City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello, my name is Cedric Shanks, and I'm just here to ask that the routine maintenance be put on a schedule for the walkway between the light at Cove Avenue begins and N Avenue. I ride a bicycle for exercise early in the morning, and that's really overgrown. I have some pictures. I did come in right after the last Additionally, I got to wondering if there are any ADA requirements, so could that cause issues for the city if there are? So I just ask, you know, I've called every year, I believe, and it's just something that needs to be done. One year, I know the young man from River

Can you repeat the location, please? I beg your pardon? The location.

You go underneath the railroad overpass between N Avenue, the light at N Avenue, and where Cove Avenue starts. And it's both sides. Need the maintenance every year.

The underpass?

Yes, the walkway there.

Oh, you're up on top then?

Yeah, the walkway itself is overgrown. Gotcha. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Hello.

Deborah Whitewaters. I, too, am with the Right Track Resource Center, and I mimic what Olivia said. The only thing that I would add is when you all go home tonight and get in your beds, just remember we've got about 25 or 30 people looking for some place to sleep. Try to help us make this service continue with your support.

Just a quick reminder for anybody that's doing public comment. If you could please put your name on the signup sheet. I don't, I don't know if I lost track of tracking of who was signing up, but just, just a quick reminder for our records. Thank you.

Uh, good evening. I'm Jackie tries heard, and this is my husband, Jim heard. We came down from Seattle, uh, today, um, uh, to meet with you. And, um, For the last year, the different organizations, groups, neighbors, friends, swimmers, cloggers, school district, church people have been just saying, what are we going to do for your mom on her 100th birthday? And I said, well, I think we need to get a little closer to that. But that time is upon us, and we want to celebrate her and her neighbors and her friends that she has... quilted a patchwork with since my dad brought her here after the war, we want to lift her up. And we have planned a community celebration that is going to include all her friends with bowling and swimming and Special Olympics and people that used to count boats in the old days to celebrate her and lift her up. And we're here to petition the council for an official community designation for that celebration. Any questions?

Stacy has some information they can contribute.

I was going to ask you. Yeah. So we've been talking with this family. They had submitted a special event permit for a parade and they want to designate it as a community parade. Per OAR and the state, because it's an ODOT highway, we have to have city council decide if they want to approve that for a community parade or not. If that's something that you guys feel that you would like to discuss further, we would have to move that onto the agenda and we would have to have a motion to amend the agenda. So that is up to the council if somebody wants to make that motion.

In order to approve it, we have to...

In order to have further discussion so you can hear from staff and get some more of the details. And then it would also give them another chance to talk. Good. We just can't deliberate and talk about it during public comment.

I think add it to new business. Yeah, that'd be great.

I agree. So somebody needs to make a motion at this time?

I move that to the agenda, yeah. We add this discussion about celebration for Dorothy Rice to our agenda. Would that be under new business? Yes, that would be new business.

So that will be new business under H, correct?

Did we have a second on that? Second.

OK. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Sorry.

There you go. You got it.

Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead.

Everyone's telling, yeah, I'm so sorry. Thanks for walking me through it. I'm new on this side. My name's Evelyn Wallace. I won't take too long of your time. I'm here to voice the support that I know in writing from Olivia. and the rest of the Right Track team. I'm just coming in, so apologies. Childcare, I would imagine some of you know what it's like. Thank you for your grace. I have been working, volunteering with Right Track since I found out that there was a person who died in a freezer container, a shipping container, which is part of the whole origin story of how we came to be in the first place. With all of the, as we all know, well most of us maybe know, like the ups and downs and ins and outs and what are we doing or what are we not doing, history of the organization, I can say that it's so wonderful to be at a place in like operational capacity and community support where we all It seems to me like we all agree that nobody wants people sleeping outside downtown in doorways. I think there's some baseline agreements that we have seen and that we have felt like as an organization and talking to our broadened community, around transformed opinions, like lots of legitimate fear or concern and then a lot of assuaging that fear and concern and really relationship building and really doing our best to acknowledge we are all part of the same community. Our motto, maybe this already got said, so thanks for bearing with me, but our motto is safe for you, safe for me, safe for the whole community. And so I just speak in support. I mean, really what we're here to do is look into the energy tax and how it's possible that as a public service that really benefits the whole community. Oh, sorry, tax is probably the wrong word. Act, strike it from the record. The fee, the energy, tiny little pennies that might be added that could keep us in operation and could keep our community members who need a place to sleep out of your doorways. So thank you for your time. I guess I'll close. That's all I need to do. Thanks for listening.

See you next time.

Greg Amer, Washington Street, La Grande. I'm here about affordable costs for the city to pass on to the taxpayers. On July 24th, I put a letter to the city manager's office. I wanted to put these pictures up on the big screen. 11 days later, he calls me. He says, well, we can't do that. I go, why? He says, well, we got a policy. You have to have 10 days notice. I was at that office twice that day. Nobody ever said anything about a 10-day notice. It's like 11 or 12 days now, but that's what he told me yesterday. I guess he doesn't want you, the public, to know what the bathrooms look like. You've got pictures on your desk. I don't know if you've looked at them. Some of you have. There's four of them. The first two are the condition the bathroom was in the day he kicked me out of this building. And I complained about how dirty they were. The next two are over at the library. Now, Corrine, when I remember where your business is, it's got a tile floor, doesn't it? Some of it?

No.

Okay. And it's got, when I remember, blue grout with white grout. I mean, blue tile with white grout or gray tile with white grout.

Depends on where you are, yeah.

So look at that picture of the tile.

Yeah, I mean...

I'd like to remind the council, too, that we don't need to engage the conversation.

So you can't talk? So we got a city council. There's a dirty bathroom. You charge us $100,000 a year for the employee to clean it. $8,333 a month. $400 a day. $51 an hour. And it's dirty. Mr. Abrams.

Those numbers are incorrect, and I want to state that for the record.

For the record, I was given them by the finance department. She's right here.

That's not accurate.

It's accurate with benefits. That includes rule of thumb, but that's not the power of the union.

Correct. That's the total cost, though. The business right across the street, their total cost was less than $20,000. You talked about a multilevel brick building. The one two blocks away, their total cost is $26 an hour. The private residence up on Oak Street pays $30 an hour. Scarfo is here. The county has a person who does the cleaning, takes care of the grounds. Their total cost is $37. You're charging us $51. You're charging us 38% more, and that's what that looks like. And I'm going to make a request to have the pictures up next month. What's going to be your excuse then? I'll be back.

I'm Tim Matthews, a local contractor.

Just wanted to start coming into some of these meetings. We're getting ready to do some big projects coming up. And we've been attending some of these round table meetings. Our biggest thing is like infrastructure costs for these developments, stuff like that. So we've been putting together a bunch of options at these discussions. But I wanted to kind of bring it to your guys' attention to see how this works. I know it's going to take a few meetings and probably a year to get this stuff done. One of those options we were talking about was kind of a deferment program for the building fees. When we go to build a house, there's a lot of money that we have to put up front before we even break ground on there. And so I know that on some of the projects I've done, you guys have waived the fees. And but I thought about it long and hard about it. And I thought there's some different ways we can be a little bit flexible on that stuff and keep these projects going and kind of help us get through those hurdles. And some of them are things like phased payment plans where we can maybe do it in sections as we go instead of everything right up front. There was a deferral program where if we waived the fees until certificate of occupancy, that would be helpful, you know, because we could maybe get started on a couple projects rather than just one and then trying to get through it. Or what my favorite one was where if you deferred the fees until the first sale, you know, then that would be helpful to get that fee cost covered. But you guys are still making your money. You're not waiving it. you're going to make your money at the end. And there's ways to protect it in there, stuff like that. There is also some people, some developers, they end up in a tough situation once they get going. So there could be probably a hardship program

you know, maybe individualize something like that.

And then maybe even a low interest or no interest deferral where they go like a year or something like that. But you guys would get your money down the road or something like that. But an incentive, like I'd like an incentive program where if we deferred it and then I paid it at, say, certificate of occupancy or maybe first sale, I get to leave in a little discount, like pay 85 percent of the fees to kind of incentivate me to pay right away. Or if I delayed it a year, then I pay that cost or something. I mean, you guys with the brains got to figure that stuff out, but I just kind of want to throw it out there as an option. But that way you guys are keeping, you're making your money. it's helping us developers kind of get things rolling on the ground and stuff like that. And, and I just think that would be kind of a great approach. I want to bring it to the attention. There's a few more things. I had like five different options where it's not taxes. We're not raising taxes. There's grants, the deferral program, stuff like that. Maybe a reimbursement program. We'll, we'll bring that up later. I just wanted to kind of make some noise. Yeah. So anyways, I think there's a good way to go. Uh, You know, we just want to get the discussion going, because this project's going to take at least a year to get going, you know, this development we're doing. I think it's going to be good for Legrand, so I just want to kind of let you see my face, make some noise.

Are we discussing this tonight?

Um, so, uh, I will be expanding on some of my comments in regards to work that's already occurring in regards to this. One of those things, one of those elements within that is being, uh, uh, discussed and voted upon this evening. Um, but there's multiple other things and I'll talk about that in my closing comments.

Okay. Good timing. Yeah. The big bulk is like infrastructure costs. We got to start dealing on that stuff cause we need to grow. And there's a, there's a lots of tricky and uh, We'll get into that later. Just wanted to say that.

Thank you. Thank you.

No, unfortunately not.

Once we get into that section, if you hang around for a little while, you're going to hear some stuff from me that will give you that clarity.

7-8. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else like to make public comments this evening?

Nope.

All right. Let's move into the new business. The first one we're going to get into is public hearing and the first reading by title only of a proposed ordinance establishing a public safety service fee. At this time the public hearing is open and can we have the city recorder read the rules of order in its entirety.

These rules of order are applicable to the public hearing for proposed ordinance establishing a public safety service fee for the city of La Grande. This is a legislative hearing, therefore, counselor, ex parte, or pre-hearing contact does not apply. The hearing will proceed as follows. The mayor will open the public hearing and request a staff report. The mayor will then accept public testimony relating to the matter. There is a three minute time limit for testimony. The order of testimony this evening will begin with that of proponents those in favor, followed by opponents, those opposed, and ending with those neutral to the ordinance being adopted. The proceedings are being electronically recorded to be converted to written minutes. When testifying, please step to the podium, clearly print your name and address on the speaker sign-in sheet, please, and state only your name before addressing the council. Members of the city council may ask questions of the staff at any time, and subsequent to deliberation, the mayor will close the hearing.

We have a staff report, John. Yes. So for some time, as I think you may recall, we have a nexus to our efforts in regards to the fiscal transformation initiative where we're exploring many different ways to try and help transform the fiscal realities of the challenges that we're facing within the city. Within those discussions included talk about the need to be able to improve the fiscal realities connected to public safety services. We had a work session in regards to that, had some lengthy conversation in regards to that topic. And then coming and stemming out of that was an agreement that we would place on for consideration this evening. The implementation of a $10 public safety service fee that would be accompanying the current utilities bill that is used within the community. One of the, both in that conversation that evening as well as some follow on conversations that took place individually with community members as well as the individual council members was concerns in regards to how the application of the utility bill is perceivably inequitably applied within the community. Our public works has done a lot of work to be able to ensure that we can resolve that inequity. Basically, a short version of that is that there are locations, as an example, that has one meter but 40 dwellings within those meters. And so you have one meter paying $8 versus all 40 dwellings paying $8. So that's a substantial lack of loss or a loss of people paying to contribute. And so we wanted to make sure that we were solving that problem and making it fair and equitable. upon if this was to be approved and adopted. And so the desire per what we've put in front of you here this evening is for us to give us time to make sure that that equitable application is in place. If approved this evening, then we would not put it into motion or effective and give us time to communicate out into the community as well as opportunity to ensure that equity in application is in place. And so by February that will be the case and that will be the target date for this to be implemented should it be approved by the council this evening. Unless you have any questions on that. And I do believe that we have some members of the staff here that would like to speak to this as well this evening if possible.

But this is just the first hearing, right? Correct. So we won't be able to approve it.

I'm sorry, you were correct. This would be just approving it to continue forward in the process.

Is there a staff report on it?

