City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm waiting The February 2nd, 2026 Auburn City Council workshop will be called to order. Uh the first item is a discussion of the FY27 budget with uh the city manager and the superintendent. also like to recognize the members of the school committee that are here in the audience and uh invite you after we go along the presentation just to flag me down if you have questions or comments. So, Mr. Manager,

thank you, Mayor, Council, appreciate the opportunity to come and we'll This is uh certainly our kickoff of the FY27 budget. Um the superintendent and I have been having discussions. as we've been uh working through um preparation for this kickoff. This is we do this annually uh coming before the council. Um work has already begun behind the scenes. The uh departments are working through compiling their numbers um as well as within the school the committee is working through um compiling theirs as well. So u this is this will be a moving uh process for us for the the new counselors that are here. We'll have several more um workshops as these numbers become more refined. Um I think what will be beneficial for tonight is for us to just uh give you information on where the budget drivers are currently, what we're anticipating, and then any feedback that you can provide to us as we go and start working out and hammering out some of these details and u preparing what will come back before you um in in the future. and for uh the council. Um our discussions will be really starting in the next couple meetings. You'll be getting a lot more information, but certainly kicking off in your first meeting in March. So, I'm going to start with uh the superintendent to start the slides and then I'll have a few for the city and we'll go from there. I should also mention uh we were able to have a a meeting uh with uh the mayor, myself, the superintendent and the school committee chair as we also started talking about uh the preparing the budget. So um so that was a good kickoff to us in this discussions and so um we'll start now soon.

Thank you very much. appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and provide you with a high-level overview of the key drivers for the school department budget. So in terms of the overview, our budget reflects contractual and mandated cost increases and we are focusing right now on maintaining services and the primary drivers and I'll go into this in the next slide are contractual salaries, health insurance and special education costs and the cost pressures will be partially offset by declining debt service this year. And also we anticipate a state subsidy increase. And our budget is also aligned with enrollment trends in the district and long-term planning around our facilities. So this budget is really about meeting obligations and maintaining services, not adding personnel or programs. right now. This next slide shows the budget distribution where you can see 80% of our costs are reflected in personnel salaries and benefits and then 20% is represented by all other costs. And we say this every year, public a education is a labor intensive service. The majority of costs support people. So when we talk about budget increases, we are largely talking about salaries, benefits, and required staffing. And now we're getting into the details right now of our top three budget drivers. And the first is contractual salary increases. And right now, we're anticipating around a $1.38 million increase there. And you can see the

three main groups, the teachers, it's going to be about $1 million. The edteex and our admin assistants around $300,000. And the administrators, $80,000. And again, these are all contractual increases. They're built into the contract. And then the number two budget driver this year is health insurance. and we're anticipating about a 15% increase in health insurance. That's going to be about $1.1 million. And then the third budget driver is special education and we're anticipating about a $1 million increase there. And this includes mandated staffing, student placements, transportation, and other student supports. So, it's important to remember that these costs are driven by contracts, market conditions, and legal requirements. Okay. Looking ahead, we are proposing a project at the Auburn Middle School where we would like to renovate the middle school so that it can it can include sixth grade. And our proposed CIP request this year will be around $11.2 million. And the breakdown in that is about $5 million for the renovation of the building to include sixth grade and then another $6.2 million for building systems and infrastructure. And it's important to note there that that $6.2 million, that's those are capital improvements that need to be made no matter what. So, the investment that's in addition to that is around $5 million to put a small addition onto the middle

school to be able to fit sixth graders there. And we would target this change to happen in the fall of 2028. And at that time, we would be able to transition 240 students to the middle school. And that is going to free up space in our elementary schools. And it will allow us to look at our elementary school configurations and determine how we're going to organize and how we may potentially be able to consolidate and close a school. And with the closure of an elementary school, we would see the cost of this project returned over a 5-year period with even more savings possible in the future because we'd be looking at a million dollars in annual operating costs that we would save and also at least $7 million in avoided future capital costs with the closure of an elementary school. So this is really a a phased and strategic investment to improve efficiency and avoid larger future costs down the road for our facilities. And you know as we move forward with this any future decisions about our facilities would return to the council through our CIP and budget process. And so this is just a summary of the things that I've talked about. 80% of our budget supports personnel salaries and benefits. Our increases this year are driven by contractual obligations, health insurance costs, and special ed. And these special ed costs are mandated services that we have to provide to students. Our budget is right now maintaining current services. So, we're not adding personnel or programs,

and we will um have declining debt service and anticipated state subsidy growth to help offset the cost pressures for this year. And then our strategic capital planning positions the district for long-term efficiency and cost avoidance down the road. So, I would open the floor to any questions here. Any questions or comments from the council? Council Gary. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Could we please get a copy of your slides and your presentation tonight, both from the city and from your school? Yes.

And can we also have eventually more numbers so we can compare costs and see where all the costs are coming in and line items? Yes, we can. And thank you for all your kind hard work,

Council K. Thank you, Dr. Dr. Doris for the presentation. And in addition to those materials, it may be helpful for um council to have materials related to the um presentations and the the pros cons for the expansion of the middle school. A lot of really good information there. U a lot of benefits not just from a cost savings down the road, but from more immediate uh impact on the educational attainment. So that would be helpful. Thanks. Yes, council plat.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Dr. Dors. Uh my question was just a reminder to the council. I know we've got uh 15% estimate in there for health insurance. Around what time do we find out the actual uh health insurance increase? That's in April when we will find that out. Great. Thank you. Other questions, comments? No. Um thank you very much for the presentation. Um just remind me um special ed the situation with special ed is there's state and federalmandated services that have to be provided but neither the federal or state government reimburse the full amount for their required services. Correct.

That's correct. Which ends up being it it seems like we had the same discussion last year, right? is there's continuing uh requirements that may be good things to do, but they don't give us the level of um reimbursement that one would expect to pay for those services. Yes. Um any questions or comments from members of the school committee? No. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Manager.

So, we'll move into the municipal side of the budget. These are um as we've been discussing the very preliminary numbers and so um basic where we're at currently as a city we've had we've collected the uh budget uh numbers from the departments uh we also have uh interlocal government uh budgets that have been presented those are um budgets mostly those are budgets with uh the city of Lewon and so uh myself and uh the city administrator in Lewon and the two finance directors uh will be meeting uh this week uh to go over uh the joint budgets that have been presented so far uh for those um just to to recall what those are. So it's uh LATC which is our transit. It's also Lewon Auburn 911 and the Auburn Lewon airport um and then LA Arts. So those will be the four entities that we we meet with um and go over their budgets together and um and then typically both managers come with a recommendation u back to the cities for consideration. Um and then the other in a local agreement uh I'm sorry the other inlo um line item is the county tax. So when you look at our section of inlocal um and our governmental departments county tax will be included in that. So, right out the gate, our total municipal budget increase is at 15%. Um, the drivers for this um under municipal services, it's under 50 uh under 5% increase. Uh what's driving that is uh salaries that we have built in just as the superintendent mentioned. We have some contractual obligations. Um and these are mostly uh salaries that were um introduced last year's budget that is now coming in to this year's uh budget

um uh cycle. And so also within uh the municipal services uh would include um solid waste increases that we know is coming as a result of main waste energy and um health insurance as well. Um as the superintendent um mentioned uh on the municipal side our health insurance is increasing 11%. We have our numbers already but we are off um health insurance that are off cycle. So it's really we have what the numbers are for starting January 1 and that will go to December of next year. So, we usually add some in there for depending on what the increase will be um starting uh for January uh in our FY27 budget. And so, uh so we will be uh putting a number in that'll be safe for us to move forward with. Um debt service is the the number one driver in our budget this year. This is the public safety building. uh moving forward with with the uh voter initiated um bond that is now introduced for FY27. So that's a 44% increase in what we would normally have in our debt service line item. And then intergovernmental programs is increasing uh 11%. Two of those budgets still need to be uh reviewed as I mentioned um um that have the the largest increase and that is Lewon Auburn 911 center as well as um um the airport stayed flat, LA Transit stayed flat. Um so those those line items are are holding holding the line. I think it was just rarely a small less than a 1% increase in transit. And so we'll we'll continue working through those numbers. LA Arts, we still need to work out what that will be uh for the

upcoming um year. But also in this intergovernmental program, that 11% would be the 13% increase for county tax. Um so those are really the two drivers within intergovernmental programs, the LA 911 and county tax, both coming in at around 13% increase for each of those budgets. Of those key drivers, 77% of the increase is a fixed cost. That includes your public safety bond and your county tax. So, as we start working through this, there's not a lot that we can uh work with as far as that 77% fixed. There's 23% of that increases of that increase maintains the existing programs that were approved last year. Um very similar theme that you're hearing from the superintendent that you're going to hear from me is that the U plan with this budget is present current costs, current programs, no increase, no changes in staffing. And so um so that's what I'll be presenting um as we move forward until the council you give me direction um regarding the budget and then we'll we'll work through that. Uh but currently it's no new programs, no new staffing positions. As I mentioned, this is our first review of the department and partner budgets. Next step, we'll confirm the budget drivers over the next few weeks. Um that's really digging into these, fine-tuning these. Uh main waste energy is has not approved their FY27 budget. Um I anticipate that will happen in the next two weeks and so we'll have a a more um confirmed number from them. County tax is confirmed. However, the Lewis and Auburn uh initiatives, those will be confirmed within the next week or two. So, um, so that will help us,

um, begin to detail this budget, um, and really have it ready for you for the first week of March so that we can, uh, dig in and actually go through line item changes through, uh, this the work that's done at the council level. So, questions. Thank you. Questions from the council. I just have one question. Go ahead. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Um, uh, city manager, can you remind me the amount, uh, for the bond for the public safety bond? It's a 44% increase. Can you remind me that the debt service alone is about $6.8 million?

Thank you. Increase. um in the 9 is is the capital cost for the 911 move in the capital line or is it going to be in the 911 operational? It'll be in the capital line and is that included in in here now?

That's not No, we well we carry forward I guess to build the budget what we've done is we basically what we've retired is what's being introduced but we don't really see the FY 27 capital until FY28. So, so it will be in there. We're carrying forward our our what was approved in FY 26 is now showing up in the FY27 debt um request. So, yes, it'll be in there, but we won't see that until FY28, right? Any questions or comments? Council,

one question. Remind me. I think we've heard this before, but is the uh public safety building being fully bonded this year? Is there any are there any remaining chunks to occur after this year? I know that we did a little bit last year. Yeah, so we did um probably about 6 million last year. 5 Yeah, just under six million last year. Uh this year our total amount Kelsey 35 million

and then we'll have a little cleanup at the uh probably in FY28 we'll know a little more what that last amount that we'll need to draw down. Yeah. Any other questions or comments? Not seeing any. Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation. The my um thoughts on this for the council uh the counselors that were here uh for the last two budgets. It's the same approach. Um for the new counselors um as you've heard the superintendent and the manager what we've requested is that they provide a current services budget um to maintain the services um they previously provided and if there's any suggested new programs or services they'll those will be um outlined separately. The other thing the council should start thinking about is um what you want to set for a goal for a total budget increase. Right? As we go through the budget, um it's uh it's a much more efficient exercise if we have some generalized understanding from the council is what number you want to drive to. Right? as you're starting to make decisions and thinking about what the impacts of any changes in the in the submitted budget are, knowing what you're driving to is helpful. Doesn't mean we'll get there. Doesn't mean we won't be able to go past that, but you should be thinking about that um as a way to frame the discussion um as we start into this process here in in uh March and April. So any last questions on this?

I I would just add that um as you think about that what your target is, your percentage increase, just understand that the the increase in the budget is different than the increase in the tax levy. So they're they're not interchangeable, right? So if you pick a number five, 10, whatever that number is, they're different. And as we go through the process, you'll understand how they're different. Um but it's not quite that onetoone relationship. So that's important to note. Yeah. Thank you. Anything else? Councilor Gary. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. How on track are we with the citywide evaluation and when will that come online? Well, I I don't think it's it's the same as before and it's not going to take effect in this fiscal year.

That's correct. Yeah, you'll actually get a presentation at your next council meeting uh from the assessor's office and we'll get an update from from her then. Thank you. Anything else? No. Great. Thank you very much. We'll move on

uh to the next item which is uh picking up our workshop on syringe service programs. Um the council uh remind the council we went through a number of items. We have a a few items left uh to get some sense of from the council. Uh what will happen then is that based on the feedback that we got in the meetings, staff will work on drafting a proposed ordinance which will then come back and we'll have at least one. I'm thinking we'll probably have several workshop sessions to work through what that might be before we potentially move into the adoption process. So, picking up where we left off, um we were talking about um activities at uh an SSP site and the next question on the list was um required activities. In other words, what what's the council's expectation about services that would be offered at at uh an SSP site other than just um uh needle exchange? So, councilors uh have thoughts on that. There's, you know, there could be other harm reduction, it could be medical testing, it could be uh education, referral services. Um you know we uh in our early workshops there was quite a bit of discussion about this some of there is some activity that's mandated when they become certified by the state but um interested in what thoughts the council has uh about expectations on an SSP in this area.

Council count. Uh thank you Mr. Mayor. Before we start that conversation I had a question. And are we thinking about the bricks and mortar uh sites or are we also thinking and should they be separately thought about for the mobile?

