City Council - Regular Meeting

webinar is being transcribed and summarized thank you very much we're being transcribed and summarized and uh now we can go to approval of the agenda we moving a couple of proclamations and moving the water environmental services presentation to the beginning of the agenda

Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve the agenda for the July 7th, 2026 Westland City Council work session. I would like to note the following changes. We will be moving item six up to, which is the Water Environmental Services State of the District. We will be moving that to item three, so it'll go right before public comment if we have any. We are also removing the moving Parks and Rec proclamation and the farmers market proclamation to next week. So staff and others can attend.

Is there a second? Okay, it's been moved and seconded. I can't repeat that word for word. Every word just said, but I will repeat that it's been moved and seconded to move the Water Environmental Services State of the District to number three on the agenda and items 5A and 5C, the Parks and Rec Month and National Farmers Market Week and Summer Street Market Week proclamation to next week's meeting so that staff can attend. Any discussion?

You did it.

I did it. Thank you. Any discussion from City Council on the agenda? Seeing none, we could call the roll, please.

Councilor Bonnington?

Yes.

Councilor Bright? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Mayor Bielastowski?

Yes. So thank you. The motion passes. Unanimously and with that we can move on to the water environmental services state of the district presentation and I see director Geist here and also chair of the Advisory Committee, Westland resident Greg DiLoretto. So welcome to you both.

Alright, thank you Mayor Bielastowski and Council. It's a pleasure to be here again this year. My name is Greg Geist. I'm the director of Clackamas Water and Environment Services. And as in years past, I come here annually and give an annual report, things that we've been up to recently and things that are coming down the road over the next year or, in some cases, farther than that. And for those of you who may be watching, don't know who Wes is, what we do, or why we matter, we take what goes down the toilets and the businesses and the showers in West Linn, and we make three things. make clean water out of it, which goes back out to the Lyme River for downstream uses. We make electricity that we use to fund, to power up to half of our industrial facility there in Oregon City. And we make a natural fertilizer called biosolids that goes out to eastern Oregon and is applied to agricultural fields. So if folks in West Linn wonder what happens when they flush their toilet, it comes to us in Oregon City, we treat it, and we make all kinds of wonderful stuff. Next slide, please. Oh, sorry. Next slide, please. I'm going to toot our own horn just a little bit. In 2025, Wes was awarded the Outstanding Member Agency of the Year Award by the Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies. And that is virtually anybody who's anybody in Oregon in the wastewater and stormwater arena. So Portland, Gresham, Clean Water Services, Salem, all across the state. It's the second time we've won it recently. We won it in 2019 as well. And I just want to acknowledge that and the hard work of the folks at Water Environment Services every day. We're doing good work for the community and people are noticing and we appreciate that. Next slide. I just want to review quickly our vision and mission. Our vision is to be a collaborative partner in building a resilient clean water future where all people benefit and rivers thrive. And the operative or the most important two words in there are collaborative partner. We work with all of the cities that we serve and the communities that we serve and constantly try to find ways to work together for the benefit of our customers and the community and the environment. It's core to who we are at WES. Next slide. And again, for those of you who don't know West very well, this is the area that we serve. We serve about 200,000 people in the urbanized area of Clackamas County that includes Milwaukee all the way out to the farthest reaches of Happy Valley, and then Westland, Oregon City, and Gladstone, as well as Johnson City and the urbanized area of Clackamas County. So it's a pretty large service area, pretty diverse service area. In some areas, like West Linn, we're what we call a wholesale provider. That means you guys own and operate the pipes and the pump stations that get the wastewater to us and we do the treatment. It's a little more nuanced than that, which I'll explain later with a couple projects that we're working on because we actually do have pipes and pump stations in West Linn that we're going to be doing some pretty important work on over the next few years. Next slide. And here we go. So there's actually pretty much three connections with West Linn. So a little history. Back in the 70s, West Linn was served by two separate wastewater treatment plants. One in the Bolton neighborhood, where number four is up there, which is now the Bolton pump station. And another one down in the lower left, the Willamette pump station, was also a treatment plant that discharged out to the Willamette River. In 1980, there was a vote, well, both of those treatment plants were failing in the 70s. There was a vote in 1980 to essentially regionalize or consolidate wastewater treatment. The county at the time was already in the wastewater treatment business up north with our Kellogg treatment plant in Milwaukee. And so the cities got together and said, okay, we're going to consolidate the treatment part of this in Oregon City, have the county take it over. Ultimately, West was formed for that purpose, and we've been off and running ever since. But where those original treatment plants were at Willamette and Bolton areas were converted into large pump stations in order to get the wastewater from West Linn over the river, under the river, to Oregon City. So right now, the Willamette Pump Station is what I'm going to focus on. Well, I'll talk about Bolton as well. But that's kind of how we're plumbed to serve Westland. And feel free to ask any questions along the way. We are governed by the Board of County Commissioners. We have a very strong citizen advisory committee that includes folks from West Linn, including our own Greg DiLoretto as a citizen member and Carol Brake as the elected member on our advisory committee. I will say that the Board of County Commissioners almost universally takes the recommendations from our advisory committee. There's only been one instance that I can think of, and that was slightly tweaking how fast we implement our system development charges over time. That was a little different than what the advisory committee recommended, but highly, highly respected and effective. Next slide. Just a little by the numbers, West owns and operates about 359 miles of sanitary sewer pipes. So when you think about that regional map, that does not include Oregon City, Gladstone, or West Linn, or even Milwaukee. So when you look at the amount in hundreds of miles of pipe that ultimately wind up at either our Kellogg treatment plant in Milwaukee or our Tri-City treatment plant in Oregon City, it's triple that probably. I already talked about those other stuffs. Oh, we treat 7 billion gallons of water per year, which is almost unimaginable. There's not a kind of a visual that I can think of that really captures the vastness of that amount of water. Next. I think what distinguishes West from a lot of... and treatment providers is our investment in planning. And we're not just a planning organization, we're a doing organization. We plan and then we follow the plan. So back in 2016 when WES as it exists today was formed, It really created a structure, a governance structure and a structure for the organization that allowed us to plan far out into the future. Before, we couldn't really do that for reasons I won't get into, but we need to be able to plan for infrastructure that's going to last 50 to 100 years. So as of 2016, we could do that. And so we dove right into that, looking at doing facilities planning for our treatment facilities, collection system master planning that's looking at future capacity needs as well as the condition needs of the infrastructure that we own and operate. uh once we had an understanding of that then we can build a capital plan and a financial long-range financial plan to deliver that infrastructure over time so i like to say we're very blessed and unique in saying confidently confidently that we know what we need to build when we need to build it and how we're going to pay for it and if you follow wastewater at all even just in clackamas county you'll be reading about communities that aren't in that fortunate position. And we've gotten there through the support of the community, making sure that people know who we are, what we do, and why we matter, the importance of infrastructure, and the support and trust of our elected officials. So thank you very much for that. We're lucky. We're fortunate. We're also pretty good. Last year, we won Distinguished Budget Presentation Award and Financial Reporting Award through the Government Finance Officers Association for Oregon. And this year, we, for the first time ever, submitted what they call a popular annual financial report. It's about 12 pages long. You can see it on our website. And its purpose is to explain our budget in a way that an average rate payer customer can understand. And so we submitted that to GFOA this year. If we receive an award for that, we will be one of only nine entities in the entire state of Oregon that have all three. They call it the triple crown or the trifecta from a financial reporting standpoint. Looking forward to next year bringing that back to you with success. Excellent. So rates, we proposed and received a 4.9% rate increase this year, or $1.55 per month for the average homeowner here in West Linn. We, as you can see from the chart, our goal is to be steady and predictable with our rate adjustments. And we've been doing that. We have policies around that that are approved by our board and our advisory committee, and we're sticking to it. So rates aren't going down, they are going up, but they're doing it in a very steady and predictable fashion.

