City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. It's nice to see so many people in the audience and nice to see so many people that we actually all know. Thank you. So we're calling the meeting to order. Today is 03/04/2026, and I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Oregon City City Commission.

Commissioner Scott Wilson? Here. Commissioner Mike Mitchell? Here. Commissioner Rocky Smith is excused. Commissioner Adam Marle? Here. And mayor Denise McGriff? Present.

So if you are able, would you please stand if you can and join us in the flag salute? Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, everyone. So I am very excited to announce that under our ceremonies and proclamations that we're celebrating our Arbor Day proclamation a little bit early. It's just about timing.

We are going to have an amazing event on March 14 at Hillandale Park, but this was the optimum time for our staff to get this on the agenda. Do I need to say anything else about it, city manager Conkel?

I'm sorry. I was having a

That's okay. Arbor I just gave the whole thing about Arbor Day.

And, yes, I was gonna add

oops. Sorry.

I gave the date of the event. It's 09:00, Killendale Park.

Yes. And I think I'm sorry. Pete and Kelly wanted me to add where did that go?

Click my key.

Right. So, yeah, you do. So, yeah, March 14, 08:45 to 01:00, Hillandale Park. We'll be planting over 80 trees in neighborhoods throughout the city, and community members can still sign up to purchase a tree through the Friends of Tree website. We'll have some brief remarks at Hillandale Park from Friends of Trees, the mayor, Oregon Department of Forestry beginning at nine, followed by the planting of a red alder near Mud Creek, and then dividing up the crews that will be led by Friends of Tree staff. If you'd like register, to participate and volunteer in the neighborhood planting through, the Friends of Trees website.

Do we know which neighborhoods are going to get trees?

I don't have that with me now, but I'm pretty sure we're, it's throughout the city we've tried to spread it out a little bit more.

Okey doke. Alright. So the Arbor Day proclamation. Whereas in 1872, the Nebraska Board of Agriculture established a special day to be set aside for the planting of trees, and whereas the holiday called Arbor Day was first observed with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska, and whereas Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation and the world, and whereas trees can be the solution to combating climate change by reducing the erosion of our precious topsoil by wind and water, cutting heating and cooling costs, moderating the temperature, cleaning the air, producing life giving oxygen, and providing habitat for wildlife, and sometimes people who like to climb trees. Whereas trees in Oregon City increase property values, enhance the economic vitality of business areas, and beautify our community, and whereas trees wherever they are planted are a source source of joy and spiritual renewal, and whereas Oregon City will honor Arbor Day by planting trees throughout the city with our partners, Friends of Trees, the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Now I therefore, Denise McGriff, mayor of the city of Oregon City, do proclaim Saturday, 03/14/2026 as Arbor Day in Oregon City and urge all citizens to celebrate Arbor Day, support efforts to protect our trees and woodlands, and to plant and care for trees to promote the well-being of this and future generations. We will sign this on the 03/04/2026. And thank to planning staff, Pete Walter, who's been leading this effort for a number of years, and we're very excited about that. Alright. So next, we have, public comments, and I have one slip.

And I would like to call on Sandra Janelle Janelleck to come forward, please, if she'd like. And we do wanna thank you for your letter. So just state your even though I said your name, just state your name and city of residence for the record, and then please proceed. There's a My name is Sandra

and I live in Oregon There

you go.

My name is Sandra Jalnick, and I live in Oregon City. I've lived on Netzel Street, just off of South End Road, for over fifty years, and I love our city. I walked throughout the area of Lawton and South End Road and Lafayette and Amanda Court all those years, and I have watched the deterioration of Amanda Court. All the other streets through that area receive at least minimum care, and there's a couple of streets who are that are in top shape. One being Sunny Lane where our previous mayor, mister Williams, lived, and also, Madrona Drive, where Ralph Groner lived.

These are politicians. Their streets are well maintained, and yet Amanda Court has been ignored. So, there's lots of people who walk through that area and the street has reached the point where it's difficult to walk on. Little kids can't ride their bikes, very well with and I've heard stories from the people who live on that street of their children tripping and falling in the broken pavement and getting hurt. So and then there's a big pothole with that one lady, every time she backs out of her driveway, she lands in it.

So I I got 22 signatures of neighbors in the area, and I could have gotten a lot more from people who just walked through there, but I

didn't take the time. So I would appreciate anything you can do to address Amanda Cort. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanna say for the record that it doesn't matter where somebody lives, including former mayor Williams or former senator Groner. It has nothing to do with the pavement main maintenance schedule. So I just wanna say that for the record. Okay. It just seemed interesting to me that those two are No no correlation. Good shape. There's no correlation between the two. Okay. Thank you. But thank you. We we we are aware of that. We've been talking to our public works department, and shoot, they will be hearing from somebody.

Yes. Dana Dana will reach out. I think one thing that we're looking at, Amantacourt has over $1,000,000 in waterline work that needs to be done, as well as a asbestos line, cement line, system that needs to be built from the early seventies. We try not to pave when we know we have to go in and do infrastructure work and rip it up after that paving's been done. With the WIFIA project that we move forward with, you're well aware some of the the water funding is really being directed towards that.

So the public works department is looking at adding this, you know, potentially for the maintenance utility paving projects, looking at '27, '28, adding it to the queue of sections that'll be done just because of the delay now and the ability to to pay for that waterline Yeah. Through that

Yeah. I think probably a lot of the residents are not aware of what the utilities are in that particular street. And as you said, that they are a little past their prime, and we know we need to replace them. But Mhmm. We do not wanna throw good money after bad. Alright. Thank you. Anybody else that didn't sign a slip that might want to say something? Just wanna give one more opportunity before we move to our fabulous presentations tonight. Okay. We have five a, which is the downtown courthouse update. It's my pleasure to ask mister Seth Henderson to come up and give us a brief update, and thank you for being here.

