City Council - Regular Meeting

Hey, everyone. I see that room is muted, but I just thought I'd say I'll be up there in a couple minutes. I had a plumbing catastrophe while getting ready. But I'm Oh, okay. Kevin, we're waiting for Mary. Thanks. She's on her way out.

Okay. I am too.

Alright. Sounds good.

Ready to go? I'm

going to take a peek at the agenda here. Manager, thank you, everybody.

This webinar is being We're transcribed and

going to get started and when you're here. Yes. So this is the pre meeting, meeting about the meeting, of 04/14/2026. Got the entire city council here at council Bonington's virtual for a few moments, and he'll be in the room. And then we've got a city attorney, Kaylee Klein, John Williams, city manager of the first secretary, and Morgan Lovell, remind me of your title. Support services supervisor. Support services supervisor. Thank you. And with that, we can get going and jump into the agenda. Approval of the agenda. I would like to move the appointments to next week's meeting if that's possible.

Have special meeting next week? Do you appoint

Except we're right now, we don't have anything on that agenda, and I was gonna propose canceling next week, which is a work session anyway.

That's okay. So Okay. Well, then we can.

It would be the only thing, like having more time?

A little bit more time to get more applicants for some of the boards and also just have a little more time to dive right in because that can be sometimes a little bit of a discussion. We can do it in May. City council. We could do the first meeting in May and get folks in into the position.

The only administrative timing thing with that is that Ashley Duvall will be here at the fifteenth. So if the person thinks that's we may have to wait on the first agenda item.

Oh, that's fine. That's fine. So with that was the only thing on the merit council report. It's the only change I had to the agenda, and then we'll move to consent agenda.

Any questions on that item? No.

No. No. Meeting minutes? No changes to the meeting? No. And then we go into the business meeting. I'd to turn it

over to John. Do you have any Thank

you, mayor.

Opening thoughts? Well, three items on the business agenda with a purposeful order to them. The first resolution considering whether to delegate the council's authority to a hearing officer on the operations and land use appeal. We will have we will have myself introducing the report. Actually, you'll be here to provide context and address any legal questions that you have. As if have any process questions for me and Kaylee right now, we'll be happy to present the substance at the meeting.

So you don't want any affirmative defense of the geological report?

Under this agenda item, I think probably not.

Okay. Question. Thank you. Any other questions on that?

I just wanted to clarify so we're all on all the counselors on the same page that Ashley will be here in person. And, also, check your email, please. She's responded to some of the questions you may have had, and she'll certainly present that orally too. But just to give you background, counselor Bonington, if you haven't seen that yet, I would go ahead and take a peek.

I have All

I have on that front. Sounds

good. And then moving to item b. Item b is the early bird package. Oh, I'm sorry. Kevin? That was here. Yeah.

Oh, that was okay. Sorry. I'm then starting to tell. The early work package contract, once you have made a decision about your role in the land use appeal, then you can talk about the early work package contract. Eric and Morgan will be presenting.

We'll have experts with them. We expect there may be some discussion of the geotechnical question. We'd be happy to to talk about it then under this item. As you know, this as we talked about this in detail last week, so don't need to talk about too much here except to say that it has a lot of implications for timeline and cost of this project. We're hoping to get the council's approval if you're so inclined on the state to move forward with the project. But we will be able to answer technical questions, process questions, cost questions, all of that at the meetings.

And if there's questions that you know ahead of time that you may need to research in the next Mhmm.

I like to

say in the next twenty minutes.

We're happy to take those.

And we're we're prepared

to test the press release, geotech, schedules, all the good stuff.

Any questions anybody wants to put on the table that might need staff research beyond what we've already already Well,

my analysis of the article, I mean, there were a lot of flaws in it. One word devastating, landslide. It looked like there was a six inch gap. It's a long way from devastating. And lastly, it was basically seem to be cherry picking on the original reports, and there was remediation work after that further analysis. But it doesn't really reflect the current situation at all.

I think that agenda item is a perfect place to have that discussion if you wanna share some of the feedback on that article. Is fully prepared to pull from the various geological studies going back to the sixties and the nineties and some of the memos that reaffirm the facility of the site and our own internal professional license engineer that has provided report. I think there's a really important distinction between memos and licensed geological professional geotechnical surveys of record. And I think that's a really important distinction that we're happy to talk about in the meeting. I like The narrative

narratives of thirty years ago have been essentially replaced by a study that was done two weeks ago.

Yes. And a lot of the background information from those, such as the 1991 memo that was included in the internal ODOT memo, was it was a memo. It was not a licensed, theological, technical report. And that memo itself states that observations of the slide, there has been no movement that it was structured, that it remained stable, and that narrative has actually been continued with all subsequent reports. And the only licensed stamps geotechnical engineer reports we are aware of on record.

Are those done in the last three years? The other one is our memo stating generalizations and assumptions with very clear disclaimer stating that they are not geotechnical investigations, and any further study could be done by a professionally licensed geotechnical engineer, which the city has done. I like the idea of distinction for us, the difference between a geologist and a geotechnical engineer, and not everybody goes

fast. Mhmm.

And when we hear a geologist, and I'm not it's in geologists, I know a

lot of

I I would expect to hear. So

and and also just relying on these Dokami hazard mapping. It says right on the Togami site, they're not to be used for exactly what they're being used for basically by this article. And people who are referencing the Togami, they're not fighting that it says that it's scientific investigation. This cannot substitute for scientific investigation. So and that is true for our also for our Westland map. There is disclaimer within our own GIS. Yes. I got that also. But yeah. They are all not need to be surveyed, engineered maps, and they're informational only.

They're meant to lead people to provide and investigate further with life with professionals. We're not meant to make legal.

And so just to bring this to my process for these standards, I plan to have have the city manager introduce the topic, and then we'll take public comment. And then through the public comment, there could be some questions raised. And at that point, we'll bring staff up to address any, you know, any questions from the council. And I know you're prepared to address into your technical things and that nature, and then we'll go into our own deliberation. So Awesome.

I would definitely save the commentary, though, and the engagement on that piece until item the b or q. Just, like, first, focus on whether you wanna delegate, and then on the next step, you can get into the FAF.

Thank you. And then we have the any other questions on that put out there for staff? Return as

a lady b is item c. Again, it was from the work session last week and business meeting, if you can make a decision if you're so inclined to do so. And Kaylee and I will be happy to I'll present a brief version of the staff report since you've just been through it extensively last week. There's only a couple of things that changed, and I'll cover those. I am not certain, but I believe I think it's the president. I'm just not sure who. Yeah. Oh, okay. And that's the end of the business.

Jim said he'd be there.

He agrees with you.

Well, being no other any other final comments or questions? Got about fifteen minutes to migrate upstairs, eat some dinner if you have to eat. Then We're adjourned, everybody. We'll be in fifteen minutes. Thank you.

City Council. It's Tuesday, 04/14/2026. And we'll begin as we always do our business meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. So if everybody could please rise and face the flag. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it

stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. Thank you everybody. And as always, item of business is to approve the agenda. We have one modification to move the community community advisory group appointments to the next meeting of the city council. So I'll entertain a motion.

Thank you, mayor. I move to approve the agenda for the 04/14/2026 Westland City Council meeting, removing item four b to the next meeting available.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to move agenda item four b to the next meeting available. Any discussion? Council? Seeing none, go ahead and call the roll please.

Councilor Bonington? Yes. Councilor Bryke? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Mayor Bialystovski?

Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes. The agenda is approved. And now we turn to public comments of a general nature. So I understand that several folks have signed up tonight to speak on couple of our agenda items later. This is for general public comments for items not on the agenda. Do we have any?

Luke Borland.

Luke, wherever wherever you'd like. And are you here to speak on an agenda item or just Would you be would you be okay waiting till we get to that point? Okay. Thanks. I don't wanna jump the gun. So that's all. Okay. Well, that takes us then to mayor and council reports. And we do have our land use attorney is on the way and should be here around 06:15. So if we get the hearings officer question, first we may take a brief pause while we wait for that person who helped with the staff report.

That's just letting the public know if we get there early. With that, on to mayor and council reports. Reports from community advisory groups, city business in general. Councilor Bryke.

I didn't have any meetings, but I did participate in the wine walk in the historic Willamette area on Saturday. There was quite a crowd. We were lucky and got a break in the weather, And it was a it was a lovely event.

Thank you. Thank you, counselor. Council president Baumgartner, go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. I attended two meetings yesterday for the Willamette Falls And Landings Heritage Area Coalition, the management and operations meeting, and the legislative committee meeting, and I was very excited to have us discussing some upcoming events that I hope people will put on their calendar. The one notable one that stands out to me is Lamprey, the Lamprey Festival, which will be June 25, and more information to follow on that, I'm sure. And I was also really excited to see for the tribal representatives and tribal individuals working together and conferring from various tribes that have been having differences of opinion about the falls, and so I'm really excited to see collaboration moving forward on that. And last night, I attended the Lady Bee fundraiser hosted in the Wilsonville McMenamins.

That was very fun and a good cause, And I saw a lot of our folks that are some are here today. So thank you. And that's that's about it.

Thank you. Thank you, council president. I have had no advisory group meeting since our last meeting, so I have no report tonight. Councilor Groner.

Yes. I have fond memories of last year's Lamprey Festival. Good food, good music. But no special meetings this week. Thank you.

Let's see. There was a Parks Board meeting last Thursday, but that was mostly just getting to know the acting director that we have, John Legarza. Much came from that other than bringing him up to speed on many of the intricacies of the department and the Parks Board and all the passionate work those folks do. Also, the Sunset Neighborhood Association meeting was last Wednesday. And I would say the only thing of interest there was the sunset picnic was scheduled for August 23. So mark your calendars.

I attended the

sunset meeting as well, and officer Rollins was also introduced to the group.

Awesome. Glad you got to see chief Rollins there. With with that, any other burning items that folks would like to report? Okay. Well, then we can move on then to the consent agenda. So I would entertain a motion to prevent any objection to any item on the consent agenda. We don't have discussion under council rules, but we could remove something if anybody feels strongly about that. Okay. So please make a motion.

Thank you, mayor. I move to approve the consent agenda for the 04/14/2026 Westland City Council Meeting, which includes the 03/10/2026 meeting minutes and the contract amendment to the operations complex owners representative extension and additional budget.

Second. It's

been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda for the 04/14/2026 City Council meeting, which includes the 03/10/2026 meeting minutes and the contract amendment to the operations complex ownership extension and additional budget. Thank you. Please call the roll.

Councilor Bryke? Yes. Councilor President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Councilor Bonington? Yes. Mayor Milosztowski?

Yes. Thank you. So the consent agenda is approved. And of course Kathy, thank you for your work on the meeting minutes. And with that, we've reached the business meeting item six a and still waiting on Ashley Dugald. At any moment, should be here.

Yes. Our the city's land use council from Barry Elder is en route. She should be here in about five minutes, which was consistent with the original agenda. So maybe a five minute recess.

Sounds good. Unless anybody has anything they'd like to do to fill time for you, would you like to talk about framing our future? Could do that. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Well, then we will take a brief five minute recess and and get back on track in just a few minutes. Thank you, everybody. And welcome to all members of the public who are here, some of whom I've seen for the first time.

Glad glad to welcome you to the council chambers. Have a have our esteemed legal counsel here and looking back at our TV guy, Kevin, ready to go. Okay. We'll get back on the record. I'll call the meeting back into order.

And the first item of the business meeting is the agenda bill twenty twenty six four fourteen o three, which is resolution twenty twenty six zero three, delegating the city council's appellate jurisdiction over the planning commission's decision on the operation center project to a hearings officer. And I know we have, several public comments tonight, and we've got two separate operations center decisions. So if folks have signed up for agenda item six a, that's the hearings officer resolution. And then agenda item six b is the operations center contract amendment about the early work package. So if you'd like to comment on both and you can just I might ask at that that after we get through the hearings officer resolution, well, I'll ask the audience if you'd like to comment on the other item just to make because some people only filled out item six a and you might wanna give comments on the operations center project.

So that's how I'll go about that in case you didn't fill out the form with both items. So with that, mister city manager, would you like to introduce the topic and then we can take public comments?