Next slide.

And we look pretty good when we look around the state and look regionally. You can see West Linn there. The green bar is what you pay West for that wholesale wastewater treatment. And then on top of that is what West Linn charges for the collection and conveyance. And that's different for the different cities that we serve who provide their own collection and conveyance. So that's West Linn, Milwaukee, Gladstone, Oregon City. Everybody charges a little bit different rate. You can see the retail rate zone, too, there. That's where, let's say, Happy Valley and unincorporated, urbanized Clackamas County, where West does all of the wastewater conveyance and treatment, and that's what we charge. It's a little bit less. We have more customers than any of the cities. So that's what that looks like. Next slide. Last time I'll be talking about the Tri-City Outfall Project. This was an expansion of our outfall, so the pipe that takes the treated wastewater from our treatment plant out into the Willamette River. We went from an approximately five foot diameter existing outfall pipe to a seven foot diameter new outfall in a different part of the river. So we are now, as of December, using that new outfall full time. We will continue to have the original outfall to use at future peak wet weather events. So the infrastructure is still there. It's still operable. But I want to say that we brought that project online on time and on budget. So it came online in December between the two major storm events, and we're very proud of that project. I think I showed a video last year, so I won't go into that. But it is done. Done and dusted. Thank you.

It was quite an engineering feat. It was.

Yeah, it was a career kind of project for our engineering staff. They were very proud of it, and they pulled it off. Next slide. Okay, so I mentioned Bolton Force Main. So that is a pipe in the Bolton, or a pump station in the Bolton neighborhood, connects to a pipe. And I think, I may have mentioned this last year, but we did what we call smart pigging. So pigs are essentially plugs that we send through the pipe, in many cases to clean it. But also, in this case now, they have technology that they can put in these pigs to do a condition assessment on the pipe. The reason I mention that now is because we got that data back and this summer we will be starting projects along in the Bolton neighborhood to slip line or basically take, it's called cured in place pipe. that is slipped into the existing pipe and then cured and strengthens the existing pipe so where those areas that were identified through that pigging and the subsequent analysis will be fortified beginning this summer so it was very very valuable projects we did have several leaks in that line over the years and so we were getting pretty nervous about its overall condition so getting something in there and getting some good quantitative analysis of what's going on with that pipe is going to set us up for the future. Next slide. And this just shows an overview of the journey of that smart pig starting from the Bolton Pump Station and continuing all the way across underneath the river and then discharge through a manhole on the other side. And I also wanted to speak in collaboration and partnership, thank West Linn for allowing, we had to use drinking water essentially to fill up the wet well, we couldn't use sewage to push the smart pig through the pipe, so we used drinking water from hydrants here in West Linn, so thank you for that. Next slide. So the next project that we're going to be working on is the Willamette Pump Station. So this is a pump station that was built in 1986 to replace what was a wastewater treatment plant. It's been operating ever since. It's been upgraded with new pumps and things over the years, but it needs to be completely refurbished and upsized to allow for future growth, capacity for growth, as well as condition for that. And this pump station serves about 45% of the flow from Westland. So it's a big pump station. Next slide. Oh, actually, can you stay on that one just for a minute? So you can see where the existing pump station is on the picture to the left. Part of the analysis, luckily, well, I won't get into the details, but we own about five acres there to the north of the existing pump station. And what we learned when we were looking at seismic upgrades to that facility was that it's on very poor soil, liquefaction type situation if there's a big earthquake. So we're actually moving that pump station farther to the north onto land that we already own. And we're working with the city of West Linn on all the permitting as we speak, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. Next slide. This is a rendering of what the new pump station will look like. We expect to start construction on the pump station part of this in October of 2028, and it'll take about a year. Next slide. So we split the project into two phases. So there's the pump station, and then there's the force main that connects that pump station ultimately to get it over the river. We decided to do the force main part first. So we're going to start the force main part In August 2027, that will also take about a year. If you look at the blue line, that's the existing alignment. And what we're going to do is go up the 4th Street right-of-way up to Willamette Falls Drive and all the way over to what will be our new pipe over the Abernethy Bridge once that's constructed. Go ahead. Next slide. So this is going to be a disruptive project along Willamette Falls Drive. And we've been working on this really since 2023 from a public engagement and outreach standpoint, project signs. We did informational interviews with property owners in 2024, direct mail in 2025. We presented to the Willamette Neighborhood Association in late 2025. Willamette Neighborhood Association in 2026. We interviewed businesses and residents that will be impacted by the construction along Willamette Falls Drive earlier this year. And we have an August 2026 Neighborhood Association presentation to the Bolton and Sunset Neighborhood Associations. I want to thank Councillor Bonnington. We reached out to them several times and didn't really hear back from them. One call to Councillor Bonnington and we got responses back. So thank you very much for that. Next slide. But we take public outreach seriously. We want to be a good neighbor. We want to be a good partner. We want to be transparent. So doing a lot on that front. And if there's things that you think that we can do in addition to what we've done or plan to do, we're all ears. Just, again, partnering. We will continue to sponsor movies in the park and music in the park. Also, the Old Time Fair Parade, which we will proudly have our West Water Droplet mascot be participating in the parade this weekend. So, happy to do that. And I think that's the last slide.

Who will be in the mascot costume in the parade?

That's classified information. Okay. A very enthusiastic staff member.

We appreciate that. That's awesome. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for helping the Bolton neighborhood with their stormwater pipe, or their sewer pipe, excuse me, and for taking care of our community with this important service that you do. I want to open the floor up to the city council. I also want to recognize, before I do that, Greg DiLoretto, would you like to make any comments? You're an esteemed Westland resident.

