City Council - Regular Meeting

session. Oh, yep. I should probably use my mic. There we go. All right. Um, we're going to start today's meeting, January 26. I would like to remind us all to silence our cell phones. I'm going to open up the meeting today with words by Alex Prey who was an ICU nurse that was recently killed in Minneapolis. Today we remember that freedom is not free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour we read him our honor and our gratitude. I also want to mention the names of those individuals that have been killed by ICE. And I also want to name a community member that we recently lost that is not related to ICE in any way any sort of federal connection. And I'd like to uh hold a minute of silence. Sylveo Viegas, Gonzalez, Renee Good, Alex Prey, Yahid Castillo Alvarez, and I also want to mention that there have been 15 community members that have been taken from our community who are parents, members of our community, our neighbors. So, let us start this meeting. Uh, Jessica Galas, if you want to make any public comment, please do so.

Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Jessica Sales and I am running for Oregon's third congressional district. Um, I come from the working class, 12 years in the beer industry and just want to represent everyday people. Um, along with uh I'm a part of a bunch of rapid response groups for ICE. Um, I go down actively to the ice facility in Portland and unfortunately get gassed down there. But yeah, I just wanted to say hello and hi. Thanks.

Thank you. And I realized right now that it says Salas, not Gala, so I apologize for that. Um, I think the next one says Cordon Carolyn. Oh, sorry about that. There we go. Okay. All righty. Well, I am Caroline Smail. I live on Aan Cascade and um I feel kind of a little silly for doing this at this time, but um my thought is when you have a lot of big stuff going on, you can't lose sight of small little things either. Um otherwise um otherwise it's yeah that everything affects everything. But what I'm here for is um I'm a dog owner. I've owned dogs for over 20 years. We have to get a license. So we have to keep them on a leash. We have to pick up their poop. We have to make sure they don't poop on people's yards. Um we have to keep them in our yard. Um and we have to buy a license which doesn't cost very much. doesn't pay for the program itself. Make sure they have their rabies shots. Um what I'm requesting is that within the city limits, not within the county, um but within the city limits that cats should be licensed the same as pet dogs and that the city of Hudro should act in ordinance to that effect. Um, the issues that I have seen over the last years are when we plant our garden, uh, cats come in, scratch it up, pick the seeds, eat our seedlings, mess it up, have to replant it. Um, we have to buy stuff to put over top to stop that from happening. Um, cats poop in our garden

while we have food, which means then we don't get to eat our food. Um, the cats, one particular cat comes into not only our house, other people's houses, eats our dog food. In the summer, we keep our back door open. Cat comes in, eats the food. It was on the deck the other day staring at the food through the window. Um, they kill and name birds. The owners don't come to my yard to come pick up those birds. I have to deal with the birds. I don't want to pick up a bird that has been named. I don't want to pick up a dead bird and have to have to deal with it if it's not something that my particular pet didn't do. Um, an owner of one cat, which is probably why I'm here today, was it was it was dark out. It was probably 7 or 8:00 at night in early November. Um, I hear somebody coming up from my backyard. My house is it's fully fenced in. I didn't hear the person come in the fence. No one knocked on my door. go outside pretty much to check on my dog because I heard this. I didn't know what was going on. Person comes walking up from my backyard and I said, "Hey, what are you doing?" "Oh, I'm looking for my cat." And I'm like, "You're not allowed in my yard. You didn't ask. You just went back there." "Oh, well, the tracker showed that my cat was here." And you probably know waffles because it was waffles. So, I trespassed her. But I don't need people coming in my yard looking for their looking for their cats. Um, we keep our dog in our yard. We spend a lot of time and money on fencing. Like I said, we have to walk him on a leash. We have to pick up his poop. I try really hard not to have him poop in other people's yards. Um, I I'm not I'm scared of cats. From when I was little, my great aunt had this horrible cat named Kit Kat that would steal your food and scratch you and um try to bite you. So, I am not the biggest cat person, but I shouldn't have to deal

with somebody else's cat coming into my coming into my yard and coming into my house. Um, so I think people that live within the city of Hood River should have to um keep their cats within their boundaries. And I ask that you consider that and thank you. Oh. Thanks. Next we have Tamira There you go. Thank you.

I'm no pro at this. Okay. Um I have a question. Are we still in a state of emergency? We're still state of emergency. Okay. Great. My request today is that we treat it as a state of emergency. Okay. Um, so on December 18th, the county declared a state of emergency because there was three inches of rain coming in, which might have caused some property damage, uh, was not going to kill anybody, was not going to abduct people or split up families. You have the list of the people they partnered with when this state of emergency happened. So here's what I'm suggesting is that in the city we also partner up um so that we can support people and protect them from ICE. Um so this emergency um affects everybody, but it particularly affects the 50% of our city who are Latino. People are terrified. Um, I'm a therapist and I can tell you that this is not just something that's going to affect our community now. This is going to have generational impacts. Um, this is trauma. This is real. Um, and we need to protect people from this. So, one of the best strategies we have in this particular emergency is communication. And right now, the communication is being done by rapid responders and social media. And the city is really good at communication. You guys have um vehicles with loudspeakers. You have reader boards. Um you have the ability to use the mail to get out information to people. So I have some specific requests. Um, I would like the city to uh mail out know your rights information in multiple languages to every single household in this city so that there's at least a chance that people know what to do if ICE shows up at the door. That they know they don't

have to open the door and that they're less likely to be kidnapped. That families are less likely to get torn apart. I'm going to ask the city to use the communication resources that they have such as readerboards so that I don't have to be the one posting on Facebook all the time. ICE is in town. Help me do this. There are other people getting the word out like Code River Latino Network, but you have the ability to put a reader board up where everybody who's driving by can see it and know. You have the ability to use the whatever that text message alert system is called to tell people that there's an emergency happening right now. a lifethreatening emergency. That is what ICE is. It's life-threatening. So, let's treat it like it is. Um, I also want to ask for some changes in the way that our police department deals with ICE. Um, they're supposed to remain neutral. There is no neutral when it comes to ICE. If police isn't there, they're actively assisting ICE because they're not actively assisting our community. And we need them to protect our community. We need them to let people know. We need them to pull over ice if they're breaking the law. If they're running red lights, if they're speeding, if they're not using plates. When the police say they haven't seen cars with plates, they have seen cars with plates. I have sent them pictures of cars with plates. They have responded to an incident where I was hit by an ICE agent driving a car without plates. So, let's have our police enforce the law. The city of Hillsboro is um debating this right now. I think it maybe yesterday they were talking about um having their police department enforce the laws and pull over ICE agents and make sure they have credentials. So let's do that. Um so I ask that you re-evaluate what neutral is in this situation with our police department. Um,

and I also want to acknowledge that this is scary for all of us. That like there are fears that we are going to be targeted because we're standing up. Y'all, we're going to get targeted. We are a blue town in a blue state. We are 50% Latino. We also um are an agricultural community and a manufacturing community. We are a target already. We have been blitzed over and over. We were blitzed on the day that that list for that emergency um was put together. We were blitzed on December 18th and we did nothing. The rapid responders were out there. HRPD did nothing. The city did nothing. We've got to do better, y'all. We are going to get blitzed really hard at some point. Our community members are going to get kidnapped and somebody is going to get hurt. And I don't want to see anybody in this town get shot like like the people who have been shot in Minneapolis. And I don't want to see our community members being locked up in cages and ripped away from their families. So please, this is an emergency. Let's treat it like an emergency and partner up with people like the county did when three inches of rain was coming in. Thank you all. Please Thank you, Abigail. Are there any agenda additions or corrections?

No, there is not.

All right, we have two presentations. Uh, now is the time for business from the audience. I think I just passed that one and didn't even mention it. So, uh, we have a proclamation from the Hudor County Reads program and also a presentation from the Mid Columbia Housing Authority. Uh, councelor, I'm just checking in to see if we have someone from the library here to present tonight. It doesn't look like it. Uh, I thought they were confirmed, but we will reschedu them for another meeting. Um, but I do know the housing authority is in the house uh and ready to present.

All right. Thank you.

Hello. Okay. Good evening. Uh my name is Karen Long. I'm the executive director at the Columbia Housing Authority and Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation. Uh thank you so much for um giving us time tonight to do a brief presentation on our work. Um and thank you for your interest in our work. Um and I'm joined by my coworker

Serio Garcia, director of development with the same organization.

So our organization addresses the housing needs of lowincome households in the five counties of the gorge. We serve Hood River, Wasco, Sherman, Glickat, and Scammenia counties. Um, we have four main ways that we help the community. We have federal rental assistance programs offered by the housing authority. We have several asset building and resident services programs also offered by the housing authority. And we Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation owns, manages, develops, and preserves affordable housing apartment communities. And we also have several home ownership um programs and resources. So, our main program administered by the housing authority is called the Housing Choice Voucher Program. We send out approximately $750,000 every month directly to private landlords on behalf of around 900 households. Um here in the city of Hood River, we serve about um 95 households out of 900, which is not proportionate, right? given the fivecount region. Um I don't need to tell you all that the the rent prices here are really high and our voucher holders have a really hard time being able to use their vouchers here. So we see a lot of people who are from Hood River who have to move elsewhere to find an affordable place to live with their voucher. Um and we send out about the 95 households. It's about $85,000 that goes directly to landlords in the city of the river. Um the way that the program works is that the our voucher makes rent affordable for people based on their income. So all households pay 30% of

their income for the rent and utilities. And the housing authority makes the payment directly to the landlord. About twothirds of our households are on fixed income. So that's elderly and disabled people. And about another third are working families with children. We also have several asset building and resident services programs available to people who receive vouchers. Our family self-sufficiency program has uh two case workers who work with people um on our programs to connect them to services in the community with a focus on career building and financial education to really move people off of public assistance programs. We also participate in the bridges to health pathways program. Uh we've been participating in this program since it started. Um we issue vouchers, people come to a meeting, they get a voucher, we talk to them or talk at them for an hour about all our program rules and then basically say good luck. And we felt like that wasn't doing right by people and that wasn't good enough, especially if twothirds of the people that were serving are elderly and disabled. And so we have [clears throat] two community health workers on staff who go to the voucher meetings and tell people if you're feeling really overwhelmed, that's what our jobs are, to help you navigate the system, help you find housing. And the focus is really getting our voucher utilization rates up. Um, typically every 10 vouchers we issue, only five get used after people wait on a waiting list for a really long time. So, anything that we can do to help people use their vouchers, we try to do that. Um, we've also been teaching financial education classes for about a decade. um

credit, debt, uh you know, money, just any sort of money management because your credit and your savings account are very much connected to housing. Um we also have a matched savings account program where the household saves a dollar and it's matched by $5 and can be used for certain assets including education, home ownership, or starting a small business. And we also partner with the food bank and have offer a food bank um in our front office area at our administrative office in the Dallas. In addition to our housing authority work, um we have uh we build, own, manage, preserve affordable housing. We have currently 24 properties and 435 homes throughout the five counties. Um you all know well that our 25th property will be Mariposa Village. Um and Sergio is going to share on that in a minute. Um but we're also working on a project in the Dallas that will um break ground this year and we'll add 76 additional affordable homes. Um we're working on a preservation project in Cascade Box that will preserve 12 homes there. Um and we're working hard on a assisted living facility in White Salmon um that we've been working on for a little while.

Hi everyone. Um so I just wanted to provide a brief overview of our existing project. Uh Maruposa Village is a 130 unit affordable multifamily rental housing development here in Hud River. This uh project is focused entirely on rental housing for working families and does not include home ownership units. The site includes a mix of studios through three bedroom homes including both uh town homes and apartments. It is also uh it also includes a community center with uh uh resident services, a public park and playground. uh walking trails, bicycle parking, and connections to the surrounding trail system. The the intent of the uh the property is to create a long-term community asset, not just housing with space for services, recreation, and connection built into the design. Um construction of the property began in April and follows a roughly 20 uh 20 and a half month schedule under federal Davis Bacon prevailing wage requirements. Phase one includes buildings one, two, and three and the community center and is scheduled to be completed in late summer of next year. and uh of this year, I'm sorry. Uh phase two includes uh buildings four, five, and six and is expected to complete in the um early months of January or

February of uh 2027. Uh with the park and trail improvements completed alongside of that phase. This phased approach uh allows us to bring housing online sooner while managing costs, workforce availability, and site logistics. Um I I wanted to provide a quick uh snapshot of what is happening on the site today. Uh framing is complete at the community building and is underway across multiple residential buildings. Roofing underllayment has begun at building three and uh installation is is starting at building two and drywall crews are also on site. Uh foundations and stem walls are complete at building six with uh framing uh scheduled to begin later this month. Uh site utility work continues uh including waterline installation and joint utility trenching. Um, rents at Mariposa Village are based on income limits, not on a tenants's actual earnings in a given year. Uh, maximum rents are capped at 30% of area medium income for an assumed household size. 39 units will have projectbased vouchers, meaning uh residents pay 30% of their actual income towards rent and utilities.

