's a brand new thing. It's the whole thing. So then the city wouldn't get any taxes for 20 years. But then in 20

10 years 10 years, sorry. And and not just the city, but the parks and wreck and the schools and all that. and want to um state a give notice of an actual conflict of interest due to a business relationship with Bridge River Community Land Trust. Great. Thank you.

I think this is pretty cool. Um I'm in full support and uh thanks for looking at all these different avenues for which we can get, you know, affordable housing built. Um, I know it's difficult for some of these of our our other, you know, tax entities to to hear these kinds of things. Um, but if we are gonna have people working in this town and what you know what I'm not gonna go on a huge uh soap box about that, but I think this is a great opportunity to do something like that where um and it's worth the forgoing that tax revenue uh to have people that need to live here uh to service you know the you know the the jobs that we are difficult to hire for right now and whatnot. I think it makes complete sense.

I'm hearing a yes. I'm saying yes. Ben uh hard agree uh but um did agree. Got

supposed to hard now. Um did have a question though. I thought there was um um was talking about earlier that uh half of the development would be used would uh be funded through the lift funds or rather half of the units would use lift funds. Um, if that's the case, it says if a if awarded lift funds, a MEL grant could complete the development's funding stack, would the Merurl grant apply to all of the buildings or just half of them in this case? I'm wondering like how tied to that other funding this would be in terms of like, well, you only used Lyft for half of No. Okay.

Yeah. Lyft doesn't pay for 100%. Um, so, uh, I'm not talking about like 100% funding. I'm talking about use on 100% of the buildings.

Yeah. So, if you think of it as like a bar chart like it's or it's filling up and we need to we need to fill all the way up to 100% and plus this Merurl plus construction loans that are going to be paid back through the sale of these homes. They're all in the funding stack. And this could be possibly enough to get when combined with all other sources including Lyft could get this to be a go. Um you're not going to say that um Lyft was Lyft paid for those five homes but it didn't pay for those four homes. It's all part of the funding stack that Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Is there is there a deadline on this one as well? I know that we have a deadline for the other type of funding, but I'm wondering if there's any sort of deadline. Um, there isn't um specifically, but I did hear um when uh when the state uh because of the federal Medicaid and Medicare cuts that the state might be looking at pots of money that are unallocated to um um to pull from uh at the next legislative session. And so anything unallocated could be a threat. And so we really do we want to get these allocated locally before they could be repurposed.

Thank you. And I didn't look at the funding, but these are these not these aren't lottery fund dollars either. Okay, they're completely separate bucket. Okay. Um yeah, I appreciate the work and also um Big River for helping us be a guinea pig as we pilot uh additional funding. So, thank you all. Sounds like a yes. Carry on. Um, okay. Great. Uh, oh, is it a motion? Okay. I thought it was just a temperature. I move that the city council directs staff to initiate development of a uh Merurl and contract with the Wait. Moved by. Is that right, Will? Is it contract with the

contract development of a mural in contract with the urban renewal agency for its administration? Moved by Stpina. Second. Second by Mitchell. Discussion. All in favor? I I post chair votes eye. Motion passes. Hard agree. [laughter] Uh city manager comments.

I'm so sorry, but I have a ton of stuff for you. Uh I think it's all excellent. Much of it is excellent news. Uh a couple uh fire updates. First of all, the ambulance service plan, which is something you haven't had to work on, but the county has worked very hard, as has our police chief and one of our or sorry, our fire chief and our captain. um it has been approved by the Oregon Health Authority. That's a big accomplishment. Um so now the county is currently working on the draft ordinance with their legal department to um finish that up. That should be done by the end of January. So very pleased about that. Uh also uh our um both our fire and police. The county has been working on a 911 computer aided dispatch project and that is getting um near completion. Um, we're all looking forward that's going to it's tough like software upgrades and going to a whole new system is bumpy, but I'm really hopeful that we will see new data and new efficiencies down the road. So, spare a thought for our colleagues in the county who are working so hard on that project. Um, two other fire things. One is I talked to the recruiter today and our fire chief recruitment is going well. Um, they've had a good response and they are starting um, uh, initial phone calls and initial interviews with uh, applicants. So, hope to move forward with that. We're hoping to have interviews with our finalists in January. Uh, and then of course it is December and that means firetruck parades. In fact, my while we've been sitting here, my husband texted me that the fire trucks ran by on our road. Uh, so I missed it, but it will be in Hood River on Wednesday, December 10th at 6 PM. So, I think all the streets that they go through are um I saw it on a Facebook post somewhere. So, they're available online, but if you uh you know see and hear fire trucks this week that that I'm hopeful that is why um other things, Scott, just a note, I think I've shared with the with you, but I want to publicly say that um we have been approved by ODOT for a for