Yeah, thank you. That that's a really good point and it's a good reminder. I think you should be thinking about it every one of these items potentially in three different ways. Brick and mortar, which is a fixed site for the for the certified entity. uh fixed locations which may not be at their site, but they're places that they would regularly be going to on a schedule in which they would uh identify those sites and the parameters around being at those sites in advance. And then the um the last one would be mobile in which uh we'll see what happens with the forthcoming uh rule adoption by the state but I think for the purposes of discussion at this point we should assume that there's not necessarily fixed site or schedule there um going to uh areas where there's a demand for service. Any thoughts from the council in this area?

I I just I guess I am curious. Is it typical for a municipality to consider what they have to do as opposed to what they can't do? I guess I'm struggling to I don't necessarily know what um SSP can do other than what's been provided to us through anecdotes in in Lewon, for example, but I could simply repeat the five things I remember from the Lewon site and I may be 20 items short. So, I'm just curious, is it normal for municipalities to enumerate the things they can do as opposed to say the things that they cannot do? Yeah, I guess I would say at this point there's probably no normal uh for municipalities. Uh uh creating ordinances to help regulate this is a fairly new occurrence and there are there are some there are some um guidance from the state. But um I I guess I would think about it is based on the discussion we've had to this point, are there things that um you would see as being beneficial and that you would want an SSP operating in the city to provide? I I think that the one thing again without enumerating all the different items. I would just want to make sure that somebody providing a needles and we we'll get to discussions on how many and what that looks like, but if an entity is doing that, I would want to know that they're making a concerted effort to funnel that client that person into a into the pipeline of of service of services. Not saying they're forcing them into that. Everyone's got to make their own decision when they're ready. But again, I don't know how to how to state that, what words to use, but and maybe the state already has in the licensing program, but as a city council in Auburn, I'd want to make sure it's very clear that they're not just handing these things out, but they're handing them out as a means to get someone into the pipeline.

Right. So your thought on this would be there would be some rules around treatment uh for lack of a better I don't know the actual term either but treatment referrals where uh there's a discussion with a person and understanding of the situation they're in uh identifying potential programs that would be helpful uh for that person to deal with their situation and then making referrals to the person to those programs. Yeah, just some sort of record or protocol showing that that effort was made. Again, I don't I don't know exactly how this works. I don't think you can force people to give you their names and their information, but you can at least prove that you offered them X or offered them Y and they either declined or accepted, but at a very basic level, I would want to see that as a requirement because I think otherwise it's like what are we doing, you know?

Council, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, just to follow up on that, uh, Council Platz, appreciate those comments. I to get a little bit more specific, I think, educational materials, uh, evidence-based, coaching, skill-based, uh, approaches, motivational interviewing are some of those common things. But I think the key of underscoring um as we've said, we we're I I we talked about wanting a a certified program, ensuring that there's evidence-based approaches to those to to to ensure that they're encouraging people along that pathway to eventually getting treatment when they're when they're ready. Council Randall,

thank you both. Um, I think something that we have to make sure that we include is protection for the individuals who are going to these facilities to get treatment. So, if they're going there to um to get needle to exchange needles, they need to know that when they go in there and they're getting all of this advice and these referrals to different places that they're not going to walk out and be arrested for having the paraphernalia on their person after leaving because it's expected they're going to have it. Um, and we don't want to lure them in there or have them feel like we're luring them in there with the cover of treatment or referral um, only to walk out and and be targeted by the by the police.

Yeah. And I I appreciate the sentiment just uh to remind the counselors and the public that when the legislature uh did not the initial but the more recent amendments to the syringe service programs, they decriminalized uh possession of hypodermic apparatus and the ability to use drug residue in hypodermic apparatus as a foundational piece for uh some type of a drug charge. Council Butler,

I could talk about this topic quite a bit being a behavioral health professional myself and I think one of the things I'd love to see us consider is um the motivational aspects of engaging in those treatment services. Um, one being contingency management, um, which is an opportunity to incentivize some of the engagement without it being coercive, depending on how detailed we'd like to get. Other other thoughts, Council Gary,

thank you, Mr. Mayor. Is the state mandating that all municipalities have these type of places set up? And can we also if we have to set them up, can we limit how many that uh we allow into the city of Auburn that we allow what I missed that last allowed how many that they have so that we don't have 50. I mean anyway what I mean is to get the right number of what we exactly need to have and not go overboard.

Right. So, so to the last point, I think my recollection of the discussion at the last work session is that we would permit two and um I don't know that anybody knows for sure that that's the right number, but one seemed insufficient and the uh process to modify an ordinance isn't so long that if more were necessary that the council couldn't take that up and and um expand understand the number to to the first point. The state doesn't mandate that uh an SSP operate in any particular municipality. The state uh has authorized SFPs throughout the state and uh an SSP that wants to operate in a community can uh apply to human services meet all the requirements and become certified. So you know based on the discussion last time and the discussion with legal um I think we would have a very tenuous argument to prohibit them uh which will likely lead to some very protracted and expensive um litigation that really wouldn't be about syringe service providers. It would be about the uh balance of power between uh the legislature uh and a municipality's capability to frustrate the public policy uh put forth by the legislature and statutes and a municipality's home rule. So I think we're proceeding at this point um uh along the lines that one could be certified um you know the council could decide that they that you don't want to enact any type of regulatory ordinance in

which case you would have the situation that you have today and the situation we previously had in Auburn when we had a provider in Auburn in that they would operate strictly pursuant to the guidelines promagated by the state in their certification process. Um and um some of the things that may be of concern to residents in Auburn and to the city council might not be covered in that. I think that's why we're talking about potentially enacting an ordinance. Thank you.

Yeah, councelor Dval. Uh yeah, I just I want to agree with the concept that several counselors have mentioned of just providing support services or referral services of some sort in these locations. I just when we get to the point of writing ordinance, I would like language that wasn't overly specific on what these things need to be because then once best practice is changed, you have to then go back and change the ordinance. So finding some language that really talked about best practices in these areas I think would be my preference. Um I think the other area that was touched on uh is medical testing which I think is important right the the uh programs uh typically do HIV hepatitis testing and those types of things which is uh you know another another uh harm reduction technique uh to identify those communicable diseases and make the appropriate referrals to them before um it spread without throughout the community. Um on this particular point is if there's nothing further I would invite the folks from uh human services I mean SC sorry CDC and spurink if if you have anything to add about particular services you might uh typically provide that would be uh good just come up to the microphone if if you uh if you Hello again. I'm Ernestine Peralt and I'm the community outreach uh program supervisor at Spurwink. And one of the programs that I oversee is the uh SSP there at 1155 Lisbon Street. Uh when you're talking about services, um I think about um we have a a um a form

that we try to get every person that comes into the SSP to fill out. Um it does ask a variety of different questions and demographics and whatnot. It's not mandatory that they fill it out. Um but part of that also educates them on what services that we're able to provide for them. And we currently have 23 services that we're able to connect them to. Um more than half of those on that list are treatment resources and connections. And then outside of that would be things such as um how to uh how to get food, how to get clothing, how to um housing, you name it, you know, the variety of different things. So we kind of look look at each person as a very holistic kind of perspective in terms of anything and everything that we could possibly connect them to for some sort of help with services um resources that they need. um then you know we are we pride ourselves on making sure that we have at least um you know one avenue for them to be able to pursue and many of those um you know fortunately um being part of Spurwink um many of those you know we're able to serve right there in house so it makes it pretty easy walk them up to the front desk and you know and and partake in um you know signing them them up for a variety of services right there and then outside of that we have obviously many community partners that uh you know if someone has a need then generally we're getting on the phone uh right while they're there in the clinic and trying to connect them to resources and and people and whatnot and making some arrangements and all that. So, we're very responsive. Um, you know, when someone says, "I I need some sort of help or assistance." And, um, really the only thing that stands in the way most times is if they have, you know, someone waiting like they've, you know, they've um been transported there by a ride service or something, then sometimes we're up against the clock. Um, but we can pull things out pretty uh pretty fast these days. So, um, and, um,

most of that is because any downtime that we have, the staff are continuously looking and engaging with community partners, even outside of our, you know, uh, jurisdiction, uh, to to be able to have answers for folks. Any questions? Uh, Council Randall, thank you. How often are if someone comes to you and they are ready that day for treatment, how often are they in a treatment program by the end of that day or the end of that week?

Very frequently. Um we, you know, we have a lot of community partners that um it's a phone call away oftentimes. We get the statewide um open bed list as well every day. So we we have that right at you know 8:00 in the morning to kind of know where where the beds are available um if someone wants any sort of inpatient kind of situation. Um then we have those at our disposal and then make those phone calls. But um you know I think our record is like two hours from the time that someone says you know I want to go into say detox. I think that's our record. Um I think that our average is usually within 24 hours.

What are the barriers? uh main care that's oftentimes someone might not have main care so just being able to kind of you know get that on a fast track is not always easy um transportation but we have a variety of different uh providers as well as um you know just volunteers that are in our Anderson community uh that um are that are more than willing if a person is going to treatment then they're more than willing to make it happen to figure out a way in which to get them transport and oftent times they're coming to get them themselves and bringing them where they need to be. Council count,

being in data geek, I I would love to have uh your thoughts on how much of a burden if at all it would be I know you're required to provide some data to the state. It would be great if I don't think I would make it a requirement of in the ordinance, but really nice to have is some feedback on data and that comes back to the council on some cadence. How much a burden would that be on your program?

We provide a monthly um data collection to the state. So, it's a it's a portal that the state that you know the CDC has and we enter the information in there. Um so, it wouldn't be a struggle. We've offered this um you know in other municipalities as well to have that. There is a uh an annual report of course you know that's available for for all public um that's on the website. So uh but obviously you probably don't want to wait a year to find out some numbers. So um but we have those numbers pretty regularly. That's pretty easy. I had compiled some just to kind of have a reference as to sort of what last year looked like for us since we just wrapped up all of the year-end information. Um and we served about 1100 people last year which for us if you think about the year before that we served 200 people. So that's a massive increase for us for our small little clinic um and particularly it's because obviously halfway through this past year we became the only SSP um in this area. So um you know we went from say 400 or so um in the first half of the year and then when the other SSP closed then you know I think towards the end we were around around 7 or 800 for the last 6 months. So that's a sizable increase obviously for us.

Yes. So, so would it be fair to say that uh the burden of providing reporting would be slight if it was what you're already required to report to the state, but if it was anything more than that, it would become more burdensome. Sure. I I think that you know the collection of data for the state is pretty robust. There's a you know a multitude of categories and whatnot. So, so, so perhaps you could um provide a sample of that to Ms. Edwards so staff can have it um so the council can get a sense of

uh what type of reporting an SSP is already providing and if that uh that reporting would meet their needs. Absolutely. No problem. Council Gary.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. have I mean I don't know what services our Auburn's uh drop in center has and if I mean can you contact them and maybe see if you can maybe sublet a space there when they're open like on Wednesdays and Saturdays to catch if they don't have services in place to catch those that need your services dearly. Yes, ma'am. We are already there. Actually, we have a sublet office. Burwink has a sublet office at the drop-in center. Um, we're not obviously providing syringe services there. We only provide syringe services very specifically at our Living 55 location currently. Um, but as far as all of the other types of services and connections and resources um, and support, recovery coaching, all of that, we are there on Wednesdays every Wednesday providing those sorts of um, services. And then I do have some staff that volunteer and go there on Saturdays to provide the same support.

That's really great information and I'm glad to hear that you're already made a presence there. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Council Buffer. For the um contacts that you had that you reported the 1100, are those unduplicated contacts or are they encounters? Those are encounters. Yes. Other questions on this particular item? Council Randall, can you just specify the difference between the encounters and the this the duplicated numbers so we can all understand?

I can tell you what I think, but maybe you want to add some too. Sure. So, so unduplicated, the reason I asked that question is that we're not tracking um necessarily those individual people coming through, right? We're we're doing some anonymous tracking. So an encounter would be staff person saw an individual but not necessarily that individual one time versus multiple times right new people versus repeats I suppose is maybe another way of taking a look at it so we could extract that you know I wasn't prepared for that obviously but you know for today but that's that's again it's a trackable um part of our our monthly port reporting um that would show how many newcomers versus how many repeats. So yes,

then and because you're required to provide it to the state, um you know the number of people that have registered, right? My recollection from the prior workshop is someone just someone can come in and register, but you just can't walk in off the street and do this. You um you have to register with the SSP. You could register for more than one, but you have to be registered at an SSP to get services. So you would know the number of registrants that you have and then the number of encounters that you have throughout the year.

Actually, may or no, that's not correct. That a person can walk off the street and that's actually how we get the majority of our clientele is they just come in anonymously, you know, any time between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, right? And they're not required they're not required to fill out that paperwork or register, if you will. um they could just come in and say, you know, I'm Jane Smith and this is what I'm looking for today and and that's it. And they they are not required to fill out any of that. We oftent times will just take the paperwork and, you know, have conversations with them. If they refuse to fill out the paperwork, then we still are collecting the information in terms of what they're looking for, what we provided for them, etc. So there's still a tracking of every single individual that comes in, but they're not they themselves are not required to fill out paperwork.

Okay, great. Many do, but they're not required.

Other questions on this point? Um I guess um uh one of the other questions that had come up in the past about uh potential ordinances uh what allowable activities can take place, right? We have an SSP. Is the SSP limited to providing those services and these ancillary services that have been described that go along with it or can they can it be can they be engaged in other businesses there? What what I'm I'm not really sure how this works but I had a couple members of the public that asked about this. So I I don't know, Miss Smith, if Yeah. It Are there limitations when they're certified on the activities an SSP can engage in outside of what they're certified to do? Could they be running some other business and have an SSP in the same place or the same people working on other activities?