Well, I would, and thank you for the opportunity. You asked me last year, and I said no, and I realized I really wasted an opportunity to talk about West. I live in West Linn. I've been here for over 40 years. The projects that Greg's talking about were new when I moved here, and so now they have to be replaced, which I find hard to get my head around, you know. I'm also, as mentioned, the chair of the West Advisory Board. And as many of you know, since I retired a number of years ago after a 40-year career in the infrastructure space in the public sector, I have spent my time, in addition to being on Wes's advisory board, I sit on the Westland Transportation Advisory Board and some other local ones, spent my time traveling around the country and the world talking about the need to invest in our infrastructure. And doing this opened my eyes to how fortunate we are to have West serve as our steward of our wastewater system. The planning, thoughtful approach has provided us as customers with a system that environmentally treats our wastewater and properly discharges of it into the Willamette River. And of course, doing that requires resources and a budget. And the county commissioners have adopted the recommendations of West and have adopted a budget and have adopted a rates that allows WES to carry out their mission and comply with WES's EPA permits. And I can't emphasize how important this is enough to you. One of my activities is to serve as a spokesperson for the American Society of Civil Engineers on America's infrastructure. And as some of you know, I've been interviewed by the national media, including ABC News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and others. And these requests always come following some infrastructure disaster. And the question I'm always asked is, how did it happen? And the answer I can always confidentially give them is, because they failed to adequately invest in their infrastructure. And in fact, it was about a little over a year ago, I was contacted by the Akron, Ohio media because they had to do several large wastewater rate increases. And Akron serves about 300,000 people. And it's a little larger than West, and the media question was why. For years, they had refused to adjust their rates to meet the requirements of their system. Finally, the system failed. Akron found themselves under a consent decree from the EPA. And the cost to correct this is far greater than if they just kept up with the system. So me personally, when I applied to serve on the West Advisory Board, and the same is true when I applied to serve on the City of West Linn's Transportation Advisory Board, it's because I wanted to be in a position where I was not having to pay for the failure to inadequately invest in our infrastructure. It's just too expensive. And it's too harmful to our economic prosperity and our quality of life. And so I'll say it again. We are really fortunate to have the West folks here taking care of the wastewater. They're doing it responsibly. They're doing it financially such that we can afford it. Thank you.

Thank you for those wonderful comments. And Council President would like to make a comment.

And I just want to thank you and say how fortunate we are to have a civil engineering celebrity of sorts in our midst. I know you're a very humble man, but you are the past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. And I think it's just amazing that you're here to share your knowledge with us. And you're right. I have learned so much being on council and being in the position of going to the American Water Works Association, learning about what's underground, what's going on, and talk about unsung heroes, the people that that use these and run these facilities and also the facilities themselves and what they provide for us and the importance of funding it. As you point out, Greg, very correctly, nobody wants to see their rates rise, but it is very important. So thank you. And I do recognize how important this all is and appreciate you a lot.

I echo those comments wholeheartedly, Council President. Thank you. Very grateful to have you serving on our boards in Westland. Greg, any comments from City Council? Councillor Groner.

Yes, thank you. Appreciate your presentation. Very impressed by the work you did. Thank you. Just out of my own personal curiosity, you mentioned one of the products was energy. Could you say a few words about how that happens?

Yes, happy to do that. So we separate, a big part of the treatment process is separating the liquids from the solids that arrive at our treatment plant. The solids material is organic. And so as we separate that, we pump it into large tanks, million gallon plus concrete tanks that are then heated. And there's an anaerobic, there's no oxygen in there. And so they essentially act like a stomach. And they're called digesters because they digest that organic material. And just like our stomachs, they make gas, mostly methane gas, that we then burn in an engine generator to make electricity.

Thank you.

And I'm sure if you'd like to go, some of us went on a nice tour a couple years ago. I can't remember, did you take the tour yet of the West facility? If you'd like to go, I'm sure Greg and the team would love to host you over there because it's really interesting to see the whole system.

I guarantee you'll be impressed.

We'll reach out. Maybe we can all have another tour for the city council for anybody who's interested. It's always good to see. Councilor Bryke, I think you're our WES liaison from the elected side, so go ahead.

Yes, I am the liaison, and it's a privilege to be part of that advisory committee. The work that WES does with all of the planning, you know, the financial planning, the capital improvement planning, is just better than anything I've ever seen anywhere. So I really appreciate that. I'm very proud of being able to be part of that advisory committee.

Thank you very much.

Any other comments from City Council? Okay, well, with that, thank you all for being here. Keep up the good work. Yes, keep up the great work. And we look forward to seeing those projects coming to fruition in West Linn. We appreciate your partnership. Moving on then on the agenda to public comments. Do we have any public comments tonight?

There are no public comments.

Okay. We can go then to mayor and council reports. I spoke to Council President last night. She said she was working on her council reports for today, so I know she has something for us. So we'll start with Council President Baumgartner and can go around the room.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes. Well, the day after our last meeting on the 17th of June, I attended the C4 Metro Subcommittee on Transportation. and learned a lot about the IBR, Interstate Bridge Replacement Project, and it's currently in a final phase of approval to start, and it is a somewhat, I won't say, it's not quite controversial, but it's causing a lot of conversation, I'll say that, due to the cost of it. But most people agree that we need to replace the interstate bridge. That is the I-5 bridge from Portland to Vancouver. The next day, the 18th, I went in person to the metro offices for the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation, which also focused a lot on the interstate bridge replacement project. I was there, too. Very interesting. Yes. And the mayor was in his role as his summer job. He was at his office, so I got to see his office. Then we had a South Fork Water Board virtual meeting just to do some board votes, contract approval. There was a Willamette Falls Locks Authority meeting, basically updating on the current status, which we are still aiming for jurisdictional transfer from the Army Corps of Engineers to the LOCS authority of the LOCS themselves next year, hopefully in April. And we also had a Willamette Falls Trust board meeting and partner dinner that evening, which was an excellent opportunity to interact with our tribal partners and meet and greet and prepare for the Lamprey Festival, which was the following day. And that was very successful. It was the biggest crowd at a Lamprey Festival, the ones that I've been to recently in the last few years. And the weather was perfect. And the geese had not been in the park recently, which was kind of nice. And I'll let you use your imagination there. Then we had another Willamette Falls Trust meeting with our heritage advocates who are interested in the mill site buildings and how we could save as many as possible or any, hopefully. And then we had a Historic City Hall Partners Lunch with all of the entities that are using Historic City Hall and there was a lot of congratulations and appreciation to the city for what great work that building is doing and how the renovation is creating a space for partners to collaborate on our waterfront vision project. And it's just a culmination of A lot of people's work and effort for years and the city coming to the, bringing the money to the table to renovate that facility. So it works really well. That is all.