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and members of the community. Thank you for allowing me to share a few thoughts this evening and provide my perspective as fire chief on the proposed public safety service fee. The city manager has explained the financial reasons behind the proposal. I would like to offer a different perspective. One from the person responsible for making sure our firefighters are ready when someone in our community calls 911. Every day, my responsibility is simple. I have to make sure when someone needs help, we are ready to respond. Most people do not think about public safety until they need it. When they call 911, they do not ask how old the fire engine is, whether equipment costs have gone up, or how the city budget is doing. They expect firefighters to show up quickly with the right equipment, the right training, and the ability to help them through what may be one of the worst days of their lives. That is the promise we make to this community every day. But that level of readiness does not happen by accident. It takes trained people, dependable equipment, ongoing maintenance, and careful planning. Last year, the Grand Fire Department responded to 3,400 emergency calls. Behind every one of those calls was a person or family facing a crisis. Whether it was a house fire, a heart attack, a serious vehicle crash, or a wildfire threatening homes, they were not thinking about budgets or inflation. They simply needed help, and they expected us to be there. Fortunately, we were. Our department has always worked hard to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars. We have pursued grants, delayed purchases when we could, looked for efficiencies and stretched every dollar as far as possible. Those efforts have helped, but they cannot overcome the long-term challenge we face. The cost of providing emergency services continues to rise, while the revenues that support local government simply have not kept pace. One thing I appreciate about the fiscal transformation initiative is that it encourages us to address these challenges before they become a crisis. It is built around planning ahead, making thoughtful decisions, and protecting the services our community depends on instead of waiting until we have no choice but to make cuts. That approach reflects the purpose of the FTI, to strengthen long-term stability and protect essential services through proactive planning. As fire chief, I don't want a future fire chief standing before this council explaining why response capabilities have declined because we waited too long to act. I understand that no one wants another fee on their monthly bill, but I also know that delaying investments in public safety does not make the need go away. It only makes the challenge bigger and eventual solutions more difficult. The proposed $10 per month public safety service fee is not about expanding government or creating new programs. It is about protecting the public safety services our community already relies on every day. It is an investment in maintaining the firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical responders who answer the call when people need help most. Just as important, this proposal includes accountability. The revenue would be dedicated to public safety with council oversight, annual reporting, financial audits, and transparency so our community knows how those dollars are being used. As fire chief, I have to think beyond next year's budget. I have to think about the department we leave to the next generation of firefighters and the level of service our community will expect 10 and 20 years from now. I hope the people of La Grande never need us, but if they do, I want them to know that our firefighters will arrive quickly, prepared, and ready to help. That does not happen by chance. It happens because a community chooses to invest in being ready before the emergency occurs. For those reasons, I support moving forward with a proposed $10 per month public safety service fee. I believe it is a reasonable and responsible investment that will help protect the public safety services our community depends on today while preparing us to meet the challenges of tomorrow. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration and thank you for your continued support of the men and women who proudly serve the city of La Grande. Respectfully, Merle A.C. Fire Chief.

Thank you, Chief. Well said.

Well said. Good evening, Mayor, Council, guests, officials, staff. I can't say any better than he just said it at all. That was perfectly well executed and came from the heart. So all I'm going to say is me as your police officer, police chief is I 100% support this proposal and I appreciate the city manager discovering this and looking into this and the legwork that he put into trying to figure out a way to sustain our public safety for what our citizens have come to rely on us upon, that we can sustain that. And I'll share in other staff comments more stats with you that would only help support why I'm in favor of this. So, thank you.

hi uh mayor and council i'm here to tell you this has benefits for the other part of the general fund as well which is parks and recreation so i can tell you that um some of the discussion at the work session was that we have time we can study this we can talk to consultants we can make sure we're being fair and equitable we don't have time we were asked to cut a million or two dollars in 24 hours during the budget hearings Absolutely not fair to us as staff. My staff are feeling the pinch. They're tired. They're struggling because I lost time. The parks don't look as good as they did last year for a reason, because we don't have enough money and resources. We had to cut that per your request. Now, I'm coming off mad at you. I'm not mad at you. It's the reality of the situation, right? So the reality is we don't have time. And unfortunately, a $10 fee sucks. I get it on a water bill, but we're there. And we have to do something. Thank you.

Thank you, Stu.

Any more staff comments? All right, at this time, we will invite public testimony in favor, neutral, or opposition. So please step to the podium. You do have a three-minute time limit, please.

Hi, I'm Tammy Gordon, a business owner. And during one of the meetings, I've been trying to go to multiple round tables and just to be involved. You know, I've been in this community since 1990. And so I've seen a lot of different stuff. Trying to put politics aside, Douglas County, I don't know if anybody's read the news. I'll probably get some boos, but Douglas County voted that they're not going to be a sanctuary city anymore so they could receive federal funding. And when it was brought up during the... one of the meetings, the round tables, if, I know it's not the appropriate time, but if the police wanted federal funding for another police officer, they could get federal funding, but they would have to cooperate with ICE. Now for me, It's a no-brainer to be able to get that extra funding through federal. So I didn't know if there was any other funding availabilities through the federal government to be able to help so we don't have that $10 fee. Because I do believe police, fire, first responders is very important for a community. And I'm totally for it. But if we can exhaust other resources that we might be able to have access to, I think we should do it. That's all I had.

If you'd like to meet with me afterwards, I can explain what we have done so far to do everything you just described.

OK, thank you.

Would anybody else like to speak on this matter?

I'll say one thing, although I'm trying to learn to listen more than I talk. This infrastructure thing that we're trying to do, I brought up, is the city needs to grow. And if we can get a little bit more housing in here with this $300,000 to $400,000 market that we're trying to do, if we invest a dollar towards infrastructure, you're going to get $4 to $6 back to the city. So I'm just kind of pushing it towards you guys to start thinking about that.

Tim, let me interrupt you. I'm sorry. It has to be on the topic that we're discussing right now.

That's what I'm saying. If we grow, we're going to start making money. It's going to produce money for you guys, for the city. You guys are going to win on this thing with taxes and stuff like that. That's what I'm saying. More money. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Nope.

All right. We will go into council discussion.

Well, this was a hard thing for me to accept. The only reason I'm thinking of at least listening to, I want to hear the public talking at these hearings. And I'm not going to be opposed to it right now, because we included all of the billable units, is what you called it in here. That means all the people who live everywhere will pay the same fee. Right now, not everybody's paying those fees, like with the road fee that you guys pay for $5 or $8, isn't it? $8?

No, that's the street user fee. That's the street user.

That's what I meant. The street user fee. Everybody's paying $8 right now. But not all those people are paying it. Only those who have the water bill that comes right to them. And I think that it's only fair to include everybody. To make it equitable across, everybody will be in charge of paying it.

I agree with Mary Ann. And that seems to be the problem too with our road fee and so forth. But I totally believe that the main role of government is to protect its citizens. I mean, that is the reason why government was created, to protect and to serve. And I think it's very important. The problem, what we're facing, and I think John said it very well, about our budget and so forth. It's just like in our household. If we're not bringing in enough, we have to do cuts. And everybody has their little projects they want, and nobody wants to do cuts. It's hard and so forth. And we don't want to cut services. We kind of all talked about that. But the safety and protection of its citizens is our primary responsibility and so we're trying to come up with some ideas to do that. I do believe that I think we should try to see if it could be across the board not just those who get the water bill until we could figure that out but we need to do something at this moment. I also appreciate what Douglas County was doing as well. We've got to look into as many things as we can to receive the funds that we need to operate as a city and to serve our community. So, yeah.

Well, I think the budget cuts that we had to make in May were tragic, and we are seeing the effects of it. And it's going to get worse over time as we've looked at projections and This is at least part of a solution that maintains our services, but we've already lost, I don't know if anyone's noticed, we've lost services, we've cut. Our city manager was cleaning up trash cans at crazy days because we cut the person from the parks who does that. So this is a real financial conundrum and this is a solution that can help us to maintain our services.

I think from my perspective, John, it might be good just to have some information available both for the council and for public. what we've seen as far as rising costs versus revenues for the city. Our goal since I've been on the council has been every year to try to maintain services at the present level and try to not cut services if at all possible. And over the last six years or so that I've been here, I think we've held pretty well to trying to make sure that the city runs very lean operation. I've seen comments out in the public suggesting that the city's bloated, that our budget is bloated, we're wasteful in how we spend. I would argue that is absolutely not the case. And I know a few organizational budgets that are scrutinized as heavily as this city's is. We have independent auditing. We have staff. We have budget. We have a budget committee. We have the city council all with eyes on this, as well as some very, very interested citizens who will go line by line and look at things. Mr. Amer is good about that, looking at where we're spending money. So we are scrutinized very, very heavily. My opinion is that we run a lean operation. But to maintain services, as our fire chief so gracefully explained, we have got to keep pace with revenues. So John, I think it would be good for the next time we have a hearing to have some information available for the public to see just how well we've tried to keep fees low. for our citizens and that has been a concerted effort we've made a lot of decisions as a council to not raise fees intentionally trying to protect our citizens pocketbooks but we're at a point where to maintain service levels we have no choice costs have gone up revenues have not kept pace so um i i appreciate the staff comments uh thank you chief sue you know for voicing the concerns that you've had we see it i think It would be good for the public to know and be able to trust that we are doing everything within our power. But unless people are interested in losing service levels relative to what we've enjoyed over the last decade or so, we've got to make some hard decisions. And it may come in the form of increased fees.

You didn't allow me to add. We are, we actually have started, Heather and I are collaborating together and Heather's our finance director. We are doing weekly right now, short snippets of understanding your city budget and small bite size opportunities leading up to, in September, a understand your city budget community round table that we're going to do at six o'clock at the library. intended to be able to do the best we can to do everything you just described counselor. Um, simultaneously, I haven't shared this with the staff yet, but in some of the conversation we've had over the last couple days, I share your thought process in regards to the budget hearings. Um, and my desire, even though it's not going to be probably well liked initially, is going to be to turn our budget hearings into a four day event. And the first day of it's going to need to be spent on just making sure that everybody has the opportunity to fully understand. And I don't mean that to sound like I'm talking down to anybody, but I had to get this one under my belt to learn. I now have a better understanding, and I'm not going to let myself move to time. I'm going to move to the standard that the community and that the committee needs in order to make sure that we're all having the best opportunity to feel informed and making the decisions that we need to. So fair warning, I'm planning on making it a four-day event. BUT THANK YOU.

ANY MORE COUNSELOR DISCUSSION?

I JUST WANT TO MAKE ONE OTHER STATEMENT. WE LOOK AT IT AS A COUNSELOR. WE LOOK AT THIS VERY CLOSELY. WE KNOW THAT WHERE OUR CITY IS STANDING AND WE KNOW THAT WE NEED TO HAVE OUR PUBLIC SAFETY AND WE NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY'RE THERE, THEY'RE FUNDED, AND THEY WILL RESPOND TO ANY EMERGENCY AS THEY NEED TO.

Definitely.

At this time, could the city court read the proposed ordinance for the first time by title only?

Okay, so before reading the ordinance by title, I'd like to note a clerical correction to the ordinance title that appeared in the published legal notice that was last Wednesday. The notice stated that the ordinance would amend Chapter 2, Article 5, Division 4 of the city code. The correct codification for this ordinance is Chapter 8, Article 3, titled Public Safety Service Fee. This correction does not change the substance or purpose of the proposed ordinance. It simply reflects the accurate location within the city code where the new provisions will be placed if approved. I will now read the ordinance by its corrected title. In ordinance of the City Council of the City of LeBron, Union County, Oregon, establishing a public safety service fee and providing for its administration, amending Chapter 8, adding new Article 3, titled Public Safety Service Fee and declaring an effective date.

Thank you.

At this time, the public hearing is continued to September 2nd, 2026, at which time the proposed ordinance is scheduled to be read a second time by title only and considered for adoption. We're going to move on to our next public hearing. Public hearing and the first reading by title only for a proposed ordinance vacating portions of North Cherry Street right away. Can we have the public hearing? and ask for the city recorder to read the rules of order in its entirety. Or are we still going off the last public hearing? It's a different one. This one's a quasi-judicial. Could you please read the rules?

It's a little bit longer. Sorry, everybody. The city council will conduct one quasi-judicial public hearing. These rules of order are applicable to the public hearing to consider the vacation of portions of the North Cherry Street public right-of-way. Applicants are Michelle and Brian Peterson. The hearing will proceed as follows. The mayor will request the staff report, which includes the applicable criteria and standards for the issues under consideration in the application. Subsequent to opening the public hearing, the mayor will accept testimony relating to the application. The mayor may state a time limit for testimony. All testimony must be directed toward the applicable criteria. Oregon land use law requires that all issues raised by a participant during the hearing must be sufficiently clear and specific to allow the hearing body and other parties an opportunity to respond. to those issues. Failure to raise the issues during the hearing may invalidate future appeal. The proceedings are being electronically recorded to be transcribed into written minutes. When testifying, please step to the podium and state your name. Before leaving the podium or before you speak, please complete the speaker sign-in sheet. The applicant will be invited to speak first, followed by proponents, then by opponents, and then by any parties neutral to the application. An opportunity will be provided to parties to clarify any issues raised or to rebut testimony. Proponents then opponents will be provided an opportunity to clarify any issues or to rebut testimony. If additional documents or new evidence is introduced during the hearing, any participant may request a continuation of the hearing. Any participant may request that the hearing record be kept open for seven days to submit additional written evidence or testimony for the purpose of responding to new evidence. Unless waived, the applicant has seven days to submit a written response. Members of the City Council may ask questions of the staff or hearing participants at any time. The Mayor may then close the hearing or continue the hearing at a specified time and place. All decisions must be based on findings of fact from the staff report or evidence and testimony received which relate to the criteria of the land use decision. An appeal of the City Council decision must be made in writing to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals together with the required fee within 21 days from the date that the final decision is mailed to the applicant and interested participants. Before the mayor requests the staff report for the public hearing, the city councilors will be asked to make any declarations. A councilor must declare any ex parte or pre-hearing contact. including the person's name and the nature of the discussion, as well as any site visitations to the area in question. Counselors should declare any personal or financial interests in this matter and may disqualify themselves from participation in the hearing. The mayor will then ask if anyone in the audience wishes to challenge the right of any counselor to hear this matter. Back to you.

