City Council - workshop

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the City Commission Work Session. It is September the 8th, and we all know what today is and what happened 60 years ago today. So we are going to be not celebrating, but we're going to make a note of the fact that today is Star Trek Day. So there you go. I'm sure everybody knew that, correct? Yes, thank you. Yes, I figured, yes. All right. So on our agenda tonight, we have some items, but first we'll have the roll call by Mr. Jacob Wiley. Jacob S. Wiley. Commissioner Scott Wilson.

Here. Commissioner Adam Marl. Here. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Here. Commissioner Rocky Smith. Here. And Mayor Denise McGriff.

Present. So let's start out with the Clackamas Park redevelopment planning and public engagement process update. Say that three times real fast. I'm serious, Tom. You have to say it three times real fast. Excellent. That's a point for you, Mr. Chairman.

All right, good evening, Mayor and Commission. Scott Archer, Parks and Recreation Director. And also helping with our presentation tonight is Kirstie Haswald from AKS Engineering and Forestry. Kirstie's our project lead with our consultant team. And then I think you all know Tom Kissinger, our Parks and Recreation Deputy Director. So this evening, we're gonna give you an update on the Clackamas Park redevelopment planning process. This is a commission goal, as you know. We provided an update on May 12th at the work session. And in the time since then, we've completed extensive community outreach. We further refined our development plan. And that was based on community and commission input. In the time since the last update, we've also received great news. And I think you've probably heard about that the city has received some substantial funding towards the project. We're already, yeah, thank you. We're already well on our way to funding portions of the project. We have been awarded nearly $2 million in grants from Metro for collectment redevelopment. We're gonna cover this in some additional detail in the presentation here in a few minutes. And so the conversation tonight is what we wanna do is just update you on where we've been since the last time you heard from us, where we're going and the work remaining that's in front of us, there does remain some key components for us to still study, even though we've examined a lot of the park redevelopment. We also have some kind of outstanding questions and some decision points that need to be answered. So what we'd like to do is actually Tom and Kirstie are gonna walk you through kind of the majority of this update. And then of course, we'd love to answer your questions and what we're hoping for as well as some conversation and some potential direction from you, or at least your feedback on kind of where we're at, where we're gonna go with the rest of the project. So with that, I ended up with a clicker, but let's get that over here.

And I'll ask you my question now. So I was interested in getting an approximate, not a specific number, but so we, you said we have about 2 million and then I presume we have some other portion of monies that we're going to be adding to it, at least for the initial phases, so.

Yeah, we can certainly talk about some of that. I think that'll be part of our discussion, but yeah, we're gonna, you know, we think, so ultimately what the end goal here is we'll have a final redevelopment plan that will be approved at some point, and that'll come to you, of course. And we believe that that will be, you know, we want that to be basically something that we can then go and seek further funding even beyond, I mean, again, we're already receiving grants and we haven't even completed the process yet, but there are some potential city funds and other sources of funding that we'll be exploring. So we're gonna try to do what we can to put a full funding package together. It's probably gonna be, you know, in increments over time, but yeah, we'll address that further there. you talked earlier about last time you talked about different phases is that still what we're talking about yeah it's it's likely that we'll have to develop this in in phases as the money is available when we have funding and yes so that certainly is still part of it so i think we'll i'll turn it over to tom and kirsty

All right, thank you. And excited to talk about Clackamas Park and share some updates. We'll just do a brief recap, kind of the process so far before this current process. So the Clackamas Park Master Plan, which was really a process that was run between 2021 and 2023. It was a public planning process with a large variety of community outreach opportunities. It was eventually adopted by city commission in 2023, and it really highlights five key community priorities. Number one is a public plazas. Clackamas Park was really envisioned as a place for people to gather for events and informal activities. The second was river access, and that's really all sorts of different river access. One of the things that I like to say when we talk about this project and that we've heard from other community members, Oregon City is a riverfront town that does not have a riverfront park. Clackamas Park is a park along the river, but it's not necessarily designed to be a riverfront park. This is addressing that. Art and interpretation. We wanna honor the park's historical and ecological significance. This is our largest park in the system. It's our only regional park, and it is a very large ecological habitat area. There's also a lot of opportunity for the historical interpretation to take place at this park. Play and recreation, you know, this is one of our few parks that actually does not have very much opportunity for play. Today, we only have a single set of swing sets. This new plan envisions a lot more play opportunity for a variety of different recreational activities. And green space, kind of going back to that idea of this is our largest park, our largest regional park. Um, really having that be green space accessible to the public, uh, and the Clackamas park master plan envisioned converting the existing RV park area to flexible restored green space. We'll talk a little bit about outreach, uh, so far, and then I'll turn it over to Kirstie to talk a little bit about some of the engagement numbers. So for this process, we had three major key touch points, uh, and all of this took place between may and July, 2026. The first major touch point was a public open house, which was held right here in this room on May 21. It was hybrid. So we also had an online option for people to join. It was a 20 minute presentation followed by a 30 minute q&a session. And then we had about an hour and a half for people to engage with the consultant team, learn more about the project. Immediately following that open house, we moved into an online open house, which was basically a recreation of that event that people could visit at their leisure. That was very helpful for us this summer as we went to a variety of different tabling events. You saw us out at concerts in the park handing out flyers, different events throughout the city to make sure people were aware. And then that continued outreach at summer events. One of our large opportunities was this timeframe worked nicely with the Lamprey Festival. So we were able to partner with Yakima Nation and have a booth down there where we were able to do a lot of on the ground tabling, talking with people about this project, hearing from the community and from visitors about what they would see, not just for the day-to-day use, but also for event usage. Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of those engagement numbers?

Yeah. Put the mic on there, sorry. Yes, we had a very good response. As you can see, the online story map views, which was kind of our online open house, received 600 views during that time frame, which I think is fantastic. It was available in both Spanish and English language, so we feel like we got a good demographic there. And in total, we had 57 people that responded to the survey online and with hard copies that were passed out.

So here are some key findings that we found during that outreach. There are many areas of broad agreement in the plan and these we kind of feel like are the low hanging fruit for a phase one, right? So number one is just improved play amenities and playground features. Generally speaking, people are very excited about the opportunity to actually play and recreate at Clackamas Park. The playground concept is well received. One of the only comments we really heard was that they want bigger and better. which everybody always does, but it's a budget conversation, right? Generally speaking, though, the feedback was very positive about the playground. Bigger and better playground? Larger and larger. Oh, okay. Yep. Yep. More and more space. One of the key features in that was the water table concept, the idea of some sort of water amenity down at this site, which makes a lot of sense. It's a riverfront park, and there's a really cool opportunity to turn that into kind of a piece of um, play and an interpretation. Uh, the next one would be expanded recreation opportunities. We shared with the community, the concept of, uh, converting about half of the existing horseshoe courts into pickleball. That was very well received. Uh, we did also talk with the major club, the horseshoe club that does hold their tournaments down there. They're amenable to that solution. basically leaving the covered courts, I think we ended up with eight total courts, horseshoe courts that remain, the rest get converted into pickleball courts with permanent nets. So improving accessibility throughout the city. The improved access, circulation and accessibility, this is really just about park access. People want to be able to get into the park. We had the unique opportunity really to be doing this process at the same time as the Community Choice Grants process, which was also doing a lot of outreach. And one of the things that we consistently heard through both our process and theirs was that people really want accessible river experiences at Clackamette. That was actually one of our funded grants that we'll talk a little bit more about. So this is something that people, they wanna be able to get in there, they wanna access the space, they want better circulation. And from that is an enhanced river access and experience. So a wide variety of water-based recreational activities occur in this site. And there are many different user groups that are excited about ways to improve that river access. Everything from, you know, getting in the water and just swimming up to motorized boats. Shade gathering spaces and protection of habitat, wildlife and natural character and green space. These two kind of go together. But really people like the green space that's down there. They like the mature trees. They want to preserve that. They want to preserve the habitat and want to give us opportunities to have space where we can do more down there. Those are the areas of broad agreement. Kirsten, anything to add?

No, I think I'll touch on those a little bit later. Okay.

Areas where we found some opportunities for refinement, really balancing the motorized and non-motorized boating needs. So one of the things we heard is there's obviously a large community that does desire a boat ramp in this location. There's also a large non-motorized boating community that wants to have the opportunity to launch from this site. We're trying to find the right balance, the right mix of access for both of those groups. The configuration of the boat launch. The joke I always like to say is every boater is the best boater and they all know how to do trailering their way is the best way. And so everybody has a lot of opinions on where the boat launch should go. But, you know, I think the important thing is that we're studying this to make sure that the choice of where this boat ramp boat launch would eventually land is durable for the long term and is going to serve the community for as long as we can. parking demand and vehicle circulation. This was another area where we consistently heard from people. It's just a concern. It's a, you know, 25 acres is a lot of acreage, but it's actually relatively small for a regional park. There's a lot going on at Clackamette. This plan does include adding new things. Where are all those people going to park? That's definitely something that we need to balance and definitely an area for refinement as we move forward. And then areas without clear consensus, kind of the future of the RV park, we basically ended up 50-50 split, whether people think we should operate an RV park or not. So that is definitely an area where there is no clear consensus on how that moves forward.

All right. Thanks, Tom. I'm just going to go into a little bit more detail on some of these areas and kind of where does this leave us now? So we are working on design refinement based on this feedback. And our plan is to have an updated redevelopment plan before you later this fall. Areas that are going to proceed as designed for the most part include the playground and sports courts, as well as removing the current RV park and creating that green space and community gathering area. And as Tom and Scott have mentioned, there's some grant funding that's coming along with that. Areas that we're looking at a little bit closer are primarily centered around the boat launch and the amenities that serve that. And right now we are conducting a new survey of the river channel and we'll be using that to look at a new hydraulic design assessment just to make sure that we are choosing, looking at the feasibility of that and the best location for that boat ramp based on what is currently out there.

Is there any good location there? I mean, I know we don't have the study, but I'm glad we're going to do it, but I have a concern.

That's why we're taking the whole frontage there, so that will be considered in that assessment as well. It's not showing up.

He needs to put the hand up.

Okay. Yeah, basically from where you see the new boat ramp, the whole way down to the bridge, we're going to survey the whole bank of the river.

It has changed quite a bit since I think the last one was done 10 years ago. Next slide, please. All right, play area. So the community was very supportive of this area. As Tom had mentioned, over half of respondents felt like not only did it work as a signature playground for the city, but also met their needs at the park. As Tom mentioned, we heard a lot of people really excited about the water play element for that. So as we move forward on that, there's some funding which Tom can expand upon, but we will start looking at refinement and finalizing that, and there'll be some additional opportunities for community outreach as that happens.

Yeah, and just to expand on that a little bit, this site was selected as a community choice grant for nature play, which really helps us expand this park. and the playground, the grant is 157,000 from Metro and would have a match of 78,000 from the city. That would be eligible for SDC funding since it would be expanding access.

And along with clay, this was one area where we received really great feedback on that. Over 82% of respondents liked the idea of reducing the horseshoe pits from 20 pits down to eight and then accommodating four pickleball courts as that. We will keep, as Tom mentioned, the eight that have the covered area for the horseshoes. And then the plan also allows for the future expansion of the skate park as well. All right, gathering areas here. We feel like Clackamas Park can really become a premier community space for Oregon City. The proposed design received a very broad support and I can say just on a personal level, that was one of the things that people are most excited about when I talked with them during our outreach. This will remove the RV park and create kind of multi-space lawn stage area.