Housing choice vouchers will also be accepted in nonPV units. Uh these homes serve people already in the community including construction workers, dental assistants, teacher aids, carriers, etc. I want to note that these rent amounts um are based on the income limits and HUD changes the income limits every April. And so those numbers will likely change um before people are moving in. But we just these are the current numbers that we have for the rents um and the incomes. Um, and I mentioned earlier that we have a hard time getting people to be able to use their vouchers in the city of Hood River, um, just because there aren't a lot of affordable homes. And so, we're really excited that my posta village will also offer a chance for people to use their vouchers um, where they want to live or where they grew up,

bases of of development. Um, so I included the site uh slide on here to provide you a rough understanding of why our projects take so long. Uh, oftent times the feasibility phase can take six months to several years and is where we evaluate a potential sites, zoning, infrastructure, environmental conditions, and whether a project can work financially. Pre-development typically takes one to two years and is the most fragile phase. This is when we finalize design, secure permits, uh co coordinate utilities and apply for funding sources each with uh different rules and timelines and requirements. Construction usually takes one to two years depending on the size of the project uh f followed by closeout which can take another 6 to 12 months depending on when the project stabilizes with tenants. Um decisions made early especially at the local level have an outsized impact on whether a project ever reaches construction. So, uh, I added this uh slide uh because there's often a critique that affordable housing is not afford uh affordable to build and that isn't intentional on our end. We try to bring the cost down as much as we can while also operating as an organization and ensuring that the project succeeds financially for its entire term. Um, and other factors that contribute to the

expensive cost of a project and include that our affordable housing has a lot longer timelines. Unlike market rate, a development projects often spend years applying for a competitive state and federal funding before construction can begin. there. During that time, construction and material costs can continue to rise while rent remains fixed by affordability requirements. Uh multifamily has significantly a lot more due diligence of requirements than single family housing including um the fact that our buildings are often a lot larger and have larger uh site footprints that trigger more extensive environmental review. G uh geotechnical work, storm water and utility analysis, traffic and access planning, and uh fire and life safety conditions. Um affordable housing is also frequently limited to more challenging sites due to land availability, zoning constraints, slope, wetlands and and uh infrastructure limitations that results in higher site preparation cost and additional engineering before construction can even begin. These projects are also held to a higher uh building and energy standard. Uh at this project we are building to energy star multifamily new construction standards which exceed uh base building code. These standards improve long-term efficiency, durability, and comfort for residents, but they also increase the upfront cost.

Um, so in short, there's a lot of things that are added onto our affordable projects based off of the grants that we apply to. Um, so it isn't as if we can just go to a bank and get a loan on it because then that were the case, we would have to charge higher rents and that's essentially where you're at within the existing market. Um, next addressing the funding uh challenge to make uh projects work. We focus on four strategies. Reducing a development cost, lowering financing cost, lowering long-term operating cost, and filling the remaining funding capital. The gap is filled through a mix of state, federal, and local resources, including tax credits, housing, trust funds, bonds, grants, and rent subsidies. Uh local participation plays a critical role in ensuring that these projects are are competitive and financially feasible. Okay. Um, we also offer several home ownership programs in addition to the vouchers and building housing. Um, and last week, um, CCHC became a HUDcertified housing counseling center, which is really exciting. We've been working that's been an organizational goal for about 15 years. Um, so it was a really hard application process with lots of requirements, but we did it and that will open up more funding to be able to come directly from HUD to our organization to the community. Um, so we offer an ABC of home buying class. It's

a class available for firsttime home buyers and then we also have one-on-one home ownership counseling. So people can attend the class and then also meet with a home ownership counselor who can talk about their specific situation and how um kind of build a path to home ownership. Um we have very limited down payment assistance programs. The unfortunately the state of Oregon has stopped funding down payment assistance um which is confusing to us because we all know that that's a great need. Um but we're hoping that um that can be brought back in the future. Um, we also have a foreclosure avoidance program and home ownership counselors are also trained on how to um, talk with people about foreclosure, either prevention or helping them through the process and the easiest way forward. Um, we have home repair programs that offer uh, loans that are 0% interest and don't have to be repaid until the home buyer sells the home. Um, a lot of seniors use this program to help make modifications to their home to make shower bars and ramps and things to help them stay in their home longer. And then we're also getting into the community land trust model. Um, I think that you all are familiar with Big River Community Land Trust and we've also been um figuring out a way that we can do this as well for home buyers that are between 70 and 80% of area median income. And we have our first project in Carson, Washington. Oops. This one.

Yeah, that was yours. There we go. We have our first project in Carson, Washington that Sergio is going to talk about.

Yeah. So, our first project, um, as Karen had mentioned, is in Carson. It's off of Smith uh Beckan Road and for anyone who's familiar, it's adjacent to the golf course. Um we are planning to build 14 single family homes. Uh we're essentially dividing them in half. Half of them will be three-bedroom, two-b homes and the other half will be fourbedroom, two-b homes. Um and that was done intentionally based off of one the required parcel size of the property. Uh given that it's not an incorporated city. Um they have higher well lower density allowances per uh property regardless of what's um accommodated there. The homes will have city water, but they will be on septic. Um, our hope is that they will be multi-generational homes whenever possible and for whoever qualifies. Um, but uh we do hopeo uh hope to expand this uh program across the gorge. Um on on the Washington side, we we were awarded uh housing trust fund dollars through the Washington State Department of Commerce uh and also uh were awarded some funds in collaboration with Schammania County um through CHIP uh which stands for connecting housing to infrastructure program. Um and we hope to break ground on this property uh mid to late summer of this year. And

uh depending on the demand within the region uh we can either complete everything within a year and a half or three years.

And that's all we have tonight. Um, we have our contact information. We're always happy to answer any questions. Please reach out. If you ever something comes to mind, you know, tomorrow or next week, we're always happy to to answer questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions? Um I'm not sure if uh you know but um since you were talking about Mariposa Village specifically I don't know if you guys are like you're part of the building of it and we're we're pretty familiar with that project but um I'm curious if it's been opened up to potential residents or if you guys have a wait list or how people are you know are you hearing any um expressions of interest from prospective residents and if not like you know who do they contact and you know with the timing it's really exciting. Thank you for the work that you guys are doing. This is really great. I'd love to hear what's happening in Carson, too. Yeah. Yeah. What's what's the status of for prospective Mariposa village residents?

Sure. There's it's still the interest email that is run by community development partners or CDP. Um we get calls. I had a voicemail today of someone who it was actually really uh touching. She uh I don't know how she got to my voicemail, but she said she has had to move around five or six times and she's just so excited for this opportunity to have a permanent place to live. And it made me just it there's like moments like that remind us of like why we do this work. And that's it's such it's so meaningful to people to have a permanent place and not have to feel like they're always moving around. Um, but to answer your question, um, the waiting list, the official waiting list for tenants should open within the next six weeks. Then we'll put out a public notice and email will go out to that interest list email. Um, we're going to be putting out a lot of information about when that date will be opening. And then we also have the project based voucher waiting list will also open on the same day just to make it easier. So if people are applying for a unit, they can also, if they are income qualified, apply for one of the 39 projectbased vouchers, which means that the household will pay based on their income instead of paying just the rate that's affordable to the 60%.

Any other questions, Doug? Thank you for being here. Um, I keep choosing to drive up Rand every time I'm in that part of town just to see the progress and it's just quite unbelievable. Usually, you know, developments take so long and whatnot. I know it took us a long time to get to that part, but I think the mayor said it a couple weeks ago. It's like once they broke around, it's like, wow. It's like there's there's a building, there's a building, there's a building. So, it's super exciting. Um, you know, I'm really encouraged to hear about, you know, your entrance in into the land trust model. You mentioned funding from Washington, etc. Are there impediments to funding in Oregon that we should be aware of? uh they make it harder to do in Oregon.

Um our primary challenge in Oregon has been finding developable land. Uh it's very limited here based off of the scene area and the lots that are available have a lot of challenges associated with them. Yep. Uh ranging from in uh infrastructure or just zoning. Um, this is probably a question for staff, but can we can we help get the word out in six weeks when uh is that something we we can repost uh etc? Yes, thank you. We'll we'll coordinate with the housing authority and CDP on that.

Awesome. Um and I you know I think we get um are we can have access to this presentation as well? Is this this something we can can have? I think we get a lot of questions about, you know, what does affordable mean and just having some of those figures that are on there about, you know, the sizes of the units and, you know, what what, you know, it's it's difficult for people to connect, oh, 60% AMI, but when you start putting the totals and what goes on there and and everything, I know they'll adjust in April, but I think that's that's just helpful for us to make people aware of, you know, what happens. Yeah. Yeah, we can make that available. Great. Thank you. Thank you for being here again. Great. Others asked my questions.

I I do have a question. So, um, thank you for being here first of all. Appreciate all the work that you do. You mentioned that there were 95 households in Hood River that are receiving rental assistance in total of 85,000. Can you elaborate around I think you mentioned later in the presentation that cost was one of those but how do you like advertise that and given that there's over 900 individuals that you're helping in a variety of counties. I'm trying to understand that 95. Is it that our rents are too high here in Hood River? Like I'd like to better understand the 95. I think that it's a variety of reasons that I think first is that the rents are too high um and that there just aren't enough affordable units. I think also Hood River is one of the most desirable places to live in the gorge and that means that um when a unit does come available it's really competitive and a lot of times people can [clears throat] show up you know a landlord wants first last deposit and if you um can show up with you know a5 $6,000 check and say I can move in today a landlord's more likely to pick that person over someone who says well I have a voucher and I have to have an inspection and I can get you the deposit next week. And uh so there I think there's just a lot of reasons why um our vouchers are not utilized as often in Pit River in the city of Pit River.

Thank you. I have two other questions. You talked about the homeownership program. Have there been recipients of the homeownership program here in Hood River? The down payment assistance. Yes, we've had several who are able to buy homes in Hood River. Okay, great. Yeah. And given that there's been a lot of uncertainty in federal and state funding, you mentioned that there's $900,000, has that have you heard that that could potentially de decrease for the housing choice voucher?

The um tead bill, which is the way that we get our funding, is this actually has an increase for the housing choice voucher program and an increase for the family self-sufficiency program. Um there is a decrease for public housing but that's not something that we had in the gorge. Um so sometimes you might hear about there's a decrease in public housing but we don't have that here. So our programs um you know we know that passed in the house so we don't know what's going to happen next.

Yeah I think if you are hearing of of such programs if you can just keep us in the loop or connect with Abigail. We have many constituents that ask around uh the HUD program and I feel like at a loss of words based off of, you know, what I may hear through the great vine. So, it's important to just give factual information when we know something's coming. So, thank you. Any other questions? I have a follow-up question to the waiting the list for Maraposa Village. How will um residents be determined? Is it like first come first serve or first come who will qualify first serve? like how how do you know how that will work out yet?

It will be first come first serve and then they'll um uh the property management company will do a verification of their income to make sure that their income qualifies.

All right, no other questions then let's move on to our consent agenda. Thank you for being here. Okay, if I can get a motion for the consent agenda for the fiscal year urban renewals urban renewal agency annual report and the gorge grown request for fee waiver. I move to approve the consent agenda. Um, by the way, are we tableabling the proclamation for Hood River reads until next time? Yes. My suggestion would be that uh that I can reach out to the library and see or to the friends of the library and ask them to come back to the next meeting. Do we need to table that?

Should be I think it's just an adjustment to the agenda. Okay. All right. I have a quick point of order. I I I thought we discussed last time um I should have mentioned this before uh that we maybe needed to extend our emergency declaration via consent agenda. Right. It was So the last one was for 30 days. You did it on January 12th. So that's on my agenda for the February 9th or Yeah, February 9th meeting. Just making sure. Not this one. I thought that's my what we would say about that. Got it. Thank you. Okay. I have a motion on the floor.

Second. Motion made by councelor Pollson, second by councelor Gakei. All those in favor? I I Yes.

All right. Consent agenda passes. Uh discussion items will be general obligation bond. Uh thank you, Council President Rivera and members of the city council. Um so this is a continuation of the discussion we're having on January 12th um about um uh selecting our um investment targets if we choose to move forward with a bond on the November 2026 uh election. Uh we uh council requested refined polling focusing on um the police station and housing only and then the combination of uh police station and housing which were combinations that weren't um specifically pulled on the uh first round of polling um but were indicated to be um favored uh by voters relatively to some of the other options. Um, so we also in the poll uh changed how the police station language uh was phrased. Instead of talking about public safety at large, uh we zeroed in on some of the discreet uh features of a police station re remodel and the direct outcomes um that would result. Um and so I have um Jake has uh uh joined us from practis and I believe we have Maggie from uh Patinkin uh research strategies to go through. Um there was also the second polling and I apologize we couldn't give it to you in advance. Uh it was uh just got wrapped up and I only got it myself today. Um so Maggie and Jake take it away.