Is there any counselor declaring any ex parte comments? CONTACTS OR CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

I DROVE BY THE AREA, LIKE I USUALLY DO, JUST TO SEE IF I CAN GET A VISUAL OF IT.

DOES ANYONE IN THE AUDIENCE WISH TO CHALLENGE THE RIGHT OF ANY COUNSELOR TO HEAR THIS MATTER? LET THE RECORD SHOW THERE IS NO CHALLENGES. WITH THAT, CAN WE PLEASE HAVE THE STAFF REPORT?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor and Council. So this is the North Cherry Street right-of-way that is located between Cove Avenue and Penn Avenue, kind of catty corner from the fire station to give you kind of perspective of where it's at. It's an 80-foot-wide right-of-way that has a kind of a narrow paved street and gravel shoulders, and the gravel shoulders are fairly small, and they transition into landscaping of the properties next to them. The property owners have approached the city with a request to do some additional landscaping and private improvements and our public works department referred them to my office to do a right-of-way vacation rather than to go through some kind of an exception process that would allow them to improve the right-of-way with their private improvements. So this is a common request that we've seen over the years. We'd much rather vacate wide right-of-ways and narrow them. than to give folks permission to build improvements within the city's right of way. This is a 10 foot vacation on each side. It consists exclusively of just private landscaping areas that are improved. It would narrow the right of way to 60 feet, which is our current city standard. And that's likely the standard that would be constructed if the road was ever improved to a higher level to include curbs and sidewalks. The process for a right-of-way vacation is fairly extensive. It requires all of the property owners next to this right-of-way to sign on and agree to the vacation, as well as there's a 400-foot off each end and 200 feet off each side. The property owner has to go and visit most or all of those property owners and get the a little over two thirds to sign a consent form and they've hit the 70% mark. So they've done a lot of legwork to do this and this is a typical request that's supported by staff. Do you have any questions?

So to just get a perspective, this right away belongs to the city.

It does.

And are we transferring it to the homeowner, or we're just giving the homeowners, the property owners, permission to landscape it? And are they going to put in, like, sidewalks, or this is like... No, we're going to be transferring this ownership to the property owner. It's going to the property owner, and they are to maintain it.

Yes, and they currently maintain it now. It's just right-of-way.

Okay, from that, what do you think?

Any more questions for Steph?

I'm assuming that the ones on the other side of Penn have never requested this.

On the north side of Penn? Yeah. They had, I think, one property owner did not want to participate, which we generally don't vacate just part of a block. And so we stopped at a street. And so that was part of the legwork that the property owner was asked to do, was to visit with all of those property owners. Because ideally, it would have been fantastic if we could have done the whole segment of North Cherry. But they weren't able to get consents on the north side. Interesting.

OK. Thank you.

This is gifted to the property owner. We don't charge them for the transfer, the value of the property.

I don't know if it's gifted is the right word, but there's no cost to them other than the process. As far as history goes, the property goes back to where it originally came from. And so as properties develop and they dedicate right-of-way, it comes from the private side to start with. And so this is essentially transferring it back to where it came from.

But does it go on the record that they have to pay more property tax because they've added more space to their land?

Yeah, that will be part of their tax assessment. Their property is going to grow by 10 feet.

Yeah, right. Well, 10 feet wide and then however long. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

this time we will invite public testimony of those in favor opposition and neutral on this proposed ordinance would anybody like to speak on this ordinance only counselor discussion well we've done this before for other areas and i think it's

It sounds like a good plan for the people that they've been taming this property anyway. They know it's theirs now. That would be great.

Any more discussion? At this time, could the city recorder read the proposed ordinance for the first time by title order?

An ordinance of the City Council of the City of La Grande, Union County, Oregon, vacating the east and west 10 feet of the North Cherry Street public right-of-way between Cove Avenue and East Penn Avenue, all being adjacent to properties described as being in Township 3, South Range 38 East of the Willamette Meridian, Section 05DC Tax Lots 3600, 4300, 4700, and 4800, La Grande, Union County, Oregon, and declaring an effective date.

Thank you. At this time, the public hearing is to continue to September 2nd, 2026, at which time the proposed ordinance is scheduled to be read for a second time by title only and considered for adoption. We're going to move on. We have no unfinished business. We're going to move to new business. Our first one is considering... approving resolution establishing policy for granting fee waivers and reductions. With that, can we have a staff report?

Yes, so you may recall a couple months ago the school district came to you and asked for a reduction or waiver in fees for the development of moderate housing. And the request that's before you tonight is to expand that fee waiver process and offer it to developers. And we have, in our housing needs analysis, we have a significant need for for kind of mid-range to low-income housing. And we kind of follow our housing needs analysis. We did a housing production strategy that provided us a number of goals that would help us achieve the production of more housing. And most of those were code amendment related and we've accomplished those, but one of the items that's on that list is to consider the waiver reduction of fees. And so that's partly why we're here tonight. Last month, I think it was early last month, we held a round table discussion for housing production and we had a number of developers show up And this was a hot topic of something that was supported and asked for. And so the model that's presented tonight is structured for an application process that would be presented to the city manager. There's review criteria that they would have to meet. And whether they're actually granted the fee waiver or not or whether they're granted it in part. or none at all would be at the discretion of the city manager based on the criteria that are outlined in the resolution. And the fee waivers that are proposed are identical to what the LeGrand School District was granted a couple months ago. Do you have any questions that I can answer for you? Do you want me to go into any more detail?

Yeah, could you give a little bit more detail on what waivers you're talking about?

Yeah, so the waivers are all the land use fees that would typically go through my office. It would be like a partition or a subdivision application. So those would be waived. There's a reduction in the water sewer fees. They would still pay the assessment buy-in fee, but they would not have a waiver of... the installation of sewer taps or water meters and taps. Those are hard dollar costs that we'd expect to recover through a development. Let's see what else we have. The building permit fees would be a reduction based on the number of permits annually. It's based on a December calendar cycle of how many city permits versus county permits that have been issued by the building department. Right now it's 40-something percent that the fee would get reduced on building permits. I think that's it. So our park system development charge would not be a waiver. That's something historically that has not been supported, so we didn't include that.

Okay. Thank you.

Any more questions for staff? Thank you, Mike. Okay. Thank you. At this time, we'll invite public comments.

Would anybody like to speak in favor, opposition, neutral?

Actually, if you're going to speak, if you could step to the podium, please.

Thank you. I mean, the waivers are great. It's a helpful start. I was involved with the Tiger House. It's a great project. What I was trying to talk about earlier is instead of waiving the fees, defer them. There was some options we talked about, the deferrals or the until the certificate or the sale, you know, those kind of things. But the incentive, like 40%, that's big. But maybe we cut it to 20 so when we go to pay the fee after it's been deferred, Now you're at that 80%. I'll still pay it, but now you guys are getting your money instead of waiving it and it going away. I mean, I love the waiving. Don't get me wrong. I think that's great, but I'm just trying to think of how you guys are going to make the money, and that's why I was throwing out that option for the deferrals.

We'll make an exception for you. We'll let you pay. We'll make an exception for you. You can pay him.

Yeah. I like the idea of a deferral.

I do too. I'm going to talk more about this a little bit later.

It helps us get started because we have a big upfront cost. He mentioned all those things that we've got to pay first. And when we're trying to do a couple houses or... like 35 homes, it's a big deal. So that's why we want to kind of get help on that kind of infrastructure stuff.

That's what you're going to talk about later, too.

Yeah, really making that, listen to me, this twice or three times. The bottom line is we're piecemealing and putting together a plan to help motivate and inspire and help. more housing occurring. We're just taking a little while to get all the answers that we needed from the state. This week we got the answers to those questions, so now I'm putting together a policy that's gonna give us the, that I'm gonna put to you for approval for us to be able to offer deferments that has within it the ability for us to make sure that we ultimately get money. But making it so it's low cost for the developers to do that. And I realize there are some things that come from the discussions that we've had indicates some community not liking that developers get the opportunity to have it easier because there's a perception that they're wealthy. What I can say is we need the developers, and we need them to build, and this is the only way we have a chance at getting them to start to build more rapidly. So if it happens to make them more wealthy, it's not because I have an investment in that particular thought process. It's just simply our community has a need, and we've figured out a path to get it met. Okay. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Katie Fox. So I just kind of have a comment for you guys to ponder. You're talking about the developers. And I think the deferment is actually a great way because you're saying you need money. This is the way that definitely brings in quite a bit of money. But what about just the independent people who are building spec homes to sell which can also be considered as developers and not on a mass scale of like 10 or more homes. So I would recommend considering if you're going to allow a deferment like this to developers that you allow it to the people who are also developing but one house at a time. Just something to consider.

Sorry, I'm just going to fill out your papers. I just have a question. John, with what you said, would that be affecting this particular?

I'm still working through, it may end up being a different ordinance or policy for us, but I'm working through the nuances of it. So this is one of those things where it's one of many things that we're working on at any given time, but we are making ground on it. My hope is to be able to have something in front of you by September, absolutely no later than October. But it could be ultimately an amendment to this one, or it could be a standalone separate one altogether. I'm still figuring that out.

I feel like this isn't complete. We don't have all of the information. We were just talking about our budget and now we're talking about waiving fees. Housing has been one of my big issues. It feeds into a lot of problems in our community is the lack of housing, so we need to support that. but I feel like this resolution is incomplete and I would rather wait till next month and have a comprehensive.

Can you share with me what your feelings incomplete about it? Because remember, these are completely different dollars than general fund.

Yes, but this is talking about fee waivers and not deferrals, and it doesn't address all of those issues, and I would like something that hits all of that in one instead of voting on this and then having an amendment later. I want a complete...

I agree with you on that.

Yeah, I think she basically wants to know, like, are we going to go with the deferment or we want to go with the fees or how are we going to work it together? I think that's, you know, at one piece.

My other issue is that this is left at the city manager's discretion. And I think we need to really be transparent and have fairness and have anyone who comes requesting a deferral or a fee waiver to know exactly if this is yes or no, not, oh, well, this week it's gonna be yes, next week it's gonna be no, or you have blue eyes and it's yes and you have brown eyes and it's no. It needs to be clear.

In order to manage those funds, there's not always gonna be that money available for us to be able to do it. there's a point in time where it won't be healthy for us to be able to do it, and that might be the point where we have to cut it off. And so that's my ability to manage it real time and ensure that it's happening in that manner. I agree with everything that you're outlining, but what we're trying to do is help people be able to move at the speed of their capability, not be slowed down by what's perceived as red tape. And so the intent behind it is to do the best that we can for everybody with a really good explanation if we reach a point in time where we cannot, being able to explain to them why we can't. And what it's going to come down to is if there's no enterprise funds that's causing us to not be able to pay for employees, well then we can't continue to waive it. Because these same funds that we're waiving are things that pay for employees.

Can we add that into the resolution somehow?

Absolutely.

Yeah. I understand that. It depends on our finances, but I want it to be clear of what our criteria are and if they change, why they're changing, if there's a threshold.

Actually, real quick, let me make sure, because we are in public comments at the moment, not councilor. Let's make sure that we don't have any more of the public that wants to speak on this matter before we move into the councilor discussion.

Just a reminder that when it's... I guess when you're still in the staff report and you're just asking questions of staff, it's not really sharing your opinion yet until public comments is over.

Just a reminder.

Is there any more citizens that would like to speak before we go into the counselor discussion? None? Okay, now.

Is this one basically, I mean, I thought it was basically just for the school district, but then Mike made it sound like it was broader than that.

If you want, Mike, go ahead.

Yeah, so the school district currently is eligible for fee waiver reductions because they're a government entity. This is to expand that and to allow private development to be eligible as well. And I guess I wanted to respond to one of the comments. There's not a criteria that this is for 10 homes or 20 homes. It could be one home. So the intent is it's for the development of new housing that fits the price range or the household income level. Yeah, it's really not intended for you or I to go build our own house, and so we're gonna get a waiver. But if I was a developer and I was building a spec house, That would be part of the intent. That would be part of the consideration that the city manager would take is you're producing housing for the community. So there's not a 10 unit threshold. I just wanted to... lay that out so that there wasn't any confusion there.

Because with the school district, there is that threshold of $10 or $25, whatever the homes were going to be there.

Well, there's a price range. I don't think there's a quantity. They just happen to be building eight houses.

Oh, yeah, right. So that's why I was confused, too, because they can't be put together in the same ordinance. waiver and or deferment.

What I would say based on the conversation that we're having right now is maybe we table this and give you the opportunity to give you the clarity that you're asking for and we will work to make both all inclusive.

