City Council - workshop

and call on GF Hunsaker, Public Works Director, and Adam Garvin, City Manager to present.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Just sent Claudia over the share request here, okay. There we go, all right. So tonight's work session, we're gonna be continuing our discussion on the parks SDC methodology update that it corresponds with the recently adopted PROS plan. Purpose night, like I said, is a continued at discussion. Our focus this evening after the first work session was to get some more development cost impacts. So I have some more information in tonight's presentation to share with council on potential development costs impacts. And then as well, I have some very specific policy questions for the council to discuss later at the end of this, to hopefully get to our goal of attaining council direction on the policy choices and allowing the staff to proceed with the development of the final SEC methodology and getting that implemented. So since there has been some time since our last discussion, I'll try to quickly review what was covered last time. The first is the methodology and how it was constructed. So the first part of the methodology is we estimate the amount of growth we expect to see over the planning period of 2022 to 2041. That is both the growth in both the population as well as employment. Next, we have to convert that to an equivalent population to do that you use a residential coefficient of one so one person equals one population and then the non residential coefficient that was used in the assumption for the current methodology was 0.33 per job, so a job is the equivalent of one third of a resident. From that, we calculate an equivalent population of expected growth. So that is the 15,000 number you see in the lower right of the table. Next, we take the CIP to accommodate that growth. The assumptions that were made in the PROS plan were that the existing park system is correctly sized for this population. So any further population growth would be an expansion of the park system at that same proportion. So that was the capital improvement plan that was designed in the pros plan. And then from that, we calculate how much of those projects have a SDC recoverable costs to them. So are the expansion projects, is there any adjustments or credits needed all that? And then finally we calculate, we develop a formula for how different types of development have equivalent populations and what those equivalent costs would be per SDC for a person. So for residential, we have more categories than what we have currently. Currently there is only, one residential rate per household. Now it is scaled depending on the size of the home. And then since it's considering commercial and industrial, there was square footage equivalents that were applied for the types of development that you see there on the right. So that was a very quick simile, but does council have any questions on the assumptions that were used in that methodology development to date? We covered that quite a bit in the last one, but I wanna make sure I answer any additional questions before moving on.

Any questions? Councilor Chenoweth.

Thank you, Mayor. So trying to understand and wrap my head around the methodology to determine commercial, You're saying it's gonna be that the commercial employee, industrial employee is gonna use the parks about one third of what a regular citizen would use the parks on average.

That was the assumption made in the current methodology. That is a policy question that council I have later for the council to discuss further. It's just the assumption that was made. It is defensible. If the council doesn't feel that that is the correct equivalent corn ratio that could be modified and the methodology would have to be updated, but that is a question for the council. It's a policy question mostly, but it is defensible.

And how did that translate out to the per square footage?

It was an assumption looking at development data and the amount of employees per those types of development on average. So for industrial or manufacturing, there's an assumption about how many employees there are per square footage and then that's converted over.

Where did that assumption come from?

I'd have to go back and look at the methodology report that is on the website and I've included in past work sessions. I don't have it off the top of my head.

And did that come from the consultant or from the consultant? Yes. Okay. Um, okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I question, as you know, the, the 33% modeling, um, we'll have that more in the policy discussion section of this.

from what I recall in the methodology, the assumption is essentially they're employees here for eight hours of a day. So that's the equivalent of a third of a resident. That's, that's the assumption that was used right or wrong. It's a policy decision. Yeah. And we'll, I'll save that for the discussion of the, at that point. Thanks.

Any other questions at this point? Okay.

I'll keep moving on. Also just a very quick, Recapped of the capital program, the capital program that we're most interested in is the new parks. That's the largest chunk of SDC eligible projects. So there's quite a few in the pros plan for about $80 million worth of the 98 million in SCC eligible projects. So when they're a brand new park, they're completely SCC eligible, but there are additional SCC eligible capacity projects that can be done in existing parks, be they building a new playground or a new skate park or a new ball field or something similar. So the total number of STC eligible capital projects is 93.3 million. And so that equivalent population of 15,000, you take 93 million divided by 15,000. That's the dollar amount per resident that you would calculate for the STC and the methodology. So those projects are mostly on the outer urban growth area portions of the city. There are two projects that are called out for in the Northern central part of the city for new parks there. The reasoning behind that was the goal was to have a park within a a quarter mile walk of every resident. And those two areas were shown to be islands without park access. So it was determined that the ideal would be to build two new parks there as part of the pros plan. It does not identify exactly how that will happen, but it does call for staff to look into building parks in those locations. And those are included in the SDC costs. The projects that aren't included, as we've discussed before, there are maintenance and replacement projects. Those are not SDC eligible projects. So replacing, for example, the dragon play structure in upper city park that since it's a replacement, it wouldn't be SDC eligible. However, if you built it larger, the extra capacity could be SDC eligible as part of that, just not the bulk of the replacement. And then as well, the recreation center and aquatic center replacements, essentially the bond project, those are not part of the SDC calculations. Those are separate and we're assumed to be funded wholly by a bond. So for the development financial impacts, there's a lot of data here. I tried to accommodate all the different requests that I've seen from council and from some of the other committees that have just been discussing the park to SCC's regularly. It is not all encompassing data. I don't have the resources to get everything, but most of it is here. And so hopefully it will help you with your discussion later on.

So the first is our current park SDC is

$3,088 per unit, so that is one household. The new methodology assumes a typical home, which is that 1,000 to 1,999 square feet would be about 12,500. That number goes down if the residential unit is smaller and it goes up at the residential unit is larger, but that is the average in the proposed methodology. There is some asks for where that landed. And so currently McMinnville. So in this graph, the bottom is the SDC costs ranging from zero up to a little over 17,500. McMinnville currently lands in the upper third of SDCs being on the lower end. If we, took this methodology and just assumed only if 50% of the cost was recovered from this methodology, it moves. We're still in the upper half, 80% begins to get into lower half. And then the proposed being fully funded is in the lower third. I've also heard people ask in the past, well, each city on here is a different median income. So you need to look at that information. So I included that as well. not the cleanest way to show it, but I was trying to show as much information as possible on this chart. So as you can see, a city like Hillsboro where their SDC lands in about that $7,500 range and their median income being about $97,000. Generally as median income goes up, the sdc goes up but that is not a hard rule it is really each community kind of sets their own sdc based on what they're trying to do with their parks program so i'm going to pause here because there's a lot of information on this slide i want to make sure everybody understands it before i move on mayor counselor cunningham yeah um obviously this would be a maybe have that information maybe don't um

Of these communities, would you say where are they at with tiering like is being proposed? Is there a majority of them that have tiers like what's being proposed or is it a majority of them have a fixed rate?

I'm trying to remember back onto if it was tiering or not. most of the ones with newer methodologies have tiering. Cause that's the current best practice. And that encourages middle housing development and smaller redevelopments and whatnot in the communities. So most of them with a newer methodology have that tiering, but it's not consistent across the board and I'd have to go back and look at each individual one if I didn't record that data when I was doing the research.

Sure, sure, sure. Do you possibly have like a couple that have the newer, like do you remember which ones have the newer methodology?

Let's see. Hillsborough has the newer methodology. I believe Redmond has the newer methodology. Wilsonville does. Tiger does. I think it's the majority of them. I just can't remember off the top of my head exactly which ones. Okay, thank you.

the state has been moving toward that tiering system uh recently talk about proposed parks and development we're requiring some parks to go in with development correct so on here just looking at proposed parks just keeping that in mind

Yes. If a development is required to build a park as part of that development, and it's something that would be in, that's a park that's identified in the pros plan, which is why we would require it. They get the SDC credits for the cost of that park development. So we, they don't double pay. So they're reimbursed for the cost of the land and the cost of the park development. If they do that on behalf of the city, the other option would be that they, the city would purchase the land using park SDCs and then building it themselves. But then the development would be fully charged all SDCs on all the households that they build moving forward instead of getting SDC credits for those.

Okay. And immediately does the city take that on for maintenance or is the developer required to do that for a certain length of time?

Um, In that scenario, you could work it out different ways, but essentially it would be, the city would take on maintenance right away. It would be the standard. I know that that's been done slightly differently in a couple of developments here in town, but the standard would be, we would take on maintenance as soon as the project plotted.

I might add a little bit more to that. There are a couple of sort of non-traditional ways to look at how parks can be built through new development. Here in McMinnville, we changed the annexation process to take annexation out of land use. create the annexation agreement. With the annexation agreement, you do have the opportunity to exact parts through that process without an STC credit. Obviously that's all negotiated. And then we have in a couple of recent projects where we've been meeting with developers that are doing planned unit developments, which allows us more flexibility. We have had discussions with them about providing open space, so Baker Creek North is a great example of this. The 17 acres that is on the edge of Baker Creek by the creek is land that they own. They built the park system, and they didn't get SDC credits, so all those natural trails in there. They then provided it to the city, but they are under a land use decision where they're maintaining it until 2032. Thank you.

Councillor Tucholsky, did you have your hand up? Okay. Councillor Benner.

Thank you, Mayor. Jeff, can I have you help me understand the graph? On the left, you've got McMinnville scattered out repetitively. If we just looked at the proposed, the green bar represents the STCs for a what? A 2,000 square foot house or is it, how did you get that?

That's correct. That's the $12,500 number, which would be an average home of that 1,000 to 2,000 square foot home.

In the tiered system. in the tiered system yes the the the the driver of this graph is a 2000 square foot home yes and then if it's not a mcminnville resident is that the same assumption for like sherwood how do we figure out is that 75 in 2000 square foot house or how did you figure out the baseline for the other

For the baseline, it's hard to be perfectly apples to apples with each of them. If they did a single rate, I used that. If they did a tiered rate that had the same tier, I used that number. If they had a tier rate that didn't match up with ours very well, I kind of went with an average. So I tried to get as close as I could to making them apples to apples, but there's a bit of apples and pears in here.

Thank you.

Any other question of Councillor Peralta?

Jeff, I appreciate your work on this. I had a couple of questions. So I see we have the tiered system in here based on square footage. I think an earlier version, maybe it's been a year since we've seen it, had a category for multifamily that was different than single family residences, and that category seems to have been pulled out.

Yes, that category is not in the methodology that we have currently. It's just residential and then the size of the unit. So if it would be a... So if it's an apartment unit that say less than 500 square feet, that unit would be 6,000. So you would determine the size of the, of the units in the facility, and then you would calculate the SDC that way.

So my, I appreciate that. My concern with that is that you're essentially stacking the SDCs on apartments in a way that seems to make those more cost prohibitive than just doing single family residences when we stack them that way. So I'm wondering if it might not make sense to.

So I guess help me understand the stacking a little bit more. Essentially it's trying to assume how many people would live in each of those units and then converting it the cost that way. doing it this way. It's intent is to calculate the amount of people that would be in that multifamily unit and then charging the SDC. That would be appropriate for that. Similar to the amount of people you would assume would live in a home. Now it's not going to be perfect, obviously, because somebody might build a 5,000 square foot home and live in it by themselves, but it has the capacity to hold more people is the idea.

Yeah. I mean, I guess where I'm getting at is you compare say a 4,000 square foot home to a thousand square foot apartment and the thousand square foot apartment at 4,000 square feet is $40,000 or $38,000 in STCs. Whereas the home is 15,000. So it seems like based on just the square footage comparisons, you're, it makes it more prohibitive to do, um, to do that kind of development, which I don't think we, yeah. And that should be a policy goal to reduce the amount of, of multifamily as a result of this. I mean, my preference would be to see fewer 4,000 square foot homes. And to the extent there's an economic disincentive, uh, with an SDC, I guess I would just like to see that applied more to higher end housing and less housing that's targeting people of more modest means.

There would have to be a change in the methodology report or to be able to accommodate that because it's based on equivalent population. So with a higher density, you're going to apartment units going to have more people. So would have more of a impact on the park system is the idea to change it to be the way you're talking about. We'd have to. There's a way to do it. I'm not sure exactly what that'd be. I'd have to talk to somebody that's more of an expert in STCs, but if that was the desire of the council as a whole, we could look into something like that.

I mean, I feel like that was the sense of the council previously. I don't know if that currently is the thinking among the group, but I mean, we can add that as a question.

Uh, when we get to the more policy discussions later, I can add a question eight, um, so that we can, you can talk, uh, through that.

Um, yeah, I mean, I, I would just say, you know, from my perspective, um, disincentivizing housing that is more affordable, um, by square footage and then incentivizing housing that's less affordable and larger housing and McMansion type properties. I just don't think that's the direction that I'd like to see us go.

There are some cities, and if you recall, we talked about this a little bit when this was first presented, that USDC methodology is based on the number of bedrooms in a unit. I want to be careful to say that a 4,000 square foot home isn't always a McMansion. Sometimes there's several families living in our larger homes in the community, and we're going to be moving forward with SROs in this community through some state legislation, which would also have many bedrooms in a larger home providing affordable housing.

Can you explain what an SRO is?

Single room occupancy. So it's the old, well, it's like a dormitory, but for adults, I guess, if you want to think of it that way. But if the interest is how to disincentivize large living areas, units for smaller amounts of people, which is what I'm hearing from you versus affordable living units for more people. We can look at it from that perspective.

I mean, that that's a frame that I, I definitely bring and I'm looking at, for example, Newberg's, um, and this is not the full STC is just the Jalen parks, STCs, and they have a lower rate for mobile home and a lower rate for multifamily housing. and then also a lower rate for ADUs. So I don't know if that's too far afield from what we're considering, but I do have some sympathy to that approach.

