City Council - workshop

The City Council work session meeting to order. I'd like to call on Geoff Hunsaker, Public Works Director to present and I assume you're going to introduce.

Yes, and tonight I'm not going to be up here by myself. So I'm joined by Director Sprague and we're going to continue our discussion on policy for the park SDCs and the updated methodology as a result of the adopted PROS plan. So before we jump into the discussions, Director Sprague wanted to share some comments and answer some questions that came up during the last discussion. So we're going to go ahead and do that before we jump right into where we left off last time.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Mayor and counselors, for the opportunity just to do a little bit of information sharing from our last work session. And thank you for the large amount of time you've already put into Parks SDC and Jeff for leading this. So just to recap again of what SDCs are about, which I know that we are all pros at this point here in this room. So SDCs, again, are a one-time fee placed on new development to recover the cost of building the city infrastructure needed to serve new development. So Oregon law allows for five SDCs. That's water, stormwater, wastewater, transportation, and parks and recreation.

Just one sec, Jeannie. We're getting feedback for, okay. Are you good, Heather? Are we fake?

I thought I heard my voice twice.

You did. I'm good? Nope.

I was just getting to the good part, Heather.

You're doing a great job.

You good? Okay, let's try that, Jeannie.

Okay, so the basic concept of SDC is growth supports growth. And this protects the city's existing residents from subsidizing new developments, For the public needs that this higher development Happens what what happens from this higher development So just to answer your questions really quick before Jeff gets into the final questions for City Council One of the counselors question is what funds parks and right now that is SDC's general fund and donations grants and alternative funding which is not city budget and alternative funding is wonderful and it's something that I will definitely go through and Go for in the parks and rec department, but please note that it's not a sustainable Budgetary process for long-term planning because I just don't know if I'm gonna get the grant or not all the audit or the alternative funding and

Another couple of questions came up or comments about deferred maintenance and from the public works park maintenance and facility standpoint, we tend to think of deferred maintenance in two categories. We have our ongoing maintenance, which is what's handled by our staff with mowing, minor repairs, landscaping, irrigation. That part, we are pretty close to what was the direction in the pros plan. We're still down one staff person, but we're pretty close on being able to maintain the parks from an ongoing maintenance standpoint for where we wanna be. The other big component is asset renewal. So with asset renewal, you're looking at the replacement of large play structures, restrooms, shelters, things like that. And the original pros plan, Strategy what there's a five year plan five year capital plan that came with it looked at the idea of the bond also paying for some park projects since that time the projects that for the in the parks has been removed from the bond discussion as the Council and community has focused on the aquatic center and rec center replacements. So we still have those projects and those projects will get wrapped into the CIP process that happens annually at budget. There are some significantly large projects in there. A couple of examples are the replacement of the dragon play structure is called out as a $3.8 million project. And another large one is the replacement of the praise structure at discovery Meadows, which is about 1.2 million. There's other projects in there, when we're talking about deferred maintenance and some work with asset renewal, we're talking about those larger projects that will now have to be wrapped into that CIP discussion that we have every year with council during the budget time. Also it's been discussed about, we're not keeping up with our maintenance now outside of for the ongoing maintenance, it was assumed that as the, city develops more and more parks are built. The tax base is increasing. So if the proportion of funding that goes to park Mason stays relatively the same, we should be at again, our near amount for ongoing park maintenance. It's park asset renewal. That will be the hardest part for staff to keep up with.

When you have parks maintenance, you're including the trails as well. All the linear.

Yes. The linear parks as well as the, um, the main parks and the restrooms shelters and such at the park facilities.

Okay.

I just had questions, but go ahead. Another question that came up from council was Yamhill County. Does it have SDCs for parks? Yes. They have SDCs for new residential development. with a single family unit at $403. Does the PROS plan consider budget? The 2024 plan is intended to look at the city's comprehensive parks, recreation, and open space needs with a strategic effort to address these as we move forward for 20 years. We did have a consultant come in and do public surveys with 3,733 respondents, 25% of which either work or own a business in McMinnville. So this allowed us to do some data driven analysis to determine final community needs and priorities. And what that means is that following public process, which again, we will always do when we're talking parks and recreation, we need an action plan for budgetary numbers. So the consultant team used visions and goals that were incorporated by the 1999 PROS plan, the city's comp plan, and the information that they got from the public during the 28-month process for this 2024 PROS plan. So if you'd like to look, the budgeted parks, the final decision on the budgeted parks are on page 100 of the PROS plans, and we had to use budget matrices for each process. Project as a costing exercise So that means this helps because we're unable to show actual budgetary numbers for projects from 15 to 20 years from now It's just impossible to forecast those budget costs But what it does is it ranks each part project with scale and scope with priorities by cost So it'll show low cost to high cost and in between medium cost. It was a few majors So that helped us prioritize which projects that council may want to look at it in the future and and also the budgetary numbers that would go towards those projects in 2024. Last question to answer from council from last work session is the PROS plan included the vision of having neighborhoods within a 10 mile, I'm sorry, 10 minute walk or bike trek to a park, which is between a quarter mile to a half a mile. I just wanted to let you know that that was not a decision made by anyone on the MACPAC or in the city of McMinnville. That is an edict and a vision that's brought forth nationwide to all parks and rec departments through the National Recreation and Park Association. So their goal is by the year 2050 to have the majority of parks and parks and recreation departments dependent on population to have that quarter mile to half mile proximity for residents.

So that's all the additional information responding to questions and statements we heard last time. Is there any questions or statements again from council on these before we jump into those policies?

Yes. Counselor Chenoweth.

Thank you, Mayor. On that 0.25 to 0.5 mile goal, is that a mandate or a recommendation?

It's a recommendation from the Professional Organization of NRPA. Thank you. Yeah.

Councillor Geary, did you have?

Okay.

Councillor Tchaikovsky?

Yeah, Director Honeysucker, just to clarify, you stated that the SDC park charges could be used for replacement of like the Dragon Park structure, but doesn't that have to have a larger capacity at that point to be used?

Yes, it would have to be in addition. So if you just replaced it for a like-sized place structure, you could not use SDCs. But if you built the structure one and a half times larger, that additional capacity 50% increase, you could use STCs for that portion of it, just not the replacement portion.

Thank you. And then is there a required percentage increase that you have to have in order for STCs to pay? Or is it anything greater than 100%?

The ORS does not have a requirement. It just is additional capacity is how it's defined. Okay, so it could be 1%. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

I think, thank you for the information. I know Jeannie and I talked earlier today. I still have concerns in regards to the process of the PROS plan. And I know there was input from the community, but when you have input without costs, it gives you a different input. And again, my perspective of looking at it at this point was looking at what could be paid by SDCs and whether I really necessarily think those are things that we need right now. So we did have a discussion of a possibility of Determining what our SDC's were going to be and then from there determining how they'd be spent with information coming to the council in the future So I just kind of as to where it gets spent want to make sure that was kind of out there, too.

I Didn't track that you would you care to look at your pros plan?

There's a list of projects and they all say well how they're paid for whether they're paid for SDC's whether it's a bond a grant a donation And I guess I should just say, Jeannie, thank you that you're going to be willing to work on donations and grants because it's been a request, but not a lot of input from the council to do that. So looking at the items that can be paid with SDCs, they aren't all things that I think that we as a city need right now. So that's how I justified my thought of, I don't think we need to get a hundred percent of those SDCs because I don't agree with the funding items. So, but we looked at it a little differently that we determine what we want to get for SDC funding and then go from there as to what will we pay for with it. That makes sense.

So there's a question if I could, there's a question for the council that I'm going to bring a little later talking about, should the city look to be recouping a hundred percent of the SDCs that are in the methodology or as a lower percentage, something that the council wants to look at. If the majority of the council wants to look at a lower percentage, we could go through that process to then adopt the methodology recoup at that lower percentage. And then we would start a public process with the council to prioritize that list of projects that is in the pros plan. And this would be led by director Sprague and myself to help the council choose which projects to prioritize so that we are looking to build what we're going to be bringing in funding for. That percentage can change over time as well in policy changes with different councils in the future and things like that. So, but you can go that route and we'll talk about that a little bit more coming up.

Okay. Perfect. Any other comments? Councillor Peralta.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is something I already know, but just for the benefit of the community, in terms of the SDCs, how are these projects? I understand how they're going to be selected. You just described that. But how do they come online in terms of the funding cycle, meaning you're going to be building out, we're going to be building out houses in the community that adds money to the SDCs. And then that gives you an opportunity to start spending it at some point. We already have a preexisting dollar amount in there. And so I guess my question is like, we're not, you're not going to be necessarily building out new parks immediately. It's going to be something that happens as growth occurs in the city. meaning when we get to 40,000 people, there might be new parks to accommodate that development.

Is that basically the... Councilor, are you asking what we are doing with the SDC budget right now?

Yeah, no, I'm asking more about what the timeline is for building out, for the build out. It's a 20-year...

Right. That has a number of different avenues it could go through. my experience in the past is working with an advisory board who would bring recommendations to the department, the city manager and council of what they would want to see from the pros plan. And then council and the city, the council would make the decision on which, plans to start with first, kind of like what Jeff was just saying. I don't know if there's a different process in McMinnville.

No. I would say, though, that the two ways that the parks are going to be built in the future are generally either development is building the park and getting credit for that construction, or the city is collecting the SDCs and then building the park itself through our process that we do with contracting and whatnot. Right. With... Develop large developments. It'll pretty much come online right away. So a developer will go in build all the infrastructure Plat the property and then houses will be built and the park would be constructed at with the rest of the infrastructure like the streets and the utilities if the city is the one taking the responsibility for building it, there is going to be a lag because we're going to be waiting for each of the houses to come online or to be built and pay the SDCs. And then once we built up enough money, then we would construct the park. So it depends on which way it's done, but generally if development builds it, it comes along right away. If the city does it, there'll be a two or three year lag after that development.

Thank you. And there'll also be a public process with that, with the city, which contributes to the lag.

Any other comments or questions? Okay.

Okay, with that, I will start sharing the presentation here. So last time we talked through this first question and I took down notes from everything. So unless the council wants me to rehash what I heard, we'll go ahead and move on to the second one.

Anybody want to go over that again?

Okay. So the second question. Should one employee be the equivalent to 0.33 residents of additional park impacts. So we've talked a little bit about the, as the non-residential development comes in, it's assumed each new employee has about the same impact for the park system as one third of a full-time resident. So that number can be changed. It would change the methodology and would require us to go back out and work with a consultant to update the methodology. But Raising or lowering it will also conversely impact the residential SDCs if you do not change the amount of projects in the plan as a whole. So I have some slides here from the methodology to hopefully help explain this, because this is one of the more heady bits of arithmetic in the methodology. So first off, they looked at the amount of residents that live in the city that aren't workers, then those that work in the city, then those that work elsewhere. And then they also looked at the amount of employees that work in the city that don't live here to come up with some equivalent population numbers for both employees and for residents. Then they took some study data to come up with the amount of park availability, depending on if it's a weekday or weekend and the time of year, which is that table on the bottom to come up with a weighted average hours per day of park availability for people that are here in the community full time, but not working people that are working and people that are coming in from out of town. So they came up with the park availability by hours, converted that into the total amount of hours per week of park demand that is required and then divided that by both the amount of residents and the amount of employees to get that residential equivalent of 0.33. So there's a lot of math there, which is what's required for making it defensible. But I've heard, um, both from the council and the community a couple of times that they did not feel that there was, an employee has the same amount of impact on the park systems or a one-third impact on a park system as a full-time resident does. So going back to the question, do councilors feel that that 0.33 residents is an appropriate number for employees?

Councillor Tucholsky.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. It sounds like you're asking for like a yes, no, or just an explanation in between.

Yes, no, and if you feel it should be higher or lower, if you have a specific opinion, anything that we can use to help build a policy.

Yeah, so I think it's important we give our teams and the city something to work with tonight, so I'm going to try to be pretty direct with my answers and give you something you can take back. The fact that we're trying to use 0.33 residents per employee, that tells me like one third of the employees of any facility within the city would be using a park. And, yeah, I agree.

It could be that way or each employee has the parks available for one-third of the amount of hours a resident would have for use.

Okay. Is there any kind of seasonal adjustment that has been baked into these numbers? Because I can tell you I haven't used a park in February as much as I have in June. Yes, they work seasonal adjustments. Oh, my apologies.

They're right here, Danny. into the table, the weighted hours, the second table on there, where they look at summer, spring and fall and winter as different. So for example, on the far left, a resident that does not work in the city has the park available for 10.55 hours in the summer, as opposed to the winter time where it's available for 5.21 hours a day. Got it.

Thank you. I'm just trying to bring it to the attention. that people that are here to work are using the parks as much as our residents are. I also don't believe that the 0.33 factor is indicative of how much they're being used. very rarely see people using parks that are employed within any city, regardless of its McMinnville or not using parks to the point where they would actually cause some kind of a cost to be incurred. I do see people running through parks frequently during their lunch break. I see people walking through parks. I don't see them using restrooms, using ultimate Frisbee. I don't see them using the facilities, the barbecues, other things. I personally don't believe that that .33 should be included, and that's because I don't believe that that many people from the employment sector are taking that much time from work to go into the parks specifically. Excuse me. I do believe they're going out to lunch. I do believe they're going down to 3rd Street. They're walking down the sidewalks there, but I don't see these people in parks, and regardless of the city, I just don't see it taking place. That's my opinion.

Thank you. Councillor Chenoweth.

I actually have a question more than I have an opinion at this point. I want to hear more thoughts. But the question I have is it seems to me like this is dependent on the first question. And so meaning the first question asked. whether we wanted industrial and commercial assessment. And my response to you was I'm okay with that, but much less than what we originally stated. And so if the conclusion of the first answer is that we agree that we want to scale it back from what was originally proposed, then that would require this answer to be Yes or no. Rather, I don't think 0.33 is correct. Am I understood? So they, to me, they're tied as one question in two parts.

Yes. Um, I'm trying to do my best to break it down, to be able to have counselors opinions on each because, um, they are dependent, but if, Yeah basically yes trying to do that there's other questions that there's other ways to get to this as well you don't you can keep the methodology for the same for example but lower the percentage that you bring in on non-residential STC's and that's what our next question is so I'm trying to get at it a few different ways to try to understand. What policy decisions?

