City Council - Regular Meeting

City Council work session meeting to order. I would like to call on Jeff Jacobs, Emergency Management Coordinator, and Jeff Hunsinker, Public Works Director, to present the topic.

All right, good evening. Good evening. If there's anyone I haven't met yet, I'm Jeff Jacobs. I'm the emergency management coordinator. I've got a presentation here for you. Jeff and I have a presentation here for you about basically the status of the emergency management program at the city and where it's at right now, what we've been doing, what we've accomplished. And I tried to keep it simple, high level, not too many slides. This time I have a tendency to talk, but we're perfectly happy to answer any kind of questions you guys got along the way. So bringing up the slides right now. So should I just? OK. There you go. I'll tap. All right. So today's topics, I broke it down into just four topics for you. We'll do an executive summary, basically like what is this presentation about? And then we'll go into, I've got basically a slide for each of the types of plans that we've created for the city, and then kind of a status, a more detailed look at the status of the readiness of the city, and that includes the plans, but it includes the entire program, really. And then what we're looking forward to in the future. All right, so executive summary, just kind of an overview of the entire presentation here. Where did we come from, where did this start? February 2003 was the federal mandate, which was Homeland Security Policy Directive Five, which kind of started this whole effort at the federal level to get all cities, counties, states on the same page with the National Incident Management System. That's kind of a starting point and a trickle down from there. If you look at the timeline on the slides for you, it kind of basically comes down from the federal level, adopted national incident management system, the state then adopted their version of that, or they adopted the policy to use that, I should say. And then it trickles down to the county, and the county also started incorporating the National Incident Management Plan and the Incident Command System into their own plans. And then that leads down to the city of McMinnville. In November of 2021, the city received ARPA funding, which is basically disaster funding from the federal government, and that's what paid for my position. So just to be clear, my position up until this point has not, depending on how you look at it, has not really cost the city anything out of its own coffers because the ARPA funding had paid for 100% of my salary. We also... As soon as, or as I was being hired at that time, there was a grant that was secured for the writing of an emergency operations plan, so I oversaw the hiring and the development of the plan, or the hiring of a contractor, and then worked with the contractor, Stacy Burr, to develop an emergency operations plan in conjunction with the, city leadership. So that a plan is not an emergency operations plan is like a high level plan. I'll talk about it here in another slide. But basically, it's not something that I would write by myself. This is something that is a kind of a team effort. But in any case, using ARPA funding and that grant, we started the process of creating our own emergency operations program. plan and emergency preparedness program because less than a year later that was when the fire department left and became the fire district. Formerly that type of planning and preparation had been handled by the fire department. as they separated, we needed to kind of take that over. And so that's what I've been doing since I was hired in 2003. It's kind of fleshing out the plan, I mean, fleshing out the program and working with contractor and with the city leadership to develop the different plans at the different levels that we will talk about here just in a minute. Okay, moving on. So executive summary, where are we at with the program? We're in a good spot. Okay, we do have, The council had set some goals for us, including adopt the national incident management system, use the ICS system, update the emergency operations plan, and we've accomplished those goals as set forth by the council. part of creating the program though is coordinating with other entities in the region and that's something that I've kind of taken big steps towards by creating something called the emergency management working group, which is a group of Citizens that represent different organizations within the community, such as the Red Cross, Linfield University, Willamette Valley Medical Center, the county, so on and so forth. So it's just a group of people so that we can fulfill basically our stated intent in our plan of having this be a whole community concept. What that means is that We developed this plan in such a way that we are letting the public have input, or at least our partners, if not individual members of the public, but at least our partners in the area, such as the school district, et cetera. We're communicating with them, letting them have input on what the plan should be and how they should interact with it. The readiness, I think we're in a good spot with that. The emergency services, Chief Wood and Chief Godfrey, you know, as far as I can tell, from my point of view, have done a great job just Liaison with each other but with also with their partners in the community to To have a good system of response for if they're if they're on duty resources are in danger of being you know overtaxed at any point We saw we've seen that in a couple of incidents since I've been here and I thought they did an excellent job just for what it's worth the reason I mentioned that is because I did get questions at the time when we had the We had the incident where the propane tank was struck by a car. There were some questions for me at that time about, hey, what about the Emergency Operations Center? What about the Emergency Operations Plan? What does that have to do with this? And just to clarify on that point, The Emergency Operations Center is something that we're still training to stand up in case of emergency. But the idea is that it's a group of people representing the different departments in the city that come together to provide the incident commander with resources in the event that we have an incident that Has overwhelmed our existing resources and agreements okay that that incident that we had with the propane tank, we were able to the chiefs were able to exercise their inner government inner agent inner governmental agreements and other. Memo memorandums of understanding to get the resources they needed from the local partners and handle the situation, so it did not rise to the level that we would have. activated the Emergency Operations Center. So again, I think they did an excellent job, and we're on track with getting trained up to help them out if it were to be a larger sort of an incident. And then, yeah, over the past two and a half years, we... we have created these plans that i'll go through one by one uh briefly uh to make in such a way that we are compliance with the compliant with the national incident management system which is something that the council stated was a priority for them and for good reason because that opens us up to grant funding availability and such right so overall like i said i think we're in a great spot Let's get into each one of the plans here that I worked on with the team, starting with the big one. So to explain these plans we're gonna talk about, they vary in scope. So your Emergency Operations Plan is the broadest scope. It's a general plan. It talks about how we're going to organize and how we're going to liaise with other organizations, what sort of command system we'll use, how the council should or how we view the city management interacting with the council and such. It's a broad overview of a lot of things. It's a broad scope. The next kind of level of plan are the annexes to the Emergency Operations Plan. So there are some annexes that we'll include in the basic plan, and there's some annexes that we have developed that are separate, okay? And basically the annexes are that mid-level of a scope. So an annex will be specific to a type of action, like let's say recovery. We've got a recovery annex in the plan. And it's specific to, okay, after the incident is over, how do we see ourselves organizing the recovery operations for an incident, right? The other type of incident annex would be specific to a type of incident. So we have incident annex for earthquake, for instance, right? And it's specifically in an earthquake, how do we think our response might look different than in a different type of emergency? So yeah, the annexes, what I was trying to explain there was that the annexes for not the specific types of hazards, but for the way we act like mass care and sheltering, emergency services, recovery, critical infrastructure, continuity of operations, those are included in the basic plan. With the one exception of the continuity of operations because that's such a large Plan that we've separated it. Okay, but the other ones are included in your basic plan and the basic plan is designed to be releasable like on our website and it's which we intend to post for Everyone to take a look at so that they can realize what the plans are and how they might interact with the plans now the Or am I getting ahead of myself here? Let me go on to the next slide and make sure I'm not getting out okay, so The okay, so the incident annexes like I said, there's two types, right? There's the type that are separate and they're the type that are included. I may have just misstated which ones included I'm sorry, the ones that are included are the hazard specifics ones. They're not included are That list right there, so I'm sorry if I said that backwards to you Okay, so the hazard-specific annexes are all included under Section 11. I believe we gave handouts to all of the counselors there. If you're interested in following along with any of this, please feel free. Did we not? Okay, not for that part, okay. So in Section 11 of the Emergency Operations Plan, that's the hazard-specific appendix, and that's where your annexes for earthquake, hazardous material release, severe weather, volcano, that type of thing, that's where that's included. Okay, separate document now. So now we're moving on. Remember I was talking about the scope. You've got the emergency operations plans, then you've got the annexes, which are kind of a medium scope, a little more focused. Now you're getting into a more specific, what we would, in my industry, we call like a tactical level plan. And this is something that last time I spoke before the council was specifically brought up by the council was questions about what are your best practices? What are the recommendations for you during an incident and how get the specifics of how we see the management of the city interacting with you? Well, that's exactly what this is. We got two guides for you. We've got the city of McMinnville elected official guide, which is a little longer. We tried to provide you as much detail as possible so that all your questions are answered ahead of time. But then we created a second document called the elected officials quick guide. And this is for you to grab when the incident happens. It includes some checklists there for, hey, what do I do? I do these things, one, two, three, four, right? And so just something else that the council requested that we were able to provide for you. Happy that we were able to do that for you. And now moving on down, like I said, the scope now we're to the finest scope, which is still like the tactical level. But now I'm getting down to department by department. What does each department do in the event of a specific emergency? Let's say active shooter, let's say earthquake or power outages or that or cyber threat. Right. each department is going to need to develop its own actions in these events. And that's not something I can mandate for them. What I can do is I can do the research ahead of time. I can provide them what we are providing them, which is a template for them to review and to look at and see what of it they can use and what of it doesn't apply to them. So this is something that we'll be What we have developed, but have not rolled out in conjunction with the department heads yet. So just to make that clear, this is something that I'm hoping to finish up here before July. I want to have a meeting with each of the department heads so that we can go over the template and see what of it is useful to them. So that's in a nutshell, the plans of the various different levels or scopes. So Readiness, getting a little more specific about things that we're ready to do, things that we're not ready to do. The EOP and the Continuity of Operations Plan are done. The citywide training is in progress. So supervisors and above have been asked to complete a series of Incident Command System training online. We're at about a 90% or a greater, completion rate with that We've identified also in conjunction with the fire district We've identified members of the city employees who will be members of an incident management team jointly with the fire district Those individuals need additional training And the fire district is working on scheduling those classes for our individuals, but it's in the process of It's not something that happens overnight. We have to bring instructors in for that. It's not an online training. It's an in-person sort of a thing. And then partnerships. Like I said, I worked hard to create this group called the Emergency Management Working Group. We're going to be transitioning this into a local emergency planning committee or commission. This is an organization that's very similar to Emergency Management Working Group, but it's just broader geographically. So the state has a representative for what we call LEPC's, local emergency planning commissions. The state has a representative and they're going to come in and basically guide us through this process, but we'll be transitioning that emergency management working group into a local emergency planning commission or committee. So our strategic partnerships are strong and growing. I've been working with the, I do want to mention the Willamette Valley Medical Center and also the McMinn Middle School District have been very good partners with the city. And we've been working with them on some specific projects. Reunification after an incident at school has been one project we're helping them with. So our strategic partnerships are strong. And then the command center. We do have a good facility over here at the police department next door for our emergency operations center. It's got all the technology and such that we need. Talking to Scott Burke, I believe we have what we need to function in the case of an emergency over there as far as the resiliency of the facility and the power and the rest of the infrastructure. However, our alternate facility, it's a little less capable. It's currently identified as the wastewater treatment facility conference room. Prior to me being here, it had been designated as the fire department. But that doesn't exactly work because the two are right next door to each other. And if there's a major incident that affects one, it will probably affect the other. So we made the decision during the planning process to move the alternate facility over to the wastewater treatment facility. But it just has, it doesn't have all the infrastructure and technology that the primary location has. So room for improvement, but still very satisfactory on that point. Okay now i'm looking at capabilities that are more in the development stage here. let's see we need to test the up so i've got a slide for this here in a couple of slides but on. In a month or so, we have a tabletop exercise plan, and this is where the department heads will get to pull out the emergency operation plan during a controlled scenario, and they'll see how the plan is designed to work, and they'll be able to provide additional feedback. Just to caveat on that, they've all seen it before. They've seen the plan before because they had input in creating it. But yeah, we're going to test it. That still needs to happen. critical infrastructure mapping. So, I've been working in the background with our public works department, but also loosely with Mack Water and Light and the county to develop two things, a critical facilities list and a resource list. Resource lists are challenging. They're challenging all over the state to have a standard format and to have everything the way FEMA wants to see it. We can talk about that at length if you'd like. I'm working on it. But it's a long process. Nobody's got 100% figured out. The critical facilities is just something that's in the works, but we've only really had one meeting. We need to have more meetings because what the critical facilities are is you just rank or at least categorize the facilities that belong to the city, which ones need to become operational first after an incident. So it's an important part of the planning process. It still needs to finish happening. So annexes and checklists and training, like I said before, training is ongoing. We've got, I don't need to belabor that point. You know where we're at with that. Okay. And then our last slide on kind of the current status of the program here is the emergency management capabilities that are on hold. So I don't have to tell the council this. You're well aware of the budget situation. There is no specified budget to my knowledge for emergency management after the beginning of the new fiscal year. There's not a plan for additional staffing or continue staffing for emergency management only. Those duties will now be rolled up to be determined, but I assume the public works director will have a hand in that and possibly the police chief. Department monitors modernization. Things I'm talking about there are technologies, mostly communications, but also mobile emergency operations center capability and that type of thing. We are... you know, when you look at, I do talk to my peers in other similarly sized cities and I think, uh, we're certainly no worse off than other places. I don't want to give you the wrong impression, but there's, there's room for improvement there. And there usually is with technology because it develops. So, you know, capabilities develop, um, you know, at a, at a fast pace. And then, uh, moving on to the, um, let's see, oh yeah, involvement with the industry and the commercial sector and such. So as the... emergency management working group transitions into the LEPC, we will invite additional members, and those members will include members of the business community more. It will also include, it will, by definition, the way that Oregon Emergency Management runs the LEPCs, it will also be open to elected officials. So city, county, and also neighboring counties will be open to be part of this group. So that's something that needs to happen. It's not a lepsy until we get a broader, you know, swath of the community, more people involved. Okay, and then officials training. So I did specify, I have a separate document also that talks about what training I recommend, but it is included in the emergency operations plan. And some of that training is also recommended for the counselors. So I would start with your online training, IS100. You just go to the FEMA website or you can Google it. And it's a free training, but that would be the place to start. The other two things that we need to do in the future would be to bring a, I believe it's called a 402, ICS 402, but it's a class given specifically for elected officials. We'd like to bring that to... to you guys in the future but that's another one that needs a certified instructor that we'd have to schedule out so this is you would assuming that the council is interested in this it would take a couple of quarters probably to get that to actually happen okay So on the horizon, just wanted to, I got two more slides, okay? I just wanted to show you things that we're doing in the near future and things that I recommend that we move towards a little further out, okay? We have the air show planning with the fire district. It's beginning now. I have not had involvement in that, to be perfectly honest with you, but it needs to start happening basically as soon as the... The last air show ended. We should have been working liaison with them to start planning for the next one. So it's something that needs to start now. Our emergency operation plan validation, like I mentioned earlier, that's going to be on 11 June. It'll be at the police department in the training room over there. Let's see. So the designation of additional emergency management duties for directors, I put that on there because it's something that needs to happen as soon as this position that I'm filling right now is no longer here. I would say by the end of that month, we need to decide the duties and responsibilities of this position need to go to whom, right? We can't just leave a blank spot there because if we do, the progress that we made will just deteriorate. I'm speaking from personal experience. If you leave a position vacant, the progress will deteriorate. So other things in the near future, we're, like I said before, the fire district will be scheduling training for our incident management team members. And I also mentioned the standard operating procedures template. Hopefully I'm going to roll it out before the beginning of July, but if not, I'll leave it to Public Works Director to get with the other department heads to finish that effort up. The LEPC will be converting this quarter. So we'll have one final meeting of the Emergency Management Working Group, at which point we'll transition it to the LEPC. Yeah, so also I mentioned McMinnville School District is doing a reunification plan and exercise. We are involved in that. We just need to follow that through. It's not something that'll be done before July. So we need to follow through on that. And then Genesis evacuation planning. This is a software that's been rolled out By the state the state paid for it. So it's already out there existing the counties are getting with the cities to determine evacuation zones the whole purpose of the software is to draw boxes on the map and say This is zone a this is zone B, etc Right, but we don't just want to draw squares. We want to make them make sense. We want to make them as You know the borders coincide with natural terrain features or major highways and that kind of stuff So that is an effort that Brian young at the county is going to be heading up He's already started working on it, but it needs to get finished Okay And then future projects. So these are not things that are going to be done anytime soon. But you can see the list there. I don't need to read them all to you. Let me just take a quick look and see if there's something I think I should broadly point out here. So now that we have the plans, now it's time to practice the plans and then exercise the plans, okay? I'm proud of the fact that I was able to kind of get us to this point, but moving forward, like I said, our progress will deteriorate unless we practice what we've planned. So those need to be scheduled that need to happen on a regular basis. Just like a fire drill, right? A fire drill, that counts, right? But you can also do an active shooter drill. You can also annually look at your portion of the plan or your standard operating procedures and see, do I need to make any updates? That's what I'm talking about. There's maintenance that's involved with this. Anything else on here? A common operating picture I mentioned it there basically that is a usually it's a specific software, but. There is no standard common operating picture that is mandated by the state, there is a system called raptor it uses the GIs mapping system and the state has a website that uses this raptor system and it. the map will continually update and show you the location of hazards, right? It'll also have, if you have access to it, like a chat feature, and it will keep a tab of all the requests that have been made to the state. They have a couple of systems that kind of overlap and work together there. For the future, we need to decide exactly how McMinnville is going to integrate with Yamhill County, which then does the request to the state. Yamhill County has the ability and the access to make resource requests, but we don't all share the same common operating picture, the same map of what's going on necessarily. And that's a problem that is more long-term and needs to be solved. Okay. After listening to me speak, without stop for that entire time. I don't have anything else. Jeff, did you want to talk about something?