I'll talk a little bit about the grant that we've received from Metro for this. So this is, this is the section of the park that was funded through the Metro nature and neighborhoods capital grants program. So it's 1.5 million from Metro with a $500,000 match from the city. Again, it would be SDC eligible since we're expanding access. So really what this is going to pay for is the removal of the existing RV park and the creation of this. METRO funding would not support the rebuilding of the RV park. That's just not something that's part of their bond funding. So that is something to keep in mind. The timelines on those projects are exceptionally broad. So we have three years to negotiate an agreement and then three years to build it after the agreement is signed. So it's really kind of up to us timing wise what we want to do. There's obviously a negotiation with METRO that has to happen. It could be as soon as a year or two years, we could push it out further if we need to. So we have a lot of time with these grants to figure out what we want to do. The other thing I do want to mention is there is also a separate Metro Community Choice Grant that was for river accessibility, accessible experiences at the river. We think that could be paired with this to do the pieces down along the bank to kind of get down and have a more accessible beach experience.

I know a lot of people use that area for fishing and just river access. And something I wanted to mention. Say that again. We know a lot of people use that area for fishing and just river access in general. Currently? Yes.

That's why the bank is all tore up then.

It's kind of a rocky, beachy area there, yes. And I did want to mention, as we look at the constructability of this, we are going to be looking more closely at flood resilience, durable materials, things like that, to make sure that this is something that stays for the long term. All right. Again, the community was very broadly supportive of adding educational interpretive elements to the park. They commonly cited a desire to see these focusing on the Native American history and culture and or the unique natural history of the park. There's several locations which we identified for these elements and that can be incorporated. And again, Tom, you have some good news about funding for some of those.

Yeah, so this was our third grant that was funded for the Clackamas Park project. The title of that was Indigenous Art at the Mouth of the Clackamas within Clackamas Park. It's a $52,000 award with a $26,000 required match from the city. This could potentially fund the Arts Commission desire to do a Lambray statue down at this site. Obviously, that would have to go through a planning process and figure out when, how, who the artist is, talk with the different tribes and everything, but it is a potential funding source to make that happen.

Let's just say that I strongly suggested that they not get ahead of this process.

I totally understand.

I said I appreciate their enthusiasm, but I said it's too soon and maybe you need to just pull back a little bit because this process has to catch up.

All right, let's talk a little bit about the boat launch. It's obviously one of the areas that still is requiring a little bit further study. Again, there's a lot of support for both River Access from a recreational standpoint and a cultural standpoint, but we wanna make sure that we're doing this responsibly. So we have a hydro survey scheduled, I think for the end of this week, and then we'll be taking that and doing the new hydraulic design impact assessment just to make sure that we can determine both the feasibility and the best location for that boat launch.

I'll jump in on that for just a second. So to the mayor's question earlier, and I think that's an important point to note, which is part of this process is to study the potential relocation of the boat launch. The current master plan that has moved that down river, which is what was depicted on the rendering, is over 10 years old at this point. So we do believe, I think it's pretty easy to say that the river continues to shift and move and there are challenges there. So we are, it's really the study is for two purposes. One is to look at what the best potential location is for that. So we're not locked in on what was decided or what was approved 10 years ago as a concept, though that was based on some hydrology and some studying as well. The second part, so are there other, more appropriate locations up and down that part of the river that Tom pointed out a little bit ago. The second part of that is, does it make sense at all? We know there's support for a boat launch at Clackamas on the Clackamas River, but we don't want to invest any public money, including the city and the Marine Board money that would come our way in something that's not going to withstand the changing river. And so that's a big part of this study as well. So we're not While it is in the current plan to rebuild the boat ramp, it is not an absolute, you know, we know for sure that it makes sense. And that's the point that we're, that's why we're engaging some kind of specialty work with this hydrology and, you know, surveying work. So just wanted to be very clear with you that that's the status. of what that is. It's not out of the realm of possibility that this study might come back and tell us it doesn't make sense to rebuild this. We don't know yet.

And expanding kind of that initial area that we're looking at too. All right, and the last one I'm gonna touch on briefly here again was the RV park. And as you can see there, we are very, very evenly split. 23 respondents said that they didn't feel like the city should maintain an RV park here, and 23 said yes, and there was eight undecided. So I've never really had that happen before when it's exact, but there was not really a clear consensus out of this. That's something that is currently shown in the master plan right now. The redevelopment plan has 20 spaces for RVs plus some boat trailer and some overflow like passenger vehicle parking stalls as well. There has been some discussion about the potential for moving it to a property just across Highway 99 near the cove. And so that's something I think could be looked at a little more closely.

But that was just the dump. site moving it across, not the entire RV park?

No.

The entire RV park? Yeah. The RV park was part of the conversation too.

Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit more about the dump station a little bit. There's got to be a better name for that. Yeah.

unloading station sorry i don't even want to know what might come up out of that yeah let's just yeah you come up with something that's appropriate

Yeah, so this is kind of where we are now. Again, a lot of this will be staying the same, but we are again looking at kind of that boat launch area and some refinements based on that study coming out of it.

I do just want to share before we go to questions. We did have, there's a very cool kind of 3D render of the park that was done as part of the outreach process that is available in our story map if you haven't seen it. But this is actually a photo from that, so we can really start to envision what this place could look like in the future, what the park could be. And the flyover does a flyover of the entire park and really shows you what it would look like. So if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to go do it. It's very cool. And where do we access that? That is on our story map. We can send you a link to that. It's on our project page. It's also available on our YouTube.

So we're going to pause here for questions and discussion. We do have one other thing we wanted to run by you as part of this, but we thought this would be a good place to kind of let you capture your questions and conversation on anything that you've heard thus far.

So is this... 50% right? Is this 70%?

I think it's maybe even a little bit more than that. I mean, play area, basically everything south of the boat launch area, I think we got pretty good community support on, and I don't anticipate that that would change too much.

Well, with the exception of the RV park.

Yes, yes.

I made a couple of suggestions the last time we saw this that I still think make sense. And I hope they don't fall by the wayside coming up for some discussion.

We did... You want to remind us of what that was? Yeah. Well, can I go up there?

Sure, please.

Thanks. This space is not going to get used.

Yeah.

It's an island. Nobody's going to have their family out here with boat traffic all the way around.

Yeah.

And I don't like the fact that we already know that it's gonna be a lot fewer RV spaces and combining that with boat parking doesn't make sense. Mr. Williams, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but probably the main time that's gonna be needed is fishing season, which means early morning boat traffic in and out right next to an RV park. So my suggestion was make this more boat parking and make this more RV, another row of RV faces.

Yeah, now I remember when you said that. Yeah, it was about that. Yeah. And hopefully they're going to make the trailers any longer than they are now because we can't just keep.

The trailers get bigger and bigger.

Yeah, but I mean, yeah, we just can't keep changing stuff just to accommodate big, gigantic trailers because next year they'll be bigger.

Yeah, we don't have control over that, but we can try to. We can certainly try to accommodate or adjust, but I wanted to comment on Commissioner Mitchell's questions or comments. We did capture your feedback. We captured all the feedback from the prior commission discussion, and it was all kind of put in the, you know, how we want to take this forward. So to those two points, one is, Regarding the boat launch traffic flow, we didn't really think it would be necessary to change that just yet until we, so that was kind of the first blush at it. And then with this study of where the ramp might end up, that could all change potentially. So that configuration might be different, but we did note your comment. And we, I think we had discussed some potential ways to use that area differently, but we didn't want to spend the time to adjust that just yet until we have some better definitive. So that certainly was heard.

I think we were all in consensus that we thought that was a better idea. So once we get the study done, I'm hoping that we see that incorporated into the plan. I don't think we need to go back out and survey people and ask them. I think that's better utilize the space. Because I thought the same thing when you brought it up. I said, yeah, who's going to go over there?

And then regarding the RV park and the additional parking there, all good points and things we're thinking about. And I think that ties back to the conversation from just a little bit ago of, is this for sure the right place for the RV park? Is this where it ends up if we rebuild it? Do we consider moving it somewhere else? And then what's shown as the RV park right now, does that just become, which we certainly have a need for that. So that's all part of that as well. So I think there's still some of those types of decision points that we're kind of honing in on.

Thank you. I'll probably quickly mention some of the things just in case I won't go in depth because I think they were captured last meeting, but there's a couple of new things I think I want to mention. Mike's point about the island, yeah, I think that was pretty, yeah, I think we all kind of talked about that. On the RV park part that Mike mentioned, the way it's drawn in this version is a 50% cut and space is about, I think. So the question would be, If we do both sides, do we keep the same number? But I guess my concern is how close those spaces are together. It doesn't even allow for picnic table. I mean, you know, even if we doubled the amount of RV spaces there and widen them, I think we'd still end up with the same amount. because right now I don't know, I mean, it's probably not the scale, but I couldn't imagine there's five feet between each of those or 10 feet at the most between each of those spaces. So, you know, where the RV park before had some space, had, you know, picnic tables, that kind of thing. The, and I, On the RV park, I think there's some people that are still open to the idea that the RV park doesn't go still where it's at. And this rendering, I know that that's debatable from everyone here at this table. But my question kind of goes in terms of the phasing of the grants. I think the one grant that you talked about talking about a lot of time, six years. Six years isn't a lot of time. In six years is not a lot of time when we're saying, we're gonna have an RV park built by then. We probably wouldn't. So I guess the question is, the RV park is at least one park that's not funded right now. And so if the grant, which by understanding some of the grant money for that area one, the gathering space is, funded because that made more sense than the fund they it was that was the metro piece right it's the metro money fit within their criteria is that contingent on the fact that we are going to do something with the rv park later or not so much it is not okay so that was actually one of the things they liked so that that piece could be built regardless of whether we have the funding for the RV park and where that goes in the future. It just won't go there because we've already built or have a plan for that. All right, so that's fine. While I'm on that stage spot, this is a conversation I had a little bit with Tony and I don't know if we've had this conversation as a commission, but what I'm trying to balance in my head is, the future of Oregon City, current events, and future events. So there's a lot of debate on are we creating regional events? Are we not creating regional events? I don't necessarily want to get into that conversation because let's say we aren't planning regional events. We already are. but that shouldn't be the only conversation because we have to design parks that are able to service the future city. And as we know, just by talking about the swimming pool site, even just talking about a future swimming pool site, if you look around Oregon City, maybe half a dozen sites, that we could think of. And so my concern is which of these parks is going to be, and when I say the other one, right now we have kind of a focus on two places, Clackamas Park, well, actually the swimming pool too, but end of Oregon Trail. So in recent years, we have flipped from Clackamas Park being the, And I understand there's some overlap, but I guess my question is, how much overlap do we want between two parks and how much do we wanna double design as opposed to saying, this is the park that's gonna be events and this is the park that's gonna be, you know, We haven't really had that conversation because 10 years ago, major events were always at Clackamas Park and that was the plan. And we were like, we're gonna build a stage there. And everyone said, no, that's a bad place to build a stage. And so we've had to the effort of building a stage at end of the Oregon Trail and moving the concerts there. So now in recent years, that has become the main venue for massive community events. I think, well, massive meaning it's full to capacity as is, right? So my worry about that is if that's at capacity now, what's the plan for the future? And really the only other plan is going back to Clackamas Park. And so now designing that as an amphitheater space, it's like, okay, well then, we really have to think about this because especially, I worry that we're now compartmentalizing these again because we've had in recent couple, just within the last year, I don't know how many times this commission has heard from the public and actually amongst ourselves talked about possibilities of large amounts of property in the urban renewal district that have always been discussed as development sites to now let's just make them parks. Okay, so if we're back to that conversation, maybe we're designing for the wrong parks because if other large pieces of property that were kind of slated for future development are going to become parks, then this changes this whole conversation. For instance, if the Cove area is just going to become a park, then what about this design? You know, I mean, it's all intertwined. I'm really concerned about that because it all has to work in the right way. We have to have a plan for that entire area. And I think that piece of parking comes into that. You know, if right now at the end of Oregon Trail, we have land across the street for parking. If we develop that, we don't. If we, you know, build Clackamas Park to this scale, we still don't have the parking. So, you know, and I think that's the next topic. And I saw, we can talk about that in a second, but I, and I think that's on the right verge of trying to discuss that. So I just want us to be careful of, you know, duplicating things or we really should say which parks should be used for what and create a, God forbid I say some sort of master plan. Okay, enough with that. But the other things that I worry about, and this was something I just thought about because I forgot the stage piece until I just talked with Tony. It's like, oh, yeah, I forgot now the stage is back into this. I like that idea. I mean, I think if utilizing that space in a way that could be used for events, I just don't know how we're making those decisions from one year to year, which one's the event space. Because it's very, very clear, one of the reasons some of the park stuff moved to the end of Oregon Trail was because parks didn't like dealing with it in Clackamas Park. Is the park staff's position that now we do want to? I don't know. There's mixed signals over the year from public and staff about... which park is gonna be really what. If that stage goes there, of course, I mentioned last time electrical and dealing with that, which is still a concern about flooding, which would be less of a concern than the RV park, but you still have electrical that has to be replaced in flood stages. But the other piece is, and I know I mentioned this last time, but I'll say it again is, if there's events at that place, that stage area, that doesn't mean if for bigger events, there wouldn't be vendor spaces or other things throughout the park. And one of the issues with Clackamas Park prior to the Optimist Club using it for Pioneer Festival was there wasn't, infrastructure for electrical in the park, in the center of the park. And so how do we design that there's electrical on those paths or in the interior of the park for when large events happen that that might be usable? Again, with the food cart, the idea that has always been centered around the children's play area, That was before we talked about a stage. Well, if you're going to have a stage, where's the food going to go if you have a concert? It's not going to go by the children's area. It's going to go probably in that little strip.