Each counselor is okay with and then build a policy from there instead of trying to do a holistic one with each of you and trying to Match all those opinions that way so then my answer to this question is no Um, it should not be 0.33 It should be some somewhat less and um I concur with some of the reasoning and my counselor have already spoken fellow counselors already spoken in that um You know, anecdotally, I've never seen an employee of mine go to the parks on their lunch or on their break. I've seen them walk all over town, but I've just never seen them go to the parks. The only employee that I'm aware of that went to the park on their lunch break, and they have an hour lunch break, mind you. I'm not giving them half hours. The only employee I know of that went to the park in the years that I have been involved in this business, which I've been there since 1996... was me. So, and I'm a resident here in McMinnville, so I would have paid for that theoretically through homeowner SDCs. So I, when the first house was first built and first sold or purchased or Sorry, I'm getting that all wrong. We were backtrack when that house was first built. The STC was covered at that time. So, um, I just don't see 0.33 being remotely close to accurate as to the usage that would be done by these facilities unless the business happens to be located very close or adjacent to a park.

Can I get a clarification? So we have a square footage SDCs for industrial warehouse and it's when they add square footage. Is this on top of that? This employee number?

Um, the square, there is another calculation of the methodology that converts square footage to employees. So it's all based on an equivalent resident at the end of the day, but it's backed into different ways. So we would only count square footage, not number of employees. We make an assumption on the number of employees that is associated with that type of square footage and how much increase there is.

And that's how you get these square footage rates correct. So we can't as a council just determine what the square footage rate is that we feel comfortable charging and not worry about employees.

You could, but it needs to be defensible per the RS. So usually it's based on a report or something similar. What you could do is change the percentage that you're bringing in. If you feel the percentage is just too high and keep the methodology still built on defensible numbers that have been figured out through reports and whatnot. So there's different reports that the methodology uses to create these numbers. And if I would suggest that the council just feels like the numbers are too high to look at bringing in only a percentage of the SDP SDC as opposed to modifying the methodology, which because you would need to have something to back that up.

So like for example, just so citizens hear this too. So industrial right now it's 2.77. So we could say as a council, we only want to charge 25% of that. And that wouldn't change methodology, it would just change percentage.

Correct. So staff would always calculate it based on the full methodology. And then at the end, we would then reduce the amount to whatever the council set as policy for the amount of money they want to bring in. And that's a much cleaner way and a way that's pretty common with other communities of these. Instead of modifying the methodology itself, they'll modify the percentage that they recoup. And that can be set by policy decisions moving forward without having to update that methodology as you move forward.

Okay, because I agree with Councillor Tucholsky and Jenna with it. I don't think very many employees use the parks during the day, especially people that don't live here. You may see a few people parked at Workman Park, but the percentage is extremely low. What other council, Councillor Benner?

Thank you, Mayor. I think that I'm less interested in arguing whether the 30% or is I think I'm more interested in coming up with a dollar number backing in as Jeff suggested that percentage and so coming to terms across the dais of we feel that there should be some fee that commercial industrials should pay and not fighting over how much they use the park or don't use the park. I think the value to McMinnville of having quality parks, it makes it a good place to be an employer and then setting that rate and then doing the reverse on the math and not getting wound up of the 30% of an employee because it seems a very arbitrary number. And base it more on it's a 20,000 square foot warehouse. That means it's this sort of occupancy and that means it should be this much dollar amount. are basing it on the square footage rate and a percentage of coming up with a good doll or a dollar number that we can all agree upon across the dais doing the reverse math and say, we're going to do this percentage of this already defined a methodology.

Answer Gary Try to be brief. I've read that 33 page policy packet that the consultants put together So I understand how they walked through the methodology and realized the link and I agree with the conclusion the cost that they're assessing for industrial non-residential rates, so I agree that the price that they ended up with is good and I think it's myopic to look at how many times a person goes into the park in their eight-hour shift. I think in the future, high-wage dynamic employers that we want in McMinnville will be looking at the quality of parks that they're going to be able to provide for their business and their employees in the future, and we need to meet that demand. I also think that the big world begins where my nose ends, and I don't see everything that happens, but I know that there's... employers and employees who have people who, you know, play on our softball teams, their kids play, they meet up for play dates over the weekend. They use the open spaces now and businesses will want to use that in the future. And so I think where we ended up on those rate structures is correct.

Councilor Peralta.

Yeah, I think I definitely agree with Councillor Benner and Councillor Geary about the importance of parks to contributing to the high quality of life and that being a driver for the kinds of jobs and economy that we want in the jurisdiction. So I'll be supportive of that approach.

Councillor Cunningham.

What I would say is that I think I lean into what councilor Benner was saying of, of finding that dollar amount and, and going from there, because I agree. I think the way that particular thing is of one, you know, one third of a, of a resident, especially when a lot of these residents are the employees. So I didn't, wasn't able to do the quick math on the out of town people that to see what that really truly looked like as their representation of how many employees there are in this town as a whole. So, but I would agree with almost everyone up here that the one third is not quite the right number, but obviously that leaves us to trying to figure out where that target is and trying to hit it.

Councilor Peralta wants to add something.

No, actually, that's okay. Thanks, Mayor.

Okay.

What did you gather from that, Jeff?

I'm generally hearing that the calculation, there's less issues with the... calculation itself and how it was done and more disagreement of the amount of impact based on feeling or what has been observed out in the community. So I, which leads into the next question, I think, well, and what I was stating that you couldn't keep the methodology the same. But you could then discuss, should the city be recouping 100% of the potential SDCs? So the methodology calculates the maximum SDC that the city could recoup. We're not allowed to recoup more than the amount that was based on the plan that's there. And then Director Sprague and myself had some time to brainstorm last week, and we talked a little bit about... Often cities will just set a percentage that they want to recoup, but you are allowed to set different percentages for different types of development if there's a policy that you're looking to spur a certain type of development, be it non-residential or multifamily or things like that. So... when I'm asking this question, I would like to know councilor's thoughts. Do they feel that the city should be recouping 100% or is it amount less than that? And also in addition, do you feel that the number needs to be different for different types of development? Uh, you can break it down again by residential, non-residential, or even break it down further and say, uh, for residential single family versus multifamily, you want to recoup a different percentage because you want to spur on a type of development with residential. And then again with, um, There'll be a little harder with non-residential, but you could do the same if you're looking to spur on, say, retail over manufacturing or something like that. So if you have thoughts on that, I'd like to hear it. But the main question is, should you recoup 100% of SDCs? The impact would be if that number is lower, as discussed, we would want to come back and have another public process for the council to then prioritize that. The projects in the pros plan on which ones we're looking to put the funding toward because we're going to be bringing in a lesser amount than the total. And that also doesn't mean that those other projects that aren't prioritized would never be built. We would just be potentially looking for additional funding sources. be they grants or donations, and those can go to the projects that were prioritized and that opens up more money from your non-prioritized list or vice versa. Somebody could choose to fund a non-prioritized project because that's one that's close to their heart and they want that one to move forward.

And we can always come back later in a year or two and increase SDCs too.

Yes, they can.

It just doesn't mean that right now we have to fund it 100%. Yes.

Okay.

Councillor Geary.

Thank you. My answer is yes, we should be at 100% to fund the plan as suggested after discussing with multiple people who have written in representatives of organizations in the business community and economic development, I think. it's more realistic to be more at the 80% rate. And I would suggest, and I know it's a later question, but I would suggest joining that with a tiered phase in rate structure approach. But I think getting to 80%, the total cost is probably where I'd be okay with landing eventually.

Is that 80% on all?

Correct. Yeah, correct. And there's a question later specifically about affordable housing, so I'll save the waiver for affordable housing for that question.

Okay, next. Councilor Tchaikovsky.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Jeff, or Director Hunsaker, sorry. You're asking if we should recoup 100%. Are you talking about 100% of what's currently being asked for today? And the example that was given last time was the standard residential charge was $3,088, but the proposal is $12,500, which is your 404% of what it is today. Are you asking... 100% of the new or 100% of existing?

Correct. I'm asking for 100% of the new. The current one was already set at 50% of the recommended back in 1999 when it was adopted. So this question is for the proposed methodology, which had a single family home, the average home at 12,500. Okay. Thank you. I'll follow up in a bit. Okay.

Councillor Benner.

Is there any way you could bring up or tell us where it is in our documents, the city-by-city chart?

Yes, I do have that. Sorry, I'm going to be flashing slides here real quick. There you go.

You didn't give us a flicker warning. Thank you.

Okay. I can go, yeah. So first I'd like to, if I might, we've heard kind of philosophical positioning on SDCs and I'd like to just spend a minute, if I might, Mayor, expressing my philosophical position on these kinds of SDCs. There is the argument that is made that the concept of 100% cost recovery on SDCs is intended to make sure that only the developers are paying the cost of the increase need to the system. And to put that on what caused the need, what caused the increased need. And that's a defensible position, one I understand. It's not one that I share. I look at, just as an example, and particularly when we're talking about parks SDCs, I look at my neighborhood. I have one of the most prized possessions for parks in my neighborhood at Discovery Meadows. I don't think it's currently working, but it's the splash pad. And it draws people from all over. It is not an amenity that is only used by those that purchased in the development area where that splash pad was created. It also serves a much wider area. Already in this discussion, you pointed out that existing parks that saw an expansion greater than 100% of current usage, could be eligible for SDCs within existing parks. On the proposed plan list, there are two parks that would be located in existing property within the city that are on that list. All of that shows that parks SDCs actually end up benefiting A MUCH WIDER PORTION OF THE POPULATION THAN THE SMALL PORTION THAT WOULD BE PAYING FOR IT IF YOU ONLY PUT IT ON THE NEW DEVELOPMENT. AND SO GIVEN THAT THAT BENEFIT IS A WIDER BENEFIT TO THE COMMUNITY, AND GIVEN THAT ALL OF US GET TO ENJOY THAT, I BELIEVE PARKS SDC'S SHOULD BE SPREAD OUT AMONG NOT JUST THE DEVELOPMENT COMING IN BUT ALSO US THAT GET TO USE IT GOING FORWARD. Um, so I don't believe in 100% cost recovery on parks SDCs. I don't think that's an appropriate way to go. I believe our previous city council had it pretty much spot on at 50%. Um, I, I think that takes into account the, um, the portion that the community that's existent is going to enjoy that. I also think it takes into account a desire that we have to spur development. If we put all of the cost on development Eventually, as you can look at these graphs, they're going to choose not to develop here. Some people don't want development here. That may be a good thing for some folks. But I think we want to encourage development to some degree. So between the encouraging of development and making sure that all users are paying into that amenity, I would be in favor of 50%.

50% as to leaving it where it is or an additional 50%. I just want to make sure we're clear.

I believe it's the 50% of the proposed methodology. So a average home of 2,500 would be that 6,000. Okay.

So that was clear. Counselor Gary.

I just wanted to add, unless something's happened that I don't know about in the last two days, the splash pads working.

splash pad must be new.

The splash pad is working. It's, um, currently doing single pass through. So we're not reusing the filtration system right now. Um, but we are, uh, it is operational, uh, as we work to get that replaced.

Thank you for that clarification.

I didn't mean to put a black eye on McMinnville and, um, with the 50%, uh, number that you mentioned and the other 50% shared by everybody currently there is that would have to be an identified funding source. in a way that the rest of the community would be able to pay for that other half. So if we reduce the SDC's 50%, we are gonna still have to prioritize to only build half the projects and the other half would not be built unless there was a bond or some other mechanism for paying for that.

Right, and I think identifying other sources of revenue from grants to bonds to donations are all great ways to go about building out parks. I mean, we see on a regular basis that, we get donations, look at Shegwin park. Um, I mean the reality is it happens. And so I, I'm, I don't think, um, that we should be, um, automatically not considering that that's a good way to help fund this. Okay.

That's your Cunningham.

you ma'am um i would say that no it shouldn't be a hundred percent um i would be comfortable um with eighty percent although i i honestly i look at a few benchmarks shahalem um being one of them that i think that we you know they're within our community uh we should be basically tied with them because I think that's what our citizens deserve. Uh, I also would push a little bit back on, uh, counselor 10 with in, in that the development, it will be slowed by SDCs. When you see that Sherwood is the highest one. and Tigard quickly following behind it. And that has not slowed any of the development there. Now there might be some argument that it's closer to I-5 and I could definitely agree with you there. But I think that honestly, if you have the land and you have the ability, We are a very desirable community. I think we will continue to be developing out and hope for that. And so I guess where I would land is somewhere looking more like 75% or something like that, whatever that number is, that would be Chehalem.

Council Peralta.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay, just a couple of, excuse me. Thank you. Just a couple of points. First, I don't find the argument persuasive that new parks being built benefit everybody. Therefore, New development shouldn't be primate the primary driver of paying for it simply because a new resident Paying SDC's benefits from the existing parks infrastructure that we've already paid for so I don't see any problem with with putting the cost of new development on that development I also don't find it compelling that we're gonna suddenly have a paucity or a reduction in In building here, just given the cities on the list behind me, you know, Corvallis, Tuala, and Oregon City, Chehalem Parks and Rec, I mean, they're all charging in that $10,000 range. So the idea that we're going to have housing fall off a cliff for charging the same rates as surrounding communities just doesn't, it's not persuasive to me. Um, and then with regard to the business, uh, the economic development portion, I think parks, I agree with, I think it was Scott that said it. I agree. Parks are a huge driver for economic development for the kind of businesses that we want to recruit here. Um, businesses want a high quality of living. Our residents want a high quality of living. So I think, you know, to the extent that we have new development coming in, that new development should be contributing to the quality of life here. So I'm in favor of, of having the SDCs, I am in that same 75 to 80% range, probably more closer to 80 than 75, unless there's, you know, a broader consensus around 75. But yeah, so thank you.

I need just a bit to get there.

Do you have anything you want to add?

Sure. I think everybody up here is for parks, and so I want to make it clear that we're not objecting to parks because I think it's important that everybody understands they do lend a quality of life. I would say that if we're comparing ourselves to Sherwood and Wilsonville, uh, counselor Cunningham, we do have a significant, uh, drive compared to, uh, most of those areas. So there's a lot of industry that doesn't exist, uh, in the Yamhill County area that does exist in Clackamas, Marion County, uh, Multnomah County, which are all very easily accessible from somewhere like Sherwood or Wilsonville. So I, while it's a, It's a closer comparison. I don't consider it an equal comparison. But if people are willing to drive, they can do it. I would say that I do believe that we do need to recover some costs for the SDCs. So I'm trying to give you tangible things to work with, Director Hunziker. So I don't believe in 100% right now. I think this increase on the residential is in... I'll call it in tension with another thing we're going to be talking about tonight, which is low-income housing. If we continue to pile fee upon fee upon our builders... Yes, I understand... That should be absorbed by the builder, theoretically. But we also know that that also goes and gets passed to the consumer, regardless of what industry you're in. The housing industry is no different. If it costs 400% compared to 100%, some of that's going to get passed on. I assume it's going to be the majority of it. I would like to see that we have a cost recovery in the 60% range, just to give you a number. 50% is what we had in the past. If we could do a little bit more, that'd be fine. I do believe that we need to maintain the parks that we have today, and right now we're having a bit of a challenge with that. We've made some significant inroads since... Basically, the start of 2025 on maintenance and other things that needed fixed deferred maintenance. But I really want to make certain that we can take care of the parks that we have. I also want to see new parks. So, you know, there's tension even in my own opinion here. But I do want to see that we're taking care of the parks. The parks that we have are high quality and they attract people. have amenities for within these parks i don't want to see a grassy area where kids can play soccer and that's it with dead grass if you go to the kingwood area right now the park in that area is not real exciting if you go to the small park over by linfield which is in the residential zone off of cleveland cleveland area It's just a big dead grass area that says, you know, McMinnville Park. That's not a park for kids. That's just, it's a lot waiting to be developed. So I do want to see that we have recovery. 60% is the number I'll give you. But I also want to see that we're maintaining parks today. The parks that we have today, let me be clear. Thank you.

