City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the 02/09/2026, Toulton City Council meeting. Please stand and join me while, I say the pledge of allegiance. I

pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands,

Next, we have a proclamation recognizing 02/21/2026 as Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration day. Is mister Thoo here, and would you like to say anything? Okay. Well then, we'll have Council Brooks read the proclamation.

Good evening. Excuse me. The City of Tualatin Proclamation, whereas the Vietnamese Community of Oregon, VNCO, is an organization whose mission is to unite, support, and foster pride in all members of the Vietnamese community in the city of Tualatin and throughout Oregon. They act to ensure all Vietnamese Americans understand that they have a voice and a place in society, and whereas the Vietnamese community of Oregon achieves this by passing down Vietnamese culture and traditions from generation to the next generation while striving to strengthen relationships with other ethnic communities throughout Oregon and Southern Washington, and whereas the most important of those traditions is that of the Lunar New Year celebration, a celebration of joy, history, and culture for all Vietnamese wherever they are in the world. And whereas this important tradition has been celebrated and organized by the Vietnamese community of Oregon in the city of Tualatin and neighboring cities across Oregon for the last, I want to say, fifty years and whereas we continue that tradition today by showing our support to the Vietnamese American communities not only in Oregon but across America to be an example of unity for future generations.

Now therefore be it proclaimed by the City Council of the City of Tualatin, Oregon that Tualatin recognizes the February 2026 as Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration day. We encourage community members to join our Vietnamese neighbors in celebrating, introduced and adopted this January 2026. And hopefully we'll see him later.

Thank you, Councilor Brooks. Next we have employee of the year presentation and proclamation and I believe that would be Cherilyn.

Thank you. And it's a pleasure to be presenting this employee of the year award and honoring our employee of the year for 2025. So our employees here at the City of Tualatin are our biggest asset, right? And nothing can happen without our wonderful city employees who do everything from oh, okay. It disappeared.

They do everything from taking care of our technology to the parks maintenance and patrolling the streets and keeping us safe. And so every year we have an employee of the year program that I need a prompt. They get nominated by their fellow coworkers and no. It's okay. They get they get nominated by their their fellow coworkers and through in the month of November, and it's based on the city manager seven values and how employees performed regarding the city manager seven principles.

And like I said, it's based on nominations by coworkers and is intended to recognize frontline non management employees. So there's a committee that reviews all of the nominations, and that committee is made up of members of our employee engagement crew called EEK, the past two employees of the year and two supervisors. And they individually score all the nominations independently, and then they turn in their scores and the employee of the year is produced off of that. So eligibility, the employee must work at least thirty two hours a week on a regular basis. They must have worked here the full calendar year for which they are nominated and they must be in good standing, so not in disciplinary status.

So that's kind of a no brainer. So employee of the year comes with eight hours paid leave, dollars $3.50 cold hard cash. We used to give it out in like a big check, but now we give actual like cash and the finance department like threatened to me that they

were going to give me $350 $1 bills to give out and but I didn't do that

to Frank. There's a press release that we do, a proclamation. I this is probably the the favorite part of it, coming down to counsel and and hearing the proclamation. No. It's a little embarrassing. And then their name and picture on our wall of fame, which is in city offices, and then they get a trophy, and it's a rotating trophy. So Frank will keep it for the year. So this is Frank Butler. Frank is our network administrator and he's worked here for a number of years. Think the proclamation says that how long Frank has worked here.

Just some of the things that some of these are these are quotes from the nomination that I received. So Frank is the unsung hero who keeps our city's digital heart beating. He ensures we stay connected, protected, and productive, all while wrangling a citywide network that occasionally behaves like a toddler. Over the past year, Frank has flawlessly led major projects such as growing our badge access system, deftly migrating us to SharePoint, and defending the city from ever evolving cyber threats. Without Frank, we'd face outages, security breaches, budget hits, and a serious loss of trust.

With him, we get reliability, humor, and a calm confidence that everything's handled. So I present to you our twenty twenty five employee of the year.

Congratulations, Frank. Did he get extra points for having the same name as the mayor? He

does get confused. Sometimes he will get Frank's, the mayor's emails and sometimes the mayor will get Mr. Butler's emails.

We

have a proclamation here and I'm going to ask counsel Hilliard to read it because I don't have my glasses on. How

about that? Alright.

City of Tualatin proclamation. Whereas the employee of the year program annually recognizes a city of Tualatin employee for demonstrating the city manager's seven principles in an exemplary way. And whereas Frank Butler was hired on 11/18/2013 as the city network administrator, and whereas Frank consistently demonstrates Tualatin's core values of teamwork, respect, having a one city mindset, empowerment, problem solving, customer service, and being non bureaucratic in a multitude of ways every day. And whereas his teamwork shows in his constant patience even when the fix is turning it off and back on again. His one city attitude ensures every department gets equal tech, TLC, from police to parks.

He is a problem solving master, tackling outages before we even realize something's broken. His empowerment shines as he fearlessly learns new systems and implements them citywide. Respect, question mark. He shows it daily even when your emergency is forgetting a password again. In a truly nonbureaucratic fashion, he streamlines, simplifies, and saves taxpayer dollars without a hint of red tape or drama.

And whereas Frank is the reason our city systems along so smoothly, you would think it's magic, but it's not magic. It is hard work by Frank quietly making it all work. Now therefore, be it proclaimed by the city council of the City Of Tualatin, Oregon that Frank Butler is named the 2025 city of Tualatin employee of the year, introduced and adopted this February 2026. Congratulations, Frank.

Did you wanna say anything to us?

Well, thank you very much. That's all I have

Well, to

you don't mind, I'd like the counsel to come over here

and have a photo with you. Council, if you could stay. I think Mr. Two is in the room so we could get a photo with him while there.

On behalf of the Vietnamese community of Oregon store, thank you so much for recognition of the

Okay, the next section of our agenda is public comment. This allows anyone to address the council regarding an issue not on the agenda. And we ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. I don't have any forms here. So Nicole, did you have any? Okay. Anyone in the room want to speak? Anyone on Zoom? Okay. Well, next we'll move to the consent agenda.

The consent agenda will be enacted with one vote. I'll ask, is there anyone that wants to remove any item from the consent agenda for discussion, and consideration? If not, I'll read through the consent items. One, consideration of approval of the work session and regular meeting minutes of 01/26/2026. Two, consideration of approval of a new liquor license application for Ancestry Brewing.

And three, consideration of resolution number 5940Two-twenty6 authorizing the city manager to execute a grant agreement for a metro area communications commission grant and appropriating special purpose revenues in the city's general fund during the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven budget. Any comments or discussion?

I make a motion to, adopt the consent agenda as read.

Second. We have a motion and second. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. All right. And now I see several people from TriMet in the audience. So I'd like to ask you to come up for your presentation.