Yes, thank you. Um so yes as uh will mention I'm Maggie Simmons from Tinker Research Strategies um and we conducted this both the first poll and now this second poll. Um so I will start um by diving into the methodology of this survey. Um we spoke to 400 likely November 2026 voters within the city of Hood River. Um we used a telephone uh professional interviewers via telephone with a representative number of landline and cell phones. Um, we used a voter filebased sample and used both quotas and waiting to make sure it was reflective demographically of the November 2026 electorate. Um, this survey was in the field January 19th through the 21st. Um, the margin of error for this data set is going to be plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. Um, anytime I'm talking about subgroups, the margin of error is going to vary and be higher just because we have fewer interviews behind each uh, cell. And then um, I think that covers it. The rest of it is pretty self-explanatory. So, I do want to pause here on the voter demographics. Um, I think it's important to flag sort of the difference between the voter universe at large and what a likely November 2026 electorate looks like. Um, the main things I would flag on this slide is that the likely November 2026 electorate skews a bit older compared to the registered voter universe as a whole within the city. Um, it also skews a bit more partisan. So, you have a lot fewer of these non-affiliated or independent voters um and more um particularly registered Democrats um showing in a November um midterm election. Um the other thing I'll note is it is a bit whiter um than the registered universe uh registered voter universe as a whole. So, um, diving into sort of the perception of these various bond measures that we tested, as um, will sort of set up, there were three different packages that were tested in this round of polling. Um, one is a $18 million bond that addresses both the police station and um, the affordable

housing. So, the way that this was framed was that it would update the city's 100-year-old police facility. This includes adding technology enabled interview rooms to support high-quality investigations, up-to-date evidence processing facilities to protect officers when handling dangerous substances, and other improvements that reduce the time officers spend in the office, increasing availability to answer calls for service. The renovated police facility will also meet earthquake standards specific to essential public safety buildings with backup power, enhancing the city's 911 emergency responder preparedness. Um, this bond would also address Hood River's status as the most unaffordable community in the state by funding the construction of additional housing that is affordable for Hood River residents with varying household incomes. And then this bond was projected to cost the average Hood River property owner $16.32 per month. We then broke up the two components to test sort of separately what it looks like um for just a police facility um and then just the uh housing um option. And then each of those uh was priced at $8.16 per month average cost. Um as well when you look at how sort of these various bonds perform um the $9 million housing only bond performs the best. That's sort of the long and the short of it. Um in this test um particularly when you look at sort of the yes to no margin. Um you can see that you know when you look at the $18 million housing and police bond um this is within margin of error in terms of the yes no vote um the intensity of feeling actually leans a bit negative um on the sort of uh bond option that would include both of those items. Um for the just the police facility um you have sort of similar levels of support you have weaker strong support um and then you have sort of similar levels of strong opposition. Um the $9 million housing only bond has the highest level of strong support overall. Um and then also um you know is notably

the only one to sort of go past that 50% mark. Um it also has the weakest overall opposition. We then asked a direct question that said, "Having learned a little bit more about what this bond could fund, which of the following project is the most important to you personally?" And when forced to pick um the sort of top priority, 38% say that uh constructing more housing that is affordable for Hood River residents is their top priority. Um one in five say that modernizing the police station um is their priority. Even another one in five who are undecided. And then 23% who say that neither um is a priority to them um personally. This next slide gets into sort of the the partisan dynamics here. Um, this is based on uh party registration available on the voter file. Um, I think notably the $9 million housing only bond gets the highest rate of support amongst Democrats and these non-affiliated and independent voters. Um, as you'll recall on that initial slide, you know, a majority of likely November 2026 voters are going to be registered Democrats. Um, but there's also a significant portion of those non-affffiliated independent voters. And there's not really much of a difference based on uh the makeup of the bond amongst registered Republicans. So sometimes we see the registered Republicans are more supportive of public safety um as opposed to other priorities. That's not necessarily the case in this instance. We see similar similar rates of support sort of for every um type of bond project amongst Republicans. And it's a fairly frankly low level of support across the board. When you look at the $9 million housing bond specifically um and demographics, we do see that uh there are gaps based on age, party affiliation, home ownership status. We already looked essentially at these party uh registration numbers. Um but younger residents tend to be a bit more supportive than older residents, though it's not a massive gap. Um you still have a plurality of seniors who say that this is still a priority to them, that

they would vote yes um on a on a housing bond. Um, and then I think something that makes a lot of intuitive sense, renters more supportive than home homeowners of this um, housing um, bond. But still you have, you know, a plurality of homeowners who say that they are also supportive. Um, I'm now going to turn things over to Jake to sort of talk um, next steps um, and sort of what they their recommendations are from a communications perspective.

Hey everybody. Uh, again, my name is Jake Wiggler. I'm a partner at PRAIS. We've been excited to work with the city in Patinkan to help you identify the path forward here. So, um, as you've seen, we've gotten some additional data. I know we had earlier in our previous presentation kind of four different bond models. I think the direction today was really to come back and focus on that police station and the uh housing uh affordable housing or housing that would support affordability in the community, I should say. Uh, and so as you kind of wrestle with these numbers and decide your path forward, I know there's a lot of different considerations, politics, policy, um, what I'm here to do is kind of talk about next steps. I think at this point we have gotten as much information out of the polling as we can. Uh, we do recommend doing an additional poll before final referral this summer. There are a lot of things that we can control, right? The economy is going to change. other jurisdictions might bring forward a ballot measure, a a bond measure between now and when you'd refer. And so we can't control those things. We do want to understand where the voters are this summer, but we do want to also take the time we have now to talk about and explain kind of the the logic and the decision of the city to move forward. And so the next two slides outline a little bit about how we typically work with cities on this front. And on some of these projects we do a lot, some we do a little bit. It just depends on kind of what is the capacity and ability of the city. So um generally we talk about communication strategy and engagement strategy. The first piece here is the communication strategy. That is how are you going to put information out into the community. And I sure I'm not telling you anything that you don't know that you know relying on this meeting or other kinds of communication channels from the city will only get you so far. Right? there's a chunk of your electorate that just simply aren't going to take the time to come to a town hall or to read every newsletter. And so what we want to think about is kind of a surround strategy approach here of how do we provide different mechanisms to

try and get that information out to the public and help them understand kind of the decision before the city and why you're approaching it the way you are. So the obvious opportunities are thinking about your existing communications channel, the city's website, the social media channels, updating the content there to provide a good clarity both about the substance at what the city is looking at in terms of bond proposal as well as the process. What brought you to this moment, other community engagement processes, I know you all have done a lot of intentional work there. I think it's we're seeing that's actually more important with the public of feeling like I want to understand how you got to this point. you know, I'm I'm fine to cosign on it once I understand that. But I'd like to kind of see the breadcrumbs of how you got here. And so putting out that information, including in bite-sized chunks, so post withformational graphics that can be easily u digested through your social media. In some communities, we do video content. We've done that in some other projects. I have a couple examples in the last slide. I can talk about that. Uh in the reality in a digital world is video can tell a story in a way that text simply can't. So um sometimes we add video content and then we can also do video uh digital promotion to reach a broader audience. Um you know you all will reach a certain level of the community with Facebook and with your other channels. Uh we also employ digital advertising programs to say no we actually want to reach all of the voters in the community. How do we put a little resources behind this to make sure that it's getting into their newsfeed and they're seeing it. In addition, we also frequently recommend mailers. Uh mailers are one of the most effective ways particularly for older voters to get a fair amount of information out there and to communicate to them what's happening on a measure. And that can be particularly important if it's a little more of a complex uh issue or you need to give them a little backstory. It isn't just kind of like the police station's broke, we got to fix it. And you know when you're going to have a little more of a complicated story to tell, you want to kind of try and take the time that you get space in a mail piece to do. So those are some of the communication strategies we reference on the next slide.

talk about community engagement. And again, I think it's also important not just to push information out, but to get feedback from the community. And obviously, the poll we had today is kind of the gold standard. It is a scientifically representative sample of the community. So, it tells you pretty accurately where the public is. Uh there is some margin of error, which you can talk a little bit about with those different numbers, but I can tell you, you know, this is a representative sample of your community. um some things that are maybe not as representative but still also good ways to get the message out and get feedback. Town halls with a focus on accessibility and inclusion by which I mean thinking about how to design those in a way that's going to get good turnout or maybe allow for people who don't physically show up. Maybe it's recorded so we can put a recording online. thinking about, you know, the the reflection of the community there, having uh language translation or other ways to make sure that other parts of the community that are non-English-speaking can still gain uh maintain, excuse me, obtain information. And then we also want to provide some feedback mechanisms there. Tell us what you think. here's an opportunity to give us some feedback and to communicate that back both to the council but also to the community to show that as you go through this process it was a learning opportunity for you to kind of think about how to further refine this proposal before it was finally put before voters. Uh a similar tactic we would usually employ is called it would be meetings with stakeholders beyond kind of those general open conversations with the community. do want to think intentionally about who are different audiences we really want to try and reach out to whether they're organizations or um sometimes community partner groups can be really important for reaching particular parts of the population. You know, your data for instance showed that older voters maybe have some more questions about this proposal. So, as we're thinking about those different stakeholders may want to be intentional and saying let's try and find a way to communicate to the older residents in the community, whether that's through retirement communities or organizations or other strategies. let's find a way to kind of make sure that we're really reaching that audience. We

also freely recommend a community survey through the city's website and social media that doesn't have the scientific validity of a poll like we just did, but it's still valuable, right? It's still lots of members of the community giving you their thoughts and perspectives on an issue and it's a chance for them to have their voice heard. So, we frequently will work to design one of those uh with the city and then put it out and promote it through your channels. Those are some tactics. We can always customize this approach as we get further into conversations with city staff about kind of what's the right fit for Hood River, but that's a lot of how we would approach this in the past. And if we go to the last slide, you'll see here's three different projects that we worked on in the last couple years. Um, and I do want to make the point that I think this process that community engagement communications can make a real difference. You'll see on this slide that sometimes you'll see a difference of 10 percentage points which as you know from the polling we got today depending on which package you go forward with may be the difference between passing and not passing. So you know one of the most dramatic ones you'll see here is urban flood safety water quality district. We worked with them in 2024. That is a new special district that covers Multma County along the Columbia River. Um but actually their district included all of Multma County. So, you had a lot of voters who weren't even familiar with flood control. And as you can imagine, flood control was a fairly uh dense issue. Um, you all are probably more familiar with it than most voters in Oregon given where you're located, but a lot of that was doing largeformational mailers to the community so they could really understand the nuances of what needed to happen along the Columbia River, why the special district had been created, uh, and also using trusted messengers. So for instance, in that case, our research had found that uh having an engineer or a scientific expert was one of the best voices to put into the conversation. So the district's chief engineer was kind of front and center in that mailer. Second example, community tilm emergency communications bond. As you can see, um, we did not move these numbers dramatically, but the really important thing we did do, and we did a variety of things, whether it was a radio ad or

doing mailers to the community or digital advertising through this uh, county's communications uh, Facebook page, was preserve that majority. You know, they were at a bare minimum of 50%. As you'll see, as we move from the initial polling to when it was actually on the ballot, opposition rose substantially. That is frequently the case in these ballot measures. We typically say if people weren't a yes at the start you can win them over but it's a lift and on balance most people are going to go in opposition and that's absolutely what happened in Tielemok as you can imagine Tieuk is not the most tax friendly part of the state and so we really happy to use our communication strategy to preserve that majority and get the measure passed. Uh last example uh maybe not as happy of a story but we did work uh last year with McMinnville to p propose a parks and recreation bond. As you'll see, their initial polling showed they were in a real danger territory. They only had 43% support for the bond initially. We did a lot of communications work with them, including mailing, digital advertising. There's a really robust campaign and they came up just short. They actually lost that measure by 20 votes. Um, so I kind of debated putting it on here, but I think it still shows the overall trend that this public engagement and communications work really can help to move the public along. It's just a question of how much. And the good news for you all is you know all the polling numbers you saw today show you that you are at that threshold. You know obviously the bond measure for housing starts the best case always good to start over 50 but if you do for a variety of reasons choose to do some of the one of the other models they're all within striking distance. And I think these strategies are really valuable for helping the public understand the decision and why you're going forward with it. So I um will finish my presentation. We can open up the conversation. happy to talk through or address anything we can.

Yeah, thanks Jake and thank you Maggie. Um yeah, so just a couple uh additional comments to add. So my takeaway from um looking at the poll is that um all position uh all the options that we pulled were net favorable um uh but only slightly so and we're in a weak starting position no matter um which one which option we choose. Um, but we do have time for education ed education and um uh an engagement which is why I asked um Jake to add uh those slides and really help you envision what that looks like um once we do choose a path. There is um we do have time now to do um a lot of uh education. And interestingly noted um when we pulled the um police station bond uh in the first poll, sorry I just got popped out here. uh in uh there was 34% favorable but in the second polling when we got into discrete features and outcomes it went up to 46% favorable. So it was almost a nine it was about a 9 point increase in favorable um when we got more detailed on on what it includes. Um so um yeah time is of the essence uh and uh what we're looking for is to get to uh a decision support you in u making a path forward and uh do also note that um choosing not to pursue a bond is also always uh an option as well. Um but uh with that happy to answer any questions or support you in a decision.

Thank you Will. All right, questions. Grant, uh, if we could go back to the survey results for those three options, um, showing the favorability like the the red and blue chart that was shared earlier. Yeah. Um, and I understand the sampling error was 4.9%. Um, so if my memory of stats from a long time ago is correct, correct me if I'm wrong, the standard deviation would be um, uh, 2 four five%. Is that accurate?

You following Maggie? I'm going to look at you as a statistician. Is this so the margin is going to be plus or minus 4.9 percentage points? Yeah, that is Yes.

Okay. So, so the the standard deviation of that dist of that distribution of sampling would be 2.4 or 5% right. Um, so is there based on your background is there a statistical significant difference in between the results of these um these results? I because as far as I can tell it's just initially looking at those numbers the standard deviations in between these is close enough that is there a the question I have is there a statistically significant difference in between these results

so there is but just barely right so that it is outside of the margin of error but it's not dramatically so when you have a margin of error plus or minus 4.9 percentage points um you know we are we are just outside of that in between in between these options right and in fact the opposition numbers are not necessarily outside of the margin of error. When you look at the um overall performance though, we do have a statistically significant difference in terms of the name. Yes. Um but it as you noted, you know, it's not a massive difference, right? Um we're sort of just outside of the margin of error here. Yep. That's my question, Doug.