Thanks. Yeah, I added that as a question later for the council to discuss further. it would end up having to be some kind of a policy incentive on the back end, because it wouldn't be then based on population impacts, which is how the methodology is built now. So there's a way to do it. I just don't know exactly what it is, but I don't want to chase that down too much unless I know that's the will of the entire council or not the entire, the majority of the council. Okay.

Councilor Benner.

Apologies. I missed the beginning of that question. Sal, where is the rate for the multifamily?

It was for Shea-Halen Parks and Recreation.

For what we're looking at, is that part of this packet?

No, the packet breaks it down based on square footage of the unit. And so what I was asking was in previous versions where we've discussed this and where we've looked at it, they had different rates for multifamily housing and they were a lesser rate is my recollection, but that's not in this packet. So that's why I was raising that.

And so in the proposed, we're still looking at square footage regardless of how many units are in that currently. So a 10,000 square foot apartment would, or is it per unit?

That is to be the size of each unit. So if you have, 20 units that are 500 square feet or less, you would charge that 500 square foot cost for each unit. So multiply it 20 times.

Okay.

Thank you, mayor. I just wanted to comment on this slide while we're here. Thank you for presenting this because it does show the rather startling relationship that our proposed SDCs is in comparison to median income. comparative to other cities that are similarly priced currently. There's a pretty big difference and I appreciate that being brought out because as I've expressed multiple times, one of my concerns is the cost of housing and how rent burdened and how cost burdened our citizens in this particular community are. And being able to see this played out in front of us really kind of helps to drive that point home as to where we would sit where we should sit if we wanna be comparable to other cities with a comparable median income. So thank you for doing that.

Okay.

Okay. So again, those non-residential rates, about 10 of the 14 municipalities that I compared on the last slide have a non-residential park STC. So it is common, but it is not a firm rule. Every city has to make their own policy decision on this. What we did break it down by was development type of industrial warehouse, retail or hospitality, and then office. So there was also some asks for total SDC costs for different communities. And so the best I had was on a short window was the 2025 League of Oregon Cities SDC survey. This was completed in December of 2025. So it's our most recent survey for Oregon cities that filled out that survey, the average park SDC for a residential unit is $5,200. in the North Willamette region, which is where McMinnville is, which includes Polk, Marion, Yamhill, and the Southern half of Clackamas counties. The average for the Park SDC for the communities that completed the survey was 3,200. for the fifth quintile. So that is essentially the population quintile. McMinnville is in the top 20% for population size in the state of Oregon. So the top fifth quintile, the average is the $6,700. And then where we are currently is that 3,088. Just so I would share the information, but I wouldn't read too much into this. I also included the non-residential information, what they had for non-residential SDCs. Their average was 21,000 for park SDCs, but that's highly dependent on the type of development that occurred. So this was just the average of actual SDCs that were charged to non-residential projects in 2025. That's where you get the 21,000. I'm not sure why, North Willamette region was an NA, but that's what's included in that report. And then that fifth quintile park SDCs for average non-residential projects was 30,000. And then also looking at all SDCs, not just park SDCs. I have up here similar to the average for the responding communities, what it is in the North Willamette region. I am not sure why it is 58,000 in the North Willamette region. It did not state that. I have a hard time understanding that number and I wonder if there was maybe a typo with a one and a five there, but that's the number that they put in there. I highly doubt it's average $60,000, but that's what's in the report. I can get that. I can try to verify that with League of Oregon Cities, but I assume that number is slightly off. And then that fifth quintile, then as where McMinnville is currently, we are on the low end, but a major, a main reason for that is McMinnville does not have water or stormwater SDCs. Stormwater SDCs are usually pretty small, but water SDCs are usually pretty large in most communities. We do not, McMinnville Water and Light does not charge a water SDC. And then, as we're going through all these processes with our TSP or our pros plan and our wastewater master plan, most of our SDT methodologies have not been adopted, updated in a very long time. So that's probably also contributing to why our current SDC that we're getting per residential unit is on the lower end. Again, I included the non-residential. I don't know the types of projects these were. And then I have some example projects that are following that show what, what the total SDC was for McMinnville projects. Um, they're on the higher end. And so these are larger projects. These aren't, uh, really a good sample showing all types of non-residential development. These are more looking at larger, uh, non-residential developments that have occurred recently. So jumping. Is there any questions on these numbers before I jump into those example projects?

I have a question. So the retail and hospitality is significantly higher than everything else. And do you have any idea why that is? I mean, it's like people staying in a hotel or eating at a restaurant.

I believe it's people staying in the hotel.

You think they're going to use parks more than people that live here?

I believe so. And then for retail, I assume it's a larger employee base for the size.

Anything else right now? Councillor Ticholsky.

Yeah, Director Hansegar, I also had a question on retail and hospitality. It's going from the proposals anywhere from, we're going from zero to the proposals 347 square foot. Does this apply only to new construction or if a retail and hospitality business takes over an existing facility and has to remodel in order to meet their needs, are they charged this SDC per square foot?

Since the methodology is based on the new square footage, it would only be if a remodel included additional square footage. So if you had an existing 20,000 square foot warehouse and you're adding 10,000 square feet, you would pay the SDC on that 10,000 square feet, but not the existing 20,000. Okay.

Does that also go for warehouse, industrial, and offices?

Yeah, it would apply to all of them, yes.

Basically, any existing structure that's being reused doesn't have any kind of an SDC associated. Correct.

If it changed use, so it was office space and got converted to hospitality, then it would get charged that difference.

So it would be 347 minus 296? Correct. Per square foot? Okay. Okay.

is it would be, it would have that additional capacity usage of the park system in theory.

So let me just clarify that. So he said three 47 minus two 96, but is that how that actually would be figured?

The difference you would get the equivalent of the it's already an office space. So you wouldn't charge that what it was. So you would only jump to 51 difference in converting from office to hospitality. That's how we would calculate it.

Does that work in the opposite scenario?

no the um there isn't a situation that i've ever seen where a city's paid back secs because our credit test i i it's once you pay for that capacity it's there

Councillor Chenoweth.

Yeah. Following up on that. Um, is this the methodology we use for all our, our STCs, meaning that when a, uh, expansion is occurring on a piece of property, we only charge for the difference in square footage or are we doing this differently?

We would, it's not always square footage. It's based on capacity. So for transportation, it's based on trip generation. So if it's a coffee shop that converts to a, or it's a warehouse that converts to a coffee shop in the, um, in the ITA handbook, it talks about the amount of trips you would assume for a coffee shop versus the amount of trips you would assume for that warehouse. And so you would calculate the trip difference and then convert that to the STC cost.

Apologies, I didn't mean to make you have to do all that. What I was more interested in asking, and I'll rephrase the question. Is there a way to be uniform across all so that they're all the same? And the answer sounds to me already like it's no, because we're of the way SDC is for transportation is done. I should have asked that better.

And then for wastewater, it's based on your water usage. So you could convert to square footage, but it's going to be wrong. Not saying the way it's done now isn't wrong. It's just a lot less wrong, if that makes sense.

Right. I like the idea of only charging for the added footage.

Yeah, you're always charged additional SDCs only on if you're having additional capacity impacts. So with transportation, it would be more trips. For wastewater, it'd be using more water. And for parks, it would be more employees. And the way they calculate employees is by square footage, except for the hospitality situation.

And I just want to, again, clarify a couple of things. So the office is something that's an office and going to be converted to hospitality, even though park SDCs have not been paid because we don't have those in place right now for office, they still are only going to pay the difference.

Yes. Okay. Yep. It's based. You can assume with the methodology that we kind of had a frozen in time moment. What is here now has already happened. It's paid its way. Once this methodology is adopted, it can only be applied to additional development, additional capacity. It can't retroactively go back.

Okay. Anything else right now?

I had just a general question, if I may. So we keep talking about the parks program. I mean, you've even presented parks in the packet tonight. SDC funds aren't just exclusive to parks, though. They can be used for... capital infrastructure improvement of any kind, like what we were talking about a month or so ago for wastewater.

Wastewater SDCs can be used for wastewater projects. Park SDCs can be used for park.

We're just exclusively talking about this is all about parks.

This is parks only.

Yeah. I just want to be very clear because it's okay. I'll keep my opinions closed right now until it's time to talk. Thank you.

Anything else right now? Okay.

So some recent developments, this is again, just more data to help you with your discussion. So I didn't include the actual names of these developments because I didn't request to be able to use that, but this is some general information. So a 90,000 square foot industrial development that occurred recently. You can see what it was charged for. It's affordable housing, construction excise tax, the amount it paid for fees and permits, the amount it paid for SDCs, which is our transportation and sewer, and then some fees to the state as well for a total of $868,000. if this methodology was adopted, the proposed park SDC would have added an additional $249,000 to that project costs. So which would be an equivalent of a 29% development fee and charges increase. That project was an $85 million project overall is my understanding. I don't have the total development or total project costs for all of these, but I did include it on the ones I did have. So that's one example. Another industrial addition, a much smaller one. The total fees and STCs on that one were 23,000. So in this example, even though the square footage was larger, their water and transportation unit usage stayed the same, so they didn't get charged those STCs. So this proposed park STC has a larger percentage increase at that 32% cost. Or 32% increase, excuse me. Here's another industrial one at 20,000 square feet. This one, what the park SDC would have increased the percentage for development fees and charges by 40%. This 10,000 square foot increased it by 35%, so it kind of shows how each project's going to be a little bit different. It's hard to have perfect apples to apples on each project, but you're kind of seeing that it's increasing in that 30% to 40% range for fees right now. Here's a warehouse one. Since warehouses have a much lower cost per square foot to them, the percent increase was much smaller at 16%. And then with hospitality and that having a larger cost per square foot, the percent increase was the highest one we've seen yet at 46% increase. So before I jumped down, so that's the recent projects. So just kind of showing how each of those projects, their development fees and charges was gonna increase with this part proposed park as to see if it was at that full methodology.

which is a little bit alarming to see the total and to know that there's still SDCs that are probably going to be coming in the future to increase those fees. Instead of looking at things as a silo, looking at them as a whole like that is helpful. It really shows the cost. Counselor Gary.

Yeah. The first two, you had overall project costs and then the rest not. Is that just not available information or?

that was an information that I didn't. So I took this somewhat from a, some of the information for this was based on information we had internally. And then also some information that MEVLC put together for some of their stuff. So they had the project costs for these two projects, but not the other ones. And I didn't have time to go and get the overall project costs. I could have gotten the cost for the building and the improvements on site, but that's not necessarily the entire project cost. Cause that wouldn't include costs for land or furnishings. If it's a hospitality project or equipment, if it's an industrial project. So each one's going to be pretty different. It depends on your development and how much total investment that you're making for the increase.

Yeah. And your percentage increases increase to the total tab for fees and other STC is not total project increase.

No, that's just for this development fees and SDCs that you pay to the city. Okay.

You can get some sense of proportionality of the project because the affordable housing CET is 1% of the building permit value.

1% of the building permit value on the $85 million project.

Yes, because there's other costs embedded in the $85 million that aren't part of the building permit. I'm assuming equipment, land, things like that is going into that total project cost. But the building permit itself, our CET is 1% of the value of the building permit.

Can I ask?

Councillor Peralta.

Thank you, Mary. So I just want to confirm just based on this chart then, Heather, so... On this property, it's about a $13 million property, and the total fees are about $868,000.

A $13 million value on the building permit, so what's being constructed on site through a building permit.

And that doesn't include the dirt, just the building?

Yeah. It does include furniture and fixed equipment.

Can I get clarity on that one? So we're saying that it's sorry to grab a hold this one, $13 million building permit, but a total overall project cost of $85 million. That's five times the building is soft costs.

No. So I'm assuming the 85 million came from the developer. and not from our records.

Correct. I don't have.

So the $85 million is how much that expansion cost that business. It includes the equipment that they purchased and installed. All sorts of things that are outside of our building permit value.

Okay.

What I'm saying, if you wanted some sort of comparative across all the projects, the constant is the affordable housing CDT is 1% of the building permit value.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I had a question you may or may not be able to answer. We're talking about SDCs for the city itself. If someone wants to develop just outside the city boundaries, do you have any idea exactly what those SDCs are with respect to ours?

Outside the city boundary, so in the county?

Yeah.

The county does not have SBCs but some of these developments wouldn't be allowed in the county because they wouldn't it doesn't have the zoning to allow these types of developments.

I agree with you and if you could find some light industrial zoning in the county that some of it could apply but obviously residential obviously high density residential wouldn't apply in some areas. There's farmland exclusive farm.

don't believe the county has adopted transportation sdcs that i don't know in washington county where i live there is they replace the sdcs with a tdt and that is charged to everything outside the county but i actually don't know if what the county's if the county has any sdcs for transportation and then sewer if you're outside the city you're, we don't provide the sewer. And so they're, they're doing some kind of drainage field or something different if they're outside the city.

Right. Yes. My, my point with that comment or the question I should say is, um, I I'm concerned personally because we have increased SDCs that are going to be passed on to either residential people, uh, commercial people, essentially everyone that does business or lives within the city or surrounding this area. And if we make the cost of doing business within McMinnville, uh, I'll just use your example right now, 29%, uh, higher on the park SDC. It concerns me that people will just not do business within McMinnville and they'll find other ways to skirt the development charges and, I also am concerned that we're going to negatively affect the people that want to build affordable housing. And I'm not talking about the 4,000 square foot McMansions, like you talked about. Um, I don't want to discourage affordable housing because I was in significantly a need right now. And it, it's very concerning that we would have that increase. And then, you know, realistically those increases get passed along to consumers and you can say that they don't, but I, We found that that's true. Look at the oil prices today.