Okay, thank you. That would make sense to me.

Can I maybe ask a couple more questions, Mike? Can you give me an idea, just, I mean, ballpark, what are we talking about fees? Is this a few hundred dollars? Is this thousands, tens of thousands? I mean, what are we talking about? I'm sure there's a range, but, I mean, give me a ballpark.

It could be somewhere. I mean, it depends on whether they apply for all the permit fees, but it's probably somewhere in the $20,000 to $40,000 range. Okay, tens of thousands.

So this is meaningful for a developer.

Yeah.

to be able to defer that or have some discount on that. And I understand that. I think I would support what Karina and Marianna are saying. Waving is one thing. I understand that if we really need something, waving is a way of enticing people to do it. But I think I would favor what this gentleman has suggested, which is instead maybe incentivizing people by allowing a deferral as an option. But maybe what you're doing is, I mean, we like it when we get our money up front. That's nice, right? Get it in one package and have it up front. I suspect that there's some difficulty or cost incurred by the city in having to track this if we're waiting to get that money at a later date.

Yeah, I don't know if we have a whole lot of concern on the tracking side. That would be straightforward. I potentially see a scenario where we would waver, reduce the fees, and defer them also. Okay. I mean, that's what I would see this package potentially looking like because I don't know of a deferral by itself. It may incentivize some developers, but... there's still significant costs in the waiver or reduction, at least from what I've heard, is the incentive that some developers are looking for.

the table in this for a while we have a vote for a table that's also a bit of a hit to the city you know if we're talking 20 40 grand that we're outright waving short run though remember that what we're trying to do is get your taxes capturing back on the on the property tax but you get that whether you waive it or not so it's still a hit it's still a 20 40 000 hit so you can't write that off You may say it's worth, we want to do it to get it back, but you get that anyway. So it is a straight write off of that money to the city.

It is. I think you're right. I think part of the challenge is that some developers are not building spec houses because of those costs. And if we incentivize them through what we're talking about, it may be enough of a benefit that they will actually build spec houses rather than just waiting and just doing custom homes.

So the fees, this pot of money from fees, what does that go to? Does it go to hooking up sewer and building roads or?

No, so like the building permit fees generally pay for the building permit process. And so it may force them to dip into reserves if they end up going negative. And they have a significant reserve account right now, which is why we're considering this. The public works fees, the assessment fees, that is reserve money. That's money that is not going to something at the moment. It's in a reserve account. So the money that actually goes to build stuff are the items that are not getting waived. if that makes sense, paying for the actual water tap and the water meter and the sewer tap and those actual installs. That's real cost that we feel today. So those are not proposed to be waived.

It's your opinion that what is making people not want to build is not the upfront cost, but the cost itself. Because I mean, to me, I'm thinking if I'm going to build a home, if our costs are similar to what they are in any other city, you're going to bake that price into what you expect to sell the home for. So if homes here are not selling for enough that somebody can maintain a healthy margin above that, I get it if a developer doesn't have $40,000 in their pocket to start and pay that up front. I understand that. I don't quite understand saying we're just going to outright waive this because there's no margin for the developer to do this. If you make it at the point of sale, that's easy because those fees get baked into the sale price of the home to whoever the buyer is.

Part of the issue is hoping that we're going to incentivize folks to build the housing in the price range that we're looking for. Somebody who's building a custom home for a doctor is not going to be eligible for for those houses are not going to be in that price range. And I know it's just something that we're considering. Right.

Because we're making an assumption that that developer is then going to reduce the sale price of the home by the amount that we're waiving the fees. And that's, I'm not sure.

We never made that assumption. We assumed that they were going to still make the same money. But the point is, is right now they're not building at the rate that we need them to. And this is meant to get them to start building at the rate we need them to.

Yeah, and we need that.

Right. So again, though, I would question the waiver versus an outright versus a deferral. And I think I would lean more on the deferral side unless we can show that somehow a waiver is going to give a significant advantage to the incentive or is going to end up with a lower price to the end consumer.

When we started this conversation, we didn't know that deferral was going to be a possibility. And literally on Monday is when we got the email that showed that it was actually a viable path. So it's in the last two days that the circumstances changed.

I think tabling it to next month would be... wise so that way since you have new information you can work that new information into this yeah and then bring it back to us on the next meeting and then we'll make a good you know decision with all the information so is there a counselor with i move that we table this discussion i'll second we have motion and second all in favor aye aye So this item will be moved into September 2nd, is that correct?

Yeah, if that gives staff enough time to prepare the documents, otherwise we'll move it to October.

Okay, so we are going to move on to... considering approval resolution establishing updated athletic field fees. Stu.

Thank you, Mayor and Councillors. As part of the fiscal transformation initiative, staff and I have been working on evaluating different fee structures within the department. We're going to see two before you tonight. The first one is an athletic field adjustment, essentially adding adult field fees. There's been increased demand from adult sports organizers that we haven't seen in the past, so we'd like to capture additional revenue, being the fact our mission is to have adults pay for kids, essentially. So this encourages that sort of financial transition through our cost recovery methodology that I'm happy to share sometime if you want to geek out over it. But we have such a thing where widespread community events are free and specialized adult programs and things that people can pay for aren't free. So the top pays for the bottom, in other words. This is part of that strategy. Any questions?

Have you had any public comments on that? About, is this too steep?

I can tell you that adult leagues are generally fee-based profit-making enterprises, so it's an opportunity to capture revenue that we're not capturing now.

Right now they all pay the same fee.

Any more questions for staff? Thank you, Stu. At this time, we'd like to invite public comments on this matter.

You're scaring him away from the mic. Oh, sorry. Anybody would like to?

You've got to go out of the building.

He's kind of imposing. Showing none. Counselor discussion.

This makes sense. Yeah, it does. Motion.

I move that the proposed resolution establishing updated athletic field rental fees and repealing resolution number 4788, series 2020, be read by title only, put to a vote, and passed. Second.

Motion second. Any more discussion?

It looks like that. We made these fees in 2020, which is quite a while ago. Mm-hmm.

Okay. At this time, could the city recorder read the proposed resolution by title only?

The resolution of the City Council of the City of La Grande, Union County, Oregon, establishing fees for athletic fields and repealing Resolution 4788, Series 2020, and all other resolutions or parts of resolutions in conflict herewith.

Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Nope. Our next one is considering approval resolution establishing updated pool user fees. And with that, let's do it.

Thanks. That's the reason I stayed here. Yeah. Staff have been evaluating fee structures, as you just heard. Part of that is a realization that we did a like-sized city study on pool fees, including daily entrance fees, memberships, et cetera. One of the things that we were underpricing were annual memberships for all different age groups, so proposing essentially about a 10% increase there. For only annual memberships, the single admission and monthly membership fees will remain the same. And with that, I'll entertain any questions.

Do we charge a different fee for non-residents?

We do not. We changed that a few years ago.

Yeah.

Go ahead. It's okay. The reason was, well, there's several reasons for efficiencies on the staff end, especially since we have two cities and county with one zip code. Our software supports different zip code fee-based structures. That doesn't work for us because if you live in the county or island city or on Fruitdale, you are 97850. Just like you are in the city of Legrand so for us it didn't work the efficiencies didn't pay off And it was it was a nightmare customer service nightmare so with that argument City Council supported that move years ago To support yep to support it and It's just something the industry's gone away from, too. You don't see that, except for in districts, where you see in district and out of district, special districts use that quite a bit. Cities don't do that anymore.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Any more questions for staff?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Stu. At this time, we'd like to invite public comments on this matter. None? Council discussion? Motion?

I move that the proposed resolution establishing updated pool user fees for the veteran memorial pool and repealing resolution number 4870 series 2025 be read by title only, put to a vote, and passed.

Do we have a second?

I second.

We have a motion to second. Any more additional discussion? At this time, could the city recorder read the proposed resolution by title only?

The resolution of the City Council of the City of La Grande, Oregon, establishing fees for Veterans Memorial Swim Pool and repealing Resolution 4870, Series 2025, and all other resolutions or parts of resolutions in conflict herewith.

All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Nope. I got it, I just gotta find it. So our next one is approving charter amendments ballot title and referring to voters. With that, can we have the staff report?

Mayor and council members, as you may recall, at least some of you I believe were here in 23, 24, there was a charter review process where the desired intent by the council was to visit amending the charter to change the rule structure for how council members would be established into positions by the voters at the time that the votes are cast. In order to simplify the way that that process would be determined, the council that went to vote, it did not pass at that time. We believe largely in part because of some confusion in communication and association with that information. We've since amended that information per the council's guidance and further per the June 15th work session that we had on the topic. moved forward for your consideration today for us to actually move to ballot for the voters to make that amendment to the charter. So this is here for your consideration, and we recommend that you approve so that we can move it for ballot in November. Ending your question.

Can I just clarify? How is this going to show up on the ballot? Is this the title of the language?

This will be the ballot title. This is what our attorney sent us.

Okay. So it's a question?

No, it won't say that. It'll say... It just says Amendment of City of La Grande Charter.

That's all the title.

Yep, that's what we had in 2024.

And how is a voter going to know what...

So it should have... I'm not quite sure. It's not listed in the book, but I'm not sure how it will show up on the, I don't remember how it showed up on my voter actually.

He had it at our meeting, didn't we? At the work session, we had what the ballot would look like.

Yes, but what Glade is asking is what is going to show up on the actual ballot. So is that only going to have the title or is it going to have a description? That I don't know. I know that we have put together some materials that we are planning on putting in the water and sewer bills like we did last year. I had Wyatt look at that and I also have already sent it off to Safe Harbor for review and it's already been returned back. I just have to make some alterations to it and then we should be able to get that approved and then Um, we from staff can, it's safe for us to distribute that. Um, so we can put that on our website. We can send it to maybe the paper if they wanted to publish it. Um, and then put it in the water and sewer bills. I have this question. What if somebody pays, um, by auto pay that they don't, it's my understanding that if they're by auto pay, it should be, it should be sent as an attachment. Um, okay. And that's an apartments.

Yeah, I don't have a water billing department.

I'm not 100% sure how that looks, but that's why I was told. I do auto pay and I haven't seen anything on it unless I'm supposed to click on something I did not click on.

Yeah, and it might be just a matter of me reaching out to the public works department and getting an email list of who is paying by auto and then emailing that out. I just don't know what that looks like at this time.

Can you put on the ballot a brief explanation of what they're voting on?

I think they're limited with what they put on those ballots and that's ran through the county office. So I can check with our county, um, people there.

But yeah, I think the problem we ran into last time as I visited with a lot of members in our community, is that they would have supported this, but they perceived it as being ranked choice voting, which it is absolutely not. And so I was hoping to get eyes on how this is actually going to show up on the ballot so that we can understand that we've eliminated that confusion this time around.

So, yeah, so if you look, I think on the summary on page two, we did put on there, this proposal does not create rate choice voting. There's a certain way of running the caption, the question, the summary. It has to be neutral information. We have to word it a certain way for political reasons and per ORS and OARs. So that was what our attorney came back with.

So this is what the voters should see is what we're seeing here, is it?

That is correct. That's my understanding as well.

I think that piece is clear. That's pretty good. So that whole piece, that whole summary will be on the ballot?

I believe it will be. I can't give you a definite answer. All I can do is reach out to Lisa Feek and ask her the question. That is what our attorney gave us. That's what is going to be published in the paper. If you guys do decide to approve this resolution because it has to be in the paper for a seven day challenge. And so that's what he gave me and I believe that's what's going to be on the ballot itself. I can confirm that and email you.

This was the one thing we could try to address the confusion that you're referencing.

Thank you. Any more questions for staff? This time we will invite public comment on this matter. Council discussion?

I think this charter amendment would be good for the city and clear for voters because we're eliminating council position numbers that people are like, why do you have that? and the person who gets the most votes gets into the position. So I think it's more fair than what we have. We also had discussion about how setting it up this way will have less potential for vitriol in elections because you'll have potentially multiple people running for multiple positions instead of pitting two people against each other.

I disagree. I like the old way. I like each position has to be earned by the person that gets in that position. I don't have lost count because I've been on the council for a while. But that's my thoughts on it. Any other council discussion?

The only problem is people will say, you've got, I don't even know what my position number is, but whatever it is, they'll say, well, who do you represent? What area town? What area town? Because they're used to it with school boards because they're by district of where you live. This isn't. We represent everybody. Each of us do.

You each have a position that you're working for. It's not you're working for part of La Grande. I think, you know, and Baker's a prime example how it didn't work. They had a lot of issues back because they are doing the exact same what we were proposing. And that's just my thoughts. Any more council discussion? Motion.

I move that the proposed resolution approving the ballot title for the city charter amendments measure and authorizing the city elections official to finalize the steps to refer the question to the voters at the November 2026 general election Be read by title only, put to vote, and pass.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any more councilor discussion? Show none. Could the city recorder read the proposed resolution by title only?

A resolution of the city council of the city of La Grande, Union County, Oregon, approving ballot title, placing the following measure on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot, amending the charter of the city of La Grande.