If you have events, sorry, I'm probably not on mic.

If you're going to have events and concerts here, then you would assume this food would be here. Where's number two, Rocky? Well, it's designed, did we change that? Well, it shows it in number two. Yeah, so that's where it is today. So we've got to rethink how that might work because it may not work there anymore.

So if maybe I could clarify a little bit. So the area number two by the playground area does have, you know, we are planning infrastructure to support food carts, but that would not be the only location in the park. The primary identity of that area would be kind of a plaza area.

Well, first we have to identify the fact that food carts are not allowed in city parks, period, as is. I wouldn't think you would design a more permanent place for food carts that are just for events. So that's kind of what I'm having a conversation about. It's like that kind of shows a design purpose for food carts, which, you know, kind of implies more than just an event. Maybe implies weekends or something like that, which would involve permits and all that, which is fine. But we just got to make sure the city allows that. I just think about the stage and what would go there. So it's not just electrical for the stage, but if you have food vendors along that area when you do have an event, how do we plan for that? I would like us to think about, and I know I said this last time, I think, the signage. There is no signage in order to, and this actually goes for Andover Trail site too. I mean, I see... I hate to say this, but we have, we put up, what are those, blade signs or blade banners for the Closets to the Park, which aren't allowed. They're supposed to be going away. I know, but we're doing stuff that we don't allow in the city. But that shows an example that we have no plan on these sites for telling people there's an event going on. And when we designed the entry plaza at River Shore Hotel at the corner there. That was all beautifully designed. And in fact, even on the McDonald's quarter was designed in terms of interpretive piece. But none of that included any way to have any kind of signage or banners that could go up. Even if it was just streetlights at the entrance of Clackamas Park that we could hang our regular banners off of for an event would make sense. I think that's because that's ODOT right away. Well, yeah, but we're hanging banners on them right now.

Well, no, I meant right where you're talking about those two

It doesn't matter because we're hanging banners on ODOT right away as it is. So, you know, we just need to think about all those things. I think that's pretty much it. But the skate park, and I understand this is the last phase before the changes, because I think the wording on there says keep the existing skate park, but then you said something about maybe expanding it. input about expanding the skate park rather than just keeping it or it's just an open idea?

It's an open idea. We just want to make sure that we're not overly crowding it so that there is as a separate process opportunity to expand that because I know that's something that has had discussion.

and I know that all this is done in phases and there's no way to just say, oh, poof, you have a brand new park. But I hate the idea of spending tons of money on a beautiful new park and then still having a crappy skate park, which needs work and horseshoe pits and those things. So I hope we plan for re-enhancing those entities or those elements of the park in addition to planning the park so that when we have the re-grand opening of Clark Park, it isn't like, oh, well, here's the nice park and here's the crap from when all of us were kids and we remember it that way. So, you know, plans, making sure we kind of enhance all of it. I think... When was the last study that we did on the river? Was it, because the last studies that we used were the studies from the state, right?

Yeah, 2016, 15, 16. Okay. And that was, I think, just after they'd stopped dredging.

I didn't know it's been that long. Yeah, it has been that long. Okay, I think that's everything I can think of at the moment.

If I may just quickly, I wanted to make a point on some of your comments. And I think it's very timely that you were talking about thinking of using the various sites in our parks and rec system, the collect met site, the EOT site, and we're studying that right now. Of course, we're studying the aquatic, future aquatic facility, but specifically the EOT planning process. We're gonna be bringing you an update at your next work session, so a month or so from now. And that really ties in well with what you just said, Commissioner, which is that will bring forward kind of this concept of thinking about is that space used for events differently than it is now if this becomes the bigger event space. So we're not making these decisions in a vacuum. So I think the timing of doing these processes at the same time is really gonna overlap each other and be helpful. So I think that addresses part of that thinking and those are decisions that are obviously gonna have to be made.

I'm saying it just because I want the current commission to think that way. I also hope that a new commission thinks that way and not just see these individual projects and kind of think about them on their own, because it really will affect the future of the city, what happens here at the Endo-Lorgan Trail and all the empty space in between if we don't really think it through. Well, we appreciate that thought.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm glad to hear that there is going to be further analysis on the placement of the boat ramp. I think a lot of us would like for there to be that access, but are skeptical about making that investment if it needs to be made again in the near future. So I'm glad to hear that that's still an open question. And the same thing goes for the placement of the RV park. I'm glad that it's not going to be where it is now. And I've been fine with the idea of it going where it is as presented here, but I do think that there's merit in the conversation about putting it across from the McLaughlin Bridge. And I would be interested in hearing the alternatives for that. Quick question. I'm recalling from a prior presentation on this, there was a comparison, I think, Tom, you gave it about the size of the EOT site versus the size of the acreage we're talking here.

Can you remind me of that? Yeah, that's a great piece of context. So the EOT site, this is about two and a half times larger than the bowl at EOT. So if you imagine that space filled with people, this green space that's identified by number one is about two and a half times that. We estimate about 1,500 to 2,000 people at a large concert. This would be more like 4,000, 5,000 people.

And I'm glad to hear that because especially having gone to that last concert of the series and seeing the people sitting where people were not supposed to be sitting, although that's a good problem to have, knowing that we're preparing for that future capacity that we're going to need. And I appreciate Commissioner Smith's point about parking, but I also recognize that if we add more parking, then that just means less space of them. park itself. There's a next piece to this. And so I think that there are opportunities. I mean, there's a huge parking lot right across the street where maybe we can be partnering with the Oregon City Shopping Center in their low hours to be partnering with them. And I think that there are a lot of creative solutions to the parking issue because obviously for Concerts in the Park, this will not be sufficient for that, but there are ways to be creative.

Thank you. And to that point on parking, you know, no matter how many spaces we can squeeze into that, you know, that number four space or the, we're going to pull something else up in a minute that might suggest where we could put some additional parking, no matter how much we can squeeze into those spaces, we're going to have some parking issues that we need to think about for the big events. So we need to think about the shopping center or shuttles from

like they do for the old fashioned fair in Westland, which works really well.

Absolutely. So maybe that's a good segue into this last piece. Oh, excuse me.

So here's your new term. I just thought of it. So how about the RV sanitation station?

I mean, it doesn't have the same ring to it.

That's fair.

I mean, my two thoughts, similar to Commissioner Morrow, I appreciate there's ongoing Discernment regarding a boat ramp, just in full transparency. I don't know if I'm sold on it. I mean, there's a boat ramp in John Storm. There's a boat ramp at Meldrum Bar. And the way I'm also looking at it, again, just being open and honest, is an overwhelming majority of Oregon City residents do not own or operate boats. And I'm looking at how do we use this park to serve the greater population, right? Those people that don't live here. which i understand and i'm i'm concerned about how how our oregon city residents using this park not along you know goes to the rv site um just looking at you know i i would like to you know at Sounds like some point reasonably soon in the future determine Is this something we even want to go forward with like is it does it make sense to rebuild the RV site? Is it financially? Feasible viable, you know looking at costs looking at revenue looking at again just being open and honest who it is serving Is it something where we want to be in the business of operating an RV park? Sure and Anyway, that's just where I'm at, but I very much appreciate all of this work.