I'm going to pitch that to the CDC. I Hi, good evening. Ann sites with Maine CDC infectious disease prevention. Nice to see you all again. One comment on the the discussion you just had is that SSPs are required to enroll all participants. That can be limited in what that enrollment looks like, but at the minimum they must confirm that the participant is um 18 years or older. So there is an enrollment requirement and that is what's reported to the state new enroles and then total enroles each month. Okay.

And then at the end of the year we are looking to aggregate across all SSPs the total number of enroles including new participants in a year. And that's part of our legislative report each year. SSPs typically do not conduct SSP activities alongside of another activity in that same brick and mortar or um the other um ways of delivering services. So I think your your other question is relative to like could they operate another business or another type of service provision alongside. So typically SSP services are somewhat discreet and um handled separately of those other services. I think Spurwing's a great example. They have many different prevention, harm reduction, behavioral health services that are offered in the same house, but their SSP work is like a designated room, if you will.

Right. So, so the very specific question I got was, can somebody have a cannabis license and be operating an SSP in their cannabis store? Uh, I'd have to review the rules to see if that's particularly like specifically prohibitive. I do know that that's not the case. Currently there is no currently certified SSP that's operating another business or service out of the same house like

so the expectation would be that the SSP program even if it's colllocated with other programs would be focused on specifically just providing those services and the you know the ancillary referrals and coordination that that goes along with that. Yes, that's my understanding. Okay, Mr. Mayor, quick question. Uh relative to that, do SSPs ever sell anything? Uh no. No, they're actually it's I think it is prohibited that they cannot receive rumination for Yeah, I think that's the barrier right there is I think that there's probably a state provision that allows them to not conduct business uh within a trans transactional level monetarily.

Yes, that's my understanding of it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good point.

Mr. Mayor, just to underscore this this question, I I suspect I agree with council class. We're probably covered there. But I would just like to state that I I think the intent here is that any activities that are going on are related to harm reduction, right? That's the per purpose and that there would be referrals or motivational. And so it it you know something like to the question of the the the resident, could you sell cannabis and do this? I I think we could have a hefty debate on whether there's a harm reduction conflict there. So

So the rule specifically states is that programs should not shall not accept rum rumination from consumers for delivering needle exchange services. So that's the specific statement, right? But but to council plat's point, it doesn't prohibit them from engaging in some other type of business in in the same location. Again, I would have to review the rule in in depth to understand the colllocating of two services together. One which is collecting fees and another which is not. But my understanding is that we do not have that model here in the state and um I don't believe it's acceptable.

Thank you. Um uh we touched on this a minute ago as recordkeeping requirements and um uh I think that it goes along the sort of two pieces to this that a companion one's recordeping requirements and one's inspections. So my understanding of the current um situation is if there was a certified operator in Auburn, we wouldn't have any direct access to their records, nor would we have any direct means of inspecting to make sure that they were following the appropriate rules. So, um I think along with um understanding what records the rule provides and for the council decide if those are sufficient for the city purposes. Um I would the other question is whether the council thinks we should have a right of inspection uh to the location. People are shaking their head up and down. I think the answer to that is yes.

Yeah, I think that's there's parity with other other ordinances that affect other industries requiring inspection.

Um um council plat brought this up a minute ago, but uh one of the items that we need to discuss is needle exchange rate. You recall from our uh I think the first workshop um when Gordon Smith was uh addressing this issue of the needle exchange rate um it's currently uh up to a hundred. It it uh it's not automatic. You just don't walk in and somebody hands you a box of 100 needles as as uh Miss Pearl has discussed before. there's a discussion to understand the person's circumstances and supply the number of needles that make sense in that circumstance. Um, uh, Gordon Smith in his discussion, if you recall, when the legislature modified this, the the hundred was a compromised position between um um a lot of harm reduction specialists that wanted the flexibility to provide the number of needles necessary without a cap and those that wanted some very strict um exchange rate. So um thoughts uh on this issue by the council council count

Mr. Mayor before uh provide a thought I would love to ask a question because I think you told us on you know in general how often people are getting that extreme number of you know hundred or more versus a smaller number. Could you could you talk about your experience at Spuring?

Sure. Um when someone comes in that's new uh that doesn't have any syringes for an exchange then we obviously first begin by having a conversation with them to understand their use and their need etc. Um and generally what we're um giving people is a couple of sleeves which is usually around 20 um for them at that moment. And because the the key to a lot of the success in harm reduction is connection and having people come in as often as possible and continuing to discuss and support, you know, support them for their needs and and whatnot as well. Um and so that that's kind of a generalized kind of number that we're that we use. Are there exceptions to that? Yes. Um but you know we follow the CDC guidelines. We obviously do know that we can give a person up to 100. Um the concern that we have had as a whole um about that number is you know we may not see someone again for quite some time if we give them that amount. Um and again it kind of goes against our sort of connection mantra. um as well as what what the evidence shows is you know the connection and the repeated sort of um support um from harm reduction specialists, recovery coaches, treatment providers is usually what drives obviously uh you know the success rate for folks.

Quick followup if I may. Uh Dr. Sykes, any thoughts to add to that in terms of what your knowledge is around other programs? You know, how often are we getting to that 100 per visit? I'm not exactly certain how often it the exchange is at 100. Um I do know that some programs have adopted internal policies which is allowable in the rule where the limit of their exchange is only up to a certain number that is actually less than the 100 that is stated. Um and then there are other SSPs that are very um when when we discuss the rule and we're in rulem as we are now um we hear regularly that a a needs-based approach is harm reduction and that having a cap is not best practice. Um, so, uh, we're sensitive to to all the viewpoints and the community needs, um, and really appreciate the opportunity that SSPs have to create that trusted relationship with their clients, their consumers, and ideally meet their needs over time. So, particularly like if there were going into a long weekend and the SSPs closed on Monday, how does how do we can support that person's need for that weekend such that they're always using a sterile syringe every time they use? And this is what's just so critical. Any reuse of the syringe um leaves that person vulnerable to infectious diseases. So we emphasize this.

Council Gary. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've got great concerns of allowing some people to have 100 needles because uh if you're homeless, you can only carry so much stuff with you. And if I am a drug addict and need to have needles and I just found out my tent mate or somebody else down the road has a hundred half crate and I thought I may go and and this person up and take his supply. Council Randall,

this question may be off the rails. However, I have heard the argument of why do we give free needles to drug addicts but we don't give free needles to diabetics. Is there any situation in the state where diabetics are able to use the exchange as well?

Um syringe programs um service programs can enroll any person in need. Um, and I believe that's part of the conversation um, in their enrollment process and and during each encounter talking about their need. Um, generally I think the people visiting syringe service programs are um, people with substance use disorder. Um, uh, so I think there's that opportunity of course I just don't think that it happens in common practice. Other questions council button with that? Are we screening at the SSP for glucose monitoring or needs around that

uh screening in terms of is it part of the questions that are uh so each SSP will design their own intake process. Is this part of the pro procedures that they in it should include the points that are part of the rule in terms of the type of information for each consumer as they enroll um and then during each encounter. Um, so I don't know that that's part of their questionnaire. Um, it would I don't if you had that experience, Ernestine at Spurwank. Um, yeah, it would be interesting. We I could ask that question further to find out more for you, but I I don't know that it is part of the current enrollment process. It's certainly not part of our standard requirements.

Sure. Um, well, I won't beat around the bush. I'll answer your question directly, which is how do we feel about the needle exchange ratios? Um, so I I have discomfort at this particular moment in time about some large ratio of 10 to one, 100 to one. It's not to say that I can't be dissuaded. But in this moment, I so I I understand everything we've heard from the public health officials. I they're right. I'm not going to argue that. I'm not the scientist. I you know, clearly the facts are the facts. What I struggle with is something we saw in one of the earlier presentations about the disparity between needles out and needles in. And it's a huge number. Now, I'm not going to say that those are the needles that people find on the ground. It could be any needles. It could be needles from SSPs. It could be needles people buy at CVS. I think it's foolish to link one to the other. But I do know that there's a massive disparity in the number of needles collected and the number of needles out. So, where I'm at in this moment, and again, I'm someone who can change with a nice debate, but I would like to see us dive in a little further to the exchange language of exchanging needles. Okay? I I understand that somebody who might show up for the first time has a greater need for a greater number of needles or if they show up on a Friday, maybe they need five, maybe they need 10. But I what I want to focus on is how do we instill accountability in the folks receiving these needles to bring them back. Not use them again, but to not throw them in on the ground to bring them back or for SSPs to invest in more effective collection locations. And I'd like I'd love to to explore a system where it's a one one unless the SSP has amassed an amount of of um of trash of of used needles and they can prove via collection data, hey, we've got we

picked up 20,000 needles in our receptacles across the city. And so now you can give those out. I I I'd like to explore some system where it's not just a open-ended number, but but we're actually collect we're tracking what comes in and what goes out. Um, you know, that's the feedback I hear from constituents is is concerns about about litter. Again, I'm hesitant to link SSPs to the litter, but anecdotally, I have cleaned needles from my commercial properties. I have cleaned needles off of encampments on on private property of my parents home in Auburn. So, I I've I've seen these things. they're very real. Um, so that I feel like is the thing that we need to address. So I'm currently uncomfortable with a 10 to one or greater, but I I would love to have the conversation.

So So the question I I'd like to address this, but the first thing I would do is ask a question is so what do you expect will happen if it's different than 100 to one? Because I don't expect anything different to happen.

My hope is that we compel users to bring back 10 needles to get 10 needles. And so the question I would ask is why do you want them to bring them back? So you've got to remember that these numbers from the SSPs don't provide an accurate reflection of the issue around needle disposal. it. So, are we saying that if we give someone a hundred needles and they get them on Friday and they're not coming back till Tuesday because it's a holiday weekend, we don't want them to put used needles in sharps boxes. People come to the drop-in center, there's sharps boxes there. There's sharps boxes on the Riverwalk. There's sharps boxes all over the place. Are we saying that if someone's a substance abuse user, we want them to carry these dirty needles around with them until they happen to come back to the SSP and they go to a different SSP?

No, but I but like I just said, I I would support a conversation around are SSPs responsible for possibly emptying those boxes, taking inventory on the contents, reporting it to the municipality, and therefore increasing the balance of needles that they can give out. I just I want to address the issue of accountability and we have a lot of needle waste whether it's on the ground or it's in the the refuge stream you know it's it's there and is it responsible to be just pouring in hundreds of thousands of needles into the waist stream without thinking about it I

so what would your thoughts be that we pass an ordinance that any pharmacy in Auburn cannot sell needles to someone that needs it for not substance abuse issues but a medical issue unless unless they bring all the dirty needles into the pharmacy. I think it I think we're not comparing apples to apples if we're talking about selling versus giving away.

Well, there's nothing to prevent people. I don't know if anybody's gone to thesearmacies like I have and checked this out. Literally, you can go buy a box of 100 needles for 20 bucks. You can walk into any pharmacy in the state of Maine and buy them and there's no questions asked. So people can be buying them for medical reasons. They could buy them for substance abuse reasons. We don't know why they're using them and there's no requirements for return. The other thing I would like to address is the waste issue. So, I hear this all the time from people in the community, and I've yet to find a single person that stopped me on the street or called me that actually has any direct observation whatsoever about needle waste. So, I'll tell you how I started looking at this. So, I got a call back in the beginning of August from a woman. I I don't know her personally, but I'd met her before when I was campaigning um complaining about all the needle waste in our parks and she rattled off a bunch of them and said there were hundreds of needles there. I said, you know, okay, this woman is in a wheelchair. She cannot leave her house without assistance. So, I asked her if she actually saw these herself. No. Well, how do you know about this? Well, a relative took me to breakfast this morning and everybody at the restaurant was talking about this. So, I started in the beginning of August and as of this weekend, I've made 18 trips where I park at Great Falls Plaza. I go to West Pitch. I go down the Riverwalk. I check Molton Field Anniversary Park. I go down Newberry Street to the resource center. I go around the resource center. I go all the way back and I check all the trails where the homeless people go. In 18 trips, I have found four discarded needles in 18 trips. Um, Anniversary Park is something that I hear about all

the time. So, I have stopped at Anniversary Park besides that trip twice a week since August. In those stops, I've never found a needle in Anniversary Park. One needle in Anniversary Park on one of those 18 trips. My dog's getting a little sick of doing this river walk trip. I can tell you she'd rather be out on the trail, but there we are. Is there potential for some needle waste? Sure. But I don't see it. And when I talk to the police department and I talk to public works, they don't see it either. Where do we find needle waste? We find needle waste in encampments. The public isn't going to these encampments. I would say that most of the people sitting up here couldn't find most of these encampments if you're out unless you're out like I am beating the bushes looking for these places and talking to PSY and options and the police department to find out where people are. So, I think there is some potential for needle waste and we should treat it as a waste issue because if if there's hundreds of needles laying around in on the streets of Auburn and someone's going to have to show me where they are cuz I have been looking at for these constantly since the first of August and I found four. So if other people have actual real life, I went there looking and this is what I saw recent. I get it. I talked to public works and the police department three or four years ago. There were lots of these, right? There's been lots of remediation efforts and I just don't see this. So, I I think it's reasonable for uh an SFP uh in the area of their, you know, the the near area of where their location is

to do some type of um good neighbor work and check this and look for not not just um the needles themselves, but any type of litter that's that's there. But I just don't I I I get it that there's a a big difference in the number, but those aren't all going on the ground. And those that are going on the ground are typically in places that um there's no services and the public doesn't go. And we'll see what happens with mobile services, but my assumption would be that that would be very helpful to remediating these issues um in the encampments. Um, so, um, I'm happy to discuss this more, but for me to drive this off needle way, someone's going to have to come in here with real data and real observations to convince me that I've been missing this since August 1st. Council Gary,

thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've heard reports and I know that public works have cleaned up over by little theater over by the fence that goes down into the gully. I don't know how often it's been, but I've had pictures sent to me. And uh I don't know if our public works, they work their butts off to try to make us safe, make the parks and areas safe and pretty. I don't know if they've got a plan where they just habitually, if they're going by, they just check out to make sure that there is no needle waste. I mean, I don't want to add more to their time, but I want to make sure they're safe as well as the general public and kids that go to the different places.