Thank you, mayor and council. Good evening. Yes. I'd be happy to. Ashley and I, Ashley Dugil, our contract, land use attorney will be, assisting on this one and doing part of the presentation. So, the question tonight is, does the council wish to delegate your appeal authority over the Planning Commission's decision on the operations complex with the file number given in the in the staff report? The Planning Commission has made a decision to approve the operations complex, and a appeal has been filed by the Savannah Oaks Neighborhood Association. We're here tonight to discuss your options in terms of process moving on from here. And so Ashley is gonna present the legal background and the options for you.

Thank you. So as as was said, you basically have two main options. You can either delegate your authority to hear this appeal to a hearings officer or you can hear the appeal yourselves as the City Council. So those are your two choices here. Staff is recommending to delegate your authority to a hearings officer.

You are authorized to do this per essentially state law and your charter. Your city charter provides broad authorities to city council to act on all manner all matters that are vested in the city as a whole and is not expressly vested in another entity per state law or per the constitution. And so as long as it is not expressly stated elsewhere in your code or in your charter, then you may delegate authority. That includes your quasi judicial authority to act as a body and also your administrative authority to act as a body. A common example of delegating administrative authority is, for example, when you create a committee or a commission, there might not be expressed authority in your code to take those actions, but you are still permitted to do so by by the broad authority that is provided to you by your charter.

Similarly, you are authorized to delegate your quasi judicial authority when you're making quasi judicial decisions such as this one upon appeal. So there is a definition in your code for a hearings officer but there's no express process by which to delegate authority to a hearings officer in this sort of situation, that means because there's nothing express and there's nothing expressly prohibiting it, means that you are expressly authorized to do so. So there is authority to do so and it is recommended by staff to do so, primarily because this is a city decision in the first place. It's a city application And in order to avoid any sort of potential future conflicts or any sort of appearance of bias, it would just be simpler for council to potentially just remove themselves from this process and delegate this decision making authority to a neutral third party.

Thank you for the overview. Any initial questions or we can have some questions or comments after the public comments? Sorry. Didn't have a comment. Okay. We can proceed to public comments on agenda item six a. So this is for the hearings officer issue then we'll get into the

operations center next.

Ed Schwartz.

Mister Schwartz, welcome. And we have received your written testimony as well. Just to state your name and city of residence and are you here on in your individual capacity or on behalf of your neighborhood?

I'm here just in my individual capacity.

Sounds good. Given the amount of speaker, I'm gonna try to keep it a little close to three minutes.

Sure. Yeah. No problem. I practiced. I got it.

That sounds good.

Thank you, mayor.

Thanks.

Good evening, mayor and counselors. My name is Ed Schwarz and I live in West Linn. I urge you to make the right choice and hear the appeal of the city operations complex yourselves. Do not delegate your authority to a hearings officer. Doing this would be a disservice to the city and residents you have promised to serve.

Up to this point, you have authorized the project to move forward, budgeted up to $45,000,000 to pay for it, and help select the location. Now you are suddenly unwilling or unable to keep an open mind and hear the residents objections to the project. The city council is elected by West Linn residents to deliberate and sometimes make difficult decisions on matters affecting the residents. This is one of those times when you need to do exactly that. Abdicating that responsibility is not why you were elected.

The residents of West Linn deserve a decision from the city council as to whether this project should proceed in the currently designated location. You're considering using a hearings officer instead of hearing this appeal yourself because you approved the funding for the project. This is not a direct conflict that would prevent you from hearing the resident's concerns about the location of the project. That is the primary issue that you would be deciding as there is already consensus from residents that we do need a new operations complex. Our city's code allows using a hearings officer for various decisions such as appeals of building officials decisions, decisions made regarding a customer's storm drainage account, a person challenging an expenditure of system development charges charge revenues, and others.

Our code does not mention using a hearing officer in place of the city council in any circumstances. In his memo to council regarding the use of a hearings officer, city manager Williams states, quote, city council is vested with all powers of the city that are not expressly provided to another party or otherwise reserved by the Oregon constitution, unquote. This sounds suspiciously like the pleadings of the current administration in Washington DC, which wants to reserve for the president any powers not explicitly denied by the US constitution. As we have seen, this could potentially provide the president with broad new powers. I contend that mister Williams statement does the same for the city council.

I do not believe that the council can claim for itself all powers not explicitly described in city code. To do so would upend our system of government. Please make the right decision tonight and choose to hear this appeal yourselves as the residents of West Linn elected you to do. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Roberta Schwartz.

Missus Schwartz, welcome. Welcome back. Thank you. State your name and city residents and you have up to three minutes.

It's always a tough act to follow. My name is Roberta Schwartz. I'm speaking this first time as a citizen. I will be speaking later as a neighborhood association president at president as well. So I will be testifying tonight in two parts because the city council drastically reduced the amount of time that citizens and neighborhood associations are allowed to speak in front of them.

I will be testifying both as a Westland resident and a Savannah Oaks neighborhood association. This time I'm speaking as a resident. Tonight, the city council is going to discuss whether you you will perform one of the most important tasks you signed up to do when you became counselors, and that is surrender a decision on a land use appeal. The Savannah Oaks Neighborhood Association filed this appeal of the operations complex. The alternate to the city hearing the appeal is to shirk your responsibility and delegate your responsibility to a hearings officer.

I encourage you to hear the appeal and not delegate your responsibilities to a hearing officer. The cost of hiring an hearings officer for this case is estimated to be 4 to $9,000 and would be paid for out of the city council's budget from the general fund. The idea of hearing of the hearings officer in West Linn came up in 1995 when Jill Thorne's administration passed ordinance thirteen seventy five of the municipal code and added six codes of the muni code. But you won't find those muni codes in West Linn any longer because they were revoked. The use of hearings officers to make important land use decisions ended soon after August 2001 when the David Dodds administration amended the code with ordinance fourteen seventy four.

Changing the appeals process was looked at again by some people on this current city council. On 11/04/2024, they directed staff to find information about how nine jurisdictions in the metro region handled their land use appeals. Only Tigard was found to be using hearings officers for these appeals. It was determined that using hearings officers will have the greatest impact to city costs in processing an appeal. And the con list that was developed included two important items about using a hearing officer for land use decisions.

It compressed the public's view time to review a potential proposal, and it may require the appellant to secure a land use attorney. Given the above, I encourage you to hear the appeal and do not delegate it because you'll be delegating your responsibilities to another person. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Roberta Schwartz, you stay up for the neighborhood association.

Hey, welcome back. It's been a while. Now you're speaking on behalf of your neighborhood?

Correct.

Okay. Now we've we've set the timer to five minutes and, just state your name and neighborhood association and, go ahead.

My name is still Roberta Schwarz. I still am a Westland resident and I am the president of the Savannah Oaks Neighborhood Association, very proudly representing those folks. There has been no ordinance passed by the current council that includes what is being suggested tonight. The hearing of the hiring of a hearings officer. So tonight's resolution two zero two six dash o three is being hastily proposed to allow the city council to relieve itself of the responsibility to hear this appeal of the operations complex.

The proposed operations complex was labeled in an 04/11/2026 front page Oregonian article by investigative news reporter Max Bernstein as a $45,000,000 gamble. Please see the appeal on the side. Is that Oregonian article why you want to try to back out of your responsibility to render a decision on this particular appeal? The city council is governed by procedural code, overseen by the Department of Land Conservation and Development. With this resolution, you are effectively amending the comprehensive plan, which is a land use regulation.

A land use amendment must go through a process. It must go through a PAPA. A PAPA is a post acknowledgment plan amendment. By amending, you are changing the land use procedures on an ad hoc basis. You cannot do this on the fly.

Oregon ORS one nine seven six ten through six twenty five states, before a local government adopts a change including additions and deletions to an acknowledged comprehensive plan or a land use regulation, the local government shall submit the proposal to the director of the Department of Land Conservation and Development, DLCD. In all cases, the proposed change must be submitted at least twenty days before the local government holds its first evidentiary hearing on adopting the proposed change. And o r s two two seven dot one seven eight three a states approval or denial of an application that was complete when first submitted or deemed complete pursuant to subsection two of this section must be based upon a, the standards and criteria that were applicable at the time the application was first submitted. By trying to use a hearings officer, you are in effect changing the goalpost. Please do not pass this resolution.

You need not pardon me. You need to do your job because the people expect that of you. They pay you to do it including a recent raise that you received in your compensation. There is no legitimate reason for you not to do so. You have stated in the past that you can remain neutral making decisions in land use decisions. Do just that for us, the citizens. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Bill Relye?

Oh, she called Bill Relye. Bill, welcome back. And just state your name and city residents and you have Yeah.

Good evening. Council, members of the public, staff. Bill Rallier, city of West Linn. Members of council, I I think this is a a very important matter that deserves your attention. And I I also believe that it deserves at times assistance from third party experts to help make decisions when we ourselves don't have the expertise to be able to fully define the subject matter and help us arrive at the best decision for the public.

You know, there there are just way too many pieces of the puzzle that are missing in this land use application that are just now being brought to the table such as the waiver of indemnity that the owner of the land prior to the city's purchase asked the city to sign. In all my years of buying real property, I've never been asked to sign a waiver of indemnity for geological impacts that could potentially have pose hazards to the next purchaser of that property. Now why would the state ask us to do that if they didn't know that there were risks involved, with building on this property? So these types of things lead me to believe that the state is trying to take precautions, they're trying to indemnify themselves, but to what extent? Well, liability would only be for the amount that they purchased, that we purchased the property from the the state for which is around 360 some thousand dollars.

The the other $44,700,000 that we're gonna spend to build this facility would then rest on the public. And so there there's a huge risk here and I think it deserves full attention of the council and possibly the formation of a a committee to review this matter and help the council reach the best decision. So I appreciate your time on the matter.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

You're welcome.

Former counselor? The next

Terry Cummings.

Another former counselor, welcome, miss Cummings. Just state your name and city residents and you have up to three minutes.

Terry Cummings, resident of Westland. I'm coming here before you to talk about the two options, to consider about hearing this appeal. The first option that says council has the authority to hear and decide an appeal of the decision is correct. Westlands Community Development chapter 99 authorizes the city council to hear land use appeals. However, this option is the only legally valid choice.

Option number two, to delegate the authority is invalid because the mere definition of a term cannot supersede or alter a CDC ordinance. For example, municipal code 1.1 defines what a hearing officer is, but does not indicate how or why a hearings officer might be utilized. When it comes to land use, CDC chapter 99 clearly authorized who may decide land use appeals. The provisions of chapter nine nine ninety nine do not include a hearings officer. Santa Claus can't do it either.

Furthermore, the wording of Westland City Charter chapter six distribution of powers, was referred to in the staff report about the charter for some reason, does not mention or pertain to a hearings officer. Although, charter chapter six states all powers of the city are vested in the city council, that does not mean council has the power to quickly pass a resolution to revise CDC code as a matter of convenience in order to avoid having to hear an appeal. None of the following CDC chapter 98 criteria can be met by merely passing a resolution. CDC chapter 98 is procedures for decision making. It's a very lengthy chapter.

I have a couple pages that I've written about and it's in the record for you. I don't think I'll have time to go over all of it. But I ask you to please look at it and notice that none of the criteria was met. You didn't give proper notice, you didn't form LCDC, you didn't do a public process before changing the codes. This is essentially changing the code.

In summary, as a reminder, you swore to support the constitution and the laws of The United States, the state of Oregon, and our city charter, and the ordinances of our city. These are our laws. Now that you know that city council has no authority to bypass city code by passing a resolution, And if you truly want members of the public to have confidence in the fairness of a final decision on appeal, you will refuse to delegate your authority to a hearings officer hired by the city manager to make a decision for you and the rest of us regarding this critical critically important matter. We're depending on you to do the right thing.

Thank you, miss Cummings.

Thank you

for your comments.

Patricia Foster?

Welcome. Hi. Miss Foster, is that correct?

Yes.

Hey. Welcome. Just as

I'll just keep it short and

sweet, but thank you all for being here.

Could you just state your name and city residence for the record?