Good evening, Council President Platt and members of the Tualatin City Council. My name is Sam DeSue, Jr, and I'm the General Manager for TriMet. Joining us tonight here at the table is JC Veneta, our Chief Public Affairs Officer. Also to my right here is Tom Mills, our Director of Mobility and Planning Policy. To my left here is John Serra, our Local Government Affairs.

And we have the privilege tonight to have one of our Board members, Director Kellogg, that's with us as well. I want to thank you all for inviting us here tonight to discuss TriMet's budget and how we will work together to address our deficit. One of our most challenging parts of this conversation is a proposal to cut service, but I do want to emphasize that this is a conversation. We announced these proposed cuts on January 5, and we have spent the last month speaking with all of our partners around the region, really getting feedback and looking at the best way forward. Mayor Bubinac and Council President Pratt, two weeks ago, you and I met to discuss the impacts of this proposal and to really talk about ways that we can work together to mitigate the impact of our cuts.

Tonight, Tom Mills is going to discuss our proposed cuts with you as well as some innovative changes that we've come up with to address some of the city's major concerns. I would also say before I pass the microphone, please pass along my well wishes to the mayor. I understand that he's not here tonight. So now I'd like to hand it off to JC Bonetta.

Sounds good. Thank you, Sam. I just want to bring some context to why we're here tonight and some of the background associated with where we're at financially at TriMet. So next slide. Just a current status of the region. Is this the right one? There you go. Just kind of a current status of where we are in our region. As you all are seeing, we are seeing layoffs that are outpacing the great recession. We're at that level.

You probably have seen, maybe not, the latest CBRE report where the office vacancy rate for our entire region rose to 27.3 in Downtown Portland. It's now at a historic 34.7%. A lot of vacant office vacancies. We have a high teleworking rate. Oregon is second in the nation for teleworking when it comes to working from home.

And then as you can imagine, there is also a continued elevated concern around public safety out in our community. Next slide. So and now our current status of TriMet. So right now, our ridership is holding steady. We have seen some growth over the past few months. We stand at about 65,800,000 boardings this last fiscal year. One of the things that you should know is 35% of our riders are transit dependent. That means they rely on TriMet to get to whatever opportunity that they're heading to. That number has grown. And the reason why we have seen that and we know that is because we have seen record setting low income fare program enrollment.

This is the program that we have for people with low incomes, and we've also seen record use of that program. We are also seeing declining tax revenue through our employer payroll tax and the one that you might see on your paycheck, which is the employee payroll tax known as the transit tax or what we know as the state transportation improvement fund. And that we've also seen our fare revenue, the money that we get at the fare box go down, and I'll talk to that in this next slide. Since the pandemic, we obviously saw ridership drop, but that also means people paying fares at the bar right at the fare box has decreased as well. That's about $60,000,000 a year that we have lost.

One of the things that you have probably seen as the city is you're handling your own budget is how inflation has really increased. From 2019 to 2025, we saw it increase by 56%. And a couple of reasons why, obviously, just normal inflation that we have investments in safety and security on the system. What we always say, what you see in our community, you will see on TriMet from time to time. And so that has meant a lot more investments in our safety and security, cleaning as well as we've made some investments in reconfiguring our network.

Throughout the pandemic, we watched things change. We saw people move throughout our region. They weren't just in downtown or in in more populated areas that we had seen. People moved. And Tom and his team really did a good job of making tweaks to our network to gain access to more people through our service.

And as you can imagine, we have a backlog of capital maintenance needs. Two of our bus garages are nearing 50 years old, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done to them. Next slide, please. So as we start to take stock of all of this, we are faced with about a $300,000,000 budget deficit that we have made the decision to solve by 07/01/2028. You might say, well, why give yourself that timeframe?

In good government budgeting, when you see a shortfall, you try to solve for the problem within three years. And that's exactly what we're doing. So there are three areas that we're concentrating on, where we're trying to lessen the shortfall through administrative cuts of at least $93,000,000 We are looking to raise a minimum of $48,000,000 in new sustainable revenue and service. We are going to hopefully cut at least 10% by 07/01/2028, which is around $159,000,000 We are having conversations with lawmakers. If we don't find new revenue, we will have to take deeper cuts.

Next slide, please. So what have we done internally? When we were down in Salem lobbying for more funding, one of the things that we heard from lawmakers was get your house in order. And we really have been doing that. We have cut up to about $150,000,000 in discretionary funds through efficiencies.

We've canceled future planned bus service increases, and we've had our first round of layoffs, 68 positions, 26 people that were in those positions. Another round of layoffs is ahead and more internal cuts are expected. Next slide, please. External actions, you are aware of this. Well, first off, we increased our fares January 1, and we'll be going out this fall with outreach around another fare increase that we expect to take place in somewhere around 09/01/2028.

So more on that to come. But we have been working with lawmakers around an increase in the stiff. You will note that we are introducing legislation for folks, because we can't get very much done in this short session, to introduce legislation around a transit funding task force to bring folks around the table to really discuss how we can fund transit, not just in Portland, but throughout the state. A lot of the smaller transit districts around the state are really going through some tough times. In November, we made some small cuts on five lines.

March 1, we're doing the same on four lines. As Sam said, on, January 5, we rolled out a proposal to the community about some of the larger cuts that we are going to be taking, and then there will be another round in August 2027. We'll go out for outreach around that this fall. So more to come on that, and Tom will walk you through. Just so you know, we are very good at outreach.

It's one of the things that we continue to learn and grow, but we have gotten the message out around this proposal through all of our normal communications channels, through our webpage, email, postings. We've worked with a number of multilingual organizations to get the word out in our various communities. This slide says nearly 5,000 responses, but it's actually well over 7,000 responses to our survey because we asked people their thoughts on the routes and the changes that affected them. And I would note that while not a scientific survey, we did not see significant differences between groups, meaning a certain demographic said one thing, a certain demographic said another. So we didn't see those differences.

Next slide. And with that, I'll turn it over to Tom Mills, who will go over our proposal and some of the changes that we're proposing.

Thank you, JC, and thank you for counsel for having us today. Again, my name is Tom Mills. I'm the Director of mobility planning and policy. Essentially, I manage the service planning team that makes recommendations for how we want to change service, whether that's increasing or decreasing. I want to talk a little bit about our process for how we developed our proposal for the service cuts that we have released to the public for their comments.

So on the screen, there is a table, and in the left hand row is a list of various ways we could have gone about cutting service. And JC referred to the initial survey that we had in the fall in which we asked the public, if you had to cut service, which would how would you prefer us to go about doing it? And that helped in and the list you see on in the table were the options that people could kind of rank in the survey. And so what we did is we ran those options through this matrix, first starting by looking at, well, how much could we save with each of these types of cuts. And I want to note that green in the table is good, red is bad and yellow is kind of in between.