Yeah. It's often not a direct correlation, but often an indirect, um, for SDCs, they call it SCC incident is what I believe it is. So essentially if the cost of SCTs go to a point where it makes development not feasible, you're going to have less development. So you'll have less supply. So your housing costs will go up because it's the market's based on a supply and demand and all that. So, um, yes, there is potential for indirect, uh, but there's also many, many factors that go into development. There's also many communities on here that have significant development, have high SDC. So there's lots of moving parts, I guess, to this. So it is, but it is definitely an important factor for the cost of development and a city.

Councilor Benner.

How would these parks be paid for if we didn't do an SDC?

Well, that's a very much larger policy discussion that can be done many different ways. You could dedicate a portion of the general fund every year. You could go out for bonds. You could do private public partnerships. There's lots of different ways to potentially finance park. And this is much more in director Sprague's wheelhouse because she's much more experienced for park development historically than I do, but you could pay for it in different ways, but all ways are easy, I guess.

Could you give us a history lesson on how we paid for the parks that we currently have?

I can't do it for all the way back, but in 98, when the last parks master plan was done, there was SDCs that were adopted for the increase at that time, that council chose to only implement 50% of the total SDC methodology. And then the other 50%, the idea was to then go out for additional funding financing via bond to pay for the other portion. What was, what actually occurred my understanding. And again, this is history that has been passed down to me was that the city went out for that bond and then used SDCs to pay back that bond. So essentially they just financed 50% of the total projects in the last master plan.

And so all the parks in McMinnville were the, the, the, in the last 20 years, all the parks were funded with a 50% burden SDC or a 50% burden and then another 50% that was a bond.

I would say generally, but there's also parks that are donated. As Director Richards was talking about, there's some developments that built parks with them as it could have been part of an annexation agreement or something similar. So there's lots of different ways. but this would be kind of your backbone for how you would develop additional parks would be the park SDCs and then you could make modifications here and there.

Okay. So historically we had a 50% burden SDC and that paid for all the parks or we did that and an additional bond or did the bond simply pay off that 50% burden?

No, the bond was used to pay expand the park system and then they used then they had to pay back that bond it was like a 30-year bond or a 20-year bond i forget what the number was and then they've used park sdcs to pay that bond back once that bond's been paid back we've just been got it sdcs at this point we have four million roughly of sdcs in the bank so counselor benner when when they adopted the plan in 1999 their their plan to fund the cip or

100 million CIP, which wasn't 100 million there. The city council as a policy body elected to only collect 50% of the SDC that they could collect and then fund the rest of that CIP through a bond to the general public. So that was, when they adopted the plan, that was the financing mechanism that they adopted it via, and in practice, it practiced a little bit differently, but.

And so the, as I, As a citizen, I buy a house, I pay SDC, and then I also have an additional bond.

No, that bond's been paid off.

It's been paid off.

It wasn't a tax-funded bond.

It was a general obligation bond, yes.

Sorry, it didn't go to the voters and the voters didn't vote on that. It was a bond gotten by the council and paid for using the SDCs that they were bringing in separate. And so there was no added increase to the voters for that bond. It was just the SDC money that paid for that.

So when it was originally adopted, this is my understanding, looking at the documents, the intention was there would be a general obligation bond that passed and the SDCs and they were meant to be collected together to build the full plan. Over time, there were policy decisions to reduce the general obligation bond to the public and through an SCC mechanism. That's my understanding.

And I do think it was a voter approved bond in 2000.

Yeah, I do think so as well.

Councillor Peralta.

Thanks. So I really appreciate this discussion. For me, it's easiest to look at other cities and see what they're doing just to kind of have a comparator. And the city that I tend to look to is Newburgh because they're fairly population similar, income similar. And so I'm looking at their parks SDCs Ours currently are 3,200. Theirs are 93 89. Does that sound right for the residential?

Um, most likely, uh, I can see if I can get back to that. Sorry. Uh, So they, yeah, that's about where I have it.

And so 93 89. So there's is almost triple what ours is currently. It's below what the a hundred percent recur recuperate is. They also have a stormwater STC, which we don't have. That's Newberg does. Yeah. It's 218 per thousand square feet per year. And then their wastewater STC is 6,039.

Ours currently is, uh, ours is a, it's in the three thousands. I'd have to be around four grand. The transportation is three and the sewer is four, I think.

Okay. So from my perspective, this kind of gives us the range that I'm looking at in terms of what our folks can afford. It feels to me like we should be able to be in the ballpark of where where Newberg is and theirs are significantly higher kind of across the board. So I mean, that's I'm just kind of letting people know what my thinking is in terms of how we might go forward. And I like the idea of graduating it out so that projects that are already in the upper that that have made plans based on one set of assumptions don't have those assumptions pulled out from under them. But I'm just offering that as a point for consideration by the council. Thank you.

Is that 9,300, no matter what the square footage is? No, thank you.

No, Mayor, it's 9,389, no matter what the square footage is. And then there's a lower cost for multifamily, and another lower cost for mobile homes.

And then there's a separate ADU line item.

And so most cities now are going toward that graduated based on the size methodology. But if, There's not a lot more questions on these. I can jump into these policy decision questions I have for council discussion so we can start potentially walking through what the council's looking for on each of these different points that hopefully we can get to a way that I can get some solid answers on what to bring back in the future.

I want to clarify solid because there's a lot time package here and we have a lot to talk about. So yes, we can work on these, but I'm not going to necessarily agree that we're going to solve it tonight. Well, yeah, I didn't be okay with all of this. So I just want to clarify that. Okay. Take some time to swallow. Yes.

We've been working on this for three years. I didn't assume it was going to be all tonight, but I'm just saying the first time that this came to the council was three years ago. So it's been a while.

Yeah.

So I was not expecting it to all finish tonight. So the first question, one that I've been hearing a lot, should industrial and commercial development be charged SDCs? That is a change in this methodology. And so I need to know where the council sits on this, if this is something that they wanna move forward with, or you all wanna move forward within the methodology or not. Do you want to charge SDCs? Not the amount or anything like that, but do you want to charge SDCs to commercial and industrial developments?

Anybody want to jump in first? Councillor Tucholsky?

Yeah, I'm just going to say how I feel. I think we struggle for jobs in this area, unlike the city of Newburgh, if you want to use that as a comparison. I actually work there. there are a lot of people in that work in Newberg and or live in Newberg and they work in Wilsonville, uh, work in like us, we go Portland, it's much easier commute. And we're talking about McMinnville. It's a challenging commute to get into Portland. It takes at least an hour, uh, most of the time on average, and it's not a very nice commute. So to me, that's a bit apples to oranges. Um, I, I would like to see that we have more, job opportunities within McMinnville so that the Western Valley can also have those job opportunities, McMinnville people can have those job opportunities. I don't know if Empower, just to use it as an example, would have been here and expanded further at such a significant rate had we had these SDCs in place. It concerns me. empowers a larger company business. I'm concerned that the small businesses are just going to go elsewhere and small businesses make up a significant portion of the labor opportunities. And so it concerns me that we wouldn't, you know, bring in commercial and industrial SDCs when we already have a problem with a lack of jobs in this area, which is why most people oftentimes drive out of town because they work elsewhere, myself included. I can see the benefit, but for parks in general, I don't see that and I don't believe and I will just say I don't want to see industrial and commercial development charged SDCs for parks.

Thank you. Councillor Geary.

Yeah, instead of doing this in front of every question, I just want to start by saying I read through the Chamber's letters, MEDP, and Linfield's letters, and just thanked them for their time. And overall, what I pulled out is that important balance, recognizing that we're talking about adding costs to an already burdened tab, and I very much recognize that. But it's also important for me to recognize the parks and development system and a lot of the infrastructure and social infrastructure is important too. And we need to represent the respondents in the PROS plan, we need to represent everyone, we need to recognize that McMinnville, if we don't do anything, if we remain status quo, is going to continue to get and I think ossify a little and we need to make sure we have a community for the future that has families and retirees and people moving here and businesses and so I think we need to recognize and balance all of those things as we work forward. So to that end, in my answer to number one here, I think yes and I think I got to a different conclusion, but I have a lot of your same reasoning. I want to see high wage jobs. I want to see businesses attracted and brought in and employees retained. And I have a couple of things to bring to bear for that. In the list of economic development benefits of parks, knowledge workers and high talent workers are attracted to areas with good and successful park systems. I think quoting from our own economic development strategic plan, high quality recreation and educational programs are prerequisites to attracting high quality employers and workers. And I think this is a step in that direction. I think it's simple to look at are we charging new development businesses, parks SDCs because those employees are gonna go take their smoke break and walk through Workman Park or whatever. I just have coached my son Hiram's baseball team for four years now and in that baseball league we play against teams of parents and kids from Amity, Dayton, a bunch of surrounding communities. those people don't live here they work here they have their families here they recreate here so we need to be able to provide opportunities for all those people however they're coming to mcminnville and recreating so yes and that's sort of a broad answer for multiple things along here in your questions that involved industrial and commercial industrial commercial and industrial sdcs answer chanoweth

So yeah, I would lean more into the first councilor's response than the second. I would remind the council that it doesn't matter how we break this up, the same dollar amount is going to be brought in based upon what we determine is the percentage of SDCs we want to recover. So the only real question is how are we dividing this up? You've got a pie and you're dividing this into pieces. Assessing it to the industrial and assessing it to the commercial doesn't increase the amount of money we're spending on these projects. It just assesses some of it to those components and takes it away from the residential component. And I think that is an underlying assumption. I got that in... Some of the letters that I read through, I also was very grateful for all of the different letters that I read on this topic, that there was the assumption that by assessing industrial and assessing commercial, that somehow increased the SDCs. The SDCs are defined by the project list and then the percentage total we choose to recover. With that in mind, I went into the, for the last three months, the EVLC has discussed this at some level. EVLC is made up of a lot of your economic partners throughout this community. This includes every single school level from college, both colleges and the school district 40. This includes some of your key business partners, some of which are in the room. And unanimously, they put together that letter for our consideration. That put pressure on me because as I said, I was in Councilor Tokolsky's position of I don't think we should be charging commercial or industrial for parks SDCs. And the letter that was brought to us indicated that the EVLC supported 15% to commercial and 10% to industrial. and I signed on to that. So that would be my, I am willing to put some, but it needs to be a smaller amount than what we currently have I like that one of the points that was made in our discussions was it does take a little bit of the pressure off the residential development. I think that's a valuable point to be made. And I do think there is some benefit. I'm very, very concerned with this conversation we had about comparing to Newburgh and Dundee a minute ago. Dundee's medium income Newberg's median income is $91,000. That's $18,000 more than us. Dundee's median income is $100,000. That's $27,000 more than us. That's a considerably more wealthy pair of communities that I don't really wanna compare too much to in terms of looking at what we're doing to the cost of housing. So when I put all that together, I would lean toward yes, but not as high as we initially said.

Councilor Tucholsky wants to respond, I think, to something.

Yeah, I just want to make it clear. I am very pro-park, okay? I love our parks in McMinnville. I'm not anti-park. The problem is that we're not currently paying for our parks today. The SDCs that we bring in don't pay for parks. They don't pay for maintenance. And if we can't maintain the parks that we have today, which is if you go back to our budget page, page 230 in the budget, talks about the beginning fund balance of our park development fund down in the area. It says basically, um, we, we have reduced funding because we can't basically pay for the parks that we have today. If we're charging SDCs to these people, including residential, we're adding to the park system, which obviously I want to do because that'd be great. My family fought for the Jay Pearson Park here in town. We literally went to Salem and advocated for it. It's a great spot. The problem is that if you can't maintain what you have today, why are we expanding or why are we talking about expanding? at the expense of residential people, industrial people, commercial people, it, until we get our house in order and aren't able to pay for things, it doesn't seem wise to do that. Okay. Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and go next. Okay. And then I'll get it to. So to me, it ultimately goes back to the pros plan is where we start. And I'm not a huge supporter of the pros plan. I think that it's nice to have some guidance, but I think it's kind of like, having a Sears Roebuck catalog through it. You have people together and they choose what they want to have. And yes, I want this park. I want this, but there's no price tags attached to it. Same thing happened with third street improvement plan. We all want benches. We want lights. We want all that. And it ends up being $30 million that we can't afford. So I have an issue with the process on how we get to some things. And I think that also might come with a TSP plan that we're going to want stop signs. We're going to want everything, but with no price tags involved. And then we come back with SDCs. So I also in the pros plan, don't agree with the half a mile or 10 minute walk to a park, which in turn, I don't support. land acquisition to add more parks. Um, we can add when it's development. I agree with that in regards to, and that's generally going to be the developer that does that, but to add parks and over where I live, it says we had to add one. We don't Jay Pearson park is a very close. There's a neighborhood park off of Baker Creek and Memorial school is very close. So I agree. had talked to you in regards to SDCs and can we use that with an IGA with the school district? I think that should be, because that would expand our park program. And there is a possibility of doing that. And I think that makes more sense than acquiring more land. I'm not sure. I know there were some pop-ups with the PROS plan, but it looked like, The DEI committee was the committee that helped with that, and my concern is EVLC wasn't part of that, and that's where we go out and we ask that committee, how is this going to affect our community? I agree with Councilor Tucholsky that adding we can't maintain the parks we have, and it's not the park maintenance department to blame for that at all. they have been doing a great job. We gave them more money. And if anybody walks the greenways, they're the best they've looked in years. They doing a great job, but we have airport park that needs help. We have workman park, the city park got, um, some environmental design. It looks great, but to me it's quality over quantity. So being able to take care of what we had versus keep adding more and more. And, people will go to those. I mean, if we don't think somebody's going to go to a park, then why are we building the aquatic center on marsh lane? And they, and why would people go to Joe dancer? They, they make it there and it's a quality park. And I think they're going to make it to the aquatic center. If we part, if we build it out there. I also I appreciate what you gave with the fees because I think we need to look at him as a totality not as a silo and some of its astonishing how much they add up to. And we are in a time right now where the economy is not great. the state of Oregon is not great and people aren't wanting to come to the state of Oregon, but we want to do what we can to make them at least if they're going to stay, come to make them bill. I do a lot of mayor's made tours where I go to industrial commercial and we hear we, we were thinking about expanding, but we can't afford it. We can't afford the fees. Um, and we just had a business that started in McMillan. It has grown significantly and they may not stay here. Again, that's taxes but also fees and they would like to build a new building. So it's concerning to me to add additional cost to that and I don't agree that our industrial and our commercial are a third of their time spending in our parks. I wonder how many of all of us spend time in our parks. So I think it's nice to walk through them, but how much are we actually using them? We need to have them and I want them to be nice, but I think our numbers need to be a little bit more realistic. I also need to think about the fact that we're going to go out for a bond and we're going to ask our citizens to take on this bond. And even though they may not all be paying that, it's still the thought process of we're adding more fees to people. So I think we need to... I'm fine with keeping the residential SDCs. I know we're not there. You're at industrial. I don't agree with at this point adding industrial and commercial development SDCs. Rates are flat. Lease rates are flat. We have empty spaces and we want jobs. And you have to think about when all those fees come on, those aren't what a bank's not going to finance those. those are fees that are for the person. And unless there's enough value, it's not going to be funded by a bank. We have Linfield college. I appreciate their letter that we want that built out on the South end of town. That's going to be more property taxes or property taxes can go towards parks maintenance. Um, I hate to, to have that not happen because of such a large amount of fees. So, um, i had a lot to say there and i hope you understand but i have a problem with the process and i don't think we should be charging industrial commercial development sdcs at this point counselor cunningham thank you mayor i would support industrial commercial development fees sdcs