Carson, do you want to go?

Yeah, thanks for giving me a chance to get my head around it. No worries. I think that from a builder's perspective, I think about I'm going to build a house, 2,000 square foot house, and I've got an SDC. And so coming up with a dollar number feels more comfortable to me than a percentage. And so I think anywhere in that $7,500 to $10,000 is... It feels comfortable when you look at the medium home price in Oregon or in McMinnville It's in that one to one and a half percent of the value of the house So it's it's not nothing, but it's a pretty small dollar number And I think I would echo Sal's comment that New development is benefiting from the efforts that previous development paid for in our community and Historically, when someone moves into our community and buys a house, they should pay for the parks that we're going to need to build for that. Thank you.

Okay, so I'm last. So I understand increasing the residential SDCs, and I am around the 60 to 70% on that. I do believe that that one-time fee is good, and it does, I agree with Sal in regards to paying for parks and that we have. Um, but I'm, I still want to make sure I do believe that the parks that we have need to be maintained and quality over quantity. So, and I know those parks that we're talking about with developers are only going to come as we grow. but I also want to just make sure I know you think we have a handle on cleaning and it's better, definitely better in our parks, but there's still, there's still weeds. There's still things that need to be done on a regular basis that I would like to see those more pristine and more enjoyable than adding more property. People will go to them if they're good in good shape. Um, I still can't really wrap my head around industrial and commercial. If we do that, I think it needs to be very minor. And if we want to increase it, we need to give time. We need some people to be able to build right now. We are building housing. We're building affordable housing. But we need to have jobs. And I don't want to squash some growth that we need in the commercial and the industrial area. And I honestly don't think those people are going to the park during the day. Um, if they live here, they're going on the weekends and there may be some, but, um, we've already already talked about not doing it as an employee base, just as a square footage base. Sorry, I'm losing my voice today. Um, so industrial, I'm just concerned about that. I think we can look at it at another date, um, down the road. But right now with the economy, there are businesses that we've talked to. I've, I know Councillor Geary said he's gone out and talked to people. I have talked to a lot of businesses, and there are some that want to build, but they're concerned about the cost to build. Our economy is in a hard spot. Oregon has put us in a bad spot. So I just have a feeling that I can't really justify or accept that unless this group here does it, then I obviously will defer because it's a majority vote, but I don't support that.

So moving on to our next question This one might be able to be pretty quick, but so we use the metric of square footage and that is based on Reporting for the equipment employees by square footage There is other methods to calculate like parking spaces or doing an estimated staffing or things like that. This is somewhat immaterial, but it is something that is a question. If the council is not comfortable with that number being based on square footage, uh, I would like to know that, but if it's the council's okay with it, we can move on from this question pretty quickly. I think so.

I think square footage is the most reasonable answer. Peralta.

I think whatever, cause I don't know what defensible under the, under the law is under the state law. So I think whatever you all think is the most defensible thing, way of calculating it is probably what makes sense to me. And what's more important, I would assume from this side is actually what the dollar amount ends up being. That's my view.

I wasn't really necessarily going to go at this point, but, um, yeah, I, I, I, I struggle with honestly with square footage unless you have a secondary variable. Um, meaning square footage warehouse, square footage, commercial space, square footage, light industrial. What, what is the secondary variable? So straight square footage I struggle with.

They are listed up here as industrial manufacturing is the second. Yeah.

So if you have a variable, I think probably that's makes logical sense. Okay.

Councillor Cunningham, can you jump in there?

Uh, I'm good with the square footage.

Councillor Benner.

Yes, I am. I think I'd like to avoid anything that would cause us to have to redo the methodology because I think that we're going to pick a number that feels right and then reverse back into it. So square footage is great.

Councillor Geary. I have to keep you guessing.

I'm good with as proposed.

Okay. Councillor Tchaikovsky.

I had my hand raised from the beginning and now I'm last. That's nice.

Real nice.

Yeah.

So sorry.

No square footage is exactly what I would use in lieu of anything else. We don't have anything else to use. Parking spaces can be used by multiple people. If you carpool parking spaces are also irrelevant to people are parking on the street regardless. They don't care where they park it. So that means nothing to me. The other part of it is the, uh, what was the, sorry, my screen just died. Uh, The other part was, Oh, employees, number of employees, completely speculative. You can fit a lot of employees in a small space or a large space. And I don't see that's consistent and defendable. I'd like to stay with the square footage and it keeps it consistent with residential.

Okay. And there was a report that was done in notes up here in metros, 1999 employment density study. And that's where those numbers came from. So it's defensible because it's based on an existing study. Did we hear from everybody on that? I think I heard okays.

I think everybody was fine with square footage and the different, um, Warehouse versus commercial industrial.

I will say I do concur with your concerns about applying this currently in the market that we're in. The argument that we're hearing over and over again about how it's going, how McMinnville will develop just as easy as anywhere else to me is not convincing at all. Just listening to the people on the EVLC and their comments and concerns, knowing the struggles that we're going to have in bringing people in To develop the McMinnville landing because of the distance for my five looking at medium incomes all of this tells me we have a whole different set of Circumstances facing McMinnville and all the comparables we have so I don't even like those comparables to me aren't real comparables and So I have real concerns about we're applying this and what the impacts are going to be. You know, we've put a lot of time and energy and investment into developing out the landing. It would be really unfortunate if we put something in place that prevents it from going anywhere.

Okay, so the next question is, should the residential SDC fee be tiered based on square footage? This is current best practice for residential SDCs. It's meant to encourage middle housing, ADUs, things of that nature. nature changing it back to something what we have a similar where it's a flat rate you are going to be having some smaller residential units that are going to be overpaying and then some larger ones that would be underpaying but it averages out at the end and kind of going back to this is the current proposed tier list and there is a assumed amount of occupants per dwelling size you see that in the population per occupied unit that's what converts to the cost for the STC for each of those unit sizes and again that those numbers are from a study I'd have to pull up which one it was but that's Those weren't arbitrarily chosen. They were based on another study that's used in the methodology. So does the council want to have a tiered system moving forward as opposed to a flat rate for all residential?

Okay. person or your counselor, Gary, I'm going to let you go first.

Um, I think it's, I appreciate, I, I agree with how it is proposed. Um, I think two things, one man, two years ago when we first saw this methodology to join the parks SD to, to, uh, supplement the pros plan to fund that there was discussion, I believe at the time around six buckets being a little odious at the assessment. when you come in for permit, right, then you get, there's, it's starting to become a cumbersome tool to administer. Um, so I'm fine if it shrinks by one. Um, but I, and then recently I think there was a discussion about perhaps taking the, um, lease the smallest two pools and the highest two pools and perhaps blending those costs down and up respectively right so trying to get the less than 500 to be weighted a little cheaper to incentivize smaller more compact construction and then and then blending the upper two because it's less of a function of the overall value of the house when you're building a over a 4,000 square foot house it can perhaps encumber that a little bit more And we should be in trying to incentivize more smaller development than, than larger development. So I think those would be my only two, but I'm fine with if, if we end up as proposed with the six buckets.

Okay. To do the blending that you mentioned, you would have to probably set a different percentage based on unit size that you're looking to recoup as opposed to There's probably a way to get there through the methodology change, but you'd have to find a different report that would be trying to do what you're asking. Okay. And so it might be easier as a policy to incentivize smaller units and you can set it that way, or you could break it down by multifamily has pays a smaller percentage than single family or whatever it might be.

I removed my blending comment then.

Okay. Yeah.

I like the tiered system.

Are you ready or do you want me to move on?

Yeah, I'm ready. Thank you, mayor. Uh, I don't like the tears just because I like equations and I think that it should just be a nice equation based on the square footage. Uh, obviously you've constructed this. We already work with this. Um, I can support it, but I, I, I don't think it's appropriate to incentivize dwellings less than 500 square feet any more than it is to incentivize those greater than 4,000 square feet. It seems appropriate just to apply the cost accordingly based on the square footage. One thing I do want to throw out, and this is not a popular opinion or a comment, but I've also heard during my time on the planning commission that we have a lack of executive housing in McMinnville specifically. And yeah, nobody likes to use that term because it means bigger houses, larger wages. But realistically, if you don't have executive housing, quote unquote, in the city, you're pushing these people out to the county, then you're completely losing out on any kind of tax base at all on SDCs in this case. I would, I'd say I can support this. I don't want to go through the motion of changing it, but I do want to, I do not want to incentivize the smaller ones anymore than I want to incentivize the larger ones greater. So I, this seems fair to me.

Okay. So to clarify, it's not that you're looking for a flat rate for all sizes. You're looking, your preference would be a scaled rate based on an equation that says, you know, as you get larger, you're paying more, but you're okay with the tiered as presented.

Yeah, because I believe it keeps it simple enough that we can give you something to work with right now, which is realistically what your group need so that we can move this forward. I don't want to continue stalling. Thank you.

Counselor Peralta.

uh yeah i think this is fine i would repeat what i said in the previous meeting where i i think that the the stacking of these fees on multifamily is onerous so i think that the multifamily should maybe be its own category and have a an adjusted lower cost potentially um and then to counselor takulski's point i would i would point out that another way of looking at the um at the, uh, the scale is based on the number of people per occupancy. So instead of square feet, you're just capturing the, the impact based on the size of the building, the estimated impact. So that maybe gets it what he was, he was going for a, uh, a formula. That's all I have. Thank you.

Councilor Chenoweth.

I am. Thank you, Mayor. This is an acceptable way to do it as far as I'm concerned. I understand the concerns from my counselor about the stacking. I'm not worried about that when it comes to standard multifamily, when it comes to low income. We have other ways of... of assisting that we can bring to bear. So construction excise tax, monies that can be used for that kind of purpose. So I'm good with this.

Councillor Cunningham.

Yeah, I'm going to start by just asking a clarifying question. The adjusted cost per person of the $4,936, that's 100% of the current suggested plan, right? Correct. Okay. And so I was just... thinking about what, uh, counselor Kolsky said. Um, and the, what we've basically said is we're happy, we're comfortable at 50 to 80% somewhere in between there. So I took the adjusted cost per person and did it at the, um, 80%. Uh, and then ultimately did that by the square foot. Um, and it came out to $7 and 89 cents a square foot. And so the... Sorry. So if we looked at the 500, you'd be looking at 3,945 would be the max of that... that one would pay for. Um, and I think that's similar to like what we pay today, right? Or it's a little bit more than it's a little bit, uh, more, but it's similar. Yeah. Okay. So then as you would go up, um, not to go through every single one of them, but looking at the 4,000 or more, you'd be looking at an STC of 31,590. So I think it would definitely, uh, incentivize, uh, the smaller homes in that sense, but would definitely make the larger homes paying substantially more than what's even proposed right now. So I do support a tiered thing, but I think we need to figure out whether that is based off of the population per occupied unit or by a square footage number.

Okay, so the current... methodology proposes to do it based on the Roughly average population per that size which is was researched and studied and that's what's proposed in here as opposed to going to that scaling purely on square footage, which is Generally, you're not seeing 4,000 square foot homes being built to maximize putting like 25 people to live in them. It's more a, as Councillor Tucholsky was discussing, executive housing where people are looking for a higher quality of life, larger home. Okay.

So the math is not quite what Councillor Cunningham was thinking.

Um, yeah, we wouldn't be, I'm not right now. We're not proposing to change it to just purely on square footage. It's just the categories that are up here. And then the scaling that was talked about before would be a little difficult to do with the dwelling. Uh, the person per occupied unit, there's a way to get to the, get there. But in general, I've heard more that this tiered system is okay.

Thanks. Um, Anybody speak up and can't answer to Kolsky.

Yeah, I had, I had one other thing to ask on the bottom. You talk about non-residential. Those are new fees on the McMinnville product properties, correct?

Yeah. Currently we do not have non-residential park SDCs.

Right, so now we would have industrial, manufacturing, warehousing, retail, restaurant, hospitality, and office SDCs for either new construction or improvements to add to. Is that correct?

Correct, and we would look at any kind of non-residential development and put it into one of those categories. As it's noted on the bottom, things like education, finance, healthcare would fall under the office number. Okay. We would look to fit it into the correct category. If that was causing issues in the future, we could change to having more categories or less, depending on how we wanted to look at it. Okay.

I just, for the record, I'd like to say that today we have zero for proposing an increase on non-residential I personally don't want to see that happen right now. I'd like to forego that for at least a duration of a few years and allow what I would consider the McMinnville economy to become stronger than it is right now. And I'd like to see more businesses move into the area and create more development. I understand that some of us believe the employees are using the parks adjacent to where they're at. I understand that, but I do believe that the cost to build, the cost to get a permit, the cost to hire and create new jobs and new opportunities within McMinnville, for McMinnville, and surrounding area residents is something we need to encourage, and I'd like to ask that we don't. bring in non-residential at this time and revisit that at least within one year if not my preference within the next two years to allow the economy to at least tell us where it's headed because right now i believe it feels a bit unstable and it's hard for people to invest when there's a lack of stability so thank you for listening thank you you want to talk about that now

I do have that as one of the questions. I hadn't heard on the tiering. Sorry, did Councilor Bennett, did you, you're okay?

Yes, on the tiering.

Okay. And then married? Okay. All right, so... This one, we will get to that one. I can jump to it ahead, but also if we're just going in order, should there be STC waivers for affordable housing development? So currently we waive STCs for wastewater and for transportation on affordable housing, not for parks. There's been discussion about wanting to waive it for affordable housing for the parks moving forward. You could also, as opposed to just fully waiving it, do a smaller percentage on affordable housing units. So just council feedback on that.

Councillor Geary.