Good evening, mayor, commissioners. My name is Seth Henderson, and my contact information is on the card. As recommended, I am here to provide you a quick quarterly update on where we are. I know you have a full agenda this evening, so I will try to get through it quickly. Feel free to interrupt me if you want, if you have specific questions.

This format should look very familiar because what we've been doing is taking the same presentation that we're giving to all the neighborhood associations, all the nonprofits, and we're just building on it as questions come up during the discussions. So this is actually the same one that we gave to the historic review board. I think it was last week. Time flies. Thank you. There we go. So this is the general format, the things we usually cover. I think you know who level development is. A lot of this, we, reviewed last time I was in, which I think was November, if I remember correctly. And I've added MUD.

It was actually really interesting. One of the neighborhood associations asked, why do you think there should be housing downtown? And so it seemed appropriate to put the MUD to show this is actually this entire zoned area, and this is what's being asked for. And, that is why. Did I do that or did you? Okay. Thank you. This is the RFEI. So if people want information specifically about the process, we put a QR code now so people can actually go and look at the information themselves. All those links are live on the county site, so you can see the meeting video as well as well as the minutes.

And then we put over on the side kinda what was in the RFI, the exhibits that a lot of people are interested in, geotech, structural. So, again, you can go directly to that county page and review all those reports yourself. So when we say that, it's 10 feet of silt and sand and fill that you add water to it and turns to Jell O and people say, don't believe you, we go, here's the report. You can go take a look at it. Next one, please. This again, this is a cross section.

I'm not gonna spend a lot

of time on this, but this is interesting. It's actually the borings that we've done and previous borings. This is the north, line. So between the building, kind of the north edge between the building and the river. And those are four borings that were taken by different, groups.

I think two of them are ours and two of them were previous studies. And you've got about 25 feet of, down to the basalt of silt sand fill on either side of the building. So as long as you stay within the footprint, you've got about 10 feet of that material. So when you think about a new building and having to do board piles down into the basalt to hold that building in place. This kinda graphically is showing you that courthouse is sitting on top of a basalt outcropping, and you go to either side and it just drops off.

And I think everybody knows what the north side is doing as well, which is even more significant of a drop off. Next slide, please. This is all the information about SHPO. If people wanna go to the SHPO website, State Historic Preservation Office, take a look at all the information about addresses within Oregon City. And then on the right is the 2020 survey that was done by SHPO that identified all the exterior elements that we are saving for either use in the new building or in the expanded Liberty Plaza. Next slide, please.

I know that a little bit. Somebody's asked me, like, go and name a couple of things that you told me that I figured out.

So that survey says specifically the two plaques out in front on the rocks. One was constantly, vandalized, so it's currently in storage with the county. They've told us they have it. It's both pair of oak doors. It's the bronze, wrapping around those doors.

Two small eagles on eighth, two large eagles on main, two Illuminati guys, which the mayor clarified for me is mercury, and then the, scales of justice in the middle. So seven structural elements that will actually be we've got a mason coming who's gonna take those off and actually crane them off the building so we can reuse them. The courthouse. That wasn't noted in the 2020 survey.

I know that's it's forgive me for not remembering, but the metal that it's made out of, it's not it's not Yes. It's not cheap and cheesy.

Okay. Anybody want a bronze handrail? Well, you might need

it to get to your folks.

So This was our response. You guys have seen this before. This is, the layout response, RFI, showing that consistency from iteration to iteration. We are not changing the target. Left side is that daylit basement parking. Middle is at grade. Right hand side is the vertical as you go up. Next slide, please. This is what we submitted with our pre app. It should look very similar.

This is about where we were the last time we came in, and there was a question about the backside of the building and what activity we were gonna do there. Next slide, please. I'll tell you what we're gonna do there is a giant stormwater planner because none of the runoff on-site is currently being managed. So we now have a giant retention detention stormwater facility on the backside of the building. You can now see Liberty Plaza design has further developed.

We went to Prac. We've talked with Scott about what the options are for Liberty Plaza, and, you can see the retail that abuts both Main as well as Liberty Plaza. That's over 60% of the frontage, along Main And Liberty Plaza. The other portion is the lobby to the multifamily. So that that is where we sit today.

Next slide, please. This gives you just a a further version of where we are. With Liberty Plaza, you can see potentially where the tree might go, where we could do something within the pavers themselves, potentially, the new seal for Oregon City or something else more creative. There's a covered stage now that is parallel to Maine, so you can actually look in and see what events are going on. We've talked about water.

We've talked about electrical, separate services. And then you can see those are, I believe, 10 by 10 tents, so kinda how the tents would lay out so that that space could be used. You see lighting added. You see the historical elements from the building that are being used as a backdrop to the stage as well as extending the planner. All those trees top right are existing.

We're keeping all of those, and you have retail that actually butts it. Back left corner is a flow through planner. Right now, the runoff is not treated or retained, detained for Liberty Plaza. So we're actually would put a storm a small storm water area there for collection and treatment of runoff. Next slide, please.

So so this shows all of the items that we have completed to date or are working on, and then the specific events that have occurred. Any neighborhood association or nonprofit that is asking us to show up and present, we are doing that. We've got a couple coming up here. Also, Rotary, I think, is next Wednesday at lunch. We've submitted our determination letter to BOLI regarding prevailing wage.

We have our type three hearing on Monday for the Willamette River, Greenway. I will obviously be recusing myself from that. We've submitted our demo permit. We're currently in abatement. So 3rd Floor, I can't remember if if we had finished our full hazardous material assessment last time I was here.