Mr. Manager, could you um address public work?

Yeah, I think they, you know, our team is very um attentive to these areas. I think we we certainly did as the mayor mentioned um the um Great Falls Park as council Gary's mentioning um we did have um some considerable needles there probably uh two and a half three years ago I think councelor Walker sent me uh quite a few photos that might be the photos that's being referenced um our team is collecting those we are uh turning those into the uh fire department when we do come across those. I think the mayor's correct. I think the team we we contract out cleanups at encampments and um it's very difficult for that team to when you think about the the volume of waste that they're they're collecting in the encampments to separate that. I think they we do, you know, have them um they um dispose of those materials in accordance with any biohazard uh requirements as they come across them. We are as I said tracking uh what we collect. Um but it's what the the team collects and I think you know the the goal with that and it did start probably late summer. I think that was when we were beginning this discussion. Um, and those are things we'll continue to take a look at. We're basically weighing uh the actual containers to determine how many are in a container that we have. The fire department is tracking that. Um, but I think um, one thing that um, you know, the public works can give you some more information as far as what they're seeing. Uh but I think as the mayor said, we've certainly seen a reduction in our parks on the amount of waste and I think that's been part of education and it's been part of uh communicating um about the concerns on these and I

think we've had um people that are uh visiting our parks are taking initiative as well to ensure that um mom's going into areas there before their child goes to a playground. they are looking at those areas and they're probably disposing of some of those before before their children are used using the park. So I think that and we hear that feedback as well when we've had some concerns. So um I think the education component has been really essential. Uh but we'll continue we can provide you some data as we as we move forward and uh and this spring will be really important to take a look at because we'll have snow melting and and we'll have we'll we'll set up a lot of uh cleanup initiatives and we do that annually and and our team will go out and we'll be able to collect some data as well.

Council Randall, how many public receptacles do we have? The Sharps receptacles. I'm looking at our public works director. We have two out in the parks areas. Two. Is it possible to put more in the areas that certain counselors are or have seen activity in or are litter in? I I don't know where the second one is. I know where the one is on. We have a second one out.

Yeah. So, so if anybody wants to go see what it looks like, if you go down to um uh next to the 7-Eleven, if you Bonnie Park, right at the intersection of the Riverwalk, it's on the light pole. And I think if the first thing we should do if we think we want to try to remediate needle waste uh in park areas are put out shop containers because I appreciate public works putting it out there but it's literally like a 6x 6x8 box and the city manager told me it was there and I went right by it three or four times. had no idea what it was until he specifically told me what light pole to go look on and and there it was. Um if I don't know what it looks like today, but yesterday there were needles sticking out of it because it had been a long weekend and it it only holds so much. So I think more can be done there to give people an opportunity uh to dispose of them properly. Council.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. But um it's important for us to be thinking about the issues of of the you know the the waste. Um it's a concern of our residents, right? And so that it would be remiss if we didn't um pay serious attention to that. I would encourage us to think of I I agree with the mayor that let's think of strategies and the the waste issues somewhat separate from the syringes uh programs. Uh, a couple of things. I believe I'm correct, Dr. Sykes. I believe you presented some data that there was studies done that with the programs you see a smaller percentage of waste. It's still a lot to to counselor Platz's point. You know, if you're talking about hundreds, the volume of syringes going out, it's still a number of of syringes that could potentially end up on the ground uh and not returned or not uh discarded appropriately. But it's better than it is if you don't have them at all. Um, correct me if I'm not uh portraying that corre correctly, but my that was my understanding is a larger proportion were returned and particularly if you have a a program and this is part of the you know perhaps the number that we would want to have exchanged because to uh to your point the the the smaller the number the more times are coming back the better there there's more touches there's more conversations there's more likelihood of the treatment. So, I'm all supportive of that, but because there are so many different ways that the waste could be addressed, um I don't think it's just the SSP's uh obligation. I, you know, because I think where we're really trying to that the most point, and I'll leave it with this, is I don't believe that putting a 1:1

ratio is a is in line with the current evidence of harm reduction anymore. And so I would be um I would be concerned about us putting a lot of what I think are really good guard rails for an SSP and then uh restricting their ability to do their best work because we're putting a ratio like a 1:1 exchange on there. Council Randall,

it's also good to remember that all of the waste that is being found is not always maybe largely it's due to addicts, but it's not always due to addicts. There are people on GLP1s. There are diabetics. People, not all people just because their addicts are dropping their needles on the ground.

Councelor Dwell. Uh yeah, I just want to circle back to what uh where councelor Cowan ended up and that I would be really hesitate hesitant to set a low number of needles allowed if particularly if it gets in the way of evidence-based harm reduction best practices. that just it doesn't like if we want the services there to do harm reduction but because we don't allow the exchange of anything more than one one or 2:1 or whatever then the people aren't going to go there to get the harm reduction services and it just doesn't make sense to me. So,

Council Butler, is there any data that demonstrates when a new SSP comes to town that there's an uptick of waste in the community?

Uh, no. In fact, the evidence is that SSPs do not contribute to uh syringe waste in the community. And I'm not a physician. I'm a public health professional. So, just to set the record there. Other other points here, questions or comments from the council on this item? Um, we talked about um sharps, containers. Um, I think the next item was about um community engagement, education requirements. Um uh some municipalities have some requirements around engagement by the SSP with people and businesses in the neighborhood. uh and um or or broader education requirements in the community to inform the community what's going on and um being able to establish relationships with the neighbors to try to address any issues that um might be identified in the area of the SSP. So are there thoughts about that from the council council? Yeah, I guess I mean relative to the last round of discussion we just had, it seems like the focus primarily I think it's going to always be on waste. I think ne it's going to be loitering and waste. I think neighbors that's what they would react to. So in the efforts to combat that I think it's it's getting out there vocally knocking on people's doors having handout whatever the programs are for outreach. But I also think it's what you guys just tapped on. I think it's having we haven't seen yet what the overlay map will look like of where this will possibly be zoned to be, but it's having sharp more sharps boxes to hear that we only have one. I mean, I I should know that. I'm a city councelor, but it's no one's fault, but

that's embarrassing. We should have 10. I mean, and we should maybe engage the SSP and helping us figure out how to solve that. Um, so for outreach, yes, some of it'sformational, but I guess now I'm kind of focused on these sharps boxes to hear that we only have one. So maybe that's something we can work in with concert with with an SSP to to increase that service to increase that monitoring.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I've had discussions with the manager. Uh you know, I recognize um even the two week took a very long time to arrive because they when you order these things um that there's a big backlog. But um you know we've had discussions about not just having one on the Riverwalk, you know, we should have one every quarter mile or something and we should have them in our parks um around the city and um you know there's um there's pickup activity uh for trash going on in all these places already on a on a fairly frequent basis. So it would seem that we could empty the sharps boxes at the same time. Um I still think the predominant location is going to be um where people are sleeping overnight and that's going to present a challenge not just from the sharps issue but other ancillary waste. Uh you know um council Walker pointed out one here two months ago so I went over to see it. It was a mess and it was right near some apartments and um there was there's a whole bunch of trash there, not just needles and it's a quality of life issue and it's a disturbance in the neighborhood. So I think um you know more sharps containers and thinking about a strategy uh on what we try to do in encampments and mobile we'll see what the mobile rules are but mobile may help with that because uh there may be the ability to provide better services to some of these locations in a mobile environment that will help and it'll provide them a place to return the needles while they're engaged with the service provider. Um

other council random who empties these boxes or this one box it's public works. Is there a way to use the SSP? Write in that the SSP that they have trained individuals to do that because I would hate for us to mandate that public works have 17 of these boxes to have to clean out every single day or week. Is there another What other options are there for getting these boxes maintained?

Well, we can certainly look at that. public works is going to all these areas now, right? I I mean, if you if you Well, I'll just use a Riverwalk as an example. If you go down the Riverwalk, I don't know how far it is, every few hundred yards there's a trash can, and with some frequency, uh, less in the winter, but quite frequent in the summer, public works goes down through there, they empty all this stuff out. you know, we we can talk to uh Director Holland, you know, at more length about whether, you know, what what might be involved in emptying the them along their regular route? Any other?

Yes.

Might I offer a comment here? Um SSP's funding is quite limited and really supports their primary operations. um adding additional responsibilities relative to litter waste would stretch their budgets further and certainly is not part of their current um their current uh scope of services from the state. So just to keep that in mind. Um there are municipalities I think I presented this to the council at a previous meeting that have adopted different strategies around syringe waste and one strategy was to engage um through a separate contract the city with the SSP and they're now um supporting syringe waste pickup and um disposal. So

account

and you also provided some intriguing information around um similar to uh re you know getting money back if you trade in bottles that could be money exchanged for you know for syringes. Um not suggesting that that necessarily goes into the ordinance, but I think it is something we should look at further um as a potential uh and really you know have a discussion and um about the pros and cons of the ROI of of such a program. My my recollection not remembering all the numbers that one Portland introduced that it was quite effective uh in in in getting in reducing the waste when they were looking at that.

Yes. specifically they were able to track the numbers of syringes returned as well as those going out and that number the ratio in you know there was a greater um match to the two numbers together. So if you think about um syringes disposed and syringes um distributed and wanting that to be a full like 100 to 100 like you know one to one there um Portland's model did show um evidence that they were able to increase um the number of syringes that were brought back and disposed through the SSP. Um, so yes,

and to clarify my earlier comments, I I would say that's my focus. Like that's the thing I want to focus on is how do we lower that gap, right? I said I'm uncomfortable with 10 to one, 100 to one. I am, but we're going to talk about it. Maybe I'll become less uncomfortable, but I am very focused on that issue. We need to come up with ways to deal with the number one taxpayer issue, which is waste. whether it's on the ground or in a in a box in you know in a discharge box that's the thing we need to focus on there probably lots of ways to do that um but that's where I want to stay laser focused

I'll join you with that I appreciate that that that clarification council plat I think absolutely I think there are some really creative ways that we could do that and perhaps uh city manager this there may be an opportunity for a grant pilot test some of these things butler

I just want to return to your original question which was around community education as we do this and I think that there are likely community members who are families who are really struggling in isolation with the impacts of addiction within their family and I know that we can there's a lot of essentials in terms of the logistics of setting this up but I think those community education pieces hold the opportunity for us to really outreach to some of our constituents some of the folks in our neighborhoods to bring that back to um engagement for the whole family in treatment as opposed to some of the more individualized pieces we're discussing. Other questions and comments in general about SSPs. Um thank you both very much for being here and helping us tonight. Um the uh council be adjourned until 7 p.m. when we will start the regular council meeting.

My dog example you was right there. It was right

The February 2nd, 2026 Auburn City Council meeting will be called to order. Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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. If we could have the counselors introduce themselves, we'll start with council Gary. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, good evening. I'm Belinda Garary, Auburn City Councelor at large. Rachel Randall, Auburn City Council, Ward One. Good evening, Tim Cowan, City Council of W 2. Good evening, Matthew Duval, City Councelor, Ward Three. Good evening, Jeff Hman, mayor. Good evening, Kelly Beller. Ward four. Good evening, city council, ward five. Good evening, Adam Platt, city council at large. Phil Croll, city manager.

Thank you. There are no consent items this evening. The first item is approval of the minutes of the January 20, 2026 regular city council meeting. Um, are there any errors or corrections? So, I would point out two errors that I noticed. one is was under item three, ordinance 04 012026. Uh the Jaylen trailer park is isn't spelled correctly. It should be all caps. J A-LY NE. And also on um also under new business on item number one which was order 1612026. Um the full uh motion didn't get captured. Uh uh what's reflected in the minutes is a referral of the planning board. The motion was actually a referral of the planning board and the S SNRB with a return date no later than February 25th. Um the clerk is already prepared to um make those corrections. Uh is there a motion to accept the minutes as amended?

Motion to accept. Second.