Yes, I think we should offer that. I would want to see, because I think the types of the affordable housing developments that would be some of the developments that would Benefit the most that needs these services the most I think it's important to continue to fund the plan as proposed So I would like to see Along with the waivers proposed how to make the fund whole so what's where is the subsidy for that waiver coming from? How would we how would we cover that cost so not not collect it but? pay for that STC cost for affordable developments in another way

So if it was waived, have a future policy discussion on ways that the plan could be made whole.

Correct. Councillor Chenoweth.

Again, I'm going to repeat the same comment I just made on the last batch, which is we have a excise tax that we could use to offset when we want to do affordable housing benefit. So in my opinion, no, I would not support SDC waivers on that. um, affordable housing, I would, I would support finding other ways to go about, um, assisting the development process when those are up. Um, so that would be my preference.

I think with it too, you have to describe what is affordable housing, you know, is it deed restricted? Is it what percentage? I mean, I think in this, we have to have a description of affordable housing.

Um, okay. So, um, And it would only be on the, so if a unit development is done in only 50% of the units are considered affordable housing, they would only get the waivers on those 50 units. Sorry, you'd only get the waivers on the amount of units that were affordable housing. So if a development had 50 percent, 100 units and 50 of the units were affordable housing and 50 were market rate, they would only get the waivers on the 50 units. But the specifics on how to define affordable housing, I would assume would be the same percentage. policy decision that was already made on the waivers for the other types of SDCs, we would continue that if we're looking to put different kinds of things, like you mentioned with deed restricted or whatever, that would probably be a larger discussion. But to start, we would match the same waivers that are currently used for wastewater and transportation would be my proposal of what I'd bring to the council.

And I agree with Councillor Chenoweth finding the ways to cover that with other funds that we have. Councillor Peralta?

Thank you. One of the reasons why I support kind of a higher SDC, at least based on what I've heard on the dais, I was, I think, at 80% is because it allows you to absorb the cost of doing waivers like that. We do have a construction excise tax, but the amount of revenue that generates is not sufficient to fund more than one project every handful of years. So it's just not sufficient if the goal is to bring in, um, in a short term significant, um, lower income housing into the community. Um, so I favor the SDC waivers and, and, uh, for affordable housing. And then, and then I think that should be offset by slightly higher, uh, SDCs.

Who's next? Councillor Tucholsky.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. Uh, I'm not completely in support of waiving the SDCs for affordable housing. The reason is because a lot of these people that are creating the affordable housing, the contractors are, these are private for-profit companies. And why should they be subsidized by the taxpayers of McMinnville? We have a lot of people in McMinnville that are CONSTRAINED IN THEIR FINANCES. THEY ONLY HAVE SO MUCH MONEY PER MONTH ON SOCIAL SECURITY. IF THEIR FEES GO UP, AND I UNDERSTAND THIS IS A PARK SDC WHICH IS PAID AT THE TIME OF CONSTRUCTION OR ENHANCEMENT, It doesn't mean that their fees aren't going to go up on their rents. It doesn't mean that their fees aren't going to go up on other things that the contractors and or providers of, quote, affordable housing, unquote, are going to have control over. The other thing is I don't believe that the... I don't believe this... taxpayers of McMinnville should figure out ways to subsidize and Make up for what we've granted a private business as a waiver it's I Understand that we're we're trying to give people the opportunity for affordable housing. That's great, and we need that obviously we'll be talking about that further But I don't see supporting private industry through taxpayer funded grants essentially as the way to do it. And I, so to give you an answer, director Hunsager, I would say, uh, should there be SDC waivers? If you want a yes, no answer, I'd say no. I would be willing to talk about a pro prorated version though. So thank you.

Answer better.

The advantage of going first is you don't hear all these great arguments on both sides. Yes, on the waivers.

Councillor Cunningham?

In this particular instance, I... I think I'm going to be no on the waivers, just because I think we have already given them quite a bit of incentive, and I know that they are getting incentive from both the state and sometimes federal as well to build these projects, and that's where I am.

Okay. No.

No.

No.

All right.

And then the question that we alluded to earlier, should these increases be implemented all at once or phased over multiple years? So say the council settles on 75% as, as do we want to recoup all 75% at once, or does it want to be phased over three years or it could be 50, 60, 75. There's multiple ways to do it. So essentially is there phasing in and is there a type of phasing that counselors prefer?

I'm going to start on this side. I'm going to give everybody the opportunity to start first. Councillor Peralta, you're going to go first.

I'm in favor of phasing it in over three years, and I don't have a specific approach to it.

Councillor Chenoweth.

I'm in favor of delaying the non-residential period for two to five years, revisit this. I'm in favor of probably a five-year delay. phase in given some of the projects that are coming online and the potential impact to those projects. Um, I don't think it's hard when you're trying to do a project to have all of a sudden your numbers change right out from underneath you. So I, I'd like to see that kind of phased aways.

Um, so, so, um, and that's a different type of phasing that I wasn't getting into, but generally with these, um, there is a, a runway, um, that you can build in for projects that are in development. And so, uh, what I have seen in the past is you set a date for when this starts to go into effect and then any project that received its land use application, uh, before that date would be set to the old methodology. And then any, um, land use application in, uh, after that date would be the new methodology. So that way projects that are in development wouldn't be impacted as much and the projects that are upcoming can update their numbers before they bring it in.

So to simplify this, if there's a runway, I'll agree with the three-year implementation and like I said, delay two to five or delay two years, come back and have a discussion on non-residential.

Councilor Cunningham?

Yeah. I like the runway and I feel pretty good about three years, although I could be convinced of five, um, three out in the way I like it is it could be 25, 50, 75. So, um, that's where I have.

And is that on non-residential and residential? Okay.

Yes.

Counselor Gary.

I think moving them both together, residential and non-residential, and assuming we can get something soon, I would say roughly a six-month period of 0%, so you have a total on-ramp. And then that would start a date, publish a date that you'd be at 50%. And again, I'm thinking we get to 80% of the total assessed proposed. So I think you have six months at 0%, one year at 50%, and then one year... at the next rate. All right.

Councillor Tucholsky?

Yeah, I'm a proponent of a five-year phase-in for residential only, and I'm asking for a review of non-residential with zero phase-in, zero fee for the next two years for anything non-residential to be reviewed.

Councillor Benner?

Three-year.

And I agree with Councillor Tucholsky.

All right, we have eight minutes, and this was the last question, and this is bringing in the question that Councilor Peralta wanted to have some discussion on, which was should multifamily residential units use a different, originally I was saying it as a different metric beside the amount of residents, but I think it actually makes more sense to talk about should multifamily be a different percentage of recouping? So that way the methodology can still stay based on that report that was used in there. So I'll push this to the council and then council Peralta, if you wanted to say any.

So right now we're going to be somewhere between 60 and 80% of residential. And so you're looking for a different percentage possibly for multifamily.

Correct.

Is that correct? Okay. Just want to make sure we're clear. Councilor Peralta, do you want to start with that since it was yours?

Yeah, I mean, again, my concern, I think it's actually a bigger concern now that the council is contemplating not continuing the, not extending the offset for SDCs to lower income housing. I think if that were to happen, then I think it's especially important that multifamily use a different metric and a lower metric. And again, the reason for that is that there's a stacking effect on the developer of the property where if you have 2,500 square foot units, you end up paying a lot more for, for your development than if you were building say three or four houses of the same square footage.

So do you have a percentage that you put out there?

No, I really don't. I mean, it's going to have to all hang together in terms of the whole thing, but I just, I think it should be less just because of that multiplier effect. Thank you.

Okay. Counselor Chenoweth.

No.

Counselor Cunningham.

Um, yes, I, I would agree creating a separate, uh, category for it, but I, I guess the question would be, since you said that we have to have documentation, um, supporting, uh, that type of thing is, is that some of that is out there that we know of that or, uh,

Again, if you choose to just do a different percentage for multifamily, you don't have to change the methodology. So if you just want to say multifamily is 50% and regular single family is 75%, you can do that without changing the methodology. If you're looking for the specific report that could support this, the stacking issue and all that, that Councilor Peralta or the compounding, I'd have to do more research and talk to some people that are more experts in this. I don't know if it's out there.

Yeah, I think I would support a lower percentage for multifamily then.

Councilor Benner.

Agree with Councilor Cunningham.

Okay. Councilor Tarkovsky.

Yeah, I hear everyone saying that they support a lower percentage for multifamily. The argument upon which I push back is SDCs in this case are based on population per unit. And I can argue that a lower income housing area, let's say a two bedroom apartment, could have four or five people that live in that apartment sometimes. What we're talking about is an impact to our system, hence the system development charge. And those people are more likely to produce sewage, more likely to use the parks, more likely to use all the systems we have established. So it seems a bit counterintuitive that we would reduce the SDC on a high density housing area. As an example, using just the exhibit A6, which I don't see that you have up right now, but it's probably about the same. You're talking, let's just use 1,000 square foot, 1,500 square foot house, 2.53 people per unit. I would expect that there's more than 2.53 people per apartment complex, a two-bedroom place. In essence, you're actually up into the 4,000 square feet or more range on the population per unit because you have probably greater than three people living in a two-bedroom place. I'd argue that I would leave it as is rather than impose a further tax upon this area. But I don't believe that it should be lowered because if we're really looking at what we're trying to charge here, we're charging against a system which is being used by people and therefore the count hasn't changed on the people. They're producing the same, I will say, tax upon the entire system. So please leave it the same.

Just to add to that, I just would like to comment, keep in mind that when you're talking about a multifamily unit, it's not just that you're stacking the fee, you're also stacking the income for the folks that own that multifamily unit. They're getting rents off each one of those units. And so to me, it's counterintuitive to be giving a discount to a facility that is making, that has much more income coming in as a result. I just, I think... I think this is a bad policy.

Councillor Geary. I think it depends on the whole ecology of the package that we're seeing in front of us. If it is not going to include waivers for low-income housing, I'm more open to seeing what a schedule could look like, what a schedule could look like for what's proposed in question eight. So I'm open to the possibility, yeah.

I'm going to say no, but willing to look at it.

And the policy around affordable housing waivers can also be a discussion that's done separately from the methodology that can change at any time. So if the council wants to add or remove that waiver, they could do that separate from the methodology adoption. So just want to want that to be clear. So got a lot of great information here. I'm going to have some internal staff discussion on this talk with the city manager about where we think we are on being able to have a draft proposal for council to discuss and what that would look like and try to find a way to get to a point of adopting the methodology. So more to come on that as we talk through this.

Okay. Thank you. Anything else before we close this session?

Thank you. Good to see up at this part of the presentation now, director. Great job on the hot seat.

Okay. So I'm going to close the work session at 6 59 PM and audience just to let you know, we're going to take a 10 minute break cause we've been up here for an hour and a half already and then we'll be back and start. Thank you.

Good evening everyone. I'm Heather Richards, the community development director. If you're here for one of our two public hearings tonight, we have a public hearing for annexation of a property in the Shegwin neighborhood. And we also have a public hearing for an appeal of a downtown design review of a apartment project in the downtown. If you're here to testify for either of those hearings and you haven't already pre-registered with us, we'd just like you to fill out a form that's over on the table. you can provide your name and address and what hearing you're here for. And then if you support or oppose the project. So for instance, with the appeal, the downtown design review project, you will say whether you support the actual project itself or oppose it, not I support the appeal or oppose the appeal. The reason we do that is when we go through testimony, we will ask everyone who is on one side of the fence. So the supporters, to testify first and those who are opposed to testify second. And so that's the way we can help organize the hearing tonight. So if you have any questions about that, I'm happy to help you over there. But you can sign up that way. Then if you're unsure if you want to testify or not, you want to sit here and listen. And then you decide as you hear people talk, you also want to testify. We will at the end of everyone who has signed up say, is there anyone else in the room who wants to testify? So you will also have that opportunity to testify as well. If you're not quite sure at this point in time, we want to make this as easy for you to participate in. So thank you.

federal.

Recording in progress.

We're going to go ahead and get started now. If I can get all your attention, please. Perfect. Okay. It is now 710 and I'd like to call the city council meeting to order and request that Claudia do a roll call. Counselor Geary.

Good evening.

Counselor Cunningham. Yep. Counselor Tucholsky.

Yeah. Present.

Counselor Chenoweth.

It is a great night not to go first. Present.

Counselor Benner. Here. Counselor President Peralta.

Here.

And Mayor Morris. Here.

You can save that for later. If you're able to stand, please stand and join me in the pledge. Okay, so hopefully my voice bears with me through this whole evening. I'm losing it in and out. So now it is time for a public comment. Any interested audience members are invited to provide comments and any comment provided that requires some type of follow-up will be assigned to a staff member. Anyone may speak on any topic other than a matter in litigation, a quasi-judicial land use matter, or a matter scheduled for public hearing at a future date. Comments will be limited to four minutes per person for a total of 32 minutes. If you are on Zoom and wish to speak, please use the raise your hand feature or chat feature and send a chat to the city recorder team. You will need to provide your contact information prior to being promoted to speak. Once your turn is up, we will announce your name and unmute your mic. Just a clarification, this isn't the public hearing portion. This is just public comment. Do we have anybody signed up?

Yes, I had one second. Stephen Haynes, uh, signed up online regarding ordinance 5 1 8 1 that was pulled. Um, I did not hear back from Steven if he still wanted to provide public comment or wait until ordinance 5 1 8 1 is read out the September 22nd meeting.