Well, thank you, Council President. Who can top that? Who wants to top that? Councillor Bright, go ahead, and we'll go to Councillor Groner.

Well, I certainly can't top that. I didn't get out much recovering from my broken ankle. It's much better now. But I did go to the police swearing in two new officers, and that was, as always, a wonderful event. And so we have two new officers that are currently at the police academy. They were kind of in the middle of their training. So we will be seeing them soon. helping us on the streets soon.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Groner?

Thank you.

I too was at the Chamber of Commerce meeting at the Old City Hall. Interesting seeing a lot of businesses represented there. I was at the Lamprey Festival and there were some interesting Native American dances and speeches and food. It was an interesting, fun session. On the 18th, we had a sustainability meeting. And on the 30th, I attended a dog show at the adult center. And I'm proud to say, well, actually, every dog won some sort of prize. But mine won the best bionic doorbell award.

Thank you, Councillor. I hear there's another dog show at the old-time fair coming up. My dog will be entered, actually, by the way. So that'll be great. Thank you, Councillor. I'll just share. I attended a, just going back through my calendar, the South Fork Water Board meeting, and then some of you may have forgotten, I'm on the local officials advisory committee to the Department of Land Conservation Development. So every once in a while that committee meets. It's called LOAC, and so I attended their meeting and we talked about the housing production strategies submitted by all the cities and had a report on that and i emphasize the need to continue the grant funding to the cities as we move towards implementation which we're going to talk about today and also attended coffee with a cop with our city attorney a couple weeks ago so that was Very fun at the Willamette Coffee House. So with that, we can close out with Councillor Bonnington. What's your report from the last couple of weeks?

I sure seem to spend a lot of time on this city council business to have nothing in the past to report for the last two weeks. But I do need to make a plea on behalf of the parade and the organization of that. Volunteers are badly needed for Saturday. So if anyone happens to be watching or could get the word out, that would be very helpful.

That's a good reminder, too, of the whole Old Time Fair happening this weekend, starting Friday, going through Sunday. And the Old Time Fair will be, I think, at 10 o'clock down in Willamette and some judging and things before then for all the awards. Parade at 10 o'clock. Fair all day. So looking forward to that. And so if anybody would like to volunteer, I'm sure they can contact Rebecca Hollenbeck. Thank you, council. Great reports. And council president has one more thing to add.

I just want to recognize that the Pollinator event happened on also the evening of the 25th, and I was a little bit done in by walking around in my lamprey costume at the Lamprey Festival, so I wasn't able to attend, but I have been going just in the evenings. with my family sometimes to enjoy the pollinator garden and I would recommend it to anyone. It's just so lovely and every time I go it's different. Different things are blooming and it's so well cared for by the volunteers led by our recent community recipient of our award volunteer award Cheryl Borden and we appreciate all of her work and I also wanted to mention I've started again having coffee dates there's been a little confusion on the calendar about my coffees and so please refer to the calendar which has now been corrected hopefully I didn't stand anyone up thank you thank you council president for that clarification and uh

With that, we can move on to the proclamations. We have one today, which is the Disability Pride Month. And for those anxiously waiting, the Parks and Rec Month and National Farmers Market Week will happen next week, as we said earlier. So I will read the Disability Pride Month proclamation. Whereas Disability Pride Month, observed every July, commemorates the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990. a landmark civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. And whereas Disability Pride Month recognizes the history, achievements, experiences, and contributions of individuals with disabilities and recognizes the important role that they play, and strengthening our community. And whereas this observance is the call to advance inclusion, accessibility, and equal opportunity by removing barriers that limit full participation in community. And whereas the City of West Linn is committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible community by supporting equitable access to programs, services, facilities, and public spaces for all residents. And whereas Disability Pride Month recognizes that people with disabilities are an integral part of our community whose talents, perspectives, and contributions strengthen the social, cultural, civic, and economic vitality of our city. And so now, be it proclaimed by the City Council of the City of Westland that July 2026 is Disability Pride Month, dated the seventh day of July 2026. Thank you, everybody. I'll sign the proclamation and issue it after the meeting. And moving back then to the agenda, We will move to item seven, which is the West Linn Housing Production Strategy. And we have members of our planning department here. I'll turn it over to Steve Kopper to introduce the topic. Thank you mayor.

So we have Darren Weiss, principal planner and Erica Smith, senior planner here to provide an update on a grant funded project to implement the city's housing production strategy, which you'll recall was adopted by council in may of 2025. Um, Darren will take it from here, but I did want to give a shout out to the department of land conservation and development for providing grant funding for this project.

Awesome. And a teaser, Erica, emailed me earlier today talking about a working group that's going to happen for the implementation phase, and the city council will have a member on that group. So as you're hearing the presentation, think about whether you'd like to be on that working group. We could talk about time commitments during the presentation. So with that, take it away.