I've been mulling around many of your concepts in my head over the last few months that we've been looking at this, and I think a couple of things that come to mind is that This has got a lot of stuff in it. And that's one of the things that I have a concern about. You know, how much is too much? Are we trying to be all things to all people by putting everything in this park? And it's one of the same concerns I have about our neighborhood parks. Does every single one of them have to have the same exact thing? I mean, if we rebuild the thing at Chapin, it should have something there that can maybe bring people from across town to use, but every park doesn't have to have one of those same type of play equipment there. It can be completely different. I am with the other commissioners again, I want to have some data backing the decision one way or the other whether we go with the vote ramp. I know that when Commissioner O'Donnell was here, we had kind of leaned towards not putting it back. But then we basically said, no, we need to get the data, we need to get the information. It shouldn't be just we like it or we don't like it. documentation this is what the river is doing this is you know this is yes it could work because we've got this situation or no it can't work because over time it's going to do x y or z so i i would i would appreciate having that that background information anybody that i've talked to about the boat ramp has been primarily oregon city people they have not been people from you know out of our area. So I've explained that to some degree. I said we need to get information because we're not just going to put it back and then have the same thing happen that already happened to it. I agree that we need to do something about the skateboard park. I mean, again, we can't have a lovely park with old skateboard stuff. I'm hoping that we will come up with some sort of a reservation system for any of the courts, including the horseshoes, because I do not want to see private organizations taking over facilities. look online and I see that there's a court available from 10 to 12, you know, I want to be able to sign up for it and not have to go through somebody else to go use the court. And I'm not saying anything against any of the clubs, I just, this is supposed to be for everybody. And I know that's the hot new thing, you know, next month it'll be some other new sport that'll come up. I think some of the things that I wrote on the map was, you know, what is the key focus for, you know, river access and contemplation. I have concerns about, I know we can't control everybody's behavior because we don't want to, but I'm concerned about the bank that even if we specify certain parts of access, what I worry about is the liability. Somebody wants to go swimming in the Willamette and, you know, it's the risk part of me that's coming out. I want people to walk along the river. I want people to enjoy the river. It would be nice, but I think we need to carefully look at that access because I don't want to see the bank degraded any further than it already is. There is some points on this Clackamas side that could be maybe better access because I don't think it's as steep. I like the idea of us really kind of looking at how the thing fits together and what type of art we might want there. I know in my discussions with a couple of art commissioners, they said, well, let's build the, let's get the lamprey statue now and then we can just move it. And I go, no, no, that's not really good. It's not a good way, not a good plan. Let's, let's just hold that. Um, I know that there's a big debate about the RV park. I, I think If we can keep it and use it as, you know, offsetting some revenue, I think that that would be great. I totally agree with the comment about you don't want people backing up their boat trailers at, oh, dark 30 when somebody's there with an RV. So that, thank you for that. That was, since I don't boat, I, you know, I didn't think about that, but yes, that's really critical. Your idea about if we're going to have a place for food carts, I agree with you. I don't think the best place for it is over by the children's play area because, you know, you see how a lot of them operate, at least the ones we are familiar with at concerts in the park. There's just too many things that have food carts. You know, they've got generators and tanks, and I don't think that works really well with children. But I think that, you know, if we decide that this is going to be a, you know, continue to be a multi-use park, there's just, like I said, there's just a lot going on. And I want to make sure that we don't forget about the area around number five, where we have, you know, like you said earlier, Tom, river contemplation or whatever, so that people are, feeling like if they wanna go stroll there, it's a good, nice little loop without, and I like the fact that, you know, everything is over here and whereas that is kind of separated, so. And I think, what else do I have on my notes? I think just the financing question that I asked earlier about, you know, how we, how we're looking at that with these pots of money. I think I wrote something down. True riverfront experience, I wrote passive walking. And you're gonna answer the question about the grants and grant money versus our money versus other money.

So can I go really quick? To Commissioner Smith's point, it doesn't make sense that we end up two almost good places for the same kind of events. We really ought to decide which is which and do it. To the mayor's point, that is too much stuff in that space. And if we hopped across on the other side of the bridge on the cove front with an RV park, it really becomes something different. It's not a It could be more of a destination park, which would command higher fees as opposed to, oh, here's a place we can pull off for the night as we go on down at the Oregon coast or whatever. We could really make it into. a lot more of an asset and charge more money. And speaking of charging money, something we've never talked about, I don't think, but which we should consider, our friends across the river in Gladstone make a fair amount of money off their boat ramp. And parking fees. Off of fees. And I think that's something that we could consider. I would support that. Because they're going to be some sort of, I assume there's... You know, there's state money, but I'm assuming there's going to be some sort of a match component that we're going to have to come up with?

Correct.

Yeah. And with regard to that charging, that's a decision that gets made by every jurisdiction that operates under Oregon State Marine Board facilities. We do have that option. It does affect some of the money that we receive, but not a great amount. But that's been part of our conversation is as we think about if we build a new boat ramp, that we want to make that decision as part of that process. Absolutely. That's something we should consider.

Thank you. You're just talking about boat parking, or you're talking about a small entry fee for the park, period? No, not for the park.

I'm talking about... I took Commissioner Wilson's comment. It is still a fairly small percentage of our residents that are powerboat users. So I don't have a problem if we're providing a facility for- Others. For a small portion of our residents that we charge for, just like we charge to go to the pool.

Yeah, I agree. To be like a launch fee, maybe rather than a parking fee. But Metro has- some of their parks that they charge a, like you get a day permit or something to that effect?

The study is just the Clackamas side. We can't put a boat ramp on the Willamette side. Well, we can, unless we want. That's a whole other conversation. I don't want to get in that fight.

But we're going to, the whole, that whole side, essentially, right? Correct. Yeah, that's correct.

reminds everyone too about a former conversation of a former commission long ago that prior to the conversation about moving the rv part to the mcdonald the property near mcdonald's that was a piece of property that the city has had for sale slides on in in probably more than once and taken down. And so I think if we do have a dialogue in the future about the RV park, if and when the RV park goes somewhere else, if it does or doesn't exist at all, then that brings us back to that lot. And Every conversation that I can remember in the 16 or so years, 20 years was parking, not parking, boat parking, not parking, development. So those questions are sure to come up again, or dialogue would sure come up again. The one plan at one time was to sell that property or to at least have a partnership where the lower part, let's say that would be developed as a hotel or something else, that it would have the parking probably, you know, possibly remain on the lower floor so that you would have possibly shared parking with whatever was developed there that could be extended for the park. So I don't know if anyone remembers that, but, you know, so that's, those are all conversations that could come back in the future if we ever got to that. But I think that's all.

I think when we looked into that, because we did have that discussion and it had been for sale and we pulled it

As I recall, that was dedicated from the county to the city.

It's another one of those very big pieces of property that is not park space. And that is, yes, it's a complicated history. That was the sewer treatment plant. And I think it was a fire training. And then it was used for the fire training facility after that. Gosh, I'm thinking back. I can't. that was another life ago um but i do remember the sewer treatment plant there um there was a ramp that came off mclaughlin right where the skate park is to come off of uh the highway onto to main street so um we've that space is you know it grew over time and that piece of property is definitely one to think about if it's not used to start remark what it could be

Okay, Scott. If we may, just very quickly, I know we need to wrap, go to that slide if you would. Thank you, Tom. So this is one additional thing that we just wanted to just kind of float in this conversation. We can come back to it later. Is this relocation of the existing RV waste dump site? Name to be maybe determined differently. Sanitation station. And so this piece of urban renewal property that's below the Oregon City Shopping Center, our engineering team just did a really kind of a snapshot high level. This is not super accurate. It's just kind of a snapshot to see how it might incorporate the new dump station and add more parking for the park use. This could greatly reduce the congestion that happens around the entry point to the park. It enhances traffic flow. And it also gives us the opportunity, the questions about the skate park, whether it might expand or not. If it were moved, we would then have that option. There could be some additional space coming towards Clackamas River, Clackamas, Clackamas Drive. The last piece of that is, if we did a new RV dump station, we could modernize that to the point where we would probably generate quite a bit more revenue than we do right now. Right now it's a donation, it's very manual. There is a pay station, but the operation of it is just you kind of lift something up and you put the hose in and there you go. A modern station has the ability to be locked unless you swipe your card, you make a payment. um we have a five dollar uh suggested donation that we know that that some um jurisdictions charge like 25 dollars per time that you use it and it only opens if you're if you're paying so just to kind of think about that we could uh increase some revenue there but um just a thought uh it puts a double lane on where the rvs would come through kind of pass through and back out and again additional parking potential there so we just wanted to

it would be full hookup water sewer. So if your RV park has the sewer already built in, do you need the dump? The dump would be for people who are not staying at the RV park.

Is that a service that we want to continue to offer to our community, but it's also for visitors, non-city residents?

Yeah, I see people from our community that have trailers. They're using it. I can't tell you how many, but I recognize people going through their...

And if we didn't relocate it or we abandoned the dump station, then could that just be parking? Yeah.

I think it's a great place to get it out of that area. Yeah.

Not your front door.

Yeah, exactly. It's not going to be our front door.

So that's everything we had to present tonight. We're going to continue to refine and do the additional studying, and then obviously we'll be reporting back when we have more to report.

And when do you think that might be?

The survey is, I think, this Thursday and Friday. So obviously they'll have to process that data and then we'll turn it over to our consultant who's going to do the analysis and assessment of that. So, I don't know, a month or so.

And she said make sure that they have the survey. Yes. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Alright, systems development charge exemption, deferral and reduction. I'm not sure that's a mouthful. Anybody need a break?

OK, we'll break after this one.

Can I see this? Mm-hmm. Mine isn't working.

Hi, Josh.

Good evening.

We get you too, Mr. Zook? Boy, it's double bonus here.

Josh asked me to be here, so I'm here. I'm here for him.

Thank you. Could be good or bad, Josh. I know, right? Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. Nice to see you all. Tony. Josh Wheeler, Assistant Engineer. As the Finance Director, we are going to speak on three items because we last spoke about them to some degree on January 13th, 2026 and April 7th, 2026. And currently, just to let you all know, we're in the 90-day public notice period for changes to the methodologies for tiering SDCs. So you'll be seeing something October 7th more than likely on those. But in the meantime, we wanted to verify some directions that we'd heard from you, as well as answer some questions that came up during those January 13th and April 7th meetings. These are the topics we want to talk about. Stormwater tiering exemption criteria, short-term delayed STC payment code and STC reduction code. And the way we've lined this up is we'll briefly talk about each item. And at the end of each item, there'll be a question to discuss. So that's how we've got it set up. So the first one, stormwater tiering. The methodology proposed that you see here that was generally accepted through the discussions and is currently in that 90-day notice period is shown on this slide. It'll assess 23 cents per impervious square foot on any given property. Now the commission has the option of allowing certain size exemptions if we codify those exemptions to prevent small additions such as a patio or a deck to be assessed SDCs, which also would be a bit of, if we did not exempt it, would be a bit of a burden on staff resources to assess those SDCs. And I'll explain why here in a second. But alternatively, after hearing the various options that we're gonna provide, the commission may choose not to exempt any items from the stormwater SDC. And so we're gonna go through what some of those options might be and how we came to some concepts. So first when we started looking at this, we were trying to figure out what criteria we might use. And the first thing we looked at was our existing code. And you see the housing code criteria, things like ADUs are around 800 square feet, cottages are a maximum of 900, If you did a house addition, that's like 100 square feet. If you did a basic bedroom. And then you've got accessory structure categories that are three categories, less than 200 square feet, 200 to 600, and over 600. One important thing here that I think I'm going to come back to later is you do not need a permit for an accessory structure that's not habitable. of less than 200 square feet. So even if that occurred on site, if they didn't ask us, we would never know it was being built and therefore we'd never be able to apply the SDCs anyway in that situation. Unless? Unless. Correct. So another thing we looked at was how are stormwater rates charged? And so we looked at things like the should we do like a flat rate and have something that's exempt that way? But then we looked at how much extra impervious area would really be left over after you have the maximum building lot coverage. Really what a lot of this is saying is it was all over the board and it's probably not a good criteria to use because it was just all over the board. Jacob, I've lost my ability to, thank you. The next option, again, I believe has more relevance as a possibility. Because as I mentioned earlier, if you are doing a structure which is non-habitable and detached of less than 200 square feet, Unless someone called us or asked us the question or a neighbor called, we would never find out that the structure is being built. And even if they did call, a permit would not be issued. And currently, SDCs are only applied to those things that get a building permit application. That's the way the code reads. So other things we would not see normally would be private sidewalks, driveways and patios, pools, porches and decks that are less than 30-inch elevated because those don't require a permit either. Those are things that we would normally not see a permit on and would be hard to get.

So you're talking about an in-ground pool or above-ground pool or just a pool in general?