And so you see with the estimated costs, there were a number of cuts where, wow, we could save a lot of money if we do that. That's great. But then we went to the next row where we said, yeah, but how many of our riders is that gonna really impact? And then we said, oh, uh-oh, okay. If we make some of these cuts, we're really gonna hurt a lot of riders.

And, you know, in doing so, may actually lose fare revenue. So that kind of winds up kind of washing out the savings that we get to some extent. But then the next column is looking at the degree of the impact. So what we mean by that is, for example, if a bus line completely goes away, that has a greater impact than if we're just changing the frequency on a bus line because at least there's another bus coming. So we weighted our evaluation based on that as well.

Then came the survey results, and that's the survey that I was referring to that occurred in the fall where the public told us, hey, go ahead and cut. If you're going to cut, cut this first, cut these things last. And what we heard from folks there was we have a proposal for the MAX Green Line not to go all the way to downtown anymore. That was highly ranked, making some network changes where bus lines are pretty close to one another. Maybe instead of serving the same area with three lines, you serve it with two lines or one line instead of two lines, whatever.

So that was highly ranked as well as some other smaller changes around night frequency and service that only goes to schools. But where they told us don't cut was kind of the high frequency services that most people use. So most of our riders use, which so it's probably not too surprising that they said don't cut this because this is what we use. Lastly, we have an analysis. We didn't do this for all of the options, but an analysis called a job access analysis.

Basically, what it says is if you make this change, how what is the change in the number of jobs that someone can reach within a certain period of time? So we used forty five minutes as being that amount of time, and it it does include the wait time. So the reason you see something like the changes to frequent service as being a big impact is because if you have to wait longer for your bus, then you can't travel as far within forty five minutes, and therefore, you have access to fewer jobs. So using all these different factors, we developed a proposal, and that would be the next slide, please. In that proposal, first starting off on the top line, the small reductions that JC had mentioned, I oftentimes refer to them as trimmings.

They some occurred in November. The next round will occur in March. So that's in this proposal. Then the green line max kind of trimming there where the line doesn't go to downtown anymore, people have to make a transfer, that is in the proposal. The network changes, A few low ridership lines, one of which is here in Tualatin, so we're going to talk about that.

And then the lines where we will serve the school trips that are very popular, but the other trips that aren't popular, we would cut those. And then lastly, a couple lines where at nighttime they won't run as frequently. This proposal altogether is about 6.5 percentage points of our 10% goal. So it doesn't get us all the way to 10%, but it gets us more than halfway there. And as J.

C. Mentioned, we have another year, another bite at the apple to get us to that 10%. Next slide. So I just wanted to quickly show how these cuts balance by county. So in Clackamas County, showing Clackamas County would bear 21% of the cuts Multnomah County, 68% of the cuts and Washington County, 11 of the cuts.

Now I will say, as I mentioned, there will be another bite at the apple, so that's going to change a little bit. But that's particularly with Multnomah County, that's about in line with the amount of service that they have in their county. So they're bearing about the amount that they receive. Next slide. So I wanted to really address the service cuts here in Tualatin that are proposed.

And before I do, I wanted to really kind of level set and make sure that we're all in the same playing field about how much service, what service you have here and how often it runs and what days it runs and that kind of thing. So real quickly, I'll just go through it. So I'm trying to see now. So the yellowish line oh, thank you. The yellowish line is line 76, and that is a line that goes starts in Beaverton at Beaverton Transit Center, goes to Washington Square, Downtown Tigard, and then Toalton Park And Ride, Downtown Toalton to the West Station and then out to Meridian Park Hospital.

That line runs every fifteen minutes, seven days a week. That is really your trunk line here in Toalton. Now additionally, a year and a half ago, we also extended that line to Westland and Oregon City every hour. So you've got four buses coming an hour and the fourth bus continues on to Westland and Oregon City. The next line that I want to point out is Line 94, which is the maroon line to the west there on Highway 99.

That goes to Sherwood in the South and it goes to Tigard in the North. That runs every twenty minutes, seven days a week. And then we have some more rush hour oriented lines. You have Line 97, which is on Tualatin Sherwood Road. We're going to talk about that a little bit.

And then Line 96, which starts in Wilsonville, goes through Downtown Tualatin Tualatin Park And Ride and then it hops on I-five and it doesn't stop until it gets to Downtown Portland. And that is only five days a week in the rush hours. There of course is the West which is also a rush hour. And then lastly, well there are two lines that also go to the Tualatin Park And Ride then go on up to Lake Oswego. Lastly though, I want to mention the red and blue lines in these pictures are the Tualatin shuttle.

TriMet provides funding to Washington County to contract out for that service. So that is a TriMet funded program. And those shuttles run kind of all day on the weekdays, about hourly, if I remember correctly. Because we don't operate it, I'm not as familiar with those schedules, but that is a service also. Next slide, please.

So first, I want to talk about Line 97. So there are three lines that we are proposing that would be eliminated. And here's how we kind of came to that conclusion. So prior to the COVID-nineteen pandemic, our service standards said any bus line that had 15 boardings rides per vehicle hour. A vehicle hour is every hour that the bus is out of the yard.

In other words, every hour we're paying for a bus operator, so it includes deadhead time to the start and end of a line. It also includes the layover time. But mostly it includes the time that it's running in service. Every hour we're paying, if it's getting 15 or fewer boardings, that is a low performing line. Now that was in 2019.

In 2024, we said to ourselves, hey, the market has changed. We need to change our service standards, and we lowered that to eight rides an hour. So that costs in 2019, and using today's dollars, it was at 15 rides per hour, it cost us $10.53 In 2024, again, using today's dollars, eight rides an hour costs us 19.5 almost $20 a ride. If it's $20 a ride, that's a low ridership line. You can pay for a taxi most of the time.

For this exercise, we actually lowered it further to six rides per hour because we know this is sensitive stuff. And that is basically saying any ride, any line that's costing us $26 a ride is really low ridership. We really need to take a look at that. That left us with three lines, one in each county, Line 97 being one of them, where we're only getting three rides per vehicle hour, and it's costing us almost $49 a ride. To give you an example of what kind of a common kind of middle of the road ridership is, I use Line 76 because that is one of the lines that is serving here in Toowalton.

That line gets 17.5 rides per vehicle hour, so and it costs us about $9.23 per ride. So that's why Line 97, Twalter and Sherwood Road, kind of rose to the top as a line that we might want to consider eliminating, and we put that in our proposal. Next slide, please. Now after hearing from you and after hearing from the community, our riders, we've taken a closer look, and we have a solution that can maintain and save Line 97 at the same number of hours per day, the same schedule that we have today. So on the left shows our current service.

Line 97 is in green. I want to point out another line, Line 38, which goes to Walton Park And Ride. We have a proposal for that line to not go all the way to Downtown Portland, but only go to the Barber Transit Center. What happens is when you shorten a line like that, it becomes less efficient. What I mean by that is the bus operator doesn't have to drive as long, they get to the end of the line and they have a longer layover and they're sitting around waiting to turn around and go the other way.