Thanks. Um [clears throat] yeah I you know I I think um what I'd be interested to know is mainly around uh you know I suppose this is for will um just for us to understand the cost associated with the communication piece of it. Um I think it's going to be extremely important for for both of those. um for affordable housing. Uh I think people want to know what that means and I think as we've talked before, you know, laying out options that could be going to a land trust or uh something similar in Mariposa village, etc. Getting that out, I think would be important. And also, you know, um you know, as it comes to the police station, you know, it's not like a library or, you know, something that people go to all the time. probably have no idea, you know, um specifically what the conditions are, how, you know, certainly people seem to be just, you know, pretty um hesitant to to spend money on uh public projects like that because they they figure, you know, oh, it must be fine and they just want a nicer one. We we really have seen that it's not. Um but we're not going to be able to give everybody a tour. So I think really understanding the communications plan for me and what methods would be used. I'm encouraged to see you know sort of where things landed in uh you know um in other cities and with their measures and other municipalities and their measures but I think we'd really have to understand you know what what is the lift going to be uh how much it's going to cost etc. because because to me that's like the last mile of for us to really move the needle on all that. You know, I I guess I guess I'm you know, I'm just digesting this right now as we've just seen it, but you know, not unsurprised. Um, but I think to Will's point, as we got more context into the police station, we saw the favorability go up. So, I think communication is the only opportunity for us to really do that. Um, so see it as a key element.

Yeah. Was that I can maybe take a stab at answering that question. I don't know if it's a question. It's just it's more it's more of an observance. Um I mean Yeah.

Yeah. So um it's going to vary significantly between the housing and and police station. So police station is uh much more of a discrete easily uh understood. We know what we're doing. We have architectural uh cost estimates. Housing on the other hand is a black box right now and there's going to be a uh significantly more work in engagement to define uh and start filling that box with particulars. Um and uh you know we haven't uh created that whole uh engagement plan yet because uh we have a chicken or the egg problem with we need to know the direction before we put together um you know the budget and the approach. Um but with that too, I don't know, Jake, do you have any advice you give to local governance as far as um budgeting for um at this point in the election process for um a city our size?

Uh we always try to work within your means, you know, and I will say uh frequently come to this conversation with a number of options. Some fix costs are pretty fixed, right? I can't make the post office charge you less to send something in the mail. and we can do numbers and say, you know, this is how many registered voters you have. This is how many households we'd have to send to and help you work some through some fixed costs. Some are options, right? Uh video production does cost more. It just I mean, you can obviously imagine it takes more to produce a 30-se secondond video than it does to put together a mailer. Um but it also can be really powerful. you know, with the Telmuk emergency radio system, you know, to your point earlier, it wasn't like we went into the, you know, emergency communications office and were like, "Here's the stuff. See, it's old." Like, no one would have able to understand that. And so instead, we use community members to talk about the impact, how it tied into the emergency uh medical response, how it tied into fire, law enforcement kind of. So, we had different voices from the community kind of saying this is the impact here. So, you know, maybe if we do do the police station, we do do a bit of kind of like and here's how I have to work and here we are crabed up with each other and you know, when we have this kind of situation, it's hard to be able to do an effective interview, you know, and we can work with with the kind of city staff to kind of think about that story. or you know if we go the housing route it may be more of trying to find different community members to talk about the challenge of housing affordability right now or the opportunities as we kind of talk about those different options for what the bond could be used of how it could make an impact. So um always want to work with you and kind of figure out what makes sense for you. you know, we work we work backwards from what is what do we think is the budget that's available or you know, we have some different options and then we find the right approach and um you know, we work with big and small localities and we're happy to figure out what what's the right fit for you and get you the best bang for your buck. If it's really, you know, we

can do some Facebook posts and we want to jump in next door and get in those conversations. Can you just help us think through that strategy? We're happy to do it. Obviously, I love being able to do something that we can put directly in front of people through digital advertising or mail, but sometimes that's not realistic. So, I don't we'll come back with some thoughts to Will, but I don't think we'll be like this is the only way to go. It'll be a conversation to figure out what works for you. Thank you. That's helpful.

Yeah. And to that point about communication, one of the things that and I know you couldn't have a laundry list in there of everything that's wrong with the police station, but um one of the things that I unless it was in there and I missed it was kind of surprised to not see was uh the mention of uh water water not being portable in the police station. Like I think that if you went to voters who like yeah the they can't drink the water in the police station that that would be a really significant glaring um description of the level of problems that are there. So if we do move forward with the police station element of the bond like would definitely want to see that as one of the chief things that's communicated because I think that's pretty striking in terms of something that's not available in a workspace. Um, and also I know that there was kind of discussion about this last time. I think uh Council President Rivera brought it up, but um I do wonder that if uh in terms of you know this I would say kind of not great support for what we're proposing as of right now is if people do have hesitance about this because of other potential bonds that are out there or the you know just general nature of the economy And I wonder if you know we get to that final summer poll um if it's worth maybe including something on there because at that point we may have [snorts] you know um we parks on May which will either you know that'll be done at that point one way or the other and then potentially school in the fall and I think that we might have a even better sense of what people are willing to support because sometimes it doesn't matter whether whether the idea is good or not, you get to a point sometimes

where people just like, I just can't do this. I don't feel like I can support this just based on how things are right now. So, I feel like it might be good to include something that isn't even about the bond, the nature of the bond itself, but what are the willingness of what is the willingness of voters to just support something in general? Um, so I think Jake had mentioned that we he's recommending another um poll as we go and we even you're not setting a final direction tonight. You're setting the broad categories what we're going to invest in and we're going to refine this over the next few months. So yeah, there will be a reason to do another poll um before we finalize the ballot title. Um but I might also just council that you know uh trying to game out the kind of palace intrigue of the political strategy um is not going to be I don't think successful over the long term. I think you put out to the voters um what you can fullthroatedly say that is um needed and it's their choice at the end of the day. If they don't feel like they have enough money to support a pool bond and a police station remodel and housing and a school district, that's their choice. It's not a not necessarily a reflection or mean that we failed in any way. Um, so I wouldn't uh wouldn't say that, you know, we get wrapped around trying to game this out to ensure a win. I don't think there's any ensuring a win. There's just accurately communicating uh and giving the choice to the voters.

I understand that. But it is one of the things that we're discussing about whether we are going to go out for one in November. And one of those considerations is other municip or other uh taxing districts going going out for that. I totally understand what you're saying. Sometimes you just got to let it play out. Excuse me. Um but I I think it's worth throwing a question on there just to see what kind of feedback we get.

Um I was curious. I think Maggie, you said that kind of the rough costs were $16 for um the combo of the police station and affordable housing and $8 if we went one or the other. How long was that for? How what how long was the bond for when you calculated that out? Oh, I don't say that because I did the calculation. Okay. Uh 20 years.

20 years. Okay. Um and yeah, in the whole um to to Councilman Mitchell's point of um you know, what are the communication strategies and what are people's appetites for being able to pay for this? I think um part of the spin and this is something that you guys uh you know that Jake and his team would maybe do too in the communication side is and I've heard you use this word too will it's really an investment like sometimes when the economy is not looking as good that's really when you do want to make investments and put your money into something sound and I think investing in both housing and our police is a sound strategy. I I don't we got to the point where we're talking about what we're in support of, but I like the combo.

Amanda, can you tell me what the like per thousand is for those you? Oh gosh. Uh yes, I think it's about 45 cents uh per 100,000 um or per thousand uh for each of them. So then um let me double check that before Is that for like the two smaller ones, the eight and then Yeah, that's what I see. The 45 cents per thousand for the combo one would be like 90 cents. I think that's good. Both are under a dollar like that.

Yeah. And those are um the high that that's the high estimates rounded up. Um so we wanted to kind of do the very worst case um financial scenario when we were pulling it. Thank you. The the only other additional question or just comment that I want to make is, you know, we understand how we'd use $9 million for a police department. I too would like to better understand how we would use $9 million for housing. And you know, I like the idea of the combo, but back to Ben's point, there's also an opportunity to do an additional polling in the summer as well. And I'm not saying yay or nay, but that that is another option given that I heard today that Norcore is also going to go out for a potential bond as well. And so we're going to have competing agencies that are going to go out and trying to make really good cases for that. I would lean on maybe having a smaller bond rather than a larger bond. Um so I help us understand what we do with $9 million and how would we communicate that?

Yeah, thank you so much. Um so the 9 million there's no magic behind it. What I did was I looked at Portland's housing bond uh and what they approved and then what would that rate produce for us if we did a similar mill rate that the city of Portland when they did their housing uh bond. Um there let's see it's very maybe too buried too deep in your packet but there is the um back sheet from the housing affordable housing option. Let's see page uh 21.

And so I have there like how many units. So I look Metro and Portland um advertise how many units they've created um and versus how big their bond size was. So I divided um how much it cost them to create a unit versus what we were able to achieve with Mariposa Village. So, if we can replicate Mariposa Village, we'd be able to do 660 units um with $9 million. If we were um more at this, uh what Portland and Metro was doing would be more like 70 units. Um so, just uh it's really, you know, how can you project? Are we going to be are we going to strike lightning again with Mariposa Village? Do we even want to do another LITC deal or would we perhaps uh use this for land acquisition for um community land trust? Um do we want to um do like a Tilma County model and create our own nonprofit and get into developing um housing ourselves? There's really the spectrum is so wide uh at this point. I'm sorry if that wasn't a great

No, that's okay. And the reason that I brought it up and some of my peers may or may not know Abigail and I had a chance to go on the radio today with Mark Bailey and that was actually one of the questions that was brought up is how would you spend this dollar? And I said the same exact thing. Well, we can put X amount towards a land acquisition, X amount to a public private partnership. There's a lot of different ways. And then as I mentioned that, I thought, okay, well, we we have this that just says the total number of houses, but we've never really thought about or done a deeper dive around how much would it be for land acquisition versus replicating some of our other projects that we've done. Well,

oh, go ahead, please.

I was just going to add to that. I think that'll be a really interesting opportunity for community engagement. Um, my intuition is this polling shows, yeah, I think housing is an issue. It's really costly. I'd like you guys to figure that out without necessarily being weded to any particular model about how to do that. And your bond council will inevitably tell you, you know, yes, give some specificity to how you spend this money, but don't shackle yourself to something that then 5 years from now you feel like, oh, we really wish we could use this bond money for this. So I think that's an important thing for us to explore in those engagement conversations is how much do people want to say look I know I know you need to deal with this area tell me about how you're going to approach the problem what are the values what is the approach you're going to take versus I want to see you know blueprints in a highly specific plan and so that's the other thing we can also help you answer and kind of help you make an informed decision on is how much specificity you want to give around this these numbers. I I had a comment that was almost exactly that. And the second comment that I had, so thank you. Um, and the second comment I had just, you know, based on what I heard from Will and just kind of the nature of Oregon, you know, I was having, uh, you know, a catch up with a friend that lives in Portland, Multma County, uh, you know, etc. And, you know, I mean, it's being that five and 50 are the way that they are, this is how we do things in Oregon. And we're going to have competing uh bond measures probably all the time being being that we're we're you know we're seeing less and less you know sort of f federal assistance in some areas and you know states budgets are tight and um etc. Right? So, I I think that we there's not going to be a magic time where we're like, well, it's, you know, I I I think the the the sort of data that we saw earlier about historically how much people have been paying, you know, related to what they're paying for bonds, that that was really helpful information, but even given that

information, it's kind of like, yeah, I mean, my my head's sort of in the same place as Glattuses where it's like maybe that $9 million for the for housing can slide somehow or whatnot. But I I think you know these are things that we know based on lots of conversations, lots of research um that that the city uh desperately needs. So I think we just you know there's not a great time to do it ever. So it's we can't we can't really consider the other bond measures when we're making the decision. We have to consider the issues uh that face us and and what we propose to address those issues.

What direction do you go for it? I was going to say I think that's a great point and of course in the communications engagement work we can say none of this will get cheaper if we wait right the longer we wait to do construction or do this other work it's going to cost more and so we're trying to do it now and get you the best bang for your buck while we can point that poll before you finally have to make that final decision to refer to the voters is they might say I don't care how good of a deal this is not the right time for me and so it's a a a give and take conversation I think Amanda.

Um, yeah, I guess I'm just kind of in a just getting all this information tonight. It's really hard for me to make like know what I want to do going forward, but it would also help to know like I know we don't have the money to do the police station without a bond, but are there I know there's like the grant um that we could get. Are there other ideas if like we just do the housing on the bond how we could help the police station in other ways because like I still think that's really important and I don't just want to like leave them out to you know h just suffer in your space like [laughter] this is an important thing. So um yeah just be curious to know like what other options might look like um since the housing was more favorable. I mean, I would love to do both of them, but I don't know if that's the best way to go. So,

yeah, there's the organ seismic grant. Um, but we need to come up with the rest of it. Um, I think that was like I didn't don't remember how much it was. Yeah, thank you. Um, so there's that grant and I understand that's uh pretty um people who apply for it get it from what we've heard from the architects. Um on top of that um you know this is just how police stations, fire stations um are built. We've um gone out for bonds uh for two different fire stations in the span of never having a police station. Um what uh you know we put in um evidence handling hoods um you know so we you know could help ventilate out a little bit better. Um but you know that's it's it's It's awkward kind of um patches like that. You know, we could they've got secondhand donated furniture. We buy them new furniture and that would be nice, but it doesn't fix that they don't have good ingress egress. They doesn't fix that they have not enough square footage. Like anything substantial is going to be substantial dollars, too. And bonds are just really the way that we can raise enough uh revenue. Well, if I could jump in on that, I think the other uh question we'll get for funding and it's a really good one is what about the state? And I think uh that's a tough ask. I think there's a lot of requests at the state level for earmarks. I don't know that they do a lot of funding of uh police stations and uh in this county um the county is of course really seeking state funding for a courthouse and so again when you think about other agencies and their needs I think um looking to the state for funding outside of the seismic grant um would be really a narrow possibility for us.