All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Yes.

All right.

We'll move on to our next one. Considering the resolution to approve ballot title for local fuel tax measure and referring the question to the voters at the November 26 general election, could we have a staff report?

Yes, Mayor and Council, you may recall that back in February we held a work session that delved pretty deeply into this topic. Bottom line is there's only a few levers that we have to pull in order to be able to get after, well, first off, over the last few years, because of ARPA funds that was dedicated to students, we were able to make a lot of progress. as it relates to streets and roads, approximately 5% of the streets and roads per year. Those funds have run out, and that puts us at risk to return back to business as the way it was before those ARPA funds were in the mix. Our desire is to ensure that we're giving the community what they've already made very clear that needs to be addressed, which is improvements to our streets and roads. In order to achieve that, one of the four that I would say are the levers that we have to activate. One would, of course, be do nothing, and that leaves us in a bad situation. Another would be, of course, to increase the street user fee. In discussions in the work session, there was sentiment general sentiment that it wasn't very fairly applicable to the number of drivers that were on the streets and roads by utilizing that. So in order to make it more fair and less expensive was the perception that was felt for the community, not to mention to also capture the individuals that are transient drivers through Legrand help pay for streets and roads. with the understanding also that on average, it would be about a $25 to $30 more cost per year in gas to institute what was then discussed as a $0.03 per gallon gas tax that we would apply. A lot of conversation that stayed within the topic. We held a significant, I shouldn't say significant, a good number of community round tables to try and get information out into the community onto the topic. Solicit feedback from the community in regards to what their thoughts were and what they would want to be on the menu of options in regards to this. Doing our best to be able to provide education on those different tools that were available. Ultimately, the feedback that we have strongly received is that gas tax is not something that people want to see happen. Simultaneously, in trying to be a good steward, I can say that I feel that the problem isn't isn't the cost, the problem is the perception of the word tax. And so it is in my perspective and what we ultimately came back to you in the recommendation last month when we decided to bring this forward was that we owe the community to show them that we're gonna do the best that we can with what we have. We ask that you consider for putting on the ballot to consideration this month The ability to get a five cent gas tax, which would keep us in that $30 increased cost per year approximately versus well over $100 if we were to do a street user fee per payer. If we were to do that and it be a smaller segment of the population that it was carrying that burden versus sharing it. So in order to be fair and equitable as best as possible and at least as expensive as possible, our recommendation was to give us the opportunity to be held accountable by the community by making it a limited duration tax of five years. And then if the community should feel that we are not doing what we say we are going to do, then of course if we should be dumb enough to bring forward the request to continue the gas tax at that time, having not done what we said we would do, well then of course the community would rightfully vote us down for any continuation or for that, with the desire to be held accountable by the community. So what you see in front of you is the desire to put a five cent per gallon gas tax, fully recognizing that the world is crazy expensive right now. But we also can't solve the problem without some additional funding. This is the cheapest and best way, and our recommendation is that you approve a limited-duration, five-year, five-cent-per-gallon gas tax with what we believe is going to be the least amount of adverse impact to our community. With that being said, for your consideration.

Any questions for staff? At this time, we will invite public comments on this matter.

Hi, Tammy Gordon again. I'm already on there. I've been attending the meetings, and when I talk to people, I mean, because I've been around here for a while, and I'm retired military as well, and the different places that I've done service, Baker City, Salem, different areas, I try not to feel up here. It's expensive. I was in Baker today. It's cheaper there. They have a Love's. So we're competing with Pendleton and Baker City. So I have mixed feelings about the tax on the fuel. Just because as soon as I heard that, I was like, what in the world, another one? Because the state wants to put a tax on it as well. So I think if when we put it on the ballot, I think it needs to say if the state tax is good and it gets voted in, then the city tax should not happen. Cause we're already like 40 cents I think for the state. Um, the other thing too is one of the things that I brought up, a lot of people that I talked to think that our property taxes has a portion on there for the streets and the roads. I thought it was that way. I've talked to other people, every person I have talked to about it and I've asked them what their thoughts were. They thought it was on our, on our taxes. You pay for your home for the taxes. you're responsible for the roads in front of you. And so I think we should put on the ballot that we put that back on property taxes because it used to be there and then it got voted down. The reason why our property taxes are so expensive is because of school bonds or something or other like that. And we're still like even compared to Washington. were pretty expensive. But I just want to put that out there. I think a lot of people that may not be going to those meetings that I have talked to, every single one of them has said, I thought we were already paying it on our property taxes. So I just want to put that out there.

Any more comments?

Sorry, now remember, Tim, Matthew, sorry guys, I swing a hammer, I'm not a brain, but I guarantee you when people hear taxes, they want to shut it down right away. I think that if they have a plan, and it might be already in place, I don't know. If there was a thing that said, this street is priority one, this one's priority two, this one costs this much, we're going to do pen for two bucks, it's this much money, and it comes out, then people might be a little bit more... interested in that, but if they just hear taxes and they don't know where it's going or how, what road they're going to just be more frustrated because we're already, we need money obviously, which is going to get to my next point. You know, the, we need money for our, uh, you know, the $10 you guys are talking about. You're talking about water sewer. Like you just could throw this at everybody. They're going to panic. And then the second they hear that taxes, they're going to say no. So it goes back to our growth. And I don't mean to keep beating the dead horse here, but we need to grow in this infrastructure stuff that we're talking about for the homes that we want to do. That's why I keep trying to do it. I'm trying to work with you guys about ways to get money for the city without raising taxes, which was going after some grants. There's $50 million available for moderate homes that are that $300,000 to $400,000 program. We're working with everybody about that stuff. There was incentives for like a reimbursement program. So if I go and put in this development and I cover up all the costs, so just to put it in a row, it's $2 million almost. if i pay for that then maybe there'd be a reimbursement program after we start getting the houses sold and then it'd be a little bit easier for us to cover costs like that the deferred fee thing we talked about was another way then obviously there's an investment it's not a cost i'm not sure that a dollar you guys put into infrastructure is four to six dollars back to the city so it's a it's an investment and then and then i'll produce that growth And then we get more money because you guys are going to I don't have the statistics. I can get it for you guys or what it's going to bring in when you get all the sewer taps, the new homes coming in, you bring all the new jobs in. And then what we talked about in these roundtables is I manage these big commercial properties and we just we're not growing fast enough. You know, we're barely there. So they look at a one to three mile radius and we just don't meet it. So we try to bring in. the 40 mile radius, the rural Oregon, you know, where we bring in Somerville, Elgin, stuff like that. And we're still like, so then we talk about the college and the hospital. And then, then they're like, okay, now we're getting in the bigger stores and stuff like that, but they got to see the growth with the homes. And right now we've been flooding it with the lower income stuff. We need to get this moderate home stuff. And then you're going to get the money to pay for this kind of stuff. So anyways, just throwing it out there. Thank you for your time.

Is there anybody else that would like to make a comment on this item?

Brent Clapp. I'm in favor of this. Nobody likes more taxes, but this is fair. for clarification if I'm understanding, the tax that, the fee that is on the water bill currently is not enough to keep up the roads. And the only way that the roads have been, the things that have been accomplished in the last several years have been through the ARPA funds that have come in. The bottom line is, I've spent a significant time talking to Kyle about this and There's just not enough money. I mean, even to repair the amount of roads that have been recently covered with ARPA funds, there's not enough money 20 years from now to redo those roads. And so the thing that is fair about this is that it goes to a very specific thing, and it is applied to everyone. Yeah. Not, I mean, I agree with you that, that, that, you know, you're, you're kind of in a unique position in the sense that most that you can choose where to gas up. But, you know, I'd say 90% of the people, they look at their gauge and they're go like, I got to stop for gas. Hey, there's a Starbucks, you know? And so that's the other thing is we're the, this tax benefits from people that are out of town that are traveling through to contribute to this cause. So I think it's a good thing. And it's so small compared to .

Any more public comments? Counselor discussion?

Roads are the number one complaint that we get as counselors. I've been engaging with someone this week on the roads. And he and I share a road, and it's pretty bad. So I think this is a solution. It brings in out-of-town money, because we have a lot of out-of-town people who drive on our roads that give wear and tear on the roads. So it brings some of them in to help pay for them. And if people don't want to pay a gas tax, they'll vote no on it. And then you get what you pay for. So if you don't want to pay the gas tax, then these are the roads that you get. And that's how we are. So I'm much more in favor of a gas tax proposal than of imposing another fee on our citizens. So they can choose.

I agree with that. And I think to address your one issue, I believe that it's part of the bill that if the state puts the tax in, then ours goes away. Isn't that correct? No. That was not what we agreed to.

If the state passes, we still don't get much of a bump. Yeah, so here's like a point of clarification is 20% of what we pay for state gas tax is split amongst all the cities in Oregon. So we get a watered down percentage of what would come from the state. So we would get a bump, but it wouldn't solve our problem. What we're proposing is an opportunity to prove that we'll do what we'll say we'll do. And this is the path that we see is the least impactful. On average, our statistics suggest that the worst case scenario for most people is going to be about a $30 per year increase. That's $30 per, I mean, over 12 months, not $30 a month. um everything every other mechanism that we have will be substantially more than that per month than than what we're talking about so this is the word tax is allergic and rightfully so but our statistics suggest that this is actually the healthiest thing for the community other than to say it would be nice to not have to pay more at all

What about small businesses that pay way more than $30? You're putting a 5% tax on small businesses by doing this.

$0.05 tax, not 5%. That's big.

$0.05 on larger amounts, that's a lot of money. We already get taxed over and over.

But I think it's wonderful that our citizens get to vote. For the citizens to vote. To vote. Because they know their budget and everything. And I think that's just, and I think what's great too, we're only going to do it for five years. And we're going to be held accountable if it passes. And so I think it's good. I'm glad that it's going to be on the ballot. Some people are in favor for it and some people aren't. But we'll find out.

So with your permission, Councilor Hickey contacted me and asked to be able to have a statement read on her behalf since she wasn't able to join us here today. So with your permission, I'll proceed forward with that. uh... to my fellow counselors and mayor rock i prefer that i were with you in person for this for the discussion this evening as it is i'm unable to attend here are my thoughts on tonight's agenda item seven e resolution approving local fuel tax ballot title and referral to voters I fully understand the desire to implement a fuel tax because it is a logical and quick answer for our city street problem. I absolutely want our streets to be maintained in the most equitable way possible. I understand that a fuel tax seems like that avenue. I support the fuel tax because it helps pay for the upkeep of our roads, not only from those of us who live here, but also from those outside of the city limits who use our 84 miles of paved streets on a daily basis as they and we operate our businesses, shop, work, and play within the city limits. A fuel tax will generate a significant revenue for the street budget. It spreads the burden as thinly as possible. What I'm having difficulty time wrapping my brain around is how this will indeed impact our local families who are living paycheck to paycheck. We are in a time when our poverty rate is currently 23% for age 18 and younger and 11% 65 plus years of age. when the main mode of transportation throughout our town is driving alone to work, adding to the wear and tear of our streets, and when 45% of our population earns under $50,000 annually. As we watch our country face a financial crisis, our state burning, funding being withheld out of spite, and our youth unable to play outside due to the dangerous levels of smoke in the air, I simply cannot imagine what it feels like to be the person at the pump counting out $8 to pay for two gallons of gas that will get them until tomorrow. I am not sure how many of you have experienced a moment such as this, but I tell you that it can be scary, it can feel frustrating, it can seem defeating. Regardless of circumstances, when we ask our citizens, it will seem insurmountable. At this time, I do not wish to put such an ask before our people without hearing more voices. Before moving on from the inflated fuel prices, I want to add that while the prices of oil per barrel just dropped, it would behoove us to remember that a drop in oil prices occurs about this time every election cycle and to not count on those drop prices remaining in effect. Back to the fuel tax, I have heard both logical support and empathetic opposition to the fuel tax. However, the pool of thought is not demonstrating a wide enough understanding of the logic and reasoning behind the fuel tax. To try and force it through at this time feels like the council is having a knee-jerk reaction to the budget hearings this year, especially after it was the council who forced our organization to make the cuts that it did. The budget cuts that the council approved placed a high amount of pressure on our workforce and infrastructure. While I understand the desire to race the clock and place items on the ballot or face delayed action, I do not believe we have heard from a wide enough pool of our citizens who may be able to bring other ideas for street maintenance, funding, and conservation to the conversation. I also think that referring local fuel tax to the ballot does the city of La Grande as an organization a disservice at this time, especially as we are building trust through the broader dialogue and educating our community members on the reality that this city is facing. City Manager O'Brien and his team have been putting out tremendous effort to build the public's trust in the City of La Grande as an organization. It is a detriment to their progress and dismissive of their efforts. While I understand why advancing a fuel tax to the ballot is a pertinent and timely topic for the City of La Grande and its people, I do not agree with advancing it to the ballot this year. Oh, I'm sorry. Signed, much appreciated, Ricky Johicki.