For me though, I'm trying to understand if we say we're going for 50% or 75% or 80%, would we see the fees drop by that percentage? If it was $3.44 a square foot, if it's 50%, then is it $1.70 something per square foot?

Essentially, yes. If you choose to keep this methodology exactly as it is and only then say we only want to collect 50%, then yes, it would be, we calculate the whole number and then we'd reduce it 50%. If you start making changes to the methodology, like removing industrial commercial, you have to redo the methodology and then the total amount should stay the same. If you do it, the residential would increase and then you would, in that scenario, then you can reduce it again to that 50%. So, um, there's lots of ways you can do it, but if you keep this methodology, you can just say, we're only going to collect 50%. That is a question I have later on in here. So it would just, okay. Just, we just calculate the total amount and then reduce it by half.

Yeah so it sounds like there I mean there's many different ways to look at this and I understand that your question was just should be period. So I'm a yes to that. But I think when we get into the further discussion I think that's where it's going to start meeting the road. And I think I'd add to it as I understand what my fellow counselors have talked about and their concerns in the mayor. And I, you know, when I look at it, I think of these are brand new buildings, especially when we're talking about retail and commercial space, there will be an increase, but ultimately the rental rate is the rental rate. I mean, it's what people are able to pay for rent. It's not, what it costs to develop the building. And when we're talking about something where it is 2% of the permitting costs, I guess, or based off of the permit of the building, but then going to an $85 million project where it is three tenths of 1% of the total cost of the project, which is what would have to be financed. I think that is an exceptionally minuscule amount of that cost. Thank you.

Councilor Peralta. Thank you, mayor.

I really appreciate the conversation from the, from the dais. I just wanted to offer a perspective on a few things. First, I don't see why changing the SDC schedule for any of these buildings would affect the ability to lease current spaces, because we're really talking about new development and things that are adding on, not just existing space that already exists in the city. I do think we need to keep adding parks as the city grows. Right now we have a 35,000 population. When we get to 50,000 population, we're gonna need more parks. and whether it's as many parks as were written into the PROS plan or not, that can have a policy discussion, but there's no question that as the Southwest Area Plan comes into place, they're gonna need parks over there, they're gonna need parks in currently underserved areas, so I do think we need to take that into consideration. With regard to the economics of it, I'm also in favor of the commercial and industrial fees, just so that that doesn't fully get borne by residential. I don't think that low taxes are the only basis for businesses settling in places. If they were, places like Boston and New York and large cities that have high densities and high taxes would not be meccas for this country's economy. And really what I think a lot of businesses are looking for, especially businesses that have higher wage jobs are the kind of amenities that you would expect to get in a nice city, the kind of amenities that drew pretty much anybody up here who's moved to McMinnville to this city. which is a walkable community, a lot of parks, nice culture, a nice downtown, good schools. Those are the things I think that have a higher value to most businesses. If it was just low taxes, we'd have a lot more businesses siting in the West Valley or places that really are low taxes, but really don't have any economy to speak of. We have an economy in McMinnville because we have gravity that is in part result of all the kinds of infrastructure that we have. So I do think that those things are important and important to stay up on top of. The other point I'd like to make is that SDCs are fees that you charge so that you don't charge your existing taxpayers. If you want new development to pay for infrastructure, rather than the existing taxpayer, you do it through SDCs. And I've said this before, but my opinion is that most of the voters in my ward, most of the people I talk to in this community don't really want the community to grow that much. They'd rather it not get to 50,000. But if it is gonna get to 50,000, or if it is gonna grow that much, people want the newcomers to be contributing to the livability of the city and not taking away from it. And right now, unless we start accurately assessing the costs associated with that development, those, that new development is not adding to the culture of the city. So I do think we need to look at holistically, and that's why I picked Newburgh, because Newburgh's a city that, although there is slightly higher income, I think there's probably fewer retirees in Newburgh. But they've taken, I think, a reasonable approach to funding the things that they need. They need wastewater. They need parks. They need stormwater. They need transportation. We need all those things. and they've given us a path to how we can get there in a way that at least we see that one community is handling it and making it affordable. I realize there's gonna be some sticker shock. The parks SDCs haven't been touched in 20 something years. They're really, really low. So I'll repeat again, I'm in favor of this framework. I'm not in favor of it a hundred percent. I do recognize that that's probably too big of a bite, but I do think that we need to substantially increase these and then graduated in over, you know, a three to five year period so that businesses have some certainty based on the projects that are already in the hopper. And I don't think it's gonna hurt our long-term development. I think it's gonna help it. the better we can keep McMinnville livable for the future, solving problems, dealing with the infrastructure, the better off we're going to be. So long-winded, but there's my thoughts. Thank you.

Councilor Tucholsky.

yeah i just wanted to clarify for a moment uh council president peralta you had brought up the uh not only the parks but also the transportation sdcs and the wastewater sdcs uh we're not talking about those ones tonight we're only talking about park and my comments are directed specifically at park sdcs not wastewater not transportation so i hope we can keep those delineated on the dias here

Thank you, Councillor, if I can just respond. I agree with you. I hear your perspective. I just am also mindful that the mayor and others have been concerned about the total impact on taxpayers and I'm trying to keep that present in my thinking as well.

Councillor Benner.

Mayor, thank you. I agree with you on the PROS plan. I think that we were tied to a bureaucratic process that Puts these plans ahead of the financing and I think that when we look at the transportation plan We just can't do that. We've got to make sure we're putting dollar numbers on everything that's on our wish list. And so In general I'm in favor of the SDC's if we can scale them to be more reflective of what is affordable In general I think that Anything we can do to increase housing, I'm in favor of. And so I think that Chris and I, for the first time, maybe on the dyes, can agree that if we can funnel some of that SDCs to industrial and commercial, lightening the burden on housing, I'm in favor of that. So in general, I agree with Sal, the framework I agree with. Mayor, may I make two quick comments?

Councillor Chenoweth.

First, I'd just like to say one of the real reasons that we see growth in places like Boston and some of these larger cities, even though they're more expensive, is they're right connected. It's not just amenities, but they're right connected to all of your transportation network. Um, one of the reasons you further, you get away from large cities, you don't have that kind of growth is because they're further away from that connection point. And so it becomes less and less worthwhile for businesses to invest in, in jobs in those further away connection points. Um, And we have to be cognizant of that as we're making decisions about how we're gonna increase the cost to do business here, because it will have an impact as to whether or not businesses choose to come here. We've heard several comments regarding that at the EVLC during the course of this conversation. That's the one point I wanna make. The other point I wanna make is an underlying of high SDCs is the corporatization of America. Because what ends up happening, the higher the SDCs go, the companies that can afford to pay those high SDCs are the ones that are going to be more apt to develop. they are gonna be able to spread that cost across their corporate platform and be able to make the kind of investment into communities that, that's why we see Albertsons and Safeway and grocery stores like Ross are becoming less and less common. So I would just say, be careful, the higher you, it becomes harder and harder for small mom and pops to survive and build new. So be careful how high we go.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Yeah. To follow a comment, uh, uh, Councillor Benner, you've made a comment about, uh, industrial and commercial SDCs, uh, potentially covering for residential and making sure that they don't, uh, either increase or perhaps even decrease. Um, I, the reason I wanted to comment on this is because that's not what we're talking about tonight. We're talking about an additional SDC or industrial additional for commercial, And then on top of that, we're also talking about a potential 400% increase in our residentials from 3000 up to 12,000. So I don't want to jump to conclusions saying that an industrial and a commercial, if it's charged as going to help residential, because that concerns me because it's not part of the plan yet. Thank you.

Thank you. Maybe I'm confused. I was led to believe or under the impression that, there was a fixed SDC. And then if we had a portion of that paid by industrial and commercial, it would naturally mean that less was paid by residential. Is that the case?

That's how it's built currently. So if you did not charge to industrial and commercial, but kept the same project list, the residential SDCs would have to increase to cover the difference.

So we could choose to not fund the entire PROS plan and those are other options?

Yeah, I guess, thank you. To make sure, what I'm suggesting is that we have some commercial and industrial component because that will mean less for residential and look at the baseline fundamentals of the PROS plan.

So I'm going to do a quick time check. I don't, I have 54. Yes. I have seven more questions. I'm going to suggest to the city manager that our August 25th work session that we were going to be talking about wastewater more. Instead we do this, continue this discussion. So we don't have too much of a lag between the two discussions and we continue with the other questions, trying to get to a place of council direction on this. I would suggest for the one on the 19th, but the mayor is going to be out of town, I believe. And I don't want to continue this discussion without her on the dais. That sounds good. So we'll go ahead and stop it to be continued.

Okay, any further comments before I close the work session? Okay, I'll close the work session at 6.55. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it.

No problem.

Yeah. Recording stopped.

Can we just keep going? It's all right.

Thank you. It's always fun.

I think I know where I scared you.

I'm going to stay.

Go ahead.

Recording in progress.

All right. It's 7 0 1. I'd like to call the city council meeting to order requests that Claudia do a roll call, please.

Counselor Benner here. Counselor Geary.

Good evening.

Counselor Cunningham. Yep. Counselor to Kolsky. He is here. He just stopped off. Uh, counselor Chenoweth still here. Council president Peralta and mayor Morris here.

Now, if you're able to stand, please stand and join me in the pledge. All right, we are now time for a public comment. So any interested audience members are invited to provide comments. 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, or a matter scheduled for public hearing at a later date. If you're on Zoom and wish to speak, please use your raise your hand feature or chat feature and send it a chat to the city recorder team. Also forgot to note that we're limited to four minutes per person for a total of 32 minutes. And please, Claudia, do we have anybody signed up?

No one has signed up, but I do want to state for the record that we received five letters regarding Park SDCs, which was our work session beforehand on one from the Chamber of Commerce, one from MEVLC, one from Linfield, one from Kevin Chambers, and another one from Lisa Macy Baker. Anything submitted past noon yesterday will be included in the packet for August 25th. Great. Thank you.

Is there anybody in the civic hall that wanted to speak that didn't sign up? Okay. All right, let's move on. Consent agenda. Does any counselor request to have any item removed from the consent agenda? All right, do I have a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented?

So moved. Second.

A motion from Councillor Geary, a second from Councillor Cunningham. Any discussion? Claudia?

Councillor Benner?

Aye.

Councillor Geary?

Aye.

Councillor Cunningham?

Aye.

Councillor Tucholsky?

Aye.

Councillor Chenoweth?

Yeah, why not?

Councillor President Peralta?

Yes.

And the consent to agenda has passed unanimously.

Thank you. Now we're going to move on to ordinances. Consider the first reading with a possible second reading of ordinance five, one, eight, one, an ordinance amending the McMinnville comprehensive plan volumes one, two, and three to support a natural resources, which is trees and scenic views planning program docket G two dash 23 per Oregon land use goal. Number five, I would like to, does any councilor need to declare an actual potential conflict of interest or recuse themselves from reading regarding this ordinance?

Mayor?

Yes.

I live along one of the riparian corridors, but it's not a conflict of interest, but just wanted to let people know.

Okay. Thank you. All right. We will now consider the matter of ordinance 5181. Does any councilor object to having the ordinance read by title only only. Nope. Okay. City attorney, David Lightberg.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Counselors. This is the first reading of ordinance number five, one, eight, one, an ordinance amending the McMinnville comprehensive plan volumes one, two, and three to support a natural resources trees and scenic views planning program docket number G two dash two, three per Oregon land use goal. Number five.

All right. I'd like to call on Heather Richards community development director to present.