Yeah, just a few things before we get to questions. So the elected officials guide that Jeff mentioned have copies that I'm going to be handing out to you all today. What's that? Oh, sorry. So going to be handing those out today. So you have those to help kind of focus you on what is the council's duties in an emergency and how that works. The emergency operations plan, like Jeff said, is completed. We're gonna do this exercise. If there's any last small changes, we'll make them at that time, but then we'll put it onto the city website for everybody to have access to. If counselors want copies of that whole plan, just talk with the city manager. We'll make sure to get you hard copies of that, but it'll be on the city website as well. So at this time we're staff or myself, I'm not recommending that we adopt the entire plan. We don't have to the council, the way the policy was written in the past was the policy to go to the NIMS system and then just make updates as we go was already done. So we don't have to do a full adoption. If there's desire to still adopt the, it's a significant upgrade, but it is just an update. the council can and the city manager can make that decision we can bring it to council for adoption the biggest benefit to that is it there's one type of grant that does require adoption by the council but most of the others don't require it and it's just an operating plan that we use as staff As Jeff mentioned, we're gonna be kind of transitioning into a new phase where myself and Chief Wood are gonna be working together on the emergency management and who covers what. We wanted to get through budget to make sure that that position wasn't gonna be funded before we had a lot of discussions on that. So he and I will be working together with city manager to make sure we know who's covering what. But next year's focus is mostly gonna be on that IMT training and making sure we have staff ready to go that can staff an emergency operations center. And then finally, I just want to give a big thank you to Jeff Jacobs for coming in here. He did all this work while working part-time. He was still full-time with the guard and now he's full-time with Marion County working in their emergency management team there. So he's not going away. He, I still can get access to him. So he'll always be a resource for the city, but want to give him a big thank you. He started two months before I did. So we kind of, went through this process together of taking on emergency management and public works. And I'm really happy where we were able to get done with the council's goals were with that and a couple extra things and do it in a pretty cost-effective way. So just want to give a big thank you to him for that. And with that, we can turn it over to the council for any questions you all may have. Councilors, any questions?