I might offer a slightly different perspective. This is not the first time we've talked about a gas tax. This has been years in the making. This was brought forward before voters how many years ago six, seven, eight, something like that. So we have systematically explored as a council and as city staff every alternative to, again, the number one complaint that we get as council and city staff, which is the condition of our roads. And as we've seen and discussed throughout this meeting, we're on a tight budget, and the funding simply is not available, A, to maintain the roads that we already have at current levels, certainly not to improve what we already have. And so to me, we're putting this question before citizens, and they can make a choice. If they care enough about the condition of the roads, they may elect to vote yes on a measure like this. If they don't, they'll probably vote no. But this is the cheapest way for a citizen of La Grande to pave our roads. they will pay less to pave more roads through this method than any other method that we have discussed or been able to discover over a decade of looking at viable alternatives. So to me, this is not about not having ideas. We've got all the ideas. They've been compiled. And at the end, this rose to the top as the single most viable method and the cheapest method to solve a problem within our community. What I wouldn't mind discussing a little bit with this is an idea that we have had, which was centered around how this money will be spent. So Kyle has explained that our city prioritizes how we pave roads. And we do that based upon whether the road is considered an arterial route and how many people are actually driving on it. Unfortunately for most of us, Our complaints aren't about necessarily Adams Avenue or Jefferson or 12th Street or Gekler. Those big roads, we do a reasonable job of keeping them in pretty good shape. Our complaints are around our residential streets that I've got to drive onto and from my way to work and all of you do to get home. And so right now we do not have funding. Those are way down here on the list. We're simply not getting to them. And so we had discussed taking some of this money and proportioning it to go toward the bottom of the pile where we would otherwise have no hope of achieving the paving of some of these residential roads that affect our citizens. Yes, there's fewer people that drive on them, but those are also the worst roads in town. And so we haven't committed anything to that, and I think it's worth a discussion around that end. Because I think, you know, if I'm somebody who lives on one of those roads, I'm saying, all right, I can speak to that. You mean I might pay $30 for the next five years, $30 a year in what I pay at the fuel pump, but there's a chance my road gets paved where otherwise it is a long shot. We're talking probably a decade or more before we're going to be able to get to some of these if we can solve the budget crisis. So my two cents on that.

I'll make sure that we have the opportunity to make that be addressed the way that you just described it. Yeah.

We do have a list of our current priorities on the Public Works website, but it would be helpful to have a list of if we had the extra $540,000-ish, then it would go to these specific projects. Because we do have an inventory. We know the condition of the roads. We know which ones need it the most. But they're just at the bottom of your pile.

I appreciate that.

Do we have a motion?

I move that the proposed resolution approving the ballot title for the local fuel tax measure and authorizing the city elections official to finalize a step to refer the question to the voters at the November 26th general election be read by title only, put to the vote, and passed. Second.

We have a motion to second. Any more discussion? At this time, could the city recorder read the proposed resolution by title only?

A resolution of the City Council of the City of La Grande, Union County, Oregon approving ballot title placing the following measure on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot to establish a five cent local fuel tax with a five year sunset provision.

All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? Yes.

All right. We are going to move into

Designated surplus property location at lot 300, 102 Elm Street, and 1006 Penn Avenue.

We have a staff report, please. Yes, Mayor and Council, partly paralleling our fiscal transformation initiatives. We're taking a lot of looks at things internal to the city where there could be potential for us to be able to save money for the city or even in some cases make a little bit of money. None of it would be ongoing monies other than the savings but bottom line is is through that process you'll see in front of you here today three different properties that the city owns that are simple ability to reach a point in time where we could eventually divest of them would save us a minimum of sixty five thousand dollars in insurance costs by divesting from them let alone whether or not we are able to make any monies off of those properties. The goal from my perspective isn't as much about how much money could we make getting rid of them as it is so much as making sure that we're saving the money of what we're paying in regards to the insurance coverage costs with those properties. I do feel like there'll be a balance of that in whatever comes behind, if you should determine today, to allow us to surplus them. But surplusing them is a requirement before we can enter into the stages of figuring out what now to do to divest with them. We have some ideas already, but that will be for something to discuss at future council meetings. For right now, the first step in that process is just simply needing you to give me the permission to be able to move forward with figuring out how to divest of those properties. And that's what you'd be voting on tonight. Not giving me permission to get rid of them yet, but just the ability to start moving forward with the process to eventually get rid of them. I'm pending your questions. Any questions for staff?

So what is each of the three properties being used for? It looks like lot 300 is just

It's actually an old dump that was eventually filled and has a lot of topsoil on it. The location of where it is, I'm horrible at directions.

There's a map on page two. Yeah, right here.

Bottom line is it's near a river. It's got some great commercial value. We've had some people express interest in possibly trying to acquire it. I think of all the properties, it has the most immediate potential for us. Behind that one would be the building that the old firehouse was in, currently housing the museum as well as the Side A Brewing. That building of itself is owned to us. We lease it currently for a dollar per year to the museum, and then the museum subleases for the restaurant portion of it to help them stay funded to Side A. Our costs to allow this to happen, just with that building alone, I believe is about $15,000 a year to the city. So us divesting of it offers us the opportunity not only to save that money, but also to eventually collect tax on that property, because currently we're not doing that. And the approximate value of that building is somewhere between $800,000 and $1 million. So divesting of it is, I would argue, is in the best interest. The third property is the current building that houses Art Center East. It is a staple of our community and an opportunity for us to be able to do, I think, even better things by being willing to divest with it. We have had some preliminary conversations with the organization that runs Art Center East, and they have indicated interest in acquiring that. Again, our desire is simply to be able to divest from it, give an opportunity to the community to have better and even more improved services than they already do there. And so that is our desire and intent to move in that direction with those three different properties.

I have a question just for you. Okay, so let me just make sure that I understand and everybody understands as well. So I was under the understanding before that Site A was going to purchase or to buy the station as well. Is that correct?

I have to say that was an erroneous statement that I made that I should not have. Okay. All right. And so what I can say is they are one of the businesses that are interested in talking about it. Okay. But we can't even go anywhere. Until we do this. With anybody. And I don't want to say that they're the only. Right. Simply what I can say is they certainly are interested, but it would be completely inappropriate for me to talk any more about it at this time beyond that.

And that's kind of the same way with Center East because they've just been noted as a historical, Society, they could get the grants and the whole nine yards.

Okay. On that particular one, we have no desire to see that go away. If we were to enter into a situation where we were looking to sell it, I would be making recommendations that if we were to sell it, whoever was to buy it would have to agree to let them stay. Okay. And so, but I think that there's a path to making it good for everybody, for the community, for the city, and for Art Center East. But again, we need to surplus before we can enter into any of those official conversations to be able to come back with any recommendations.

So if we surplus the 1006 Penn Avenue that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to sell it.

Correct. We're not obligated to anything at this point. It's just giving me the ability to now start having conversations officially about that. And when I find a point in time where I think you may be interested in entertaining whatever comes from those conversations, then I'll bring that back to you and we'll decide what to do from there.

I just have concern for Art Center East that they're a great asset to our community and I don't want to bury them. Oh, no.

They're here tonight and I'm sure they'd be willing to answer questions if you would like to.

I do not get the impression that they're against this idea.

Any more questions for staff? At this time, we would invite public testimony.

Art Center East. They're all talking to each other.

Hi there, I'm Jessica Dolch. I'm the Executive Director for Art Center East.

Can you step a little closer to the mic? Thank you.

This is a really exciting conversation for us to possibly be able to have. We've been in, Arts Center Ace has been in 1006 Penn Avenue since 2008, leasing the building at a very low fee, which is great. Although we have, as a nonprofit, also incurred all of the expenses of the building. It is also still not ADA compliant for our community. So we've been engaged in a capital campaign to fix that and also maintain operations since, well, my time there, which started in 2015. We've also put a new $50,000 roof on it. We've also replaced all of the plumbing in it, replaced furnaces over time, which we have two of. So we're already really wonderful just stewards of the building. Now that it's on the historic registry, that's an even better opportunity for us to be able to ensure that You can tell I'm nervous. The sentimentality that the community has with the building is carried through the future. So we have people come in every day remembering when it was the community library. They want to see the fresco over the fireplace and the children's library downstairs. And so it's imperative that there's some way that we can carry the building into the future. And if this surplus allows those conversations to happen, we'd be very grateful.

So that's all I have to say.

Thanks.

I'm Candace Smith, and I'm president and board of directors for Art Center East, and we have some board members here in the room, as well as some staff, and just to reiterate what Darcy had to say, I'm incredibly impressed with how the stewardship of previous boards and previous staff over the span of time of this very old building that we all love and adore, And I feel like that's an honored place within our communities is that space. Lots of childhood memories of lots of kids and lots of parents. But it also does amazing work for our community. So this opportunity and this kind of conversation with you guys, we'll be back again for more conversation. But as a board member, we've built our board up to have a large number of board members who are ready to kind of work on how we might do this transition as well. So exciting times for us to have these conversations and we're just thankful that we can have these conversations with you.

Thank you. Any more public testimony? Counselor discussion.

I think these make sense.

It does make sense.

Motion.

I move to declare city-owned properties located at tax lot 302 Elm Street, and 1006 Penn Avenue has surplus to the city's current municipal needs and authorized staff to work with qualified local professionals to determine the fair market value of each property, evaluate the flexibility of sales and or other dispositions, I guess, options, and return to the city council with recommendations prior to any final depositions of the property.

Dispositions. We have a motion and a second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Is anybody opposed? All right. Our next one. Considering authorization one time, one year, 50% water and sewer utilities assistance for the Blue Mountain Humane Society. Sorry. Our association. Can we have staff report, please?

Yes, Mayor and Council, you may recall at the last council meeting, representatives from Blue Mountain Humane Association came and asked that we would consider providing them some relief as it came. They've had some, like everybody, increasing costs. The services that they provide to the community are not adequately funded. or revenued to be able to meet the needs of that continuation of that organization. So creatively they're seeking as many opportunities as they can to be able to save nickels and dimes everywhere that they can to help make sure that that service can stay in our community for as long as possible. When we had the conversation before as well as within the staff, I'll admit that there's a lot of internal controversy over this topic, not because anybody doesn't see the value in the organization or that they don't want to see it thrive, but because when it comes down to it is we're risking opening the floodgates of other people seeing this as the standard and therefore referencing it. The commitment that I made to my staff is that I would not depart from or continue beyond this recommendation that I'm ultimately making to the council and asking you to approve. which is for this one time that would require them to come back again next year to ask for it again if they should find themselves at a need to ask for it. But at this time, for you to approve a 50% cost to them in regards to the utility bills that they get. It's my intention. We have a very small fund in the city manager's office that is intended to go to community event type circumstances. It's approximately a little over $2,000, maybe $3,000 that we have that we share amongst different organizations on an annual basis. My intention is to take the remaining 50% and cover that cost for them if this is approved. And so bottom line is it's not going to solve their problem. They have many thousands of dollars that they still have to come up with in order to be able to survive. But this could be potentially as much as $2,600 in their most expensive year, worst case of savings that they would be able to get if approved. So my recommendation to the council is that you approve this 50% and that it doesn't require your approval for me to utilize those other funds for the coverage. So just the 50% is what we're asking for. With a commitment from me that I will not come back and ask for you for that with others in the future, at least for another year.

And I have a comment I need to say. I need to declare my...

Actually, right at this moment, if you don't have questions for staff, then we'll go into public, and then you can do the counselor discussion.

He's got a declaration. Oh, you have a declaration.

Sorry.

I need to declare a potential conflict of interest. My 17-year-old grandson has recently been hired by the Humane Society. While this decision may or may not affect him financially, it could be perceived as a conflict, so I'm making this disclosure for transparency. Under Oregon ethics law, because this is a potential conflict, I am still permitted to participate in discussion on this item. However, out of abundance of caution, I will abstain from voting.

Thank you.

Sorry. That's a little different. Right, right, right. Thank you. With that, is there any more questions from staff? None for staff. Then at this time, we will invite public comments. In favor, neutral, opposition? on this matter, of course.

Thank you for your considerations on this.

We really appreciate it. We have been working very hard on fundraisers to try to close the gap and provide this community service to the residents of the city of La Grande and the county. The county has graciously increased the amount that they support us. And knowing the budget crisis that the city is under, that's when we came up with the idea of maybe you could help with the water and sewer. We're halfway to the Big John already. And so it wouldn't be money out of the coffers, but it would be just less money you might receive. And so we appreciate your considerations on this as we try to work on our own budget crisis.

Thank you.

And just as a reminder, make sure you say your name, because Leslie, I know not everybody in this room knows you.

I'll go sign later. Would anybody else like to comment on this matter?

Hi, I'm Kathy Caldwell. I'm a board member at the Blue Mountain Humane Association. We have been trying so hard to help the community by fundraisers. We don't sit around. We are movers and shakers. We can't even water our trees because we don't really have the extra money. I mean, our dogs... They need the shade in the summertime, and we can't water the trees to give them shade. I know the county and the city are helping. We've got girls that work at the shelter that are hard workers. They're putting it on social media. They're trying to get these animals adopted. But we just need the extra help. We don't want to close our doors. We want to be able to help the community. But there might come a time where we might have to shut our doors. And Baker doesn't have an animal shelter. Wallowa doesn't have an animal shelter. And we don't want to shut our doors. So thanks for your time.