So others weren't on council when the recommendations that I'm about to bring up were made, but I'm trying to understand just to follow up on councelor Gi's comment. In the past, council has expressed, okay, given this might not be the right time for police to go out for a bond, what other can we rent additional space? Like how can we open that up? And and those options were never followed up on. So, I'm not saying we should and shouldn't. What are the additional options that we have to broaden up the space, potentially rent a different location for where victims are coming in? I mean, those have been proposed in the past. And so, I'm trying to understand what would be the potential options moving forward.

Yeah. And I think um the chief is on uh as well and can chime in as um there too. Yeah, he's uh and I don't know the specific numbers, but I would want to note any space that we were to rent is not designed for law enforcement and so there would be significant tenant improvements required um in order to u make that happen. I think the county has been looking at that for a public safety space and has found that to be a really high price tag. So uh we could certainly if you wish to not pursue police uh you know facility at this time we can research that but I do think it it is not a small number.

Yeah I think that's exactly what I was going to say. I just we can do tenant improvements to the space we already own or we can rent some place and do tenant improvements. It's not going to change that neither space is um made to be a police department.

Yeah. And I completely hear that and understand that's factual information. Just bringing up additional context that in the past when the council found that it wasn't the most appropriate time to go for a bond for police station, there were other options that were discussed. Those options were not followed through and it I don't understand the price tag. So just following up on councelor Gakei's comment is what would be the price tag and then that helps us better understand what we want to go for and then potential additional polling in the summer.

Chief and I think it would be the same cost plus rent you know to because there is no other facility. Uh but if we had like if there was some class A office space, maybe it would be cheaper than remodeling the basement of a 100-year-old um building. But

um at the end of the day, if you're looking at a police function building, like any organization, you're still going to have to upgrade it to the actual specs that a police department functions as. I would hate for see a small organization be split and say two people work over here. I think we thought about that in other ways when we were looking in the upstairs and we thought that wasn't the best function for the communities i.e. even the the actual employees. So either way if you rent a space um your cost like wheel had stated is going to be the same. You're still going to have to do pull bulletproof glass. You're going to have to still have secured doorways. Um you're still going to have to have evidence lockers and processing through that. So really what you're doing is as as some of you had said I think is we're going to give that money to the landlord basically to upgrade a building and upgrade the needs that it gets where we at the end of the day you really don't foresee anything and recoup that cost in the future. So we're going to kick that can completely down the road continuously until we bring some ownership within the city to decide do we want to remodel the piece of property that we have today

so that we own. So, and and it may not be satisfactory, but I think the one thing that we did do after the that council direction is um look into buying a hood for evidence processing. Um so, that was something. All right. So, what I think I'm hearing you say, Will, is do we move forward on a combo? Do we move forward on an individual? Is that the direction that you're looking for from us tonight? Uh yes. get a suggested motion on page 16 and it's to select the targets. Uh, and I would note that if you choose both, they don't necessarily have to be as a package. They could be two separate ballot titles. That's something we can work out.

All right. Are do we want to make a motion or do we want to thumbs up how we're feeling around a combo versus an individual? Grant.

Yeah. If you want to make a motion, we can certainly make a motion. Um, just before we get that far, might I just like to point out that in our original packet when we discussed this two weeks ago, the scores for the large one that had everything in it are about the same as the ones that we just tested as well. So, this, correct me if I'm wrong, uh, the the there may not be a statistical difference in between those options in our survey results. So, uh, if we choose any of those options, we may be working from the same starting point no matter which option we choose, whether it be the largest package or the smallest. And the first one included safe routes. Safe routes and public works in addition to that.

Yes. So, thank you for bringing that information up, Grant. That's important, Ben. Oh, I was just saying again for discussing a little bit just because for me the initial round was more about like talking about the poll at at hand. Um um and counc you already stated you're you know you were somebody said team combo I don't remember who said that. Um

for me uh I'm also down for the combo. Um, you know, as Council Pollson brought up, the initial polling was stronger for the combo and there was uh research that like voters traditionally uh are more in support of things that are have multiple or larger projects have more components to it. I think both are extremely important. Obviously the police station uh that issue has been a longgoing issue and uh as Chief just brought up like even if we you know didn't end up moving forward with that uh ballot like we'd still have a building the city building that's not in good shape that needs to be dealt with um really at some point. So, um, you know, I I would also the fact that there's $2 million attached to it that we would, you know, likely get terms of a grant, like leaving that money out there is also something that would, uh, not sit well with me. So, I like the idea of going with both. I I do think it is a challenge to not have something finite about housing. And I think that one, you know, could potentially have a little bit more wiggle room in terms of what the dollar amount ends up being since it isn't as well defined. But, um, you know, I'm I'm in favor of the of the combo. And I think compared to some of the other we're going to talk about other ballot measures compared to some of the other ballot measures that are out there, 18 million is a lot cheaper than what other talking gorge other other entities are are doing. So,

could I make one comment? Sorry, just before we get any further, I just wanted to note that when we talked about um 45 cents per thousand, just you all know this, but for our audience of thousands of people out there watching right now and later is that that is uh 45 cents per assessed or per thousand is assessed value, not real market value. So when you think of what your house might sell for, that's not what we use. We use what has been assessed like and you can see that on your property taxes. So just wanted to get that out there as you continue your conversation. Thank you. So, something you just said piqued my interest. Like, what if there were two ballot measures? Um, I think that [clears throat] I'm not saying that should double the cost necessarily, but I just like I'm like I'm trying to find a common theme between the two of them other than they're both city needs. They're they're both very unique city needs, you know? So, like how do we have a unifying message with the both of them? So, at least the prospect that we could have, you know, maybe two communicated simultaneously, but two ballot measures that are unique is enticing to me. Um, is that something that we would need to decide tonight if we went for the combo as people are calling it?

No, I think that's what we would do with the summer poll that Jake was talking about because that's what's going to inform the uh final ballot construction. Jake, do you agree? Yeah. Nothing needs to be set in stone until that referral. And you know, I think you could package them together under the kind of banner of like a affordability and safety bond, but happy to kind of workshop that and continue to work with you all as we kind of figure out the right ingredients that make the most sense. Okay.

And I'll just add that it would definitely be our recommendation that we test ballot language for the bond in that summer poll because that is not something that was done in the polls to date. We tested concepts which is wonderful but we know that the one piece of information that every voter actually gets is what's written on their ballot and so that's best practice to to test that as well. Okay. Comment uh is there an would there be an increased cost in having two separate entries on the um minimal? Okay. Yeah.

What's minimal? Um I think let yeah just turning in paperwork filing fees. I think one thing we should consider if we decide to go that route and I know we're we're still like in the we're just discussing in but um when when a single entity has two options we should be prepared for somebody say I'll go with yes on one and no on the other like split the baby like you know and that would be a bummer but I guess maybe it would be better to have one pass than not neither of them I don't know but that's something that we'll all want to talk about and consider later disappointing like I think That's what you know I've seen traditionally and actually I'd be curious if Jake as as a consultant maybe you've witnessed that too. I don't know. Um but but I just I would want to be cautious of

it. Absolutely happens. I will say though I'm always surprised because I'm here in Portland and I'll look and you know we've got four tax measures on the ballot. I'm like well surely the least persuasive one won't pass. Like everyone will take that off the list and no they all pass here. But that's my problem not yours. Um, so yeah, I think there is definitely a calculus, particularly if you're hearing from the voters of I'm just tapped out, you know, like that's what we saw in the polling was not anyone thought these were particularly bad ideas. It was just I can't afford this right now. Um, and I'll just say, you know, and Maggie, you'll probably correct me because I'm like the more the qualitative person than the quantitative person. You know, looking at the last round of polling and this round of polling, if you pass a bond, it's going to be driven first and foremost by Democratic voters, which are a significant chair share of the electorate there, and to a lesser extent independent voters. You know, you will get some Republicans, but we found is that none of these packages were particularly enticing to Republicans. Raising and lowering the cost did not really shift their where they were. And so it's really about what motivates and excites those Democrats and independents to vote yes. And I think what we've seen most clearly in both polling is housing is what excites them most right now. And so that doesn't mean that has to be the only thing it talks about. It's just that's the easiest path to a victory is saying, well, we know this is the top tier issue and the top thing that motivates you right now. Let's just focus on that. But, you know, to your point, the previous polling that we did last round where we had a grab bag and we had all four different ideas, there was something for everybody in that. And so, that's part of the reason you may remember that last poll, housing was only in the kind of full meal deal. And so, that's not surprising to me that that kind of helped boost that. But, it wasn't like the other packages weren't of interest to people. It's just as you're kind of narrowing down and saying, "Well, what's most important to me?" housing rises to the top of the pile. And

I'll just add that is something that also we could address in that summer polling is how those two interact if they were separate. I will say that we have other clients school districts that have had a levy and a bond on the same ballot at the same time and that's something that we explicitly tested in their poll was how do those two interact? Are there folks who vote yes on just one? You know, and if so, which one? Um that's something that can be explicitly sort of tested scientifically in a in a subsequent poll. And yeah, I I understand your point, too. I just wanted to make sure we didn't have to debate that today, you know, like it's it's an option, but like we don't have to debate it today since you asked. [laughter]

Um I guess after this discussion, I feel better about going for both of them. um because of the fact that like yeah whether we're asking for everything or one thing it's kind of this we're starting from kind of the same point. So I think both of early are are really important and I don't think that we should leave one behind. So that's kind of my two cents.

Sure. We can all share opinions. Um [laughter]

yeah, I mean other people have said similar things. Um I I look at this sort of a different uh perspective than my peers. I look at more in terms of the expectations or demands or uh value that the public uh wants us to deliver on. And based on these survey results I see here, uh it appears to me that the public expects us to deliver on uh safe facilities uh in which our staff needs needs to work in as well as uh adequate housing um and the the the um the overlying infrastructure that may deliver on those two things. Um, so I am in favor of combining both of them together. Uh, if we're just talking about housing and police and running with that, uh, one thing that I would add to consideration is that if we just go with those two things and move forward, um, and that becomes our practice, there will be additional services or demands on service uh, inherent in just affectuating those things. Um and so uh if we are going to move forward with that as a strategy long term, we would need to consider other ways to address the additional demands on services such as roads, sidewalks, pipes, what have you. Um and that may not be a question for this particular bond, but that will be an increasing need that these sorts of decisions will generate for long-term uh perhaps future councils. But um if the the the more they those considerations could be integrated into these bonds, great. But if we just want to move forward with just housing and police and that's favorably what we receive, it's wonderful, too. So

thank you. You know, I I I hear what councelor Pollson is mentioning. And yeah, I think if we uh have additional dollars for housing and police, what does that mean as far as like workforce capacity that we have now, right? Do we have the budget to hire more planners? Do we have the budget to hire more police overall um to meet updated spaces and whatnot? And at the same time, I also think about when I look at the data that's presented to us, the data tells us that housing is the highest priority above the rest, over 51%. And so I'm I'm struggling with all of that information. I would be open to pursuing both options right now, but that we have a summer poll and that we also talk about the idea of splitting the bonds at some point because I'd rather have a bond something passed rather than nothing at all. And I'm worried about an 18 million bond. While it's definitely going to be one of the cheaper ones compared to the others, I just feel that we're competing against schools, we're going to be competing against the school district and that folks are going to have a really hard time deciding. And so I feel like they might say, "Okay, I'd rather give some money here, some money there. $16 may not be a whole lot to us, but when you're piling up, you know, the pool infrastructure that's that's um falling apart, I I really struggle. And so I'm not I feel like normally I can make decisions and I I can't. I I'm open to doing the combo and looking at more information, but that we do have another poll in the summer and at that time

understand should we have two separate bonds. Try to make this easy. Uh, I move forward I move that city council select the housing and the police option and moving forward with that for now is anticipated investment targets for a November 2026 bond election and direct staff to return with public education and engagement plan. It may be split in the future, but that's what the motion is for now. I'll second. Okay. Motion by councelor Pollson, second by counselor Wow, I'm forgetting everyone's names. Um, Cavaleri. [laughter] All those in favor? I I

Yes. All right. Motion passes. Thank you, Will. And thank you. Online. Yes. Thanks for thanks for joining us today. All right. Uh, city manager comments.

Thank you, councelor Pres, uh, Council President Rivera. Uh, couple updates, I think. First of all, some updates on immigration enforcement work that we've been doing, you've been doing and the city staff have been doing. Uh at the last meeting, uh you adopted um a sta a policy for staff um that we had crafted. Uh so now we are in the process of implementing that uh and training that with staff. So I think we have about 10 um that 10 trainings scheduled that the uh HR manager and I will be attending with uh staff. They have really good concrete questions about what immigration enforcement looks like and how it might impact their work. So, I'm really happy to be doing those trainings. Uh, I'm continuing to work with the Next Door um about scheduling listening sessions in a town hall. Uh, I've given them a scope of work. They've given me something back, given them some comments on that. Uh, hoping to sign a contract with them this week. Once we have some possible dates identified, I will reach out to all of you for scheduling because I know you are super busy folks. Uh but really looking forward to getting those done. Um uh and hearing from the community. Uh sanctuary city resolution, you adopted that last at your last meeting. Um we it took us a little while to get that posted because we were waiting for the Spanish translation from code publishing. That's how our ordinances and um resolutions are put on our website. Um, and this is fairly new for code publishing to translate our materials and post them. I think that's this is only the second resolution we've done that. So, that took them a little while, but once we got that, we got that on our social media and we will continue to um publicize that, put out our press release. So, I've heard from some of you that you're looking for more social media posts and more videos. Um, we've been doing roughly every other week on our social media. Um, but, uh, and so some of that has been just announcements or posts and then some have been videos. So, but have definitely heard that. Um and we'll try to include more um videos in our updates. Jackie, our um vendor, our community engagement coordinator, and I talked uh today about some good examples we've seen from other cities.