Councilor Benner.

Thank you. I think that, uh, it's pretty amazing that you've taken all this time to get this wonderful document. And I guess the only thing I would have having been part of organizations where the document sits on a bookshelf and it's never gets looked at again, it's only going to be effective if we can train to it. And I know that there's no budget for that, but we, I hate to see this just get stale on a shelf. So I encourage you to do whatever you can to do exercises and get people familiar with it. And, you know, if there's a disaster and that's the first time it comes off the shelf, that's not going to be effective. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks. Yeah, Jeff Jacobs, let me be clear. Yeah, thank you for your service and thank you for what you've done for the community here to create a plan and do so under a basically one-man team. So I appreciate that. And your last day is July something you said? Yeah, as of the new fiscal, the position will continue. Okay. July 1. That makes sense. Okay. Do you think you'll be able to wrap this up before then?

I do. There are that one slide with the ongoing projects. Some of those may linger for Jeff to finish up, but most of it will be done. Yeah. I mean, the plans are done. Nothing to worry about there.

I had a question on the upcoming project slide. I don't know if you want to go back to that one or not. It's like bullet point number six. It says transition to the LEPC with involvement of business and elected officials. It says first quarter. Is that this year or next year?

This year would be a... Did that happen?

I guess it's a first quarter of the fiscal year.

Fiscal is what I'm talking about.

This was the group that we started somewhat at council direction about wanting to involve more parts of the community, different groups to come together and talk emergency management. And it just kind of is a happy coincidence that OEM is propping up this LEPC program. So they're going to be not necessarily McMinnville focused, probably more regionally Yamhill County focused. But that, so much of emergency management is those connections. So that's probably a good thing. So they'll be able to lead that instead of us having to staff that internally.

Yeah. Sorry. I meant of the fiscal year. No, that makes sense. I just, I work in the private area and we're just Q1 is ending March. So it completely makes sense. Just want to make sure we're behind. Jeff, you had mentioned that if we choose to adopt the plan, then we are eligible for a grant money. Um,

Yeah, there's one specific grant that requires it. I don't even, I can't recall the name of that grant.

You know what the value of the grant is?

I don't think it's a particularly large one and it's one of many. I can get that information and get that back to you though.

I was just curious if we had the staffs and we had the staff hours and we also had the staff plan to actually execute. Should we actually get the grant?

And yeah, that's, we're going to be looking for grants, I'm sure, to keep it moving. It will be a staff resource and capacity. Obviously, Chief Wood and myself are pretty booked up time-wise already. So absorbing 20 hours a week of an emergency manager's time is going to be difficult. So we'll have to keep an eye out for that. But A lot of the FEMA stuff has been pretty rough lately. It just with what's happening at the national level, for example, the ICS training, when there was the, And there wasn't the funding coming through from Congress. They actually shut that website off. So we couldn't train staff for a while there. So grants are similar. They're cutting back and there's even more talk now about restructuring FEMA going on. So it's going to be pretty something we've got to keep an eye on. I know there's a plan that board's going to be looking at here more in depth.

I was gonna offer just in consideration on whether or not you'd make the choice to adopt the plan. There are some very significant proposed changes at the federal level to FEMA away from the current operationally guided disaster response by FEMA to a locally executed state controlled response to emergencies, disasters, And I don't think really anybody knows exactly what that's going to look like, but it could happen in the very short term. So I would consider that when you make your decision to adopt, if you were to adopt the plan and then we were needing to pivot, to make any kind of changes, corrections, additions to the current plan based on FEMA's rollout of their new structure or to this new system of the state controlled model, we would have to go through that process again. So just something to consider when you make that decision.

I have one more question. So chief, what do you know? So considering let's say we receive a grant and we can't predict the future, but if there is a significant pivot required to update the documentation, do you believe that consultants could be hired to update that information using the grant or would that be out of the scope?

I'm not sure how to answer that.

It just assumes some things that I don't know at the moment. I guess my question is, could we bring Jeff Jacobs back if necessary to update the documentation? Should it change significantly? Yeah, I just don't know the answer to that. Okay, thank you.

I will say Jeff and I have been talking about some potential for he's looking at, you know, starting up maybe an LLC type situation where we might be able to get access to him again in the future. Obviously with Marion County, we could always try to coordinate with them with some kind of IGA in addition, but he's not going away completely. Sir.

Thank you, Council President. First, I'd like to say thank you very much for doing this. When I ran in 2020, this was a topic of great concern for me. Cascadia event is a real possibility in the very near future or long future. Nobody knows exactly when. And it seemed like we didn't have really anything in place for our community. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I didn't know what anybody was supposed to do in the case of an emergency. I'm grateful that we have something now to work with. I think it was high time for the city to have that rather than have it siloed in each department. So thank you, thank you, thank you. You use the acronym OEM in the midst of this, which has always been original equipment manufacturer in my line of work. What does that stand for?

Office of Emergency Management. It's the state department here in Oregon for emergency management. It's their version of FEMA.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm sure the IT guy to my right over here probably totally understood why I got confused by that. It didn't seem like it fit. And I just, I guess I want to stress, I want to take it a little differently. I really appreciate the comments of my fellow Councilor at the end, Councilor Benner, about not wanting it to be a dusted product on a shelf somewhere. I think I want to make that a little firmer and say I'm hopeful that, not just hopeful, it needs to be that this product that we've created doesn't stop now. It's got to continue to be worked on. It's got to continue to be implemented and made sure that we are training and we have people up to speed. Because it's not when. It's going, excuse me, it's not if, it's when. It's going to happen. And we've got to be ready for our citizens. Our citizens are owed that from us and from our staff. So I just want to put a high mark that this product, I know you have all the free time in the world to implement it, and I get that. But just make sure it stays in the top of list of priorities somewhere up there and it doesn't get forgotten. Thank you.

I'll just say that I'd support everything that every one of my counselors just said. So, and Jeff, again, thank you and good luck in Marion County.

Jeff Hunsinger, do you have what you need from the council tonight?

Yeah, I think so. We'll obviously be updating Adam, sorry, city manager Garvin on any updates to this FEMA plan. I've just barely looked at it myself. I know court's taking a look at it. So we'll see if there's anything we need to pivot on there. And we'll just keep you appraised of everything. And if we think that we want to switch to proposing the plan being adopted, we can get that onto the council agenda.

Thank you. Jeff Jacobs, thanks for your service to our city. Congratulations on the position in Marion County. I'm sure we'll see you around. With that, we'll adjourn the meeting at 6.41 p.m.

Amen. Recording in progress. Good evening, it's now seven o'clock and I will call the city council meeting to order and request a roll call by city recorder, Claudia. Councillor Benner.

Here.

Councillor Cunningham.

Here.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Present.

Councillor Chenoweth.

Here.

Councillor Geary is absent this evening. Council President Peralta.

Here.

And Mayor Morris.

Here. Councilor Geary is on his way. Okay, if you're able to stand, I'd like to ask you to stand and I'll lead you in the pledge. Great, now it's time for comments from the public. Any interested audience members are invited to provide comments and any comment provided that requires some type of follow-up will be assigned to a staff member. Anyone may speak on any topic other than a matter in litigation, a land use decision that is or will be in front of the city council.

Hello.

or a matter scheduled for a public hearing at some future date. Comments will be limited to four minutes per person for a total of 32 minutes. If you are on Zoom and wish to speak, please use the raise your hand feature or chat feature and send a chat to the city recorder team. You will need to provide your contact information prior to being promoted to speak. Once your turn is up, we will announce your name and unmute your mic. Please announce your name and the city you live in for the recorder. Claudia, do we have anybody signed up?

Yes. First, I do want to state for the record, the councilor Geary is here. We will start with Maggie Bowman.

Good evening, Maggie. You could just make sure the green light is on and then put it pretty close to you. Just push the red button and it'll turn green.

Like that.

Very good. Thank you.

Good evening. It's fun to be here. I'm aware of some high schoolers that have come and I'm really happy to see them. I know a couple of them and that's, that's, that's our next generation right there. So I'm glad they're here. My name is Maggie Bowman. I'm a retired school teacher from this district. I taught 35 years of middle school and Yamhill Carlton and McMinnville. And my topic has nothing to do with the fact that I was a teacher, but what I'm here to talk about tonight is data centers. In the news, we have heard so many things about data centers. There are some people making lots and lots of money from them, but those aren't the people in the communities where the data centers are running. You've heard about the incredible use of electricity in areas where what the people in Lake Tahoe have just been informed they need to find a new electrical source because next year they're not going to have their normal electric company serving them anymore because it'll be going to a data center. It's using water. I know that it's using how many millions? I don't know exactly how many millions of gallons of water it takes to cool the Machines as they're working during the day. I do know that the people in the organ has over a hundred data centers already I did a little homework before I came up here today but for the most part I would like to say that I love Yamhill County just the way it is and I don't want to share my electric grid with a data center. I don't want to share the beautiful water program. I mean, I talked with the folks at McMinnville Water and Light at the farmer's market the other day. And they were shocked to think, oh, a data center here? I mean, we need to prepare for the inevitable possibility that some developer might want to just parade into Yamhill County and go, this looks like a good little community to take advantage of. We the people are not going to benefit from a data center. They use our water. They'll mess up our electrical grid. They're noisy. Talk about the people in Utah who have been fighting their data centers. There are some counties that have put bands on data centers. Let's get the ball rolling before developers move in and sink their claws into our land and our resources. And that's basically all I have to say today. I am really worried. I was raised with the seven Ps in my family. Proper prior planning prevents pretty poor performance. I cleaned it up for the high school kids. But I was raised to plan ahead. I don't want a data center that we have to protest after the fact. Let's get ahead of the ball, get ahead of the developers. And I'm challenging our county to create a moratorium, a ban on data centers in Yamhill County. That's what I'm here to do today, to challenge you to ban data centers and protect our county and protect the people that live here. So I'm down. Thank you. Thank you, Maggie.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Joseph Polipka. Welcome.