Moved by councelor Walker, seconded by councelor Gary. Vote by show of hands. All those in favor? Opposed. the uh seven having voted in the affirmative and none in the negative, the motion is adopted. Uh we'll move on to uh communications presentations and recognitions. We have several uh items under this uh tonight. The first one is a winter storm operations update uh from Director Holland from public works. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and counselors. Thank you for having us tonight. My name is Scott Holland. I'm the APW director and Adam Stevens is the deputy director and also joining us is Jason Mullen, the police chief. Um, so we've just got a winter operations update. Um, some stats of what's happened so far this winter and specifically the last storm that happened last week. So, winter by the numbers. Um, so far this year, we've had 24 storm events. And an event is when our vehicles hit the road to ply material. Um, our budget is based on 20 storms. So, as you can see, we're already at 24. Although some of these are smaller events. It might be a freeze up after a rainstorm. It's froze overnight. We have to come out and apply salt for black ice um to the big storm that we just had. But either way, we've been out 24 times. Um, in that, we've had 61 in of snow. The we've had three bigger storms that required parking bands. There was an 8 in one earlier in the year, and we've had two 17in storms, but we've had a lot in between. And we don't call a parking ban unless it's 3 in or more. We've had a couple that are really close to the 3-in mark. They were only forecasted for an inch and we got more. So, we could have

used more parking bands for sure. Um, yeah, I'll dive into it. Um, so far we've used 3,500 tons of salt that has been out on the road. Um, plus the 900 that we got in our shed right now, they hauled uh about 600 yesterday, 600 tons. I know you some of you were there Saturday. You saw we had 3 350. Um, they did call us uh Saturday afternoon said, "Hey, we're unloading the barge. Can we haul some on Sunday?" So we said yes please. Um so we have a full shed right now. Um at best we can fit about 1,000 ton in our shed. So we do have a capacity issue. Um and that's stacking it with an esavator. So we drive an excavator in there. He makes a pile for himself, digs it and distributes it around every corner he can in that shed. um any typical storm, some of you heard this on Saturday. When we load a truck or when we load all of our trucks, it's about 150 ton total that goes out of that shed just to load the all the salt trucks. Um not much of that comes back and usually there's a second application, a third application of salt depending on the storm. So that's 150 ton each, you know, each time. Um so yeah, we budget for 4,400 tons this year. Um so what we've used and what's in the shed, we're at our budget. uh if we continue having storms when we have to order more then we're going to start going over on our salt budget. So we kind of covered this a little bit on Saturday but salt brine um check the machine today uh we've made and and produced to the trucks 35,000 gallons of salt brine this year um at the cost that you know it takes us to make it at 15 cents a gallon it's only 5200 bucks. Um, if we were buying calcium um, in the same amount like we used to, uh, price of calcium now is $187 a gallon. It'd be $65,000 where we'd be at for for calcium

if we were to buy it. Um, a salt brine unit was installed back in 2016. Um, since then we've produced 473,000 gallons. That's numbers from the machine for a total cost roughly $71,000 is what salt brine has cost us to pre-treat our salt. That same cost if it was all calcium would be $885,000. Okay. Overtime before this storm we um we're at 70% of our overtime budget expended. Um and that like I said that was prior to this recent storm. So when payroll hits this week I'm estimating at 75 to 76%. So we have like 25% left in our winter uh overtime budget. Um, just wanted to touch on that a little bit because um, we do a lot of snow removal at night and we have actually we implemented a third shift crew several years ago and they are in there on regular time. So if you see our guys down on Main Street, it's a six-man crew with a supervisor that is all on regular time. So that's not costing overtime. However, if we get a big storm like we just got, um, we do bring in a few guys because they would not be able to get very far with just them a few guys. We need more trucks to haul. So, we do bring in a few guys once in a while to supplement that crew on these bigger storms. Um, we, you know, so regular hours for that. Um, this also includes sidewalks. We spend an unbelievable amount of time on sidewalks after a storm, especially these big ones because you get all 17 in that fell plus what's getting plowed out of the roadway. Um, this storm was really tough for us, um, with with the snow, the consistency of it, because lots of times you can stack it, you can put it in an esplanade, you can do whatever, but with this snow, as fluffy as it was, it was like an avalanche after the sidewalk tractor went through, it was all falling back in. So, we've had to go over it several times. Um, you know, and again, we have different consistencies when that happens.

Kind of a prerequisite, um, talking about this most recent storm. This is our salt chart that we use uh for our salt applications. Um in the top left, pavement temperature range. That's what we go by. We don't go by air temp at all. It's all how hot the road is or cold. Um each of our vehicles have a road temp sensor in them so they can give us, you know, live what the road is for temperature- wise. So anything above 32° real quick 32 and rising, we're probably not going to put any material out. You can scrape that off. It's slush. It's melting. Anything from 28 to 32 degrees, we're we're doing 200 lb per lane mile. Um, treating that with 8 to 10 gallons of salt brine per ton. Uh, 20 to 28°, we're doing 300 ton uh 300 lb per lane mile. And then 15 to 20 is 400 lb per lane mile. Anything below 15°, there's really no moisture content in the snow to help that salt do its thing. So, we just leave it and we'll scrape it. Um, we won't treat it with anything other than maybe some sand as needed for traction for hills, intersections, any tough spots that people are having a rough time with, which is what we did this past storm. Um, it seemed to work a little bit, but when you put that sand down, the sand has its own moisture content. It started to pack in certain areas, and that's why we had what we had when we ran some sand out there. All right, so wintertorm number 24, which was last weekend, 25th uh into the 26. Um so after most storms we have a pre-storm meeting. Um there's a lot of thought that goes into this. We use every forecast app that we have. We we have three that we particularly use and we use the local channels and as you guys probably saw it's all over the place. They didn't know if it was going to hit us. It was and it wasn't. And you know so we really tried to go over it. And of course we're not here on Saturday and Sunday. So we did this on Friday. And in that pre-storm we discussed a parking ban and we knew we were getting a lot. So, we asked for that and it was an extended one because we knew it was going to last a while. Um, we talk about

timing, when it's coming, you know, um, what time of day is it? Uh, the temps, which was very important in this storm because they forecasted to be cold and that's exactly the way it was. Um, and in this we have school there. Fortunately, it was a workshop day on Monday, so there was no school. And we go over our salt inventory. Well, at the start of the storm, we had about 350 ton in the shed, which would have been fine if it hadn't bonded to the pavement. Um, and I'll get to that. We did not expect that in a cold storm like that. It usually blows off. Um, but anyway, it started as predicted Sunday afternoon. Um, it was extreme cold. If I remember right, it was like 8 9° and it stayed that way throughout the night. Road temperatures stay, you know, are about the same. um when you add a little material to it, snow to it or whatever, they run a little bit colder. And again, our policy is no salt below 15°. It is very ineffective. So the decision was to plow and sand as needed and that is only as needed. We're not wholesale sanding anything cuz like you said, Adam said that it sticks sometimes and it does. We also sand doesn't melt anything. Sand is a visual. It provides a little bit of traction, but it does not last long. It is also harmful to the environment more than salt because it ends up in our basins and then it ends up in the river. So we try not to use any more sand than we have to. But sometimes in freezing rain in this particular storm we we absolutely had to do that. So we plowed and sanded as needed. Um part of um you know again we ran no salt. Gill which Jason's going to speak to too as well but Gill is a public safety hazard when it snows. As a public works director, I stay away from that hill. I don't go over it either. And it takes salt to bear it off. And we weren't able to use any salt in the storm. So, for public safety reasons, we closed it during the storm with the hope that we could open it fairly quickly afterwards. Um, so heavy snow accumulation overnight

had the fluff factor. We had about 17 in. We scraped roads and during that whole storm and all day Monday, pavement was showing. If we follow our trucks and we see pavement showing, that's a good sign in one of these storms because it's not bonding to the pavement and we know the next morning it's going to be cold, but we can apply salt and we can get that off. And we also knew that we had enough salt in the shed to do that if that was the case. Um, but it snowed on and off all day Monday. Um, it did have some lulls. Um, and it ended up coming back in after dark and it snowed until 2:00 a.m. Tuesday morning. Now, Adam and I, we pulled the cameras up. We have weather stations in two different spots in here that have cameras. We watched that and we watched it. It stayed wheel track showing black pavement until about 8:00 at night and then it changed after that. And the snow that fell out of the sky and lots of times at the end of a storm or big storm like this, we get freezing rain on the end of it or a freezing drizzle. It's kind of the same idea. We feel it was a different consistency snow and it bonded to the pavement. Our trucks were out there just as much as they were all day and they kept going back and forth scraping. But it it bonded and I will tell you when I got up Tuesday morning and I came in it was like that in every community until I got to Auburn and saw the same thing. Um and you know we that's the last thing we want to see because at that point it takes twice as much material to get it. You're not working it from the bottom up. You're working it from the top down. And we knew that and we knew we did not have enough salt in the shed to just go wholesale salt everything and get it clean. And the reason we don't is a capacity issue, but we also have we we order salt the minute we know we need it. But we are relying on a a salt company and trucking to get it to us. So we had been after them. They had delivered just a few loads. Um they kept saying we were going to get it Wednesday and then it moved to Thursday. So we knew we only had what we had in the

shed. Um, I communicate with Lewon. Um, we're not just our own community here. We all talk back and forth. We, you know, sometimes with the state, uh, most generally they, you know, we don't communicate with them as much, but Lewon in the past, you know, with our capacity issue has been able to, uh, let us borrow salt. So, we'll send trucks over there in the night. We'll grab it and then when we get our delivery, we bring it back to him. I talked to him. He was in the same boat. He was waiting for deliveries. They did not have the capacity to give us any this time. So, we did what we could do and that was use what we had. So, Tuesday morning, our plan when we saw this was to hit it with a hot mix. Hot mix is sand and it's salt with a little bit of sand. It's like two buckets of salt to one sand ratio. And sometimes that works on colder temperatures where it gives a little bit of traction with the salt cuz when we got hard pack and glaze like that, you put salt on it, it makes it really slippery at first. So, the sand would help that. Well, it didn't touch it as cold as it was. The road temps were down near three or four. There was just no way. You know, we basically put stuff out and it didn't do anything. So, we, you know, we we decided that we knew sun was coming out. We waited until the sun came out and the temperature started coming. Waited till like 8 or 9:00 and then we hit the primaries hard. Um, again, golfill and that I'll I'll talk about that. We hit that but it no traffic on it either and traffic has to work the salt sometimes. We could not bear that thing off. We had that thing you know so Tuesday morning um you know we were planning to go out and try to get it open but then I know I'll let Chief Men speak to that. So

yeah um we're in constant communication with the public works department throughout a storm right from the pre-torm meeting uh right through our officers giving feedback on driving conditions and whatnot. Um, and Goffill remained closed Tuesday morning cuz I went down over Goffill on Tuesday morning and I've been driving that hill for 30 years. And uh, that was one of the worst times, worst I've ever seen it. And I made the decision to leave it closed. Um, talking with Scott, they were going to let the try to treat it, let the sun hit it, and try to break someone up because I wasn't confident that the motor in public would be able to navigate that hill. I've had to dive over a snowbank and on that hill to avoid getting hit by a car sliding down over the hill before in the past. So, uh, we made the I made the decision to leave it closed for most of the day on Tuesday just as a safety precaution. Um, so anyway, we we dealt with it the best we could. Um, we worked on the primaries only that day. The sun went away at noon time. So when that went away, temperatures were only they only got to a high of 17 on Tuesday. And anyway, I'll let Adam touch base on that now. So

yeah, so the plan was to hit the hit the primaries, the priority ones, your center street, you minded have where the bulk of your traffic is, get that back to bear as best we can with the with the salt that we had. We did that and ended up working. It's like, all right, good. Now tomorrow we can hopefully dedicate to the the secondary salt roads, your park a lake street hotel, um you know, your higher traffic salt roads that we have. Um so went ahead with that with the plan and that seemed to work. So, uh, Wednesday we had higher temperatures than Tuesday. It worked great. Thursday we had higher temps coming. We're like, "All right, we'll hit the rest of our salt roads and hopefully we get some salt in the shed to kind of backfill what we need to to get everything done." Um, so, and we ended up using just about all of what we had for salt in the salt shed to do that. And if we' have wholesale done that on Monday or Tuesday, we wouldn't had any salt and those roads would have stayed that way until we got a delivery. Y

So, um, again, the capacity issue is a big issue for us. I know I we don't bring that forward. We we face that internally, but I'm telling you, we've had times where we're praying and hoping for salt. Um because we just have not, you know, and again, we order it just as fast as we we see the forecast, we know the storm's coming, we'll forecast it, we're going to use this amount, and we'll order it even before the storm is there, knowing that we can put an excavator in there and stack it if we do run out of room. Um but it at this point in time we had three storms back to back plus we had ordered it and it just wasn't coming quick enough.

Um with the golfill issue we we knew we wanted to get a grater on it to try and peel some of that pack off. That's about the only thing that's going to try and get that back down to pavement is is the heavy equipment to do it. Um unfortunately we didn't have any guys extra to go do that during the day on Tuesday cuz they were all doing their runs. So um Tuesday afternoon evening uh we had a guy get freed up. We said, "All right, go try and scrape the hill with a grater. We'll go treat it." Um, supervisor made the call before he went home at 11:00 that night that it's still kind of icy. We'll wait till tomorrow morning. Um, so what we did is we hit it at 7:30 in the morning or hit it a little before 7:30. The road came to all right, let's get it opened up. It's finally good for traffic. Um, the other unfortunate part of closing Golf Hills, it is a main thoroughfare in Auburn. Um, so we recognize the need for um improved detour for that that area. Um, so we're going to have our sign guy make uh golfill close signs so that if it should happen again that we can put them out on Madav on the approach to Court Street out by Giorgio's that area. Um, coming up Court Union every direction for Golf Hill. Um and the the detour route will probably be western a half to get around um where that's fairly flat and slight grade coming down and mined out.

We certainly did take complaints on that because people got there and realized we did not plan to keep it closed that long, but again it was for public safety and we felt that was the best the best route. Yeah.

Um it took so on Tuesday when we did apply for the main drags, it took three applications to get the primaries back to bear. So, three times they're running 450 lbs of salt per lane mile took it to get back down to bare roads. Um, say I think Scott touched on this 17 in total accumulation. Um, and with the low salt supply decision was made to delay further application till Wednesday morning till we know we had the sun and the temperatures. We had the sun full day on Wednesday. Road temps came up to I think 17 18 degrees that day. It was great. Everything worked as it should, you know. Um, and again, we didn't just neglect the the hard packed roads either. We did apply sand to them to keep a little bit of grit to them. Obviously, it blows off. It doesn't stay. So, we we had to put out a fair amount of sand as well to try to keep the traveling public safe. Um, you know, and and and with that, um, you know, the statistics for the parking man and all of that, I know Jason has that. I'll let him speak to that.