All right, thank you, Mayor, and good afternoon, Council. Again, Darren Wise, principal planner with the city. Again, with me is Erica Smith, senior planner. It's Erica's first time in front of Council, so it's very exciting that she's here to co-present this with me. We've got a short presentation. It'll just cover the information that was in the agenda bill that was sent to Council, and then we will discuss in very brief terms some of the work that's been done and what's coming up. And if you want more detailed information, the links in that agenda bill will get you to more details. Sorry, skipping forward here. All right, so the goals of the work session, we're going to do a brief recap of the implementation of House Bill 2003, a briefing on the housing production implementation project, which we are just commencing right now. AND THEN TWO REQUESTS FROM COUNCIL ON DIRECTION FOR POINTING TO WORKING GROUP, AND THEN AS THE MAYOR JUST MENTIONED, COUNSELOR ON THE OTHER WORKING GROUP FOR THE SECOND COMPONENT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION. SO I'M JUST GOING TO GIVE A BRIEF HISTORY OF HOW WE GOT TO THIS POINT. House Bill 2003 was passed by the Oregon legislature in 2019. It was called the Housing Needs and Production Bill. It required communities to do certain actions, and it was really intended to help communities meet the housing needs of Oregonians. There's been a housing crisis in the state of Oregon for a while now, and this bill was intended to help meet the needs of Oregonians through these actions. The city of West Linn, out of this bill, was required to do four things. The first, align our comprehensive plan goals in goal 10, which is the housing goal of the state. Align our policies with the bill itself and the actions in the bill. complete and adopt a housing capacity analysis, follow that up with the housing production strategy, adoption of that document, and then implement that housing production strategy through the actions that were adopted, which Eric is going to talk about. the current project, and then update this process every six years. So after six years, we will go through the process again, review what has worked, what hasn't worked, and then adjust our actions as necessary. So the housing capacity analysis, which was commenced back in 2020, 2021, again, the Department of Land Conservation and Development supplied grant funding for consultant services to the city. The city council appointed a working group to help work through the housing capacity analysis. It really boils down to looking at what the future projected housing needs of the city were and compare that to the available lands to build that housing and then come up with strategies and actions in order to fulfill those needs. THE PLANNING COMMISSION MADE A RECOMMENDATION AND THE CITY COUNCIL ADOPTED THE HOUSING CAPACITY ANALYSIS IN OCTOBER OF 2023. SO IT'S BEEN ABOUT TWO AND A HALF YEARS SINCE WE'VE ADOPTED THIS DOCUMENT. THERE WERE, AGAIN, GOAL 10 POLICY AMENDMENTS THAT WERE MADE AT THE TIME TO ALIGN WITH THE HOUSING BILL. WE REZONED A PROPERTY OF MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING. LACK OF ENOUGH MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING TO MEET THE COMMUNITY'S NEEDS, SO THE COUNCIL AT THE TIME REZONED THE PROPERTY, REZONED A COUPLE OF PROPERTIES TO ALIGN WITH COMPREHENSIVE PLAN DESIGNATION AT THE SITES, AND THEN APPLIED ZONING TO A PROPERTY THAT WAS NOT ZONED AT THE TIME. SO SOME SMALL ACTIONS AT THE TIME OF THE ADOPTION OF THE HOUSING CAPACITY ANALYSIS. The city then followed that up as required by the bill. And again, DLCD provided grant-funded consultant services to help the city with the process. The city council, again, appointed a working group to help worked through the housing production strategy process the working group was consisted of some affordable housing providers some local developers the home builders association there was a member of city council in the planning commission and the neighborhood association president's group on that working group uh The intent of the housing production strategy, again, is to identify actions that would address the identified housing needs from that housing capacity analysis. And the identified needs for the city of West Linn are primarily more low to moderate income housing as needed in the community, subsidized affordable housing if there's a need in the community, and also more multi-unit housing in the community. So the actions are really focused on primarily those three subsets of housing. And again, the Planning Commission went through a recommendation process and City Council adopted the housing production strategy last May. There were 12 adopted actions. They're in the image here on the screen. Probably too small to see, but you can get to it through the link or finding the housing production strategy on the city's website. And they're divided into some near term, the first three years of the six year cycle, and then the longer term, the last three years. And Erica's going to talk about six of the adopted actions that are the near term, which we are just beginning to work on currently. And I will turn it over to Erica.

Hello, I think I've met most of you in person now, but I just wanted to reiterate that I'm very happy to be here. I've really been enjoying my first several months here and feel very welcomed by the community and by my coworkers. So I'm excited to keep this work going. As Darren mentioned, we're now working with two consultants, one more focused on the land use items and one more focused on the kind of financial incentive action items to work on implementation. I think at the three-year mark of the six-year cycle, there will be an evaluation by DLCD, where we'll have to show what progress we've made on meeting our housing capacity analysis goals. So while we're not, I think, yet tying really aiming for any certain production numbers at this point. That's just something to keep in mind, that we're going to use the tools and the actions that have been identified so far. And then at the three-year mark, we'll have to kind of take a look and say, where has that gotten us? What do we need to do additionally if we're not getting close to the identified goals? The first set of actions are related to zoning changes, either rezoning land or updating different zone code elements to incentivize the target types of housing in those zones. including incentives for workforce and affordable housing. And that will go through the land use process because those are land use items. And so we're hoping that council will confirm that the planning commission can be used as the reviewing body for those actions and then planning commission will make a presentation to planning commission and get their feedback and they will make a recommendation to city council on adoption of those items So per our code, there is the option for city council to appoint planning commission as the reviewing body for those items to make recommendation. The alternative would to be go through a multi-months long process through the citizen involvement committee to create a separate working group, which wouldn't really line up with the timeline for this project, which is why we're recommending using planning commission as that body since they are already familiar with land use hearings process. So yeah, that's one of our asks of council today is to consider appointing planning commission as the reviewing body for those items. The other side of the action items are related to financial incentives because those aren't related to land use. We'll have a project working group that has representatives from the city finance department and public works as well as community development. We're reaching out to representatives of the affordable housing development community as well as traditional home builders, also the Clackamas County assessor's office to all kind of weigh in on which financial incentives will be the most effective and which are also the most feasible. So they'll give us feedback and then we'll bring those items to city council for approval. The items are updating system development charges, which the cities, we're only going to be looking at the city's portion of those rather than the SDCs that are charged by the Tri-County Service District and South Park Water Board. So looking at one is updating the methodology for how STC's are calculated so that it would be more favorable to the types of housing that we want to incentivize. Another kind of lever that we can pull is looking at waiving or exempting certain types of housing development from some or all of the city's portion of the STC's. And then in terms of tax incentives, we're looking at a two options that have already been enabled by state legislation. So one is a low income rental housing tax exemption that would provide a fixed term exemption from property taxes for affordable rental housing. And it would lower the operating costs for affordable housing providers, essentially subsidizing the low income housing in effect. And then for ownership opportunities, another limited tax exemption would offer a limited term tax exemption for owner-occupied homes that were purchased at a sale price that is related to a certain level of, I think, median... sales levels, but I think it's connected somehow to income levels also. Our consultants will be able to kind of get into the nitty gritty on those details of how those can be calculated. But essentially, you know, having kind of three different options for how to make home ownership and rental opportunities more affordable on both the user end and the developer end. And as I mentioned, I kind of already went through the review adoption process. I went a little bit backwards on that. But as I had reached out to Rory earlier, we are hoping that one of you all will Have some time to join that project working group. We are hoping it's going to be a pretty low time commitment our The project schedule right now has just one meeting Later at the end of this month that will be virtual and we're hoping during Daytime hours and then the next meeting wouldn't be until January of 2027 You are you asking right now

Are you pausing so we can weigh in on that?

Yes. Yes, thank you, Mayor. Yeah, so the two items for direction from City Council. So I'm happy to answer any more questions or any questions you have. But yeah, one is, are you comfortable with the Planning Commission as a review body for the zoning community development code amendments? And then two, would any of the councillors like to commit to being on the financial side of the... All right, looks like we've got someone.

Councillor Bonnington, would you like to go? Absolutely, yeah. I was on the original Housing Production Strategies Working Group, and right from the first week on council, it was an interesting time. I look forward to continuing down this path and this process. Also, just professionally, I have a serious interest in it, too.

Good fit. So, Councillor Barrington has put himself forward for that position. Councillor Barrington, did you have a question?

If you need an alternate, I'd be happy to to be the alternate.

And the council president.

I just had a question about you were mentioning what there might possibly be the ability to waive fees, SDCs, et cetera. Is there state guidance or policy from DLCD or somewhere on that type of criteria setting?