Here we go. Hello, Council and Mayor Morris. We live in a time and place in history where our most fetishized public service that a city provides is policing. Based on this year's proposed budget, McMinnville does not skirt this societal sin, but once again maintains status quo, spending excessively on a veil of safety. So little thought goes into the need for police and even less thought goes into their list of requests. As well noted, the city has to run an incredibly tight budget, but where most people accredit the stringent resources to a myriad of abstract expenditures, the actual route can be found in the form of 38% of the general fund. Chief Wood actually put it best last week. If you don't control the money, you don't control the department. but he doesn't only control his department, he controls the budget. Well, information services, CDD, and the finance department once again are denied their request for more FTEs, and the library and parks and rec limp along. The police are granted everything on their wish list. Two new patrol rigs, a drone program, riot gear, a $10,000 increase on ammunition, and money for three to six vacant positions all screams excess to me. If even some of these expenditures were to go elsewhere and we may have a chance at affordable housing in McMinnville, a robust finance department ready for upcoming retirees, an IS department equipped to tackle cybersecurity concerns and the changing landscape due to AI, we would also find ourselves in a more equitable community prepared for future expenses and growth. The exorbitant costs of our police department will continue to cripple other departments as well as express to our community that we are about reacting rather than building here in McMinnville. Soon enough, we will have to face the writing on the wall that the city is not prepared to build robust infrastructure across departments or provide an expendable social services to the community. Frankly, I left Tuesday's budget committee meeting with disgust, not pride in my local government. So little scrutiny fell on Chief Wood and his department, and yet $12 million goes their way. I'm here to ease my conscience and make sure someone identifies the elephant in the room. Thank you.

That's everyone that signed up.

All right, and nobody on Zoom or phone? Okay, well, thank you. Now we're going to move on to our public hearing. We have a public hearing to consider resolution number 2026-29, a resolution establishing a revised sanitary sewer user fees and repealing resolution 2025-09. You can find it on page 17 through 33 of the packet. Does any counselor need to declare a potential or actual conflict of interest or recuse themselves regarding this topic? Okay. I'd like to call on Eric Grimstad. Oh gosh, your first time. Wastewater Services Manager and Geoff Hunsaker, our Public Works Director, to give a presentation on the topic. Good evening. Good evening.

Thank you, Council. Thank you, Mayor. As you noted, this is Eric's first time up here in front of you all. With Lee's retirement a couple months ago, Eric's been taking on the management of our wastewater services group and been doing a great job. So I decided to throw him another curveball and have him speak with you all, get those first-time jitters out of the way. So with that, we have a presentation tonight as part of this public hearing, and we'll go ahead and jump right into it.

Great, thanks, Jeff. Good evening, council and mayor. Tonight, staff is requesting an approval of a 4% increase to the Santa Terry sewer user fees schedule to go into effect July 1, 2026. This increase is needed to keep pace with the rising operational costs to maintain reliable wastewater service. This increase is focused on day-to-day operations and maintenance. It does not fund major capital projects, but it does allow us to continue funding that capital account by roughly five to $6 million a year. Looking over our recent rate history, The city did not increase rates in 2021 or 22 at a sensitivity to rate payers during COVID-19. In 2022, the city completed a wastewater rate study that recommended annual increases of 2.5%, which were implemented in 2023, 24, and 25. As the chart shows, an additional 1% was added in 2023 and 24 to cover the city's franchise fee. That portion of the revenue goes to the general fund and does not support wastewater operations. This next slide compares the original 2022 projections with our current budget. As you can see, revenues are matching very closely with what we projected back in 2022. And then costs for staff have come in slightly below projections, mostly due to retirements and staffing changes. The primary cost pressures have been on operations and maintenance materials and services. Items like chemicals, fuels, utilities, replacement parts, and contracted maintenance services needed to keep the plant operating reliably have gone up in price. Individually, these increases have been moderate and manageable, but collectively they create an estimated operating fund gap of approximately $500,000 compared to our original projections. The proposed 4% increase would help cover that gap and staple operations moving forward. The need for reliable maintenance becomes even more important as our infrastructure ages. The wastewater treatment plant and our two major pump stations are 30 years old with much of the original equipment still in service. Staff has done an excellent job extending the life of this infrastructure through preventative maintenance and careful operations. However, maintaining reliable service now requires increased investment in equipment replacement and ongoing maintenance activities. This rate increase supports those day-to-day operational needs, including utilities, consumables, preventative maintenance, and small equipment replacement and required contract services. This does not fund major capital improvement projects. Those larger long-term infrastructure needs are currently being evaluated in our wastewater services master planning process. And you'll hear more about that in the coming weeks.

Two slides now.

Yeah, there we go. So in summary, staff is requesting approval of Resolution 2026-29, adopting a 4% increase to the sanitary sewer user fee schedule to go into effect July 1, 2026. For the average residential customer, this represents an increase of approximately $2.60 a month, which would increase the average monthly bill from about $64.50 to $67.10 a month. Thank you for your consideration and we can take questions now.

Any counselors have any questions? Counselor Benner?

Eric, could you go back to that last graph? I would have that one. Could you talk us through that one one more time?

Yeah. So the, on the left side there is our rate revenue projected for this year versus what we thought we were going to get in 2022. So the blue bars are what we projected in 2022. And then the green bars are what is budgeted for this upcoming year. And so, Deb Gilardi is our consultant who helps us make all these decisions. And so her projections back in 2022 were pretty spot on for items like the rate revenue, the wages and benefits, and then kind of like our transfers out to IS or engineering. And then some of our other costs like the fees Water and Light has for us. And then the materials and services there in the middle with that, you know, we expected maybe to spend $2.1 million in that category. And this year we're budgeted for 2.7. And so that's where that funding gap is that we're trying to address with this 4% increase.

Follow-up question. Is that inflation or just the age of the whole apparatus catching up with us?

it's a combination of all of those things. So we've definitely seen a bit of inflation with some of our materials and supplies like chemicals have gone up 40% since 2022, kind of like lubricants and UV bulbs are all more expensive than they were, but then also our equipment's much older and requiring more active management to keep running.

Dr. Tarkalski.

Thank you, Mayor. The question I have is maybe I'm reading the graph a little bit differently than you expected. If you just keep it simple at total operating costs, the actual budget is $7.5 million. And coming out of budgeting season tells me that we gave you $7.5 million, but you only needed $7 million from the projection.

Correct. So in 2022, we projected we should be asking the council for a $7 million budget. And really we had to ask for a 7.5. And most of that, as Eric mentioned is because of that increase. So we're a little behind where we were hoping to be a few years ago.

So we, we provided seven and a half million in our budgeting process through the budget committee.

Correct.

And you're still asking for a 4% increase on top of that.

Yes, so that would align what we're bringing in with what we're spending. If there wasn't an increase, it would just spend down the reserve and the wastewater operating fund. Okay. One more question.

If you could go to the slide about the cost per residence.

Oh.

Yeah, the one with the people on it. Oh, did I kill it? Okay. So the proposal gives you a $2.60 per month increase for a residential bill. Do you have any idea what it means for a commercial facility?

We built in this monthly bill based on an average usage of 600 cubic feet per month. And so that's kind of the average amount of water. And then commercial varies a lot. I think our... our largest industrial user, their rate would go up about $500 a month. And that would be the largest one. They use about $12,000 of our services a month. And so that's on the very high end of what this rate increase would do.

Got it. And are the sewer rates still being prorated out through the season when? Yes. Okay. All right. That's all that. Thank you.

Anything down there? Okay. Okay. Councilor Chenoweth.

Yeah, can you go back to that graph? So as I'm looking at this, I see the total operating costs of 7.5 million and the rate revenue of 12.3 million, which to me is a $4.8 million net gain. So I'm trying to understand why I need a 4% increase to balance the books if I have a $4.8 million net gain. revenue advantage.

So since we run a no debt model, we have to save up a certain amount of capital every year to pay for those future capital projects. And this is what Eric was mentioning is what we're going to be discussing further in a council work session here at the end of June. But So essentially, yes, we do bring in enough to operate, but we would be cutting into that capital savings that we do to maintain that no debt model. So we can move forward without an increase, but it's just going to put us again, further behind in, the money we're saving up for those capital projects. And we'll have to look at different funding sources in a scenario like that. So right now we try to keep it just based on the operating and our operating costs. what was projected in 2022 versus what we should need to get back to being at a whole would be a 4% increase. So that's why we recommended that, but you are correct. We bring in more money than that total operating amount and the rest goes into funding the future capital projects.

So the 4% is intended to catch the difference between 7.5 million and 7 million.

Correct. And it's, we looked at that increase difference because the recommendation was to maintain a 2.5% increase annually and looking at the operating, how it went up, showed that it was a 4% increase needed to keep up with that operating increases, especially with the materials and services.

And will that be a 4% increase also on the money being piggy banked for later as well?

That is correct.