And so if you see good examples, pass them on and we will keep working on that. Uh and then in other topics, uh you know, but public doesn't know yet that uh we had a successful fire chief recruitment. Josh Rogers from the city of Dallas will be joining us. I keep saying the Dallas, but he's from the city of Dallas. He's a deputy fire chief there. He will be joining us uh starting February 9th. Uh and Chief Damian's last day will be February 13th. So those two will have a week of overlap and then uh Chief Damian is willing to continue to work with us to ensure a smooth transition. So very excited to um have that position filled. And then a couple of you asked me about the hotel the Marriott proposal which you know was at the planning commission uh planning commission had uh recommended denying that. Uh so the next step is at their February 2nd meeting the planning commission needs to adopt those findings to make it official and then um the applicants have 12 days to appeal after the notice of decision is uh mailed to them. So that is the timeline that they are working on.

Could they have appealed prior to that or are they obligated to appeal after that period? I think they have to wait until the planning commission has adopted their findings because not the planning commission has not taken an official action until they adopt the findings and so I don't know that they have something to appeal yet at this point because it's not been written. Makes sense. Thank you. Thanks. Great. Thank you. Committee reports. Oh, uh Dan, did you have something to mention? No, that that's correct. They don't have anything to appeal yet. Um, so it it's sometime before this comes before you, if ever.

Thank you, Dan. I don't have anything. Region One Act meets next Monday. No committee reports for me this time around. Nothing for me.

I do have a couple reports. So, I had a chance to uh watch the Hutter County Commissioners meeting. There was a lot of information, two big ones. Uh we had our district attorney, Matt Ellis, talking about financial support that is needed for an additional DUI attorney. Uh I believe that he will come to us at some point. So, I'm certain he might be reaching out to Abigail to give us that information. My understanding is that he is looking for financial support and that it would be a cost that the county and the city would potentially split a total of $160,000 to pay for an additional to pay for an attorney that whose grant will end I believe this next coming year. Um so I I expect that um based off that conversation that will get brought back to this council and presented where we can decide what to do. Uh in addition to that, there is also an update from Norcore. It sounds like they are having some significant funding challenges and looking to potentially go up for a bond as well. There was a Seruda sister city meeting that took place. Um there will there will be students that are going to be visiting Hood River March 13th through the 19th. There is a planned Hood River to Seruda trip that will take place in August. That day has not been finalized. Taste of Seruda would happen either March 7th through the 14th or potentially the 14th and the 15th. There would be an adult Seruda trip from Hood River to Seruda in the summer of 2027. And we have MCAC tomorrow. So I will give you an update at our next meeting.

Council comments. Anna, do you want to start us off?

Um, one thing I wanted to pass on was just um that Congresswoman Maxine Dexter will be here in person for our town hall this Saturday at 11:00 a.m. at the Y East Middle School Performing Arts Center. It's located at 3000 Y Road in Odell. And um this is a fantastic opportunity for all of us who are feeling um frustrated and uh concerned about how our federal government is handling many things. This is a great chance for us to tell her so she can um affect some change at that federal level. Um and maybe we could think of something positive to tell her, too. I don't know what that is at the moment, but it's always nice to try to be nice. Um I think the other item was that um at our November 24th meeting we were looking at module four of the zoning code update and I had brought up the idea of maybe inviting you know builders to come talk to council. Um, I wanted to thank Dustin and um Nikki for getting me some numbers for what and I don't know if that got shared everywhere but um that just like permits and uh cos that have been issued over the last five years just to kind of see if there was a trend. Um, I think affordable housing is still a big obviously um from our conversation tonight a big priority for this council and I think that again while we're looking at the zoning codes this is an opportunity to really understand from people who are building in our community you know and it might not have anything to do with the zoning code but if we have a better understanding of what the um hurdles are to uh providing more inventory for our community of housing options. Maybe we can try to fix that right now while we're doing zoning code stuff or at

least addressing. I think there's an overlap there. Um and I just would still want to come back to that idea of have you know some conversations whether it's a work session or a council meeting or side group or whatever. I just want to get back to that. Those are nothing permitting.

Can I I'm sorry. I wanted to mention councelor Cavaleri had asked for and I think some of you knew uh some permit data. I shared the kind of raw data with her. I was hoping to write a memo and send it to the rest of you. But I will certainly send that out. I'll send that out tomorrow so that you all have that information. I'm sorry for that delay. I just haven't written the cover memo. Uh, okay. Um, uh, so I'm gonna for my comments make a make a statement. Um, and, uh, I know that, uh, the council president Glass Rivera, thank you for leading this tonight. And I know it's the times that I've had to run these things like, you know, like it's like, thank you, Glattus, for doing this tonight. Thank you, Mayor Paul, if you're listening, for following along. Uh, it's it's just it's it's hard um to be able to compartmentalize. Um but I you know something that councelor Rivera is gonna propose uh for her council comments. I want to make a statement about that um so that we can gauge. Um I want to start with an excerpt from uh Mayor Jacob uh Fry's press conference following the murder of Alex Prey. Uh the quote is to everyone listening. Stand with me. Stand with Minneapolis. Stand up for America. Recognize that your children will ask what side you were on. Your grandchildren will ask you what you did to act to prevent this from happening again. What did you do to protect your city? What did you do to protect your nation? So, um, the city of Hood River cannot stop ICE from entering our town. Our police cannot prevent the unconstitutional fascist sort of ICE Gestapo tactics from violating our residents due process. However, through the extensive research by our city manager, our council president, myself, the rest of the counselors, we're beginning to understand the most impactful ways in which we can fight really this unprecedented unprecedented evil. Um the first is to work with local organizers who are on the front lines of this battle. Um I was encouraged to

hear, you know, um you know, testimony earlier from Tamira. Um but our participation in the county, uh uh partners collaborative is a good way to start. Uh our emergency declaration has allowed our city manager to contract with the next door to facilitate listening sessions uh that'll be forthcoming. Um Abigail's done a tremendous amount of work that's probably going to aid a lot of Oregon cities through via the League of Oregon Cities um to understand what C's role can be in this fight, right? Um we continue to work with other cities to understand their approaches. I know Hillsboro came up earlier uh where they've had success in aiding individuals and businesses impacted by this ICE invasion. Um we've uh heard a lot from our district attorney and you know I've spoken with him again recently. He's committed to helping document these atrocities within Hood River. Um, where I feel like we're falling short is really the communications plan to inform the public about what we've learned, what our city police is able to learn about each incident, what our police does do or do not or cannot do um when ICE is in Hood River, what the city can and cannot do when ICE is in Hood River. So, with some of the materials provided by Council Rivera on a communications plan and social media strategy, um I'd like us to consider these options tonight to build a framework of communication that can serve the residents of Hood River's needs during this unprecedented attack on our residents and on our democracy. And furthermore, I'd propose that we would have a dedicated uh item on each city council meeting uh to discuss, you know, ICE kidnapping events, uh our progress on action items related to this response, and proposal of new items to address. And again, I want to thank the city staff for the time they've spent to date across the city staff, across the police. Um, but we also need them to have time to run the city, right? So, if they are overwhelmed, I would like to understand how we can use council resources or funds via the emergency declaration to hire contractors to

assist us in this u effort. And I just checked our uh Facebook post that was uh you know um roughly 11 days as you mentioned uh you know uh because we were waiting for uh the translation. We're we're at like a thousand uh comment uh not comments, likes. Uh mostly likes, you know, hearts, that's that sort of stuff. That that's a that's a tremendous amount of engagement that I feel like if we had more of a social media media presence, whether it's just just with the city or what I'd like is aided by the council as well. It just seems to be the way that Hood River communicates. And uh I think we need to, you know, lean into that. Uh not every communicates not every uh neighborhood or neighborhood or city or uh demographic communicates as much as they do in Hood River on social media. Hood River tends to get a lot of the information out about this particular u event uh that that happened related to this uh via social media. Uh thanks for listening to all that.

Thank you, Grant.

Uh more brief from me. Um, let's see. I agree with councelor Cavaleri that I that we have opportunity in addressing housing through zoning and our code audit work. So, I I view that as an opportunity to actually address some of the problems that the actual goal one that we've have on our work plan that we've had on our work plan as long as I've been a counselor of addressing housing. Um, and the other thing uh that I had that hasn't been shared yet is um I am now co-chair for the bridge authority. So I'll be doing that for the next two years. So that's it. Um, I just wanted to thank Jessica Sales for coming tonight and um, I've had the opportunity to chat with her a little bit and I think she's great and I encourage everybody to kind of chat and with her if you feel so inclined and at least dig into a little bit what she stands for because it's awesome. Thank you.

Okay. Um, so I just wanted to I I brought this up a little bit in our last council meeting. You know, I was I was born and raised here. And when I was growing up, uh I felt like our specifically to immigration that our city leadership just didn't always speak up during difficult moments and that there were long stretches of silence even when many families were scared and uncertain and uncertain. And I just want to again continue to express gratitude and sincerely thank this council for being willing to do something and to say something because it truly matters. It sends a message that our local government sees people that we hear them and that we understand that it is our responsibility to the community that we serve. So this brings me to the importance of communication. It is in times like these that we need clear, accurate, and consistent communication from the city. And this isn't just helpful. It's it's essential. It's essential. As councelor Stpina, we see that there's a lot of interaction. We we need to we need to ensure that we're getting messages out in a timely manner. And I understand that we had to wait 11 days, but that's an inequity to me. And that's not okay. I think it's really important that we have clarity around the roles in the authority that we need to be explicit about which agencies have authority and what their limitations are like our city police, city staff and public works, the county sheriff, our state police and forest service and federal agencies that we can clearly identify the difference of what they look like, what their uniforms look like so that residents clearly understand that city police do not

enforce verse federal immigration laws unless there's a judicial warrant and understand the process. That distinction truly does matter and it needs to be stated plainly. Second, it's important that we have a know your rights information and I appreciate the comment that was brought up earlier on its importance and that it needs to be in both English and in Spanish. There are already many know your rights guidances. We would just have to replicate what already exists. If ice comes to someone's home or workplace, people do not open the door unless there's a court order signed by by a judge. And it's important that we help them understand what that looks like. People do not need to volunteer information about immigration status or place of birth. And the city does not ask any resident those questions for any of our services. So, they should not present false documents or sign anything without any sort of legal counsel. These messages should be communityfacing, easy to understand, and shared in both English and in Spanish so that they actually reach the people who need them. Third, consistency across all channels. Messaging should be uniform across city social media platforms, the website, police communication platforms, and bilingual press releases. The goal is to ensure that residents are not confused by mixed messages or information. This is another way that we establish trust with our community that they are learning factual information from their local government. And finally, that we have a trauma-informed tone. Our language should be calming and fact-based, fact-based, not fear- driven phrases like here's what you can do, here's what your rights are under the law, and here's how to how to reach support. Help people feel grounded and informed. Again, I want to thank the council for stepping into this moment. We need to be

clear, compassionate, and consistent with our communications. That is one of the most important tools that we have right now. And I would be open to continuing our community engagement strategy that we've been talking about for a long time. In addition to zoning and code audit and some of the other TSP work, overall tracking the success of our work plan, understanding where our bottlenecks. So that gets back to the zoning piece and to develop true key performance indicators that help us track that success so that we know where have we been effective in our policies, where can we do better because in the end we are accountable to our constituents and that this is a way that we can do that. So, it's important that we have messaging that is clear for folks and would also be open to having more of these discussions during our retreat so that we truly are focusing on how can we be an effective council, continue celebrating our successes and then understand areas that we need to do better.

Comment. No, no,

question. So, you know, um based on what you said, I I'm I would propose to the council that we work to adopt something within that framework based off, you know, Glattis's opening comments on it. Um I I don't know if council, you know, comments is the best time to discuss this kind of this kind of stuff, but I don't want to sit much longer on this. Um, you know, I'm I'm not sure what you're hearing from your part of the constituency, but people want more communication for this. Um, so I don't want to tell them, you know, wait 6 months. Um, I feel, uh, like, you know, um, I don't know if people have thoughts on how to proceed with it, but if it's not tonight, we we certainly, in my opinion, need an agenda item of the next city council meeting to talk about it. Sorry, can you hear can you hear me now? Okay. That we have asked this in several meetings, right? And and trying to better understand some of what you mentioned earlier. If there are bottlenecks, do we need to outsource our communications so that we can have timely like what does that look like? I think overall we haven't given clear direction or talked about what our strategy is like if we have an action item on today's agenda. What is the timeline look like for followup or for successful social media implementation? Is that a week? Is that a couple of days? Like I think that's the type of clarity that we need to give to staff is or that general understanding is once we sign something, how soon do we give an update to our constituents so that they understand because there's been confusion around what is an emergency declaration mean? And that was

even brought up at the county commissioners meeting, right? Like what does that mean? What does that allow folks to do? What is a sanctuary city? What does it do? What does it not do? This is all information that when folks don't have that, they just lead into assumptions. And that's where I think that we just need to be really clear. I would look to Abigail on what is it that the city or staff needs in order to do that. But I think we've all said it in in the last couple of meetings. We need clear communications about these four things that I brought up and that it hasn't happened. And so the intention isn't to place blame, but we're going to continue to have more things that come up. We're talking about polling, right? What is a an accurate or a justifiable timeline for turnaround for some of this messaging? And so I I maybe look to Abigail on what is it that you feel that you need from us to have a better understanding at least around these communication efforts. And then I I strongly suggest that at retreat we can maybe talk about our overall communication engagement strategy so that we better understand in addition to some of the other items that that my peers have brought up. I think this is the time that we can have discussion though. Yes. Santa

curious if some of the communication needs or gaps would would be better understood after we have an opportunity to listen like the listening sessions too of like you know once we actually get to sit down with our constituents and do with the town hall or the listening sessions we can hear from them like what are where do they feel like because I think we have a unique and and you brought up some good points a unique perspective of knowing like you because we're sitting in these meetings and we're hearing the the people that have come and spoken to us and we have an understanding of what Sanctuary City means and we know when we've passed the resolution and um we have that but if if we might not always understand exactly what you know where the communication gap is happening because we're seeing information um we're understanding information but I think we need to hear it from our our constituents and our citizens of um why they feel like they're not this information because I I went and looked at our city website today and we do have links to a lot of stuff. Um there's a lot of good explanations there that that's not a resource that people are using. And then I also appreciate what you said, Councilman Stpina, about like the social media is what a lot of people use in our community, but there's a lot of us just flat out don't [laughter] will not use social media. Um but yeah, and and I think some other people are are, you know, the same. they feel the same way too. So, um you know, we need to kind of find out what what is the best way to do these communications and do we really have the gaps that you know that you're mentioning and I believe that we do, but um I think maybe we can make better decisions once we've had it. Uh yeah, I agree that not all of us have heard the same thing as we hear this feedback in isolation individually as

councelor Stpina mentioned. Uh so it's difficult for us necessarily to all come to this table when we've had these individual conversations and provide clear concise direction for staff to go out and execute on something when I don't think we have provided as clear direction with clear executables to staff as we would need to provide for them to deliver on. um if we as a council I think would need to do a better job of doing that in order for them to actually uh do the things that you're mentioning to deliver. Um that's the point.