There are documents from a DLCD, but our consultant, the consultant team has put together information around options the city can consider. At this point, they're primarily targeting like accessory dwelling units and affordable housing for some kind of SEC reduction or exemption. And that will be part of the working group. The first meeting of the working group will be presenting the options and then getting feedback from the working group on which ones they recommend exploring further. And then the next few months would be spent really getting into the details. And then the next time the working group met, would be the opportunity to make a recommendation. But yes, there will be multiple steps along the process to evaluate options, consider alternatives, and then review them. And we will come back to council along the way to make sure you're all up to date on which direction is being pursued at that time to make sure you're all comfortable with it.

And do we take into account in the process what other local regional partners, cities are doing just so we can be similar? We don't want to maybe be much higher or much lower. I don't know what the thought process behind that might be, but...

Yes, there will be an evaluation of how other communities address some of these topics. And so we can get a good sense of what maybe has worked and what's not working and align ourselves with what's going to be the most effective.

Excellent. Thank you.

So, Councillor Bright, you were also interested in being on. Is there any reason why we can't have two councillors on that working group if two are very interested in it? I don't know if you were...

ABSOLUTELY NOT. IF BOTH OF THE COUNCILORS WOULD LIKE TO BE ON IT, WE CAN HAVE YOU BOTH ON THE GROUP.

I JUST WANT TO SAY, IS EVERYBODY SAYING OKAY? I SEE THERE'S A CONSENSUS. SO HEARING NO OTHER OBJECTIONS OR CONCERNS, I SAY WE CAN GIVE INFORMAL DIRECTION TO DESIGNATE COUNCILOR BRETT AND COUNCILOR BONNINGTON ON THAT WORKING GROUP. IF WE NEED TO TAKE ANY FORMAL ACTION, WE CAN DO THAT AT A CITY COUNCIL MEETING.

No, I don't believe there's any formal action needed. The only other question would be is the council comfortable with the planning commission being the review group for the land use items?

Just looking for head nods or thumbs up or any objections to that approach. Otherwise, we have to have months-long process to plan. Do we want a long bureaucratic process or do we just want to have the planning commission do it? I see some head nods. Okay, we can... proceed forward with that approach. And I appreciate you both being here, giving the presentation. And Erica, we're very glad to have you here. And welcome again. Look forward to continuing to work with you. And the journey continues on the housing production strategy. So thank you. We'll hear more about it soon, I'm sure.

All right. Thank you very much for the direction.

Okay, Councilor Groner, go ahead.

Do we have any statistics on how much housing has been produced in the last year or two?

We could get those statistics put together and get them to you. If I remember correctly, the first two years of the middle housing, after the middle housing rules were put into place, we did a two-year check-in in 2024, I believe it was, and it essentially had doubled the amount of housing that could have been built on the parcels or lots where the middle housing was built. But we can actually get council a figure of how much housing has been produced since we started all of this work.

Thank you.

If it's not too hard by the next time we meet on the topic, it'd be nice to have some numbers.

Yeah, it's no problem. We have to do reporting to the state every year so we can just pull those reports and get them to council. Sweet. Appreciate it.

Sounds good. Well, Mr. Coper, any final thoughts on this topic as the Community Development Director overseeing it all?

No, thank you. I want to just commend these two for their great work on this project.

Thanks. well with that we can continue on then on the agenda and thanks to councillors for being willing to serve on the advisory working group and on the agenda to the code of conduct slash civil exclusion policy for city property and this is kind of a long-term follow-up to our guidelines for civil discourse that we've had for a long period of time but don't have a lot of teeth to them so Happy to turn it over to City Attorney Klein. I know you've worked closely with HR on this matter.

Thank you, Mayor. I think I might first turn it over to Steve to introduce the topic and discuss some of the concerns that came to the admin staff, and then I will go ahead and walk through the proposed policy with you and explain the different provisions.

Sounds great.

Thank you. Go ahead, Steve. Sure. Thank you, Kaylee. So I did, before jumping into a little overview of the policy, did specifically want to commend Kaylee and Alyssa, our deputy city manager, for their fantastic work on this policy. The aim of the policy is to establish clear expectations for behavior in city buildings. So as council may know, there is an existing policy that was established by previous council that sets a framework for behavior at council meetings, but this policy would expand that to city facilities, primarily city hall. And so the idea would be that it would provide clear and fair communications to the public and other visitors to city facilities as to the expectations while these people are on city premises. The goal would be to enhance safety, allow for engagement and comfort for both employees and the public. I think you all are aware that in many of the city facilities in the public, the employees are interacting regularly with people in some areas of the city that are not protective glass separating staff from the public. And so some of these concerns have arisen over time. And so the idea here is to provide a mechanism for excluding individuals who engage specifically in highly disruptive conduct, not necessarily people who are dissatisfied with a bill or something like that but people who take it to the next level and so what is being asked of council at this meeting is to share feedback if you have any on the policy itself and then provide staff direction and then we would return on July 14th with a resolution and a that would enable council to consider adoption of the resolution which would then affect delegating authority to the city manager to implement the policy and then in the future amend it as necessary so unless there's any questions about the overview I'm happy to turn it over to city attorney Kaylee Klein to talk about the legal aspects of the development of the policy itself

Thank you. Any questions on the overview? Seeing none, we can proceed.