There's 20, asbestos containing materials in the building. So roof, all of the exterior windows gasketing and caulking. So each one of those windows is gonna have to be taken out individually. The whole roof's gonna have to be taken off. All the all the 3rd Floor plaster ceiling, black mastic under most of the flooring, and then you also have lead paint as high as I've I've actually never seen paint 22% lead.

So you you're spraying metal basically onto it. So we're we're going through the abatement process right now. We closed on the property February 13. The next day, we're in the building starting salvage. That is Aurora Mills, city liquidators, and then our team for the elements we're gonna reuse. So we spent about two weeks, and I'm gonna show you some of the stuff that we've actually salvaged for reuse in the building. Is there anything else up there on the left hand side of significance? I think a lot those you see like that's an odd group of people. The the group of people that we talked about? Yeah. So I mean, I

know about the other one,

but city liquidators, that's that's So there was a ton if if you walked through the office space in that building back into the corners, you have, like, nineteen seventies cubicle furniture. All of that. Okay. So so all of the old IT equipment, furniture, anything that did not have historical relevance, instead of putting it in a landfill, city liquidators are like, yeah. We'll come and take everything. Whatever we can potentially resell. So yeah.

That makes sense. Yep. That's the kind of stuff they have.

So if we we're tracking the schedule. It took us about a month longer for due diligence. We found contaminated soil. We found a couple of things that need to be resolved with the county on the title. So we were hoping to start abatement in January. We started in February. We will be done with abatement by the end of this month. We will start deconstructing from the northwest corner moving towards main in sections, obviously, after all of the historical elements have been taken off the face of the building. And that'll be done before the May. So before summer retail event seasons, that'll all be complete.

Okay. And last slide. So this is cool. So these are all the elements that we are gonna be reusing. So a SHPO survey really looks at the exterior of the building.

On the interior of the building, the left hand side, you can see where it says owner salvage. So we took 1,400 law books as old as 1873. So we're gonna have when you walk into the new building, you're gonna have a giant bookshelf that's about 14 feet high that's gonna have all the old law books, the beautiful plaque that tells about the history of the building when it was constructed. There were actually six vault doors, and it was interesting because we got drawings from the county. There were nine different TIs to that building.

So we we had all these drawings from all these different periods where they did different construction throughout the building. So you'd walk through the building and go, oh, that was the nineteen sixties TI. Oh, that was 1984 TI. And you could actually tell by the type of construction that was done. So there were six vault doors, and every single one was different.

One of the vaults is actually all sprayed on grout asbestos containing. So they have to they have to contain that vault and take all the walls off before we can take that vault door and the frame off. Really cool old fire extinguisher cabinets. The DA wood doors, we're actually gonna use that on the property management office. So when you're going to complain about your lease, you actually have to go into a door that says the DA.

We thought that might intimidate them a bit. And then there's these beautiful there are 18 beautiful pews in multiple courtrooms. So we have two of those, and then Aurora Mills took 16 of them. How many oak, solid oak wood doors do you think they Aurora Mills salvaged from the building?

Probably over 20. 130.

So a 130 solid oak wood doors, including the frames, thousands of linear feet of wood base, a few 100 feet of wood storefront, the elevator, the old elevator equipment. We mentioned the vault doors. And then if you look at the bottom middle, so we've talked about how this retail sidecar comes into the plaza. We need about 1,300 square feet of brick for that, and we're actually gonna pay a mason about $20,000 to take individual bricks and clean them off from the courthouse building to clad that side retail car. So yeah. So we've been busy. We've been working hard. Question?

Yes. One of the questions I've been asked by some community members because they have bricks from the old Carnegie section, they wanted to know where there will there be any bricks available for either for purchase as a memento? That's what the question was. And I said, I will ask you tonight.

We we are not asking anybody to purchase anything. Like, people have asked for components. The concern is regarding hazardous materials. As it relates to brick, we are going to reclaim as many as we can. Some of that bricks in really bad shape.

I am obviously, it's 90 years old. So we're going to collect as much as we can, and then we will make those available to people that wanna use them. And then, obviously, the the bricks that are currently in Liberty Plaza that are from the old Liberty Theater, if you look at kind of the layout of the new Liberty Plaza, we're gonna try to wrap, the two seating area planters with those brick, and have some sort of plaque or something that says, this is where these bricks came from.

That'd be great. Yep. There was some sort of an etching at some point that was in I don't know what happened to it, but it was an outline of what the Liberty Theater looked like back in the day, and I don't know what happened to that.

There are quite a few etchings. If you look at them, they're actually in the paving, and some of them you can't even see anymore because they've been walked over and scraped so many times.

Well, this was a this was a metal, something that the county had from years ago.

I I I don't know what happened to it. I will ask. I I have not seen or heard about that, but I'll ask. Any other questions, concerns, comments?

Go ahead.

Thank you. Could you talk a little bit more about the prevailing wage determination? I think our community members and the commission deserves to know a little bit more about how the Bureau of Labor and Industries is making a lot of projects across this state very difficult to pencil out?

Commissioner Marle, are you asking me to stand on a soapbox?

Because I'm willing to do that. No. No.

So so bully man. What what bully does is based on ORS, they determine whether or not a project needs to

be

prevailed. Prevailing wage, Davis Bacon wage rates are increased wages that are more aligned with union wages. Every project that has prevailed gives unions a higher probability of being contracted some component of that. So so what BOLI has done is they have extended the interpretation of ORS. It used to be that, if the work if the funds that are being utilized are over $750,000, it triggers prevailing wage.

And for most projects, that kills it outright. Under Davis Bacon, there's two different wage rates. There's actually quite a few, but the two that impact most people, residential, four stories are left less, commercial, five stories or more. And so what's happening is developers are actually only building four stories high when they get prevailed. Some projects, housing projects are being killed outright because they're no longer financeable.