Thank you, Mayor. And I just wanted to check, Claudia, is Carrie Richter on the Zoom? Can you bring her up as a panelist? We have Carrie Richter joining us from Bateman Seidel tonight to help as legal counsel as we work through this planning program that we're bringing to you. Missy Ryan is on vacation this week for us. So Carrie is her partner and you all are familiar with her, I believe. So this is our natural resources planning program. We've been working on this since 2021. It's to respond to goal five of the Oregon land use goals. I did want to share with you that tonight we are not talking about repairing corridors. We actually remove that from what we brought to you. I'll talk you through why we remove that. And tonight we're going to be talking just about tree groves, significant and landmark trees and scenic views. So the ordinance itself does several things. It mends our comprehensive plan. If you recall, our comprehensive plan is three different volumes. It's the volume one is the background data. So that's the data we have to show and adopt to support any of our policies or our regulatory codes. Volume two is the actual comprehensive plan goals and policies and volume three is the zoning ordinance and our zoning map and comprehensive plan map. So this amends all three of those volumes. And typically whenever we're doing a long range planning project, we will need to amend all three volumes to be able to support the project. The other thing it does is it adopts what we call easy analysis. And I'll walk you through what that is. We adopt that as a particular finding based on statutory rules that we have to work through for some of these programs we're bringing to you tonight. And then it adopts the decision document and the findings for this program. this is a recommendation of the planning commission it came to you from them after hosting a public hearing on april 2nd 2026 and they voted unanimously to recommend approval of this this is after five years of work in public engagement we've had 11 public work sessions over that time with the city council with the planning commission and with the landscape review committee and we sent out a measure what's called the measure 56 notice to all impacted properties A measure 56 notice lets property owners know that the city council is considering adopting a zone. So we have an overlay zone in tonight's program. We're going to talk to you about, and that zone may impact their property. So it gives them an opportunity to come in and provide testimony at the public hearing or provide to the city for the decision-making body to consider. So Oregon land use, we have 19 goals that we have to respond to as a city. As we do any sort of major planning event like a UGB amendment, we need to go into that expansion area and apply these goals to that new land. And typically you're updating it for the whole city at the same time as well. And as I said, we have a comprehensive plan that we use to show how the city's meeting these goals. And those are the elements that we're amending with this ordinance. So Oregon land use goal number five, it's called natural resources. It requires cities to conduct natural resources planning. So we have to go through the evaluation process. Local governments shall adopt programs that will protect natural resources and conserve scenic, historic, and open space resources for present and future generations. These resources promote a healthy environment and natural landscape that contributes to Oregon's livability. So our cultural resources and historic resources we do through our historic preservation plan and we brought that to you in the past and we're working on actually an update to that right now. This will be for the scenic and natural resources and then the open space resources is something that we still as a body need to decide if we want to tackle that work as well. so the goal tells us what we need to inventory this is the list of everything that's in the goal and the what we looked at for this particular effort is repairing corridors wetlands wildlife habitat federal wild and scenic rivers state scenic waterways wilderness areas and cultural areas What we didn't look at is natural areas. So if you remember when we adopted the proposed plan, we actually didn't inventory natural or open space areas. It's a parks and recreation plan and natural and open space areas. It could be private side as well. And so it was not part of that work. And it also is not part of this work. I just wanted to clarify that. In terms of the process, the rules tell us how we have to go through the process to evaluate goal five resources. So we have to inventory them. We have to take an inventory of these particular resources in the city limits as well as in the urban growth boundary. We then have to go through a process of determining significance. What's important for us to protect? So the the goal is all about protecting natural resources that would be of community significance. And so that's the policy decision, right? What what are what are the actual ones that we want to protect? We then need to identify what would be conflicting uses to protect them and define the impact area because we're dealing with private property. And then we need to analyze what's called the easy consequences of protecting those. So if you're protecting natural resources on private land, you're presumably limiting what they can do with that land. And so to do that, you have to go through analysis showing that the community value of doing that and also providing, and then go through analysis that says we're gonna do full protection, we're gonna do no protection, or we're gonna do limited protection as a community and as a body. And it walks you through how you make those decisions. And so that document that is an exhibit to the ordinance that is the EZ analysis walks through all of that for tree groves themselves that are on private property. And then we have to adopt a program that achieves goal five. So we started in 2020 when we were doing the UGB amendment from the MGMUP. We call that the McMinnville Growth Management and Urbanization Plan. And so we were required to go through a goal five analysis. Then we inventoried in 2021 and 2022, the repairing corridors, tree groves, scenic viewpoints, and view sheds. Then we drafted programs and we've presented those in work sessions to city council and the planning commission in 22, 23, 25, and 26. So this has evolved over the years with different decision-making bodies. I told you that we removed repairing corridors from what's in front of you tonight, and I wanted to walk you through why we removed that. But it's part of what we called the overlay zone. So in your proposed amendments here, in the proposed code amendments to Title 17, we've created an overlay zone. So that's a new zone. and in that for natural resources. So in that we can then put sub districts underneath there of things that we wanna protect in that overlay zone. Tonight you have tree groves as a sub district. We also have a proposed sub district for repairing corridors. We have not brought that forward to you yet, but it would be part of this overlay zone. The riparian corridors, there's 11 of them that we inventoried. When we first started this program, we did it under what we called the safe harbor. So state rules for land use have state safe harbors that you can decide to do. Typically safe harbors are if you move forward with your planning program in this way, using this data with this type of outcome, then that protects you in some regards. from appeal processes. It's less discretionary. It's more clear and objective and presumably less appealable. So at the time city council directed us to use the safe Harbor for repairing corridors. And that was based. And so that safe Harbor says you're not inventorying your repairing quarters. It's already been inventoried by the department of fish and wildlife. Here's your map that shows you which ones are called repairing corridors in your community. And then based on that, you then decide this is how we're going to protect those under that safe harbor. We're going to say we're protecting them by creating this zone that is 75 feet from the bank of the South Yamhill River. That's based on that classification of that river and 50 feet from the bank of all other fish bearing streams as identified by this database. That way we don't have to do a goal five easy analysis for that safe harbor. And so, and just to let you know, a goal five easy analysis, the one we did for the tree groves was about $65,000. So it's not, it's a very complicated process. This is the first one I've done, been part of in the 25 years I've been doing planning in Oregon. So it's not a typical process. Most repairing quarters, for you to know, are in our 100-year floodplain, and that's important, and I'll tell you why that's important. But when we were going through recently in the last couple years, I guess I would say, as we started getting more refined in this program, we got property owner requests for looking at removing what we call tributaries from the repairing corridor overlay. and just rely on the floodplain zone. So if you look at this map, the hatches that you see there, that's the floodplain zone, and then the light blue would be the overlay for the riparian corridors. What I've highlighted in the red boxes is everything that's not in a floodplain zone. It's also... places where you don't really see water consistently through the full year. So these were historically fish bearing streams. They're still considered fish bearing streams by department of fish and wildlife, but some of them are dry seasonally. Right. And so, um, we've had property owners come to us and say, it doesn't make sense that that's that we have to protect 50 feet from the bank of those if they aren't really carrying water and it's impactful to my property. Is there any other way we can look at this? Um, so to let you know, uh, for the safe Harbor, for the safe Harbor, we're using the inventory that's already been provide if, and we can adjust it based on a city approved engineering study. So we could go five days in advance of the first public hearing. Uh, we did that. We've been in conversation with DLCD for the past four years. We're working on this, but their natural resources planner, uh, looked at the work after we submitted it in that 30 to five day window. and got a hold of me the week before we were supposed to originally bring this back to you back in April and said she had a lot of concerns with the repairing corridor work. And the concern she had was that we didn't have clear and objective standards for how we were using the repairing corridor itself. And then I talked to her about, well, we were also interested in actually not using the safe harbor because we have property owners who are being impacted by what's an identification of repairing quarter that's dry seasonally. And how do we work through that? And the response was, if you don't want to use the safe harbor in the database, you have to do your own inventory. So you have to go out on site and survey everything, and then go through a process of identifying that on a map. So that's a ground survey. And then you have to do the easy analysis on top of that work as well. And that's what this says is if we're not going to use the safe Harbor, that's the type of work we need to do for that. So that would be survey and easy analysis. The other thing that they got back to us and said it was, um, you need more clear and objective standards for what you have in there. So what we tried to do is now knowing that we're using the safe Harbor database, we tried to make it more flexible in terms of what could happen within these 50 foot and 75 foot setbacks from the repairing corridors. to respond to the property owners we were hearing from. And so what that does, flexibility adds discretion. Discretion takes away from clear and objective standards. So that was a red flag to the state as well. So we're in a place now where we need to make a decision. And I'd like to bring this back to you in a presentation and get some sort of policy direction on it in the future. where we need to do more work on our program one way or the other. So either come out of the safe harbor and do the work for the inventory and easy analysis or stay in the safe harbor and make more clear and objective standards and remove the flexibility. So removing it from what I'm bringing to you tonight, I'm not that concerned about it because we protect our riparian corridors that are waterways and carrying water with our floodplain zone. So in McMinnville, uniquely, we don't allow any development in our floodplain zone. There's a lot of communities that allow you to develop in your floodplain zone if you mitigate it with engineering. We don't allow any development our floodplain zone and if you recall we just went through a process of amending that zone to make it even tougher to develop in because of the endangered species act lawsuit so back to that map this shows what a floodplain zone looks like and so our floodplain zone is the flood hazard area so you see how far it goes out from the actual waterway there in terms of what we control and don't allow development in So if we go back to this map and you look at it, most of the repairing corridors that aren't sort of those tributaries in question are in a floodplain zone that's larger than the actual repairing corridor that's been described. And so we're, you know, in terms of the outcome and the intent, we're protecting those corridors in the ecological system with another mechanism right now. So taking more time to figure out. how we respond to goal five, I think is, you know, a thoughtful and mindful decision moving forward. And we need to have that conversation. So that's why we removed it from tonight. We estimate that it would probably be about 125,000 to do the inventory and the easy analysis. If we did take it out of the safe Harbor, I'll collect more information on that before we come back to you with, with, more detailed presentation to get some direction. So what we do have for you tonight is the overlay zone sub-district for tree groves. TG-P subdistrict in the zoning ordinance. Same sort of thing where you have to inventory your tree grows and then go through a methodology identifying how are we gonna say which ones are significant and we wanna protect versus those that aren't. So if you recall, we had a third party vendor put together a methodology that council agreed on and had us move forward with and then that third party vendor did the evaluation. So it was in this neutral position. And then based on that, um, we did, uh, and that was all with a field assessment and some point systems, and you have a copy of that document, um, in your packet. And it's what we would amend into volume one. That's the data element. So, um, we here in 2025, as we picked up this work and started moving it forward, again, we reached out to people who own property impacted by tree groves. and said, here is our methodology that we use. This is the assessment for your tree grove. We're bringing this forward for adoption. If you have concerns or want to visit with us about the methodology, like you don't believe it's accurate, let's sit down and talk about that. Let's have that discussion now before we get into a public hearing process. We did have that discussion with a couple of different property owners who brought in information to us suggesting that the way we scored things were inappropriate or they just didn't want it as part of the tree grow protection program. And then based on that, we did remove one tree grow from the overall list of inventory that we were bringing to you. And a couple of them who just didn't want to be part of the program. It's a policy decision by you to have a tree grow program And there needs to be a sort of fair neutral approach to that in terms of how you're grading, how you're signing significance. So it's not picking and choosing individual properties. Um, and then we did the easy analysis, the ESEE analysis. And, and from that analysis, the recommendation is a limited protection program. So there was the three choices are full protection, no protection, limited protection. And the easy analysis came out and said, These are important to the community. You do have some significant tree groves. We do need to protect them. We can't remove all development rights from property owners. So let's do a limited protection program and create some relief valves in our code to allow development rights to move forward. So the EZ analysis, what that does is it analyzes economic consequences, it analyzes social consequences, it analyzes environmental consequences and energy consequences. That's the EZ. And it's how you put that together is actually prescribed in Oregon administrative rules. So it walks you through that process. And so the limited protection program you see in draft chapter 1747, it's recommended to balance the consequences that came out of that easy analysis. That easy analysis says, here's the consequences of what you're doing to these properties. And then we developed a code to sort of respond to that and try to mitigate it. So the key components of the Tree Grove Program is, The development standards try to avoid and minimize grove impacts. So you'll see in there discussion about, you know, not of minimizing grove impacts as much as possible. There is in 1747.220, there's a list, a table that lists what you can do. as a permitted outright use in a tree grove. And then there's a list of what you would need a conditional use variance to do. And that's the attempt at sort of minimizing that impact. And that is, I saw some of you looking for it. So that's on page 175 of your meeting package. Then there is an opportunity to evaluate alternatives. So there's an opportunity for someone who has a tree grove to come into the city and say, this is how I propose meeting your objectives that are in your zoning ordinance with an alternative tree grow mitigation plan. And they can bring that in for review. There is mitigation requirements for unavoidable impacts. So there are times when there will be unavoidable impact. So there's a mitigation piece to that. That's typically, you know, the replanting of trees, things of that nature. Um, we look at avoiding any grove impacts on steep slopes. So we did this work in conjunction with the natural hazards work and, uh, you know, trees are stabilizer on, on, uh, subjection soils. If you recall, we have, um, soils that are, uh, shaking soils on steep slopes. And so we wanted to maintain that stabilizing vegetation there on the trees. So we try to avoid Grove impacts on steep slopes, uh, encourages cluster development and density transfer provision. So if you think about, um, the development occurring out on the West Hills right now, if that came in after this program was adopted, you probably see more clusters of residential development out there, probably higher density, but then also protection of the tree groves within that as well. And then there's a process to amend or verify the tree go Brownie. So, We gave people an opportunity to come in and talk to us about their tree groves and the assumptions. The code also allows that to happen now in a formal way to come in and say, I think that my tree grove has changed. There's, you know, some sort of disease went through it and several of the trees died and we need to change the boundaries. There's all sorts of opportunities in there to be able to walk through that process. There's exemptions in the program as well. So this doesn't impact any activities outside of Tree Grove. So there are some properties where the Tree Grove is in a section of the property. It doesn't impact the whole property, just where the Tree Grove is itself. Already developed residential lots are not impacted by this. routine maintenance is not impacted by this. Thinning of the tree grove is not impacted by this. The wildfire mitigation plan, so thinning for wildfire isn't impacted by this either. So there's all sorts of levers in there in terms of exceptions to make sure that the tree grow remains healthy for the community and the property owner. So what you have in front of you is to adopt 26 significant tree groves, adopt the easy analysis, because that's the findings to allow us to do this. And then the zoning ordinance that talks about how it impacts properties. When development occurs, the recommendation is that there's no actual permanent alteration of the groves. You'll see this in there, and then that there's limited uses that are allowed because of that. So within the tree grove specifically itself, there's uses allowed that are recreation, pathway, hazard tree removal, those types of things, but not sort of clear-cutting for development if you want to put it that way. And then there is relief built into the zoning ordinance as well. That's section 17.47.260280. And that's where you see the opportunity for, so it's a limited protection program for economic consequences. So there is an opportunity to come in and say, I'd like a conditional use to be able to be able to do X, Y, or Z that's allowed in the underlying zone because of the economic hardship that this tree grow protection is doing to, for me on my property let's pretend my whole property is a tree grove and it takes all my development rights away. There's an opportunity to come in and go through a process under that economic hardship variance as well. So scenic views scenic views are a little bit different. So we don't have an inventory that we're adopting into volume 1. We're just addressing scenic views through goals and policies and the comprehensive plan. So we're not protecting specific things. in terms of creating an inventory in the zone. We have policies that say moving forward for private development, we want you to consider the scenic views that have been identified in the scenic view assessment plan and for public facilities, the same thing. The scenic views are comprehensive plan policies you can find in pages 165 to 169 of your meeting packet. And it impacts two chapters, chapter seven, community facilities and chapter nine, urbanization. There's comprehensive plan policies for private land and there's comprehensive plan policies for public land. In terms of the public, so the private land is considered, so it's considered these options for public land. It's a requirement to think about how park master plans and public facilities adopted by the council impacts scenic views. Are there other alternatives in terms of being for those public facilities that would not remove those scenic views? And there has been 16 viewpoints that have been identified that are an exhibit to the ordinance. This is an example of how that plays out. So 170.08 is a new comprehensive plan policy that's being recommended, public land with scenic viewpoints. Scenic views and viewsheds shall be considered in creation of an amendments to park master plans and public facilities master plans. adopted by the city council. So the shall statement is they need to be considered. And this is a map that shows the scenic views and your assessment report talks through a little bit more about how those were all evaluated. And then lastly is a significant landmark tree program. This is a separate program. So this is not a comprehensive plan policies. We're now creating a program actually in the code itself. So landmark trees are defined, and this is in chapter 17.58 of our existing ordinance. So there's amendments in the existing ordinance for that. And you can find it on pages 183 to 196 of the meeting packet. A landmark tree is a selected tree placed on an inventory. So we're going to create an inventory based on the age, species, location, and historic significance. Very similar to our historic landmarks inventory, if you want to think of it that way. Someone can submit an application and say, I'd like the sequoia tree in City Park to be landmarked as a landmark tree. The city owns it, so the city would make the decision of whether they think it should be or not. It's a property owner decision. They have the right to say no. And then if they say, yes, we think it should be landmarked, then we go through a process of landmarking it. In this particular program planning commission, the filter was really important that something be recorded on the property that indicates that there's a landmark tree on that property. So that if the property ever, if it's on private property, ever a transaction to another property owner, they're aware of it. And so you'll see that in the code as well. Significant trees are trees located on both public and private property, and they are two parts. So any tree with 36 inches or greater DBH, so that's diameter, breast height, or an Oregon white oak tree that's 10 inches DBH or greater. So it captures the really large trees and it captures the Oregon white oaks at 10 inches or greater. So the key issues for this program was equity and consistency. If you remember, we had a lot of discussion at our work session about this program and we went back to planning commission and said, it's getting really complicated. Let's just put something together. That's consistent and equitable to all. And so our recommendation was to ensure tree regulations are applied fairly across all properties and avoid exemptions. Cause we were working through 10,000 square foot lots, 20,000 square foot lots. And then we need clear verifiable standards in terms of enforceability. We need to think about private property impacts and we want to protect the large established trees as much as possible. So the landmark tree inventory in here, we have a process. We were told create a process that's really clear and easy to do. It's a voluntary designation and it's a streamline any removal criteria. So our historic landmarks program is very complicated. It's nuanced. And the discussion was let's keep this as easy as possible for the landmark trees. So you'll see in the proposed code, a purpose statement for that. The managing body is you, the city council. So we'll go to landscape review committee. They'll make a recommendation to you. We then amend the comprehensive plan and create an inventory in the comp plan. That's how we do the historic landmarks as well. So it would all be stuff that would come to you as a final decision. It's not, I don't see this happening a lot, but for the really unique trees, they would probably come through once or twice, maybe a year. You have to demonstrate how the tree meets at least one of six reasons to be a landmark tree. The private property you need owner consent, public property needs city approval. So the landmark trees need to be maintained. They need to be protected. So removal and pruning of them requires a permit. if you want to remove or cut down your landmark tree, you can do so the, but the property owner needs to make the request. And then it's a three, you have to plant three trees. Uh, so they're each one of these significant trees and landmark trees have a replacement policy. So what the planning commission decided was don't eliminate the opportunity for people to remove these trees, but if they are removing, they need to replace them at a higher percentage. So three to one, And for landmark trees, there's an additional fee. So they wanted a higher disincentive for cutting down landmark trees. So for significant trees, it applies to all properties. There's no exemptions. All significant tree removals require a permit to remove them, but there is no criteria that would prevent removal, if you want to think of it that way. what the reason why we want there to be a permit to remove them is one, um, when, if it's in a protected district, so the natural hazards, um, the hazards protection district, uh, and the management development area that we pass, again, we said we wanted to keep trees because they're protecting the sort of the hazard. So, that has more limitations and the more the more limiting district applies. So we want to be able to see where people are removing them. And then we also want to make sure the three to one replacement is occurring as well. So for significant trees, the mitigation requirement is three replacement trees. And then you'll see in here there was a lot of discussion about how do we define whether something was removed, you know, how big it was to see if it was a significant tree or not. And so it's actually measured at the base so there's some relief we we just find it as 36 inches at dbh that's four and a half feet up the trunk but when we go out for enforcement it's at the base level for oregon white oaks it's the same thing or you can do a fee in lieu for any of these in terms of the replacement trees it's just the oregon white oaks is 10 inches so we did part Partner agency outreach for this as well. And DLCD did not have any problems with the tree protection programs or scenic views. We worked with the fire district with the wildfire mitigation plans. We worked with McMinnville Water and Light because they have emergency plans as well relative to trees. So you'll see all that in here and the McMinnville Public Works Department. We did outreach for this too. We did a measure 56 notice to 657 properties. We conducted many public information sessions with both individuals and hosted them online. Notice DLCD did the 11 public work sessions and had one public hearing. At the public hearing, the testimony we received was we got four written pieces of testimony. They're provided to you in your packet. They're pages 54 to 60 of the packet. And then at the meeting itself, we got oral testimony from seven individuals. And that's identified in the minutes that we provided you from the planning commission meeting 50 to 52, pages 50 to 52 of your meeting packet. I would say the testimony we received were... We received testimony and support for people who really want to see this move forward. And we received testimony from property owners with concerns about how it impacted their individual properties. Did receive a letter this weekend on August 9th from a property owner with a tree grove on it. Since the planning commission closed the public hearing at the planning commission level, the public record is not open. So we have not sent that to you because of that reason. What you have here is the public record for the whole program thus far. The letter that we received on August 9th from the property owner had concerns about how it impacted their property. The decision document that you have in front of you is a little bit different than what we've done in previous decision documents, so I just wanted to point that out. Since this is three different programs that all impact our property, different products that all respond to state law in a different way and impact our products differently. We actually have three sections of the decision document creating findings for how we're meeting state law and how we're meeting our own local codes for that. So you'll see that written in here. The urban forest preservation program is our significant and landmark tree program. The options in front of you when the planning commission makes a recommendation to you, We bring it as an ordinance with that planning commission recommendation. You then have the opportunity to adopt that ordinance as recommended by the planning commission. You can adopt an ordinance in an amended form. So you can say, you know, I want to change this part of this exhibit. So the zoning ordinance or a comp plan policy, you can refuse to adopt the amendment through a vote to deny. And that, that stops the program or you can call for a public hearing on the proposal. So you have the opportunity to say, I, I'd like to open up for a public hearing and hear more from people about it. To do a public hearing, we would go through the noticing requirements. So it would probably be in about four to five weeks from now if we went through a public hearing process. Or you can remand it back to the Planning Commission. I should have added that to there for them to do more work if you want to do that. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you, Councilors. Any questions for Director Richards? Councilor Tucholsky.