Yeah. So if and I agree with councelor Cavaleri that in order to do that all of us that was the point of the listening sessions I believe was so all of us can have a a more complete understanding of all of those things all those expectations from the entire community everybody in the community so we can make a more informed decision we haven't had those yet I would like to have those as soon as we can. Hopefully we hopefully we in the next door can get that on the books as soon as possible. I agree that yes, there's stuff to be learned from listening sessions, but I also can see that we are not like even if you just look at social media by itself, we are not doing enough there. Like I think maybe Abigail said we put something once every week or two weeks like there should be three posts a week. I feel like you know and we haven't done any videos like these that we've talked about that before. So, I like really prioritizing that and getting stuff out there multiple times a week I think is reasonable. Um, and yeah, I don't know about the outsourcing. Like I I understand that's like putting stuff on staff's plate and and that's just another thing that they have to do, but it's also really important, right? So, I don't know. [laughter] It does sound a little bit to me um that we might be talking about two kind of different things here. One, we're talking about and for people don't know, I do work in social media for a large organization. We're talking about a couple different elements here. We're talking about crisis communication about a really specific entity here, but then it also sounds like we're talking about a broader just how the city utilizes social media. And I think that's a pretty far ranging conversation that

I don't know I have a little bit of uh trepidation about in terms of I think that I don't know that that is how much of that is council's responsibility because that does seem like very much a city manager and staff related um uh discussion regarding staff and council can have input on that. Um, I do definitely think that the more uh time-sensitive and urgent thing is about this critical uh situation that we're dealing with now and we'll be continuing to deal with. Um, and I would kind of like to even though they're linked, I think it's maybe better now to like really talk about that, get that dialed in because that is like a it's a that is crisis communication that we're talking about. And then if we want to, I don't know, talk about broader just general communication about city things and and social media. um that that be maybe a a a separate conversation because that's kind of broader and that can involve a lot of different facets. So

yeah, just you know a couple things. Um totally agree you know uh like Tamira said earlier is is this an emergency? Like we should be treating it like an emergency. Um, these aren't like I'm not forming my basis of like we need to get this communication plan uh prioritized uh because I've heard from like a few people here and there. Um I've been extremely engaged going to protests, going to community meetings. I've heard tons of testimony from people like you know if we're going to do this a traditional way, yeah, we're going to have listening sessions in March town hall in April. It's not quick enough. Like can things be refined from there? Absolutely. But this this is a this is a crisis, right? And um it's it's to me like we we can't we can't wait. We we can't you know I use the the phrase Abigail pointed out boil the ocean on this. It's to me it's it's just we we've been doing all this work. There's been a ton of work done within the city. We need to we need to push that information out to people in a way that they can consume it. Um and it's 2026 and people use social media. There's a it's like we don't need to debate this for like three days, right? It's it's just, you know, some people are gonna we have newsletters. Some people are going to use newsletters, some people are going to go to the city website, some people are going to use social media. Um I want to encourage people to keep coming here and telling us and giving us feedback and writing us and giving us feedback and testimony. I want, you know, you know, Abigail's been enga engaged with different cities. Um you know, Glattus has been engaged with community organizations. We're getting feedback, right? And most of what that points to at this point isn't is is like, oh, you know, you should start working on this. There's a lot of work happening that people don't understand because we're not communicating about it.

Yeah. I think what I'm uh proposing is that we we are in a emergency declaration in a crisis situation and that we be really clear and have messaging immediately go out around the clarity around the roles and the authority and what is the difference between city police and even public works and how we do not ask anyone for any sort of immigration status for city services. It's important that we have a know your rights information so that folks understand should they be in the situation here is their rights that the constitution grants them. Um and that that information needs to be consistent across all those channels like I mentioned the website. That way whomever wants to go to the website they're finding out similar information through the website through the police department um bilingual press releases whatever it may be and that it's trauma-informed. So I think that's the first and foremost that I've brought up in the last couple of meetings that that majority of you have all of you have supported and that it hasn't happened. So I think that's the first issue is we have asked for messaging to go out and it has not happened. That's the first piece. In addition to that do we need to give better direction? Do we need to better understand okay we don't have high utilization of our newsletters for example right? So then do we then move those dollars to then solely focus on social media? Do we have staff capacity to do social media? Right? If we don't, how are we outsourcing for example? So yes, two different topics. One is we are in a crisis. We need to ensure that there is clarity to our constituents and that this information comes from their local governments around the roles and the authority that we hold. the know your rights information that's consistent across all channels. the latter part of

a community engagement framework that could be at a retreat for example we're we're in the conversations about planning what that looks like what what should be re what sort of policy do we need to create around and I'm just making this up whenever we have a resolution there is going to be messaging that goes out in social media with a week turnaround for example like we can set that level of clarity so then staff understands like here's the processes and they own that right? We own the policy pieces. So I think I'm saying I'm haven't seen social media updates. I'm trying to understand why. How are we more explicit in a longer retreat work session where we can talk about that so that we can be successful? Because when we don't, we have comment like we had today. You're not doing your job. When we've had that discussion like yes, we want to ensure that folks understand the rules. That is that is our job and our constituents are not feeling like we are treating it as such. And so then that creates distrust with us as as a council and that is what is essential that we sustain because we know we are doing our best, right? We are responding to our constituents needs and wants as they arise and we will continue to learn more through these listening sessions, but they're asking us to act now and we haven't delivered. So, I think this needs to go out sooner rather than later. And I'm trying to understand when can we expect to see this because it's really important that folks are hearing it directly from their city government

and that it's not that it's factual information as opposed to hearsay that you know anyone can now have a social media account and create false narratives or misstatements. Thank you all for these comments. I think I um I want to summarize what I think I'm hearing because I think there's a lot of different threads here and I I'm definitely missing pieces, but I think I'm hearing uh uh when you said you want to hear like what's happening. I mean uh we can put out a video this week. I think we uh Jackie and I have talked specifically about something that shows this is what uh our police look like. This is what our cars look like. This is what our public work staff look like. this is what their cards look like. Uh that feels like a very straightforward concrete piece. Um and we can continue to work on this. We have been posting I mean we like I said we've been posting every other week. I'm hearing that's not enough. Um three times a week is probably not able for us at our current staffing level to do. I can look into what it could look like to outsource if that's the piece. I also want to be careful about balancing uh the amount of messaging on one topic versus all the other crisis. We also have other topics we need to cover. In fact, the last uh development code piece uh question went out. So that will be going uh out in email as well and we want to bring that back to you because I know that's a critical piece for the uh you know your number one uh work plan. Uh so um I already had scheduled uh our community manage uh community engagement manager or um specialist to join me um for my one-on- ones at the end of February. I can see if we can move that up. I'm not sure if that worked from a scheduling point of view if some of you are willing to reschedule with me on a different day uh when we could the three of us could meet you and Jackie and myself to work on community engagement pieces. Um uh I'm not sure do you want

to see a plan or something next time or just uh you know I guess uh between now and the next meeting it certainly send you out to like here's what we're we've got planned uh for feedback if you just want to comment with me or send me good examples from other cities. Um I had not planned on putting together a formal plan on all of our social media engagement for the next several months but can certainly do that if that's something you want to see. Let me let me know what what deliverable you want from this conversation.

Yeah. And I I think that's the difficult of this, you know, the difficulty of this context, right? Is, you know, um we have to be cart before the horse, right? Is kind of like what is is the way that I feel we can't like develop a social media strategy or something like that that we don't have yet to be able to inform, right? Um, like I said, I'm going off of, you know, I I don't know how many hours I've spent on this particular topic, but it's a lot, right? Um, and you know, I think it it serves the city, it serves the police department, it serves the council for us to do this because calling back to what Glattis said about her growing up here and just like there wasn't a lot of information when there were, you know, these types of moments. And I think what people are seeing, you know, uh, out there is, you know, a lot of cities that have a lot, you know, large cities that have a lot of money and lots of police force and all this kind of stuff, um, responding. And I know we can't hold ourselves to that same type of standard. But that does not mean that we can't, you know, act like this is an emergency and and just put out some some information, right? Like the hardest the harder thing is the work is getting people trained is understanding what our roles are versus you know the chief putting out a statement or Abigail putting out a statement or working with us to put out statements when there's an event or when there's uh you know something that that that's significant in in the community right so to me like you know you you tell us the best way to communicate that and and we will do that if it requires an agenda item if if tonight it's you know like specific actions but I think I think you I just would hate for the work that's getting done and also the work thinking about this issue to just be lost in like council comments. And I think that's partly our fault for not saying let's make this an agenda item um before uh because we want to make sure that you have actionable items and you know like

like I said I think Glattus did a good job sort of laying out that framework and and bullet pointing it and everything but we we really need to hear from you like what's what's the I've heard all of your feedback all this kind of stuff. Now, based on that, like, you know, this is this is what I think these action items should be. Do you agree that that sort of stuff, right? Like, what's the best way to communicate to you in a crisis-l like situation like this to to be able to get some some actions sooner than later? But then again, build upon it. Um, and then if we, you know, we talk about something that's more of a more holistic strategy or even this part of the part of this strategy, um, at at like like an event or within a town hall or something like that, I that's what I'm trying to understand.

[laughter] I mean, you're nodding like does that make sense to you? Like, you know, do we need to give you some Abigail, go do this and vote on it tonight? Like that's that's the kind of stuff that I'm

Yeah. How how uh I sorry process. So, just thinking like perhaps uh we have a department head meeting tomorrow. we can uh you know I shared the uh email and those points and so we can talk about like what do we think we can accomplish with the resources we have or or then come back and ask you what resources we need and then I can um just loop back with all of you by the end of this week with some things but I I think that we already are on track. I mean we are we have done three videos already. Um perhaps they were not the videos you were looking for about how you can participate from court you know from um remotely. Uh, councelor President Rivera did one after we did the emergency declaration. The mayor did one early on. Um, and then we've been regularly posting announcements. So, I'm hearing I don't know if it's different than that or more of that. Uh, but we can talk about that tomorrow and review all the things that we've heard. Um, and then come to you if we need additional resources to do that. The other thing I did not mention earlier is uh I heard from you in council comments a couple meetings ago, maybe it was last meeting. Um a request or a desire for social media accounts that you could have as elected officials. city attorney has given me a first draft of a policy that I will review and I will bring that to you for conversation at the next meeting because that might also help if you are able to use an official um channel to communicate with people directly to supplement what the city is doing besides um because yeah at this point I clearly hear a strong desire to communicate with the public but you're having to wait for staff to do it when not directly yourself

and I just want to respond just directly to what you said about you know like the videos that have been produced I think what I've been hearing hearing people ask for more is you know the sort of like what can the police do what can't they do

um when there are events we speak directly to that particular event um you know I I think it's it's difficult for those to understand that you know we like it's not like the the police know when there the police aren't told when when I is showing up and the police uh aren't in such numbers that they're going to be able to see every event that happens that happened quickly and all that sort of stuff, right? But people don't understand that, right? So part of it is is to me responding to specific events when they happen in a timely manner to weigh in if there was a police presence, what did the police observe, you know, or like not not to the detail level of like an investigation or anything like that, but people are asking us what they're seeing in other cities where, you know, if the police do respond that they've taken down a statement or something like that, providing it to the district attorney um or just saying like, "Hey, we we realized there was an ICE event today. Hey, the Hood River Police were not on site, did not respond. You know, like quick statements like that to be able to build trust. That's not just like, well, you know, well, here's our policy every time something happens, like speak to the event, which I realized takes a little bit more time, but it also doesn't need to be like fully produced content. It's just, you know, I mean, like the day after the Dows did their uh wasn't a resolution. What what's what's the best way to say it?