Well, if they have a longer layover, they could use that time to continue on and operate along to Walton Sherwood Road. So what we're proposing is connect if you look to the right under new proposal, we're proposing connecting Line 38 to Line 97 and using that time that the operator would otherwise be waiting to do their turnaround, have them continue out along through Downtown Toowalton and along to Walton Sherwood Road to Sherwood. Now that efficiency doesn't get us all the way there. So what we're also proposing is we wouldn't do it this August because we haven't done outreach on this, but we would propose it starting next fall to do we would do some outreach next fall on it, taking Line 94, which if you recall, that's the maroon line here on the map. If you recall, I mentioned that line runs every twenty minutes, seven days a week.

We would have that run every thirty minutes instead of every twenty minutes. So we would take that savings and we would put it into Line 97 to kind of make up for the difference. And that way, we could save Line 97. So that's our proposal for Line 97. We'll go to the next slide. So also Line 96 and actually talking about Plambach Gardens. And this there's nothing in the proposal necessarily about Plambach Gardens. There is a proposal about 96 and changing the route north of Plambach Gardens. I will point out though that Line 96 today, it actually runs all I think I called it I said it was peak hour, rush hour. It isn't.

It runs all day today. But what happens is during the rush hours, go all the way to Wilsonville. But in the midday, we don't go to Wilsonville. So Wilsonville is not part of the TriMet district. The reason we go to Wilsonville is once you get South of Downtown Tualatin, you can't really turn the bus around without going down some residential streets, and we don't want to disrupt all your neighbors. So we go to Wilsonville and we turn around in Wilsonville. But we're really not supposed to leave our district. So we try to minimize how often we do that. So we only do it in the rush hour. And then in the middle of the day, we turn around at Saggart and go to Martin Azi and layover at the Mohawk Park And Ride.

Well, by doing that, then we're not serving Plantback Gardens south of Saggart. So we have a recommendation for how to go about doing that. So again, we will continue to serve it during the rush hour. But in the midday, we have been having conversations with SMART in Wilsonville. We actually give them money to operate their bus line 2X into Tualatin.

It's part of the statewide transportation improvement fund. Of the things that the state recommends we do is make it easier to go between boundaries. And so for years, we've been giving SMART money to have service that comes into this area. But they take the freeway. And by taking the freeway, they're bypassing Plant Back Gardens.

So what we're asking them to do is during the times when we don't go by Plantback Gardens, so in the midday, they could take we asked them we're asking them to take Bloons Ferry Road so that they would serve Clambeck Gardens all the way up to the Tualton Park And Ride. That way so in the peak hour, folks at Clambeck Gardens could ride our service and in the midday and even on Saturdays, they could ride Smart. Smart does have bus on shoulder lane on I-five, but they would only need that during the rush hour. So when they're using I-five, in the middle of the day, they don't really need it because traffic is going just fine on I-five. So they might as well just be over on Boone Sverre Road.

So I know that's a little complicated, so I'm happy to answer more questions about that. Next slide. I also want to talk about Line seventy six. So part of our proposal is to no longer have Line seventy six serve Borland Road by going by Rolling Hills Community Church, also no longer serving Westland and Oregon City. I mentioned how we evaluate lines by how many rides you get per vehicle hour.

This segment of Line 76 only gets four rides per vehicle hour. So for every hour we're putting service out there, only four people are riding, which is why we kind of looked at like, well, maybe we shouldn't keep doing this, maybe the market is not there. In fact, it really isn't that surprising, right, because a lot of that area is undeveloped at Stafford. Also, we're on the freeway for a good portion of that, and when we're on the freeway, we can't pick anyone up. Also, East Of West Linn on our way to Oregon City, we're taking Willamette Falls Drive, which some of you may be familiar.

One side is the freeway, the other side is an embankment down to the river. So again, we're not picking anyone up. So really not surprising that that really didn't take off. The good news is that for the Rolling Hills Community Church and Twalton Pantry, the Borland Free Clinic, Ride Connection, which again, we give money to Ride Connection to provide a lot of service, they're still providing service to the church twice a week. So people can still get to the food pantry, they can get to the clinic.

They used to provide it every day until we put the 76 through there. We worked with them on bringing their service back. They said we don't need to go every day based on our experience before they just weren't getting the rise to sustain everyday service, but they felt like two days a week was appropriate. The last thing I would say about this is we are also talking to SMART. Again, we are providing them money to run service from Wilsonville.

Their plan was Wilsonville to West Lynn to Oregon City and then on up to the Clackamas Town Center. And we've asked them to consider also going up to Meridian Park Hospital and then going out Borland Road. So they're looking into that. No commitments at this time, but that is also the potential. Again, something we're already funding, trying to be good partners and helping make it easier to go between our districts.

If we're giving them money, maybe they could help us out to serve you as well. And then the last slide with regards to the proposal for your area is Line 96. So Line 96, I mentioned earlier, once it goes to to Walton Park And Ride, it hops on the freeway and it doesn't stop until it gets downtown. And it's kind of similar to the Plambeck Gardens issue with Smart. Once you're on the freeway, you can't pick anyone up and you're bypassing all these people who could be riding.

So we have recommended that that line continues on Boones Ferry Road, cuts up through Mountain Park, goes to Barber Transit Center. And then from Barber Transit Center into downtown, it would have just three stops, three kind of stops where we tend to have larger ridership, more destinations. So you would kind of pick up a little more speed from Barber Transit Center into downtown. This allows us to eliminate a line on Boones Ferry Road in Lake Oswego. So it allows us again, as I mentioned, instead of serving that area with two lines, we can do it with one line and that's a way we can save and yet still provide rides to people.

It will take longer. We estimate it will take ten to fifteen minutes longer. People who ride that line President Pratt, I believe you mentioned you used to be a rider of that line. You know it's a very fast trip into downtown, and it's really nice. We think that ten to fifteen minutes longer, while less convenient, is still a pretty fast trip from Tualatin into downtown.

And so we think that it's reasonable. However, on this Wednesday, we are going to have a preview ride for the riders so that they can have the opportunity to ride with us and see what it's like. And we'll all have open minds. If it's traffic locked grid locked and and we you know, it takes us an hour longer, then I will reconsider whether it's it's something we should do. But I hope that the riders also will have an open mind.

And if it is only ten or fifteen minutes longer, they'll say, yes, I don't like it, but I can live with it. So we'll go to the next slide. So whenever we make changes to big changes to the service, and this is in relation to the entire proposal, we have to do what is called a Title VI analysis. It's required by the FTA. It just basically means that we have to do an evaluation to ensure that people who are low income do not have a disproportionate burden, and people who are minority don't have a disparate impact to them, negative impact to them.