Okay. Is he in the room? Thank you. Appreciate that. Was there anybody in the room that wants to make a public comment that did not sign up? Again, not for the public hearing. Okay. Then we will move on. We're going to move on to ordinance number 5183, a public hearing to consider ordinance 5183, an ordinance annexing to the city of McMinnville tax lot R4409C, D as in David, 00100, Counselors, you can find this in your packet. It's packet one and it is page 11 to 131. The order of the procedure for tonight's hearing is set out in detail in our city code. In brief, we will start with a staff report. Next, the applicant will be asked to provide testimony. The applicant's presentation is limited to 10 minutes. Next, the public will be asked to provide testimony. Testimony will first be taken from those testifying in support of the application, then from those testifying in opposition to the application. Public testimony will be limited to three minutes. We will then, excuse me, we will time the testimony and provide you with a visual warning when there is one minute remaining. The applicant will then be given time to respond to and or rebut any evidence presented. After the staff report and after people testify, counselors may pose questions to the mayor, so to me, to be addressed to the person who testified or to a staff to clarify any information that was conveyed in the testimony. I will ask everyone who signed up in advance to testify first in the order in which they signed up. Then I will ask if anyone present at the civic hall would like to testify. And then I will ask anyone who is on zoom who has not testified, but would like to testify to do so. Once the city council has heard from everyone and the city council is satisfied, it has all the information it needs to render a decision. The city council will close the hearing. Deliberations will occur during agenda item number eight C of the regular city council meeting and consideration of ordinance number 51 83. We wish to hear from everybody who wants to testify. However, we request that you refrain from repeating testimony already given by someone else. If you agree with what someone before you has said, but also want to ensure you have legal standing in the public record, please provide your testimony indicating you concur with what was previously said before you. Public testimony will be limited to three minutes. We will time the testimony and provide you with a visual warning when there is one minute remaining. Since this is a legal process for considering an annexation of land into the city limits, we need you to state your name and address for the public record so you can receive a written notice of the city council's final decision. We ask that you keep your comments relevant to the discussion. A staff report was published seven days before the hearing and it identifies all the applicable criteria. Now it's time for the public hearing. This public hearing is to consider ordinance number 5183 to annex the property into the McMinnville city limits. The property is tax lot R 4 4 0 9 C D as in David 0 0 1 0 0. The applicants are Corey Redding and Phillip Higgins. The public hearing is open at 7 16. Does anyone object to the jurisdiction of the city council to hear this matter? Does any city councilor wish to make any disclosure of a conflict of interest or abstain from participating or voting on this application? I'm just going to say that I did have a email from Catherine Christie, but I forwarded it to Heather Richards, so we didn't have any discussion, but I do want to make sure and note that. Does any city councilor need to declare any ex parte contact prior to this hearing with the applicant or any other party involved in this hearing or any other source of information outside of staff regarding the subject of this hearing? Councilor Tucholsky.

Yeah, I did have one ex parte communication, but that was forwarded to a city recorder who has included that in the packet and it will not affect my ability to be up here.

Okay. Anything else? All right. Um, let's go. Will community development director Heather Richards please give a staff report on ordinance number 5,183.

Mayor, excuse me. I'm sorry. Um, so when a council member, um, states that they received an expert to communication, The best practice is to then ask if anyone wants to rebut the substance. But if we could hear just a little bit more about the substance of that communication that Councillor Tucholsky received, I think that would be the most helpful.

You want me to do that now?

Can I just identify who you are? Yes.

I, excuse me. My apologies. I intended to introduce Missy and I got thrown off by the discussion. This is Melissa Ryan. She is our contract legal counsel for land use matters. You normally are used to seeing her on zoom because of the number of agenda items in front of you tonight. She is here in person to help serve you.

Perfect. Thank you. Can you share more of your experience?

Yeah, I'm actually going to say that I actually just made a mistake and this was for the next portion of our hearing. So it's not the one with the annexation of the law. So I redact that comment and I apologize. So now I'm glad I know who you are.

Thank you. Okay, great. Now we can move on to her other Richards. Yeah. So good evening mayor and counselors. This is a public hearing to consider annexation of a property into the city. It is a lot that is owned by Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District. It's under contract with Mack Multi LLC. The property owner is the one that submitted the application itself. They're the petitioner in partnership with Mack Multi LLC. It's located in the Shegwin neighborhood. It's across the street from Grand Haven Elementary right adjacent to Shegwin Park. It is part of the same parcel as Shegwin Park, though Shegwin Park was annexed into the city in 2008 through another process. It's a little over three acres in size, the portion of the lot that has not been annexed into the city. It's surrounded by the city itself, so we call it an island in terms of being a county island in the middle of the city limits. It does already have a comprehensive plan designation on it for residential use. So when we go through our land use process for the urban growth boundary, whether it's in the county or it's in the city, we do identify comprehensive plan destinations which proclaim what the city would like to see as the future use for this property when it does come into the city. It does not currently have a zone on it. This is a picture that shows what I just described as it's a larger parcel where a portion of it has already annexed into the city to service the park for this neighborhood and a little less than half of it still remains to be annexed in. And that's what we're talking about tonight. If you look to the right, the map, there is our zone map. It shows the different types of zoning that surrounds this parcel. It's surrounded by residential zoning and it's surrounded by residential zoning of all different types of zones. There's the R4 zone to the north. There is the R2 zone to the south. That's the darker yellow R1 zone, and then the R3 zone is the salmon color there. The large lots you see there that are in the R1 zoning are the school lots, so Grand Haven Elementary, and then they own a lot just north of that for a future school site, and then the park itself that is to the left. As part of the annexation application, they do need to show us a concept development project for it. And they have provided that that is a multifamily project that they provide as their concept project for that site. So this is different than the land use process. We're looking at annexation. So there's annexation criteria that city needs to use to make decisions on annexing land into the city. It's governed by the city charter. It's governed by Oregon revised statutes and it's governed by our McMinnville municipal code. I'll walk you through the Oregon revised statutes and then the McMinnville municipal code. They interact with each other. Our code was amended in 2021 to be compliant with state law in terms of annexations and our charter as well. So ORS 222.111 is a statutory provision that sort of provides the process in which to look at annexations. They can be initiated by the city or by petition of the real property owners. In this case it was a petition by the real property owners. The petitioners need to rec, uh, agree that they are going to come under a new taxing district when they come into the city limits. So the city of McMinnville would be the new taxing district for them. Um, and then they also have to recognize the overlapping taxing desk districts that would be in effect. Their application recognized that as well. Then there is a potential vote of the electors in the territory proposed for annexation. If it's, if it's several electors in this case, it's a singular property owner, so that's not applicable. And then there is the opportunity for a vote of the city. If that is the process locally, which is governed by ORS 2 2 2.1 2 7, that is not the process here in the city of McMinnville based on a changes in an ordinance that was adopted 5 0 6 8 in 2021. ORS 222.120 gives further guidance to the city on how to process an annexation, so the city must host a public hearing, which is what you're doing tonight. That hearing must be noticed for two consecutive weeks in the newspaper of general circulation in the city that was noticed in the news register on August 14th and August 21st, so the printed editions. And then the city votes via ordinance within legal description. So later in your agenda tonight, you have an ordinance considering this annexation, which we call ordinance number 5 1 8 3 4 s 2 2 2.1 2 7 is the statute that governs, uh, annexations that take place without a vote of the electorate. So without a vote of the city itself. And so that or says that not withstanding a contrary provision of the city charter or a city ordinance, Upon receipt of a petition proposing annexation of territory submitted by all owners of land in the territory. In this case that occurred, the legislative body of the city shall annex the territory without submitting the proposal to the electors of the city. If the following conditions are met is the property within the UGB. Yes, this property is within the UGB. The property will be subject to the city's comprehensive plan. Yes. If it annexes into the city, it will be subject to our regulatory framework of the city. At least one lot is contiguous to the city limits or separate from the city limits only by public right away. This is surrounded by the city limits and the proposal conforms to all other requirements of the city's ordinances. So in this case, uh, one of our ordinances is you do need to come into the city with a city zone. And so you have that later in your agenda tonight as well as to consider a zone map amendment that the applicant applied for. And that's ordinance number five, one, eight, two. Then in terms of our McMinn bowl municipal code, title 16 of the MMC is dedicated to the annexation process and there's several different regulatory provisions in that as well, which we need to find compliance with. So it mirrors, as I said, the state law as well. So it was property has to be in the UGB and contiguous to the city. It is needs to be approved by ordinance and needs to have a comprehensive plan destination, which I just shared with you. It does. It's residential. It needs to have an effective date and notice of approved annexation, which is a whole process that we need to go through as a city in terms of noticing the state and overlapping taxing districts. The ordinance you have in front of you, 5183, authorizes the city recorder to initiate that process. If there are any non-conforming uses on the property, those are annexed in in a unique way. That's not applicable. This is a vacant property. The initiation of the annexation needs to be by the city or petition of the property owner. It was petition of the property owner and the application itself was submitted on March 4th, 2025. 16.10.020 of the McMinnville Municipal Code talks about what needs to be in the application itself. So A through J of that section is all the different forms that need to be filled out in the application. Those were all provided. They're in your packet. They are exhibits 1 through 13 of the application itself. K is another section of the application where they need to provide findings. Findings that show an adequate level of urban services must be available or made available within three years of annexation. And there's three subsets to that. So the first one is that there should be municipal sanitary sewer and water services. There needs to be roads with adequate design capacity. or the annexation of the property where it is not adequate. The city will note requirements such as dedicated right away and easements and consider the public cost of the improvements. Your annexation agreement that you went through in 2025 has a section in it called section four that described all the necessary public improvements that needed to take place to support this annexation and the petitioner needed to agree to those pub to the cost of those public improvements. So they are absorbing them themselves. And then there needs to be documentation of availability of police, fire parks and school facilities. The petitioner provide findings for that. It's on page 16 of the application and it's page 39 of your packet. There needs to be a narrative of findings for compliance that was provided. That's in your packet as well. They need to pay the fee, which they did and provide the concept development plan, which they did as well. So for the annexation agreement, which you passed in 2025 by resolution, section four of our annexation agreements is where we describe all the components of the project that need to be addressed prior to annexation relative to the public improvements. And so when we get an annexation application, what happens first is we circulate it to all the impacted agencies as well as internally for review and comments. So we gather everyone around the table, and talk about what are the needs to support this project. And we put that into the annexation agreement. So it's clear to the petitioner that this is expected of them before, before they annex in or when they annex in. And this, and the city has established its expectations of the application. And so that process took place. It was embedded into the annexation agreement. It's in section four of that. It talks about the frontage improvements needed for this property to develop. And then that's all been carried forward into the land use process as it's navigated its way through that This is recorded on the property. So it is Something that passes on to whoever the property owner is in the future for those improvements We got in terms of public testimony. You have that in front of you tonight. We also Provided it to you in advance of the meeting tonight. And I just realized I missed one person's name on this. Um, we got testimony from Kathy Frederick from David Debbie Hammond and from Patrick Evans. You have all three of those in front of you this evening and received them over the past week as we got them in. Um, I would say that, uh, in terms of the testimony we received, there is, um, there's a, sort of confluence of the zone change application and this annexation process in that toast testimony, you'll see in some of the testimony, there's a lot of response to what the zone change application is. Your role tonight is really to think about the annexation process and whether this meets the criteria for that process. And then obviously one of those criteria is successful zoning through ordinance number five, one, eight, two. So staff has reviewed everything. We feel it meets all the provisions of the annexation agreement. We feel it meets all the requirements of the statutory provisions in ORS 222 and Title 16 of the McMinnville Municipal Code. In terms of next steps, you need to conduct the public hearing. You need to consider ordinance number 5183 later on in your agenda. However, ordinance 5183 is contingent upon the approval of ordinance number 5182. Tonight you will be asked by the planner for ordinance number 5182 if you want to consider it tonight based on the Planning Commission recommendation or if you want to host a public hearing. If you decide to host a public hearing and delay the consideration, then our suggestion is to delay the consideration of ordinance number 5183 until the consideration of ordinance number 5182 is concluded. So we include them on the same meeting so that they can occur concurrently if they need to. But if you're going to delay one of them, we suggest you delay both of them. And happy to answer any questions you have.

Any questions for Director Richards?

Okay.

I don't see any. So we'll move on. Is there anything else that wants to be said over there? Okay. Perfect. Okay. We'll now start to hear public testimony. Our role is to listen, excuse me, before I do that. Councilor Peralta wanted to make sure I told all of you that are standing in the back. If you want to sit down, there are a bunch of chairs in the front row. If you don't want to sit down, that's fine too, but just let you know there are some there. Um, we will now start our public hearing and testimony. Our role is to listen to the public testimony and to ask clarifying questions when appropriate. Does the applicant wish to provide any testimony? I take that as a yes. Okay. You can state your name.

Thank you, Mayor. Counselors, I'm Doug Rucks with the Rucks Group LLC. I am the representative for MAC Multi LLC. My address, 15532 Southwest Thrasher Way in Sherwood, Oregon. Corey Redding was not able to be here this evening. He apologizes for that. He's out of town, but he did want me to share with you, thanking staff for helping us get through this process to get to this day. We started it back in the 1st of December of 2024, so it's been a journey for us, but we're finally here for the hearing portion of our annexation. I'm not going to go through what Heather has already provided you. Your community development director did a great job, covered all of the salient points. It's 3.17 acres. It's an island. You only have four or five islands within McMinnville as looking at the GIS this morning. This is not about the zone change. This is strictly about the annexation. So I thank her for bringing that up. As she noted, we complied with all of the material that was required in Title 16. A lot of information, all the affidavits, all the consents, all the narratives, all the drawings and so forth to get to this issue this evening. As Heather noted, there's no non-conforming uses on this particular site. We've already done the annexation agreement back in October of 2025. We had no issues with that. So we know we have to do the frontage improvements on McDonald Lane. We know we have to grant an easement for the pedestrian connection to get to the park. We have to construct that pedestrian path with the landscaping. So there's no issues with that as well. So with that, I think between your director and those few comments, we're just asking that you approve the proposed ordinance.

Okay. Does any counselor have any questions of the applicant? All right. Thank you. We will hear testimony starting with the people who have signed up in advance to testify in support of the proposal. Please remember to include your name and address for the record. Claudia, who do we have signed up? We don't, we have no one signed up for in support of. Okay. Is there anybody in the civic hall that didn't sign up that is in support and wants to speak? Nobody on zoom or phone.

Oh, no one has raised their hand yet. Okay. Sorry. Didn't see you coming.

Come on up.

Hi, Ryan Peterson, 726 Northeast Summerfield Street in McMinnville. And I want to speak in favor of the annexation. It's a no-brainer. It's an island. And there is nothing that I can see that reasonably should prevent it from being actually used in the city instead of being a vacant lot and an eyesore on the neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you. Does any person in the audience wish to speak in opposition of the proposal? And I'm sure Claudia, we have people signed up.

Yes. We'll start with Debbie Hammond.