Yeah. Patricia Foster and I'm a resident of West Linn. Have been for a long time. And I can basically just say ditto, I mean, to everybody except for one comment that I do not understand how anybody can even consider thinking about building something on land that has been proven to be landslide dangerous. So I just have shown up to show up and say that I'm trying to pay attention to what the community that I'm in is really concerned about. And thank you all for doing your job.

Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Michael Kappigan.

Another former counselor. Mister Kappigan, welcome. Welcome. Just state your name and city residents and you have up to three minutes.

Thank you, mister mayor. Thank you, mister mayor. Hello. My name is Mike Capigan. I live in West Linn.

25 I wanna first, I wanna let you know these remarks were prepared before, so there's some repetition, but I wanna just read from what I prepared. Twenty five years ago, was on the newly elected city council and one of the first things that council did was act to remove the position of hearings officer from the Westland Community Development Code, the CDC. The council that I was on at the time directed the Planning Commission to have hearings for code changes on chapter 99 and chapter 98 of the Community Development Code. The Planning Commission did that and later that same year the City Council after a series of meetings amended the CDC and distributed the various duties and responsibilities of the former hearings officer position between the planning commission and the planning director. If the city of West Linn now wants to reestablish this position of hearings officers into the CDC, there is a clear precedent for how to do this, direct the Planning Commission to hold hearings for amending the CDC.

After the Planning Commission makes its recommendations, the council can have a hearing and amend the CDC to create the position of hearings officer with that position's duties, responsibilities clearly delineated. I am not in favor of a hearings officer as I feel there is their so called impartiality is essentially an illusion. They are hired by the city and almost always rule in favor whatever the city planning staff recommends. In any case, the operation center application is already vested. It needs to be heard under the provisions of the CDC that existed when the application was submitted to the planning staff.

I think the rest was just more repetition, so I'll stop there and just add a few comments from my observations.

One Go ahead.

One, I think this project this process is is laid out in the CDC on how it's to work. I mean, we've already had the city attorney at the hearing making giving advice to the planning commission and one could say, well, why didn't we hire an outside city attorney to make recommendations and give advice? We have a city manager who has interest in this project and we have a city council who has the goal to approve this project. I don't see why the city council would not be willing to listen to the concerns of this project and make a decision and own it. They've already decided to spend the money to go forward with this project.

They should hear what the citizens have to say, listen to their concerns, and either agree, disagree, or mediate in between. But to put that off to somebody that the city manager hires to make that decision. I I see that as a really avoiding a fundamentally important responsibility that you have in front of you. Thank you for the extra time.

Thank you.

Doris Swanson, I was told that you just wanted to turn into testimony form but you didn't really want to speak.

Okay. I just want to verify.

And then that's all I have unless somebody else wanted to speak.

Would anybody else that didn't fill out a form like to speak? I didn't give a disclaimer at the beginning that we have testimony forms if you'd like to speak. Would you you're welcome to come on up and just state your name and city residents. This and this is for the hearings officer resolution. We'll have this another agenda item for the operations center next as well.

Okay. So it's some engineering questions. Would that be the next?

Next agenda item. Okay. Okay.

Sounds good. Thank you.

So is that that all the testimony for for that item? Okay.

So

Would you like to provide any clarifications or comments?

Yes, please, Mayor. Thank you.

And could you just make sure you speak in the mic and speak up? I know sound system is not as good

try my best to articulate clearly. So I just wanted to clarify a few points based off what I heard from public testimony. I don't know. Is this better? I don't want to touch.

Turn it up as loud as it can go in the system and then we'll sorry just give it

a I second

can also try to just you know project if that helps as well. And that way if you can't hear me from the mic you can hopefully hear me just from my voice. Okay. So I just wanted to make some comments about a few of the items that I heard mentioned in the testimony now. The first thing I wanted to clarify I don't wanna be yelling at everyone. Can you hear me better now from Yeah. The

Oh, it's good. It's good. Perfect. Good volume.

So the first thing I wanted to clarify was I heard some comments about impartiality, essentially a city council's ability to make a decision on a quasi judicial action. And I wanted to clarify for council and then also for the public two additional heightened standards that apply when making quasi judicial decisions unlike typical decisions that you see a council make in the standard day to day decision making that they actually are doing in front of you. Unlike the typical legislative process, quasi judicial decisions like this require impartiality, which is essentially no bias. And bias is a it's a legal term. It's you know, we have the colloquial understanding of bias, but we also have a legal definition of bias, which is established through case law.

And the appearance of bias is more important than even actually in fact being biased. So if there is a potential for bias from the facts and circumstances of a situation, meaning there's the potential that the decision makers have pre prejudged an application, they are prohibited from making a decision on the quasi judicial in the quasi judicial process. And essentially, if there's any risk of a decision maker appearing biased, then we will often encourage them to recuse themselves out of an abundant abundance of caution. And so that is the very situation where hearings officers are utilized is where because the quasi judicial decision making process demands this higher bar, essentially, this neutral third party can step into their shoes and make a decision where legally they are encouraged not to be doing so because of that appearance. So I just wanted to clarify that additional heightened standard for quasi judicial decision making that all of the elected and appointed appointed officials are subject to.

Could you just define quasi judicial for the audience? Yes. Legal term.

Of course. So there's three different types of typical decisions that a city council will make. You have legislative authority, quasi judicial authority, and administrative authority. I mentioned those very briefly at the beginning in the staff report, but legislative authority cannot be delegated, that has to be made by the city council, that is essentially rulemaking, that is like for example passing ordinances. Quasi judicial authority is making decisions on in what's called an order.

That is where you have a a limited set of facts and a case before you. You are making your decision based off of preexisting criteria, and you have to make a final decision. And there are limited situations where council will act quasi judicially primarily in a land use context, and that is allowed to be delegated that authority if it's not expressly precluded by state law or your code. And then finally, you have administrative authority, which is essentially policies and administrative decision making. So that and of course, there are higher bars for quasi judicial actions because the council was essentially acting like a judge.

So that's I just wanted to provide that additional context for bias. I also wanted to provide some additional context for home rule authority. So that section six in the charter is spelling out a legal concept in Oregon, which is called home rule. This is not true in every state, but in Oregon, there is an idea that essentially anything that isn't expressly preempted, meaning already spelled out by state law, by constitution, by federal law, any power that's not expressly spelled out in that manner may be exercised by your local government. And so it is a bit of a universal power for your city council.

Of course, there are limits on how they exercise that, but that is what that section six in the charter provides, and that is called home rule authority. I also wanted to make a comment about hearings officer use over the years and just provide a brief background on that for just hearings officer use in the state in general. Hearings officers were less common in the last twenty to thirty years, primarily just because there wasn't a need as much for them. But in the recent in the last five to seven years or so, there have been changes to state law to mandate hearings officers in certain contexts, and not only that, but the complexity of land use in Oregon has shifted significantly to the point where hearings officers are being used more and more by elected and appointed officials to make certain types of land use decisions, most often where there is an appearance of bias issue local conflicts or an extremely political topic. So it is although it was less common twenty to thirty years ago, there's a recent trend of commonly using hearings officers either some larger cities use them for all land use decision making, but most cities only appoint if it's a particularly contentious issue.

And then I wanted to make a comment on the fixed goalpost rule. That's the statute that I heard quoted. That's or as two two seven one seventy eight three a, that's basically a law that says you have to apply the standards that were in effect when the application was first submitted. Appointing a hearings officer is changing any laws, it's just using the laws that are currently in effect. So it's not like you're amending your code midway through and using new standards for your op center that now will apply.

It's simply delegating authority that currently exists to a different body who will review the existing laws that were in effect. And then it I also heard a comment that you cannot delegate authority because that would violate an ordinance. There is no ordinance that spells out delegations being prohibited, so there is no ordinance that would be violated. I know that was a lot, but I appreciate Are a lot of your you

familiar with the DLCD notice requirement? There was some testimony about that the city council would be violating certain notice requirements for that rule making.

Yeah. So I think those comments were directed at the idea that by delegating authority to a human's officer, you are essentially rule making. And so anytime you do do rule making, like for example, if you're amending an ordinance, co development code ordinance, you do have to go through a really specific process by which you notice DLCD thirty five days in advance. That's referred to as the post acknowledgment plan amendment notice or papa. You also have to do specific noticing of neighbors and go through a public process called the legislative text amendment, but this isn't a code revision. So none of that is required.

Thank you. Happy to I asked a question. Happy to open up the floor to other counselors. Do have questions for legal counsel? Any? Councilor Bonington.

I think you you covered what I was wondering pretty well, but can we just confirm for the record that this would be a one time situational delegation of authority and not a code revision, not a not a new ordinance?

Correct. It's a resolution only temporarily delegating your authority in a very limited scope simply within the context of this one decision.

Okay. And does it alter anyone's rights or, I guess, the process substantially for them in terms of

It's the only difference to the process would be that there is one hearings officer hearing the appeal rather than five council members or and every other element of the process would remain the same.

So all the the appellant's rights Correct. All of that is preserved?

Correct. Thanks.

Thank you. Great questions. Thank you for asking that. Can you just talk briefly again about the requirements of an impartial tribunal or impartial decision making and bias? I want to reference that a little bit in my comments. Avoiding the appearance of bias, why the law favors that in the land use context?

Of course. So again, there's a heightened standard when you're acting in this quasi judicial role, essentially as a quasi judge. And there are three standards that typically will apply to you ethically, conflicts of interest, which all of you are used to, ex parte contacts, which means communicating outside of this setting in a pub in the public hearing, and also bias. And bias is highly fact specific, it's decided on a project by project basis and a judge will determine it by looking at all the facts and circumstances surrounding your decision. And they are typically looking to see is there evidence that you may have prejudged an application, meaning that you had essentially reached a conclusion about whether to approve or deny the application prejudged before you even read all of the facts and details of the decision.

Were you trending in a certain direction before you had seen all that evidence, Or was the decision that you made the product of animus, which basically means you had some sort of negative extreme negative feelings towards a decision. And if all the facts and circumstances that a judge looks at from the outside looking in shows evidence of the appearance of bias, then they can invalidate your decision.

And what would happen if the city council heard, you know, decided we're gonna hear the appeal, but then before the hearing started, there were bias challenges to city council members or other things that or other things like that that then city council had to say, I can't hear the case.

So if you weren't able to hear the case, then most likely the lower decision would stand. So it would be a final decision that was just approved and that would be the city's final decision. If the council decided to despite the appearance, potential appearance is a bias, they decided it is your discretion, you may choose to continue despite potentially there being the appearance of bias. If you decided to continue to participate in the decision making process and the decision was appealed based on one council member's appearance of bias, then the entire decision would be invalidated.

Thank thank you. Any other questions or should we move into council sharing their thoughts? Counselor Groner, please.

So if the council's decision was invalidated because of the appearance of bias Is your

Bias. Could you take If

the city council's decision wasn't validated based on the appearance of bias, what would the sequelae of that be likely?

What would the I'm sorry. Could you repeat the end of that?

What would the consequences of that be?

I see. The consequences would be that you would need to start the decision making process over. There would be no decision.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Seeing no no other questions at this time, can move into deliberations. And any if anybody can share their thoughts. I have some, but happy to open the floor up. Oh, okay.

Well, certainly appreciate hearing from public and and the comments that folks have brought in and understand the concerns. My goal really is to ensure that the public has full confidence in the appeal process and the outcome. And in this case, we are the applicant, the city, my our esteemed staff have put together the application. And the city council has been involved in the project in the planning, funding, and overall direction of of of the project through the through the last it's been a council priority for several years. And we've heard from legal council that land use hearings have to be land use hearings have to be impartial.

And we're trying to avoid the appearance of bias in in what we're doing. So given the involvement that we've all had, I think it's important to avoid that appearance of bias and serve as the appellate decision maker. And I don't feel like it's stepping back from my responsibility as mayor. I feel like it's making sure that the process is fair and trying to have public trust in our process. And so delegating the appeal to an independent hearings officer ensures for me that the matter is reviewed by a neutral person with expertise in land use law.

It's a complex record that we have and a lot of complex issues, and I want the decision to be scrutinized. And the planning commission's already re approved the decision and conducted a detailed review. And I feel like this step would provide an additional level of of scrutiny on the on the on the process and making sure that it's the appearance of biases is not part of that. And, you know, if the concern is about ensuring a fair hearing, I feel like the the having an independent person come in is the best way to do that. And I understand that some appellants would prefer that the counsel hear the case.