Yeah, thank you, Director Richards. On page 44 of your presentation.

Oh, the slide 44?

Slide 44. Oh, no. Adobe. Adobe number 44, I believe.

Can you tell me what the title is? I don't see slide numbers on my presentation.

Landmark tree inventory. Maintenance must be protected. Removal of pruning requires a permit.

um i think i remember from my time with the planning commission there was a percentage that you could cut or prune without a permit is that still the case like i think it was 20 percent a year for street trees so of course the only currently without this being adopted the only trees that we protect in terms of maintenance and pruning is street trees at this point in time and there is a percentage of how much you can prune without getting a permit um the Planning Commission did not bring that standard into the landmark tree discussion.

So is there a standard of percentage or is it just you cannot prune unless you have a permit? Does that include times when there's ice storms?

No, so there is an exemption for public safety. So for instance, if there's an ice storm and a branch has been compromised or something like that, there's no permit required.

Okay, thank you.

You go to the next slide. So talk to me about this. My memory of the last meeting was the majority of the people in that meeting voted in favor of having a 10,000 square foot exemption. How is it that we do that and when it comes back to us, that's gone?

So that was when we only allowed, we, We were very, so that program was not flexible in terms of allowing significant trees to be cut down. And so the question was, okay, how do you apply that in your community? When we went back to the planning commission in another work session, we had a long discussion about it was getting too complicated. The program was just gonna be very difficult to manage. We didn't know how to make it equitable across the board. So let's step back for a minute and figure out what we're trying to do and then work a program into that. So in the terms of when I started with the key objectives here was something that was fair and equitable across all properties. It didn't make sense to have that sort of exemption for just 10,000 square foot properties anymore. It was just significant trees. And now the discussion was the replacement program rather than the limited program in terms of being able to remove trees.

So I'll just, to my fellow counselors, I was already on the fence on whether I supported this. That pretty much kills it for me. I can't in good conscience tell private property owners on small lots that we are now gonna have a program that defines what they can do with their trees on their lot. So I just, I'm not this to me is has crossed the threshold when we, when we made an exemption to 10,000 square foot lot, I was borderline, right? Because now we've at least protected those that can't afford to hire an arborist, can't afford to bring in all of the necessary people to make these things happen. Um, but now we have no protection for them and, and they're going to be stuck with, with, with a situation where they're being told by the city, what they can and cannot do with those trees.

So I think the planning commission thought they were doing something very different than that. So now you don't need, you don't need to get an arborist to cut down a significant tree. You don't need, um, the permit process is just, you're coming in and letting us know and showing us that you're, you're planting three trees that are two inches in caliber. somewhere else on your property. Because what the planning commission discussion was, if you're cutting down a tree that's 36 inches in diameter, that's a significant expense for somebody. So they've gone through some thought process as to why they're doing that and have a reason for it. And so what the, planning commission fell back on is what we want to do is one, we want to encourage people to think twice about cutting down a large tree, but if they are cutting down a large tree, we want the, we want to protect the urban forest by having a replay replacement planting program and planting three, two inch caliber trees is significantly, it's probably less expensive than applying for a permit through us, quite frankly.

But Yes. So my recollection is that this differs from the previous discussion because the previous discussion didn't allow removal of significant trees at all. Yes. And so what you've done now is allow that removal and there's not a requirement that you get an expensive permit. The only requirement is replacing it with three trees. And that's not even on the same property. If I read it, you could put it into, public space as well, or.

Yeah. Or do a fee in lieu of if it's so right. Yeah. So the thought was it's easy, it should be easier for property owners and then it's equitable, whether you own a large property or a small property, It's the same program clarifying on that.

I don't think that's accurate. So I think the previous conversation was if the property was 10,000 square feet or less, they were exempted from this process.

But prior to that, if you had a tree that was a significant tree, you couldn't take it at all if you were protection. And so the protection accrued to just that category of people. Whereas now, everybody has the same protection to be able to remove the tree. There's just a requirement that you replace it with something, something. So you're not, you're not requiring the expensive permit that you just mentioned. That's not part of it at all. As I, as I'm understanding.

That's better. But again, I still, when you're talking about 5,000 square foot lots and you're putting these kinds of.

What requirement though? I mean, they're not, they're not, there's not a financial requirement other than replacing it with. trees, not all of which have to be on the same property.