Uh, honestly, it was a pretty uneventful storm for us. Uh, we had a total of nine accidents throughout the storm. Uh we towed 18 vehicles uh as a result of the parking ban and we issued 25 parking tickets. Folks, those are on the low side of any storm that we've had this year. Uh so that's a testament to public works for the number of accidents. The roads are in great shape for the most part. Um couple of wrinkles at the end of the storm, but overall it was fairly uneventful. And two of those accidents I will say were our trucks getting hit. So, um, you know, just just to put that out there, it was, you know, it's tough. I, you know, and I I want to bring that up is that we do get a lot of complaints about the two trucks that we plow the two-lane roads with, like Center Street, Mined A. Those trucks stay together for a reason. There's a lot of turn lanes. There's a lot of things that they're blindsided, you know, in those trucks. They cannot see. So, they follow each other to make sure that we cars are not trying to go by us. and in one instant that somebody tried to go between those two trucks out on Washington Street and that was one of the accidents. So, um I want to make sure people get very frustrated they're behind those trucks, but that we do it for a reason um for their safety along as with with traveling public. Um so, um so again, Gill remain reopened Wednesday morning. Um and we used the sand on hard pack. used every available tool to make progress. Again, I I can't emphasize that the same impact on every neighboring community. However, the tools that they have, the approach may vary on what they use for, you know, salt. They have different stuff. They have some of them have calcium. Um, and again, we were in consistent contact with the city of Lewon. We were both on the same page. We both had the same plan of to not run any material until that next morning. And um, that's exactly what we did. Um, yeah, and hats off to our crew. You know, they work from Sunday afternoon from I think they some guys punched in

3:00 to be ready for the storm and right through to Wednesday morning. Those guys are running 24/7. Um, or our trucks were uh the guys do 16 hour stints and and take 8 hours off, but we have a rotation. But either way, those trucks were filled 24 hours from Sunday afternoon till Wednesday morning. Um, right through uh I think they did a great job. Um, I don't think we had too much of a travel issue. I mean, other than hearing a few accidents, but you know, traffic was moving that was out there. You know, it was it was pretty good. And testament, we've got seven or eight guys that got less than a year of experience. You know, so this is their first time dealing with a storm this magnitude and this cold um that they did a great job with sidewalks and with trucks, you know, pretty

pretty thank the crew that we do have. I thought it was very very good. Um and just a couple helpful facts. Um we talked about I I know there was a complaint I heard a complaint about how they left our the city and onto you know bare pavement. Um so state roads have higher speed traffic and that's most of where the connections are. You know it's Washington Street, it's Mined A, it's Center Street. Um which the snow does blow off. Um and it makes it for more effective salting when you have black pavement showing. That's why they were able to hit it hard, probably more than one application, and they had theirs bared off when we had the compacted, you know, um the snow. So, that is one reason that you saw when you went out of town, that reason. And uh I want to bring up Riverside Drive cuz this is another one that people don't understand. You know, they tell us all the time that it's in such poor condition. Well, the road itself is in such poor condition. If you look at the Auburn section, there's no it's all shaded. It's all curvy. There's no shoulders on it and there trees right out to the edge. When you get to Durm, it opens up before Durm, you know, before we get to that section, you know, around Vicory Road that's all wide open. Um, so the road has it has a very bad crown. It pitches off and then the shoulders don't have any gravel in them. So people drive off the edge of the road and that's when they lose it most of the time as they're trying to get back onto the pavement and they they slide off the road. So we do our best with that. That road needs to be rebuilt and we are certainly hoping for that in the future. It'll certainly make an improvement for us helping us take care of that. Um and future issues. Um again I I talk about the storage capacity issue. Um seeing how we own 67 Kittyhawk and I know the fire department's going in that but that will be coming to public works in the end you know for for a bunch of reasons. But we I'm going to be asking going forward about putting a salt storage building there that will

increase our capacity. Um we'll be able to put sand up and not have to truck it all the time in between storms. You know, we'll be able to put stuff down there. Not only that, but our trucks on that south end won't have to travel all the way back to Graceawn to get loaded. And you know that we'll have a tank down there with salt brine in it as well. Um so that is the the hope um is that if we do that, we should not have a trucking issue anymore. or we can keep that supplied enough so we can move material around in different places if we need to. So just know that that is coming. As a matter of fact, it's in the CIP this year. Whether that happens this year or not, it's not a major deal, but going forward, you know, we're really asking for that. And we've talked about the calcium. We took it away. We've done very well with it. Um it has worked, but it's just another tool in the toolbox. if we can have a tank of calcium on hand for these colder storms, it does help with uh making the salt work at lower temperatures. So, it would have been helpful to have that. Um, you know, I'm not talking wholesale like we were before, but if we could have 10,000 gallons for the year, you know, so we have it during these cold storms, it would certainly help us. And I also want to make sure to know that there is a bunch of new um material out there that has rust inhibitors in it because everybody here worry calcium and they worry about their vehicles. But we would buy the stuff that has the rust inhibitor in it and you know try to keep it environmentally good as we can. So um that's the end of the slideshow. Is there any questions?

Yeah. Thank you. Questions or comments from the council? Council Gary. Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you for your presentations. May I please get a hard copy of this? And kudos to all your public works and everybody else that works for your departments. I know the storms was very hard to deal with and I've thank you for people calling to have your sand sheds wood sand in it and and you guys were right out there trying to keep those as full as you can. My question is with the weather the way it is, how does the wind chill affect these lower temperatures and what you're trying to do?

So windchill doesn't really affect the road temperature. The road temperature is what it is. It does not affect that. you know, it does on our people, of course, if we're having to work out in the elements. But, you know, as far as you know, obviously it's it's keeping it cold, but um if if there's a wind chill and it's 25°, salt's still going to work because the sun is out and the temperatures are up. Because they were saying like a couple of our nights was wind chills of over 30°. So, I didn't know during the middle of the night if you guys are out there if that makes the road even colder. Nope, it does not. It's hard on our our equipment obviously it's you know the cold air and stuff but um but no it does not affect that.

Thank you kindly. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Council K.

Just a second. Kudos to you all u the collaboration and um a lot of hard choices that had to be made and I appreciate the thoughtful um remedies that you're you're you're recommending for moving forward. So, other questions or comments? No, thank you very much. Um, look, some storms are more challenging than others and um, you know, it get cleaned up in a reasonable amount of time and um, we can't always expect black pavement as soon as it snows. So, appreciate all the hard work from the crew to be out there and and get it cleaned up as quickly as they could.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I did want to touch on that is that I think we do a pretty good job of making roads black after a storm. Um, and when you have these cold ones, I'd love to say it is not going to happen again or have bonded pave, you know, snow on the pavement, but that I' I've had it happen a handful of times in my career and I I can't promise it ain't going to happen again. We'll do our best to combat it. Right. Thank you very much. Uh,

the next item is a 2025 economic development update. Uh, Mr. Brenett. Okay, thank you. So, I'm Jay Branchick. I'm the director of economic development for the city of Auburn. Um, I've been here since 2020 and um, I'm looking forward to giving you this presentation because just before my arrival in 2019, the city had done a citywide um, strategic plan and um, I actually like carrying out strategic plans and so we took a look at the portion of the strategic plan that the economic development department could work on. Uh, one of them was downtown revitalization and we accomplished most all of those tasks and it's time to uh put that revitalization plan to bed and develop one for the next few years. And now I'm happy to announce that the for the industrial manufacturing business park portion um we have either accomplished the tasks or are in a position where from now on year on year in year out we'll be accomplishing those tasks. So um growth goal number two um in the strategic plan was industrial areas and business park solutions said define promote clusters

and business parks take advantage of energy initiatives map industry types uh for vertical in integration supply chain partners develop linkages and connectivity to the community utilize by utilizing transit and advertise and create industry tours define look, feel, function of corridors and gateways. And then there's one that our city manager and myself um added as a recommendation and is that's make Auburn a valuable statewide economic development partner. Um what we've found when I arrived is that we've got an intermoal facility. We've got exit 75. We've got the airport. Um we've got um Auburn Business Center, which is our commerce center, which is a pre-approved business park. We have all these assets. Um and we felt like we kept getting looked over. uh when conversations would start to happen at the state level, uh they would talk about the University of Maine, they'd talk about the Rue Institute, they'd talk about Brunswick Landing, uh Luring Air Force Base and and down east as well as up in the county. But we didn't feel we were getting the love. Uh but the reality is you don't get the love until you give the love. And so we were trying to make sure we position ourselves as a valuable economic development partner. And so the first thing we did to implement the recommendations was create monthly manufacturing meetings. This is uh all manufacturers in Auburn are invited to attend these meetings. They're once a month on Wednesdays, Wednesday mornings from 7:30 to 8:30. And so the first thing we talked about was defining and promoting our clusters and parks. And really what we found is

Auburn's in a very good position when it comes to manufacturing, warehouse, and distribution. We're really the center or the hub for the state of Maine with how many we have within minutes of exit 75. The other good thing is while we do have um a little bit of clusters when it comes to bioforest products and things, we actually have a pretty wide variety of manufacturers in in Auburn. So anyways, we started it was somewhat selfproclaimed, but we are now. Uh when the state economic development folks speak and when the governor speaks and and um people around the state, they think of Auburn as uh Maine's manufacturing hub. Then also with uh define and promote um the state of Maine got a federal tech hub designation for bioforest products. And one of the main things I've done throughout my career is you take a look at what your universities and your institutions are doing for economic development and you see how you can help out and be a part of that. So the state through the main uh main technology institute and the University of Maine, Brunswick Landing um and the Rue Institute all got together to apply for this techhub designation. Um we learned about it the way we didn't want to learn about it. We read about it in the paper and that's when I went to them and said, you know, what can we do to help? um they had a round two for their um application process to see what kind of funding they could get. So we developed a tech hub to align with federal and state initiatives here in Auburn. So now we're becoming part of the conversation. We're the only municipality to have done so and we're

the only municipality who's been invited to be a part of the coalition and partnership as we go to move forward with this techub designation. And then there uh the recommendation was take advantage of energy initiatives and map industry types. Um so there was the main community energy redevelopment program which was through the main department of energy resources and the department of economic and community development. Uh this was a program where they picked five um communities in the state to see what um what research or what projects could be done to help stimulate the economy. And Auburn and our Auburn Tech hub got picked as uh one of those uh localities. And so what we got from that was an industry and land assessment from um from HRNA advisors which is hired by um the state so we didn't have to pay anything and then they created a marketing dashboard for us. So right now the challenge is there's a state level economic development uh real estate database but you can't just narrow it down to your own community. So when I have prospects ask me about sites in Auburn, if I use that database, I'm also linking them to the rest of the state, which is which is fine, but taxpayers are paying uh me to help promote Auburn. So that I will later this year uh as we populate that dashboard and that database show it to you. It's really a a strong great tool because the other issue that we have is we've got a great deal of industrial property that's not up for sale. Um the property owners aren't sure what they want to do with it. Uh they could sell it, they might sell it. You talk to them

and they say, "Well, send them my way if if there's an interest." And no real prospect has an interest in that type of conversation. So now we can gather up all the information, put it in one space, in one database so we can sit down with the property owners and help them make a decision as to whether they want to keep the property or or um as it is or develop it. And then map industry types. Um, this also was part of that um um main community energy redevelopment program where they helped us find um um the industry types that we have within Auburn. We already kind of knew the answer to that, but it was nice to have it backed up. And so now we have things happening because of these monthly meetings where you have like Angstrom is uh testing and developing products for Auburn manufacturing. So Auburn manufacturing makes um textiles that are fire resistant and heat resistant and now Angstrom has the ability to do some of the testing for them. Uh so they're starting to to look into that. And so then the other thing that really helped us with some of our supply chain homework that we did is when there were tariff concerns that led to more supply chain needs uh within the state within the community. And because we had the manufacturers association of Maine and the main uh manufacturer extension partnership part of this monthly group, the presidents of each one of those organizations attend our meetings. um they were able to instantly start helping people with supply chain issues and that says deliver uh develop linkages and connectivity. Um we had