But given our prior involvement, I feel like independent review better serves the city, the citizens and those raising concerns. And, you know, I think it deserves impartial consideration. So that's where I'm at on this on this topic. And so happy to open the floor up to just to city council to speak. Councilor Bonney, go ahead.

Yeah. I I largely concur with with everything you said there. I don't view this as a potential jerking of responsibility or hiding behind someone else. I think this is a very transparent and appropriate way to deal with appearances of bias. If I put myself out back as a member of the community and not a counselor, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd wanna see. So from that perspective, I think this is the the most appropriate process to follow.

Councilor Gruyter.

Yes. While I personally believe I would I can be unbiased. I can see how a third party viewing the history of my discussions with city staff would have some doubts about that. And so yes, I think there is an appearance of bias. And therefore, I think the policy outlined is the correct one.

Thank you, counselor. Counsel president, any thoughts?

Oh, yes. I have thoughts. I have been also studying this issue and I am hearing loud and clear the message from the public. Although from the very well, actually several years ago, I just in independently went into the planning staff's offices and asked about the hearings officer process because I had never seen it used in the city of Westland, not that it hadn't been, but I just was not aware of it. And while we all are very dedicated and very serious, there's not anyone up here sitting here who I can honestly say in my heart is not totally dedicated, passionate, wants to be transparent and make the best decisions possible.

None of us are land use attorneys or subject matter experts in this particular matter. So yes, we do represent the public. We were elected. I am serving with honor and privilege in that role, I greatly appreciate the confidence of the public, so we But we have to make decisions to the best of our ability. I have been researching, there are most of the large cities in Oregon as just stated by our attorney on this subject, use land use or hearings officers and some of the important benefits of that have also already been mentioned which is independence, impartiality, and a third party that is

a

professional and hope and trained in these every aspect of these decision making. So I don't I don't want to take the public's contact or input away. I'm not interested in distancing or hiding. That isn't the goal at all. It's to make a thorough review. I'm also concerned at the potential of city council sitting in decision of an appeal as previously stated by my colleagues, so I am in support of this particular resolution for those reasons, but I respect the public's input and perspective on the matter also. Thank you.

Thank you, council president. Appreciate that those thoughts. Councilor Breitkeny?

Thank you, mayor. Avoid any appearance of bias, I am I am in favor of this resolution. I do want to say that as the let's try this over here, maybe that'll be better. As the liaison to the planning commission, I saw all of the planning commission meetings that were related to this topic. I didn't attend all of those meetings in person, but I was there virtually watching the meeting.

So I have heard the comments from the community and the concerns from the community. And again, because of the city itself being the applicant, I feel like delegating our authority to a hearings officer is our best route.

Thank you, councilor Bryke. So with that, any other comments that we'll have discussion on a motion. If no other questions for legal counsel or comments, okay.

You, Mayor. I move to adopt resolution twenty twenty six dash o three, delegating the city council's appellate decision making authority over the planning commission's decision on project ID cup twenty five zero two dash d r twenty five dash o two dash w a p twenty five dash o one to a hearings officer.

Second. It has been moved seconded to adopt resolution twenty twenty six zero three delegating city council's appellate decision making authority over the planning commission decision on project ID CP2502DR2502WAP2501 to a hearings officer. Any discussion on the motion? We've already kind of had the in-depth discussion from city council, so appreciate that. Seeing no hands up, we can call the roll

then, please.

Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Bronner?

Yes.

Councilor Bonington?

Yes.

Councilor Bright? Yes. Mayor Belaszewski?

Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes and we appreciate all the testimony we received from the public on the topic. With that, are we ready to transition into the next item on the agenda. Okay. Well, then we can move on then.

Mayor, you may wanna give just a moment in case some folks are leaving.

Yep. Okay. I thought people might stick around for the next discussion on the operations center. But we can we can continue then on on the agenda to agenda item six b, which is the operations complex early work package contract amendment approval. And happy to turn it over to city manager to introduce the topic.

And I know we've got the project team here as well.

Yes. Thank you, mayor and council. The next agenda item is a item that you discussed in work session last week. And, yes, I'd like to invite Eric and Morgan to come up. Yes. But it Mayor, are you gonna have public comment before the staff

Do we have some comments on this topic? Okay. Happy to take public I

will just broadly introduce the topic and then we'll turn it over to public comment. Thank you, Morgan, for reminding me of that. So as I was mentioning, you discussed this in work session last week. You directed us to bring it back for consideration at a business meeting. This is the early work package for the operations site and requires council approval or consideration at least decision based on the size of the contract. So we will have our project team present some background information, but first, we will hear from any members of the public who wish to speak. And I'm sure as the mayor was about to say, if you thought you were signing up for both and you wanna speak on this, you're welcome to come up and speak under this item, and we can fill out a form or amend your form later.

Yes. Thank thank you for repeating my earlier statement. Appreciate that. So with that, we can welcome up our first speaker.

Terry Cummings.

Hi, Ms. Cummings, welcome back. State your name and city residents and you have up to three minutes.

In 2021, you were asked to buy a very questionable piece of property from MoDOT. And I came forward and pointed out that the information you were given didn't really tell you what was going on with that property. The staff report only says unimproved land. It doesn't say anything about the hazards on that property. Now if you discussed that during executive session prior to making that purchase, you really should disclosed that.

If you didn't, shame on ODOT for not making that. Absolutely clear to you. What you did know is you could only do one access road and they expected you to limit what you were gonna do there. That that seems to be coming out, not that it was clear that night. What we did have at the time were was our natural hazard mitigation plan for disaster management.

That same property is listed on Clackamas County and Westlands maps. For landslide susceptibility exposure, this site shows in the high, the very highest category. It's the dark blue dot. In the earthquake hazard mapping, it's in the dark red and orange as violent to severe risk of earthquake hazard. This is not a man made situation, as Mr.

Bonington and his friends are posting on West Linn community page. It's not a man made situation. This is the aspect of this property that makes it not a good or safe place to be putting our emergency, all of our staff and equipment, locate there. Now, years ago, when I was on the council, the police station was needing to be expanded. And we had a whole site analysis of various options done by McKinsey that showed the pros and cons of each one of the sites.

Where was that this time? You've had five years to do a site analysis. To look at the pros and cons, the cost and benefits of each of the different sites. Some people might think Opellander makes sense, some people might be horrified. Some people might think that the property back here makes sense, some people might be horrified. I'm horrified about this one. The conditions that caused that landslide, the slippery layer that's on top of that basalt, 60 to 80 feet underneath everything else are still there. They're under Salama. They're in that whole area. It wasn't just caused by dynamite.

There's only one road in and out and it's on that kind of slippery slope. You have had five years to do a community citizen engagement process. You could have put up maps, asked people what they think. You could have done surveys. But you didn't.

Now, I get this in the mail. This fancy little magazine magazine saying saying that that you're you're gonna gonna wanna do some community listening. Well, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for making your decisions and commit committing us to pay $45,000,000 out of our fees instead of getting a chance to vote for it, like we did for the police station, which would have given us a lower interest rate on the bond and would have given the public the rights to have a say in it. Thanks a lot.

Any follow-up questions or clarifying comments? And we're gonna hear from our geotechnical engineers a little bit later about the concerns with the site and the maps. So appreciate appreciate you coming forward.

There's nothing. There's nothing that you can say that will reassure me. This will be on your name will be on this.

Thank you, You

miss might be dead by the time, but you will be here and your name will be on.

Thank you.

Paul Olenjinski.

Hi there, welcome. I understand you have some questions for the engineers and that we have our team here and they'll be writing them down too so they can address anything they're able to address tonight.

Sure. Sure.

Just take your name, city residents, and you have up to three minutes.

Good evening, mayor, council members, and city officials. My name is Paul, and I'm a semi retired pharmacist. And I've lived in West Linn since August 2011. I've watched the Schwartz family, Bob and Roberta, in the development of the preservation of the White Oak Savannah. So I'm really here in their advocacy for West Lynn. And I think they have their deep respect and their thoughtfulness that they've put into their work. That's why I'm here today, to support them. Unfortunately, they left. But if they're against this, I think it's worth questioning the plan. So I looked into it a little bit.

Since I'm a pharmacist, I'm not an engineer or structural engineer, but as my wife pointed out, my father-in-law is a civil and structural engineer up in Seattle, and he does a lot of the same thing with communities up in King County. And so I sent him the pictures that Roberta sent me, and I asked him his thoughts, and today he called me back and I was just taking some notes. There were restrictions on that property appraisal when that was bought from the state of Oregon. And he was a little concerned about this. And then once you put new and impervious surfaces on there, I.

E. Roofs, concrete, asphalt, where's all that water gonna go? You they'll probably you guys will probably build some storm ponds and for storm water. And, you know, I'm not I'm not engaged as much as the Schwartz's are, were alternative locations ever looked at? Usually, a city will have two or three locations that they will consider for something like this.

But what really concerned my father-in-law, JB, is other state and federal agencies, they showed no interest in this property. And they had indemnified themselves. Why would they do that? The other thing is, of course, he he was going off the track a little bit, but he was talking about some earthquakes that could be far more devastating than the the dynamite that they used to construct 205. This would basically fall under a first responder building.

So it would have to have 300% of the strategic loads, unlike a regular building. So hospitals, fire stations, as you guys know, Those would have to be able to withstand those loads at three times what a normal building could. And then he was also concerned, the planning commission, the geologist on that planning commission, seemed to have some really good valid points. And he said no, the state engineer said no. And I would hope you guys would say no on this project too. Thank you very much for your time.

You for your comments and for coming in.

Luke Borland?

Mister Borland, welcome.

Thank you. Luke Borland, city of Portland. So my name is Luke Borland. I'm the president of AFSCME local three fifty dash one. And our bargaining unit includes public works and parks maintenance workers who would be working at the operations center proposed here.

And on behalf of our local, we'd like to commend council for their support of the of this project and voice our support. It's rare for us to come speak to council, but given some of the comments our members have heard out in public and social media and that sort of thing, we felt we needed to be clear about our stance as those who would be in the in the building every day. It's it's disappointing to see comments which implies that city council is gambling with safety, is gambling ultimately with the lives of our members. We do not believe that is the case. We trust the professional expertise that has gone into this project.

We trust the transparent public process that's taken place. We trust the in-depth studies, the data, the analysis. There are over six studies since 2030 or 2010. We trust in the team that's come together in in designing this project and and really looking at all aspects of of this project. We trust in our memberships over five hundred years of collective experience working in the city of West Linn. And we trust that council will continue to support the construction of this much needed operations center. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. And of course, all the members for the service to the community. Appreciate that.

That is all.

Okay. Would anybody else like to speak on the operation center? Come on up, Mike. Welcome back, mister Kapagan. Just state your name and city residents and go ahead.

Thank you. Mike Michael Kapagan, Westland. I'm I'm a confused, but if I'm not mistaken, you're on the agenda item that relates to the over $17 you're going to approve. And I guess I'm not certain. I would have loved to have been able to hear staff presentation first, but I did look over the agenda bill just briefly.

It seemed like you were pre approving $17,000,000 for some improvements in the grounds and some rough work being done. I guess I'm a little confused on timing. If there's still a question to the plausibility of this development proposal in the appeal and this hearings officer will be unbiased, isn't there a possibility at least that this would not be approved and this funding would not be therefore appropriate at this time? I'm a little confused on the timing. Maybe it's just once it's approved you can do it.

But I it seems to me, because I do believe as councilor Groner said, you could be unbiased. You could hear this. You could make the decision. If you choose not to because you feel you have a conflict or biased, I would think you should do that in the quasi judicial hearing setting. In other words, have set your date, make your presentation, everyone look at each other and say, yes, we're biased and we can't hear this and then take the choice.

But it does so it does seem process wise askew. But at any rate, if we wanna pretend that this hearing officer or suggest that this hearing officer is going to be unbiased, isn't there a possibility that he could agree since it was a four three decision at the planning commission? It's not like the planning commission was unanimous. Hands down, this is a great approval. Seven to nothing, was four to three.