I can't speak for the building department specifically. They told me pools generally don't require a permit. I know that an in-ground pool would likely require a grading permit, but an above-ground pool definitely doesn't require engineering or building permits. But then we said, well, what do other cities do? Generally, there's not a lot of cities that do stormwater SDCs in a by square foot basis. But what we found is the ones that you provided here, Woodburn, they scale to the nearest 500 square feet. So if you're building something that's close to that, they round either down or up. but they don't get into the every little square foot. Silverton, they do rounding to the nearest hundred square feet. And then those other four cities, Albany, Astoria, Grants Pass and Mosier, they scale using just square foot and they go to the nearest square foot, which is something you could do and not have any exemptions. And so that kind of brings us to, does the commission have a criteria to use for exemptions to stormwater STCs? Is it a square footage? Is it a type, a residential versus non-residential or just let's not do any exemptions whatsoever and charge for every square foot. So that's what we're looking for feedback on tonight as our first item. Comments.

So one of the questions, it's not necessarily a comment, the question is, so we're looking at impervious service, regardless of whether it's residential or non-residential. So I guess my question is, in terms of best practices, what would we want to try to achieve with Well, what are we trying to achieve now? I mean, I think I know the answer with our stormwater SDCs at this point in time, because we're trying to minimize, you know, less runoff, stuff going, you know, where it's not supposed to go, which is why, you know, we're doing the I&I project, of course. But we also don't want to see everything covered with some... asphalt, concrete, whatever, because then the water has nowhere to go. And we need to make sure that we have pervious surfaces so that the stormwater system can recharge itself.

Yeah, so our stormwater STCs are charged so that we can build projects that will take care of the growth of the city with respect to stormwater. And so that could be things such as a upsized stormwater pipe. It could be some sort of detention or stormwater management system for all the new impervious area that's regional. Admittedly, we do not have a lot of projects in our stormwater master plan for the STCs, which is why our stormwater STC is actually fairly low. But that is what it would be used for. Stormwater rates, those are used for the everyday maintenance and then our stormwater code is telling people when they need to manage stormwater. So our stormwater STCs are really talking about that growth. And so are you expanding your lot? That's paying towards that impact of growth. Are you building something brand new, going from grass to impervious? That's paying towards that extra impervious. So you could choose to say, you know, exempt it for all residential because they have potentially lower impact than non-residential from a lot coverage standpoint. But you could just say across the board, it should go to everybody, the exemption or non-exemption.

I would have a concern about exempting all residential because they're cumulatively, there is going to be an impact. And, you know, is that going to be one of those death by a thousand cut things? know where we keep exempting exempting exempting and then what happens to our capacity i mean we're one of the few jurisdictions that actually processes our own storm water and you know that's a whole different debate with wes but the less we have going through their system the better it is for us so are you talking about exemptions on

remodel or addition kind of projects or any?

Not new construction. absolutely new construction. That's really the question on the board is we have created, before we had a lump sum for the most part of a stormwater STC, what you'll be under consideration on October 7th is a stormwater tiering, which is now per square foot. And so the question is, which in theory means people that build more in previous area are gonna pay more, people that build less in previous area will pay less. The question is, is there a point where we feel it is appropriate to exempt the smaller things? And so, or certain types, that's why I said residential versus non-residential. Maybe you say additions, garages, pools, things that are not new builds, but just additions should all be exempted. Maybe you would say that a certain square footage, like the example earlier of anything under 200 square feet, because many of those we're not gonna see anyway, you exempt, or maybe you just say, no, charge it. And yeah, if we miss some, we miss some, but try and catch each one. And that'll be an additional administrative step we'll add, but you know, that's what we'll do with this tier.

I don't have a problem with exemptions on those small kinds of things. I don't think it makes sense to try to collect a stormwater fee on something that we don't even have a building permit for. or a sidewalk or whatever. So when we do approvals on, let's say on new construction, I know there's a maximum lot coverage percentage. Is that just the house footprint or do we also track impervious surface? Is there a maximum impervious surface percentage?

That is a planning question that I think I think I know the answer for it, but I'm not comfortable saying it. From your past, do you know that, Tony? Okay. I think, just don't quote me on it, that it's all impervious area, the structure and anything addition. And there's a maximum. And there's a maximum. It's called maximum lot coverage. But then again, I'm questioning myself already that I believe that's only the structure. I think you're correct that it's the structure. Yeah, because that's all a planner is going to see in an application too. They're not going to see the other stuff. It won't come to us.

But what I was getting to is if there is a maximum percentage for impervious surface, maybe there's an exemption as long as you don't go over that percentage with a remodel project or whatever.

Yeah, and the more I'm thinking about it, the maximum build of the area is the structure. And so we would never know, we wouldn't have a cumulative calculation of those extra patios, extra decks. Yeah.

I think the percentage is going to be hard. I think we go with square foot because that's easier. I don't, I don't have a problem exempting something under 200 square feet. Cause I don't think everybody in the city is going to build a two or bring in one of those What are those little sheds that tough sheds in their backyard? I don't think everybody's going to do that because if they did, then that would concern me because then again, we have a cumulative effect of every lot having one of those little structures on. But I think anything over that we should definitely look at that makes it, it's pretty clean. Doesn't require a building permit. sets a line in the sand. I was kind of looking at some of the numbers that you had because I just heard Christina's presentation on compatible change and I somehow or another my brain there's 700 square feet is in there somewhere but you have maximum of 800 but We just need to make sure those things sync up with, that they sync up with each other.

So Kelly just sent me for lot coverage means the area of a lot covered by the footprint of all structures, 200 square feet or greater, excluding decks and porches expressed as a percentage of the total lot area.

Okay.

So it doesn't count. So the house, the garage, but if you had a porch on the back, whether concrete or deck, it's not part of that calculation when they're looking at lot coverage.

Great, thank you. Even though the driveway is an impervious surface. Right. Yeah, I just think anything under 200 square feet, whether it's residential, commercial, they have to deal with a different standard anyway.

Just keep it clean. Anything that doesn't need a building permit.

Permit, yeah. I think that's just clean.

That's an easy exemption.

And you've got a square footage. You're not having to go, okay, is it the percentage? What's the thing? And then what's the percent of that? And then it's just...

So for both residential and non-residential?

Yes. Yeah. There probably isn't a lot in the non-residential that doesn't require a building permit.

if I could ask a clarification, you clearly say less than 200, but then you added that doesn't require a building permit. So if they have a hundred square foot bedroom addition, which would require a building permit, does that get,

Is the trigger the square footage or the building permit? Because yes, all commercial is going to get or habitable space. Commercial is always going to have a permit.

That's what I mean.

We've done commercial additions that are less than 200 square feet.

Yeah, but it's commercial and it's a little bit different standard.

Just clarifying if it's based on the building permit or the square footage is the trigger.

I'd say for residential, if it does not require a building permit, no.

Everything else is going to require a building permit. So then putting on a little bump out of 100 square foot would require a building permit, which would require the calculation.

Is it an occupiable space? If it's part of the house, yes. I think it needs to get looked at.

It's going to get looked at. It's just whether we're going to charge for the 100 square foot addition.

My initial thought was the building permit being the trigger because I don't want the city chasing after things that aren't permitted and then let's say, you know, a neighbor has a beef with another neighbor and it's like, well, you put in a shed and, you know, emails the city and then we're trying to collect SDCs and they're like, well, I didn't even have to get a permit and then you guys are getting yelled at for, you know, I think that if we try and get it just simple and clean and trackable, you know, whether or not it pulls a permit is the easiest way to do it.

Wouldn't they have to get a building permit to add an addition on to a house? Yes.

Yes.

That's what I'm saying. The question is, would a 10 by 12 bedroom require SDC chart? Or would that be exempt because it's under 200 square feet? No, it requires a building permit.

It would not be exempt. We said anything that doesn't under 200 square feet doesn't require a building permit. It requires a building permit.

So the building permit is the trigger regardless of the square footage. If you don't have to get a building permit and it's under 200 square feet, we're going to exempt it.

That's how I'm reading it. If you have to get a building permit for whatever it is, it's not exempt.

I would prefer to also include a square footage cap or base that you were talking about.

So if it requires a permit and is greater than X amount of square feet, then it would need... I don't have an issue with that. I just want it to be relatively simple and, again, consistent, whatever it is.

Staff could administer if that's the desire of the commission to do no building permits, no assessment, building permits, but less than 200.

We could administer that if that is the desire. I think that makes it really simple. We do not need to be involved in that. Yeah.

Question is a wood deck over 30 inches tall, which requires a building permit.

impervious surface yes even though built out of two by sixes and there's a gap between the two by sixes and the water runs under the dirt underneath i mean whether the wood deck is directly on top of the ground or whether it's 10 feet in the air it's still impervious even it's not as impervious as a concrete one but it's still impervious because the majority is hitting a hard surface yeah It would not be considered pervious.

It's hitting a hard surface, but then it's leaking down between the pores. I know.

Yeah. But it has the ability to shed off to some degree. So most stormwater people would call it impervious. I would. Okay.

Hey, does that help?

Okay.

All right.

And we'll go to the next one.

And there's more.

uh the next one is short-term deferrals or short-term delays depending on uh how you want to call it um so as a recap the city currently has a long-term deferral program which uses a bankrupt bonding system where the city enters into an agreement with the property owner which is a nine percent interest 10-year payment plan where a lien is placed on the property There's currently no administrative fee for this option. The long-term deferral is required at time of permit issuance. An SDC is assessed at time of permit application and is paid or deferred at time of permit issuance. This is where Mr. Zook comes in as a section. The commission asked us to look into a potential concept of a short-term deferral which we'd call a delay. And this would have the SDC assessed still at time of permit application, but then at permit issuance, the applicant could ask for a short-term deferral or delay. And in doing so, that means they would not have to pay the SDC until shortly before occupancy. What is short-term? Short term. Three months or less? No, short-term, this version of short-term, we could talk about a month. We could do that. But what we've envisioned this as, and talking to another city who does this, City of Gresham, we have looked at it as at time of permit application, you're assessed. At time of permit issuance, you decide you want to defer your SDCs, but you don't want to have the loan interest. So therefore you enter into a short-term deferral agreement, which says, we'll put a lien on your property. We may assess an administrative fee, and then you can let your fee sit until such time we do final trade inspections, which is plumbing, mechanical, electrical, because that's about two to four weeks prior to occupancy. At that time, you must pay or enter into a long-term deferral, which is the 10-year 9% interest. And during the deferral, there's no interest accruing. And during the short-term deferral, there's no interest occurring. Why? Because that's the concept behind the short-term deferral is that you're not, getting revenue in for your your business or the selling of your house and therefore you're you're paying taxes on the land but you're not getting any revenue in and so the idea is that there's no impact to the system and so why charge why pay the STC at the time that there's no impact yet that would be what the people on that side would argue. The way we have been doing it is you pay it at time, which is how most people do it, but.

And the safeguard is the upfront leaning of the property. Correct. But I still don't know what the short, what we consider short. Short is however long it takes to get to the final mechanical. Permit to occupancy. So there's no time frame.

That could be six months.

It could be two years, depending on the project. Court has to be two years. Devil's Advocate, two years is not short. It's shorter than 10 years, I guess that would be.

Well, yes, yes, I would agree. That's not the right term to use.

Yeah, I don't know, yeah.

Well, I mean, yes and, yeah.