Western Main Transportation Services come and be a part of our manufacturing group. We talked about the need for transportation for uh not just manufacturers but employees in general. um there are a lot of employees who might work third shift at the hospital or or other places and the buses don't run at that time. And then when you think about the manufacturing sector, we purposely push them out into other areas that are industrial that don't have bus services. So, we didn't create the program, uh, but we encouraged Western Main Transportation Services to apply for a $3 million, um, pilot program grant, and we helped by doing letters of support. We surveyed our industry um, and and it's up and running now, and it's the only public service that I know of that's that actually became self-sufficient within about a year. uh there's a couple thousand trips go between people's homes or locations close to their homes to their workplace. Uh and that has really helped our manufacturers when they said they had issues with hiring people because of transportation. And the other thing is you could be the plant manager or an engineer. Your car breaks down, it's going to be in the garage for a couple of weeks. So this is a great subscription service. You call, you make the appointment, they pick you up at the time close, very close to your house, if not at your house, and then drop you off at work and go back the other way. It's only $3 each way. Um, some of our employers like Panelm pay the $3 for their employees and others just make sure to advertise it, but that's a that's a pretty good uh bargain, I think. And then advertise and create industry

tours. Um, we've partnered with our public schools, with the manufacturers association of Maine, the manufacturer extension partnership, as well as the city of Lewon. And we do tours for students. We do tours for other manufacturers from around the state come and look at our manufacturing facilities and our manufacturers go look at them. Uh and then these tours are also open to our elected officials as well as citizens. And so again, this is sort of uh another opportunity to kind of promote manufacturing the industry um uh in Auburn. We have included Lewon in our group and and now this year we've included uh manufacturers from other parts of the state. And so we've had manufacturers from as far as Bangor and Sanford come and join our our meetings because they see the value in them. So these tours are year round, but we really advertise and promote them in uh October uh because that's manufacturing month. So again with the implementation advertise and promote in 2024 the city of Auburn created Auburn manufacturing month and it was basically just celebrated here in Auburn and then in 2025 we launched it to be um statewide. And so more a little more details the um manufacturing month that was held in 2024. We did a tour for citizens and students of four manufacturing facilities and then we had a manufacturing appreciation uh event at Central Maine Community College. We had about 140 attendees. Uh most of the manufacturers from around the state, but also citizens from um the city of Auburn

and uh people got a chance to tour Central Main Community College, mostly the uh programs that are tied a little more closely to manufacturing. And then we did some uh advertising on social media and the Lewon Sun Journal. And then the big difference is in 2025 we moved this to statewide. We did tours of 19 manufacturing facilities throughout the state. I think it's important to point out that 11 of the 19 were done right here in Auburn and Lewon, six in Auburn, five in Lewon. LA in 2024 we had 350 participants come to the on these tours or or the events and uh this past year in October we had 800. So, it's growing exponentially. Uh, we also grew the event to be um statewide in the sense that we did an October fest uh down in Portland at a robotics company and it was granted it was a great opportunity for them to get manufacturers to come there, but it was a real fun thing we got to do. And then uh the UI advanced uh manufacturing center. We did a tour of that. We did a tour of Tech Place which is at Brunswick Landing and another tour of well they had an open house at Big Boom Manufacturing Tech which is in Portland. They do like AI and uh um tech integration. We had Main Maritime Academy Workforce Training Center which is at Brunswick Landing. Did a tour of that. There's a STEM coliseum that's in the main mall, which is this really cool thing to be able to go see and that's where students can go and kids can go and um do like the robot competitions and and that type of stuff. And then um instead of holding

the event at the community college at the end of the month, we had the meeting and event at the Rue Institute at the end of the month. So then uh manufacturing month by the numbers um we did some uh advertising in the digital version of the newspaper. So when you opened the newspaper uh email at the top there was a banner and we did those banners throughout the month. Um and we ended up getting 157,000 impressions and um 712 clicks. that's within the range of what you should expect for click rates um for that number of impressions. And impressions is really just it's it's not a great measure in my mind. I think the better measure is reach and we struggled with the sun to give us some information on reach. Um but the difference is impressions is the number of times people opened that email and saw it. Well, you could open the email three or four times and you know, councelor Cowan might open it six times and there's six impressions as a verse to reach which is unique uh each one person. So, these are a couple of the ads we ran. Now, I I should point out that we did this in conjunction with Lewon. So Lewon had banners and we alternated weeks and then we did um social media um advertising and so there was um 95,000 impressions and like 1,200 clicks. And you can see here you can expect you you should be shooting for anywhere between 1 to 5%. We're on the lower end you know to 1%. Um, we're going to make some

decisions as to whether we do this again next year or find another way uh maybe get a little heavier into our own social media advertising. But these are a couple of the ads that were placed. There were others that were similar. And then this is the onepage ad for the um print copy. And this ran at the end of the month and these are pictures from throughout the month, the different tours that we went on. And then um maim uh they created a landing page for the month and they had 3,362 views in September and October which is fantastic because in the whole year they only get 8,000 views. So, we were able to um to really kind of push the awareness of manufacturing. I think next year we will probably work to do our own landing page on the Auburn economic development website so we can drive traffic there. We're just doing these things to show the state and these organizations that it can work and that Auburn's in the lead and then the next year we take it back and do it ourselves. So, the um presenters that came to uh our monthly meeting included um the main department of labor. Uh this past year, the uh main family medical leave program started. And so, we were able to get the director of that program to come speak to our manufacturing group and explain some of the ins and outs and answer some of the questions and concerns. Um, we also had um some tariffs that were applied this year and so we got the um president of the main international trade center come talk to our

manufacturing group to explain to them some of the pros and cons of um using um different programs that can kind of help you get around some of the tariffs. Long story short, none of them work. And then uh Maine and Maine MEP helped with supply chain. We had uh Maine technology institute came and gave some uh presentations on grant programs and technical assistance they offer as well as uh loans. And then the state of Maine economic development folks came and talked about the deergo incentive and some of those programs. And then uh we had Auburn school department came asking for um manufacturers to open their doors for student tours which they did. Uh we had Maine a Apex come apex come which um they showed our manufacturers how to sell to state local state and federal government. Most of our manufacturers already are in that Apex program, but they had deeper questions and issues. And then we also had um uh a couple of different people come from the University of Maine to talk about the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and the Composits Lab and and uh what manufacturers can do to to take advantage of those. We did the same with I put main community colleges because we're going to have some of the other community colleges come but thus far it's been all uh linkages with central main community college and then of course there's the RU Institute. Uh the RU Institute really specializes in AI and one of the things that's very unique because of our manufacturing group and because of the work Auburn Economic

Development does to uh set up one-on-one meetings each time one of these presenters comes, it means that we then get them to do a visit at one of our manufacturers and get some one-on-one assistance. And the great thing that happens in Auburn is that the University of Maine Center for Advanced Manufacturing and the Rue Institute do their meetings together, which is really sort of unheard of. They're they're two institutions that are sort of competing with each other, but they found ways to work together, and we're really proud of of that fact that we've been able to do that through our our manufacturing group. And so here's the big thing is that 100% of the participations in our manufacturing group are receiving technical assistance or workforce development attraction or retention assistance, workforce transportation assistance or financial assistance. They're all receiving some level of assistance. Um three years ago when I started about a third of them were receiving some assistance at some point in time. Um, when I looked at the aggregated data for the technical assistance that our manufacturers have received, the lowinterest loans, uh, the grants, um, but a lot of it tied to technical assistance and international trade programs is they've received this in the city of Auburn about $10 million in this calendar year, which is we're knocking it out of the park compared to any other community in in the state. So they they've got things like lean and OSHA training, sales training, manufacturing layout and space utilization, internal auditing training, tariffs guide and international trade programming,

um tax incentive programs and financial tools, international market data, grant advertising, uh grant a uh advising, 3D printing models, equipment, uh automation, artificial intelligence, integration. And so what's important to really point out is I think when people think of manufacturers getting assistance, you're thinking, well, you know, you guys are thinking your budget and how does this affect our budget? This is all free to us. This is all federal and state dollars. If we don't bring this stuff back into our community, that's where it costs us money by not bringing the stuff back. So this program's really helped out. Um, and then some of our um, additional things have been make Auburn a valuable statewide economic development partner. And we've done that through our tech hub. We've done it um, through our monthly meetings because all of these organizations need to show their value and need to get out and talk to to manufacturers and deliver and they're able to do that. Uh but on top of that, when the governor was looking for um members of their task force, they asked Auburn economic development to participate. Um we also were um one of the consultants for the state's uh real estate database, which had they had never had up until a couple of years ago. Um and then we also consulted the state on our workforce attraction and retention program that we developed through this group. and then define uh look feel function of corridors and gateways. I got to admit, economic development, we don't h we play a role in this, but it's really the planning department and it's really Eric uh Cousins, our director for our division leader for uh public services who leads this effort. And so that's

what's happening now with the comprehensive plan and the W reimagine Washington Street, those things. And so those are currently happening at at this time. And then that is it. But what I can say is if you look at the strategic plan and you look at the things that we were asked to do and what I'm particularly proud of is they're just bullet points. They don't tell you how to do this. The bullet points and it takes a lot of work to do it and I'm very proud that our group's been able to accomplish it. So great question. Thank you very much. Um questions from the council. Council Gary.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. This is more or less of a statement. Kudos all kudos to Western Main Transit and their after hours transportation because it not only gets regular uh citizens to their jobs, but also helps those that are mobility challenged and to be truthful, I'm a participant of them. I've been going home from my city council meetings using their service. They have a ramp so that you can as long as they know you have need special accommodations. They go out of your way to help you get on off and they provide a very very valuable service.

Thank you. Yeah, they are a great organization and that's the the big thing here is all of those organizations exist. what we're doing is just making sure to be a a resource broker and a partner and leverage those resources and and so we're thankful to Western uh Maine Transportation System. I mean it opens the box that those that are challenged can work after hours and be productive. Yeah, absolutely. Other questions or comments? Council Platt, thank you. Um thank you Jay. That was a great presentation. Um my question is given your so I understand that in everything you've just presented you know we're trying to be the broker

a broker between these organizations um not necessarily to initiate economic development but to catalyze economic development um do you have given the status of Auburn's commercial uh h commercial building stock do you have any thoughts or opinions or advice for the council on where we should focus uh or what we can possibly do to um encourage new development, new commercial development versus leaseholder improvements on vacant buildings. Right. Obviously, that's not up to us. It's up to the corporations that come in and do that that you know the commercial building stock. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on that?

Right. So, and when you say commercial building stock, are you talking industrial or restaurant retail or mostly industrial? I mean, I guess my mind goes towards the tax base and knowing that if we build big buildings, they pay a lot in taxes. Um, but again, you know, the stock, I'm just curious, do we have more of an opportunity to be pursuing new zoning areas through the planning board or we could encourage new new buildings or do we have an aging uh commercial building stock that's going to have vacancies that we need to focus on supporting you to get out there and finding tenants?

We have some vacancies. um um but not a whole lot. Really, what we actually have is a shortage of inventory. There might be one or two buildings that have sat empty for quite a while, but that's usually because of the property owner and what they're looking to accomplish there. Um I think we're headed in the right direction through the main energy community redevelopment program. Um, we're now doing an inventory and this is a deep dive inventory of of all the infrastructure and all that of each of these properties and then I'll start talking to some of the we have a lot of property owners who just don't know what to do with their property. So, we'll get this information into their hands so they know the best return on investment they can get for their property. Um, and then we're working at the state level. Um I now have meetings once a month with the commissioner of economic development. Uh and in this month we're going to talk about two things. One is the need for the state to allow for delegated author local authority for projects that are beyond 10 acres, something more like um 20 or 30 acres. And and what that means is right now um if you've got a project and it's 10 acres or less then um Eric and his team can do the approval the state level approval at the local level and we can do it at 25% of the cost it would take to send it to the state and we can do it in like 90 days as averse to the state it takes them over a year and it's much more expensive and so that program has worked great for up to 10 acres, but I'm seeing us with a lot of raw land and um projects want to get up and running a

lot quicker. And so if we can get uh the state to make that change to 20 or 30 acres, then when we we had a prospect we lost to New Hampshire because uh they didn't want to wait that whole. They didn't want their investors. They understood and you understand, I think you're a developer, that some of these um state level permits, you can still start work on your property. You can still start construction. You can still do these things and it's still going to take you a year or two years to finally have the site ready. But when they're trying to convince investors that the site's ready, any kind of barrier we can take down so that they're not having to say, "Well, you got to wait a year or more." and there isn't a definitive timeline. Um, that's that's how we lost one of our projects. So, we're talking with the state um about that and then talking with the state about trying to get a more of a dedicated um um fund to help uh bring the Auburn Tech hub to the next level. You've got the you've got um um Brunswick Landing, which has a dedicated fund to it. uh through state uh law that that gives them some funds. And granted, they also have some federal funds and everything, but there's no reason we couldn't do that in Auburn. It's just the idea hasn't been brought to them yet. So, I think our zoning is pretty good. I think we're in the middle of our comprehensive plan process. I'll tell you that our our permit fees and uh like the water connection fees compared to the Portland area were were were much much cheaper and we're so much faster where you know to get these projects approved in 30 to 90 days is is like unheard of uh in the greater Portland area and other parts of

the state. So, um, just to follow up on what Jay said, um, a couple other things that the city's been working on with the governor's office and the legislature that are impeded beside the DP delegated authority are elevator inspections, sprinkler system inspections, and um that are real impediments because they don't have the staff to do them in the time to accommodate the development that uh we'd like to And the other one is um water and sewer distribution network expansion because some of these places um it's very difficult in the current environment to have any water or sewer expansion and some of these places um it's absolutely necessary if you want to have the development.

Other other thoughts or questions on this one? Council count. Thanks Mr. Mayor. Just a comment. I'm really impressed. Continue to be more and more excited about the work that they're doing. I think you're you're you're really you're about to take off even more. And I just thank you for all your efforts at Thank you. Uh city manager. I think the return on investment for the city was that we were able to get Jay to come here. So,

and then just one final word. I clearly sent it the wrong PowerPoint because I noticed a few typos through here when I was presenting. I don't know if you guys noticed, but I did. And uh it's the same PowerPoint, just a couple of mistakes that I noticed as I was presenting. But uh well, thank you very much for the presentation. We appreciate all the work you're doing, the progress that's being made with our um industrial and commercial sector, and look forward to more.

Thank you. Uh the next two items under presentations, there's presentations in the packet uh related to the progress on the um uh subsurface wastewater in uh system inspections in the Lake Auburn watershed and vacant and abandoned buildings. Uh Mr. Cousins is here if anyone has any immediate questions. If not, if as you review the materials, if you have questions, feel free to reach out to the city manager with those questions. Mr. Mayor, I just had one question. Do we know the delay in timing between applying for reimbursement from law pack and receiving that reimbursement?