Thank you. I think Steve did a fantastic job of introducing this topic. So just a little more on that. There have been some increasing interactions at the counters, upstairs and downstairs, by either residents or patrons that are quite frustrated. And so the point of this is to use this policy infrequently, but have it clearly established in public display and on the books so that in those infrequent circumstances where we do have someone's behavior that rises to the level of significantly interfering with our employees' service of the public, for them feeling either threatened or attacked, or other people at the counter doing different business feeling threatened um uh unsafe for and you know like they're in a unprofessional environment is is what we're trying to avoid here so uh in talking with the administration staff on this um the deputy city manager did mention that she had looked around at other cities and they do have code of conduct policies so we looked to both tigard and wilsonville's existing policies and modeled ours primarily on Tigards, but my job and my thought as I was drafting this was just striking that balance between creating that professional atmosphere and allowing our employees to work, but not infringing or creating any risks as to residents, patrons, visitors, free speech and other constitutional rights to competition their government, to speak their mind, et cetera. And so making sure we're careful of respecting that balance was one of my primary aims in working with admin staff on this policy. If you turn to your packet, we do have the draft for the work session towards the back of the staff report. The definitions, I'm going to start there. Where does this policy apply? It applies to city-owned or managed property, meaning buildings or physical structures where city employees or volunteers work or provide services. We did consult with all of the directors of the different departments and the West Linn Public Library already has a very robust policy and they did express some concerns about this one superseding theirs and they're very happy with how theirs has worked and managed behavior in the library. I think my understanding is it's more consistent with a code that other library jurisdictions use. And so I basically carved them out. So this is applying to all city buildings except the library. Turning to page two of the code of conduct, we are asking the city council to delegate your authority to adopt and implement such a policy to the city manager. The city manager has very broad authority to adopt policies that apply to city personnel. But we just wanted to make it expressly clear that he has the full authority to do this. So along with this policy, there's a draft resolution that we would ask you to vote on and enact at the next business meeting. That would give John the power to implement this policy and revise it as necessary. However, we have included a provision that any person may basically appeal or petition to you to revisit a section if they're concerned about any revisions to the policy. So you have that level of oversight. okay let's cover what we're talking about what type of behavior so code of conduct on city property it's a violation of this policy a to engage in conduct that disrupts or interferes with normal operations of city government conduct that creates unreasonable noise consists of loud boisterous or threatening physical behavior that's bucket one a Then we have B, engages in conduct that subjects employees or patrons to harm including but not limited to abusive, discriminatory or threatening language or gestures. This is kind of the area that we've seen at the counter more recently that rise the level of some of our staff feeling unsafe and reporting that to the admin staff. Bucket C is entering or remaining on city property for the purposes other than conducting legitimate city business. This is trying to capture someone who perhaps arrived here and had their issue dealt with and engaged with, but then continues to linger because they're frustrated and no longer has legitimate city business. The questions have been answered, the options have been provided, but then it kind of rises to the level of just aggression and failing. being unable to end that interaction. D is enter or attempt to enter any secure portion of the city government building. We've done a good job in the last couple of months of posting signs to be very clear on what areas are not authorized to the public. But this is just another area where it's very clear that if you're told you may not be in that area, you need to follow those instructions. And then we have deface, damage, or destroy city property. That's kind of your catchall bucket that the other examples had. And a few other catchall provisions at the end here. I'm going to go into the enforcement section. Does anyone want to discuss what type of conduct we're talking about? Does that feel comprehensive to you? Okay, we have two questions.

Questions? Councillor Groner and then Councillor Bonneton.

Yeah, I get the impression this applies to buildings, but parks are city-owned property as well. I imagine people getting boisterous, you know, rooting for their team on a baseball field is not a violation.

no getting excited on a baseball field would not be a violation um i do know i don't have john lagarza here but we do have a separate parks policy that governs conduct and when part city parks are closed that would still apply this would apply in terms of the definitions property owned or managed by the city of west lynn So this would apply there, although I did focus, you know, I said including, but not limited to buildings where city employees are, because I'm really trying to get at that interaction with city employees. But were someone to come up and, you know, harass and rise to a level of disturbing park employees that were working on maintaining park landscaping, et cetera, this would also apply to them. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.

I noticed that our draft points to second-degree criminal trespass, and Wilsonville's points to first-degree, 245 versus 255. Was there a reason for that? We went with one over the other.

Well, in the second degree is a lower violation. I think in general, we wanted to test this out and see how it how it works as implemented. And the city manager does have the authority to revise it if necessary. Wilson's bills, I will say, is more strict, more severe than ours in terms of the conduct they lay out. It's very enumerated. And even had things in there that I found in some cases somewhat surprising in terms of like You know smell or different offensive smell things like that that we just decided not to include in our policy and really focus on the problems we're seeing at our front desk and work on resolving those and again I'm trying to really toe that balance and and not present or create any risk for us in terms of people being able to to come and access their city and do city business.

That seems very sane and logical.

Okay, thank you very much. Moving on, still on page three, but going into enforcement. So we decided to have the actual civil exclusion notice be done by a city law enforcement officer. We discussed whether it should be the city manager or whether it should be someone from Westland PD, including someone like their CSO, like Nicola. And Chief Rollins made the comment that, you know, if the behavior is rising to being this disruptive, there's a good chance Westland PD would be called anyways. And Westland PD is well trained in de-escalation and also understands the importance of what's included in here as Section D, that the officer should first give the person a verbal warning and a reasonable opportunity to desist from a violation. So basically that's a notice, stop the conduct or you will be issued this exclusion. And so we just felt like that fit the best with the way our city functions. I think some higher level city officials weren't as comfortable issuing a civil exclusion, wanted to make sure they felt more comfortable with an officer doing so. And that made sense to me. And so we've drafted a couple sample forms that would need to accompany this policy. We definitely want to give the notice of exclusion in writing to the patron. And so Wilsonville had an example that was very straightforward and clear. If you support this policy, you want to move forward, we'll make sure we adopt that to have Westland language there. Then the final piece besides the officer giving notice to cease that conduct and an opportunity to do so is the right to appeal, which I really think is important. All the policies have that, and that's to just ensure that the person has due process if they disagree with being excluded from city property for a term of 30, 60, or 90 days that they can appeal that to the municipal court judge. Speaking of the time, in Section E, where it says written notice will be given, I realized today that we didn't include in there the length of the exclusion. So today I propose the length shall be 30, 60, or 90 days, commensurate with the severity and frequency of the behavior. So if you have someone who's been a repeat violator, that would go into the officer's weighing of how long it should be and also the severity of the conduct. And I should clarify, I mean, staff interacts with, very successfully, a lot of patrons at our front desk. And sometimes there are frustrated residents, and it's rare that it rises to this level. But when it does, we feel at this time there should be a way to handle that and elevate that to being handled and being taken seriously. So that's what this would do. The right to appeal. would be provided to that person who's in violation. They can request that opportunity before the municipal court judge. We coordinated with Rhonda and Rhett Bernstein in the muni court to ask if this process made sense to them and comported with their current procedures. They said yes. and currently we have the hearing procedures be that it would be the soonest available municipal court docket, which, as you know, is biweekly every two weeks. So depending on when the violation occurred and the appeal is requested, this person would be stuck on the soonest available docket. The city would have the burden of proving with evidence the validity of the exclusion, which is another protection for the person who's been in violation to just make sure we're not violating any rights. And the municipal court judge has the authority to affirm it or to rescind it or reduce the amount of time of the exclusion. So that pretty much covers the policy. I see at least one question here.

If one has been excluded from the building, but appeals, how can one then come to the building? I'm sure you've thought of this, but it's in here.

It's in here. The language that applies. Basically they do have the ability to come in. for that hearing and there's even a section on variances that says they can apply in writing to the municipal court for a waiver of some or all effects of the exclusion for example if there's someone who comes in and they're not able to pay their bills online and they come monthly to pay with Nancy they can have a variance for just that activity and again it's really important to make sure we're open and receptive to the public because we provide such an array of services and And so I think the variance does a good job of covering those instances. Thank you. Good question.