Three people did not feel it was appropriate. So it seems to me at least there's a likelihood that the hearings officer, if he were unbiased, could say no, this project is denied. So I don't see really how you would be going forward with this pre spending allocating on the other agenda item where you're allocating, what was it, another $250,000 to the consulting oversight firm? I mean, talk about cost overruns before you even begin, how you go from a $500,000 contract and then add another $250,000 it. That's not a significant increase.

Get confused especially on a project that's not finally approved for development. I'm a little confused because I haven't heard staff representation of how they're going to do it nor have I spent a substantial amount of time reviewing this specific agenda package. But I did have some concerns about that related. Thank you again.

Appreciate it. So appreciate your comments. See, if we had gone forward and heard the appeal and then done this what you suggested of taking it you know, maybe we could've heard it unbiased, to you know, recusing ourselves because we if majority of counsel determined we couldn't hear the case, then the project would have been approved. So I wanted to make sure under our code, the prod lower decision stands. I'm just wanting to make sure that the project gets a thorough vetting it deserves through that independent process.

Sure. And just if you could just also put that in context of approving any monetary commitments going forward. It does seem like a

And you're raising some good questions about the timing. So I'll follow-up about that during the staff report. Any other comments on from public? And Julia Simpson was signed up online, but I didn't see her pop in the

She was, and she popped off.

Okay.

Could I make can I add just a note while they're getting settled? I I just, mister Kappigan, I wanted to address that concern you expressed about you don't have

to get up.

Well, if you're going to address me, I prefer to deal with my

I'm just telling you some information you don't have to I'm just Okey dokey. Okay.

Thank you, council president. With that, are we ready to give the staff report?

We are, mister mayor. So Eric Lice and Morgan Lovell are here as they have been before. And I think as part of their presentation, you'll hear answers or thoughts on some of the questions that have been raised and some of the all through the course of this meeting. So Eric, if you'd provide the introduction, I would much appreciate it.

Sure. Thank you, mayor, counselors for having us tonight. Eric Laius, Public Works Director, City Engineer. Before I get into the intro for the early work package, Morgan and I did want to address some of the questions, concerns that we heard from the public comments. One of the things, couple of we heard was about a site analysis. And there was a site analysis done internally and it was pretty simple because we don't have the property within the UGB, within the city for such a project as the op center. There was another comment about

Which site analysis? Are you referring to geotechnical or you referring to that?

I'm sorry. About the property selection.

Alternate alternate site Yeah. Options? Okay. Correct. Yes. Thank you.

So there was site site analysis done looking at alternatives?

Yeah. In internally, we it wasn't nothing formal. It wasn't published. Like I said, it was simple because we don't have that large enough of a property to procure at a decent price to make the project work. Did you want to add something to that?

I was just going to state that information was provided by the previous Public Works Director, Lance Calvert, during the acquisition of the property. He provided information that for years staff had been looking at properties around the community for this potential and ultimately landed on the ODOT property. I think it lends and leads into another comment that nobody wanted this property. I think there's an important clarification to be made that ODOT did not initiate a surplus. They did not put this on the open market on their own.

In 2017, Lance Calvert initiated the conversation with ODOT asking if they would consider surplusing this property for this project and for this purpose. So again, it was not an open market thing that nobody wanted. And we also question why another state agency would have interest in building a property or a center within West Linn. So it it was a reasonable request with due diligence and lots of foresight dating back to 2017.

Thanks. Thanks, Morgan. One of the other items we heard was about transparency and why we're why the public didn't have their say and input in this project. As we stated in a press release earlier yesterday actually, It's a years long project. We've been working on this as long as I've been director.

Tonight is the seventeenth public meeting between neighborhood association meetings, council meetings, work sessions, etcetera, that we've had discussions on this topic. So we just wanted to put that out there. Did you wanna address anything?

Yes. There was reference to natural hazard maps, and this has come up in other information and appeals in reference to the Gommi maps as well and our own Westland maps and I think it's very important to note that all of those maps have legal disclaimers that state that they are not to be used for surveying, engineering, or legal purposes. They are informational only and they are not substitute for professional on-site investigations, which have been performed thoroughly by the city and licensed geotechnical engineers over the past three years.

And go ahead. Did you have a

Oh, no. Just no. Appreciate. I think that's an important topic to touch on given the recent coverage of the site and reassuring the public that we've done extensive analysis and feel confident in

the Sure.

In the safety of it. So I'd like to you'd address that. And if you need to bring up the geotechnical engineer, I know he's here. And just talk about what what works been done over the last few years, what's been reviewed, etcetera.

Yeah. We're here. Yes. Eric and I are just going to provide broad information about the geotech reports. If there are specific technical questions, our geotechnical engineer is here to answer them.

I had one more comment to address Mr. Kappigan's about the early site work. Early site work, preparation grading associated work after receiving planning commission approval is customary and normal as part of major construction projects. This work is of course performed before issuance of any structural building permits. Preparing the site in our case for this project, preparing the site for this upcoming construction season brings $1,000,000 savings and is the most prudent use of taxpayer funds.

If the city were a private developer, they would be granted the same approval. A couple of examples recently, Tanner Ridge Subdivision, Athey Creek Middle School, Sunset Elementary, all had early work performed. So we just wanted to address a couple of those comments. And if you don't have any other further questions, I can

Do you want to move into the early work package discussion? Or would you like further discussion and clarifications regarding any geotechnical?

I'd like to talk about that if that's appropriate. If you could just because that's a very important topic that's been brought up by several folks in their testimony. Mister is mister Kalis, is that correct? Hey. Welcome. Thank you for

Can you spell your name, please?

Najib, n a j I b, n like Nancy, a like in apple, j like in Jack, I, and b like in boy. Najib. And last name would be Kalas, k a l a s.

Thanks, man. Happy to open the floor up to counsel for questions. Could you just start maybe by just talking through your the process that you went through to determine your evaluation that the site was safe for development? I I have a I have to read a little bit from this a little bit later into the record, but this is your summary letter about the geotechnical engineering. But, like, what how much did you review? What did you do?

Yes. So the site has has actually, like, extensive history. So initially the site was stable slope, but it was man made landslide, because essentially it was simple math. When ODOT worked on the I-two 05, and ODOT used to be, they had different name. I could pull it out, but it wasn't ODOT, so it was different a little bit.

When they did the I-two 05, they wanted to actually cut into that bottom of the hill. So they ended up actually blasting rock at the bottom, and as a slope you release, essentially, the buttress or the stabilization force at the bottom, and initiate the slide. So landslide trigger, it got worse because there was a big reservoir on top. The reservoir leaked. Water came down. I wasn't there, but my judgment b wire going down slope gonna cause more slide. Essentially, they kept chasing down the sliding material up to the top of the hill where you could see it now from Selamoroid. And, basically, they removed all the material. They cut the slip plane, which is what's described earlier. And basically, it's weak material.

It's it sits between basalt flows. They removed the basalt mass, which is slid down the slip material, and they build buttresses of fill. They lowered the site to grade by about 50 to 100 feet. The site is not this slow. It's actually was if you look project the hill, sloped from the hill down even past two zero five. When the site geometry changed drastically, and there is lot of butlerses built on-site.

Could you say when this was done?

In nineteen sixties.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. So they hired the CH2M Hill geotechnical company. They came and did evaluation during the civilization. They they drilled borings. They installed inclinometers. They looked at the sliding material, and they documented what's being done. All that is the civilization, and the site said vacant since that time. And then we looked at it different company, Geodesign. I used to work at that company, but different engineers, not me, different geotechnical engineer and geologist, look at the site for potential developer to put, like, solar panels on it. Nobody knows why it didn't move forward, but this was geotechnical study for it.

We came in as Columbia West. We looked at it recently. I looked at it even in when Lance was a city engineer. I did some initial evaluation for the site and exploration, just looked at it. In fact, we have discussion with Lance about specific geotechnical consideration and what is allowable or can be done, what is not. So just to clarify that. And that's all documented in the writings. They have records of it. Essentially, then, you know, nothing moved forward, and then we got on for the project. About two years ago, we started our we did site specific exploration, and we did geotechnical analysis, and we looked at different options.

Originally, there was ground improvement system for the building, the administrative building because of the fill. Now the building are moved. They're gonna sit on basalt rocks. There's no fill underneath, so they're gonna be on shadow foundation. And I took bunch of notes. I could go through them quick if you guys would like bullet items from the hearing notes. Heard if you guys interested, I could respond quick. Thoughts? Unless you have questions.

Oh, well,

I just have one question, and it it isn't necessarily for you, just so hold that thought for a second. This indemnification letter has been referred to several times that ODOT apparently, it was an internal memo. I don't know if I'm using the right term there, but ODOT

re

re re recommended they not sell this property, and people are, I think, assigning a certain amount of importance and significance to that. So if we could maybe at some point, it doesn't have to be right now, address that.

I can address that.

I have

a memo in front of me.

Oh, great. Thank you.

So this memo was an internal memo that was submitted as part of opposition during the land use hearing. The memo submitted was not the full memo. We did our own public records request from ODOT and received the entire package. I'm not representing what the appeal or the neighborhood association received. Just clarifying that there was more information.

The memo is a geotechnical memo that includes hydrological input from ODOT, hazardous department from ODOT, a legal opinion, and then also cites the 1991 geotechnical engineering evaluation when there was discussion of a new reservoir. So there were various reasons for recommendations perhaps against the sale. A lot of them was because ODOT was actively using it for material storage. They had possible plans for future solar projects and I two zero five projects. The legal memorandum that suggests not to sell it, I think is important to point out that it states that the seismic stability of the landslide has not been evaluated.

Extensive geotechnical and geological investigations and analysis would be required to evaluate the stability of the landslide. So again, ODOT is not making any representations in this memo that they have thoroughly done any on-site investigation. Again, they said, before any sale of the requested property, They wanted to be assured that the land side will remain stable and that legal provisions contained in the property transfer agreement will be complete. Again, we agreed to do geologic geotechnical studies before anything was built on it. But there is also, again, a disclaimer in this memo.

The discussion of legal liabilities provided in this memorandum is a summary of our understanding and should not be considered professional legal advice or even entirely correct. The 1991 summary from their geotechnical engineering group, mirrors some of the information our engineering our mister Callis has has stated already. But it also says, that there was a buttress that was designed. No indication of movement is evident. Existing construction records are incomplete, and little is known.

Since the time of buttress construction, a large number of expensive residences have been constructed immediately upslope. That is Barrington Heights. Our recent site visit found no evidence of recent distress and confirmed that the slide has not moved appreciably since construction. I think those important things to consider. ODOT is, of course, concerned about legalities of transferring a property that has a history that can be concerning. But again, these are generalizations, they are concerns, and they are not based on on-site professional geotechnical evaluations.

There's also a note in the 'ninety one report that states that, because it was ODOT property that our water reservoir is sitting on now that was eventually built. In addition to selling that property, they recommended selling the additional property that included the landslide.

So thank you. Thank you for that context. I have can I I'm going to ask you a couple more question on topic of what's been done? Mister Callis, this is for you. Just kind of setting establishing the record of what the what works that the city has been done. You did did your team look at you kind of mentioned earlier prior geotechnical studies from 1969, 2010 and 2013. So you did that.

Yes, that's correct. Actually, the geotechnical report has big background section. It has lot of exploration logs from Columbia Waste, geo design, CH 2 M Hill. In fact, there was even more exploration done for ODOT. ODOT was gonna do a trail at the bottom of the property, which supposedly gonna go in the East West, like parallel to 205. And there was study in their geotechnical burning test pits. We reviewed all this information. There is big background section in geotechnical report. And references actually at the end of the report, what geotechnical dooms we used.

And then you did some field your own field investigations on the site.

That's correct. So we did the geotechnical boardings. We did test pits. We had the CEG certified geologist assist us and support us with the work. We did shear wave velocity, and that's for basically geophysical survey of the site to determine site specific response. There was a comment, good comment about essential structure. This can account as essential structure, so we did site specific response analysis to address that issue. That's per organ structure code. So that's all was done.

And those I just note those in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. So we spent four years going through the testing process. And then the start the testing included deep soil and rock pourings, test pits, seismic refraction, micrometer testing, groundwater monitoring, and laboratory testing of soil and rock samples.