Okay. And while you do that, I just want to say a little bit more here. If so, please provide the state regulations of the McMinnville city code criteria criteria for annexations that you feel the project does not meet why it does not meet that criteria and why you feel that a condition of approval will not help it meet the criteria. If you have a proposed condition of approval to help the project meet the criteria, please provide that as well. Please remember to include your name and address for the record. is the microphone on is it green there we go and pull it close to you

mayor and council members my name is deborah hammond mayor first of all is a pleasure to meet you because i voted for you thank you and um also i live at 3671 northeast joel street uh that's part of the chaguen farms neighborhood i have lived there for eight years i watched my house being built so i submitted these documents in the package and i will be quoting from them mr chaguen established a conservation easement to protect his land from subdivision in 2008 then established a life estate in 2009. Yamhill swcd has many plans to develop the sir gwen farm as a place to connect the public with their food production system. Charlie and his family would like to keep the land and the quality soils from the farm despite the Increasing that it would be in subdivided homes with management from the Yamhill CSW CD the wishes of the Sir Gwynn family will be fulfilled and the benefits To the community will preserve from generation to generation Charlie then deeded seven acres to the soil and water conservation district which least part of it to the city park is which became the neighborhood park. In March 2009, Charlie and his sister, Agnes Betty, transferred ownership to the Soil and Water Conservation District. Agnes Betty is an indication. She says it's an indication of our family's perseverance. Facing a continuing clamor to sell for development, they partnered with the Yamhill SWCD and McManville Parks and Rec Department to keep the land in perpetuity. The City Parks Department got 3.5 acre plot for the farm neighborhood. for the park the conservation district wants to plan an education center adjacent to the park it is envisioning a community garden there annexing the parcel to the park with the intent to build a three-story 75 unit apartment complex with inadequate parking directly across from the Grand Haven Elementary School on the land donated by the Chagwin family, sold to Mac Multi LLC for $1.3 million, goes against every wish of the Chagwin family for their farm, for their legacy. Charlie passed away in 2021. His sister, Agnes, is 84. She still lives on the family farm. I speak up today for those who do not and cannot speak for themselves. about this annexation for this donated land by the Chaguin family, and I disapprove, I pray, that it is not approved. Thank you for listening to my concerns for my neighborhood and for the Chaguin family and all that they put into this farming. Their heart, their soul. The land is in the blood when you farm for that many generations. It's $109,000. Thank you.

Stay right there in case any counselor has questions of you. Let's ask first. Does any counselor have any questions? Counselor Tucholsky.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Hammond, for being here this evening. You have a number of quotes in here, and I just wanted to confirm, are all of these quotes from the Oregon Century Farm and Ranch Program application, or are they from other places as well?

They're in your packet. They're from other places also. I have a copy of the deed. I have a copy of the news register where it talks about the park itself. I have the Oregonian where it talks about how he, um, the seven acre plot, you know how he's got that donated and his desire for the park and how is it all of this? Everything is in there. And then also I have the family farm history. that's included so that's where all the quotes are come from because I was limited to 3 minutes I I kind of like condensed it and didn't say where I took it from yeah that makes sense where I submitted information I looked at the back of it I just was there anything in there that I missed that stated that there was restrictions that

I hear his desires, but were there, was there any documents that had legal restrictions?

No, those, those were his, you know, his desires. So that was their wishes. That's what they wanted for their land to be developed. Okay. No. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next we have Patrick Evans.

Good evening.

For the record, my name is Patrick Evans. I live at 3587 Northeast Joel Street in the Sherwood neighborhood. I'm not here to say that annexation should not occur. But I am here to say that the hearing for annexation is, in my opinion, out of order. And it's out of order because one of the criteria for the annexation has not yet been approved, which is the zoning itself. I'll not get into all the reasons why I think the zoning is incorrect, but I think procedurally, council should find that this hearing is out of order. It's out of sequence. And I would ask that the City Council, before we go any further, schedule a hearing date for the zone change as a requirement for the annexation to move anywhere tonight and defer any further discussion about annexation until the issue of zoning has been completed as required by the annexation agreement. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to ask Heather Richards or attorney to respond to that.

So I think what Mr. Evans is suggesting is that he feels that the city sequenced it wrong, but it's not legally wrong to host the hearing tonight. We have in the past hosted annexations and the, and the land use in the same evening because if, As you recall, when land use comes to you as a recommendation from the planning commission, you have four options. One is to move forward with the planning commission record recommendation via ordinance that evening. You can also move forward with the recommendation of planning commission as amended via ordinance that evening. You can call for a public hearing or you can deny the application altogether. So we want you to have the opportunity to consider both on the same evening. We do have to have a public hearing for the annexation. So we do schedule it at the same time as when we're bringing that land use to you. As we discussed in the staff report, if you're, if you choose to have a public hearing for the ordinance, we, we are recommending that you not, not vote on ordinance number 5 1 8 3 until you've had that public hearing and considered ordinance number 5 1 8 2. but you have the option tonight to decide on ordinance 5 1 8 2 tonight if you choose to do so.

Yes sir.

Mayor, if I may, I've sat through many, many annexation agreements in my 35 years acting as a professional developer. This is the first time I've ever seen two phenomena combined. I think it's important and I'm not for one moment criticizing the planning department, of trying to bundle things together. This is such a hot topic for several hundred of your constituents that to not hold that hearing on 5182 first will effectively prevent you from hearing their voices. And I think that's critical given the high level of public awareness and concern about the project that will result from this 5182, 5183 combination.

Councillor Chenoweth.

My question is to staff. So if you wanted to finish with the testimony first, then I can ask the questions once that's done.

Okay. Any other questions? You want just his testimony or through the end of it? Okay. Okay. Are you, do you have something else you want to say?

As I said, I, all I wanted to do was focus on a procedural issue or the zone or the annexation application itself being out, out of sequence.

Okay.

All right.

Does any counselor have any other questions for Mr. Evans? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Evans. And now counselor Chenoweth.

So a couple of questions. Question number one is where are we on the clock?

So annexations don't have a clock? Oh, great.

That alleviates that question. Question number two, if we decide to go to a public hearing, are we going to be redoing all of what we have done up to this point and whatever we do going forward? In other words, would we be wise at this point to see if the appetite for the council is to go to a public hearing on 82 or... do we still want to wait, go through a whole bunch of this process and then have that discussion?

If you're asking me if the city council should amend its order of its agenda, I believe that that's a discussion that the mayor has the opportunity to do that. Um, if, but having a public hearing on the annexation, you're, you're having a public hearing to hear whether this meets the criteria of the state statutes and the, the local municipal code for annexation. You don't have to vote on it until you've gone through the process for ordinance number 5182. The zone change does have a clock on it. It has 120 day clock. You'll hear about that when Tom provides that presentation to you. It's October 2. So we, if you're interested in having a public hearing for that, we will walk you through what that will look like in terms of scheduling.

So we can complete the public hearing tonight for the annexation, but not make a decision. and then still held a public hearing on the zoning and talk about both of those in the same evening.

Yes, certainly.

Yep.

Counselor Gary. Procedurally, can you toll the clock on an un-annexed property? I mean, if the clock tolls, it's automatic approval, but if it's as yet un-annexed property, maybe that's in Tom's presentation.

So if I understand your question correctly, and I'm going to let Missy answer it, But the question is, because we're not tolling, we don't toll the clock. The applicant tolls the clock. We're held to the clock. So it's a question, is the city held to the 120 day clock on a piece of property that's not yet annexed? Is that the question?

Correct. Hi, Missy Ryan. So the, the 120 day clock attaches to applications independent of whether the property is annexed or not. It, it's triggered by an application for some change. Okay.

So what's the appetite at the council? Continue the public hearing, not possibly make a decision and then have a public hearing for zoning and having the discussion at that point.

Counselor Cunningham, can you give me a, yeah, I think we continue the public hearing on this one so we can get all the information. Um, since especially all these folks showed up. So,

Councilor Chenoweth, we already know how you feel. Councilor Peralta, it's a yes. Councilor Geary, yes.

Yeah, my answer is yes, but I had something else to add, if I may. Because this is an annexation from the Soil and Water District out of Yamhill County, the provisions set forth that were created when the land was donated I don't personally have faith right now that we're even allowed to annex that for a residential because I don't know exactly what was brought forth. So I would like to hear some more information out of the Yamhill County YCSW so that we can understand a little bit further about how that goes.

So I think the applicant will probably have a rebuttal to that, but you have the deed in your packet, and Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District testified at the Planning Commission public hearing for the zone change. They've signed on to... They're the applicant for the annexation... and the title record is in your packet.

Sure. And we're also not allowed to watch those because of the conflicts there. So if it's in there, that's fine. Thank you.

Okay. Counselor Benner, are you okay with completing the public hearing tonight and then moving and leaving it open?

Yes, I am. And we had a really big packet and there's a bunch of stuff in there, but I thought for sure that there was a title search on this property, which would have uncovered any commitment soil and water conservation had made to what happens with the land. Okay. A legal commitment. Thank you.

Okay. So you all heard that we're going to continue the public hearing for tonight. We'll leave it open and then we will have another public hearing for the zoning on the date.

So Mary, you're going to need to vote on that when we get to that ordinance in the agenda.

Okay.

It'll be a motion by city council and a vote.

Okay. All right. Who's the next person to sign down next?

I'll make it as hard. Just kidding. Next we have Jeff Kikala.

I would like to speak out in opposition to this ordinance specifically in relation to the concept development plan that the Perhaps not against the letter of the law for annexation, but I believe it violates a number of the principles and provisions that this governing body has made towards our principles of great neighborhoods. I respect the property owner's rights to develop the piece of property, but our opposition is that it should be in keeping with the pre-existing development in the area and the principles of great neighborhoods established by this committee. The folks who have bought into the Shegwin neighborhood did so with reasonable expectation that any further development would be in keeping with the established norms of the area. The City Council established principles for great neighborhoods, and this development violates many of those, specifically Sensitive transition and land use and scale in existing developments This is a three-story apartment complex in an area predominantly single-level with a few two-story with no apartment complexes A mix of housing types which transition logically between building forms this development will tower over neighboring homes in deprived neighborhoods of sunlight and privacy quality design and addressing relationships to buildings to the street The exit to this apartment complex is directly across the street from the Grand Haven Elementary School and will complicate traffic that is already severely congested at various times of the day. And then finally, integrating into existing developments, like I stated earlier, this is a three-story apartment complex. It's going to tower over the single-level homes that are surrounding it. Listening to the developer's presentation at the Planning Commission zoning meeting, I believe they realize this development is detrimental, but are not concerned with those effects. My reasoning for that is there was expressed concerns to the daylight in the backyards of the neighboring homes. Their response was to say that their calculations show that these homes will still get enough sunlight on portions of their roofs to support solar panels. No sensitivity to loss of privacy and sunlight in the livable areas of their backyards. Concerns to the traffic congestion related to the road and elementary school, their response was to say something to the effect that they cannot speak to the quality of drivers that will live in the development, but that stricter enforcement of traffic regulations may alleviate the issues. They also stated that there are several three-story complexes within a mile of the proposed development. If you look at those developments that they mentioned, every one of them has a buffer or transition between single-level dwellings and multi-level dwellings that protect the privacy and access to sunlight in the livable areas of the people's backyards. As I mentioned, I understand the rights of the developer to develop this property, but it's the responsibility of this governing body to make sure that the rights, property values, and livability of the existing neighborhood are respected and defended.

Thank you. Any questions for this gentleman? Thank you.

Next we have Ron Larson.

Thank you, Mayor and Councillors. My name is Ron Larson. I live at 3672 Northeast Joel Street in McMinnville, and that's in the Chagwin Farms development. Ordinance number 51 83. The annexation includes the statement at the bottom of the first page of the ordinance that quote the city council approved ordinance number 51 82 adopting findings for docket ZC, which is zone change one dash 26 demonstrating compliance with state regulations, the McMinnville comprehensive plan and the McMinnville municipal code and quote, in my opinion, Those findings for ordinance 51 82 referenced in ordinance 51 83 are incorrect, inadequate and incomplete with respect to the need for the multifamily housing here in Mac at this time. And my rebuttal testimony presented to the city on July 8th, 2026 for the planning commission public hearing on July 16th, 2026. I pointed out that the city's housing needs analysis was outdated because it was based on housing data only through December 31, 2021. So I used the city's own data regarding building permit recap information for the time period, January, 2022 to June 30th, 2026. And I have determined from that data, a total of 530 multifamily dwelling units that were built in that period of just this last four and a half years. 22 to 26. For the first six months of 26 alone, the city has issued 180 multifamily building permits. Now, all of that data is on the backside of the handout you should have in front of you now. Housing needs analysis, which is shown in the bottom portion of the front page of my handout, is referenced and quoted in the findings for ordinance 51 82 calls for a need of 375 multifamily dwelling units by the end of 2026. And as of now, we already have 530 that shoots down the need. Therefore, in my opinion, The findings written for ordinance number 51 82 are in fact incorrect, inadequate and incomplete with respect to the need for more multifamily housing. At this point in time, this need simply does not exist. The total of 530 multifamily dwellings.

Thank you.

I've already made my point.

Any counselor have any questions of this gentleman? Thank you, sir.

That's everyone that signed up.

Is there anyone else that wanted to speak that didn't get signed up? Okay. And nobody on zoom or the phone? No one has raised their hand. Okay. Does the applicant wish to respond to any of the testimony?

Doug Rucks again. I do, but I'm a little befuddled. So here this evening we're having a public hearing on an annexation. We're hearing a lot about a separate application that is not a public hearing. We're dealing with the annexation. I brought this up in my original opening comments. And so for me to respond, sort of like a rebuttal, and I've heard conversation about continuing the hearing, I want to ensure that if I make comments now and you continue the hearing, I'm going to have the opportunity to make rebuttal comments again based on any other new information. And I'm not sure you may want to ask your legal counsel how that's all going to work.

Missy, do you want to address that?

Mayor. So I guess if I understand the question, uh, the applicant is concerned about continuing this hearing and making sure that he has an opportunity to speak at that hearing.

Correct.

Okay. And rebut at that hearing. And so you can, you can, if you decide to not make a decision on the annexation tonight, you can continue the hearing and continue a public testimony can leave the record open. the applicant can provide a written rebuttal to things that are heard tonight.

Written or verbal?

Written, probably. You can also close the public hearing tonight, but leave the written record open.

Councillor Chenoweth?

I, what I understood the applicant asking was if we're going to have a public hearing on 80, 32, is that the right number? 85, 32, whatever, 32, whatever, whatever the 51, 82, 82.

Wow.

I wasn't even close. 51, 82 that he wants to at that time have the ability to, um, present and rebut on 51, 82. Um,

Yeah, I'm going to try to help separate the two. So Doug, I think what they were talking about tonight was at the beginning of this was not necessarily continuing the public hearing for the annexation discussion, but not taking action on 5 1 8 3. If there's interest in having a public hearing on 5 1 8 2, which they'll make that decision later on in the agenda, they have the opportunity tonight to continue this public hearing. If you want to do that and feel you need to hear more testimony in the future, or you could close this public hearing on the annexation and open up the pub and choose to still have the public hearing on the zone change, which would be a separate hearing on a separate date.

Okay. So thank you, Heather. So I will go back to, we are in the process of a public hearing on the annexation and You have a two-step process. You hold the public hearing, but you don't make a decision in the public hearing. You come back and you have an ordinance, which is later on your agenda. And it's like, okay, understand how that works now after talking with staff and getting clarification. But I will continue on. And I will say for Ms. Hammond's comments is that there is not a conservation easement on this property. does not exist. Uh, so there may be information that in the media and other documents and so forth, but there is no conservation easement on this. There is a conservation easement on other property that's check winds bided to Yamhill. So I'm a water conservation district further to the north. It does not apply to this 3.17 acres. Um, I'm not going to speak to the issue about the request for a hearing on the zone change because that's not what this annexation hearing is about. And I'm trying to keep the distinction clear between the two. Things are getting... I'll use the word gray. And they're getting muddled.