What has been our experience or Gresham's experience? Gresham's experience is that people have... and they have very little long-term deferrals. It's something that they offer in their code, but they don't generally advertise. We somewhat advertise it when people say, I can't pay that. We then offer them the option. We don't advertise it upfront, but we do offer it fairly quickly. Now, I believe Mr. Zook will tell you, This is a stat from about three years ago. I think at any given time we have around 50 people in the SDC deferral program. Is that still generally consistent?

It's been pretty consistent. I don't know the exact number, but we probably do, I don't know, two, three, four a year maybe. Two or three, four a year? Yeah, we have some old ones, so that's why it's built up. Are those the 10-year ones? pay it off really. A lot of the developers will pay it off once they sell. If it's a developer, commercial developer, they will pay it off once they sell the property and move on. I can get you more exact numbers on the total, but we see probably like I said, three, four a year.

And we did talk about internally about how would leaning work, do you lean during the short term and retain that lean if they choose to go into the long-term deferral and then just add on the interest part would be later, or do we do two separate things? I mean, they've got some ideas, Matt and Erin, on how to implement that. One other thing I want to provide you before we get into a bigger discussion of should of should we move in that direction. Back in April, there was a question on what do other cities do, and this is a summary of that. Albany, they defer residential only, so they don't allow it for commercial, they only allow it for residential. Forest Grove, they only allow it for affordable housing, and that definition of affordable is subsidized affordable. Gresham allows it for all types, all SDCs. Happy Valley allows deferral, but only for transportation. But the reason behind that is they don't have all five SDCs. So that's really why that one is. McMinnville, there it says transportation for shell buildings only. It's kind of a misnomer in my opinion. Oregon City, we already do that. We don't charge an STC for a shell building. We charge it once it has a use. So that's not really deferral in my opinion. Sherwood's kind of interesting. They have transportation and parks STCs, and they allow deferral if it exceeds $50,000. If it's under $50,000, then they don't allow that.

Do they have the other STCs?

I do not know if they have the other three. And then Westland, they defer payment, allow deferral of payment if there is a qualified STC eligible project being constructed. So for example, this happens with commercial projects more often. They have to build a water line in front of their property. Currently in Oregon City, they would pay that time of application, but they wouldn't get their STC qualified portion until the project is built. So they end up with a reimbursement check. In the residential setting, the way Oregon City does it is at time of permit, is the houses, and so they actually get a credit for their qualified project, and then that gets credited for every house until it's paid off. So Westland does a version of that through their deferral program. But I think the ones that are probably a little more applicable really are Albany, Gresham, or Sherwood, having an amount, a type, or just for all. So that brings us to our question of would you like us to add in to a proposed code this short-term delayed option? And if so, would it be residential only, a certain size or type residential, like affordable, all development, make it simple, a certain location, like only in the downtown area, or a specific amount threshold like Sherwood does? So we'd love to hear your feedback on that.

I don't know.

And the answer could be not provided at all.

I'll go to Adam then. so um from the beginning i've been looking at this as a tool to achieve uh or to incentivize certain kinds of development that we would like to see, which is why I like the idea of a certain size of residential looking at square footage of the building. But recognizing that that could be difficult in administering, I also do like the idea of looking at zoning. So maybe we look at our mixed-use zones and apply it there. But in the end, I'll be fine with whatever direction we go because I think that this is going to be helpful. The reason why I'm trying to tailor this to a certain use or a goal isn't to isn't to bring consequences for other kinds of development, it's recognizing that there are market forces that are always going to be at play, and if we can just tip the scale a little bit for certain kinds of development that aren't penciling out as much, then I would like us to maybe take that role. But if we do end up going with all development, then I'm going to be fine with it as well. I just, again, think that we could use this as an opportunity among a whole suite of options to consider how we might incentivize certain kinds of development we would like to see. And even if it alone doesn't get to what we would like to see, I think it's still part of the principle. It's part of the reason why when we had Oregon City Garbage here and we talked about the different rates for the different sizes, when they told us after a year of doing those different price increases that it hadn't actually affected the usage, it was still a matter of principle. Well, I still want to make sure that these kinds of uses are incentivized, then these other ones are paying their fair share.

But again, I will be happy to advertise. We need to get them to advertise that more. You can save money by doing blah, blah, blah. No, I don't disagree with you. I think I would like to see it used as an incentive. You know, if we're talking about market rate apartments, I don't want to apply it to that because we've got lots of those, but we don't have development that we've talked about that, you know, Just throw out the example. We have several developers here who are doing housing for first time home buyers and that's their specialty. That would go a long way to helping incentivize some more of that or. Development that would be, you know, classified as. Workforce housing and there's a percentage. There's a. Under whatever percentages of the median family income that's how that gets calculated. I think i'm okay with it applying only to residential. So we can help get some of the type of residential that we would like to see.

i'm in favor of having an all development. We need commercial industrial development. If this is a tool to bring jobs to Oregon City, if this is a tool that'll help, I'm all for it. And I don't think it's an incentive to build smaller, less expensive housing. I'm not gonna change the kind of housing that I am proposing to build just because I can defer the SDCs. I mean, there are people that build market rate housing. There are people that build workforce housing. And if we can make Oregon City more attractive to build in by deferring the SDCs, it'll help with all that construction, but it's not gonna change somebody's mind. If we only put it on say smaller homes, It's not, well, gee, I'm going to build a smaller house now because I can defer the SDC on it. It's not going to change any developer's mind about the kind of project they're going to build. So I'm in favor of it on all development.

I wish we still had the Development Review Committee because we could ask them. There's people out there we can ask.

Yeah, I have the same opinion as Commissioner Mitchell. I think there's maybe an assumption on our part that this would be some type of incentive, but again, I can't see a developer changing what they're going to build, whether or not they can defer the SDCs or not. I am curious, you brought up leaning properties briefly. What does it actually cost us to put a lien on a property? Yeah. That's why we have to have an administrative fee.

Yeah, currently our raw cost is 183 times two, so 166. And that's the county's fee for placing the lien and for removing the lien. We don't charge an administrative fee. We're basically spending our time doing that. And we began looking at that prior to this meeting to see, okay, how much time does it really take? One of the other entities that Josh mentioned had like another $400 on top of the pass-through fee just for the time. In particular, if we're going to place a lien for the short-term delay and then if we have to go back and restructure it for the long-term lien, that's a question that we have not answered, but there might be some time. And if we begin to see this, you know, if everybody's doing this, essentially, we're going to see a lot more of these applications come through. Whereas right now, we might not see everybody taking advantage of it because they just know that they're going to pay the end. I wanted to provide a little bit of context for $100,000 at 9% for one month is $750 of interest costs. So we're just as, I don't know what the average SDC amount is, but if you've got a home development, it might be a million dollars or $900,000. But if it's a single entity just doing the house, we're not talking a lot of money in that regard. Every developer is going to have their value on that amount. But financially, it's not a whole lot of money for us.

But I'm concerned about your time.

Sure. And I think the code would allow us to establish an administrative fee. We would do that as part of our normal fee I mean, I can see something like, you know, another 400 bucks, 200 bucks, whatever. It's not really onerous. We have some tracking and we have some reporting that we do back to the commission annually as far as posting what the SDC amounts, you know, outstanding amounts are. So it's not a whole lot.

I guess just to put it in perspective, let's say average size single family detached house, right? Total SDCs are about 45,000. 50? Yep. Okay, so 50, you got 10 houses, right?

That's 500 grand. You defer that. It takes you a year. 9%, right? That's 45,000. Divide that by 10.

That's, you know, $4,500 just in interest per house over a year. So that's what 9, and we're at the 9%. So by deferring that, you know, you don't have to carry that interest cost, right? and you can just pay the SDC once the builder's done, sells it. the lien would kick or they would just come in and pay because they would do it at the final mechanicals. And so it just, it saves that, you know, roughly 4,500 bucks in interest on a housing cost. Um, and you know, assuming it takes a year and they're usually a little quicker than that, but just for easy math. And you said we're doing like two to three of these a year.

Um, Yeah, we don't get a whole lot. We get, it comes in waves. I think sometimes we get them for, you know, bigger developments that, you know, like I think Holmes Lane, there's already some of the stuff up in Park Place, but it might be more than that.

Yeah, I mean, it ebbs and flows with development. So right now, the Sears subdivision, you know, 120 lots or something like that, we've had a little uptick in agreements because there's been so many applications and some builders have wanted to defer, some have paid outright. But when we don't have a serious farm development, you know, we're not going to have as many applications. So it is going to ebb and flow with the peaks and ebbs of development.

So do we know... So Gresham allows that short-term deferral on all development. On all. Do we have any idea what percentage of development does defer?

We do not know that, but they did say it's a popular program. Okay.

Just curious.

And I guess the benefit, at least in their eyes, was that the long-term deferral part where we're not getting the money for the impacts, they don't see happening as much because of this. That's their opinion. Will we see that? I think on builders and commercials, yes. On the mom and pops, probably not. They'll probably still need the long-term deferral to be able to deal with the SDC cost.

I guess let me ask this question. Would we be supportive of a small administrative fee? They can determine what that is. I think we need to cover some of our costs. I know the last time I went up and recorded something, I was kind of surprised at how much had gone up. So I think you've got a consensus on that. Josh, I'm still hung up on what short-term is. Like I said, I know what long term is because we know what it is. It's 10 years.

There is an instruction period. We have a draft code, but we didn't feel it was ready for you to see yet, and so short term is the term that the attorneys came up with.

I came up with the word delay, they like the word deferral. It's an expensive degree, you've got to use it somehow.

Yeah, that's right. We were trying to find a way to separate it from the word deferral because of what the code already says, but... We'll bring something to you and we'll take that into consideration to see if there's... Well, it's obviously less than 10 years. A better terminology. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, in general, it's six months to two years in 99% of the cases. That's how long most... Then I would say that.

If you think that's what it is, then... But it could be different. I know. It could be three years. It could be four years. It could be... Right. I'm just saying the majority. So let us think about that and we'll bring something back. I'm sure that the attorneys will say no less than one month, but not more than.

Right. There you go. All right. One more topic on SDCs. Mr. Mitchell's favorite topic, if I remember right. Yeah. So just, second favorite, okay.

Yeah, I was gonna say, that's not your first favorite.