Conversely, we have to ensure that high income riders don't have a disproportionate benefit and nonwhite riders don't have a disproportionate benefit either. And in all cases, we are in compliance this proposal is in compliance with FTA. So whenever we change a line and move a line, it will have an impact on the lift boundary. The lift, of course, is TriMet's paratransit service. Basically, the way it works is by federal law, we have to provide complimentary paratransit service within three quarters of a mile of any line.

Line. So in doing so, we're able to draw a boundary around our entire system within three quarters of a mile of the system. And so anyone within that boundary who is disabled and is eligible can get Lyft service. Our proposal for the 97 would have meant that your lift boundary would have contracted in your area. However, as I mentioned, we now have a proposal to save the 97, and so you would not lose that your it would not contract and the lift boundary would stay the same in your area.

Next slide, please. So our proposal, the comment period ended at the January. We are reading through all the comments. We've pretty much read through them all now. We're making some revisions.

We're going to be releasing a revised kind of final proposal for the public to view on March 11. TriMet's Board of Directors will have a listening session on March 18. And then on March 25 will be the first reading of ordinance, and then April 22 will be when they will vote on it. The plan is to put all these changes into place in late August. If you've been following this, at one time, we were saying we were going to do it in November 2026.

We moved it to August because a number of these changes will impact students and how they get to school, and we don't want them to have to change their commute midway through the school year. And I think from there, I hand it back to JC.

Yes. And this is all just what we have done over the past month. As Tom said, the outreach period ended at the January. We did, again, our usual outreach with postcards, lots of social media open houses, and partnering with a lot of community based organizations again to get information from our community. Next slide. And we also did so here are the open houses that we did in person. We also did a number of open houses online and in multilingual. So just trying to cover the region, trying to get out into the community and talk to people about what we had proposed. Next slide. And here were the open houses that we did online.

We also, had QR codes on our, station signage on various stops and on all of our digital information displays, out, trying again to get it in the hands of everyone. And we have time for questions, I think.

Thank you for the presentation. Just really quickly, we all were copied on a letter from the mayor that went to TriMet, and they responded and came to visit us and made, I would call more draconian changes were going to happen, but they did come up with these compromises. Anyway, at this point, does anybody have any questions or comments? Okay. Thank

you very much. I don't pretend to understand your business fully. But I guess what I would ask you is, do you think that Tualatin residents really receive $20,000,000 worth of benefit from what's being out here? I mean, you're business people. So could you help me with that, please?

I'm sorry, can you help me with the $20,000,000

I think that's how much tax benefit you get from the City of Twalton.

Okay. I'm not aware of the exact tax benefit.

Well, that's the money you're paying for if understand correctly, kind of the money that you're saying that you're going to spend on Lyft and you're going to spend on those things, that's money that we pay into the system, don't we?

So our revenue comes from business payroll tax as well as the employee payroll tax. I don't know what that calculation is. So but in any case, so that's a common question that comes from nearly every jurisdiction I speak with. And, you know, what I would tell you is what your community is paying for is not just for your service in Toowalton, you're paying for your contribution to a whole network of services. So for example, as I mentioned, you have a bus line that takes you not just from Meridian Park Hospital through downtown to Tualatin to the Tualatin Park And Ride, but it goes all the way to Beaverton.

And then once you're in Beaverton, you can take the MAX somewhere, you can take a bunch of bus lines to different places. So you're all you're contributing to a network much in the same way that if you have Verizon, let's say, you're paying for a phone network. And though you may never call anyone in Virginia, you are paying for your ability to do so and others in your community who may be calling Virginia. So it's the same kind of thing. You're paying for a network.

Thank you. I'm also curious, could you share with us, so as you might know, Twalton sits in Washington County and Clackamas County. And so I see a way for our residents to get to the county seat in Washington County, which isn't a very easy ride, mind you, especially for people who might need specific services during the business day. And I would argue that that is potentially a barrier for access to service for our community members. But I don't see a way to get to Oregon City any longer. Did I misunderstand that? Which is for our Clackamas County residents, the seat, County seat. Did I?

Right. So our proposal is to no longer serve Oregon City from Toowalton because the ridership was so low. However, as I mentioned, we are paying SMART to provide service to Oregon City. And so we've asked them, hey, would you consider coming up to Tualatin first and then going over to Oregon City? That way we're not paying twice for kind of the same trip.

Sure. I understand that. Thank you. And I'm curious, could you clarify for me please the schools? And I think it was slide what do you mean by schools?

So you may know in Portland, they do not have bus high school bus service. Instead, what they pay is they pay Tri Med two thirds of the cost of a pass, and those passes are discounted one third. All school districts have the opportunity to be on that program. Portland Public Schools takes advantage of that. And so their students rather than riding the yellow bus to school, they're jamming onto our buses.

You can barely get on them. But then after so we would absolutely retain those trips, but off there are some bus lines where other than those trips, they're pretty empty. So we're suggesting we would eliminate the trips when they're empty, but still keep the school trips because they are full.

So how many in Tiger Twalton School District ride those buses and count on those for after school activities and things?

So Tiger Tualatin does not participate in the two thirds, one third. Understand that

I think a lot of kids rely on.

So what we do offer for schools outside of the Portland Public Schools, and this is paid for with the statewide transportation improvement funds, are free passes for students whose families earn a low income. So if you're a student whose family has a low income, you get a free pass.

Okay. And are those so I work with high school youth on the regular. And there is a huge barrier for them to get to our activities because of the consistency. The bus just drives right past them. And so they're all they're late. They're embarrassed. It creates a lot of upset. And so I'm trying to understand, is there a better way? And so I'm trying to trying to get from you what what what is it that we can do for our youth here in Toowalton and other people that need to catch the bus and then it drives right past them. And so I guess that's what I'm kinda worried about at the core of that particular question.

And I'm not familiar with, you know, specific instances of of buses driving past students. And I'm distressed to hear that that happens. I hope it doesn't I mean, obviously, happens everywhere.

Mistakes happen.

Mistakes happen.

Appreciate that.

If that is a chronic problem, then I'd like to know about it and where that is and we can make sure that that isn't it's possible that the bus stop itself is not well placed. We can look at where the placement of the bus stop is so that the student sometimes it's even a matter of trimming bushes and trees and things like that.

Great idea. So how would we get input and impact? Like, how how could we work together to do that?

Councilor Hillier, you can feel free to contact me and I'll make sure you have my contact information and I will be happy to be the conduit for you all.

That would be fabulous.

Thank you. Because my high school kids, they're my heart, you know, I gotta take care of them. Right? Sure. And in this world, they need access to pro social activities. Right? We we want them doing the good things. Okay. I'll I'll try to get to the end here. Sorry about that. So Autumn Sunrise access to Sherwood. Could you I'm sorry. Your little lines are hard for me and I'm switching glasses.

Sure. I I hear you.

And so would you help me with we have new residents in Twalton, and their schools are Sherwood. And so I don't know those kids as well, but I'm also as concerned about them getting to school. So could you help me with that?