The...

I would concur there's not a shot clock or a tolling clock on an annexation, not like other land use applications that do have a 120-day clock. You can always get more clarification from your legal counsel on that. All of the testimony that came in about housing needs analysis and so forth is not applicable to the annexation. Again, your staff provided a report verbally and in writing. They determined our application complete. You have all of our materials, Attachment 1, to that staff report. We checked the box in detail on absolutely every requirement that was asked of us by your local ordinance. to submit for consideration of annexing the property into the corporate limits. Again, 3.17 acres. It's an Island. It's surrounded. We were required to submit a concept plan. It is only a concept plan. There's a separate city process to review any development that actually goes on the site. So again, I come back to that's, it may be an application requirement that you're not, looking to determine anything about what the actual development is going on on this property. It's simply, are we going to annex it to the corporate limits of the city or are we not going to annex this property to the corporate limits of the city? There was the annexation agreement. Again, this goes back to October of 2025 and there are conditions of approval that is in your packet. Um, my client agreed to all of those conditions of approval. And we're working through the process to deal with all of that. That document was recorded with Yamhill County. We got a copy of it. City has a copy of it. And so again, in my final comments, one of my opening presentations, we were asking for you to approve the ordinance. And your staff will tell you, you have some steps. You could do it all tonight, depending on another land use case, or you could defer this until the 22nd because of this other land use case, and it has a shot clock associated with it. And we understand that. My client understands that. But again, I want to come back and try to make sure that we're focusing on the annexation criteria. That's what you have to make your decision on, not on... other things that are coming into this particular discussion. Thank you.

All right. Any comments? Thank you. Okay, so now we have to just... Okay. Come on up.

This piece of green light. Just pull it closer to you. This piece of property is right behind me. They're going to build 13 feet away from my piece of property. When I bought this piece of property to build on, Mr. Chivwin shook my hand and said, there was nothing to be built on this piece of property. Now he's trying to say that something can be built back there. If you guys want a three-story piece of apartment,

right in your backyard.

It's going to take away all my sunlight.

I have a solar lighting for my kitchen that is not going to be able to work anymore.

So you can't block solar.

But why is this in a neighborhood

is only one and two stores three story allowed there it's going to take away from my backyard so no barbecues no nothing in my backyard i don't want people looking down at me so would you guys want that you guys want that in your backyard think about it do you want it in your back I want to ask you to listen to the people here.

Doug doesn't have to live with it.

He lives up in Shrewwood, but he's not dealing with it. So he doesn't care about the people of Mervyn, Chegwin, and the people who are gonna have to live with this thing. So I ask you, Mary, you represented me, and you're going through your pain, and you can sign your marching card, or your T-shirt, and stuff, you supported me, I'm asking you to support me.

It makes a difference.

It's a promise. It's use of it, it's record. There's danger in the past. Thank you.

Mayor, I recommend that because that this is a little bit out of order because we've already invited the applicant up for rebuttal that perhaps we could call for one last make one last call for anyone who would like to testify and then provide the applicant with a final opportunity to rebut those comments.

Thank you. Is there anyone else? This is the final call. Nope. Doug, do you have anything else you want to say? Nope, we don't. We need to be polite and listen.

Thank you, Mayor. We appreciate the comments. And again, I'm going to circle back. You have to look at the criteria for your annexation. All of the other information is not applicable to whatever decision you're going to make on annexing the property or not annexing the property. Staff has indicated that if you chose to hold this over until September 22nd, we understand that. But even at that point in time, it's still annexations have to be decided on the annexation criteria. Any other applications have to be decided on the criteria that applies to those. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, now does the City Council wish to, tell me if I'm out of, we don't do a lot of these like this, so does the City Council wish to continue or close the public hearing? Mr. Chenoweth.

If we have questions of you, will that opportunity be presented later to ask those questions or should we ask them now?

You mean questions of staff?

Yes.

You can ask the questions after the hearing's been closed, right? That's what he's asking. Can they close the public hearing and still have questions of staff?

Councillor, I think if you want to ask questions of staff about the annexation application or the criteria, then you probably do want to leave the record open because inevitably I think the answers to those questions might bring in new evidence.

So may I ask a question?

Yes. Yes.

What is, remind me what the policy is regarding islands in our city?

Oh, great question. I actually did a lot of work on that as well. We used to, so you've been on city council long enough that you were here when we were going through the annexation process, rewriting the codes. We used to have an ordinance that did not allow islands to And the city was supposed to annex those islands into the city within a year of them being made an island. And there's allowance in state statute to allow cities to do that without the property owner's consent. However, when we decided to create a new process for annexations, we had a discussion about the islands, because there are several in McMinnville that have been in McMinnville for many, many years. And the city as a policy decided that they city council as a policy decided they didn't want that moving forward that one year mandate to annex islands in because we hadn't been doing it. So it didn't carry forward into the new ordinance or into our process. And there's nothing in state law that mandates that cities annex in islands, but there is state law that says cities can annex islands into the city through a different process. So the, the, the property owners don't have to be, don't have to provide consent for that.

Thank you.

Any counselor Cunningham.

Yeah, something that we heard tonight and I only assume we'll continue to hear is on the great neighborhood principles. Can you explain how the great neighborhood principles affect our code or our code and how that would impact annexation for this particular instance?

So the great neighborhood principles is a land use regulation. And that's something you'll be considering when you look at the zone change application in terms of compliance with great neighborhood principles. And in your annex agreement that was adopted by city council and that the applicant agreed to, there is a condition that they get through a successful land use process. I would say when we're looking at property to annex into the city, there's some property that already has comprehensive plan designations on it. So we have five comprehensive plan designations, residential, commercial, industrial, floodplain, and now urban holding, which is where we're doing the area planning process. If the city's already decided that a parcel's gonna be a certain future use, residential, commercial, industrial, or floodplain, and made that decision by identifying it as a comp plan designation, We've already decided that this is residential. So that's no longer on the table for discussion what type of use it will be. It's what zone is most applicable in that use. And the property owner has the right to apply for a zone for the city to consider. And then through that application process, we then look at the great neighborhood principles. Tom will walk you through a little bit about that in terms of the zone change application that we received and how it meets those.

There are a couple of recent changes in law regarding housing and what city councils can and cannot do. Are those only to low-income or are they to all? And I know that's going to pertain to the... the second portion that it's not really dealing with the annexation. And you're asking this question about the future discussion you need to have, um, about this, the second portion of this one. Yes. So, uh, um, I can wait and ask it then if you prefer, you prefer that. Okay.

Any other staff questions right now? Councilor Geary, anybody down there? Nope.

All right.

Okay, so now we need to decide if we want to close the public hearing or keep it open.

Motion we keep the public hearing open until next time.

I have a motion from Councilor Tucholsky.

Second.

I have a second from Councilor Geary. Any discussion? Claudia? Do I need to...

So we then we need to have a discussion about a specific date because if you're going to continue it, we need to continue at date specific. So we do that in a second motion or do I need to know you do that in the motion to continue the public hearing. So we'll restate it. So I'm going to tell you what our recommendation would be if you chose to. Oh, excuse me.

Okay, now you can have your discussion. I'd like to understand the rationale. I mean, I understand we need to have a discussion regarding the other portion of this object, but I'd like to understand the rationale of why on the annexation side we want to keep the hearing open. I don't know that I follow this.

Councilor Tchaikovsky, do you want to?

I'd like to understand why you feel it should be closed. Sorry.

Just to help with the order here. I think to have that discussion, there should be a motion and second on the floor. There was. Sorry, I didn't hear the second. But I think to clarify that motion, you need to work through Heather's point. Well, then we'll get through Heather's point.

They said no, though, a minute ago.

Yes. I apologize.

Yes. So I believe there's a motion and a second. And I think under Robert's rules, the next item would be discussion of the motion. And then if the motion passes, we would have you identify the date that the public hearing has continued to. But at the moment, that is the nailing down the date is premature. I agree.

Okay. I thought keeping it open in conjunction, if we call for a hearing on 5182, those should continue to be, that should be continued to be open until we have that hearing would be my thought.

If I may elaborate further to answer Councillor Chenoweth's question, the amount of public interest in the impact that this has on the surrounding area, I believe warrants giving our citizens continued voice. And I would like to continue hearing from them with leaving the record open.

So I think you're misunderstanding my question. Because there's no doubt in my mind we need to open a second hearing. My question is specifically on the annexation portion of this. I don't see why that portion needs to continue to be open. We've gotten all the data. We've heard everything regarding the annexation. I think we're going to hear what this is going to boil down to in the discussion that our constituents are really concerned about is the use of that land. And that's going to be in the other portion of it, not necessarily the annexation of it.

Does it hurt anything to leave it open?

I could go either way. I just wanted to understand the rationale.

Okay. Shall I respond?

Sure, you can respond.

So, Councilor Acena, with my rationale behind that is that these are intrinsically connected. And because of the connection, I don't believe that they should be separated at this time.

Any other councilor have any comments, input? Okay, so we have a motion on the floor. We have a second as to keeping the public hearing open. Can I go ahead and do a vote on this motion? And then we will do a date. Thank you. Claudia. Councillor Geary.

Aye.

Councillor Cunningham.

Aye.

Councillor Tucholsky.

Aye.

Councillor Chenoweth.

Aye.

Councillor Benner.

Aye.

Councillor President Peralta.

Yes.

The motion has passed unanimously by a vote of six to zero. Now I'd like a date and then we'll have a motion for the date.

Yeah. So to discuss that a little bit further, um, I actually think it will be confusing to have both hearings on the same night because I think it will be hard for people to decide how to testify for annexation versus how to testify for zone change. Um, so I wanted to let you know what we would recommend for the zone change first, and then you can discuss the date for the annexation piece of it. Um, The zone change needs to be decided by the city of McMinnville by October 2nd. It needs to be decided by ordinance, which means we need to schedule two meetings because we haven't had a lot of unanimous first readings as a body. And so we also need to notify adjacent property owners of the public hearing no less than 20 days from the date of the public hearing. So we are in a really tight window. We can get out notice tomorrow for a hearing to happen on September 16th, which is the same night you have a work session. So you would have the work session and then we'd have the business meeting with the public hearing right afterwards. And then we would in advance already notice the second reading of the ordinance for September 22nd, which we will post on September 15th if we need it. so that we will have that in advance and done so that we can have the decision by October 2nd. Claudia is on vacation for two weeks, so she won't be able to do an emergency meeting that last week of September. So your zone change public hearing, we would recommend for September 6th, 16th, I think for both the community and for staff and for yourselves, I would recommend you separate those two hearing nights. for the annexation and the zone change, because I just think if I was sitting in the audience, I wouldn't understand which one I should be participating in and providing testimony for. If you want to have them both night, happy to support that and do the best we can to help people understand the two differences for them.

For all of it.

So I would move that we entertain. Okay, remind me of the numbers because I've already got them wrong in my head.

Yeah, so I didn't end up telling you a night for the annexation from staff recommendation. I think maybe you could have the public hearing for the annexation on September 22nd, which is the night we would also have already proactively scheduled for the second reading of the ordinance.

Can you give me the numbers of those ordinances again?

Ordinance number 5183 is the annexation public hearing. And ordinance number 5182 is the zone change.

So I move that we have a public hearing on the 5182 on the 16th.

So you're not at that part of the agenda tonight yet? So right now you're just determining date specific for your continued public hearing for the annexation.

Okay, so I move that we have that date for the continued hearing of 5183 on the 22nd. Yeah, perfect.

Okay, so I have a motion.

Second. Second from Councillor Tucholsky and any discussion? Claudia.

Councillor Geary.

Aye.

Councillor Cunningham.

Aye.

Councillor Tucholsky. Aye. Councillor Chenoweth.

Aye.

Councillor Benner.

Aye.

Council President Peralta.

Yes.

That motion passes unanimously by a vote of six to zero.

Okay. So we are done with that one for right now. And we're going to go on to our other public hearing, but I think we're going to take a quick break. So we'll be back in about 10 minutes.

Recording stopped.

Good.

I'm telling you what,

did i will not admit that i read all 1114 pages of the first one but i did read the most because there was so much public record stuff well there was so much stuff in the first one that was just very often, but I did it with that one. It popped into AI and said, tell me what's important in this that I need to pay attention to. Oh, I log in on Zoom. So I can watch it on my screen so I don't have to look at that or this. It's better on my app. Can I just minimize it when I want to do something else? It does the same thing. It's very helpful.

It's probably good because I can't read that.

Right, that's when I started doing it because I couldn't read the screen. So if you just go to the city council website, Go to the, go to the. And she'll let you in. And she'll let you in. Now you're in. Now you'll want to turn off your speaker. So now it won't make any noise. You won't get the feedback. That's what she was doing over there. She was getting feedback. Super helpful. Because then when they do the presentations, When they do the presentations, you'll have it right there. It's so much easier.

And then when you want to see your packet?

Yeah, I don't go full size on the screen. So, yeah.

I leave it like that so I can go back and forth. It's easy to do.

Click on that to get to it.

If we can ask everybody to find your seat, we're gonna get started. There's plenty of seats in the front row.

Okay.