STC reduction look back. So the current approach is non-residential structures legally approved after January 1st, 2000. We can credit the use. If it was the only use since the year 2000, then we can go all the way back to 2000. If the use has, there's been no use since before 2000, then they get no credit. But if the use has changed five times since 2000, it would be the most recent use as of last week. residential structures that exist on our aerial photos since 1994. That is similar. If you're before 1994, you would get no credit if nothing has existed on the property or if the property was vacant for that long. If a structure did exist and maybe burned in the year 2000 and has been vacant, well, that would go back to the year 2000. Yes, a structure was there. And in the world of tiering, This is even more important because in using most recent structure, we're going to go back to the most recent structure and look at the square footage starting in January if we adopt these things the next few months. Whereas right now, we just go back to assessing it as it would be today. So it's going to be a little more of a challenging calculation, but that's the way we'll be doing it going forward. So the proposed approach, if you want to go this direction, is to change it from most recent use to most intensive use. And we're recommending 1997 onward. And we've proposed a definition here for you. And that may be a little small, so I'll read it. Most intensive use for residential structures means any residential structure documented to exist and documented as permitted for that use on November 19th, 1997 or after. For non-residential structures means the use which existed within the structure or suite of a multi-tenant building on November 19th, 1987 or after, which was legally permitted and which would be the highest fee of total system development charges for that building or suite as documented by the applicant using adopted methodology data. That is a mouthful, but there's a mouthful for a reason. First, why did we choose November 19th, 1987? That is the date STCs were implemented in Oregon City. That's why we chose that date. The other things, residential, pretty easy. You know, what was the highest use of that residential property since 1997? Was it a duplex, a quadplex, a single family? Did it used to have 2,000 square feet? Now it only has 1,500 square feet. If someone can document that it was a 2,000 square foot single family house in December, 1997, because we probably don't have the permit info for it. So they would have to help prove it. That's where the proof comes in. That's how residential would be. Probably fairly easy. Commercial is where it's going to get tricky. Or non-residential is what I like to say, commercial. So it has to be legally permitted, which means there has to be evidence of a permit that it just didn't occur, which happens. And that we're going to assume that what the applicant is telling us is that The highest use that this ever had was this use here, a restaurant, for example. And so we want you to do the restaurant that was in the year 2000. Now, if they tell us that that's the one they want us to use, we need to first be proven that it was permitted. If we don't have the info, they're gonna need to provide that info. They're gonna need to tell us the square footage because that's some of the criteria in the SDCs. They're gonna need to tell us how many seats, preferably with a seating plan that were in there because that's how you calculate sanitary SDCs. If we don't have any of that information, we are not going to be able to prove as documented by the applicant, there's not enough documentation to be able to prove that. So there is a little trickiness to that that may have some challenging conversations. But information from the last five to ten years, we probably have most of that information. And so it would definitely be easier for those, just more difficult from probably 2012 to 1997. But if it exists, we would be happy to review it. So that's And yeah, that leads to the question. Does the commission support moving to most intensive use instead of most recent? And would you like to wordsmith at all that definition?

Well, this looks good to me. This is what I was hoping for.

that something we should propose in code let's see one head nod yeah that works for me three okay i'm not nodding okay sorry i understand um you know how i feel about this i think that there needs to be a call out or an exemption for downtown properties because of the varying different uses that have occurred down there and that burden of proof is on the person who's asking for the exemption They have to document, not with the menu, not with this, but they have to have some documentation as you're requiring, because to me, that's the exception.

Mayor, can you explain that a little more? What do you want downtown to be that's different than the rest?

Well, we don't have buildings in the rest of the city that I think date as far back. So let's just use... the pet sold building, for example, it's always had a commercial use on the ground floor. It's had residential on the upper floor. I don't know if that's what they're, they're not using it for residential, but let's just say that there's some use up there that they're able to document to show that in, you know, when the building was built in 19, whatever it was, that it was this, they can document that and they want to use, You know, they want to do a look back to reduce their SDCs. It's obviously not 1997. And there are, you know, my most, you know, there's a number of buildings, you know, downstairs, I mean downstairs, downtown that are like that. The Winehart Building, 1895. It was not always offices upstairs. They had a brewery in the basement. They had the store in the middle. They had residential. And let's say for some reason they want to convert or go back to that. And you could probably say that about, well, not the one that used to be Bank of America. That's new construction. U.S. Bank Building, that's new construction in terms of dating. The Interstate Bank branch is new. But you go on down a little further, the Masonic Building, the Andreessen Building, the Barclay Building, they all have some long-term documented uses that are not currently there today.

So you're asking for a longer look back than 1997? Only for downtown.

Two things. One, they didn't pay SDC in 1910. Well, they never got paid, but, you know, because you have them. I don't know how we would ever prove it to a standard that, you know, okay. I was a brewery, I was a commercial use. I had two commercial retail on the first and I had residential above. Okay, how many units, how many seats? I mean, I don't know how we would ever prove it.

It would be surprising if the information actually existed. Yeah. I mean, there's a possibility, but I think it's a low probability.

It might be low. I know in my own doing some research for at least one of the buildings downtown, the Petzl building, we were able to document how many rooms it had upstairs because the family lived up there. It's on the National Register for one thing, so that's one of the places where the documentation came into effect.

I agree with what you're trying to get at, but given that the SDCs didn't exist and that they weren't paid for those uses, I'm fine with the language as proposed. Yep, I agree.

Same. That was all I had tonight, unless you have anything further about STCs? Nope.

I think we know more than we ever wanted to know, and that's really a good thing. We can be very informed, which is very good.

You all have the same headache now that I have each day.

Exactly. We'll be right there hovering over you, helping you decide that. So what was decided for the deferral?

We were going to come up with a new name other than short, but implement it. But to implement. To allow someone to enter into the SDC payment will be due. No, not that.

Oh, sorry. Who it applies to. The majority said all, unless you want to revisit that.

No, the majority did say all. I don't agree. Yeah. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back a little before 8.50. Take it away. The city engineers, take it away, please. And I don't mean that figuratively or literally.

Just go for it. All right. Well, hopefully you're happy to know that we think this is a shorter topic than the last one, at least the presentation is. So again, Josh Wheeler, Assistant City Engineer, and with me, Kurt Krueger, the City Engineer. And we are presenting a follow-up to a geologic hazards discussion that we had on the code. The last discussion we had was on July 7th. And on July 7th, that work session, we have proposed a code that's in your packets and it clarifies who the review authority is and allows discretion by the planning commission. And if commission generally agrees with staff's proposed code, we can move forward towards adoption by the end of the year. There is a process we need to go through through planning commission and city commission, but where we're at here in September, we've talked with Kelly Hart, community development director, and we have found that we can get this through the process before a potential turnover in January. So what is it that we're proposing? Well, you know, I like little comics on this topic. So you see two guys there. They're probably in Norway. Well, if we build on these mountains along this inlet, the views will be amazing, but we run the risk of houses falling into the ocean. And the other guy says, ah, a classic double-edged fjord.

Thank you for adding a little levity.

Yeah. So here are the revisions. Three sections of code. And the first section is on procedures. And this used to be a two-piece code. Now it's a three-piece code. There are three ways that we process or are proposing to process geologic hazards. THE NEW ONE IS A TYPE 3 DECISION AND THAT WOULD BE BY PLANNING COMMISSION IF THEY ARE SEEKING DISCRETION. WE'LL COME BACK TO THAT A LITTLE BIT LATER. OR A TYPE 2 DECISION WHEN THE APPLICATION IS ALREADY PART OF A PROJECT SUCH AS A SUBDIVISION OR A SITE PLAN DESIGN REVIEW, IE A NON-RESIDENTIAL COMMERCIAL PROJECT. but it also has geologic hazards, then staff make that decision and then it's appealable to the planning commission if they're not seeking discretion. And then the third option is when the only reason they're in the type two land use process is because of a geologic hazards only, and they couldn't meet any exemptions, then again, it's a type two by staff with appeal to the planning commission, but again, they would not be seeking discretion in that process. For section 50 of 1744, we have moved some items that were in section L, which really made that area a little too complex. And we made it into what we feel is a more clear area to have it about peer review and about using the geotechnical consultant if we choose to use one. And what the cost of that is and how you get those costs. That is all in 1744-50 now, so it's consolidated all in one area. So whether or not you're going through a type three review, which is gonna be talked about in letter L, or whether you're doing the regular process, either way, the city has the right to use a geotechnical consultant and any of those costs are passed on to the applicant. That's what that section says. It also has a small section that says the applicant's consultant must respond to any comments we have within 14 days. And that allows us to keep on the same track of the type three review. 1744.060 H and I. Now that's already there and we're not proposing to change it. But as a reminder, it says that density is two dwelling units per acre. on areas that are slopes of 25% or greater or landslide deposits and their buffers, then you would get two dwelling units per acre. You would be able to disturb land in a clear and objective way, 4,000 square feet maximum, no matter how large your property is, if you're in an area with slopes of 25% or greater or an area that has landslide deposits and their buffers. That's already in the code. We're not proposing to change that. What we are proposing to change based on your direction is in letter K and L, and we've added a K in there, or we've changed the K a little bit. These are the discretionary sections. And note that we are proposing only the discretion applies to H and I. It only applies to that density, the two dwelling units per acre, and the disturbance, the 4,000 square feet of disturbance. THAT PROCESS WOULD REQUIRE A TYPE 3 SUBMITTAL WITH THE PLANNING COMMISSION THAT ALLOWS FOR APPEAL TO THE CITY COMMISSION AND REQUIRES THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND OR THE CITY COMMISSION, IF IT GETS APPEALED, TO CONSULT WITH THE CITY'S GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEER. Now, what do I mean by discretion only applies to H and I? That means that all the other sections of code that say you must minimize cuts and fills, you must have retaining walls with these sorts of calculations and designs and terracing, you're still allowed to be exempt through certain ways. That all applies across the board. We're suggesting only the discretion applies to that density and disturbance, which seems to be what most people are caught up on being constrained by anyway. The last item, number four, consulting with the city's geotechnical engineer. So process-wise, we've actually written an internal draft policy on how this all plays out so the planning, building, and engineering staff can be on the same page of how it works. But the way it generally would work is that during the land use writing process where staff helps write the reports that go to the planning commission, the geotechnical engineer, ours, would comment on the applicant's geotechnical engineer's work and would make a recommendation, positive or negative, about the application. Now our goal would be to get to a positive recommendation through the completeness process for those that know the land use process, that step between pre-application and writing the staff report. But if they force completeness, we may have to deny applications based on our recommendation. If we feel that their report is really not up to the standards. Now that doesn't mean that the planning commission can't overrule that or the city commission can't overrule that, but we may be in positions where we may be recommending denial, but that recommendation will come from our geotechnical engineer. That geotechnical engineer currently Pali consulting would be present either online or in person, depending on the situation in the night and the availability of our consultant to speak directly with the planning commission, make any potential small presentation, answer any questions before deliberations and decisions are made. And that same would be provided to the city commission as well if it made it through an appeal or requested to an appeal. Um, that is generally what we're proposing. Um, and, uh, so any questions, um, and, and another little comic, um, we've got a rooster at 2%, a cat at 98% and in a landslide, the winner of the waking up your owner race, the cat won that one.

Can you go back to the slide?

Yes.

Okay. So, yep.

Correct. Okay.

Here's, here's what we're going to do to make this development.

Here's what we're going to do to make this development safe, even though we're going beyond these numbers. And then that that's what the, that's what the planning commission is would be deciding on. That is the advice of our geotechnical engineer, whether or not, their geotechnical engineer's suggestions make the project safe, even though it doesn't hit those numbers. That is correct. Okay.

And specifically in the red line code in section K, we have said, we've proposed the applicant may choose to elevate its application to a discretionary review by the planning commission pursuant to 1744-060L, which gives you process. And then number one, when the applicant chooses a type three path of approval, a greater assessment and analysis of the site's characteristics, stability, and probability of failure shall be provided within the geotechnical report, which shall include, but is not limited to, slope stability calculations, plasticity analysis, hydraulic conveyance and impact, SCARP analysis, landslide susceptibility, historic landslide cause and prevention, soil analysis, including borings, and structural calculations, as well as all other standards in 1744. So those right there are not in typical geotechnical reports, unless it's like a really nasty site. And it really becomes dependent on what is the soil and what is some of the other things. Here we're saying, these are not optional in these cases, you must do them if you're going outside the clear and objective standards. And we've spoken to our consultant, Pally Consulting, about that. because we asked them kind of like what to write here, like what extra is really required, like what changes it from a type two to type three, and that this language we worked out with them of some options so that people can kind of be put on notice that, you know, you got to make a much bigger effort if you want to go this direction.