Okay. Thanks.

Councilor Peralta.

Thank you. I just wanted to confirm. So when you presented the budget, you presented the budget, made the ask at 7.5 million. And then I assume the budget also assumed the 4%. increase?

No, we had to make the the budget increase based on the two and a half percent, which is what we knew in February. So this information of going to a 4% is newer information that's come up from our work on the overall rate in STC study that Deb Gilardi is doing as part of the wastewater master plan work.

Okay, so then to clarify, you you built the budget assuming at least a two and a half percent increase, correct? and based on the information you did, uh, gathered working on the budget, you realize two and a half percent is not what you need or if you're going to maintain the model that, that you're operating under in terms of future capital needs. Correct.

Any other counselors have questions? That's for Cunningham.

Yeah, do you have a general idea of what those capital needs are in the total amounts?

They're very significant and there's a lot of policy discussion still to be had there. That's really a decision for the council. As part of the wastewater master plan work, our consultant identified around $300 million in improvements, but that's doing everything. And so we're going to have to discuss with council what funding models look like to fund something like that. That's what our consultant, Deb Gilardi, is doing right now. And then we'll talk through different scenarios. If we do no change, minimal change, whatever it might be. But that would be... 300 million is around what you need to be able to do everything that's been identified. And I'm guessing we're going to have some priority discussions quite a bit with the council in June.

And I believe as I'm looking at it here in the packet, table two in the packet, page 22, looks like you actually have lined out about $75 million of capital projects that kind of are, I don't know if they're earmarked, but maybe the most consequential for us.

So the 75 million is more based on a carrying forward of what was done for the last master plan. So the master plan has been updated in some time. and we've completed all but one of the projects on there. So we know we have a significant amount of projects and we're kind of just carrying forward that capital model right now. So the last master plan, when it was adopted, identified $60 million worth of projects. And so with the increases, it kind of looks at, okay, your 20 year moving forward is that 75 million, but that's where we know that it's going to be going up for that capital increase.

And just one more.

Okay.

And so our increases have followed a 2.5 since 2023 with 21 and 22. Do any of those have any, I mean, there might be correlation to CPI, but that's not how we actually figure out what our,

Correct. We don't do indexing for utility rates. The council has to adopt them each time. We can't kind of set it up to automatically increase like you can with a fee structure for like development fees.

Okay. Because just doing a quick little bit of research, since 2021, we would have seen a 22.3% CPI increase, whereas right now we're sitting at about 7.5 for that wastewater for the increases. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Council Peralta.

Thank you, Mayor. The chart on page 24 says, it's titled forecast rate revenue requirements and wastewater fund balance. But I believe that's the, the operating revenue, not the fund balance. Um, how much is the, you said we have somewhere between 75 million and 300 million in capital projects. What's the, um, what's the actual fund balance?

So the overall actual fund balance for wastewater right now, if you combine the operating fund as well as the capital fund is roughly 33 million. And then there's additional close to 5 million in debt payback from the general fund that needs to occur over the next few years. I'm gonna look over at the finance director to make sure I didn't misspeak there. Okay, so yeah, that's roughly what it is right now. There's 33 million in there, There will be another $5 million that gets paid back from the general fund over the next few years.

So at the higher end, $38 million in money set aside, but somewhere between $60 to $75 to $300 million in... capital needs.

That's correct. And that's all of our reserves. So not just the capital reserve, but the reserve for just running our system. So similar to the general fund, we want to see at least a two month reserve to cover our costs in a fund like this.

And if we were to do the 4%, and I'm sure I can see the numbers in here, but what would, what would the, increment gain be that year. I assume you're setting it more aside.

Oh, if it's 4% versus 2.5, I believe the number that was identified, it's about 425,000 additional. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Okay.

Any other counselors have any questions? Counselor Tchaikovsky?

Yeah, thank you. The question I had was, have we explored any kind of federal funding at all? I'm assuming that you have. What's the status on that? Because it's hard to maintain this with just taxpayer dollars. Are there...

So for operating federal funding really doesn't exist out there. You kind of have to handle it yourself. So getting additional money for operating costs is pretty slim. Um, usually with things like going after maybe appropriations or grants, they usually are tied to something specific like growth or projects that, um,

that kind of sell well at the federal level.

So for something like our operating, it's very unlikely that you can get federal dollars for, but some of our bigger projects, we are identifying as we're going to go after federal dollars for those. We have some significant ones in there, but it's not going to cover all the capital costs that we need.

I'm just curious. I mean, Mayor, we have a lobbyist, right? And it seems...

We have a state lobbyist.

Yeah, a state lobbyist. I mean, which obviously can help lobby the federal government as well. I didn't know that person might be working for that or on the radar.

Something to keep in mind. We've kind of talked a little bit about that, but we don't have a lobbyist on.

I will say the federal government has put more money into loan programs for capital than they have grants in recent years. So a program like the WIFIA program, which is the Water Infrastructure Financing and Innovation Act, is a program that has been set up by the federal government to help finance the capital side of things, but that still has to be paid back. There's some benefits to how they do it. they have a rate or interest that you still have to pay back on it, but they'll allow you to wait until the project's done before you start that payback. So it gives you time to build up your rates to work it into your work, those rate increases to cover that borrowed money cost. One more comment, if I may.

Sure, go ahead. I just wanted, you know, we're criticizing the capital and all the funding. I just want to say you do a great job out there because there's never really any complaints about the treatment area. And I drove past the wrong treatment area this past weekend and it was not McMinnville. I'm very appreciative of the way you don't let out into the community. Thank you.

And on that same note, how you've maintain what's out there to get it through to this point and continue. And it looks really good out there. You guys do a great job on the inside and the outside.

I appreciate that. We'll make sure to let the rest of the crew know.

Yeah. Any other questions right now before we go to a public hearing? Okay. Thank you. We will now start to hear public testimony. Each person testifying will be allotted three minutes for their testimony. We will start with the people who have signed up in advance to testify. Please remember to include your name and address for the record. Claudia, do we have anybody signed up this evening?

Yes, first we'll start with Mark Davis. Okay, thank you.

Good evening, Mark.

Mark Davis, 652 Southeast Washington Street. Mayor Morris, members of the council. I'm generally supportive of the request. I have four issues that I'll deal with briefly. First, I think that this really could wait until this plan, overall plan, because what's really gonna drive the rates is the amount of capital, however much the council decides. So I think adding this, you know, $400,000 at this point when we're talking about tens of millions is kind of – I would rather see us just stick with the 2.5% that we told the citizens we were going to stick with and go with that. And I'm going to make my usual complaint. I know you've heard this every time that we've had this hearing. I dislike the fact that the customer service charge exceeds – the sewer system charge on my bill. I've got it right here in front of me from water and light. Last month, 2457 is my customer service charge, which is basically the overhead. You know, the billing procedures, the management staff, all of that sort of stuff, the consultant that comes up with these reports. And I actually pay the sewer charge of less than $20, $19.98. I just think that's backwards. I just really think we should be charging more for the service and less for the overhead. Third thing I wanted to comment on is the, this is difficult to say, the use of the sewer funds money for other city business. And I realize that was done in the past and you didn't vote for that recently, but you know, the $5 million we're talking about was borrowed. And I really think we need an accounting of why we need it. I mean, that's basically, Citizens money that we paid to fix the sewer system being used to spec land speculation if I can be blunt and I just disagree with that and I don't think that that's this what the city should be using our sewer revenues for and I hope that there'll be some accounting and Explanation of why they needed all that money. I mean why we need to stockpile this money And then we don't use it. We loan it out for another project. I I realize it was legal, but I still, I think we need some to talk and be honest about that. Finally, I'd like to mention that there was a project advisory committee, I was on it, that did storm sewer, was supposed to do wastewater, that was supposed to be looking at the plan that's gonna be coming before you for a first hearing or at least a work session here at the end of June. And that project advisory committee was eliminated after one meeting. We had a nice tour of the facility. Like you say, it's a well-run facility, but... We were discontinued for some reason. I really think the city benefits when citizens are allowed to participate on those packs and give input. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? That's everyone who signed up. Did any counselor have any follow-up questions to Mr. Davis's comments? Okay, is there anyone else in the hall that wanted to speak? Okay. Does any counselor need anything else clarified? Nope, okay. And there's nobody on Zoom. There's a long list here, you guys. All right, there's nothing else, then that will conclude our public testimony for this evening. Does the staff have anything else they'd like to add to the record at this time, or does city council have any additional questions for city staff before I close this?

Nothing?

Okay, then I will now close the public hearing at 7.35. We will revisit that later on. Thank you. Now we have a public hearing to consider resolution number 2026-31, a resolution authorizing the sale of air easements affecting certain properties between Northwest 25th Street and Tice Park. It's pages 34 through 96 of your packet. Does any counselor need to declare a potential or actual conflict of interest or accuse himself regarding this topic? I don't need to accuse myself or have a conflict, but just state again that I did go out and see the property site prior.

I did the same.

Okay, perfect. I'd like to call on David Lightenberg, city attorney, to give a presentation on the topic.