I think they had a resolution that they called the statement of concern. statement of concern like you know the statement of concern like the next day like you know their police chief had like a cell phone video you know what I mean it wasn't like some huge thing right um and that's not what I'm expecting people to do on city staff is like spend all sorts of time like refining messages is just like speak to to to singular events but also you know continue to inform about what the city's role is what the city's role is not what police are able to do what police are not able to do that sort of thing right because um I think a lot of confus confusion and a lot of perceptions are out there. People read about other cities in Oregon where there's, you know, allegations of of collusion with with local law enforcement and local city officials to to aid ICE, you know, and people are are concerned about that. So, like when they don't see anything from us, they're like, what are they doing? Right? It's it's just that sort of thing versus tons of uh, you know, produced content that has to be labored over. It's just speaking to to things to to let them know that, you know, we are aware of events when they happen or if we're not aware when things happen, we didn't have a presence. That's the kind of stuff that I think that I see other cities doing.

Um, is this where we would usually just say, let's have a thumbs up, like do we have four thumbs up to like have something on the agenda for our next meeting or like I mean what is this? I'm I guess I'm looking for also like I'm looking at you guys because you're kind of leading the conversation and giving some direction to Abigail, but I'm also what what are you asking from us and is it something that we should have on the agenda so that the public has an opportunity to weigh in or how like I think that I mean which we've heard them weigh in too but um I just what what are you asking from? I'd like an agenda item next next uh next time. Right. So, yeah. Um, who will support that?

I was just saying this feels like almost like a work session. Like it does and that's just it. This is where I'm Yeah.

I'm really It shouldn't have to be this difficult. Like we we've asked for this several meetings ago and and it hasn't happened until you know the Hood River News the next day that we we declared or excuse. had a a press release the day after and it was just a visual you know sanctuary city like that was fast how do we do that do we need to be that explicit I don't think so right I think it's very clear that okay moving forward whenever something happens we are t getting information out in a timely manner and that it comes from us though from from their city government do I appreciate a thumbs comes up. Can we continue having discussion around communications? Yes, absolutely.

Me? Oh, sorry. Oh, okay. Um, I lost my train of thought. Uh, yes.

Well, yeah. If I What I think you're getting at here is like, you know, we've been doing all this kind of stuff peace meal, right? Like if we have an action item and that what I would propose is like kind of what Abigail is just like, "Oh, I'm just piecing together this information right now. I need to meet with the department heads. Kind of doing a readout from there. Uh and having us discuss it versus just like more brainstorming sessions, you know, um so to speak. Um that's what that to clarify what an action item would be. It'd be that um because we we've given a lot of information already. It just needs to be put into a succinct thing that we can, you know, vote on or whatever it needs to be.

I think May I may I chime in? Uh since I do the social media and press releases and website updates, um I think I I have a clear clear understanding. I think um this has been a discussion point for for several uh meetings now and um I think there were maybe some maybe misunderstandings of like what is crisis communication? uh what you mean by a crisis situation. Um as well as like the timeliness of things and what the expectations are. Like I tend to be like, "Okay, I want to make sure the website's updated. I want to make sure all of our things are there and then I can link everyone to our sources." What I'm hearing is that you want something out quickly. We can worry about getting that all the like exact like here's the actual resolution language. We can let people know when that's available, too. but you just want people to know right away when the decision has been made and when something has been discussed. Um, and I think that that's absolutely something that we can do. Um, and so I mean it's up to you guys if you guys want to have this be another agenda item, but I think there's I have several bullet points of ways to improve the communication in the way that you're asking for without it having to be. Um, I think Abigail and I can come up with a plan and perhaps uh present that to um is one of the next council meetings or something like that. Um or um in one-on-one discussions. It's up to you guys how you guys want to see that. But I definitely think there's a few bullets here that are very accomplishable. Um yes, there has been robust discussion. Um I think we thought we were maybe meeting some of those but we're hearing that we're not. So yes.

And and the the other thing that we want to understand is like you're asking us to do too much if we are like you know if um and you know to the point that I made earlier like if if you need help because like I know Abigail spent tons of extra hours on this kind of stuff, right? And like I said the way I phrased it earlier is like you know she has a city to run, right? So like please tell us if if it's unreasonable and we can discuss if we can use things like out of the emergency fund for now before we have some sort of developed social media strategy down the road or or communication strategy. Social media is just a component of it like let us know right like and and we can discuss that on council as well. let us know how council can help, right? Like, you know, what what can we do, you know, to since we're in a crisis right now, what can we all do to sort of band together and ensure that it's not just falling on Abigail and Jackie?

I kind of building on what counselor Fina was saying a little bit earlier. Um, I feel like in general we just need to be like a little bit more real and not as like theoretical or something like I feel like so far our posts have just been very general and broad, but it's like let's be real with people. We know this happened today like and not just be like oh well if something happens or you know so that's one thing that I wanted to say. The other was would it make sense or would it be helpful if like you know if we know that something happened could we check in with you guys and be like you know we heard this happened you know that it happened can we get you know like so that there's more people that have ears and eyes on the ground that we can know more what to report on instead of like well maybe you didn't even hear that that thing happen so you don't know to report or put a post out or something. Um I don't know if that would be helpful or just annoying. [laughter] Um

and uh let's see what was the last thing. Um I guess those are my two main things. But yeah, just and not having it to have again like Doug was saying like it doesn't have to be this grand production. It just needs to be simple and real and I think that's the important part and it can be made quickly like Yeah.

Um I I I just like to know what the balance is because again not being a social media person but like what is the balance for a realistic time frame? And I want to thank you for making those comments because you made me think about this. But what is the realistic time frame for being immediate but also verifying truth? Because one of the things we don't want to encourage city to do um is be reactive and you know propagate misinformation. So what is that balance and what are what are you guys seeing and seeking as far as direction for um being proactive in our communications but also being accurate because I think that that is hugely important. you know, I'm a part of the rapid response network and so I mean the second something happens, I've had many conversations with the folks on there that before any sort of public statement goes out on anybody's social media platforms. We need to validate and verify that this is truly happened and that does and they've done a great job since. I will say that early on there were some times where they'd put something out and yeah wouldn't do that. And so as we think about timeline, do we need to be really explicit with staff of we expect a turnaround to be x amount of time to give us time to validate and verify? You know, I I don't know. I think that just these points that I brought up, we've discussed it, we've agreed on it, and that it hasn't happened. And so as I think about that, you know, as Doug mentioned, are there additional resources that are needed? Do we need to give additional direction around timeliness? Right? And all of those pieces like how do we how do we help how do we help give clarity moving forward so that we have constituents that feel well informed by their local government and that feel that we are truly acting

upon this emergency situation. Right now it's immigration. You know, two weeks from now it could be another flood, for example. and that we still need to have the same level of emergent communication that goes out. You had something to say. Oh, I'm just struggling a little bit about like what is the best way to do this cuz right now one of the things I'm thinking about this is kind of an awkward situation where we have seven people here essentially telling one person how to do their job. You know what I mean? Um, well, I just saw that Monday.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, I would say that's more Abigail's job. Um, in this situation, but

redirect policy, right? Then Abigail helps us understand process. We haven't had an update, which leads me, do we need to have a better conversation or a more clear conversation around policy to understand the process? Yeah, I'm just saying that we're talking about some like really specific things here about like basically trying collectively here trying to it feels like we're trying to come up with like a social media plan and strategy where we're into really finite details and that's the thing that I'm having a little bit of trouble and I'm strictly talking about like what is the best way to do this or like efficiency making sure we're getting the outcomes that we want that's all that I'm I'm saying this I wasn't terribly prepared for this whole discussion to happen at this level. I do think it's worth having. I just want to make sure we're doing it in a way that is like works best. I do think that NATO's level is that like you have uh I'd say like three or four things on there that are like crisis level that need to be addressed immediately in terms of you know a post about no credits um you know a post about what you can do if uh ICE comes to your door like stuff like that that like we're prioritizing these four uh you know things that need to be held sooner rather than later. And then I don't know if it's like an agenda item at the next meeting or you know like a work session about this or or what. Um, I'm just struggling a little bit with like how this is going in terms of like making sure we're we're organized about this and make sure that staff has has clear direction about like what are the policies for the different kinds of communications because again we're not talking about this is not all the same

communication that that we're talking about and that's this is a this is a a pretty sizable constitution I I think as somebody who works in this arena. So that's saying

can I bring you a, you know, immediate here's uh what we're doing around immigration enforcement messaging by the end of this week. Uh and we will get something out this week in video format. Uh and then the bigger conversation around communications and pieces, you know, we can put an agenda item on and work to refine that. Uh and then as I said uh Jackie was planning to join me at the end of February for bigger comma community engagement framework and so maybe we can continue that conversation. So if we can have an immediate thing by this week and then uh a medium-term which is in two weeks in your next meeting uh and then a longer term uh end of February and into March.

Sure. Please amend that. I think that's amazing. Um so yes, please. Um yes and as it pertains to rapid response like and I want everybody to understand this too. How does rapid response uh community organizations communicate to the city when there's events that are happening? Um people need to understand I mean they're almost out there 24 hours a day right Glattus like it's that they're they're they're tracking vehicles. they're ensuring if those vehicles are uh if they don't have license plates or whatever, is this a known vehicle? They work with the PIRC. Um there's people that are out there that are doing this all the time. And it makes me think to like when Tamir was here earlier like don't make me do this all by myself.

So what I'm telling you all is the reality that like what's happening out there is Rapid's response is like communicating through like Tamira's travel service on Facebook. Like that's how stuff's getting out right now. And I to to further clarify her statement, she's like, "Help me, right? Like you're you're the city. I'm like I'm just somebody out here that's like volunteering, right?" Like it's Yeah.

Um thank you for that. And um I think we did have one uh post where someone had uh seen a police vehicle shortly after verified ICE activity and we did put out something saying we were not involved. Um but I don't have a good sense of how rapid response is verifying their information because of course we are not privy to this information. So what I would appreciate if uh if you know people who are and I know it's a very much volunteer organization but if I could talk to someone who is in charge and they are willing to share their information of how their information is verified and what their processes are um then perhaps we could create a relationship where I would feel good about rumor control and I mean because the very last thing I want the city to be responsible for is creating a culture of fear or sharing false information. So, um, but it would I really appreciate that. It would be a great opportunity to talk to someone who is, um, you know, leading this effort and can talk to to me and to the police chief about the practices and policies that they're following. Not about specific events necessarily, although happy to hear about it, but you know, what does a how what kind of information can a government agency receive that can be verifiable and can be safely shared with our public? Yeah, I'm happy to help coordinate there. What I can talk about the process is that um license plates are being vetted and when and I've done this myself, you have the ability to see whether that's like a private owner or whether that is some sort of government agency and and that has is what has been utilized in the last couple encounters. um where initially sometime last year they didn't go through that process to validate and verify. So yes, happy to connect you so that you're hearing directly from those that are a part of that. Um there are several individuals that that do this on a 24-hour basis.

And can I verify again just follow up with that because what you just said made me think of a question of um I think city um social media can be helpful in the icewood. there was an ICE, you know, uh, action in our city. Our police were not involved or our police were on the scene or whatever. It could, you know, they were in not involved in the enforcement, but maybe helped with traffic control afterwards, whatever. Um, I am not sure what you just said. If you're a little bit hoping that we would also say a vehicle that we think might be ICE is cited in the city. Okay. You know, I think we that we've talked about this as a council where

when an incident does happen that we be really clear to folks because it happened last June where our local police department was present and that created misconceptions and that we are debunking those misconceptions like our police is there for traffic control whatever right to report to make sure that our district attorney should something illegal happen there there's a report they're there to great essentially protect you. Yeah. But not a we think there's a vehicle in town that was No. Perfect. Thank you so much. No fear based. Like if if rapid response is like hey we have a very like we we think we have a verifiable claim that ICE is in the community. I want the police to know that

because we see what's happening when these events happen, right? People are getting more charged up. There's going to there's going to be more interactions. Um their tactics are you can they're not trained and they're just they're they're inciting violence and I'd want the police to know that they're there just for that just like well we better keep an eye on this in case there's an event right because I think the perception again out there is like oh they're facing know everything that happens in the city that's not true right like it's it's not like they're they're they're doing their job right right so and they don't get informed when anybody comes here so it's more about like well we think we have a verified claim and something you could you could give to the police department or whoever is helping coordinate you know our response to that sort of thing it's It's information that people think we have that we don't.

Great. I look forward to the conversation. Thank you.

Also, I know we're saying like, you know, our police, our police um almost like the perspective from the city social media accounts. Um I also I don't know who runs the Hooded River City Police Facebook account if it's multiple people. Um, but I would also maybe like to see the city's police account uh also put out some of this information that is particularly um I don't know, you know, law enforce I'll call it law enforcement adjacent. Uh especially because putting on my social media hat city's Facebook page has 4,000 followers. The police page has 12,000 Neil's pumping his fist. Uh 12,000 followers. So that's a lot. that's, you know, that's a lot of eyeballs out there. So, um, if that's something [snorts] that can happen, I think that that would be, uh, another good way to get the message out to to more people.

Sounds like a clear goal to grow our communication efforts. All right, we are going to go into executive session. The city council will now meet in executive session pursuant to Oregon Revised Statute 192.660. 6601 to conduct deliberations with persons designated by the governing body to carry on labor negotiations and Oregon revised statute 192.6601H to consult with council concerning the legal rights and duties of a public body with regard to current litigation or litigation likely to be filed. Representatives of the news media and designated staff are allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience are asked to leave the room and we will end public broadcast. Um, no decision may be made nor final action taken in executive session. The executive session is anticipated to last 20 minutes. At the end of the executive session, the city council will be adjourned and no action will be taken. We will now discontinue the live feed and recording.