And, Bully is trying to get to a point to say, if you were connecting to public utilities where the city put them in and their value is greater than $750,000, your development would not occur without those utilities, therefore, you should be prevailed. So BOLI has has become extremely aggressive and quite a few developers now will submit where where we never had to previously, will submit a determination letter. So they have something in writing that says whether or not they will be prevailed. So we submitted our letter a couple of months ago. We've done two rounds now of additional clarifications.

And because we are dedicating a portion of a property we bought to the city, they're saying that potentially is considered public improvements, anything that you would do on that site. So is that what you were looking for,

commissioner Barlow?

Yeah. I think that people one thing that we don't talk a lot about amidst this crisis of our housing shortage is that, yes, zoning and land use is a part of it, but a big part of it is the way that our state is applying prevailing wage standards, and it is killing our ability to to reach the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I just I just wanted to put that out there because the people deserve to know that.

Thank you for your very tactful answer because as we all know, there are two sides to every story. So thank you. I appreciate that very much.

I will come back if it's acceptable end of the summer. Hopefully, we will have our entitlements by then, and I'd be happy to review, the plan that has been entitled unless you want me here before that, but that seems like the logical next point. So Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Mister Conoco, one of the things is, obviously, as you're aware that Liberty Plaza has a very high priority with us, and I think it would help if we had some informal discussions at the commission about how that's gonna all come about and, you know, are we gonna end up where we want to be. And I'd like to hear, some progress from mister Archer when he's available about that just so we k. I get asked a lot of questions about it. So people wanna make sure I said, well, my understanding. We're we're going to be having it.

Not gonna be immediate, but we're moving towards that. So there's progress being made. So just informational update about how we're working with developer to make all that happen If that in the future, that would be possible. Okay. Thank you. Alright. Awesome. Thank you so much. Alright. Next, we have our, staff, Melissa Sebastian, who's coming up with the Oregon City Heritage Coordinating Committee.

And do you have the clicker? Yep. Alright. Awesome. She captured it.

Good evening, madam mayor, city commissioners, city staff members of the audience, and fellow citizens. My name is Cheryl Rice, and I live in unincorporated Clackamas County. And I'm a member of the Oregon Oregon City Heritage Coordinating Committee and serve as the secretary. And this

is I'm Melissa Sebastian, the aquatic and recreation manager in our park and rec department, and I'm here tonight because with my management of the Frances Ermittinger House, I've been attending the meetings of the heritage coordinating committee in efforts to help collaborate more. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure to speak on is our partnership with one of the events we did this year, which was the cemetery tours.

Next. So just a brief introduction if you're not aware of who the Oregon City Heritage Coordinating Committee is. It's a group of heritage sites and individuals that share the vision of what heritage means to Oregon City and the surrounding area. The the coordinating committee was formed by Rolla Harding in 1992, and it promotes heritage tourism in Oregon City and the surrounding areas. And tonight, we'd like you to inform you of the activities that the coordinating committee, accomplished this last year.

So, back in October, we did the cemetery tours, and this was an event that has taken place in the distant past. I think the last time it had taken place was in the early nineties. Probably. Yeah. So it had been a while since we've seen this.

Essentially, our cemetery staff in our department found some of the old scripts previously, and we had a lot of excitement in our department and wanted to find a way to bring this event back. And so I took that to some of our we have a recreation programmer at the Ermittinger house who is really excited about this and essentially talked with the committee and formed a partnership with them to make this event happen. It was a really big effort. Cheryl did a ton of work with the scripts, and there was dozens of volunteers that came out for that to help support it, both from the committee as well as just the heritage community in Oregon City to really make this happen. It was a really big success.

Part of what we did is we helped with the registration process, and we ended up last minute deciding to open up a lot more spots, and those ended up filling as well as the previous sold out spots. We had a total of 91 people attend in the first year, and we had very positive feedback from everyone who had attended that event. We ended up raising $1,400 from the registrations, which is being split fifty fifty between our department and the heritage committee. And they're planning on using I think Cheryl will speak to this later, but planning on using that to help support their efforts with the antique bus and the Rose Parade. And then the future, just with, you know, how successful this event is, just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that we plan to do this again and essentially offer a new experience every year.

We really think that this has a great chance of growing and being able to open a lot more spots to our time slots, and we've even talked about the potential of doing a two day event or multiple days throughout the month of October depending on what type of volunteers we're able to secure and everything we're able to put together between now and the

fall.

So the coordinating committee also does several other events during the year. We spearhead and sponsor the heritage holidays and, the houses most of the heritage houses and heritage sites take participate in this effort. This is the flyer that we had this last year and, felt that it was very successful. This year, we took great strength, I guess, I would say, in working with Travel Oregon City to help us advertise and increase the numbers of attendance at these sites. And we, as an organization, have supported and the development of the the Travel Oregon City and the DMMO here in the state, so in the city.

So we had over a 140 people at the Ermittinger house alone. We were so busy that we kinda couldn't take care and count them all, so because we were busy doing stuff. They had about a 141 people at the Barclay McLaughlin house. And Denise may mayor Denise may know, they had about 40 plus at the Rose Farm, and that's more than what they've had, even at this event in the past year. So I It was actually 55. We were really, excited to, know that the advertisement, I think, that

we

received, from Travel Oregon City really helped to promote the event. The other the next initiative that we spearheaded long ago, at least ten years ago, once again by Raul Harding, was to enter a float in the rose parade, and he helped develop that and, keep that going for several years, and it has been a great success. This this year in 2026, the end of the Oregon Trail interpretive center is taking the lead on this event, but the coordinating committee is also participating. And we are funding the antique bus, which you can see in this photo here. And that is where the funds from the cemetery tour will go to help us support the parade so people can join us in the parade, walk along, ride.