Thank you for the overview of the whole thing. Appreciate any questions from council. Well, we can have kind of discussion and comments and the ask is really about do we want to bring this back for adoption at a future meeting by resolution, correct? Yes. Not an ordinance. Okay. Council President, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for all the work and diligence that you have put into this. And from the very first times that I started to attend city council meetings and coming with, from working with students with special needs in schools, The fact that a lot of people feel unsafe when there's something happening that amounts to elevated emotional behavior. So for me, this is about access. So as you point out, if there's a situation happening that it may not involve someone who's also trying to do business with the city at the same time, that's an accessibility issue for me personally. And I also... I strongly believe, as you have pointed out, people's right to appeal to their government and also to voice complaints. And it's acceptable. But when things reach a certain level that it's causing our staff to not feel safe, again, that's about workplace environment issues. that we have a duty to have a good and healthy workplace environment for our employees and staff. So I appreciate all of this, and I do believe that this is an important new policy. I will support it. Thank you.

Any other comments? Thank you, Council President. I do agree with your statements tonight. Councilor Bright.

I just want to say delegating to the city manager is absolutely appropriate because we're not here all the time. So this is where much of that, if any, behavior is going to be taking place. So that way he has the ability to update the policy should it need it.

I support bringing the policy back as well. Appreciate all the work that's gone into it. And we just want to keep, I think, from the city council standpoint, we want to make sure that everybody on the frontline staff feel safe in their job. And so concerning that there's been times where they haven't and we're following suit of other cities and making sure we have a really carefully crafted policy that reflects the need to keep the workplace safe and encouraging people to come in and be civil and respectful of staff.

Exactly. I think that's a great summary of the purpose here and the aims.

Thank you. ANY OTHER COMMENTS? ARE YOU OKAY BRINGING THIS TO A WORK SESSION OR A CITY COUNCIL MEETING FOR APPROVAL? WOULD THAT BE JULY 14?

THAT WOULD BE NEXT WEEK. EVERYTHING FOR THAT MEETING GETS POSTED TOMORROW AT CLOSE OF BUSINESS. WE WOULD UPDATE THE TWO SAMPLE FORMS, FINALIZE THOSE, ADD IN THE PERIODS OF TIME OF 30, 60 AND 90 DAYS SOUNDS APPROPRIATE. and then do a final proofread to make sure it's consistent throughout. And that's the changes that would occur.

Sounds great. Well, we will do that. So we'll post it tomorrow and consider it next week for adoption. Anything else on this topic or closing comments? Okay. Well, thank you.

Thank you for your time and feedback.

Thank you. And we can then move on to City Manager report. I know that City Manager Williams is out and Deputy City Manager Preston was en route to ASHLAND FOR THE OREGON CITY MANAGERS CONFERENCE, SO WE HAVE STEVE COOPER SITTING IN TODAY. WE APPRECIATE YOU BEING HERE, STEVE. ANY REPORTS FROM THE ACTING CITY MANAGER?

YEAH, THANK YOU, MAYOR. HAPPY TO BE HERE. I DO HAVE A FEW ITEMS. FIRST, I DID WANT TO SHARE THAT BOTH ERICA SMITH AND I DID ATTEND THE LAMPREY FESTIVAL, AND IT WAS FANTASTIC AND WOULD ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO ATTEND NEXT YEAR.

WAS THERE EATING OF LAMPREY THERE AT ALL THIS YEAR? THERE WAS. DID YOU GET TO TRY SOME?

I enjoyed it personally, but I know it's not for everyone. It's nice. So as we discussed already, the next City Council business meeting will be next Tuesday, July 14th at 6 p.m. The mayor already alluded to this, but just to add some additional color and details, this weekend is the Old Time Fair at Willamette Park, July 10th through 12th. The fair opens at 5 p.m. on Friday night. There are rides. There's a pie-eating contest on Sunday, a ski show, live music. One of our own parks employees, Mike, will be playing there with his band on Saturday night, which I'm told is a must-see. The parade will be on Saturday at 10 a.m. on Willamette Falls Drive. There's a fun run, a pet show featuring Mary Bielostowski and his dog. I'm sorry, I forgot your dog's name.

Watson. Watson, thank you.

Exciting to be there, as well as a boat show and a car show on Sunday. The complete itinerary is on the city's website. I know in speaking to my colleagues in the Parks Department, they're very excited about it and have been working very hard to prepare for the festival. So excited to see it unfold. A couple additional things. I will be co-hosting a Coffee and Connections meeting with the Westland Chamber of Commerce at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, July 14th at the Adult Community Center on Rosemont Road. I'll be sharing information and getting feedback from the business community about the Framing Our Future project. Very much looking forward to that. Music in the Park begins on Thursdays at Tanner Creek Park on July 23rd. And then Movies in the Park begins August 4th at Willamette Park. And so the Music in the Park kicks off with a Tom Petty cover band. I'm very excited I'm going to be there for that one. And then August 4th, Bring Your Children, it's going to be Zootopia 2 kicks off the movie season.

uh, sequence.

And then a couple final updates. Uh, we have our summer photo contest going on now which is open until August 21st. Participants may submit photos on our website that show building community, people at play, community in action, storytelling, everyday heroes, or flora and fauna and i'll just shout out taryn from community development is helping organize that along with parks department folks so very excited to see the results of that and then last but not least city manager john williams will be returning from his travels and will be with you at the next council meeting Thank you. What a great report. You did a great job standing in. Thank you, Steve.

And we appreciate all that you do and appreciate all of our staff here at the council meetings helping support us. And so anything else for the good of the order? Council Breik, please.

I should have taken some still photos. We had a group in Robinwood of about 10 or 12 residents that helped us pull weeds out of the bioswales next to the Cedar Oak sidewalk last weekend. So we had a really good turnout. We had neighbors that pulled their yard debris buckets out, so we had places to put the stuff, and we got them looking a lot better.

That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for your volunteer. service there. Anything else?

I'm just going to add one more note on to Steve's point that John will be back for the next business meeting. I will actually be away for that meeting. I'll be on vacation. But our wonderful honors attorney, Kristen James, will be here in my stead. And that is actually her last day with us. So she will end with the business meeting that evening, helping with the adoption of the policy and any other issues. And I hope you take that opportunity to thank her for her service because she's been truly exceptional.

Sounds good. We appreciate that.

She's been with us for almost a year. Is that right? That really flew by. Oh, my gosh.

And luckily, she was too fast for me. She'll still be somewhat working with the city, very elsewhere. So we're looking forward to that and appreciate the flag in that. The last day came up on us. So I look forward to that meeting next week and hope you have a nice time out of the office as well.

Thank you.

With that, seeing nothing else from council, we are adjourned. We'll see you on Tuesday.