Yeah. I assume you're referring to the Sherwood High School?

Yes. And there's middle school, but I'm focused on the high schoolers because I think that's

And Autumn Sunrise is kind of just north of Near Planback Gardens. Planback

Yeah.

I I don't have an answer for that right now because the school Sherwood recently in the last several years moved opened up a brand new school kind of out on the urban growth boundary, so kind of away from where we have service. So at this time, we are not serving the high school.

Okay. Was just curious. Thank All right. Let's make sure. Oh, I'm curious. Are you eligible for transit lodging tax dollars to help with some of these things? Like, if you're talking about activities and different things, especially in Portland as they're trying to enhance with hopefully some great women's sports teams, but other things that are going on. Are there ways that you could if the legislation were to change, is that something that you would be eligible for or could look into or would look into? Yes. Not my job to say yes, but I think you should

I mean

No, it's true. At this point in time, transit lodging tax pays for $450,000 for conventions. And so the the they actually pay for $450,000 worth of convention passes as one of a a way to lure conventions to Portland. So the folks that come in, there's a convention at the convention center. They all have passes to use TriMet so they can go up, mosey on downtown, spend dollars, all of that good stuff. So we are very familiar with those dollars. How we can get more of them is absolutely something that we would love to do.

Yeah. Great. It's great to hear that you do that. Maybe great thing to know even if people are weekending in downtown to know that or something. So anyway, sorry. Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilor Reyes? Yeah. Thank you very

much for your presentation and for considering not shutting down the bus line that goes to to me, it's more of the access to services in our community. So, considering keeping that, line that goes to Borden Free Clinic and

Mhmm.

The food pantry that's there, and especially the days that they're open and available for the community. When you did the survey and when you have those numbers that said six riders or versus an hour like you have the amount of money you spend versus the riders, was that done during peak hours, peak season like summers or was that done during the winter? When was that done?

Yes, that's a great question. That's from that specific number is from our fall quarter, so from late August to early December. So just so you know, every time you step on a bus or max, there is a counter that is counting you. You actually break a an electric beam and and then you get counted. And we know whether you're getting on or off because the beams are offset.

If you break the lower one first, you're getting on. If you break the higher one first, you're getting off. And we collect that every day and then our data team kind of averages those per day and we get a report every quarter that tells us how many ons and offs we had by line, we even by stop. I can tell you what the average number of boardings and deboardings is by stop. And we get that every quarter and that's I've been getting that report for the last twenty six years.

So for the six the eight to you went from eight to six riders was based on that data? Yes. That's all I have.

Thank you. Councilor Brooks.

Thanks for coming in. Well, first of all, for coming to the library, listening to our riders and coming here and talking with us. And thanks for your service, Robert, fellow former counselor. I had a couple of questions because a lot of this we're talking about the rider counts, which I can completely appreciate. And what I think about is how do we improve riding counts.

And so I am just curious when you're talking about having a new, like our first affordable housing. And I sit on the path, so I helped make that decision. And part of the decision is made because there is access to public transportation. So we couldn't really vote for that to be there. So it's there's a lot of skinny services out here that and that's why I think some of these questions of how much does it cost because we've got a lot of people that take a long time to get to Hillsborough.

We've got a lot of people that have really skinny bus services, so they have to figure out something else anyway. So I'm just curious if there's been instead of like ridership counts, if there's been when you're talking to the people that are involved with the social services, if there's been like a needs assessment directly with the people that are in need, the people that are at the you know? And and my other question is what what would be a common need? So we've had since the bus services have changed and since we've had new residents, we've had people come in saying they're having trouble getting their kids to Mitch charter schools. So I don't know if that's on your radar.

We've had people come in and say that they take the bus every day from the park blocks up to work downtown Tualatin. And it's a fast ride, and they're professionals. We have people that have been concerned about getting over to the hospital and the VA. And then we have the food bank, which we've talked about. But my curiosity is and then we have a growing senior, which I know you guys know.

So there's just going to be more possibilities. So even with partnerships with the other two shuttle services, can there be a way to think about a loop to the food bank or to the hospital from places like the library, places like Juanita Pohl Senior Center, which I know we serve, places like Plambeck Gardens. And then I know there are services also in Tiger that are connected as well. And then also two services. There are more service sites in Tiger now too, so we really want to make sure people can get to those services.

But I'm just curious what the needs assessment looks like instead of the ridership assessment.

Yeah. That's a great question. So we we have something we call the equity index. So where we take, I think it's 10 demographic factors, and we we kind of map them throughout the entire region. So they include, you know, income, seniors, youth, all these factors of of people who would might be have a tendency to ride transit, but for kind of you know, because of lack of ability or lack of income.

And so we we then map that around the region, and we kinda kinda see where the the biggest concentrations of those communities are. So here in Tualatin, I am familiar with some of your areas. So I'm gonna get I don't recall the name of the development, but I know across the street from the Meridian Park Hospital, there is a community there, an apartment community there that is affordable housing. And then I also know, of course, in the industrial area, there are some low wage jobs. And so our services generally do serve those.

So for example, across from Meridian Park Hospital is where Line 76 operates, runs every fifteen minutes, seven days a week. And I am sure that that bus stop is very well used. In fact, I think we have a shelter there because it is so well used. The Tualatin excuse me. Yeah.

The Tualatin shuttle, both the red line and the blue line, one line goes kinda well, I guess they both kinda go into the industrial area to serve those jobs. Mhmm. And then one of them also kinda serves a little bit east of there. I'm trying to remember exactly the route. And then as I mentioned to the Rolling Hills Community Church where the food bank the food food pantry and the free clinic are, we do have the ride connection service there. And we are hoping again that Smart could provide the service that we are paying for to go buy there as well. So those are definitely areas that we want to continue to serve.

Okay. I just I personally think that it's great to come here and everything like that, but listening sessions at community level, especially people that aren't necessarily going to be taking their phones out, answering a QR code between either running kids around in two jobs or they're seniors or they have vision problems or whatever, that they're going to be doing those kinds of things. And they have advocates a lot of times. So I don't think it would be a hard thing to organize. We're like 20,000 people here, but we have 30,000 workers.

And I think part of the reason why we haven't had strong bus service is because it's been thready to start with. And then when people start getting used to it, there's cutbacks. We'll be the first ones. And I don't know I mean, this is great. And I anticipate if problems continue, we're going to be talking about these same things again next year. So I would like to figure out what do we do to build ridership, especially if we've seen attrition like this. And is there a way that the city can collaborate with you and SMART to make sure that people can get their kidney dialysis. And the kind of stories that we've been hearing and hear that are really upsetting to hear. Right?