Thank you. Any more comments?

Tammy Gordon.

Just real quick, I don't want to take up a lot of time because I know we're running late. I'm a huge fan of the Humane Society. And I know that we pay licenses for dogs. And I was just told recently that we're able to buy... license or soon will be able to there instead of the sheriff's office or the police station so that's another alternative and then my question is if we're paying a license for the dogs is a humane society are they getting any of that money or is it just going to the city so just food for thought just thought about that i owe you an answer on that okay yeah i don't know thank you

Is that animal control?

Oh, animal control, okay.

They deliver an essential service.

Actually, here, one more second. Any more public comment before we move on to councilor discussions? Nope. You go right ahead.

Okay, essential service for the city. I mean, without them, we'd have dogs running loose and just a mess. So I really appreciate them. Is this the best way to address this? Is through the utility fees? I worry about the precedent. Is there a way we can pull it out of the city manager's budget instead of as a waiver?

What I can say is that fund that I referred to before is all I have available that I could possibly throw at this. And if I use all of that to solve this problem, then I have no ability to help anybody else. And so it really comes down to is it's scarce, it's limited, and I'm trying to make sure that we can do at least a little something to help others. Right now, I feel like what I can say is if you turn this down, then I'll probably take what I have and then throw it at it. And then that just means nobody else will get anything. But I'm not trying to sound cruel when I say that. The bottom line is everybody's already said it. It's been the theme tonight, right? Life's hard and life is expensive, and we're all trying to figure out how to make it work.

It's been a very dry summer. I do want to share something. My husband passed in 21. And in lieu of flowers, I had money donated to this shelter. And hearing that the trees can't be watered because they planted a tree in his name, it's not that much to offset the cost of the water and sewer for at least one year and then to assess it again. It's personal, I guess. So I'd like to see them get the help that they need.

I have a question, too, to them. Can people just go in and donate, like bring dog food or whatever you need?

Absolutely. They have a list online. Oh, okay.

All right. One of you step to the podium. Okay. Thank you.

So I'm Lisa Hayes. I'm the president of the board at the animal shelter. And we do not actually purchase any dog food, cat food. That is all donated to us. So we really don't have to purchase any of that. We do get lots of donations. Large chunks of our payroll are sponsored by other people donating. Like they said, we just did a huge fundraiser. We earned $10,000 at our Paw Party fundraiser. It's pretty exciting for us. We're building up, we're doing everything we can. We're getting close to breaking even, but we're still operating in the red, so just any little bit counts. But yes, people can come in and just donate.

Do you have a social media campaign? We absolutely do. I haven't seen any.

Oh, yes. We are extremely active on all the social media platforms.

We have an Amazon wish list. Yes. There are ways to give. You can just go on Amazon and click, click, click. It's really easy.

Thank you, Lisa. Do we have any more discussion or do we have a motion?

I need to find the website.

I move to authorize the one-time, one-year, 50% water and sewer utility rate for Blue Mountain Humane Society, beginning with the September 2026 billing cycle and ending with the August 2027 billing cycle. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any more discussion? None. All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? And one was... Perfect.

Thanks for sticking it out.

All right. Our next one is H. How would you like to do this one, John?

I don't have any information. Jason, it would be the same. I'm sorry. H is the one you pull community. Oh, wait. We've got to do that. The consent agenda one first.

This will be the one from the consent agenda. Then after that, we will go to the tribes. Perfect. And I've got information for you for that.

Thank you.

My question is, the movie theater wants to have a liquor license. Could you explain how that's going to work?

Yes, so if you haven't known this already, new ownership for Granada Theater and as part of that they're expanding their services and to provide, this is a liquor permit to provide beer and wine and I don't know what other drinks. This is not new. Your major theaters like AMX and Regal, they do this as well. So this is just their creative way create patrons. We're all looking for ways, right? So this is their way. And this is all regulated by OLCC.

And youth can go into the same theater as this? Yes. Okay.

But youth can go into TAP that too. I thought about that. I know. Initially I went, eh, and I'm like, eh.

But I was wondering, is it in all the, will it be available to take it into any one of the theaters? Yes.

Yes. That's what I understand. Yes.

That's what I just wanted to get this clarified and put it out in the public so that they know. Okay. That's all I wanted it for. Okay.

Oh, I have a question. Okay. So I know the other theaters, cause I've gone to those with a nice chairs. Anyway, um, they're a little spaced apart. You know what I mean? Where ours are like really close together. And, um, OK, I'm just going to say, I can't stand the smell of alcohol. Sorry. My mom was an alcoholic, and so I think that's part of my issue and so forth. I'm just concerned about sitting next to somebody who's drinking, drinking. You know what I mean? Because that could happen. And I'm also concerned that I do know some people who would, and this could happen in the other theaters, but we're just talking about here. let an underage person drink something because they're in the dark, you know? So, I mean, those are just two concerns that I have, but I totally understand what they're trying to do and they're trying to upgrade and everything, but I just wanted to voice that.

Yes. And you know, they've been very cooperative and working with us. So I think if there was concerns in the future about maybe having designated seating just for maybe all the way in the back or something, uh, I don't have any reason to believe that they wouldn't be collaborative in making it a positive environment for everybody. Still being family-oriented entertainment.

Are they planning on not allowing somebody to drink too much in there?

Well, that falls under the OLCC permits and restrictions. Okay. Yes.

how they're going to regulate that, I guess.

Well, they serve. If they don't look like they're able to drink, they're not going to give them another drink.

And a lot of times, if that happens, we get called.

They must be hiring everybody over the age of 21 then to work.

Or certain ones to do it. To serve, yes. Right, yeah. Well, there's rules.

I know that, yeah. But when I think about the theater, I don't always see people that old working in there.

Yeah, this is new. It's gonna be interesting to see how they pull this off and if it's successful or not.

I'm sure it's a way to increase their revenue coming into the theater, too.

Well, to upgrade the whole thing, just like other theaters, yeah.

But they probably aren't gonna change the seating.

I know.

Any more questions for staff? Any more questions for staff?

Thank you for your time.

We appreciate you. At this time, we'd like to invite public comments on this matter. Counselor discussion? Motion?

We have to go back to the beginning to find it.

I move that the OLCC liquor license application for limited on-premises sales for alternative cinemas 12 LLC be approved and signed by the mayor.

Second.

The motion is second. Any more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? No? Perfect. All right. You want to help me with this one, Johnny? No, you're fine.

Thanks.

That makes life way easier.

Thank you. All right, so considering conditional support for Dorothy Trice 100th Birthday Community Parade. Okay. Staff report. Please, John.

Yeah, just as you heard earlier this evening, the Trice family is asking that they be able to hold a parade. The requirements within it through ODOT requires an endorsement of the council to allow them to be able to advance their request for being able to hold this parade. There is indication to suggest that maybe it will ultimately end up being denied, but they do have an alternate plan for them to be able to do it on Washington Avenue if we should end up there. So one way or another, we're pretty sure we're going to get to a yes for them. The question is just whether or not they get the final yes for Adams Avenue. And your endorsement here is just giving the opportunity for them to continue forward in that process. Okay. Any questions you have?

questions for stuff I think it's great idea a fun idea I think we just entertain a motion to move on and support him I move that the City Council formally recognized the proposed parade on Adams Avenue is a community event for the purpose of OAR 734-056-0030 thereby authorizing the applicant to proceed with the ODOT special event permit process. Second.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any more discussion?

I want to go.

All in favor? Aye. Does anybody oppose? No.

Do we have a date for it yet?

September 12th.

Yep, September 12th.

Okay, September 12th.

Got it.

Thank you. All right. Union County updates. Good evening, Commissioner. Good evening, Mayor. Enjoying the long meeting?

Yes, it's fantastic. This started with a 7 a.m. meeting and I may not even sleep tonight. Okay, so Emergency Manager Vore has been very busy, as you're aware, with the fires and everything. He was supposed to be here tonight, but since I was coming, I offered to make his report for you. I do have some talking points here. I'm going to try not to read these word for word. He did get very detailed. but the relationships and community that is very, very important to us right now. In Union County, we benefit from an incredible collaboration between all of our agencies and the private sector. Just the example of the fairgrounds and local rodeo grounds supporting fire camps and livestock sheltering. Like right now, Elgin has 600 people out there camping for the Hagen fire and mid Columbia, which is Austin Tibbets who offered 20 buses and drivers in case we do have to evacuate, which is fantastic. Offering transportation are examples that highlight the strong relationships and community service mindset we all benefit from when emergency occurs. So really wanted to just read that word for word what he said. I did add a couple things in there as you're aware. But for emergency purposes, if you are in these, I know it's not City of La Grande, but I'm gonna use this platform. If you are in some of these evacuation zones, you will receive like an Amber Alert on your phone of what needs to happen. But if you do own property and you're not in that area, you can go to, I got props everywhere. Stay informed. And I'll leave a lot of these back here. I know Brent Klaps got some. I'll each give you one here. So it's called www.Oralert.gov. And you will be able to receive information on fire and the like for evacuation zones. There is also, I downloaded, it's free. It's called Watch Duty. And it'll give you live updates as we go. So on Sunday, I was in Elgin and went to the fire meeting out there. And it was at 35,000 acres. And it is now at 40,000 acres, which we dodged a big bullet on Saturday. As you know, we're supposed to get high winds up to 40, 50 miles an hour. It wasn't as bad as predicted, which was great, and it's been very, very cold. It's been almost hoody weather in the mornings, which has been very, very nice. So it only grew about 5,000 acres, which if you know exactly where that fire is, that thing should be in Elgin right now. So very, very happy that it's not. And it's 11% contained, and I believe at the fire meeting it was only like six or seven. So they're doing a fantastic job. A lot of people are working very, very hard to keep this contained, and hopefully it stays that way. uh... so there's a couple other places to get information union county emergency emergency services fake facebook page that's on their and our website uh... see here there's also uh... a another app called raptor a r p t o r and watch duty and a lot of other sites pull that information from there i don't know much about raptor i do know about watch duty and I will mention like evacuations, routes, we won't know. You may think that's the route to take. It may be smoky, maybe dark. You're like, oh, this is the best way out. The fire may be right in front of you. So we won't know evacuation routes until it's time. So make sure your phone is charged. I know none of you live by the fire. I'm just going to use, I don't know what camera I'm on, Brent, but make sure your phone's charged so you get alerts and we get everybody out safely because we don't want to lose anybody or structures during this thing.

What about if cell towers go out as they have in past fires?

I wish Nick was here because he loves radios and he's all about communication, so I guarantee there's a backup plan.

I'm going to add to what Matt's sharing with you here too. In collaboration over the last few days over this topic, and Matt and I met and talked about this earlier today too, and Chief Hayes as well, on the 13th of August we have a community roundtable that's scheduled to be public safety related. Jason has agreed to give a portion of that time up to give Nick Vora opportunity to be there to educate the public. on all the things that he's talked about here today and more. So 13 August, if you want to learn about emergency management and how it may be impacting you, I would encourage people to turn out. That will be here at the city council chambers at 6 p.m. and we will stream it live as well.

Thank you for adding that. And just for everybody else, we do have facilities here, we do have people here, but we're a little stressed. And please just maybe don't burn anything. Watch where you put your cigarettes out. Just we don't need any added. Issues, was that clear enough? Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, anything else on that topic before I switch to, I got something else. Oh, the fair. Oh, I held it until I got there because the first thing I did, I paid to get in and I went and used the bathrooms. Which are fantastic, by the way, and I did get a complaint that the seats were cold.

They are. I'm just telling you.

I am not going to go back to legislation to get you guys heated seats. I'm sorry. You're going to have to go find grant money or something. I'm not going back. But they are fantastic. The fair board, amazing work. Mike Becker, they worked around the clock to get the – because we did have working bathrooms in the Matt and Emily building. Right. But we really wanted to get the outdoor bathrooms working, which they did. They're fantastic. I can't believe the hard work that's actually coming to fruition. We still have another bathroom. We're not done yet, but we still have another bathroom built with the showers in for the RV park. It's been, it was really, like, yeah, the smoke didn't help. Attendance still was pretty good out there. You know, we just seeded the grass, was barely coming in. By next year, it's going to be fantastic. I can't wait.

Do you know what our attendance was?

I do not.

Oh, okay.

No, we haven't really, they haven't really gone through all the numbers yet. All right. The other thing, too, was I was shocked. I know I'm taking too much time. We're all ready for bed. Was a lot of the people out there were thankful that they're able to wash their hands.

Yes.