That's correct.

And then what was your conclusion at the end of the process?

So the conclusion is the feasibility of the site for development. I you know, I hear broad comments, and I have to clarify. The feasibility of the site is based on specific proposed development. Somebody comes and say, we're gonna put this building on top of the fill. We're gonna say it's not suitable, or it is suitable, but you have to do ground improvement, which cost millions of dollars.

When we say, okay, this building gonna be put on this basalt rock, which is stable, that's feasible option and an economic option. Same for the fill, and I was misquoted by the way, just for the record, I was misquoted in writing out there. I'm not gonna be specific, but I was misquoted. When we look at the field, when we evaluate stability, we look what is proposed and how we stabilize it. We just don't say, okay, yeah, let's just do this, right? You have to analyze the proposed development in which we did in our report. And I could get more specific if you want more follow-up on it.

No. If I may, I'm going to read the last two paragraphs of your summary letter into the record. The building foundations are designed to bear directly on structural fill and basalt bedrock. The pedestrian bridge will be anchored into stable materials using deep steel grouted micropiles where needed. Slopes created for the access road will be internally reinforced, similar to reinforced earth structures commonly used for highways and are designed to remain stable during both normal conditions and earthquakes.

In summary, the project does not rely on potentially unstable soils for foundation support. The major structures are founded on structural fill and rock. The historic landside materials were removed. The new access roadway provides additional stabilization at the slope, and the remaining hillside will not be disturbed. Based on the investigation analysis performed, the site is considered suitable for the proposed development. And I'm assuming you stand behind those Absolutely. Conclusions as and geotechnical engineer.

A 100%. Okay.

Thank you. I'm happy to open the floor up to any other counselors as well. Counselor Gronin and counsel Bonnington.

Yes. I read the or at least scan the Columbia West report, and I was very impressed by its thoroughness. I have just a couple of questions. There's mention of safety factors in there and it seems like almost all the safety factors are well past one. Could you say what a safety factor is?

That is correct.

And what the distinction is between a static and a pseudo static?

That's correct. So for pseudo static or seismic condition, you would typically assign lower safety factor. Typically, is a code, it's 1.1. For static condition, you could assign higher safety factor from 1.3. And you could analyze for these safety factors. Now, you could actually, if you want to increase them, you'll be more conservative. You can. It's just going to add cost to the project. So you could so as a minimum code, it says 1.1 under seismic and 1.3 under static. And if you want as an owner, you could say, want 1.5 for static or two.

You could ask whoever you want, and we could do it. It's just gonna cost more money. So you could go with a code, state based code, or you could ask for your own desire as an owner, private or public owner. Does that make sense?

Yeah, could you just describe exactly what a safety factor means?

So essentially what you do, let's say under seismic condition, if the factor of safety is one, that means the slope could potentially fail. You could get some failure. Essentially you take the, if you want to put it this way, the resistance force is driving force. If the value is more than one, that means the slope is likely stable. It goes to one, then it's marginally stable.

And this is a worst case driving force?

Correct, Yes. Because you analyze it both under static condition, and then you induce seismic forces into the model, and you calculate your safety factor. And typically, you need to assign minimum 1.3 safety factor for static and 1.1 for seismic.

And the entire site plan does meet those requirements?

That's correct. If you look at the Geotech report, the figure, we run three cross sections for substability. So created three models. One will be through the main access road, and one will be towards the middle, it's across and with the building, and third one further east. So we analyze three typical cross sections through the site.

Thank you very much.

I

welcome. Councilor Bunjin, go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you for joining us this evening, mister Callis. You mentioned that at your previous firm, you had reviewed this site for the solar panel project.

It wasn't me. Was different geotechnical engineer and geologist from previous firm reviewed the site for potential development.

Okay.

Guess my question is based on the amount of analysis you've done, is there anyone, I guess, in the world more qualified to speak on this particular site and its suitability for this project than you? And don't be humble.

I'm not going to pretend I'm the most qualified person. But I could say I could back up my statement with data. I mean, again, know, I'm not gonna criticize anybody, but when somebody comes and says, oh, the site, you know, I mean, I heard the comment earlier says it wasn't man made. Do we have background? If not, I could provide the background. We know why it failed. It's documented by both ODOT. It's documented by CH2M Hill. There are documentation. I wasn't there in 1960. I wasn't even born yet. But I could say, on the data, there are documentation. So I heard some comments about society wasn't man made. That's when I heard another comment that the slip material is still there. This is not supported by the background information.

There was good comment about the wall, the storm wall, because the site cannot become hardscapes. That's very good question and comment. And this has been addressed because the site drainage is to be controlled. So there'll be created hardscape, concrete, or pavement. But the water can be collected and going to go to a treatment system and going to be disposed off. There are no open ponds proposed on-site and no infiltration on the slopes on the site. Just to clarify.

So it's safe to say you have the most extensive understanding and familiarity with this site of probably anyone?

Yes. I would say we have decent background. Again, my involvement with the project has for a few years. And I reviewed information back to the 1960s. We spent hours and hours on the sites.

Yeah, I'm sure. Have there been any other projects you've been involved in that are similar or have similar locations that we might know about?

I actually did Salama Road, the slope down. That's new cut in the trail. I actually was a geotechnical engineer just by 10th Street Intersection.

Okay.

So when you come up slope, this this slope actually was modified few years ago with Harper Huff, a civil engineer. So I assisted Harper in evaluating the slope and the cut because they proposed a new cut setback, and I was the geotechnical engineer for it.

Okay. Great. Anyway, anywhere outside of Westland then?

Yeah. You name it. I mean, we work on projects on landslides. I mean, I could give you not necessarily just me, but some of our firm engineers, like, we have project in Seaside. It's actually school. And there's landslide on top of the school. And we're working on stabilizing landslide. Mean, your rationale will be evacuated the school. You demo the building, you go build new school, or you use engineering to deal with the issue and stabilize it. So you could do it either way, but the cost will be different.

Awesome. Thank you.

No problem.

Council president Baumgartner has questions.

Well, I I cannot avoid noticing and recognizing that in order of chronology there was a group of citizens who were concerned about the history without any specific actual historical data, just the stories of the observations. If one goes up and down Salamor or just looks with their eye without training, it might appear that there's a 180 foot slide happened. Now a geotechnical engineer or someone else who's knowledgeable would correct maybe the record, but without that then people just come to their own conclusions. So as this decision was advancing, I believe what next happened was media became involved because concerned citizens then presented this information to the media. And there was of course history able to be found.

So could you maybe share a just I don't wanna get into too much of this and and honestly it's a little bit whack a mole because to just to chase around all the different false information out there isn't really serving the purpose. But maybe because you have a practiced eye, you could spot a couple of significant factors maybe of correction. And I think you just mentioned a moment ago that you were misquoted. I'm interested to know what you were misquoted about.

The description of the site condition or the stabilization, the difference between saying the site area of the site is not stable, or the site is stable, and we need to install some fill, and we propose this engineering solution to create fill slope, stabilized fill slope. So I just want people to be careful in the terminology they use because make a big difference. If I say the existing material is not stable versus actually stable, I'm just building material on top of it. I wanna make sure I use this technology or this engineering solution to make it stable. There's a big difference between the two.

So people have to be careful. Mean, I'm not a doctor. I'm not gonna use medical term, in any means or provide advice, but I advise people to ask or pay attention to whatever, you know, is there. And I I actually tell people always read the geotech report. It's probably public information by now. Anybody can read it and, you know. So that's but to your point, that's a good comment because essentially, I think the issue was aside because it had a landslide history. Everybody thinks about it. Really, our concern is, okay, you know, we had landslide, but we have to see what's the current condition. So even even ODOT, they didn't drill any exploration or borings to my knowledge, where we drilled in the proposed area after they stabilized the site.

So there was, to our knowledge, no exploration. We went and did the exploration before we drew any conclusion about the suitability of the site.

Thank you for that. I I also just briefly wanted to touch on one piece of history that I think because it's difficult to pin down, maybe isn't given as much attention, but you mentioned it, which is how much did the leaking reservoir actually facilitate the slide or exacerbate this slide in 1969? Because although it's referred to separately almost as there was a crack in a reservoir, it was leaking, but nowhere did I really see a connection made, and I've made enough sandcastles. I'm not a geologist or geotechnical engineer, but I know if you add water to substrate

Absolutely. That's very good point. Again, you know, I wasn't there. I could give you my interpretation as just a judgment. You could see the headscarbs. The top of the slide actually happened to me where it was the Willamette Reservoir. It's not coincidence in my opinion. Otherwise, this hill could keep sliding up where are the new houses now. It stopped at some point. And in my opinion, or I believe I'm gonna say, obviously leaking water into the slope 100% will destabilize the slope, will reduce the factor of safety.

As you get saturation, you enter that into your model, and your factor of safety goes from 1.3 to one or point nine. So definitely, the slide triggered at the bottom, it was progressed up slope, and it was planned on the slide. It wasn't set for a slide actually because it was two basalt material sitting on the slope slipper plane. So as the mass start coming down, there's just excessive failure. And when it got up to the Willamette Reservoir, it cracked and leaked, and water came down. And I think by the time it was too late to us because of traffic. So

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I think what you were getting at was what I saw. Was stated that the only, quote, marginally stable area is the land beneath the proposed access road. And that you're that kind of could lead to an inference where the whole site is unstable, but that is not what you're

But this is

intending not when you when you said that.

Correct. This is not accurate.

What what

And you're

quoting what here?

Essentially, it's it's not the area underneath the access road. What is we proposing a fell slope, and we need to stabilize that fell slope so the slope is stable. So it has nothing to do with we cannot just say the area under the axis is not stable. This is not accurate. Just to put in a plain engineering term, it's not accurate statement.

And the rest of the site, buildable site is stable?

That's correct. We evaluated the buildable portion of the site. That's correct.

Okay. Thanks. I think I think that's what you were getting at.

I heard

heard about that. Thank you. Any other questions on for the Councilor Bright, go ahead. We haven't heard from you very much tonight. Welcome back to the conversation.

I just wanna say that we have heard a lot of people's opinions. Even on the planning commission, there are people that have worked as geologists, but a geotechnical engineer is a slightly different thing. And I note that you talked about using engineered fill on the road, which is designed to stabilize. So you're just not going to throw a bunch of rocks there and pave it. And also looking at, historically, in 1969, there were different thoughts about how to deal with land movement, whether it was earthquake or anything else.

And a lot of technology has come into play in the last fifty or so years. When we see major earthquakes around the world in places like Japan, you don't even really see very many buildings that fail because there's technology now that can help them be more resilient. And I I think from the design of the building, the location of the building on basalt, the engineered fill to make that road, if we have a Cascadia subduction earthquake, that might be one of the only roads in the community that survives because many of the roads have were built long ago. So and I I like to, listen to and, rely on the advice of professionals, and I appreciate the actual field studies and work that you have done at the site.

No, thank you. I appreciate it. And just to clarify, God forbid, we have an earthquake. There will be some damages. Like if somebody's going to pretend everything's going to be 100%, no. You will get damaged. The difference between shallow material or crack or a house, how she cracked versus a house collapsed, is totally different. In fact, a lot of now private developers, they design for non collapse. Essentially, you could design for zero damage. It just the cost, the engineering, the analysis, the economic doesn't support that.

So they design for non collapse. Meaning, we could do some repair, patch some walls, it's fine. But I don't want to pay upfront, instead of $40,000,000 $200,000,000 for the project. So just to be clear for even the public, typically all these things mostly designed for non collapse. But there could be some curb might crack or something. It could happen. You're going see it everywhere. God forbid, if you have one. I happen to be originally near Turkey, and Turkey had a huge landslide. And you probably guess right above it, I went to a presentation. It's some structure is just a crack. They didn't collapse. Right?

Thank you. And thank you for being here on short notice today. I know Eric called you earlier today, and he came out in person. We appreciate it. Any other questions for mister Callis?

Oh, I don't have a question.

Okay. But I just wanna make Go ahead.