Thank you.

Questions, concerns?

If not, we will go through the process to approve it, to seek adoption. I'm interested in making sure that it's as stringent as possible. You guys don't have this experience, but I have experience in recommending denial on three different applications that should have been denied and as you know the chickens came home to roost and each one of those developments had major slide problems even though we were told oh we can engineer this we can fix this we weren't convinced the planning commission denied all three of those applications and Unfortunately, the city commission overrode them. These are old city commissions. And unfortunately, like I said, they all had problems, which we ended up as a city having to deal with later on. And I don't, you know, I know none of you have that experience, but I do. And my biggest fear is that We've made it more stringent, more stringent, more stringent. I don't want it to be overturned for some, as I realize, some crazy political situation. Because the city ends up, no matter what, we end up holding the bag. And I don't want us to be in those positions. And unfortunately, what we have in Oregon City left is we have a lot of these sites that probably... Only in my personal opinion, professional opinion, they should probably not be built on. But somebody's going to try. It's one of those situations that I like to use Kenema as an example. We know that Kenema was drawn someplace else because if they had actually really seen it, they wouldn't have planted it the way they did because it's like it's a flatland subdivision and it's not. It never was. I mean, it's those slopes. So we've got a lot of properties left in our community that somebody's going to say, oh, well, you know, if I do X, Y, and Z, and then by the time something happens, maybe five years, two years, they're going to be long gone. And so the more stringent we make this and the less discretionary we have it, I think the more it cuts our risk as a jurisdiction. And I don't want to see us in the future making decisions that aren't based on the documentation that should be there. you know, that we need to have in order for the planning commission to make some kind of decision. So the more stringent we make it, the better I feel about it, because at least I think we have covered everything and we've done our due diligence to say, you need to show us that this, this, and this.

Thank you very much.

Can we, like, do we have to go through all the city project updates unless somebody calls something out?

It's up to you, okay.

I have a future work session agenda. That's the first one, so... Okay, go ahead. Thank you, Tony.

You want me to go through these or do you want to just let me know if you have any concerns? I will say the October 13th one, one of those is probably going to slide, probably legislative affairs, just because that's a lot for one night on those, those aren't short topics. And so we might slide that in when we don't have an urban renewal meeting, or we might just do it under a general business presentation during a regular meeting, just because, They're going to do legislative days and then we'll be able to come back and kind of give the update of where we're at as we prep for the opening of the session. And I did add the marijuana facilities to upcoming at the bottom.

We're all waiting with bated breath for that session to open.

What would you like to add? So can I talk about a future? Absolutely. I think it's time for us to have a discussion about what a data center moratorium in Oregon City can look like. I've been going back and forth on this for the simple reason that we have to give a 45 day period of notice period. And what makes me nervous about that is the potential of us not even being considered for a data center and then someone saying oh i've got 45 days, so why not move now, but the reason why. I think it's time for us to consider this is because and that was the other thing I was thinking about was where would it even go but there are important policy discussions going on right now for example with the Fimble Creek concept area and I would hate after all of these years of us trying to figure out how to consolidate those parcelized properties into one single vision for the one catalyst to get us there for a data center to be the reason why that happens. So I would like us to consider a moratorium so that we can have our staff do their due diligence and make sure that our code is airtight and allows us as much discretion as the state laws will allow us to have so that we are prepared. I know that other cities who have considered this or are going through this are having to deal with it concurrently and I would rather that we have the code in place before we're put in that position. And to be fair, these do work in other communities. There was an interesting piece in OPB about Hermiston and how they're open for business for data centers. And they said that police building, that library and that city hall all exist because of data centers. And it works for them and that's great. But for us, I think we wanna make sure that we have as much discretion in our code before this comes to us so that we have the opportunity to, I mean, I haven't looked at the code but I highly doubt that we have what we need in there. So let's take the time to make sure that everything is ready and that we're prepared. Because for me, at least, I know that I would prefer that Oregon City's economic future rely on living wage jobs rather than something like a data center.

I would very much support that.

Well, in order to get the ball rolling, do we need to take... put it on the regular agenda to say, please come back. We were voting to do this and please come back with the information.

I don't think so. I think I'll obviously follow up with Kelly and Carrie and hearing consensus that this is something we'll look into the moratorium process, which we would need to start and how the commission would start that process. And then we can bring that as soon as it's ready and the commission can decide in a regular meeting how they'd like to proceed.

Well, I thought I heard something on OPB this afternoon that the governor made some statement that immediately there was going to be a stay on. I didn't quite hear it all because I was transitioning from one place to the other, but. That's for state. For the state. For like state properties and state actions. Well, that's what I thought I heard then. Yeah. Okay. So I think you have a consensus. Okay. So you want to move that? as quickly as possible. And as soon as we can, because now that it's out there. Yeah. Okay. That sounds good.

Okay. Any questions on the project updates?

Okay. Yeah. The only one I was, you had already talked to me about it. It's October the 13th, where we're talking about commercial derelict building ordinance. Because I already got... for the weekend somebody asked me about two buildings in town and i said they're on the list okay anybody have any uh quick project updates that we absolutely need to talk about go ahead um uh

The destination marketing and management organization meeting, the main conversation at the last meeting was regarding the possibility of making Oregon City Heritage Coordinating Committee, a committee under the Destination Market and Management Organization. If you know the Oregon City Heritage Coordinating Committee as Thelma likes to call it, a disorganized organization, or a disorganization, has been doing their events with Clackamas Heritage Partners as the fiscal agent. And so they've discussed the possibility of having the DMMO be the umbrella with the OCC, sorry, OCHC being the... committee underneath of that. So yeah, the DMMO would be the, yes. The DMMO had a pretty lengthy conversation about that, has not made a decision about that yet. But I think that's something they're definitely considering and may come up with the next meeting. However, the next real meeting is, probably October because the next meeting is gonna be a joint meeting and the quarterly mixer, which is gonna be the first annual meeting, which is gonna be held on September 21st at the library in the community room from four to six. So they're doing the regular September meeting, but also the quarterly mixer. And it'll be focused really on the accomplishments from the past year and discuss some discussions about the future going forward and kind of a meet and greet get together.

What are we doing about recruitment?

The board recruitment is something. Both board recruitment and staff recruitment. Board recruitment has been a conversation. They are taking anyone that's interested in applying for that can get ahold of Salacia or through the... Can we get that out on our information?

I think we had talked about that. I'll follow up on that. Follow up on Jared so that people know about it.

Yeah.

And what they're looking for, positions they're thinking about?

They've only just started, they have had limited conversations about recruitment for the executive director in the future, but is that the right title?

Yes, I believe so.

She's the contract executive director.

Yeah. Okay. Anything for you, sir?

No, just a side note. Just a reminder, I will not be here for our next meeting.

Okay. Yeah, I know a lot of people have taken the August off, so not a lot was going on.

Michael? Yeah, real quick. C4 met last week. I sat in for Commissioner Morrow as he was out of town. The mayor was nice to, came to the meeting, introduced herself as our new TriMet board representative for this district, and there was very positive response from the group that we're finally going to have somebody, A, somebody in that position, and B, somebody that we know will advocate for Oregon City and Clackamas County. So that was great. They just wanted a live body. Yeah. A live body can get things done. And then there were two presentations, one about the Oregon, the prosperity roadmap, which seems, I don't know. rearranging deck chairs, let's say. They are looking, I guess they are looking hard at how Business Oregon operates. The other interesting presentation and the presenter was probably the most impressive thing. Grace Kernighan was her name. Kernighan. Kernighan? Yeah. They spelled it wrong on here then. ODOT director. It says Kernighan on here on the agenda. Yeah, she was ODOT director. She had positions with the Federal Highway Administration. Very impressive. And she's co-chairing the Transportation Vision Work Group, which has been divided up into subgroups. And they're looking at three scenarios for transportation funding. One is if we keep funding as it is now, which means less would get done. One would be what funding would we need to support keep at the current level. The first one was keep the funding alone, which means less is going to get done. And then what would it take to fund the status quo? And then what would it take to fund a 20% increase and what could be done with that? And there are these subcommittees that each have a different topic and they're supposedly reporting a report I think by the end of the year on what can be done with our ODOT issue. And the idea of trust in ODOT came up, or lack of trust in ODOT came up several times. So that was that.

Nothing for me. Just may God be with all of the I-5 commuters.

The city is buying $500,000 worth of free bus passes. There you go. That doesn't change. Yeah, I know. I don't go over there. Did you want to report on our youth advisory commission, Potla?

Sure, yeah. We had our potluck, was it last Monday, for the incoming Youth Advisory Commission. Yeah, it was exciting. I think we had a pretty good turnout. Just kind of discussed, I don't know, what this next year would look like and kind of talked about the history of what past commissions have done. I just say I'm very excited and proud to see how many of the youth in our community are willing to participate step up and engage in this public process and and you know donate their time to this it's it's really meaningful and i'm really uh excited to to see that and i'm looking forward to this next year to see what they do yeah i was very excited about the fact that so many of the parents came

Oh, we had a huge parent turnout. We had a good parent turnout.

Yeah, you did a nice Q&A session.

So I did a tag team on answering all their, well, the kids were playing a get to know you game. We both said, well, do you have any questions of us? And so they started asking about this thing and that thing and the other thing. And we had a really good conversation with them. So it was really nice. So anyway. I forgot one last thing.

Yes, go ahead. The Visit Oregon City is also part of hosting a river tourism meeting. So anyone interested, that's gonna be Oregon City focused and then broader focused after that. But, cause I think it's multiple groups participating in this, but it's October 14th, nine to noon. And I believe it's at SportsCraft. um so anyone interested in where would they have a meeting place down there i don't know i don't know that's what i thought it i'm pretty sure that's where it's happening okay um maybe i'm wrong if not i'll correct it we have time it's october 14th nine to noon so just put it down and then i'll figure out but that's maybe you'll be on one of those barges

Okay, just very quickly, most of the committees that I serve on have not, we're not meeting in August. West meeting is Thursday. We are gonna be talking about the CIP that's gonna be going to the County Commissioners. South Fork, we're delighted to let you all know that we have an acceptable bid, hopefully groundbreaking on the water quality treatment building will be happening within a month. and that has been a long time in coming and I'm very excited about that. As many of you know, Juliana Allen from the Oregon City Downtown Association has resigned her position. Ryan Brinkley is stepping into the void and made his first video, which he says he didn't like, but he did a great job. So we'll see how things go with the board and whether they're going to start recruiting see how things go. But anyway, so Main Street is moving along. I don't know if you were aware with the building that the Pioneer Pub was in has been sold. And a guy's gonna bring sort of like a comedy venue club thing there. That's the Old Star Theater. Old Star Theater. Still got the marquee that's in the front is that big square thing. That was where the marquee was for it. So, and there's still some bones in there. Willamette Falls and Landings Heritage Area. Instead of having a meeting, we had a work party and we completely slash and burned the front of the property. So there's not tall, sharp grass there. And MPAC did not meet in August. The... just went out of my head. The Regional Waste, Solid Waste Committee did not meet in August either. So that is it. So we are adjourned.