It gives you a ride there to and from, and it helps facilitate participation. So the future of the Oregon City Heritage Coordinating Committee, I think we continue to meet. We we are and advocate and support the Travel Oregon City and the DMMO and look forward to really working closely with them in developing heritage community and the activities that we do. And with Travel Oregon City, we really look forward to the possibility of partnering with other businesses and things and making events more more inclusive of all different kinds of activities. We plan to continue to meet, formulate, and collaborate with the other groups and work towards, as a team to promote Oregon City in the area as a premier heritage, history, and tourism site.

We would invite anyone who is interested in history, heritage, and tourism to join us. We'd love to have you. Do have any

questions or comments? Oh, you had asked me a question, and I got to about 55, and then I lost count because we had an antique toy display for the young at heart, and I there were so many people going in there, and I was talking to so many people about the toys that we lost our count too.

Excellent. That's the way we wanna

do it. So I know there was I've got 55, but there was more than that that came after that. So I I don't know. Just like you. Anything else? Any questions? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you again. You have a question? No questions. Oh, but Would you like to make a comment?

Yeah. I missed all that. Could you repeat? No. No.

No. Look at the slides.

Yes. There's slides. No. I just wanna say one thing about this group, because I've been a member of this group for twenty five, thirty years or so. Thelma can probably tell you.

And this is one of the groups that is super unique to Oregon City, that has had so many different iterations and different, you know, iterations, frustrations, and yet never gives up. There were various times where I thought this committee had you know, would fall apart, and it gets reinvigorated by some new project or new thing. And most of the people associated with this committee and, yes, they do welcome everyone to come, and so there's there's different different people that come at various times. But the majority of this group has been a core group for quite a long time. And I'm I'm just so thankful that most of these people have stuck with it because what it brings is so many things that come back.

And I'll give a great example. We have talked for years about bringing the cemetery tours back, and we did it this last October. It was fantastic. And so it's a group of people that do a lot of work and, you know, are involved in a lot of things. And sometimes that extra effort to just add one more thing is a lot.

And but then when they do it, it's you see the success of it. So I just thank so many of you that have been involved so many years that don't give up, that continue to try to make new events and and and re you know, put life into events that have died and come back and and reinvent them. I'm excited about this group. I'm you know, it's I've been excited to see the expansion of things that they for the Rose Festival, but also for the future of the cemetery tours and things like that and the partnership with the city and the other friends groups. So, anyway, great great job.

K. Thank you so much. And next, we have Josh who is the chair of the citizen involvement committee. Thank you so much for being here. Just for the record, we have Thelma Hagenmiller with Slowpoke Tours in our audience. Hi, Thelma. We're glad to see you're up and around. And Hannah Schmidt. Thank you. Good evening, mayor McGriff and city commissioners.

My name is Hannah Schmidt. I'm the community engagement specialist for the city and the staff liaison to the citizen involvement committee. I'm here tonight with the present chair for the CIC, and I will let, him introduce himself and continue with the annual update.

Thank you, Hannah. My name is Josh Kasor, and I am the current chair of the assistance involvement committee. So we're here to give you our annual report for '25 up to the start of '26, and just wanna give you a few big highlights of, of things we've accomplished in the last year. So for those that don't know, the primary role for the CIC is to engage the community, engage the neighbors, and neighborhood associations to become active in the city and, and increase that community engagement. So in 2025, we started the year with seven act neighborhoods represented by 14 members in the CIC.

And at the, as of February, we had nine active neighborhoods represented by 17 active members. So that is a wonderful increase in our participation. The three neighborhoods that we don't have currently participating in CIC is Tower Vista. They currently meet, but there's no leadership in it. It is represented by Hillandale.

It's a combined meeting. 2 Rivers has active meetings, but they don't have any CIC representatives. And then Rivercrest is currently an inactive neighborhood. So, again, just to, highlight a couple of the big things that happened here over the last year. Hazel Grove Westling Farms, came into the CIC in June 2025, So they became active, which was terrific.

We appreciate them. In July '25, we had a proposal from Jared and Hannah to do some cost savings measures and things like that with the postcard mailings that we previously had and ended up saving about $4,400 overall in our budget. So that was pretty neat.

I think Hannah will give a

little bit more info on that. In October, we actually got together with the youth advisory commission and, utilized their help to identifying pathways to utilizing social media to reach out to perhaps younger neighbors and and, people to get engaged. In November, we welcomed Southend to the CIC, so that was our second new one that we got to add. And then this year, we had a couple really interesting presentations. One was from Scott Burns who spoke to us about the Missoula floods.

It was it was really enlightening to to hear that information and see his presentation and and all the the pictures and data and maps that he had. Pretty neat. And then our mayor was kind enough to come in and give us a presentation about the Willow Falls Locks, and we sure learned a lot about that. And she was telling me before the meeting that she's getting a lot of questions about it. So that engagement was was pretty awesome. And that's what I've got for you. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer

them. That was great. And keep it up. We're gonna get Rivercrest. We're gonna get them back. I'm I'm confident. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Can I make a comment? Please.

I I just wanna encourage you. I think one of the things that we don't hear enough from the neighborhood associations and from the CIC. So I I'm just gonna encourage you to not necessarily wait for a year. If an issue bubbles up and you do your round table and and your meetings and and you hear a concern, you know, more than once or more than one neighborhood association or whatever that should be brought to this commission sooner than your next up late, please do so.

Absolutely. Will do.

Alright.

Thank you.