That was my only question. Mr. Cousins might know the answer to that. We we don't really get involved in that process. My understanding is it's maybe 30 45 days um definitely in the same quarter, but I don't know the exact timing of it. I only ask because that's been kind of the number one item that I've been approached with from folks um in that area is how the reimbursement process works, but thank you. Yeah, Mr. Cousins can um let let the uh folks at Lawac uh make them aware of that concern.

Thank you. Thanks. We'll move on to the first open session of the evening. If there's any member of the public who would like to address the council on an item that's not on tonight's agenda, please approach the podium and provide your name and address. Not seeing any, the open session is closed. We'll move on to unfinished business. The first item is ordinance 0301202026 granting a 180day moratorum extension regarding needle exchange services. This is for second reading and a public hearing. Is there a motion? Motion to move.

Moved by councel Walker. Is there a second? Seconded by councelor Cowan. We'll open the public hearing. If there's any member of the public that would like to address the council on this item, please approach the podium and provide your name and address. Yes, I'm Franklair uh 42 Washington Park Road. So So sir, before you go forward, this item is about needle exchange services. We're going to I think you want to speak about the moratorum on Yeah, that will be the next item. Okay.

Yep. No problem. Thank you very much. Is there anyone that would like to address the council regarding the 180day moratorum extension on needle exchange services? If so, please approach the podium and provide your name and address. Not seeing any discussion by the council. Council ready for the question. The vote be by roll call. The clerk will call the role. Councelor Duval, yes. Councelor Butler, yes. Councelor Walker, yes. Councelor Plattz, yes. Councelor Gary, yes. Councelor Randall, yes. Councelor Cowan,

yes. Seven, having voted in the affirmative and none in the negative, the motion is adopted. We'll move on to ordinance 0412026 granting a 180day moratorum prohibiting rent or fee increases at mobile home parks. This will be for second reading and a public hearing. Is there a motion? Motion to move. Moved by councelor Walker. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by councelor Butler. We'll open the public hearing. If there's any member of the public that would like to address the council on this item, please approach the podium and provide your name and address.

Yes. Franklair, 42 Washington Park Road. Uh I just wanted to make one statement uh to several of the members here. Uh last time I was here, you reflected that you were concerned about the uh what I say influence on business in the communities. And uh I would like to point out that I agree it is a concern to get involved in businesses, but I wanted to point out that this is not good business that we're dealing with that I'm sure you people would like are encouraging, but this is bad business and I don't think you need to support bad business. are considerate in your decision making. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other member of the public would like to address the council on this item? Please come to the podium and provide your name and address.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am Juliet Sama. I don't know if you remember me. Last time I spoke with you, I said how dire we are. If he does raise the rent another 110, there's no way we're going to do it. The government gives you a little raise in your social security and takes from the top. So what are we going to do? We're stuck in our homes. We bought our homes. We worked hard to pay for them. They are not houses like some people live in. We wish we could, but we were shoe shop workers. You didn't make more than $2 an hour when I went to work. It was terrible. So if you can find it in your heart to give us a 180day reprieve, even though I don't know how to say this, but if Miles, Governor Miles or Mills, whatever you want to call her, said that they could raise the rent for 3 months, a certain percentage. This landlord that we have has already raised it. He's owned it three years and raised it three times. Is he going to be allowed to raise it three more months? We just can't do it. And it's not just my trailer park. It's Jay Lynn and it's Steven Mills. People cannot afford it and we don't want to be homeless at our age. and he's nothing but a slum lord. He does nothing with that money that we pay. Nothing.

I would appreciate your vote. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there any other member of the public who' like to address the council?

Hi, I'm going to make mine short. Um, I'm Sharon Dickinson and I live in the Jaylin mobile home park and I own my home. Um, but I pay for the space to put it on. And um, I only moved there about a year and a half ago. But, um, in that year and a half, I I started out at 475 and now it's 600. And it's just I just can't afford that if it if it's going to keep going up like that. Um, I'm concerned. I think everyone in our community is concerned. And I'm hoping that the moratorum is this a second vote on the moratorum and then the stabilization and I'm hoping that that's going to happen. So um thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Lori Nandria. I live in Canton but I work in Auburn. I work for the main labor climate council and we support the residents in the mobile home parks in organizing. I have a was talking to a friend of mine about what we're doing and my friend said, you know, I'm not sure if I agree with that. Isn't that like if I owned a car lot and the city council could just tell me what I could charge for the cars? And I said, "No, it's not like that. It's like if you owned a convenience store and there was a flood and nobody can drink the tap water and nobody can get out of town and you've got the only water and you've got the only diapers and you decide you're going to charge $100 a bottle for the water because you can. And that's we call that price gouging. And we have laws against that because it is such a moral affront to the community that we say no, we're not going to let people do that. And this in Auburn, we work with parks across the state. This is one of the worst instances of rent gouging that we've seen. And I um really place my hopes in you all to do the right thing. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other member of the public that would like to address the council, please come forward to the podium. Not seeing any. The public hearing will be closed. Um, discussion by the council. Council Randall.

Thank you, mayor and counselors. I just have a few remarks. I want to begin by acknowledging that I was not physically present at the January 20th meeting as I was out of town. That said, I was fully engaged, invested, and I watched the meeting live from my ship. I listened carefully to the concerns that were raised, particularly the concerns that this moratorium could be a slippery slope to broad rent control. I want to be very clear tonight. Mobile home lot rent is fundamentally different from nearly every other housing situation and it deserves to be treated as such. Mobile home residents are homeowners. They own their homes outright. They pay t property taxes. They maintain their homes and they enter into contract with land owners for the land beneath those homes and for services that are supposed to be accompanied to that rent. Things like road maintenance, water, sewer, trash removal, snow plow removal, snow plowing, and general upkeep of the park. This is a dual ownership model. It creates a power imbalance that does not exist in traditional rental housing. When lot rents rise sharply, homeowners cannot simply move. Relocating a mobile home can cost tens of thousands of dollars, if it's possible at all. In many cases, it's not the real that reality alone makes this different and demands a different policy lens. I want to stress something else just as clearly. This is not a punitive action against land owners. Many park owners run well-maintained, respectful, and community- centered parks. Their residents are happy and their agreements are honored. This moratorum does not

target anyone. Instead, it focuses on the homeowners who need protection from displacement at no fault of their own. However, there are parks currently in the minority, but there are very real minority where homeowners are not receiving the services that they're paying for. Sorry, I'm very passionate about this. Where maintenance is deferred or ignored and where residents experience harassment or sudden steep rent increases with little recourse. In those situations, homeowners are effectively trapped and vulnerable. These people are not transient renters. They are proud homeowners. Many who are seniors, working families, and people living on fixed incomes. They pay their rent. They follow the rules. And yet, they can be pushed toward housing insecurities through unchecked increases or neglect. This moratorum is not about sweeping rent control. As a matter of fact, I am not currently in favor of broad rent control. This is about preventing benign homelessness. People losing their homes not because they failed to meet their obligations, but because the scales are tipped too far in one direction. At its core, this is about balance. It is about acknowledging the unique structure of mobile home communities and ensuring that the scales do not weigh excessively in the favor of the landowner at the expense of the homeowner. This moratorum creates breathing room. It gives the city time to act thoughtfully and responsibly. And it sends a clear message that Auburn recognizes the dignity, the investment, and the vulnerability of these homeowners. Thank you for your time,

Council Gary. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I kindly support the good counselor uh written statement and her passion that she put in it and kudos for her first city first year first couple months of being a city council counselor that wrote such a fine statement from her heart and really looking out for her constituents.

Thank you. Other questions or comments from the council? Uh before we move on to the vote, just umformational so people understand um if uh the way we operate here in Auburn, moratoriums aren't never ending. It's for a fixed period of time to allow the council an opportunity to examine an issue and decide if a regulatory ordinance is in order or not. Um we'll be setting up some public forums. Uh we understand there's quite a few different perspectives on this issue. It's a little difficult um in a regular council meeting to have that exchange. So, um we'll get notice out to the community, but uh we'll be setting up a public forum um later this month um to hear more about uh not only the challenges that people in the parks are facing. Um challenges perhaps that some of the park owners are facing and what the current status is of activity um um at the legislature regarding this issue. Um uh depending on the outcome of that we the way the process would work is the council would have work sessions to have a discussion amongst the council about what might be in an ordinance before we move on to the adoption process. So um any other further comments or questions by the council? Council ready for the question? The vote will be by roll call. The clerk will call the role.

Councelor Butler? Yes. Councelor Walker? Yes. Councelor Plattz. Yes. Councelor Gary. Yes. Councelor Randall, yes. Councelor Cohen, yes. Councelor Dval, yes.

Seven having voted in the affirmative and none in the negative, the motion is adopted. Uh there's no new business before the council tonight, we'll move on to reports. Uh just quickly, um several of us attended the uh grand I guess I should say, reopening of Otto's Pizza. Uh you know, it was a very unfortunate circumstance. It had to close. It's a great great business to be in the community and um they had their grand reopening today very well attended by lots of business partners through the chamber and a number of folks from the city. So we really appreciate that. Um there's a number of things going on about HMI, the homeless management information system, the point in time count, but I think councelor Cowan is going Are you planning on covering those? Yeah. So, I'll defer uh to to councelor Cowan on that. With that, councelor Gary.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry to say that since I do do Western Maine after hours transit, my scheduled ride is at 8:30. So, I'm going to have to respectfully be excused. That's ve that's that's quite all right. Uh we're nearing the end of the agenda here anyways. So, thank you. Thank you, Council Randall. I attended my first library board meeting and we're going to start going over the budget soon and that's all.

Council, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, so a couple things going on with it related to homelessness. Um there was a a presentation uh about um kind of broadening the use of some kind of the HMS HMIS system so that there can be not just um a way of having an inventory and helping people find homes but to be able to use that for other social services as well. So there's better integration. So that's um I think there's some good good uh information that we'll be able to as the committee can share. The other thing is just a huge uh thank you to the many many members uh of community in Lewon and Auburn um including some of Auburn's staff who who uh provided um important uh contributions with the point in time count. Uh last meeting I mentioned that that was coming up. That was this past uh week. Um, again, that's uh something that's done the same general time across the country. Uh, it's always done in January. Uh, and it's very important to to get as accurate as we possibly can in terms of the number of individuals who are currently not housed in any shape or form. Um, and because that's it's tied to our funding, not just funding that comes down through down from the state, but potentially grants and things. So, a lot of really hard work that went there was much uh we were able to uh kind of eliminate some of the challenges from last year. Um, the drop in center played a big big part in that. Uh, as well as a lot of effort was done um at the shelter as well as a warming center um in Lewon. So, uh, I think we don't have the final

count necessarily, but, uh, just know that it was a very successful effort. Um, and, uh, you know, even the police and our project support you and folks were out in the camps trying to talk to folks and get the information that we needed. So, a big collective effort and appreciate the um, hard work by everyone involved. Thank you, Council Dval. Nothing to report at this time. Council Butler, nothing this week. Council Walker, nothing sir. Council Platt.

Uh, yeah. Just I wanted to give a quick update. So, we heard from the school department today about the introduction of the budget deliberations. I just wanted to give a reminder to the council of kind of what what our role is and what my role is in that. Um, and jump in, Jeff, if I if I botch this, but my understanding of the city council's role relative to the school department. Um, we're going to be able to vote on their budget down the road here. Something to remember though is we don't we're not voting on necessarily the merits of the budget. We're voting on the number of the budget, right? So they're going to propose a budget. We either accept that or don't accept it. We don't get to argue about the small details of how they spend their money. That said, I'm our representative to the school department and the school committee. So if people do have opinions or questions about certain things, I can ask questions. I can get to the bottom of certain things. I can certainly make suggestions in my school committee meetings. Um but ultimately as a as a body, it's our job to just approve or deny um their budget. So that's an important distinction to make as we deliberate our budget versus the school's budget. Um but it's important that we all understand that. So if you guys ever have any specific questions about school items, that's where you come to me and I do my best to raise any questions to the school department. But when it comes to our vote, it's it's a it's a binary vote.

Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh council, the only item I have to update you on is regarding uh grab and go. For those new counselors may not be aware, uh back in January 2020 during COVID, uh the city council allocated funds for grab and go. It's a program that we had been operating right along using ARPA funds. Uh we had worked with a third-party provider uh to then take over the program. Um due to changes with Good Shepard Food Bank and some of the restrictions there were unable to continue um with what that might look like in the future. Uh they will uh that third party uh vendor will be looking to still provide some resources in the community. Uh just we won't be able to um align that with graband go. Our funding would be coming to an end. So by March 1st uh we'll end uh that program which was certainly very successful provided a lot of great resources. The flyer and the information that we put out uh related to that uh we will be providing information of other uh resources in the community that individuals can contact. Since the start of uh graband go we probably have two or three additional uh resources now in the community that are that are made available. So, we'll be assisting uh those residents that had still been using that service to make sure that that will continue, but hopefully in in another uh another approach uh to get that access. So, that's all I have for an update.

Great. Uh thank you very much. We'll move on to the last agenda item, which is the second open session of the evening. If there's any member of the public who'd like to address the council on an item not on tonight's agenda, please approach the podium and provide your name and address. Not seeing any. The open session will be closed. There's no executive sessions this evening. Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Moved by councelor Walker, seconded by councelor Cowan. All those in favor? The council will be adjourned.