Thank you, Mayor. Since this has been in front of you a number of times, I will be fairly brief. At our last discussion of this topic, which was April 14, the city council determined that we would look into the sale of the city-owned air easements over properties between Tice Park and Northwest 25th Street. The general scheme for which that sale might take place was given some direction and is now reflected in the resolution that will be before you tonight. When the city sells an interest in real property, there are some statutory requirements that we have now gone through. One of which is that a legal notice for the public hearing we are having now needs to be published in the local newspaper. We did that because it was published last Wednesday. It wasn't included in your packet, but you have all received copies and it will be included in the amended packet. In addition, the nature of the proposed sale, the general terms thereof, and an appraisal or evidence of the market value of the interest in real property needs to be disclosed at the public hearing. Once again, attached to the resolution is the appraisal that we discussed last time we were together on this topic. The resolution itself if you look down to the working language there gives the terms of the sale as we discussed with some additional clarification that has been worked out since then. At its base. Air easements would be released or sold to their underlying property owners at the request of those property owners for a cost of 10% of the appraisal value of the air easements as reflected in that attached appraisal. That price would be good for five years from the adoption of this resolution. And then we have some information about what would happen after five years, after five years, a new appraisal would be required. It would be secured by the city. It would be paid for by the requester could be shared among multiple requesters and must cover all the remaining unsold air easements at that time. And maybe relied on for an additional five years. Those are the terms reflected for sale right now. That's the resolution proposed for this evening. And that is what we now have a public hearing to hear from any interested members of the community, their thoughts and responses to that proposed sale.

Can you tell us what page that resolution is on?

It's on page 34. Does any Councilor have any questions for staff? Councilor Geary?

and maybe no one else wants this as well, but I had tossed out all of the sales when they happen would go to the maintenance or development of projects at specifically Tice Park, as opposed to just general fund. If that is the case, do we need to have that in here in the resolution language or would that just be budgeted as we just hope we remember as those were to come in?

Yeah, we could make that amendment.

Okay. I would open it up to see if anyone else supports that this proceeds from any of these sales go to specific Dice Park projects.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Yeah, I wanted to say I also support that. I think it's a wise use of funding. One thing I was thinking about last night was whether or not it should be held until all of the air easements have been cleared or if we should piecemeal it out because trickling in overtime or some of that, but we can discuss that.

Some may not choose to do it.

You're right. Which is why we should talk about it.

Yeah. Um, I had a question, David. So you said if they choose not to, um, purchase their easement in five years and appraisal will be done, that has to cover all the other properties. Even if only one person wants it, they have to pay for appraisal for all.

That's the plan as written here, correct? If the council wishes to do something else with this, we could amend this.

Can you tell me the thought process on why you wrote it that way?

Absolutely. I wrote it that way because this underlying appraisal exists for five years because it is not recovering any costs. And that gives a certain incentive to take this path within these five years.

Any other questions for staff?

Councillor Chenoweth. I don't have questions for staff. I just wanted to defer to Councillor Geary and say yes, I would agree with his recommendation and be in favor of that. I would also like to point out that I like the concept of the requiring them to do the appraisal for all of them. I don't think the difference between one and all along one street is gonna be that much on the appraisal cost side. And so I think they can pool and work together and I do think it incentivizes getting it done in the next five years, so.

Any other counselors have questions right now? Okay. And we're going to move on to another public hearing. We'll now start the hearing. Each person testifying will be allotted three minutes for their testimony. We will start with the people who have signed up in advance to testify. Please remember to include your name and address for the record. Claudia, do we have anybody signed up? No one has signed up.

Okay.

Is there anybody in Civic Hall that wants to testify tonight? Come on up. Good evening, I'm gonna have you state your name and address.

Hello, my name is Jason Atkinson. I live at 151 Northwest 25th Street, one of the affected lots. The main question I have or issue is that on this assessment, it is based on the total, we have two tax slots. It's based on the total square footage of both tax slots and not just the affected easement lot in the back, which is 10,000 square feet compared to 20,000 square feet. So the increase in value they have based on, they have a metric value and they multiplied that by 20,000 square feet instead of 10. That's my biggest issue is the value. And they're asking for a 10% of, I guess it would be $86,000 or $83,000 compared to half of that is what it should be.

Okay.

If I'm looking at it correctly.

We'll ask staff when it's time. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else that has anybody else in civic hall that wants to testify? Do we have any follow up questions to who testified? So can somebody speak to that? How that value is determined?

I mean, the value was done by a third party appraisal that does this professionally. So I would stand by his professional opinion. That's why you see different valuations per each lot. And I understand that Jason's lot has the highest value of those, but it's also the barest lot of all those, which is partially what's driving the, the cost or the valuation of that is it has the most developable land out of those back lots.

Okay.

The way I read it in the appraisal language is always a little . They drive what is highest and best use and from what they're spit out analysis of, here's what we think the highest and best use was. The way they listed was sort of both lots joined together and completely redeveloped. So if you work backwards from his highest and best use assumption, I gathered that's why they had looked at both lots together. When you remove the air easement, you could, highest and best use, join those together, have one larger property able to do multiple things on and then sell or actualize those assets. So that's how I read that appraisal based on that both lots versus one.

Correct. All the ownership. Front lot, back lot are in the same ownership when you go down the street, address to address. So it was looked at for highest and best use. Typically highest and best use would be building another dwelling back there, an ADU or a home. Most of the people that have approached the city around Aries meant release are more interested in building shops, but that's not really a discussion for you guys of what they do with their land. It's, do you want them to build something above 10 feet tall or not? And what do you want them to pay to be able to do that? And so far you have about $6,000 in can cost in this plus staff time.

Thank you. Councilor Tucholsky.

You had a question. This might be for legal staff. Based on Mr. Atkinson's testimony there, it was my understanding that the area he's been told existed originally over the rear portion of the parcel. Is that correct or incorrect?

That's correct. Just to clarify, when we say rear portion, we are talking in most cases about separate buildable parcels, separate tax lots. Yes, backyard areas.

Yeah, so I guess I'll be a little more clear. The separate parcel or tax lot, which was adjacent to Tyus Park on the north side of 25th, that's what I'm referring to. Those were the lots that contained the original areas, correct?

That's correct.

And the lot just south of that, adjacent to 25th, did not have that areas, right?

That's correct.

Okay. So because of that reason, I don't see that the air easement actually was applicable to the entire properties if they were separate. The air easement was only over the north one, which is adjacent to Tice. So I see it as the air easement should be paid that 10% of whatever that north lot is, not the south lot. That's where I'm at.

I think I'm in minority. Something out of that is they were only eligible to acquire those lots with those areas bins by owning the front lot. It wasn't lots put on the open market.

I understand that regardless, I'm looking at where the air easement was placed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. So I have a little bit different take in what I was looking at. First off, these appraisals are specifically for the air easements. That's what they're for. Regardless of the size of the lot attached to them, as I looked at this, this is specifically just for the air easement. The second is there's four that are all at the same higher value, the $83,764, which tells me that there's not a double value actually being assessed to that one specific lot because there's not one that's double everybody else's. And then there's two that are only $7,000 less than that. So this is specifically just for the air easements. It's just for the air over the top. And I would agree, I appreciate the city manager's comments regarding this was done by a professional appraiser. This is what they do. And they knew that they were supposed to be appraising the air easements only. That's what they were coming to a number for. So I would tend to lead to their expertise.

Any other counselor have questions? Is there anyone else in the civic hall that wants to testify? Okay, then that concludes our public testimony for this evening. Staff have anything else that they would like to add to the record or does the city council have any additional questions for city staff? Okay, seeing none, I will now close the public hearing. All right, now we're going to go to a resolution. Resolution to consider resolution number 2026-29, a resolution establishing the revised sanitary sewer user fees and repealing resolution 2025-09. So just for the people in the audience, so this was the public testimony that we heard first. We had public testimony. Now we're going to a resolution to discuss it. So I'd like to call on Eric Grimstad, Wastewater Services Manager in Geoff Hunsaker, Public Works Director to present.

We don't have anything in addition to present for council.

Council have any questions for them? Okay. Any counselor have a motion?

I would move to approve resolution 2026-29. Second.

I have a motion from Councillor Geary, a second from Councillor Cunningham. Any further council discussion? Okay, Claudia.

Councillor Benner.

Aye. Aye.

Councillor Geary.

Aye.

Councillor Cunningham.

Aye.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Nay.

Councillor Chenoweth.

Nay.

Council President Peralta.

Yes.

Resolution number 2026-29 passes by a vote of four ayes and two nays.

Now we're going to consider resolution number 2026-30, a resolution adopting findings and exempting from public bidding requirements and authorizing the city manager to enter into a construction contract for the waste, WRF, it's what they have here, Headworks Influent Fine Screen Rebuild, project 2026-4 with the Parkson Corporation, page 97 through 120 of the packet. I'd like to call on Kevin Wood, engineering program manager and GF Hunsaker public works director.

Yeah, so this is also Kevin's first time talking with you all.

I was going to say, that's a new name for me.

We have a lot of new blood in public works right now. But this is a bit of a different way of contracting, doing public contracting, so we wanted to make sure we kind of give you a quick rundown of it. So I'm going to pass it over to Kevin to kind of give some oral summary of what this resolution has in it. Okay.