Okay. But last but not least is the mighty library board led by mister Greg Williams and mister David Goldberg, our chair and and staff. And I think there are people from the library board in the back. Right? Raise your hand. You're on the library board.

We actually have alright. Good evening, mayor and commissioners. Greg Williams, library director, Oregon City Public Library, here with David Goldberg, our library board chair. He's gonna give the annual update for the library board. And then afterwards, with your indulgence, we have a little bit of a fun ceremony with representatives from the friends of the Oregon City Public Library and the Oregon City Library Foundation Perfect. To commemorate some financial support.

And I see our dear Denise Butcher in the sitting Yes.

And Thank you. My partner in crime, Denise Butcher, library operations manager. So I will turn it over to David.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, madam mayor and city commissioners Tony Alex. I'm David Goldberg, the chair of the Oregon City Public Library Advisory Board, and I live in unincorporated Clackamas County. It's my pleasure to share with you the compliment the accomplishments of our excellent public library over the past year, and thank you for your support. I'm gonna be very brief on these. There's pages of things that I could share with you. Our registered, we welcomed a 154,000 in person visitors to the library this last year. Our registered cardholders increased 16%. Our total circulation is increasing.

The number of programs that we're offering increased by 25%. It's a very active, very well supported by the community library. We grew our senior and homebound outreach efforts by coordinating with Meals on Wheels so that books can go out with meals. The volunteers are doing that. We have a mail program as well where homebound people can get vibrant resources by mail.

You'll hear when I'm done briefly about the two major outreach programs that are coming in the coming year with book lockers that we're going to have out around the community. We have a 100 square mile district, and a lot of folks have difficulty getting stuff back. And so we want to be able to deliver and have books returned in their communities, plus a mobile library vehicle that you'll hear more about. We have a very strong dedicated board and credibly experienced senior management and a very vehicle capable library staff. Once again, we were ranked highest in the community survey in terms of satisfaction, and we take that very seriously.

During the past year, the Clackamas County Commissioners initiated a process to consider issues facing Clackamas County Libraries today and into the future. The library task force was composed of representatives of city managers, mayors, library directors, LDAC, and the city and the county commission. Oregon City was not directly represented on the task force. However, Greg and I both attended every one of the sessions. Following six facilitated meetings, a set of recommendations was forwarded to the Clackamas County Commission for action. To date, we have not gotten any feedback as to what that action's going to be. It seems to have gone into a bit of a black hole.

Is there any chance that we can get that information and have it presented to us as well so that we can apply appropriate collaborative pressure on them?

I'm I'm sure that could be arranged, Denise. Thank you.

Yes. I'll talk with Tony and Alex. We'll make sure we get that to you.

Unfortunately, the recommendations, in my opinion and the opinion of many others, did not adequately reflect even the consensus that was taking place in the findings and the discussions that that were happened at the task force. The key missing consensus finding was that the libraries in Clackamas County need additional revenue. The 2008 successful bond measure granted 39¢ per thousand assessed value to the 13, public libraries in Clackamas County. In comparison, Multnomah County assesses a dollar 22 per thousand, so just to get some sense of context. Further, due to the way the library funding formula was developed and approved, and, of course, it had to go through 11 different cities, and so there was a lot of compromise, and I'm sure a lot of very hard work by by folks, that tax revenue collected from within the borders of the library cities stays in that city, and that the revenues collected from the unincorporated area are are divided equally on a per capita basis depending upon how many exist in your district.

So this distribution has resulted in very vast differences in per capita library revenues among the the Clackamas library cities. Just to give you an example of the range, Lake Oswego Library received $79.47 per capita. Gladstone is $41.19, and Oregon City is $43.86. Now this is a very much a reflection on the assessed value of private property in our relative communities. And as the county seat, well, I don't have to tell you the difficulties that that come with that.

Already, we're seeing the impact of inadequate funding with three public libraries already reducing their hours and with significant impact particularly on ebook collection development. Given Oregon's tax rules, this will only get worse as personnel and utility inflation continues to exceed the 3% threshold. We just don't see a great future in being able to come to our cities with a couple of exceptions and expect you to balance the budget when we've got a twenty year old tax rate that just is not not adequate. Therefore, it's my opinion, it's essential that the county libraries go back to the voters for a successive district with a higher rate. This will require an incredible effort to persuade 11 library cities and the county commission to support a new levy.

With the task force within the task force, we heard a lot of reluctance, particularly from city managers and mayors for good reason because of competing needs. And so it it it's very it's gonna be very difficult to get a date specific to be able to go back to the public with the approval of all of the your those concerned. We wanna acknowledge the strong support we received from the Oregon City Library Foundation and the Friends of the Library. You'll hear a little more about that in a moment. The financial support will enable us to increase our service and to reach a large service area, and very excited about that.

Now on a personal note, my wife and I have just purchased a home in Vancouver. And after six years of being on the board, we're moving to be closer to my daughter's family. So I'm resigning from the board, and I feel very good to leave it in very strong, dedicated, hardworking board members and leadership. I wanna thank you, the city leadership, and the excellent management and staff of the Oregon City Library for making my tenure enjoyable and exciting. We have an exceptional and excellent library, and I hope that your continued support will continue to provide the broad range of services that are expected by the community and that our community deserves. Thank you. So, Greg, would you like to introduce the folks from Friends and the Foundation?

Yes. I are there any questions for David before I

don't wanna start crying.

I know. I I'm I'm I've been through it myself.

Thank

you. It's one of those things where you have to smile and say, yay. We're so happy for

you. Yeah.

Hearts breaking inside.

There's two grandkids involved, so I'll

tell you.

Yeah. I understand. I know you do. It's just it's just across the river. It's just across the river, you know.