A comment. Yes. I just wanted to thank you too for being able to come here and and share your expertise and knowledge with us. I highly value all of what you've said, and I've also gone back into the record and studied some of the past contributions. Maybe you weren't there in person, but your expertise was being referenced.

So I think we have a really good history of diligence with this project, and and I really feel good about it. I also will would like to just add that it's our responsibility to make difficult decisions that are sometimes unpopular, and I understand fear. So I understand that. And people don't people are quick to jump onto a message that is a little bit chicken little, the sky's falling. It's easy to say that, and then so I'm I'm wanting us to just take a beat and listen to your technical expertise and rely on the science behind it, and so I appreciate all of that.

And I'm grateful that we have it. Thank you.

Appreciate that, council president. I couldn't have said it better myself. With that, should we move on into the contract amendment? I'm just I have to say though, I'm really proud of the team that we've assembled as as a city with Skanska as the as the contractor and and Columbia West as the geotechnical engineer and HHPR as the civil engineer. And who else do we have? Claus Group as the owner's representative and our staff. And I just feel that this team knows what they're doing when we're talking about this project. And I have a lot of confidence in the work that's that's been going on. And so I just wanted to put that out there to the community.

I appreciate that. We're very proud of them too and happy that they're on our team and are doing great work. Appreciate them. So real quick, I got a little bit of a narrative on the early work package and then Morgan can get into a little bit more details. The city's operations complex has achieved significant progress since its original kickoff in February 2023 when council awarded the preliminary design contract to Scott Edwards Architects.

Since that time, the project has progressed through CMGC construction contract award to Skanska USA, final design with SEA, budget allocations and land use approval. At the time of the award, the pre construction services to Skanska USA on 06/16/2025, council was notified that a future amendment for the construction services would be presented at a later date. So here we are tonight. This early work package will provide limited scope authorization to facilitate early procurement and construction services of selected materials such as concrete and mass plywood panels, structural steel and a prefabricated metal building. Also included in the package is earthwork.

We talked about the road building, water and sewer, storm utilities. All work will be performed under a site development permit issued by engineering. Advantages of the early work package are reduced material escalation and supply chain volatility, secures fabrication and procurement for long lead items, establishes early site access earthwork during a dry weather, I mentioned that earlier. Our value engineering effort along the way through the project design established a $1,000,000 savings in getting in there in the dry weather and maintains transparency of budget while building permit review progresses through our other city department.

My

last thing is just about the money and the motion to approve.

Okay, thanks. So yes, again, this early work package is limited in scope, it is not the final guaranteed maximum price that will come back to you at a later date. This early work package allows for limited scope and then once that limited scope is carried out there will be a budget reconciliation, we'll look at what has been done, and then the additional construction and material activities surrounding the vertical builds will be reconciled and be brought back to you for final budget approval. We are tracking to stay within the allotted $45,000,000 budget. We are diligent on that budget and we are meeting constantly to review alternatives that are meet or exceed what we need for like structural compliance.

And we have some, you know, things we could add if the budget allows, and there's things that we can take away if are necessary. So we are very mindful of staying within a budget while producing a quality lifetime building that will serve the residents' needs. We've emphasized how important this building is, how important operations are within the community. Fortunately, I think there is a broad understanding from the community that this building is essential and it is needed. And we do appreciate community support on that note.

If there's any questions specifically about how the initial GMP works or what could possibly happen should the initial GMP contract amendment not be approved implications to schedule on pricing. We could address that or I can just go into it. How would council like to proceed?

Could you address that issue the what kind of what what happens if we don't move this move the We amendment

are on a very specific schedule proving the initial GMP allows us to move forward with the site development as Eric indicates, which captures a dry weather window, which saves the city money. So if that's moved into wet weather that immediately potentially can eliminate up to a million dollars in savings. There are other information. The initial GMP is has been competitively bid on certain components and then some work is being self performed by Skanska and their excavation partners at Kaufman. These assumptions of when the initial GMP contract will be approved triggers when that work can start.

And it allows Skanska, who's doing those bidding, to carry out current market pricing for those trades. And, it anticipates timely execution of early procurement packages. So, if that does not happen, then those bids can expire. There can be escalation, it can go into an unknown market. There's no promises on what those prices look like beyond what has been currently bid.

And so it is important, not just to the schedule, but in transparency of price and assuring we know what we're paying for at this moment in time. It also can impact the later GMP because it's a trickle down effect. Early work package and that reconciliation impacts the later competitive bidding for the final GMP. Those are all sequenced together. When you push one out, it pushes out another.

And again, that creates uncertainty in the market and can change the bid values that the city's receiving. Also, with a lot of construction, know, people become unavailable. So I mean there are certain expectations of when work is going to be performed and when things are going to get bid and if you move into different seasons, you know some contractors that may have wanted to competitively bid maybe have another project, those are all just unknowns. It could swing either way, but this provides a lot more certainty of pricing and schedule and getting into the building as we've indicated we want to. And it's the most prudent conservative way to move forward and it's staff's opinion, it's the most fiscally responsible way of moving forward.

And my other question is just, you know, we had to have an active land use appeal. So how does this relate to the land use process? I can see that some public might feel like, oh, you're approving this. If you know, if we approve it, these are impacting the appeal

I can generally speak to that, but Kaylee, I think can also highlight it. I think Eric touched on this. It is not uncommon for these developments to move forward with site work during the appeal process. Staff has and our project team has strong unshakable faith that the original land use decision will be upheld. We have a strong complete application that is rooted in compliance with the Community Development Code and we are confident that whether it went to council to a third neutral party or even above that that our original land use planning commission decision would be upheld.

Yeah, I heard that question come up earlier from a member of the audience and as Morgan and Eric have alluded to, it is legally permissible to move forward in this manner at the stage that staffs calling the early work package, in fact that's customary and normal after receiving a planning commission approval. We don't see the city as the applicant very often, but if you put it in the context of a local developer receiving a planning commission approval, they do get started right away on obtaining necessary permits, buying materials that will be needed in the future, doing site grading, even if the decision is on appeal. And that's legally permissible because you need I can see why it could be confusing but it's two separate buckets. You have engineering and building type permits and you have the land use appeals process. And so all of the work that staff has mentioned to you today in their proposal, they those will require engineering permits and other permits like those that are required by the state.

You'll see in the packet there's a 1,200 c permit, which is required for grading purposes, and that's all related to this early work. And it is not limited because the decision is on appeal. So to be clear there is no legal risk, there is of course financial and optical risk going forward with this type of work, know, if the decision were to be reversed, we would have expended those funds, but I think staff has been very clear and careful in evaluating actually the benefits of going forward now, saving over a million dollars based on the dry weather season and also with the really volatile market being able to lock in prices now that that actually the financial risk in their weighing is in favor of starting early. Also there's I did mention the optical risks of it being confusing and seeming like you're going forward when you haven't heard the decision on appeal, but there isn't a legal prohibition to doing so and developers often do take this approach.

Thank you for that overview. It sounds like it would save the city. Know, we're balancing a lot of considerations, public input, costs and risk in managing complex project. So I think to me it makes sense to save the taxpayers money where where possible while respecting the appellate process that's gonna play out. So that's where I'm I'm at on that issue. And any other thoughts or comments from counsel?

I I also picked up on that concern. We've gotten some emails too over the last few days just specifically about that aspect of going forward with this work, and not everyone is well versed in the processes as you have just outlined, and it's actually legal. And and again, I would just have to say that our whole goal is to be transparent, to make good decisions, to protect our communities, the taxpayers' dollars, to uphold our fiduciary responsibilities. That is what this council has as far as I've ever heard anyone speak on is that's our goal, our mission, and we need to provide this facility for the community and the employees and the city's best interest. So I feel really good about moving forward and I'm basing this on feelings and facts, not feelings.

So I appreciate all of the information we've been getting from staff.

Yeah. I could also add that the appeals process to now hearings officer, now that you've made your decision to delegate that authority, I think sometimes it's also confusing, we think of appeals in state court or in Luba as very lengthy. I suspect now And first we're going get sense

20.

Rather soon, as in like the next probably six weeks to eight weeks. And so it's not like we're gonna be waiting for six months or a year on appeal like you normally think when you hear that term.

Thank you for that. Any other comments from counsel?

I would be interested in at some point hearing a little bit more about the detail because we've not done a hearings officer process. And I I think especially the community would be interested in hearing how the public can engage with that process. Maybe not I'm not even suggesting tonight necessarily, but thank you.

Would you like to make a motion on the issue?

Yes. Thank you. I move to approve the early work package contract amendment for Skanska USA and authorize the city manager to execute all necessary documents.

Second. It's been

moved and seconded to I have it right here. Approve the early work package contract amendment for Skanska USA and authorize city manager execute all necessary documents. Any discussion? I will read a short statement. Tonight's action is a phased controlled step in the project delivery process.

It allows early work to move forward while maintaining oversight and continuing to manage cost increases. And if we don't move forward tonight with this action, we would be subjecting the taxpayers to potentially billion dollar increase by missing the dry season through mobilization. And I our responsibility, I feel as mayor and city council is to make decisions based on the best information available and the expert analysis while factoring in community input and balancing all of these considerations to do what we think is best for West Linn because that's what we all want. That's why we're all here. I'm sure that's why all community members were here because we all care about West Linn and want the project to be successful.

So I feel confident based on what I've read. I've read the geotechnical report and spent some time with it and had a meeting with our staff about it. And I plan to enter this letter from the geotechnical engineers. It's part of the land use process, but I'm gonna enter this into the record for the meeting tonight because it really does lay out all that's all the the extensive analysis that's been done to support the safety of the project. And I have confidence in the in the work based on what we heard from mister Callis today. So and his company. So that's my comment. Thank you everybody for your time tonight and and consideration. Happy to open the floor up. Councilor Bonington.

Just real quickly. Everyone along here lives in West Linn. We are all people who love West Linn passionately, probably the most of anyone here. We are the last people who want to build something that isn't going to last and something that is risky. We we want to benefit from this and we don't want to make decisions that will come back and have consequences for us as well. So it's worth keeping in mind when we make these decisions that we all live here as well.

Thank you, Councilor. Councillor Groner? Yes, Thank you. Please turn your mic on,

Thank you.

I too was strongly supporting this, and I I was struck by a couple of statistics that the original Norfolk site was constructed in 1937 when the population of West Linn was approximately 2,000. Today, its population is 27,000, almost 30 times as big. And so we need a center, and it's time to get one.

Appreciate that, counselor. Any other comments? Alright. Please call the roll.

Councilor Brunner?

Yes.

Councilor Bonington?

Yes.

Councilor Bright? Yes. Councilor President Baumgartner? Yes. May I be with Astroshi?

Yes. So the motion passes and the manager is authorized to proceed. And the how many meetings has this been since the seventeenth public meeting?

This is the seventeenth.

You're continuing to make progress.

So Yes.

Thank you. The seventeenth meeting on the op center has concluded, and we'll move on to the next topic on the agenda. Would anybody like a short break? Just two just two to five minutes. Just to alright. We'll take a two two two minute recess.

Thank you, mayor.

We will return to the meeting. We're back in session. And this is the Westland City Council meeting Tuesday, 04/14/2026. We're at agenda item six c, the lady b tugboat donation proposal, which is a follow-up to our last works and discussion where we decided we're gonna make decision. So mister city manager, do you have a staff report at all on this item?

I I I do. At your discretion, I can go one minute or I can go twenty five minutes.

Just take a minute. Take take a minute. Let us know where we're at. Figured that

would be the answer, mayor and council, and partially because you were just in work session on this topic last week with these fine folks from the advocates. And, you debated, or discussed the, options related

to acceptance of this vote.

We had a conversation about several items relating to risk that the city may or may not be taking on as part of this. We provided a little bit of extra information in the staff report clarifying our insurance provider's position on this issue. And the packet also includes I wanted to point out the packet includes a couple of drawings that we haven't seen in a while illustrating this possible site and the the sort of the cross section display proposed by the advocates for this tugboat. So last week, you discussed several of these pieces, and you requested coming back to a business meeting in order to be able to make decisions. Considering the hour and the length of time you've been working already this evening, I will leave my staff report at that.

We do have these folks from the advocates who have been here all evening, getting educated on other topics and may have some additional thoughts. And I

think did you sign?