ODOT and DLCD for a historic highway streetscape. This would be Cascade from exit 62 to Oak Street. This is a big big big deal and you might remember I had said this is going to take forever. Department of Justice for the state will need to review it. They've actually done their work very quickly. So ODOT and staff are reviewing what they call a mini RFP process. That's a um they're going through that piece right now and they should pick a consultant um in early January or sometime in January 2026 and the project will be underway probably starting in March or by March. Um, so that's probably at least six months, maybe a year before I thought it would actually start. So that's a major body of work. Um,

for our planning group, but you will also be very involved with this and it has a major outreach component. Does this swamp the huge workload of the development code for your department? Dustin

uh it we will it'll it'll be a burden but something that we anticipated in this fiscal year also some part of the TGM grant it uh it does come with consults so we will have be a part of the project team uh it will be good it also travels through your westside urban renewal uh district so I am um hoping that and counting on your urban renewal administrator to also help lead this project. So you're able to bring some more resources to it. So I guess help me understand does that put a pause on our potential development code or is this something we can do simultaneously? We'll do simultaneously.

Yep. I was hoping that we could finish code first, but if this opportunity is coming, we are going to jump on it and get it done. Um and then uh Senator Christine Drezen is will be in town tomorrow. I think he sent you all a note. uh what's that um 12 and a half hours from now uh meeting with the leadership team from staff and if any of you are able to join us we'll be in this room uh and then uh she will be presenting to you at one of your meetings in January just to update on what's happening a little bit about her she's new to being our um senator uh so little bit about herself what kind of projects she's working on what she hears from us in December and hopefully can update us on in January so looking forward to that um and then my last um question for you is uh I've had questions about elected officials, you uh city council members um creating social media accounts um as an official like as a council member or as a so I've talked to Dan it's a pretty standard I mean it is not unknown so there are models if you wanted us to spend some time Dan and I could research social media policies for elected officials so it would be an official city account for an elected official Um, so records retention, you know, public comment, how that's handled. Um, those pieces. Uh, Dan and I could work on that and bring you a policy sometime in 2026. I see two.

That's face. Tell me about the face. I was just saying, is that required? That sounds like something I I want to be accessible to people, but I really would not want to have to engage in social media way um with constituents. So, is it like an optional thing or Oh, for sure. I'm not assigned. This should not be homework yet. Hard. But I mean I mean seriously like you know I feel a little conflicted. It's because I I would like to reach out on social media and I don't think it's appropriate to use my personal account and everything. So I'm super in favor of this.

Likewise. And I think it's just opportunities for us to um leverage like the city's social media presence and that we can do the same in addition to um you know we can all quickly do a 30 second recap or or whatnot to inform folks um and that we're doing so based on you know our our roles. So I appreciate the conversation. Okay. Anything else? I can bring that. I forgot one last thing which is uh earlier today I parked my car on a street in downtown and I went to use the app and the app reminded me to free parking started today. So enjoy your downtown.