All right, thank you, Jeff. So the staff report in front of you recommends, like Mayor Morris had mentioned that we are recommending the city council approve the resolution to exempt the water reclamation facility, Headworks Influent Fine Screen Rebuild Project from competitive public bidding requirements and authorize the contract with the parks incorporation in the amount of $267,634. So a little bit of background, the existing influent fine screens at the wastewater treatment plant have been operating continuously since 1996 and are now experiencing significant internal wear. Despite the observed wear, the units are still hydraulically and mechanically performing well. And so as stated in the staff report, during the most recent high flow event, the screen successfully handled flows exceeding 35 million gallons per day. while maintaining approximately two feet of freeboard, which demonstrates that the units are still adequately sized and function overall. And so rather than fully replacing the screening system, staff are recommending a rebuild using the original equipment manufacturer, Parks and Parts and Parks and Certified Technicians. The proposed rebuild is expected to conservatively extend the service life of the equipment by approximately 10 additional years. However, as Jeff had mentioned, this is considered a major rehabilitation of the existing treatment infrastructure and the cost of the repairs greater than a hundred thousand. It falls within the competitive bidding requirements for a public improvement described in the ORS279C.300. And so unless that project is exempted under the ORS 279C.335. And so the legal basis for the exemption in ORS 279C.335 allows a local contract review board, AKA the city council to exempt a public improvement project from competitive bidding if the findings support that doing so is in the public interest. And so the major justification provided in the staff report and further detailed in exhibit A to the resolution is that the AquaGuard screening system is proprietary equipment. Parkson is the sole source provider of the OEM parts and using non-OEM components if available could create reliability, compatibility and warranty issues for the equipment. So in addition, we also did publish a notice of proposed exemption from competitive bidding in the Daily Journal of Commerce that's required under the ORS. And we did not receive any requests for public hearing or any comments after the minimum 14 day waiting period. So with that, I turn it over to you.

And the fiscal impact it says is $267,634 and is in your budget. That's an important part. Yay. Any counselors have any questions? Councilor Chenoweth.

I do, but I was waiting to see if Dan was going to do it. He didn't move, so I'll take it. You want to talk about a lawnmower? Kind of. I want to talk about why we didn't do competitive bidding.

So yeah, as stated, if we did competitive bidding, We're gonna have to have a very strict set of specifications to make sure we're gonna have contractors that can build it. It will still have issues with voiding some of the warranties and such that Kevin mentioned. So we felt it was in the best interest to direct award this to the contractor who built it in the first place to extend the life of this instead of doing a separate major rebuild. If the council doesn't agree, then we would have to go out for competitive bidding.

So I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree. I just know that there are companies that can actually do this work. And so I'm trying to understand the rationale as to why we wouldn't put it to bid to see if there is cost savings there that can be obtained when I have a list of six different companies that do this work.

I guess it's up to the city council if they want us to go out for a competitive building. This is our recommendation. We think, like we stated, it's in the best interest of the public from the staff point of view. But if the council doesn't agree, then we'll put it out to competitive building.

What does that mean, though? What is best interest? Do you think we're not going to get as good a work from other...

It has to be based legally on the findings that were in the staff report. I can have Kevin read them again, but that's what they have to be based on. So we're not trying to speculate or anything like that. There's only a certain amount of items that we can bring to the council, why we would recommend that this not go through the competitive bidding process.

I think important part that you mentioned, at least in my opinion is that these are the people that made the screen and having them work on it. They know what, how it was made and what they need to do to extend the life. So answer Peralta.

Did you say that not using the OEM parts, OEM parts would void the warranty that we're under?

That's correct. So you'd have to be relying then on warranties provided by an outside contractor. And there would be uncertainty in terms of whether or not you'd have to exercise those warranties if the non-OEM parts do end up having issues down the road. So that's something that we wouldn't be able to speculate on.

So essentially it creates a weasel point between the two vendors. Yeah. No, well, that's what it is. That's what it is. It's a weasel point where you have a vendor that designed the original thing and you avoided that warranty and you have a new vendor who has the new part and you have two warranties that don't necessarily match up.

Correct. I think it's also worth noting that Parson doesn't rely on necessarily third party subcontractors to do the work. So they're, There's not going to be a, I don't necessarily disagree with what Councilor Chenoweth is saying, but it's going to be much more of a limited market in terms of who's going to have the specialized experience to do it. And even if they do have the experience, they're still going to be having to procure parks and parts if they want to do it as an OEM rebuild. And then they would also be having to rely on parks and for the technical expertise as well.

So just to finish my thoughts, I mean, I'm not an expert in this. I don't think anybody on this council is an expert in what we do. We pay you guys for your expertise. So I am certainly in support of, of your proposal. It makes sense to me to go to the original manufacturer. Um, I appreciate that that's not the norm, but it seems like the wise thing to do in this case.

Counselor Tchaikovsky, did you have something?

Sure. Based on my experience with mechanical equipment, which is obviously where I work all the time, I understand why we would go with OEM people, and I do support that. I don't like the fact that we don't have a competitive bid, but sometimes you can't get an apples-to-apples bid because they're not the same, so... Although I don't like it, I would support it because I think it's the right thing to do. And also, this really isn't a system to mess around with. It can get uncomfortable quickly. Let's say that.

Councilor Cunningham.

In the report, it pointed out that this has gone 10 years, 20 years beyond its... normal lifespan. Correct. What type of warranty is still in place if we've made it that far?

The warranty would be on the rebuilt. It's a new warranty. So we wouldn't be voiding a current warranty. Correct, but you would also be getting a warranty from the original equipment manufacturer, which I think would have more certainty involved in terms of the rebuild being done correctly. Okay, thank you.

Councilor Chenoweth.

I want to be clear. I'm not... I would agree with most of what's been said up here. I just wanted, hopefully, more rationale than what I got in the packet for why we're going to non-competitive bid. In my world of IT, which is definitely not as... Well arguably depending on if you're the user but it's not as important as what as what we're dealing with at the at the wastewater facility I deal with this decision all the time of am I going with OEM or am I going with third-party manufacturing? And so I get the trade-offs that you have to decide and particularly where is that third-party manufacturing? Sourcing their parts and making those parts makes a difference I understand all that. I'm not the expert in your field. I was just hoping to get more information on the rationale. That was all. And I understand legally you're stuck. So got it. Thank you.

Can I speak to that point in particular? I just want to draw your attention. Exhibit A to the resolution goes through a list of statutory criteria which the council, being the decision body here, has to, gets to consider in not going forward with a competitive bid. So there's... step-by-step instructions on what factors were considered and how they fit into this, if that would give you the information you're looking for. Eventually, your findings of that document are what will support the not going out to bid.

Realistically, I should have called the engineer, the public works director, before we got to this point, and this is on me. Thank you.

Councillor Geary.

I'd like to make a motion that based on the findings in the packet that we adopt a move to adopt resolution 2026-30.

I have a motion from Councillor Geary, a second from Councillor Peralta. Any further discussion from the council? Claudia.

Councillor Benner.

Aye.

Councillor Geary.

Aye.

Councillor Cunningham.

Aye.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Aye.

Councillor Chenoweth.

Aye.

Council President Peralta.

Yes.

Resolution number 2026-30 passes unanimously.

Okay, now we're going to consider resolution number 2026-31, a resolution authorizing the sale of air easements affecting certain properties between Northwest 25th Street and Tice Park. And again, for you in the audience, that was the second public hearing that we had earlier tonight. I'd like to call on City Attorney David Leitenberg to present.

Thank you, Mayor. I have nothing additional to present, but I'm available for questions if you have any further.

Council having, Councilor Geary.

I was wondering if I could bounce a idea for an amendment off you.

Yes.

Number six could read all proceeds from sales related of these air easements be dedicated to the maintenance and or park development projects at Tice Park specifically and only. I added the and only just because it sounded lawyer-y.

It was not necessary, I think, but we love a couple extra words. Okay.

I'm paid by the word up here.

I just wanted to ask, you said as number six, but I only see four in the resolution, and I was thinking that it would be number four.

I was also having a fun little wild goose chase, so people would be looking for the fifth one. Okay, yes, then we can do that as number five.

Is the fifth one an air easement?

Yeah.

Yeah. So that would be number five. I'm going to propose that it's number four and we make. Oh, okay. Number four into number five.

So that's just before you do.

Yep.

Is there any other discussion about this? Because I have a feeling we're going to have a motion here. Okay. You have a question?

Yeah. So this is applicable to both the North and the South lot as it's written.

That's what it sounds like. That's how they determined it as per city manager Garvin.

Thank you. Thanks. I'd like to move to approve resolution 2026-31 with the addition that number four easement become as stated, all proceeds from sales related of these air easements be dedicated to the maintenance and or park development projects at Tice Park specifically, period. And then what was number four becomes number five. Second.

I have a motion, Councillor Geary, a second from Councillor Chenoweth. Any further discussion?

Claudia? Councillor Benner? Aye. Councillor Geary?

Aye.

Councillor Cunningham?

Abstain.

Councillor Tucholsky?

The reason I'm voting against this is because I don't believe the original error easement applied to the south lot, so nay.

Councillor Chenoweth? I'm Peralta.

Yes.

Resolution number 2026 dash 31 passes by a vote of four eyes, one abstention and one name.

Okay. Now we're going to move on to advice and information items. So we're going to have reports from counselors on committees and board assignments and what they've done in department heads.

All right. Where should I start?

I'm going to start on this side. Director Henry, Finance Director. I amazingly, I have nothing to report from finance this week.

We are just pleased that the Budget Committee meetings are done.

Perfect. Thank you. City Attorney David Lightburg.

Thank you, Mayor. Just really quickly, one thing I wanted to bring to your attention is you may have heard through the grapevine that the city was involved in some civil action with regard to dogs recently. Once again, Ms. Sandra Atwood brought a writ against the city involving the situation. around her dogs more than a year after the first events that brought them to your attention. The city through the city's contract prosecutors secured a dismissal of that writ last week. And so that matter should hopefully once again be completed.

Thank you.

Actually on a totally different matter, our next public meeting, I will be attending, but virtually from my ancestral home in Southern California. Thank you.

Chief Wood.

I will not be in my ancestral home. I will be here. And there's nothing new to report from the police department. We continuing the projects. The council is already aware of, and there haven't been any meetings since our last council meeting to report back on.