Are we ready? Okay. Thank you for taking your seat. And it's 834. We're going to continue on. We're going to do our public hearing and ruling an order of memoir memorializing the city's decision for the appeal of the planning commission commissions decision for AP five dash 26 docket number D D R one through 26 counselors. It's pages one through 500 in your second packet of three. So the order of procedure for tonight's hearing for the appeal is as follows. In brief, we will start with a staff report. Next, the applicant will be asked to present the project. The applicant's presentation will be limited to 10 minutes. Next, the appellant will present their objections. The appellant's presentation will be limited to 10 minutes. Next, the public will be asked to provide testimony. Testimony will first be taken from those testifying in support of the application, then those testifying in opposition to the application. Public testimony will be limited to three minutes. We will time the testimony and provide you with a visual warning when there is a one minute remaining. The applicant will then be given time to respond to and or rebut. any evidence presented after the staff report. And after people testify, counselors may pose questions to the mayor to be addressed to the person who testified or to staff to clarify any information that was conveyed in the testimony. The city recorder will call on everyone who signed up in advance to testify first in order in which they signed up. Then I will ask if anyone present at the civic hall would like to testify. And then I will ask anyone who is on zoom, who has not testified but would like to do so. Once the City Council has heard from everyone and the City Council is satisfied it has all the information it needs to render a decision, the City Council will close the hearing. Deliberations will occur once the public hearing is closed. We wish to hear from everyone who wants to testify. However, we request that you refrain from repeating testimony already given by someone before you. If you agree with what someone before you has said, but also want to make sure that you have legal standing in the public record, please provide your testimony indicating you concur with what the person in front of you said. Public testimony will be limited to three minutes. We will then time the testimony and provide you with a visual warning when there is one minute remaining. Since this is a legal process for considering a land use decision, we need you to state your name and address for the public record so you can receive written notice of the City Council's final decision. We ask that you keep your comments relevant to the discussion. A staff report was published seven days before the hearing, and it identifies all of the applicable criteria. Testimony, arguments, and evidence must be directed towards those criteria or other criteria in the plan. or land use regulation, which the person believes to apply to this decision. Failure to raise an issue accompanied by statements or evidence sufficient to afford the decision maker and the parties on opportunity to respond to the issue precludes appeal to the board based on that issue. Failure of the applicant to raise constitutional or other issues relating to proposed conditions of approval with sufficient specificity to allow the local government or its designee to respond to the issue will preclude an action for damages in circuit court. This public hearing is a quasi-judicial hearing to consider an ordinance memorializing the City Council's decision for an appeal of the Planning Commission's decision for AP 4-26, which approved a Downtown Design Review Docket DDR 1-26 with conditions. The Planning Commission's decision upheld the Historic Landmark Committee's original decision, which approved DDR 1-26 with conditions and supplemental findings on July 16. The property is located at 5 4 4 Northeast second street tax lot. R 4 4 2 1 B as in boy C 1 1 5 0 0. The applicant is buying star and the property owner is McMinnville cooperative ministries. The public hearing is open as a reminder, following the staff report, we will hear from the applicant and then the appellant. They will each have 10 minutes for their presentation and then public testimony will be limited to three minutes per person. Does anyone wish to object to the jurisdiction of the city council to hear this matter? Sir, can you others doing him? Yes, please. State your name, please.

My name is Quinn Milligan, six to four Northeast second street McMinnville. Thank you. So I am challenging the council's jurisdiction to hear AP five 26 is a legally valid third party appeal. And I sent the city exhaustive reasoning as to why. I'll summarize here. As you guys are aware, HP 4037 became operative on July 1st. It amended ORS 197A.400 to say that for housing applications governed by the clear and objective pathway, a local government may provide a local appeal only to the applicant. And so the planning commission decision being appealed here was not issued until July 23rd. And AP 526 was not filed until August 6th. And neither Alexa McLean nor Jeb Ledeen are the applicant. And so this is not even an appeal that was already pending when the law changed. The specific appeal did not exist until more than a month after the legislature eliminated third-party local appeals. And so I'm asking the council to resolve that jurisdictional issue before hearing the merits. And I would specifically ask the city attorney to identify on the record, the statutory authority that allowed these two third parties to initiate AP 526 on August 6th, despite ORS 197A.400, section five, subsection C. And I can go into detail, but.

David or Missy.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. With this challenge, which was received last night.

What is going on?

Kid. This challenge was received last night. I do think that it's appropriate at this time to let the applicant respond to this jurisdictional challenge. It is their application. Okay. Any further questions for Mr. Milligan? That would be... Zoe Lynn Powers is attorney for the applicant.

Thank you. Thank you, Missy. You know, we agree with the statements of the Milligan brothers. Either the city council does not have jurisdiction or the appellants do not have standing for this appeal under House Bill 4037. We maintain all rights under House Bill 4037. That said, we have been and continue to be affirmatively choosing to follow the city's process to allow robust public involvement at the local level. That public process not only benefits the public and the city, it has helped shape this project. We had multiple hearings in front of the Historic Landmarks Commission, for example, that resulted in design changes to the project to better reflect the nearby historic district. And because we've been in this public process, the appellants have had multiple opportunities in front of both Historic Landmarks Commission and Planning Commission to give their feedback and to share their concerns orally and in writing. And both of those commissions unanimously approved the project, which is what we asked you to do today.

Okay. Um, I guess, uh, so based on the applicants, what I think I just heard as a sort of affirmative choice to stay in this land use process that we're all familiar with and, um, to give the public public participatory rights. Um, the House Bill 4037 was unfortunately, silent as to what to do about applications that have already been filed when it took effect. What?

It's just dramatic effect.

It is.

Just working on the mood.

What I'm saying is so boring. So House Bill 4037, it's silent as to what to do in this situation where the applicant's application is goal posted, right? Under the goal posting statute, it's entitled to have its application considered under the standards and criteria in effect at the time the application was submitted before HB 4037 took effect. And so there is an argument that allows them to stay within the process that they started in because it's not clear. And this is the, uh, I believe there's one other jurisdiction in the state that is encountering this situation with an application and process on July 1st. I do recommend that the city is probably best to, uh, accommodate the applicant's wishes.

Councillor Chenoweth.

I understand everything you said and that makes perfect sense to me. What I would want to address though is we asked does anybody object? We didn't ask if the applicant objected. We asked if anybody objected. We got an objection. So we just summarily ignore it?

Well, no, I think a counselor, what I would say is our reading of hospital 4037 is that it isn't clear as to what happens to applications in process. And so the applicant has stated that they, they want to essentially be grandfathered in from the effects of, of hospital 4037.

I may not have been clear. What I'm, what I'm concerned about is the, the objectors rights. They've made this objection. Um, if, if anybody else had objected in a normal set of circumstances, what would have been the procedure we would do at that point?

You would hear the objection and the rationale and determine how to proceed.

And does our legal team give us, besides that it's vague, your opinion on direction?

She has recommended twice that you follow the wishes of the applicant, in this case, who wishes to remain in the process. Right, that's my question.

I think for the applicant, There's a risk here if you follow a procedure that ultimately isn't the correct one, and there's not risk if we provide more process. In general, more process is not something that's gonna get us, you know, if we get an approval tonight, overturned on appeal. So the, well, we agree with the Milligan brothers and we absolutely want to maintain all of our rights to assert that that law applies to us. We also have the right to sort of proceed in the alternative and provide more public process, even then what the public, you know, maybe is required to be provided under law.

yeah sorry just a little bit more clarification that they are saying that the applicant is saying that they are willing to go through the rest of the process as as laid out here however with what the Milligan brothers brought up if we were to deny wouldn't that be a standing that they could then take is that it shouldn't have ever gone to this level?

That is the rights that they are reserving now. They will make that argument at that point.

Oh my God.

Yeah, so much fun. So basically you're limited in the hands of the council to decide. Great. Okay. So it's up to this council to decide. We can have some discussion. We have a, Councillor Benner.

I agree with the council that more, process is always better and Taking that process away because of a law that was recently put in place I don't I don't think serves this body or serves the public. I Don't want to deny them McMillan men brothers from having their say as well but what we're simply saying is let's let the process that we have in place go forward. And it's more cumbersome and it's more community involvement, which is always good.

Mayor, can I, David and I have just been chatting here and maybe it would be helpful to lay out the two paths. So one path would be that the process proceeds as it has been laid out in your 500 pages of packet tonight. The other thing other way it could go is if the council chooses to, to sustain the objection essentially, and agree with, with the Milliken testimony and, and that would mean that the council lacks jurisdiction to hear the appeal is someone would make a motion to dismiss the appeal. They would make that motion tonight. And if that motion passed, then the appeal would be dismissed and the planning commission's decision would be the city's final decision.

Good question.

Councillor Chenoweth.

Pardon me while I take a couple of swallows here. So if that happened, what is the pathway going forward for either parties?

Okay. So if the second path happened and the council ended up dismissing for lack of jurisdiction and the planning commission's decision approving was final, Potentially that would be attempted to be appealed to Luba. House Bill 4037 does specifically say that only an applicant can file an appeal with Luba. We don't know as a city for certain how that would play out at Luba because this is a brand new statute. The applicant I'm certain would intervene in that appeal probably and seek to have it dismissed. due to that statute.

To be clear, the applicant consents to whatever pathway City Council chooses.

Melissa, does your legal analysis conform to Milligan and Ms. Powers' legal analysis of the jurisdiction?

Councilor, I didn't hear the first part of your question.

Does your legal analysis of our jurisdiction comport with Ms. Powers and Mr. Milligan's analysis of our jurisdiction?

I understand the applicant to be agreeing with the Milligans to the extent that they don't want to waive any rights that they have if this goes to LUMA. I understand that statement to be essentially a preservation, but not necessarily that they fully agree with the Milligan's interpretation of House Bill 4037. Please correct me, Ms. Powers, if I'm wrong. My analysis is that it is possible for an applicant who has goal posted, who has filed their application before July 1st to goal post and proceed under the statutes and criteria that applied when the application was filed.

May I continue? So they're not saying that they want to continue under the rules when the application was filed. What they're saying is they're happy to let a public process continue. And they're also saying that they don't think we have jurisdiction is what I heard.

I'm going to let the applicants counsel if she heard that. take that?

Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that. So 4037, the legislator in their wisdom did not provide a lot of words for us to interpret here. And there is ambiguity, which is why your legal counsel is giving you what probably feels like an unsatisfying legal opinion. I believe that The procedure isn't subject to the goalpost rule because it's not standards and criteria, which is one of the points the Milligan brothers brought up. I also believe in public process and we fully support the city council's decision to say 4037 is ambiguous. It's unclear how it applies here. So we're going to decide to provide more process rather than less. Also, you know, the Planning Commission did a great job of providing an appeal hearing and hearing from these appellants and allowing their decision to stand would be a very valid decision. I know that that's sort of saying yes and, but there's no clear legal answer. This may be the case that decides that, particularly if you disagree. JURISDICTION.

WE DON'T WANT TO BE THE TEST CASE.

WE JUST WANT TO BUILD HOUSING. SO ALSO IN AGREEMENT.

MAYOR. CAN I ASK YOU A QUESTION?

COUNCILOR CUNNINGHAM.

I think this was in our packet somewhere, maybe just a part of a conversation in the past. What is the cost to the city to going to Luba? And what if the city is then If it's, sorry, what is the cost of the city going to Luba for attorney's fees? And what would it look like if we lost and had to pay their attorney fees as well? Do we have a cost estimate on that?

I saw her take her mic off.

Mr. Milligan, we don't have him up here, not you.

was the attorney for the appellant going to say something?

I'm happy to tell you that typically I tell private clients that a loop appeal easily can cost a hundred thousand dollars in attorney's fees.

So let me ask you a question. So they're willing to understand that things are a little vague and unclear and want to proceed with a public process. Are you willing to agree to a public process?

Well, and I want to clarify that I'm not representing the applicant or anything. I understand that. And the problem is the applicant has to be nice. They're applying to develop the property. And HB 4037 was, this is not news, it just was enacted July 1st. And it was enacted specifically to avoid abuse of the appeals process. And there is no grandfathering clause. The planning commission approved this development on July 23rd, which is after this law was enacted. And there's no clarification for any ability for the applicant to grandfather themselves or anything of that nature. And the bottom line is because of HB 4037, the appellant has zero ability to appeal to Luba. So it would be kind of a waste of time anyways.

Thank you for your statement. Thank you. What do you want us to go from here, Missy?

I think Councilor Peralta has a follow-up question.

I would like to say, because everybody came out and we have a full audience, I do think we should allow... I do think we should give people the opportunity to be heard tonight. I'm definitely concerned about the process based on what I've heard. And so I'm interested in hearing other councilors' opinions about that because I'm definitely concerned about what I've heard so far, but I'm happy to go forward with it because I do think people deserve to be heard, but I'd like to hear from other members of the diocese.

Councilor Chenoweth.

Thank you, Mayor. I am not going to comment about what I've heard at this point, but what I would say is I do think we need to give opportunity for the folks that are here at 9 o'clock at night on a Tuesday night to say what they've come to say. And so I want to hear that, and I would rather reserve my opinion on what I've heard until after we allow them the opportunity to voice what they have to say.

Thank you. Councilor Cunningham.

I'm in agreement with both my counselors.

Thank you. Counselor Benner.

Same.

Counselor Tucholsky.

We keep talking about the goalpost rule and, you know, I'm an internet wizard now, but... ORS 227178, ORS 215.427. Talk about the goalpost rule and basically a development application must be processed based on the local standards, criteria and procedures that were in effect on the exact day the application was first deemed complete. So when was the appeal actually deemed complete?

Councillor we have a quick question for you. So Are you asking when the initial application to the HLC?

Was deemed complete or when the application for the appeal here to City Council was deemed complete Yeah, the application for the to the HLC because that's when this was actually Yeah, January 16th. What's that January 16th? Okay, so based on the January 16 date House Bill 4037, which is being cited as the point of objection, became legally operative on July 1, 2026, and is not retroactive to things before that. So I would, based on those two ORSs and the application date, I believe that we should hear the applicants.

Mr. Geary?

I think this is a good one. Um, yeah, I think lacking clear direction. Um, you know, sometimes it feels like we're the final authority in this. It's going up to us in this case. I don't feel like we're the final authority. We're a cog in the wheel. Uh, I think we should put our best foot forward and hear the case and weigh it on the merits. So I think we should hear it.

I agree. We're going to move forward.

If I may make a comment, you speak again.

I think it's your prerogative, Mayor.

One last statement. Okay. Make it brief, please.

I appreciate it. I'll be very brief. Understood. I'm not the city. But it is, as you know, a quasi-judicial hearing. And so the act of hearing out, I'm very all in favor of public input, but But the purpose of HB 4037 was actually to prevent exactly that for housing. And so just for the record, I'm expressly preserving my objection to the council's jurisdiction to hear AP 526 under ORS 197A.405C as amended by HB 4037. And I ask that my supplemental written testimony on that issue be incorporated into the record. And I also request that the city make an express finding on jurisdiction, um, before reaching merits. Obviously you don't have to do that if you don't want to, but I'm just want to preserve that for the record. Um, and I, I just would note that the, um, because of the way HB 4037 applies, uh, it does not, the goalpost doesn't apply because this is a clear and objective, uh, standards for housing. Um, so that's, thank you. Thanks.

Okay, we're going to move forward. Does any counselor wish to make any disclosure of any conflict of interest or abstain from participating or voting in this application? Councilor Benner.

I need to disclose a potential conflict of interest regarding this matter. I have a financial relationship with the applicant. Although my separate project is only tangentially related to the proposed apartment, I believe that my financial relationship with the applicant creates a potential conflict or at a minimum, the appearance of one. I do not want this relationship to cloud or even appear to cloud the independent judgment of the council for the public's confidence in our decision-making process. For that reason, I will recuse myself from this matter and I will not participate in discussion or vote on the proposed department project.

Okay, then you'll need to step down from the dais. Yep, yep, you have to go.