Thanks. Thank you. Committee reports. Anna, nothing from me. Ben, nothing from me. Uh MCAC will meet this next coming Thursday. we did not have a meeting on uh in November and then all the other committees that I'm a part of you know same discussions are taking place around ICE and what do um elected officials do what is the state doing you know what sort of support at a federal level and and whatnot so those are all my conversations nothing for me Doug nothing for me grant

uh the region one act met a week ago um chair you were from the county and I carpooled into that. So, we were there in person. Um they're starting to work on their next decade um CIP um which will be going to the the STIP uh for the next few years. That's those projects are pretty well baked. Uh but they would like input from us on stuff starting in like 31 or so. So if we have any input on future projects or stuff to for me to take back to the group to share, now is the time for that input and ideas on things. Um they have a couple of main priorities. Their top two are safety and state of good repair. um their criterias generally are if it's if the projects are reasonable, urgent, if it's has a a regional state benefit and it's alignment with the uh general other OTC priorities primarily consisting of safety and state of good repair.

Seems like we want to have something queued up, right? So that we like get our fair share eventually or what's the strategy, Grant?

We haven't talked about it. So we can talk about it. Um, I just think it's important that in whatever happens that it we're really clear that title six of the civil rights rights act of 1964, which is plain language framing, that we need to make sure that we have information that is available in English and in Spanish, any type of federal funding. Um, this specific title comes into play. uh anything that residents are required to pay such as tolls or any of that that we ensure it's both in English and in Spanish.

Did you want that as feedback for the step? I think for all of it. I mean anything that's happening that we ensure that there is communication that is happening in English and in Spanish whether that is public notices and announcements, public meetings and hearings, tolling policies, you know, any sort of construction updates, complaints and feedbacks, whatever is written in English that it should be also written in Spanish. Okay. Uh that okay. If there is concurrence from the rest of council, I can take that back as feedback for ODOT. I don't know how that fits in the CIP, but

Well, you asked for feedback and so I'm just saying that any sort of project that has any sort of federal or even state funding that there's certain compliant pieces that we have to follow or that should be followed because it's part of the Civil Rights Act. And when it comes to some of the other work I know you're aware of and have been on those email chains, it's important that we have information in both English and in Spanish. Why Spanish? Our census data tells us that Spanish is one of the most predominantly spoke languages here in our region and that we have communication updates and all of that in English and in Spanish.

Yep. Communicated. Is there consensus from the rest of city council for me to pass that along? This is an important question. and I'd like to talk about this at an earlier hour. So, Abigail, can you make a note that we will actually agendaize this? Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Anything else, Grant? Amanda,

um I did go to Energy Council meeting last week um and just have a couple updates from them. They finally got their money from a grant, uh a FEMA grant that they got approved for in like 2021, but they finally got the money, so yay. Um and that is they're working on energy resilience and mapping and micro grids and um and one of the good things about that one is that it's not Pacific Power only. It can be any company. So I think it makes it easier to work with integrate all the parts of the county and multiple counties. Um and then another thing that they're working on is they where they got a grant for technical assistance for micro grid feasibility and home assessments. Um, so a bilingual person is going to um do home visits and connect folks with energy assistance programs to help weatherize and make homes energy efficient, which is exciting. That's all I have.

Thank you. Council comments. Amanda, nothing for me. Grant, uh, there's going to be a bridge authority event at the Lightwell Hotel on whatever day that is, uh, Thursday. um to sign the record of decision. A bunch of dignitaries will be there. Yay. Big deal. So that's that's it. So big deal. Yay. Yay them. Doug Nice and hard now. Anna,

uh just a reminder too about the parks and wreck pool thing. I think it's uh Wednesday night at six o'clock at um yeah, Wednesday, December 10th. Uh that's the last uh community open house for the 2025 pool option study. It'll be at the middle school from 6:00 to 7:30 on Wednesday night this week.

All right, we have an agenda couple executive sessions. I'm going to read the script. The city council will now meet in executive session pursuant to OS192.661E 661E Edgar to conduct deliberations with persons designated by the governing body to negotiate real property transactions and OS192.661H Harry to consult with council concerning the legal rights and duties of a public body with regard to current litigation or litigation likely to be followed. 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 executive session, the city council meeting will be adjourned and