Thank you. City manager, Adam Garvin.

Thank you, Mayor. I attended the Distinguished Service Awards banquet and presented an award for Junior Citizen of the Year to Brian Wicks. I attended an MEDP monthly meeting. I've done quite a bit of work on the Northwest Rubber Site DDA and getting closer to a path forward on that. attended a graduation planning meeting with cord captain Fessler and some with superintendent fear and her staff to look at making some safer options for this year, as well as some different deployment models for the fire district around their, their medical team over there. If there's any heat exhaustion or any other medical issues, lots of budget meetings, And then we had park and rec director interviews, panel interviews last Friday, along with the meet and greet. Thank you for the members of the policy body that participated in that from the zoom process earlier part of the month to the in-persons and appreciate all the insight that you guys have shared as well as the UT team that participated on that panel and the community members, a lot of great feedback. And I'll have one-on-ones with the two finalists this Friday, and then hopefully we'll have an offer extended and accepted shortly thereafter. And special thanks to HR Director Hedges for helping on that, or really doing most of it.

Truth be told.

My apologies, Madam Mayor. I need a mulligan. On Friday, Officer Hayden Hampton graduated from DPSST, and he's back with us this week starting his field training. And Officer Lucien Lefevre started on Monday at the academy.

And were you going to bring the sergeants here? Wasn't that a plan?

Yes, we're just dealing with the scheduling of getting them here. The last couple of temps have resulted in conflict, so.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Benner.

I'm excited to report that I've got a committee on landscape committee. We haven't, or I missed the first meeting, or we attended the... EVLC meeting with Councillor Chenoweth and the long range facility task force with Zach and the city manager.

Thank you. Councillor Tucholsky.

Yeah, so last Friday, I attended the parks and rec director interviews, pretty pleased with the quality of applicants that we received. So I think that's great. I think good things are ahead for the parks and rec department, regardless of who we hire there. So that's a good thing. With committee assignments, I have been assigned to the DEI group, so we did meet on Thursday, May 14th at 2 p.m. The group is planning a Juneteenth celebration Friday, June 19th, and there will be a band, there's gonna be a festival outside Beerly Brewing on 3rd Street. Third Street will be shut down at that time for Mac Fresco. Just to be clear, the band and the festival are not using city funds. The funding is actually provided by Friends of the Library. So that's been a question in the past for some folks. On Tuesday, May 19th, the Airport Commission met and we discussed The budget for the airport, basically the airport's not running in the black without fees and service fees at this time. Whatever the city gives them is about $120,000 too little. And so they make that up in fees and services. There still is only one full-time employee at the airport. That's our new airport manager, Mr. Pascal. He's doing a great job out there. He did put together a good budget. I'll talk about that in a moment. We did get updated project information for the perimeter fence and the illuminated wind cone. So those will be going in soon. The pot cake hanger has been sold to Weyerhaeuser. And so if everybody remembers a while back, Weyerhaeuser is gonna bring in some firefighting Blackhawks. They've done that now, or they're doing that right now. They did actually post six job postings for the McMinnville area, looking for two Blackhawk pilots, one maintenance manager, one ground support technician, one logistics manager, and one Blackhawk mechanic. All of those are rather high paying jobs at a minimum. That's another $476,000 of salaries into our community or upwards of 714, depending on the experience of the people. They're great paying jobs for people, so that's a good thing. We also have the airport airfield striping program going into effect, so that's going to be restriped. The U.S. Army Golden Knights Parachute Team is going to be here June 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. They will be conducting tandem parachute jumps over the airport those days and upwards of 75 jumps from 7 to 5 p.m. So June 2nd, 3, 2, 3, and 4, if you're interested in seeing the Golden Knights Parachute, I'll be out there. Watch your government funding at work there. City Council will be soon receiving the budget from the airport commission. Mr. Pascal, our new manager, is actually doing a good job of enacting what the council's asked for in cost recovery. We have a lot of airplanes that land. even just last week you'll have jets that land and they Drop off people they land they pick up people they continually do so they don't pay anything to do that and You know, it's wear and tear on the airport. It's wear and tear on the paint of the airport the asphalt itself takes maintenance and you know people that are flying on these things probably won't notice the 168 dollar fee and so I was at the airport last summer with my kids. We went on a helicopter ride at Trimble and Jelly Roll. I don't know what kind of singer you call him. I'll just call him a singer. His plane was there. And so I don't think he's going to miss the $168 out of his pocket. So those are the type of people you're dealing with. Mr. Pascal is bringing together a bunch of fees that either maintain and or increase. And so he's actually done a good job of finding new fees and new opportunities to increase the revenue so that we don't have to ask the taxpayers of the city to fund this. We can fund it through the use fee. So I think he's doing a great job with that area. And that's my speech. There you go.

Thank you. Councillor Geary.

Thank you. I have a couple things. Visit McMinnville. I'll give a little bit more of a brief update this month, week, night. Some hotel data that speaks to the current and upcoming outlook for TLT or transient lodging tax funds, which is how Visit McMinnville is funded. But my presentation will be brief. The Visit McMinnville will be coming at our next meeting or early June meeting and presenting in full. So, yeah. In a snapshot, April, looking back at trends, room night demand among McMinnville hotels rose 1.9% from year over year. And while hotel supply remained unchanged, it resulted in hotel occupancy increasing 1.9%. So hotels average 62.4% occupancy for the month. However, average daily rate declined 13.6% compared to last April, which dropped to $132. Year to date, hotels have seen a 5.8% decline in revenue year over year, which is driven by a 9.4 decrease in the average daily rate. and that's my uh visit mcmillanville update and like i said you'll hear more from the director himself um in the upcoming weeks up additionally ufo fest um we helped out a bunch cleaned up a lot of trash but a big shout out to the mcmillanville downtown association staff for really doing a great job making that event work also a huge shout out and thank you to all the members of city staff who helped in any way put barricades out or ran extra shifts or anything that helped put that event on. That's a really great event. I appreciate we can help participate. I also helped with the park and rec director interview panel. I hope all candidates we have are we're going to make a good choice as long as we can make a choice, which will be great. I'll be at the long range facility task force for the school district as well this Thursday. And last and most importantly, I'll be coaching minor league baseball for the McMinnville Park and Rec. Our team color assigned is orange. We haven't got a name yet. So I'll come back with the name of our orange team. And we got assigned the opening morning game this Saturday, 9 30 AM down on the ball fields. So it's gonna be a good season.

Okay. I also attended the distinguished service awards banquet as did city manager Garvin. It was a great to see people honored. That's where women of the year, man of the year, junior citizen and farmer of the year and educator. So it's a great. a great thing that they do every year. On the 14th, I also attended the McDonnell leadership meeting on the 15th as part of the, we care about kids with the school district. I attended along with the rest of the board of love, like Michael and the McDonnell high school baseball game, where the proceeds from the concessions all went to support love, like Michael and, and support its mission of suicide awareness and prevention focused on youth. After the game, I attended the Hillsborough Air Show along with the representatives of the Chamber of Commerce and Visit McMinnville to see their Kaboom Night Show. The show consists of a huge firework show, drones and aircraft with special lighting. It was damp, but it didn't matter. We all sat outside and watched the excitement with all the crowd. It was a fantastic show, and they're considering bringing it to McMinnville's Air Show next year. Just a reminder that this year the air show is August 14th through the 16th, and it will feature the Blue Angels. Mike and I also volunteered at the UFO Festival, and we were parade monitors walking alongside Chief Woods. It was a great parade, and kudos again to Sam and Emily at the MDA and everyone else that volunteered. At this month's Yamhill County Economic Alliance meeting, we discussed opportunity zones and applications. McMinnville has two tracks that have been identified that we're gonna be applying for, one by the city and one by McMinnville Economic Development Partnership. This encourages developers to invest in do job creation. I had my monthly one-on-one with city manager Garvin, which I enjoy. Thank you. This time of year, the high school civics, as we can see in government classes, have an assignment to come and either attend a meeting or interview a local government. So we've seen you at our budget meeting. We see you here tonight. And I did have a couple of one-on-one interviews with students. So appreciate you coming, spending the time and learning what we do. I also attended the chamber board meeting where I said as an ex-officio of the board, monthly meeting of the Yamhill County mayors was hosted by Amity Mayor King. We had McRae from the COG, which is a council of governments as a guest speaker. We spoke about the COG and their restructuring and that they've chosen to stay with an interim executive director at this time versus looking for a full-time permanent one until they can really get a grasp on what they're looking for. We are planning our next meeting and bringing, hopefully, Sheriff Elliott in to talk about county committees and WICOM. Last week was Public Works Reconnection Week, and there was a joint lunch between our City Public Works umbrella of employees and the McMimble Water and Light employees. It's a great group of people. They keep your lights on.

Meeting at about 5 o'clock, and all the fellow councilors and mayors should have received the report back from the business forum that the EVLC hosted back in February. I chose not to give a report on that because that followed a bit.

So a lot of the... Most of the public works supervisors and managers are going to be attending that training. And we have some finance staff that's going to be attending as well. As you can see with some of the stuff that we bring to council, there's a lot going on with public contracting law. And maybe we'll learn some things to even make it even more confusing going forward.

Great. Do you want Chris to join you?

We're going to have lunch.

All right, did I get everybody? There's nobody online, right? Okay, so in your packet, April 20, 26 cash and investment report is in the packet. Did anybody have any questions? Okay, then I am going to adjourn the meeting at 8.31. Thank you.

And thank you all young people for coming out tonight.

music music