I On a personal note, David has been such an effective, wonderful board chair. So his passion and his expertise and influence and engagement will be very much missed. So thank you for your service. It's been a great six years. Thank you.

It is my pleasure if with the commission's indulgence to quickly welcome, we have representatives from both the Friends of the Oregon City Public Library and the Oregon City Library Foundation here tonight. A few weeks ago, you approved a contract for us to purchase an outreach vehicle to allow us to get out into our large service area. We had we had mentioned that the friends in the foundation were going to be providing some financial support. So we are thrilled tonight to welcome them to commemorate that financial support. So friends and foundation members, if

you'd like to come on up. Are we getting the big check? Big check.

Are not only getting one oversized novelty check. We are getting two oversized novelty checks. We love big checks. And I'm hoping we might encourage you

to come down for some will come. Gentlemen.

Hopefully, they don't apply for bail.

So I will introduce, the chairs of the respective organizations. I'd like to make a few a few remarks. Cynthia Andrews, chair of the Oregon City Library Foundation, also the vice chair of our library board. And Darcy Stike, our friends of the sorry, friends of the Oregon City Public Library, and Jan Salisbury, our treasurer, the friends of the Oregon City Public Library.

Well, madam mayor and, commissioners, thank you very much on behalf of the Oregon City Library Foundation for your time tonight and the opportunity to speak a little bit about this. The the Library Foundation is the nonprofit fundraising arm of the library, and we are our mission is to support the mission and goals and projects of the library. Since its inception, the foundation has rooted $500,000 to the public library and that included part of the renovation costs of the existing library, the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and other library projects and community activities. So we're really excited to partner with the Friends of the Library to support the library's new outreach beyond the walls mission, which will take library services and information out of the city and get them out to the very large service district that the library includes. So, Greg, on behalf of the Library Foundation, it is my great pleasure to present you with a check, Greg, of $75,000 to support the Beyond the Walls campaign.

Alright. Thank you, Cynthia. So can we

do the introductions? If you will hear what we got that chat.

Sure. Okay. So foundation members, come on up.

Yeah. Sorry. You got me in the air. So we're introducing ourselves. Yes. This is your name.

Pleasure to be here. Karen Martini. I'm in Oregon City. I'm Chelsea Swanson, also in Oregon City.

Cynthia Andrews, where I live in Beer Creek.

Yeah. Dave Wimmer. This is my first time in your news new digs.

My first time caller, though.

Yeah. After fourteen years.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Ken.

I guess it's on me. I'm Janice Salisbury from Camby, Oregon after fifty years in Oregon City. Oh, boy. Formerly Oregon City. Yeah.

The Friends of the Oregon City Library have been around for quite a while, and our first big fundraiser event was over a $100,000, which we thought was unsurmountable because we were just a little group, and that was towards the improvements to the library itself. And we did it. It took us a few years. Now that we have a new used library, bookstore that receives books from all over more than we can handle at times, we have been able to donate anywhere from 5 to $10,000 programs. That's our focus.

And we've we have had to really encourage them to ask us for money because the bookstore is doing very well. The other thing is that we the bookstore itself is run all by volunteers on the average 20 or so a month, which is excellent, and I always call them amazing people that work there. They do a wonderful job. It just as a note, last year, we received over 55,000 items that we recirculated through either the bookstore or we have also given them on to another place where they are able to use it for nonprofit purposes, and at least 11,000 items went out that way as well. And every day, they're working on donations that come in.

In a month, there could be anywhere from five to 10,000 items that come in, not all books, but other things as well. So it's it's quite an enterprise. If you haven't been to

the

bookstore, come by sometime. It's open not on Sunday. No. Not on Sunday. Right. Monday through Saturday. So so with that, we have Well,

you need to introduce yourself. Yep.

So We have also Glee.

Oh, there he is. Oh, yep.

Darcy, would

you like to introduce yourself? Yeah.

Sure. My name is Darcy Stike, and I'm the president of the Friends of the Library Board, and I'm one of the volunteers. And I'm on the management team there. Right. Manage as well. Oh, alright.

Come on, friends.

Come on, friends. He's got a mic. Yep. I have

a mic.

Here you go.

You guys you can pick us up.

Oh, please.

I'm Paul Hanrahan. I'm Oak Grove right down the street. I volunteer and on the board also and the management team.

And I'm Tammy D'Angeles. I volunteer at the store. I'm on the management team and the library board.

And is there a photographer tonight?

Oh, that's my husband, Kevin. He also volunteers at the store.

Kevin, do you have to list? He's a supporter.

Yes. He he started our eBay site. He does our monthly newsletter and a whole bunch of other stuff behind the scenes for

us.

Okay. Me give that to you. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Because we we started to talk about the two Denise show.

Thank you very much for those photo ops with us, and thank you again to our friends in foundation. They're incredible supporters, and I'm so glad they were able to be recognized for their contributions tonight.

I have three full boxes of books that I need to get over to them that I need to donate that I'm going to donate that are sitting in my living room. So well, that is fantastic. It's always great, to hear the report of the library board and the fabulous fundraising. And I was just saying that I have three more boxes of books in my living room that are going to get loaded into my car and taken to the friends at the Oregon City bookstore. So you're the one joining the 55,000. That's right. Yes. If you saw my living room right now, half of it is full of books.

Have a wing of the of the of the bookstore donated by

There you go. There you go. Alright. Thank you so much. So, after so how much was that altogether? So we had 75,150 thousand total

from the Friends of

Awesome. That's amazing. That's amazing. Keep reading and recycle your books. If you don't need them anymore to the Friends of the Oregon City Library bookstore. They get reused. Alright. So next we have items number six and seven. So we have the consent agenda. Do we have questions, or do we have a motion to adopt items a, b, and c?

I'll move to adopt the consent agenda.

Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Commissioner Wilson, commissioner Smith. Commissioner Wilson. Aye.

Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye. Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Adam Marle. Aye. And mayor Denise McGriff.

Aye. Motion passes. Alright. We do not have any public hearings tonight, but we do have some readings, first a second reading and a first reading for items nine a and nine b. So I'd like to ask about the second reading of ordinance number twenty six one zero zero four vacating public right of way of an alley and a portion of 5th And Main Street located West McLaughlin Boulevard. And we had this on our agenda two weeks ago. This is just the second reading. Are there any questions, or is there a motion?

I'll move to approve the second reading of ordinance number 26 dash one zero zero four. Second.

Ordinance number 26 dash one zero zero four, an ordinance of the City Of Oregon City vacating public rights of way of an alley and portions of 5th And Main Street located West of McLaughlin Boulevard.

Commissioner Scott Wilson? Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell? Aye. Commissioner Rocky Smith? Aye. Commissioner Adam Marrow? Aye. And mayor Denise McGriff? Aye. Motion passes.

Alright. Next on our agenda is the first reading of ordinance number twenty six one zero zero seven. Who's is it do we need a report on that? Do you have anything you'd like to add? Mister Graham is gonna give a report, a quick one.

Good evening, commissioners. If you recall, I'm James Graham, economic development manager of Oregon City. And if you recall, the city commission and the arts commission had a joint session back in October 7, whereby two municipal codes were discussed, one involving the very nature of the arts commission itself and the other dealing with providing guidance as to how the arts commission judges murals or decides on murals. So tonight and then after that, there were revisions made, with the help of the city attorney. So tonight, before you, you have, those revisions.

And, if you have any questions, I'm sure the city commission city attorney will be glad to answer them.

We went through this fairly thoroughly, and I wanna thank the staff for helping the arts commission get through all this because it needed revision revising. Is there a motion?

I'll move to approve the first reading of ordinance number 26 dash one zero zero seven, arts commission and mural code update.

See second.

It's been moved and seconded. Ordinance

number twenty six dash one zero zero seven, an ordinance of the city of Oregon City amending Oregon City Municipal Code section 2.26, Arts Commission, and the section 15.28 o nine o, public art murals.

Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye. Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Adam Marle. Aye. And mayor Denise McGriff.

Aye. Motion passes. Alright. Communications.

Oh, I do not have anything tonight. Thank you.

Commissioners? No. We don't have any. K. I just have one item that I will see when I get back to the podium. So for those of you that have not recalled this, so on Saturday from ten until I think somebody's trying to get back in the door. Jan's try I know. From ten to two on Saturday is the, the spring resource fair. She's on the other oh, there she is. On the other side, other side.

Spring resource fair. It'll be at the Pioneer Community Center, and several our organizations are going to have tables. I know that the Youth Advisory Commission will be there helping out. And if you have a chance to stop by, it is going to be another fabulous event. Again, Pioneer Community Center this Saturday, ten to two. And, then we already talked about the tree planting, which is the following week. So that is all I have. Alright. When

I'm gonna say this before, because I don't think we have a next meeting. For those of you that know Oregon City, like most of us do and Oregon City High School especially, Oregon State's high school's history is very well known for girls basketball or at least in the past. But our boys basketball team is doing amazing, and, they are playing again on Friday night. I think sunset on Friday night, and next week is the state tournament, for boys basketball, and I think they're gonna get there. Nice. And So is it is it

an away game or

a home game? Friday night is a home game in Oregon City at the high school. I think think against Sunset. I think it's at 06:30. Okay. And then the state tournament is next Wednesday or Thursday through Saturday. So the final championship game will be a week from this Saturday, I think. K. Saturday. If you're in Oregon City, keep an eye on that. 06:30. This town hasn't won a basketball state boys basketball tournament in the history of the school as far as I know, unless it was way, way back.

So No. The girls

have just This is a big deal. Amazing. Keep your eyes out for that and and wish them luck.

Mira? Yes. Go right ahead.

Kind of on that same line, to recognize the girls swim team at the high school. We finished third in the state, which was a record. And the the boys team was, like, seventh, ninth, somewhere around there, but it was a very good showing for them as well. So, congratulations to both of those teams.

Yay. Oregon City. There was one more thing that is coming up besides the tree thing and the community resource fair. Well, it'll come to me probably after the meeting's over. But Does

it have to do with pies?

No. It has to do with it has to do with That's next month. Yeah.

Oh, no. That's what's left.

This month. Yeah. It's yeah. This can it's March. March. It's it's another community event that's coming up really soon, and I can't I just had it on the tip of my tongue. But, anyway, so, for those of you, we just sent sent out our second issue of the Trail News. The March issue is out. So so far, again, it's been well received. People seem to be genuinely happy with it and to thank our, communications team.

The one thing I oh, I did remember what it is. So today, I had the opportunity to meet with, Samantha Swindler, who is a reporter with The Oregonian, and they're gonna be launching a new series. It's going to start with Oregon City, which I think is kind of exciting. They're gonna have a reporter focused on kind of what's going on in our area. It'll probably be in it more than likely will be in print, and there'll be some on Oregon live.

So that is a a void that, we have had in this community since, Carpenter Media pulled out. They've even now to the point consolidated the Lake Oswego and West Linn papers is now called the review. And so that was really some really good news, just from The Oregonian and that they recognize, that as the county seat, that there is a lot of information going on here, a lot of the things going on that have not been reported since we had them the other newspaper pull out. And if it is successful, they are looking at, moving a reporter to Hillsborough because it's also a county seat, and they don't have a paper anymore either. So that was that was one of my one of my pieces of good news that I heard today.

So alright. Gentlemen, we are adjourned.