And I was really going for the, like, no one wants to use a porta pot. But it was the hand washing. And I thought about it. All these kids are out there with their goats, their sheeps, shoveling poop, you know, doing that. And they, you know, had, I mean, no offense to the port-a-pot watering stations, but you had to hit the pump with your foot and get the gas or your soap. And now they're like, warm water and soap. Everyone had clean hands. And they were super excited. And I had a lot of kids, a lot of people coming up. I was like, our hands are clean. And I missed that sales pitch. I totally missed it, but what do you know? Anyway, I have other stuff, but for time, I'll just cut it right there. Questions?

Thank you.

Super excited. All right, thanks, guys.

You have a good evening.

You too.

Staff comments.

Edie Engelman on behalf of Public Works. Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on the second street construction. And you'll have to forgive me the smoke as is happening for many of us is getting to me. So through the course of the project, our crews have been working really hard as much as they can to complete that project. But as I'm learning with any project where you're digging up pavement, we've found a couple surprises out there. So currently this week, we're laying rock down for roadway paving and prepping the rock and grading for our sidewalks. coming up in the next couple weeks. It is possible that we will hit our deadline of being done with the project before school starts, but we are likely looking at about one week of overlap with the start of the school year. Cutting it pretty close, I know, but we wanna make sure we're doing that project the right way, getting everything done. So that said, we do have plans B and C in place and ready to work with the school district, making sure that the bus routes are able to be used, and we have a couple different alternatives for turnarounds and drop-off zones to be used. once the school year gets kicked off. So it shouldn't be a big overlap. We're going to aim to not have any overlap, but that's kind of what we're looking at as our worst case right now. So any questions on that? OK, sweet deal. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Timothy Bishop with Economic Development. I'll be really brief. I just wanted to give you an update. I think I've emailed you so you may have most of this information. But we were very excited to share that we did receive a fifty thousand dollar grant to help with the upcoming work on updating our economic development plan we have uh negotiated the contract with our consultant again i want to thank counselor glaive for serving on that committee i know that was extra work even while you're on vacation checking some emails so I appreciate your contribution to that effort. We had our first sort of kickoff meeting with the consultant team this week, and we will be hosting our first site visit with them the week of August 17th, 18th, and 19th. And so I think you've all received a notice of the council work session where you'll have time to meet and get a chance to visit with that consultant team more on the 17th. So I think that's my kind of only update. Any questions?

Good late evening, everyone. Oh, thanks. I love the shirts. Just a quick program update. This Friday at 530, we have a really cool program coming to the library. We're lucky to have it. It's funded by the State Library of Oregon. It's called Sketch and Release. It's black artists in rural Oregon. They'll be traveling to different parts of rural Oregon over the course of the month. It is going to be presented by Jason Graham, who's just like the coolest human you'll want to be around. We've had him at the library before. He's like a poet, a singer, an artist. He just does everything and he'll just enthrall you. He's just awesome. So 5.30 in the community room. It's a performance and conversation. They're doing a docuseries. So if you are around or know somebody, please join us. It's going to be really cool. He's really cool. So that's it.

Thank you.

Good evening again. I'll talk fast. So for us on staffing level, we have two vacancies right now for police officer. We did have one of our officers get a conditional offer by Umatilla Tribal. So we're anticipating three vacancies. But we did have testing last week. We have five viable candidates. So that's very optimistic. That's the most we've had in a single hiring pool. We do have one dispatch vacancy. Our newest dispatcher tried it. Didn't work, so she resigned. So we'll be looking to fill that one as well. You know, the last two months, I've given you stats. We're status quo. The curve is kind of still staying high. I'm waiting for it to go down, but it has not yet done so. So we had 1,247 calls for service that our officers responded to in July. uh... on any particular day monday july twenty seven we had forty nine calls for service on that day the average for that month would have been forty so We had 186 traffic stops, 39 arrests. Dispatch took a total of 2,573 total calls for service. We had 13 suicide-related calls in July, 18 calls for houselessness, and two overdoses. And I believe both of those were death investigations. And otherwise, things are status quo. Any questions? Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Chief. All right, you'll get an abbreviated version.

I want to echo what Matt, Commissioner Scarfo, talked about. No burning, no sparks, no nothing. It's extreme fire danger right now, as we'll go into some of the stats that I have for you. But just be careful out there. July, our response activity, we had 205 EMS calls and transfers, 53 fire and motor vehicle collisions or motor vehicle collision calls, 16 lift assists. So we're staying busy, 274 calls total in July. More importantly, our wildland fire response has been above and beyond this year. The eastern side of the state is on fire, and so we've been a part of that, doing our part to help. So we've had a total of 16 wildland-type fire calls, three wildland grass, vegetation, or other fires. Those are within the city of La Grande. Wow. Eight, wildland box alarms or mutual aid responses. Those are in our mutual aid partners within the county. So we've had a fair amount of fires, especially early on. We had a fair amount of fires just in our county and we helped out with those. Those are usually covered by the on-duty staff call in for standby and such. We've had two mutual aid responses to other counties. We were on the Lower Dry Creek Fire in Umatilla County and also on the Granite Fire. We went over, got a call from the fire chief over there, said we need help. send an engine along with the task force from Union County. So those two were parts of small task forces that went over just immediately to help out until we got the state task forces to come. So involved in those. We also went over on the immigrant fire right off the bat there. Umatilla County was on fire pretty good. We went over as OD helped ODF out on that. sent a crew over and we're part of a task force. Uh, we also went, uh, we've been on all of them, uh, that are this side of the state, uh, to Oregon state fire Marshall, immediate response deployments. That's when the state fire Marshall calls us, say, Hey, can you go help us immediately? It's something that we put together a task force along with union County and we're able to go to, uh, the Hagen fire. We were on the Bingham Road, protecting structures along there. And then we also went to the Fox Fire down in Huntington. So our crews have been busy. It takes all of them. They have to help each other out to make this happen. And we do this so that when our time comes, if it ever does, people help us. Just during a recent Fire Defense Board briefing, Oregon State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple gave Union and Baker Counties a direct shout out for assembling a task force in the early morning hours of 7-27-26. This was at one in the morning. We were able to get a task force together to assist with the Fox Fire near Huntington. She stated that without the response of the task force, the outcome for the town of Huntington may have looked very different. So we went and put together a task force. Winds were blowing. That fire blew up, blowing it towards houses, blowing it towards the city of Huntington. They were able to go help save those houses. They saved anybody knows where the, or protected. They lost Dutchman Mine there where all the RVs are next to the freeway. Our crews were there, helped to protect that. So this recognition, that was big. in front of all the fire defense board chiefs in the state of Oregon. And so they were, that was pretty cool. But this recognition belongs not only to the members who deployed, Captain Ployhar, Firefighter Kerr, but everybody who came in to cover them so they could go to maintain our coverage, prepared the apparatus, got it ready. in equipment and completed the a minute minutes it goes to our ministration to from our administrative assistant who takes care of all the financial stuff coordination work that we do behind the scenes to get them going. So it was pretty cool to hear that. We were excited about that. I'm extremely proud of the professionalism, teamwork, and commitment demonstrated by our members. Wildland season is not over. and the department will continue training, maintaining readiness, and preparing to assist our community and our regional partners whenever called upon. So busy season, be safe out there, and there'll be more. So our guys are out there on the line tonight, helping out, so.

Are you using the wild land fire truck?

Yep, remember we got two? Yeah, I know. Those have been out. There is some revenue that comes in with these two. But it's been used a lot. And the guys are helping each other out to make it happen. And they're putting in the effort in case we ever need it here.

It helps to plan it. Yeah.

Thank you. You betcha. Thank you, Chief.

What's that? Thanks for being here.

Oh, yes. You bet.

Any more staff comments? City Manager.

Yes, so I want to briefly address some conduct that is sometimes presented as government accountability, but I would argue crosses the line into harassment. Tonight you were able to hear from somebody who certainly presents a desire to hold government accountable, and though I am in support of that, I can say that I have personally experienced as well as my staff have experienced what could only be described as significant harassment that comes from the part of the individual that conducts that activity. Unfortunately, we exist in a gray area where of course we need to kind of, for lack of a better term, tolerate that kind of behavior. while at the same time where I feel like I'd need to endure that because of the position that I hold, I can say some of the people in our employment are getting treated very poorly. And so one of the things that I would ask is that as a community, that situations like this particular individual likes to go out of their way to try and seek and disparage people. And we have to stand quietly by and allow it to a great extent. And I'm unwilling to let my employees to deal with that. And I would ask that if you see it, that you yourself be willing to say stop. And that if you see us standing there, it isn't because they are right and that we are indefinitely wrong. I can say that the way that those conversations are being characterized are not telling the full truth of the circumstances. And I feel as though the more I try to defend it indicates some sort of implied guilt on our part. What I would say is if you're willing to understand the circumstances, seek total understanding. Don't go by just the information that you're hearing at one location. And at the same time, recognize that whether you're paying attention on social media where they're trash talking as well, The bottom line is it's not kind, and our people that work in this department or this city are human beings as well, and they deserve to be treated with that kind of respect, and what's being conveyed is not necessarily the case. Please seek truth, and I felt that that needed to be addressed. It's OK if it comes to me. I don't want to see it happening with the employees of this organization. That being said, some additional things I'd like to share with you. There was some reference today in regards to the denial of the AV usage here or support from our staff in regards to AV usage. We did seek city attorney information in regards to that. As a result of that, we will be issuing a policy. The way that it was described here tonight was not entirely accurate, but what I can tell you is I will come back to the council in the near future with a policy as it comes to how we will provide a recommendation to how we will provide or not provide AV support for individuals that want to make a statement. As far as the, we kind of talked ad nauseum tonight about the fee deferment. I was planning on talking about it here. I'll leave it at the table portion that we've already discussed tonight and save you some listening to me talk for a little bit. I want to let you guys know that the community town hall that we had a couple of weeks ago, I would have to argue, was wildly successful. We received one negative comment. Literally from the time that I left the town hall to the time I got back to my house, which is about three blocks from there, I had an email waiting for me from one citizen that I felt didn't understand the context of the conversation that took place. Everybody else I received from people I've never heard from comments about how happy they are that the city is engaging the community the way that they're being engaged and having the opportunity to have information so readily available. So that's a tax that's being paid by our team in order to make that happen. But to hear overwhelming response like that from the community has been very positive to be able to hear. Unfortunately, I just can't get everybody to feel that way. With that being said, some of the other additional efforts that we've had, I'd like to make sure that everybody's tracking that we have the community roundtable that I previously mentioned on the 13th of August, which is the public safety one, which will also include Nick Vora with the Emergency Management Office. Another one that'll be here at the council room. Another community roundtable at the library on the 19th, which will be about sidewalks for the community and addressing topics that are concerning in association with that. Another one, we are doing a city budget community roundtable, understanding your city budget on the 9th of September. And we're doing a mini series on social media as well, giving bits of information leading up to that. To help the community have maximum understanding and awareness of our city budgets So I would encourage people to please if you're not liking and following already Yeah, you get to hear me drone a little but I pride to keep them from two to three two to three minutes But it's an opportunity for you to have as much awareness as possible in regards to the city operations And then last month, the last topic I'll mention is we had mentioned that we had a strategic offsite that was scheduled to take place. Due to events that occurred, we had to reschedule that. And we will actually be going out on that tomorrow and working on the next stages of implementation as it relates to the fiscal transformation initiative, as well as some team building efforts. Unless you have any questions of me, that's all I have for the evening.

Thank you, John. Thank you. Councilor, comments?

I've got update on Union County Safe Communities Coalition. The city opted to send the opiate funds to sustain Union County Safe Communities. And they're currently actively pursuing grants for programming. They have a drug free run on September 19th and that's going to be similar format last year. It's going to be in town. There's going to be little key chain shoes that you can find along the path and TURNED THEM IN FOR PRIZES AND IT WAS PRETTY FUN LAST YEAR. SO HOPEFULLY IT WILL GAIN SOME TRACTION. WE'RE ALSO PUTTING TOGETHER A HEALTHY YOUTH CONFERENCE FOR ALL 7TH AND 8TH GRADERS IN THE COUNTY. ALL COUNTY SCHOOLS EXCEPT FOR COVE HAS CHOSEN NOT TO PARTICIPATE. They have a national speaker for positive mental health coming. They're also having a speaker for healthy relationships, accountability, technology addiction. And the school district is providing the facility, which is the middle school, and all of the food, which is offsetting costs. super excited about that. And we have had a couple of overdose deaths lately, so I think this work is really important.

That's all. On behalf of the Timber Cruises Car Club, I would like to first, I was asked to thank John for being a judge and for picking up the trash. Our police and fire chief for also being a judge. And Jason, I have not heard yet about the picture, but I will.

Okay.

That's all I have.

Anybody else? With that, we are adjourned.

I'll do better next time.

Oh, I've got it. You need it? I need it there tomorrow.

Markers and easel and sticky note thingy?

I'll make sure I have all that. Thank you. Thank you for everything you said today.

I've been meaning to email you, but we've just met.

What? You have to work? I know, right?

I appreciate it. I love how involved you are.

I try. I mean, I've been involved since I came here.

Thank you. Thank you. But I do have some concerns. Okay. Then let's just make time.

Do you have my email? I do. I've given you a card before.

Yeah, I do.