Doesn't the tree have to be designated as significant before it falls into this bucket?

No. The significant is a clear and objective standard in the code. If it's 36 inches in diameter or greater, it's a significant tree. If it's a white oak, if it's 10 inches in diameter or greater, it's a significant tree by default. We're not doing any inventory or putting in

And to clarify, Sal, look at line two, all significant tree removals require a permit.

I'm curious on that right now.

They require a permit. So the permit is, so for them to, I'm trying to find the language in the code, but the reason for the permit is to make sure there are places in the city that where we do not want the significant trees removed without some sort of thoughtful process. And that's where you have the steep slopes and the hazard soils and things like that. So we have districts we've already adopted where we said these trees cannot be removed without going through a process. So the permit is simply to get in front of the city and say, I'm removing this tree or I remove this tree. And then we have the opportunity to say, you know, you're in a hazardous area, you're on steep slopes, you have, you know, compromised soils, shouldn't remove this tree unless it's dead or hazardous. There's options to remove it for other reasons. But if you just want to remove it for development or something like that, then that's something that that particular sub district would not allow. And that's that review. If you're not in that sub district, all you have to do is show you that you're planting three trees.

And what's the fee?

That was my question.

What's the fee in lieu of the planning commission opted not to recommend the fee for that. That's an, if you wanted to do a fee for that, that's a city council policy.

Right. But you'll, we, we have a policy of a hundred percent cost recovery. So how does that come back?

We don't do. So you as a body have not done a hundred percent cost recovery on our street tree removal permits. If you remember, we, we, uh, last year or maybe this year, it all blends together. Recently, we went through a process with our street tree program and we created a simple permit process and a complex permit process so that we could reduce the cost of the street tree removal permits, because we've gotten a lot of complaints about those. So this is similar to that.

Councilor Cunningham.

Yeah. I need a little bit of clarification because the significant tree, the way you explained it when we were going through the first time, um, was that it was a program when it came to private property, that a private property owner would designate a tree to become a significant tree. Uh, but now when it comes to removal, that doesn't need to be predesignated as a significant.

Maybe. And I can't, because we've had several work sessions with planning commission since that one in January with you guys jointly, it could be that session that we had with you. The significant tree is what we now call landmark tree. and we and we change the nomenclature but um this the significant tree is not an inventory so we've always had a discussion of large trees in general are in this program and then really special trees to the city which could be large or something else are in this inventory protection program and so that inventory protection program is now considered the landmark tree protection program significant trees are the large trees the large canopy

Okay. So how, how's a significant tree determined?

Like by the definition, just simply the definition. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So, but take my property for engine, for instance, I've got a Oregon white Oak that's 10 inches DBH. Did I have to inform you that I have that as a significant tree? So if I didn't inform you, what triggers the other removal and planting of two trees or three trees?

Just like our public nuisance code, right? So we have lots of codes where we don't have inventories existing at the city to administer those codes. And we try to communicate what they are generally to the public. And some people come in voluntarily and say, I know this is, I need to do this. And we talk to them and what, how it's done. And then we also respond to complaints, right? So your neighbor knows that your tree is a significant tree and you go in your backyard and cut it down one day and the neighbor calls us, we would go out and measure it and be like, this was a significant tree. We would need to plant three two-inch caliber trees to replace it.

And so if a tree is not 36 inches, it's smaller. There's no permit required. They can cut it down.

It's not a white oak. Okay.

That's her to call ski. That's her better.

Thank you, mayor. And this is all driven by a state mandated plan.

No. So the, the, the significant tree and landmark tree is not driven by the goal five resource inventories that we have to do this was a city council direction as part of this program we have we had to look at wilderness areas so i gave you that list of things we had to study so wilderness areas and under wilderness areas is when we started talking about tree growth there's always been this discussion of mcminnville that we're not doing a great job of protecting our our mature tree canopy here and from development and the West Hills is always used as a great example. So there was direction from city council when we started this work to look at a significant tree program as well.

Thank you. And then the tree, I guess maybe we'll finish this conversation. You're fine. The tree Grove designation. Uh, if your property is part of that, what restrictions are associated with that managing those trees aside from this significant tree.

So now the tree groves as zone. So now, now we have a zoning ordinance for the tree groves. And so there's different uses you can do within that tree grove itself, not necessarily your property, your property could be bigger, but in that tree grove, and that's that table that's at 17.47.220. And it walks through what your permitted uses are. Most of it is things that aren't impactful to the tree grove, right? Trails, benches, recreation uses, thinning, maintenance, wildfire, mitigation, those types of things.

So there's a tree grove on the Linfield campus. If they wanted to put in a new auditorium or something, would it limit their ability to cut down 50 Oak trees and put in a auditorium?

They would need to go through a process. So the process is, is written under the conditional use for economic hardship. So they would come into the city, apply for a conditional use, whether in this tree growth zone, say we need to put our auditorium here, there's no other place we can put it. And if we can't put an auditorium here, we lose this. So here's the economic consequence of what it does to our program. And then that decision is made by the planning commission at a public hearing process.

Thank you. Councilor Chenoweth has a question for David Lichtenberg.

Yeah, first a comment. I'm totally supportive of the tree growth protections. So just to make that clear, my issue is with one specific item here. Is it appropriate in something like this, David or city attorney Lichtenberg, is it appropriate for us to ask to do something like say, divide the question?

Generally those options are available to you at almost any time.

So even in something like this, it's been through a hearing and gone through that process. We can do that here.

I guess it sort of depends on what question you're looking to divide.

I'm thinking to divide the, the landmark and significant tree portion of this as a separate question to, to the council from the rest of this.

So probably better remove that exhibit.

Not remove it, just separate it as two separate questions.

Right. So I guess, do you mind? I'm talking over you. So I guess if your question is, can we visit that in a separate meeting, much like I took the repairing corridors out, right? Then I would suggest you give us that direction and I bring it back to you because I'm unraveling several different documents to do that, that are exhibits to the ordinance.

if we can't significantly decrease what's happening with the significant trees, that would be my preference.

Do you want to share what you significantly think needs to change?

Take out the word located on private out of there altogether, because I don't think it's appropriate for us to be dealing with that issue on private land. Um, I think it's either that or we put back some sort of delineation of property lot size, either or, but I cannot in good conscience do this for the 95% of the lots that are between 5,500 and 10,000 square feet in our property or in our city. I just can't do that. It just, I don't like it.

I have a question, though. How do you, for the counselor, how do you believe their rights are deprecated?

Clarify what your point is.

If you're telling, if I own a piece of property and you're telling me that I'm going to have to pay a fine or plant three trees because I've made the decision to remove a tree you're stepping on my rights as an individual with my property that I own purchase and pay taxes on. So I just don't feel like that's something I can accept on private property. And when you're talking about before development and you're trying to perfect protect the tree stands and the groves that we have before development or in an entirely different ball game. But once, once we have developed these properties down to lot sizes, I can't support that much control coming from the city on those private properties.

Okay.

Thank you for the clarification.

Mayor, may I ask?

Councilor Tucholsky.

May I ask Councilor Chenna with a follow-up?

Yes.

So the way you phrased that, it sounds as though the white Oak that were removed out on West second would not apply to what you're talking about. I'm talking about in the whole homes area where they're blasting and they're removing all the trees. So you made it, you made it. What I would say is a clear statement. Once these have been turned into individual lots, then you don't support the permitting process, but would you support a permitting process if it's in the city of McMinnville, like what we had out on West second.

Yeah. Protecting existing stands in undeveloped areas as we're, as part of that process. Yes, definitely. Okay. I'm just trying to, trying to be clear. Thank you.

Okay.

Councilor Peralta.

So, um, I mean, I, I favor both parts of this bill. I think that there's, in my neighborhood alone, several oak that are multiple hundreds of years old that I would think that should be protected. And it seems to me that what we're providing to protect those is not a significant cost to the property owner. If you're gonna take one of those down, it's gonna cost you several thousand dollars in cutting it down. But the replacement cost is a couple of trees, with a two inch caliper and not necessarily even putting those on your property. I just don't think that's a particularly onerous ask. So what I would encourage the board to do is Councilor Chenoweth has suggested to consider the legislation both from the standpoint of protecting the groves and more broadly protecting the trees on individual properties in the city. And I guess it would be good to get the sense of the board on both of those questions, because if people, if there's a majority in favor of just the full protections that have been articulated, which I think are, the staff has done a very good job of trying to not make those onerous while still ensuring some protections occur. That's consistent with the city's interest of making sure there's not liquefaction on a, on a hillside and things like that. I think they've done a really good job of striking a balance compared to the earlier version, which had more onerous penalties for removal of trees or, or banded outright. So I think the staff's done a really good job here and I would encourage the board to approve both sides of the, of the ordinance, but I'd be interested in just sort of taking a poll on where people are with one or the other or both, because I think we could maybe move the conversation forward.

Mr. Cunningham.

I, um, no, I, I find myself agreeing with both of the counselors in that, in that take. So, um, if there was, and maybe I can ask a question of Heather. Heather. We removed the designation of lot size because it just became really convoluted or difficult to manage that particular program. This was what they landed on to have it equitable for everyone. But I understand what Councilor Chenoweth is saying specifically when it comes to smaller lots and having the ability to deal with large trees on a small lot. So I guess the question would be, even though it is difficult and maybe not ultimately completely equitable, would we be able to amend it to exclude lots of 10,000 square feet or less?

Yes, you as city council can make decisions to amend the planning commission recommendation. Um, I'll share with you the planning commission discussion about it. They, they didn't understand why the cough would be 10,000 square feet. If there's a property that's 10,500 square feet and they have a significant tree, they wanted to remove and they had to go through this more complicated process. Why do they have to go through it? And their neighbor that is 9,980 square feet doesn't. Um, And they also felt that, you know, they got back to the discussion of removing a tree of 36 inches in diameter is a big lift. It costs a lot of money. It's a lot, you know, it's not something you go out with your saw and do, right? And so their discussion was that's an intentional decision by anybody who owns property that has a house on it. whether it's 10,000 square feet, 5,000 square feet, 15,000 square feet, 20,000 square feet. So that's where they ended up with that. I also want to circle back to councilor Chachowski. You asked me about major pruning. And as I was looking at this for something else that I heard a counselor say, I did see that the major pruning is part of it as well. So you can prune. your tree, but you can't print it more than 20%. If you print it more than 20, it points back to what's in the current code.

Thank you. Councillor Bender. Do you want to weigh in? Nope. Okay. Councillor Gary.

Sure. I guess overall, I stand ready to support what's proposed here in front of me. The, the, of the issue that was presented around the private property owner rights. To me, if I follow that logically, it just calls into question the whole zoning code, which is telling private property owners what they can and can't do on their property. So I'm, I stand ready to support what's here tonight.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Yeah, I, you know, I'm considering what Councillor Chenoweth stated and it, I'm, I guess I'm making it a little bit personal because I planted a tree probably about seven years ago and it's probably 29 to 30 inches in diameter already. Yeah, it grew fast. And it concerns me that I wouldn't be able to take that down without a permit. If I wanted to, because it's also ordering the what do you call it, the significant, what are the big green areas?

Significant tree in terms of size?

Yeah, it really loves the water over there. So it just seems as though we're not giving people the ability to take care of their own property if we don't allow them to responsibly maintain their property without oversight from the government. And obviously I support all the tree growths and everything, but it'd be nice to at least take that part out and see if we could work on that together and, or, or just omit it completely. But, um, yeah, sorry. Am I, am I out of time? So, yeah. So, uh, I, I would like to, I would like to find a way that we could give people the opportunity to maintain their threes safely without going through a whole bunch of planning department processes. Councilor Chenoweth has proposed a way. I don't know if everyone's on board with that, but it has merit. So there's private property merit.

I mean, I, I like this better than what we had initially, but I also, I totally agree that I like property, private property rights. And if I wanted to take a tree out off my property, I don't necessarily want to put three more back. I know you can put it somewhere else, but I'm still paying to do that. Plus playing to take the tree out. So I understand the concern there that it is costs. I think. And then didn't we, before it was, you could take two out without a permit. I mean, there was a point that you didn't have to have at least a permit to take one or two out a year.

Dependent on the size of the property.

Size of the lot.

You guys were scaling property. It became very complicated.

I agree. It was totally too complicated.

And so that's what the planning commission was trying to work through is how to make it simpler. Similar to the discussion you're having right now, right? So everyone sees the value of trying to preserve mature trees in the community, but also sees the value of respecting private property decisions.

Would it be reasonable to allow one a year to be taken out without a permit? Just input you guys.

Well, I'll go back to my property that, I mean, I probably could only afford taking out one a year, but ultimately over the span of 10 years, I mean, it would change the entirety of that, that, that landscape. And it would give me a lot more view, but.

All right. We need to, the majority prepared to go forward or I'm not quite sure where you stand on this.

You got to get Carson.

Well, he didn't want to input. I asked him.

Yeah. Thanks for the grace to wait till last. It feels like four years ago, the city council wanted to protect trees. And here we are four years later with a lot of work into it. And this is, you know what, we've got a proposal. I wasn't part of that four years to get here, but I'm split on it too. I have property with some really big trees on them and I love them, but if I need to take one down, it sort of bugs me that I'm gonna have to follow a process. At the same time, we have taken out too many trees in McMinnville and we could all benefit from more.

I'm sure there's some street trees some people would love to give you.