And I would love to follow-up with you on that, Counselor Brooks, because I think that as we have conversations with lawmakers about future funding and sustainable funding, you hit the nail on the head. It's understanding those stories and sharing those stories with our lawmakers because as we have started to see more and more of that, and it pains us that we cannot provide that service. Everything that you just said is absolutely true. And much like I said, how we are seeing transit dependent individuals, that rate starts to grow and grow and grow and the record use of our low income fare program and enrollments. We are seeing it.

So I think sharing those stories with lawmakers to tell them how important transit and transit funding is, I think will help us out immensely.

Well, and also thinking clearly about this K shaped economy that we have, right? Because if you're an investor, right, you're doing good in the stock market right now. And there's a lot of people that are experiencing great things. But if you're not, it's getting worse day by day for people that are in need. And the gaps continue to get wider. So I think that there's it has to be like if you have to think about things in a different way around embedded third world countries right in our own country that we are dealing with. And people don't put it together. Thanks very much for coming in tonight. Appreciate it.

Councillor Sacco.

Thank you. And thank you for your presentation this evening. So like Councillor Halyer, I'm not an expert on public transportation. So and and you answered this question a little bit with councilor Brooks' question, how do you understand how do you contextualize low ridership as it relates to is do we have low ridership because of the time and the frequency? And so how I guess when I see those numbers of ridership per line, to me I'm wondering, well, is it not the right timing? Is it not the right frequency? And how do you decipher that?

That's a really good question. The challenge that Tualatin experiences is not uncommon. As a suburb, people are more spread out, right? I mean that's part of being in a suburb. You maybe have a bigger home, bigger yard, and people aren't the density of people is smaller. The road network is different. You're not a complete grid, right? There more dead ends. There are more cul de sacs. So it takes longer for people.

As the crow flies, it's this distance. But to get there, you might have to walk more kind of winding way, so it takes longer to get there. So kind of the land use and the street network make it a little more difficult for people to use transit. There's also kind of less of the land uses are not as mixed. So it's mostly residential over here, commercial over there, industrial over here.

Whereas in a more urban setting, might have more of a mix, which the more mix of land uses you have, you have more people coming and going, you have more origins and destinations. So that's not unique to Tualatin. That is something that we find in every suburban community in the region and every transit district in the world deals with that. So that's why the routes that tend to do the best in suburbs are the ones that are kind of on the main arterials, which is why Line 76 probably is one of your better routes is your best route. Even Line 94, which is on Highway 99, it's a main arterial.

We get more rides on that than say some of the others. So that's a challenge that we're always working with and trying to it doesn't mean we don't want to serve those areas, and we have been serving them. It's just we have this very unique budget situation in which we have to kind of reconsider what we need to preserve and what we're going to need to cut.

Thank you. I have maybe two more questions. But for Ride Connect, I believe that you said that they will now go out there two days a week. They were previously going or they are going out there two days a week and will But continue to go out there two days a with the I guess my concern is they said they think that, that will be enough. But with the I think it was 76 that was going out there and then it's not going out there.

I believe that our food pantry use has gone up. And so I'm concerned that, that might be good enough now and it might once 76 is gone, that, that might not be enough now. And so I would just like somebody to look into that to make sure that our most vulnerable population is getting to the food So

I could tell you a little bit about this. I know we're probably going overtime. But So when we first extended the Line 76, actually Ride Connection discontinued their service to the church. And what happened is the church reached out to us and said, hey, people are when they go to the food pantry, they're getting a lot of food and they have shopping carts and they're leaving the shopping carts down. It's hard for them bringing their food onto the bus. They're leaving the shopping carts down on Borland. There are no sidewalks there. They said, could you please come into our property? We decided that that was probably a bad idea. One, we would probably destroy their parking lot.

Two, because of the grade, we would bottom out. And then three, the speeds on Borland with the hills as you approach Rolling Hills, we felt like the sight lines were too short given the speed, and we felt it would be dangerous for a bus to be turning in and out of that parking lot. So that's when we actually, in collaboration with the mayor, reached back out to Ride Connection and asked them if they would continue to serve the food pantry. So my understanding is most people who ride Line 76 to Rolling Hills, they are not going there for the food pantry. They're taking the Ride Connection service already because it's too difficult for them to ride to take their food down to Borland and get picked up down there.

Okay. Thank you. I got just one more question, I think that I know that we're going long. But I think that I just wanted to Council Hillier had mentioned the cost that is coming out of Tualatin, you explained how that works. Thank you.

And the network. And I think what sparked her comment, what sparked in my mind in your answer is, but is there enough opportunity for riders in Tualatin to take advantage of the money that TriMet is getting from Tualatin? And that's one of my concerns is, sure we have this whole network, but is there enough opportunity for us to even take advantage of that network based on the frequencies and locations of stops, times of stops, those things. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Okay. I have a few. To what Councillor Hillier said about the kids and the buses, we had a housing form a few months back and we had some residents of Plantbeck Gardens that we heard the same thing or buses not showing up at all. So there does seem to be a problem. Next, oh gosh, this one's a kind of an ask for more service if it ever could happen, but, the mayor, you know, is not here. He is doing well, by the way, in home already. But, I I was glad to hear that the lift services will not be cut. That was new to me. But we do, as you know, have a little donut hole here in Tualatin.

So if that could ever be changed, because to me, that 35% of people that depend on this is who you should be serving first. Then my next is oh, your cut's in August '27. So you've got this short session, another long session, and likely a ballot measure. So will you be at a point where you can consider that to see how many more cuts you make at that point? Who knows what'll happen between now and then?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Different opportunities here for hopefully some more funding for you.

Yeah.

And then, oh, the last question I need to ask you is about the West, because we get asked about that a lot. And I know it's what $86 a ride. And so why is that left on the table of all things?

So everything is on the table still. As I mentioned, we will have another bite at the apple. WES is a complicated service. We have a contract with Portland and Western. We also have a contract or an IGA with Federal Transit Administration because they help pay for that. So we're currently exploring those contracts, and we'll be reaching out to those entities about what our options are available to us with regard to WES. So there could be a proposal in the future to either, you know, diminish or even discontinue the WES service.

Okay. Well, we do have concerns about the service in our town, but I really appreciate the time you spent and the time you spent talking to us before this meeting and for you coming out tonight. Thank you very much.

Thank

you. Again, I'm Robert Kellogg. I'm on the Board of Directors here. I used to sit where you sit now. And I can tell you what I'm experiencing in this position is something that you haven't had yet, an 18% or 20% reduction in your revenue right in your face to say, hey, we've got to cut things right now.

And it's not a matter of priorities, it's simply a matter of saying, we have to provide this service and whatever else we can, we're going to do the best we can with it. And what I wanted to speak about tonight was, as this colloquy has demonstrated our time at the library, our time in this meeting, every employee of this agency from Sam all the way down is working every day to make your transit system safe, efficient, and affordable. Right? And I can't thank them enough for the work that they do. This is difficult time for all of us, but we're doing the absolute best we can, and I wanted to let you know that.

We're not giving up Don Hudson.

Said you.