We we

have yeah. Okay. Great. So happy to have the the advocates come up and provide public comment, and then we answer any questions you have.

Bring up the advocates. Thank you. And thanks for staying with us late in the evening.

Sandy Carter.

Sandy, welcome. Just state your name and city residents and Yes, Go ahead. Hi.

My voice isn't very good tonight. Sorry. I'm Sandy Carter. I lived here for thirty four years, but I now live across the river. But I put a lot of investment into this town, and I love it. And I don't know about the three minutes. Okay. I started on this in December 2021 when I got a phone call from Bernard saying, we're gonna scrap this boat. We know you like history. It's got a lot of history.

Do you wanna save it? And that's where the story started. I went through about, well, a thousand emails today. I was trying to do this timeline, but then I had a doctor appointment and they didn't have time to go pick it up on the way home. So I want to say that over the last five years, with some pretty considerable delays, because we were low priority, as John pointed out last week, The questions came up, they came up last week.

And we satisfied the liability with the checking on the umbrella coverage. We talked about the site plan, which we resent to you so you could be reminded that it will look like a small boat floating on the mowed grass on the berm in the park next to the restroom with a new sidewalk. We have established a budget that includes every single cost. So it's a donated boat. We pay for a consultant.

And we've just estimated all the costs and it's a small project actually. It comes in probably under 250,000, but we're putting in allowances in there for contingencies that might come up because they usually do. I'd like to say that the boat has two values for sure. One is the actual historical value to the Willamette River history. This is the part of it that hasn't been told.

Some of the supporters for the grants that I've gotten emphasize that this is like a secret to a lot of people who in the younger generations, including in West Linn, have never seen a tugboat pushing a log raft. And that's where we got started with the Burner twins moved to Willamette, started the Burnert clan, started the boat businesses, got their pay stubs down at Burnert Landing, and really established the city of the Willamette and a lot of jobs. So I wanted to say the credibility of the advocates to help you pull this off has been proven. We've worked on other projects with the city. We got the grindstone sculpture at the trailhead there done with the city when Ken Worcester was parks director.

And we would hope that by the time we raise all the money, which we have to do before you guys have to do anything, The Parks Department would have stabilized a little bit under new leadership, and we have a lot of allies in the historical community that can vouch for us. And I've got ten seconds left. So I just urge you to please, this is very important to the community's global memory, as well as to the whole history of the state of Oregon, and particularly communities that live along the Willamette River between Salem and Portland. So thank you very much for all your time, and the fact that I had to repeat things is nobody's fault. It's just been five years.

Appreciate that. Appreciate your comments. Thank you, Sandy.

Al McCosten.

Alma, welcome back.

Good evening, counsel, and thank you for what you do. I'm Al McCosten. I'm from the Bolton neighborhood, West Linn. I came to West Lynn in 1962, and I have lived at the corner of Hood And Burns on bought that property shortly after I moved here. I am advocating for the lady b.

But when I first came here, the Maddox's were on their property, which is now Maddox Woods. And I encouraged them as they came to the age of doing something with their property to bequeath it to the city because they wanted it to stay natural. And after that, we became friends of Maddox Woods. We got that going so that we advocate for Maddox Woods. But when I first knew the Maddox's and was down there talking to them, The river was full of the log rest, tugboats.

The ladybait was probably one of the tugboats there in front of their house. So through the years, I have seen the tugboats all along the river. You couldn't go to the river without seeing a tugboat. So anyway, I was on the Parks Board before 2000. And when we were when the Mattox's considered, their property, I went on to off the parks board because I felt it was a conflict of interest if I was gonna advocate for Maddox Woods.

So, anyway, through the years, knowing what the tugboats have been to all of us, I just hope that we decide to accept and advocate for the potential of history that is involved here with the lady bee. And this area is has so much potential with the falls, with the locks, with all of the other things that I, at times, was involved with. I just hope that we capitalize on the potential that West Linn has for all of the historic things there are. It takes a lot of work, but I know that it is worth it. So if you have any questions?

Any questions involved? Council president Baumgartner, go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. I just wanna thank you for all of the work you have done and all of the contributions you have made to the city and our community, and, I really appreciate it. I love Maddock's words, and I always think about the friends when I'm down there. So thank you. Agreed. I don't really have any questions though.

Here, here.

Thank you.

Come down and join us every third Saturday to volunteer in the park.

Sounds good.

Are there.

I did in the past, I think, before when I

was You have.

In the past.

That's where we met.

I remember that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Any other? Okay. Well, I just had a question. Say the city direct the staff to accept the tugboat and proceed forward with the proposal. Is there funding of what was the funding situation with the actual I've I'd like the transfer of the boat and the, you know, the funding for the if we the funding wasn't able to be raised for the full on display, the potential disposal of the boat in the unfortunate situation. We do have to be clear eyed about that. So where's what's the situation that?

We do. The advocates have agreed to take on all costs that can be identified for the the remediation of the tugboat and for the preparation of the site, including permit work, including hiring a construction manager to oversee the project. And so the memorandum of understanding that's proposed in your packet includes a a phased approach. In the first phase, costs are identified, timelines are identified, needed expertise is identified, and then total cost is identified, and the advocates are have agreed to do that two phase funding to ensure the project can be funded. And they have also agreed that if the funding can't be raised, that the city is not required to retain the vote and that it would be it would be able to be disposed of.

So and it would remain when would we when would the ownership transfer happen to the city from the standpoint of the fundraising versus that timeline? Sorry to ask them. No. That's okay. Make sure.

Yeah. So there's there are three legal questions that I have that were left over from the work session. But the way to your question, the way the MOU is structured right now is that we would not take legal ownership until the advocates have showed that they've raised the full amount, which right now is about $250,000. And so we they would have raised that money first. Okay.

Some of the issues, of course, making it all match up and all the different documents work together. The the one question is about, you know, whether you would you are comfortable accepting the lady be as is, which is the advocate in Wilsonville Concrete's proposal without any types of war excuse me, warranties or indemnification, which is what we would normally expect. So that's the outline question as well as whether you are comfortable accepting ownership of the tugboat after there's evidence that they have raised the full amount of funds, but before the lead abatement occurs. That's how it's currently drafted in the documents that the city takes title to the boat while it is at Wilsonville Concrete's location. And so we own the boat before it has had all the lead abatement work, and then it will be done there at the yard and transferred to the city to the city park where the installation and design has already been completed.

So that's how it's designed. I I had flagged that as do we wanna take ownership of something where the abatement hasn't already occurred. But, again, it really just goes into that question of, is this a project that the council wants to take on? And the final third flag that both staff and I had mentioned was the advocates come said that they intend to to raise funds, additional funds for fifteen years of maintenance, but that's kind of a soft in intend. And so we could make that more formal that they do need to provide that. I think that's the major cost is the ongoing maintenance and obviously the staff time.

Thank you for that over that overview of the situation. Happy to open the floor. I've spoken first tonight several times. So I'm gonna open the floor up to counsel for deliberations. Councilor Groner and then councilor Bonington.

Yeah. Basically, I think we are all products of our history, and remembering our history is significant. We have the history of this area includes the Native Americans. It includes the beaver. We don't have a beaver memorial anywhere.

And it includes logging and paper, which were a very important part of our industry until very recently. So I think we need to remember that. And one way of remembering that is with monuments to that period that people can learn from and ask questions about. We just had a long discussion about risk with respect to the operation center. And I think a lot of that centered on, yes, people's discomfort with unknown risks and with professional assessments of what the risk is.

And we've decided to go with the professional assessment of the risk. And I think there's somewhat analogous situation with a later me. There is some unease about potential liabilities. But the question is, what do we really know about those liabilities? And I think if it's essentially buried up to the waterline and we don't allow people to run on top of it one way or another, I think the risk is very low. I did ask a question. I'm not sure I've ever gotten an answer about has our insurance carrier asked any judgment on this?

Yeah. I forwarded that this morning. She got back to us. So she said there are no limitations on liability coverage regarding the lady b. She did mention, like I had shared at the work session, that there may be design elements that are required around the display to help mitigate, like you said, climbing on or or being on the structure itself. And we also have confirmation in this email from underwriting that CIS would defend a liability claim. So your question about insurance is a good answer.

Thank you very much.

Okay. Councilor Bonington. Did you sorry. Didn't mean to call on you. I just thought you wanted to say something.

No. That's fine. I I guess I'm thinking about the fact that quite a bit of Westlands history is just gone. Many many of our actual historical ties have been demolished or hauled away to scrap. And there there are a lot fewer, I think, than most other cities of of our vintage.

It's been kind of a treasure over the last few years having been born and raised here and not having access to much of our history back during my childhood. A lot of it is starting to come back out again. It's being rediscovered. People are finding things, telling stories, and that's been really cool to see. I try to picture myself back in in the time when these boats were on the water, and I wouldn't I guess I can empathize with how it might be a very very strange difference between that Westland and this one today.

And continuing to tell that story and bringing that into the future for posterity does have some serious value. And I'm inclined to, I guess, continue allowing them the time to raise the money they need within the MOU and accept this without any warranties of safety.

Thank thank you, counselor. Any other comments from counsel?

Sure. I'll go. Well, thank you again for staying and dedicating all of this time to this endeavor. I have when I first learned about the project, although I love history and exploring history, I was I had concerns that I expressed about the cost and the unknowns, basically, liability, etcetera. But I do think that I agree with what other counsel has said, that it's a it's an endeavor worth worth undertaking, and I appreciate all the work that is has been put in and is being promised to continue as far as the funding.

Do we know how much the fundraiser made yesterday? Not yet. Alright. Not yet. Okay. So I would be happy to go forward in whatever way we agree on doing. I was just rereading the council options in here. So that that's my 2¢ is keep on sailing.

Thank thank you, council president. Or chugging. Councilor Bright, go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. Not to be a downer, but I still don't really think this is something the city should own. I do believe it can be saved, but I'm also wondering if there is another way to honor that history, without having a 40 foot boat. As I said at the meeting last week, that goes from the clock there behind the city attorney's head to that door. That's a very, very large object.

I do like the way it's going to be kind of buried. I like that presentation, but I do think that maybe we could honor the history another way. I also have concerns with the amount of staff time that has already gone into this. And I recognize that the advocates are going to raise the funds to get it in place and all of that. But staff has already sunk a lot of time into it.

We still don't have the final MOU, so that's gonna be more time. And and then if we need to fence it or do some other thing to make it less of a risk for people climbing on, then I also think that makes it less accessible as a historical thing. I was just walking through George Rogers Park in Lake Oswego, and they have a lovely little stone sculpture that kids used to climb on all the time, and it is now fenced with a sign saying don't climb on it. So I just I'm not sure that that's what we wanna see. So that's that's my perspective.

Counselor, I appreciate your comments, and you raised a lot of valid points about staff time and resources and everything. And I know there has been a lot of work that's gone into this. And this isn't at the top of the council's priority list when we go into goal setting. But I have been invested in the project for a while with advocates. And for me, we're in a financial situation.

I know as a city, we're kind of strapped for cash going forward looking at budgets and working on these initiatives to do financial planning and the budget outlook is bleak. So the fact that these advocates have been willing to come up with the full amount of the money to, you know, maintain and build the structure and keep this piece of history, I'm willing to give them a chance to do so with the understanding that if things can't if fundraising can't come into place, the city is not going to be able we're not in a budgetary situation to be able to dedicate resources to the to the project out of the budget. So that's why I'm willing to give it a chance on on the because I think there is some historical value in in the boat, and there's some passion from dedicated members of our community. So it could be an interesting display. So that's where I'm at.

But I also just recognize councilor Breich's feelings. And so you're not being a downer. You're being a realist and an important voice in the in the process. So we we will Anyway, that's I've kinda heard from the council. It sounds like there's a consensus. So should we make a motion and then do you have direction to

Mayor, I would recommend a motion. We outlined a motion in the in the staff reports, basically, directing us to return with the final documents and get the project going.

I can make a motion. Thank you, city manager. I move to direct staff to return with final agreement documents for council approval.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to direct staff to return final agreement documents for council approval. Any discussion? We've had discussion. Some places they want the motion first and then second and then discussion, but we do it a little differently here in West Linn.