So I would just put out there, I'm a proponent of the private property rights to remove trees if you have them on your property responsibly. Responsibly is defined by who knows who. So I would be a proponent of that. I also think that we need to make sure that we have protection of the tree grows and what's been presented here talks about that the protection of those larger significant areas. I think that's also very important. But Councilor Chenoweth made a good delineation when it comes down to a singular lot that someone is residing on a single lot. It seems as though you should be able to maintain your private property in the way that you see fit and Yes, the city can still protect significant grows if we pass this through, but it would be nice to give us the opportunity, us being citizens, the opportunity to do what we wish with our land, as long as they're not just completely removing the entire tree grove off of lots that have not yet been established, like what we saw with the whole homes area up there.

I'm just going to share what I'm sure is a minority opinion, but, um, I realized that we all want to be able to do whatever we want with our property, whenever we want to do it. But from my perspective, you know, the life span of say these white Oak that we're cutting down to the point where they almost don't exist in our region, the way that they used to. they live four or 500 years. And I guess I just think that a property owner who might own that piece of land for 10 years or five years or eight years, they should take that into account, but it's, it's not just, you know, it's not just this thing that, that I can cut down and, you know, rebuild a few years later. And so requiring people to have a little bit of thought before they, take down something like that, that has an effect, not just on their property, but on their neighboring properties, landscaping, not a heat that it's a neighboring property because they cut down a big Oak next door, the effect that it has on the view shed, the community. I just, I just think that there is a value to offering some limited protection and the idea that I'm getting a permit that doesn't cost anything. and planting a couple extra trees, if you're taking out a heritage tree being somehow prohibitive or a huge burden, I just don't see it as a particularly huge burden or cost, particularly given the cost of what it takes to take out a tree of that size. So that's my opinion on it. I do think we should have some kind of protection for these trees. I think this very minimal protection is reasonable because it really doesn't burden the property owner all that much. It's a lot less than, you know, I've seen, you know, big expense for street trees, for example, the permits are very expensive to take those out, but that's not the case here. So I don't know. I hope people will give some thought to it. And, and that being said, I guess I I'm not hearing a majority for that portion at this time. So what I would suggest is we move the portion where there is consensus tonight and then bring the other portion back for further discussion.

Okay. Just want to clarify. Nothing said that there isn't a cost for the permit does require permits. So you're saying that no costs.

So that's not, I didn't hear it. I didn't hear a cost associated with that permit. I thought that that, that there was either de minimis or maybe I'm wrong about that.

I don't know what the cost of the permit, it's not here.

So we have a street tree removal permit. We don't have a significant tree removal permit or a landmark tree removal permit. Those are policy decisions for the fee schedule as done by city council. They're not land use decisions. And so the planning commission didn't make a recommendation on that, but they did talk about that not having.

How much is a street tree removal permit?

The simple one.

No, really complex.

but there are complex ones, which are much more expensive. We have a complex one. I know you're sarcastic, but believe me, you could street trees are my world. Unfortunately. Um, if, if you want to move forward with the, while I'm looking this up, if you want to move forward with the tree grow program, my suggestion would be to direct us to come back with an ordinance that is isolated to that or the tree grove and scenic view program rather than try to unravel it tonight.

I would like to do that.

Majority of the council agree with that. Counselor Chenoweth.

Can we still bring the other topic back?

Yes.

Yeah. And then I can work on a work session to talk about repairing corridors and significant landmark trees.

Okay. It looks like a majority agrees. So we're not going to move forward with, how are we going to move forward with this?

Nothing tonight.

Then you don't need anything. Director Richards has heard that recommendation feels like it's a path forward. You don't need to move anything.

Okay. All right. So we're just going to move on to advice and information items. Did you have, Oh no, yours is going to be, you have something when you give your report. Yes. Share with us. Okay. Excuse me. Okay. Um, let's go on to reports and we're going to start with GF Hunsaker public works director.

All right. Yes. Just a couple of quick updates tonight. Uh, I mentioned that we had made an offer to a city engineer candidate. She accepted that while I was on vacation. So we will be having a new city engineer starting on next Monday on the 17th. Her name is Claire Robinson, and she's coming to us from the Bureau of Land Management most recently. And then also kind of an odd convoluted way by reading some letters to the editor at the news register, we learned that a car had hit the Star Mill wall again. We were unaware of that. I sent our staff out to take a look at today that had occurred. And so we are currently working on retrieving as many of the bricks as possible and keeping the wall in as good a shape as we can. Director Richards has given an update about how that project's being taken on by the historical landmark committee for the rebuilding, but just wanted you to know that we're, Strangely in a weird way, we are aware that the wall was hit and we're working on it.

Can we put bollards over there?

Uh, we can, there's a few different things we can do. Yes. It's, it's a little odd that the wall has lasted over a hundred years and then in the last year had been hit twice, but we can put bollards or extend guardrail or something like that. Um, but we just had, Again, I just learned about it today, so I didn't think it was going to be happening again so soon, but we're probably going to have to do something over there.

Thank you. HR Director Vicki Hedges. Thanks, Mayor. I don't have a report tonight, not because I'm not working, but because everything I'm working on involves an attorney in some way, shape, or form. So nothing tonight. Lucky you. City recorder, Claudia.

Uh, yes, I do want to state that next week's, uh, August 19th work session is canceled. Um, so we won't have a work session and I'll send out, um, a notice for that. And then just one final call for, uh, elections. The, uh, deadline to file for elections for elected incumbents is August 18th at 5 PM. So that means that you have to have everything done by 5 PM and then for everyone else. So all other candidates, that deadline is August 25th at 5 PM. Again, that means you have to have everything completed by that time. So just wanted to state that. So we're nearing the end. And for more information, we have a bubble that has all the election information right on the front page of our homepage.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Cunningham.

Yeah, none of my committees met since our last meeting, but just want to remind folks that this will be the third and final Mac fresco weekend. So it proves to be one of the most exciting since it will be also the blue angels flying over the top of our downtown. So hopefully everyone will come out and enjoy the 85 degree weather.

Councilor Chenoweth.

I really have nothing to report.

I have returned from vacation. It was a wonderful vacation. That is my report.

I attended and volunteered at the Yamhill County fair, which is one of my favorite events of the year had my one-on-one with city manager, Adam Garvin. And also had our 150th birthday committee meeting. And we talked about the parade and kind of clarifying a few items, which was good. McMillan made mayor's tour attend. We visited solid form fabrication. They're a company that started with two brothers, basically in a garage that moved into a building on river gate. And they build it up to a large company doing millions of dollars with about 45 people. We had greeters at first American title last week. On Friday, I met with Mike Wentz and Joseph Hunter from Lenfield to talk about real estate projects and the current concern of the SDCs. Saturday, I attended the Willamette Valley Cancer Foundation fundraiser. Their goal was to raise $75,000 to help patients affected by cancer. And yesterday was my monthly meeting with Commissioner Johnston. We talked more about the parade and preparations for the air show. And yesterday afternoon, I was excited and enjoyed the ability to greet the U.S. Navy Blue Angels as they came into Oregon at the Oregon Air Base. City Manager Adam Garvin joined me on that. And we had a group of board members from the Oregon Air Show and a couple other people. But we were, it was pretty exciting to watch them fly in and be right there and get to meet them. So that was my report. Councilor Geary.

Thank you. Mirac met whenever minutes and some updates on the downtown Sequoia tree and potential of funding that project, as well as discussion around maintenance of Alpine Avenue, but the general planted area, as well as the built environment and city responsibilities. And then had a discussion around a facade improvement grant for third street veterinarian clinic, which I'm still not sure what the resolution was other than, We'll talk about it more later, I think. So that's my report. Thank you.

Councilor Tucholsky.

Neither of my committees have met except on this coming Thursday, the DEI committee is meeting at 2 p.m. So stand by for that. And then on Tuesday, August 18th, the airport commission is meeting once again to talk about the things that we didn't decide on last time. And I just wanted to throw out a plug for Cruising McMinnville, which happens on August 22nd. They're still looking for volunteers. So if you have opportunity or time, even just a little bit of time would be great. And they have a great website where you can sign up. And they do support scholarships and grants for children. So I'd encourage you to sign up for that. That's it.

There. Councillor Benner.

No subcommittee meetings since the last meeting.

City Manager Adam Garvin.

Thank you, mayor. I'll start with that comms update, the Chinese history exhibit, the city partnered with the Asian heritage association. So that'll be a traveling community exhibit representing McMinnville's Chinese history. The exhibit can be found this week at the aquatic center and we'll make its way to the senior center, farmer's market, community development center, community center, and the library between now and the end of September. So be sure to find time to check that out. and the full schedule of where it'll be is available on the city website. Public engagement kickoff meeting to discuss a TSP update with consultants was last week. The project team will be working closely with Kettleson to get our PAC members on board and get some initial communication out about the project to the community. Noelle's been getting a lot of questions about how and when interested parties can participate in the MAC 150 parade. And she's working with Sam at the Downtown Association on that. Registration will begin with some community partners before it opens to the larger community at the end of the month. If you're getting questions about the parade or interested folks in volunteering, direct those questions to Noelle and Sam at the MDA. Then as far as what I've been up to similar to director Hedges, a lot of that's involved outside council. So I can't talk about it. And as far as the fun stuff, we onboarded Jeannie since our last council meeting, you know, so that was a fun first week and happy to see all the work that she's doing. The Blue Angels was an awesome experience. So thank you for that Mayor and Oregon Air Show. Cord's not here this evening due to his elevated workload this weekend to accommodate the air show and some other things he needed to get done. And similar to IT Director Burke trying to catch up on some things from his elevated workload. And other than that, I had some one-on-ones with Councilor Chenoweth and Councilor Benner and have one coming up with Councilor Takolsky. Anybody else wants to get on a cadence, always welcome or we can continue doing an ad hoc like I do with the rest of you. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilor Takolsky.

I just wanted to say I've already had positive feedback from community members about Jeannie. And so people are randomly coming up to me and saying that she has great energy and she's great. So for what it's worth.

City Attorney, David Leinberg.

Thank you, Mayor. Nothing from the legal department tonight.

Okay.

Heather Richards, Community Development Director.

Yes, so I have a couple of things. First, you should find in front of you a staff report with a resolution 2026-47. With your permission, Mayor, I'd love to see this be added to the agenda tonight for an action. This is a resolution supporting a grant application to the Transportation and Growth Management Program. We call it TGM. for $100,000 to do a more in-depth active trans plan as a component of our transportation system plan work. The applications due August 21, and they do need a resolution of support from the council as part of the application process.

Certainly, we can take a look at that. Can you just tell me a little bit more what active trans companies.

So if you remember from our work session, we had with Kelsen and associates active trans is sort of the nomenclature in the industry, but it's, it's for transportation infrastructure for non-vehicle vehicular transportation. So you're looking at, you know, bicycles, pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, kids on skateboards, scooters, that type of thing. It's mostly now is there's focus on off-road infrastructure. So we've, when we were putting together the pros plan, we had a lot of discussion of doing path. So with the survey work, we learned that people really liked the paths and McMinnville as part of the overall program for the community. And so we had a lot of discussion about doing off off-road paths as part of the infrastructure system as well. They get people from, from a to B to compliment the park system too. And so it would be making that connection and doing some more in-depth planning in that regard. Okay.

Council Peralta.

Thank you. So in terms of bringing this onto the agenda, does one of us just make a motion to consider it on the agenda or is there action that we need to take specifically?

You don't need to pull it onto the agenda at this point. You can just go straight into considering it via motion.

Do I have a motion to consider resolution number 2026-47? So moved.

Second.

We still have room for discussion. Is that concerned? So I have a motion from, who was the motion from? Councillor Benner and second from Councillor Gary.

Okay.

We have discussion. Is that what you wanted? No.

Okay, you look like you were disappointed you didn't get a talk. Any further discussion? Okay, Claudia, can you take a vote? Councillor Benner?

Aye.

Councillor Geary? Aye. Councillor Cunningham?

Aye.

Councillor Tucholsky?

Aye.

Councillor Chenoweth?

Aye.

Councillor President Peralta?

Yes.

Resolution number 2026 dash 47 passes unanimously by a vote of six to zero.

Thank you, council. One other update, August 25th. I wanted to let you know, you're going to have two public hearings that evening. We expect them to both to be very engaged public hearings. So expect a long night. Great.

Can we get the packet information of that early so we can start digesting?

Uh, we will do the best we can. The one of the, um, one of the public hearings is coming from, uh, planning, the planning commission public hearing that we just had and we leapfrog noticing to sort of get in front of our 120 day rule. So staff is really pushing on that one. So we'll do the best we can.

Councilor Tucholsky would like to know if you can provide information on what those are going to be about.

Yeah, what are the two topics?

Yeah, so one of the public hearings, it was in the paper, it's the downtown design, the apartment project proposed by BNSTARD called Armonia. Its land use application for compliance with the downtown design guidelines and standards has been appealed to the city council. Um, the other one is annexation of the property, uh, owned by Yamhill County soil and water conservation district. The annexation is a public hearing. You're going to get, um, also at that same night, the recommendation from the planning commission for the zone change that's associated with that. So, um, okay.

Thank you.

Park and rec director.

Thank you, mayor. Short report that, um, It's been a wonderful two weeks, such a welcoming start here in McMinnville. I love this community. I'm in double digits now. I'm on day 12 of working for you all. And my focus the last two weeks have been connecting with my recreation staff, meeting the park staff through public works, meeting my colleagues, and, of course, getting out in the community and meeting as many of the community members as possible who have input for parks and recreation. So more to come in the future.

Thank you. Finance director, Katie.

Just one quick thing from finance. Just so you know, the annual billings for the DEID assessment are going out next week. So the businesses will be seeing those downtown.

Just a heads up. Thank you. All right. I will now adjourn the meeting at 8.33 p.m.

Thank you.