I'm sorry. That was a joke. Oh, okay. What? Was, giving Don kudos for how well he does with our budget. Sorry. Okay. Just

a quick moment here. I wanted to just say if you just give me thirty seconds. I want to let you all know I have been a thirty five year transit professional. I've served in four different states. I've ran large properties, small properties.

The pandemic did something for all of us that we're all dealing with right now from a financial standpoint. And we are trying to solve this problem here. One of the things that I will not let the organization move forward with is a $300,000,000 deficit without soften it. I want to let you know we're going to do everything that we can to work with you as partners to reduce, but reduce very efficiently and very effectively. And we want to serve people because people need the service, which is vital to them, to take them to opportunity.

So I want to just make sure that the message here, I did not come to the system to make cuts to our service level. It's very important for me. It's very important for people. 35% is what was stated are people that are transit dependent and we serve some of our most vulnerable population, people with disabilities, people that don't have a car, people that have aged in place, and we want to make sure that that service is provided to everyone. So you have a partner here on this side of the table. We're going to look and I have four pages of comments that were made tonight. We're going to look into all of that and we'll follow back up with you. So thank you.

And Mr. Desu, I want to thank you personally for taking on that responsibility and not leaving it for someone in the future.

Thank you. We

had a few folks come in a little late for public comments, so I'd like to reopen public comments for anyone that would like to speak. If you could just let us know your name. Can you hit the the little red light will come on. There you go.

Hi, my name is Catherine Ball. I was at the I forget what date it was, but at the last meeting. With hearing what I heard today, the only thing the couple of things that came to my mind, sorry, is that the line 76 cutting it to Oregon City as a need that I use that bus pretty frequently for certain reasons to get to see my youngest daughter. She lives in that area, and I have to travel on that bus to get to her on the weekends. The other issue is is that the line 96 that does not run on the weekends, even having Saturdays the service for the smart bus on Saturdays, that's great and all.

But what about our our people who, on Sundays, who like to commute to church or something that's outside of where yeah. We live right next to church, of course, at Planbeck Gardens, but some of us like to go to a different church. So what is the you know, where is our service there? The line 76 runs Monday through Friday Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday. And we would like the same opportunity as the 76 line that runs every day of the week.

The other issue that happens is that with the bus lines changing and certain things, certain bus lines connect to my daughter's school. I recently got my driver's license as right now I'm in between of taking the bus sometimes and driving her to school. But even with the lines being switched and how it's going to run, my question is with the travel time being longer, am I going be in a issue of getting her to school on time? The buses passing the apartment complex is is a issue as well of never showing up. My daughter was late to school or has been tardy too many times, and I'm grateful that Mitch's understanding of my of our situation of it being the bus issue.

But trying to get back home on that bus, there's I can get back. I have to walk all the way from Mitch Mitch school all the way down to the Bus 96 stop that's right across from Taco Bell or right next to Taco Bell. And the issue right there lands is that if we're walking, if I'm walking that far to get back on the bus to catch the last bus into my to my apartment, I don't know how this is all gonna work. Sorry. I'm just like these are things that have popped up, my concern is not just for myself, but other people at my complex.

We need more frequent bus rides. We need more frequency because we have people who wanna go to work and stuff, and sometimes they're not even able to get to work because the bus doesn't even show up or doctor's appointments and stuff like that. We have people who have doctor's appointments all the way in Hillsborough. This is a big issue. And I'm sorry. I just I get frustrated because it's ongoing problem.

Well, thank you for that real life example of the difficulty of

And I'm sorry for going over three minutes if I did.

That's okay.

When is the next my next question is when is the next meeting?

The next council meeting?

Yeah. For the bus TriMet issues

Oh. And

don't know that that will be a topic we'll be discussing. We're, like, kind of at a stopping point.

I'm sorry for asking.

But that's okay. The mayor and I are both on several transportation committees, and we hear from TriMet quite often, and we're always advocating for more service because this is a problem that's decades old. And like my fellow counselors have said, we provide a lot of payroll tax funding, so we will continue to advocate with them and speak up

to them.

My last question that I was wondering is, am I able to get somehow your guys' emails so that I can email you guys a petition that was given? And

then the way to get all

of us is just to send it to counsel@tualatin.gov.

Okay.

And then that gets all of us.

Oh, okay. And I'm sorry for asking, but I I'm in the process of finishing my petition, and that's why I was asking.

Yeah. No. You can Or to

send it.

And you can look it up city of Tualatin, but at council@tualatin.gov, you'll get all of us.

Okay, I apologize for asking.

No, that's fine. Thank you. Do we have anybody here from Just Compassion for their presentation?

While they're coming forward, will say that-

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Cheryl.

That the board the TriMet board, they mentioned they

have a

board listening session on March 18, and the the first reading in the public hearing is March 25. So like going to the to the even they have a virtual option as well for their board meetings to to comment. I can come back and give you that information. But, yeah.

There's some opportunities for you to give input directly to TriMet that Cherilyn can share with you.

Hi, everybody. I don't know if we've officially met everybody on the council, so I just wanted to say hi. My name is Michael Austin. I am the Deputy Director at Just Compassion. Since I haven't been able to speak in front of the council before, thought it'd be a great idea to kind of overview everything that we do at Just Compassion. Let's go to the next slide. So I always like to start with a history of Just Compassion. I think it's really fun because I like to say we kind of started as like a garage band. So in 2010 a bunch of community members got together, we're recognizing oh, thank you. Yeah.

We're recognizing that there was a need for a houseless friends in the community of Tigard specifically. So they got together in a once a month meeting and just kind of started talking about what they could do for the community. That started with a one a day pantry at a local church and then it turned into a one a day resource center at where our current site is in off of Holland, Hunsicker and Tigard as well too. And we became a registered five zero one c three nonprofit in 2015 and that is when, yeah, our day center opened up and then we also opened up a severe weather shelter in Beaverton to go along with that. In 2020, the, you know, pandemic hit and the county had asked a lot of individuals and organizations that were kind of upstarting at that time if we could provide more support.

So we did and we turned into a 20 fourseven year round shelter. We had a case management street outreach to go along with that as well too. I'll talk about a little bit of those programs here in a second. And then SHS funding which is the supportive housing services as you all know about kind of came in to the area and really provided a lot of help to the community in a really impactful and needing time. I'm going go to next slide.

So I would like to just overview our services. I like to say we offer an umbrella of services. It really does start with our street outreach team. So those are the individuals going out into the field, identifying individuals who are houseless, providing them support whether that's just like hand warmers during cold weather, providing them we do like during the heat waves they go out there with bottled water and hand those out as well too. But the other thing they're really good at is they're really good at getting people to come into our shelters and accessing our services which is really important because our site, which we'll have some photos here soon, has grown significantly and we have a really wide variety of things we can offer individuals.

And so shelters, we actually have a shelter in Tigard which is a congregate shelter. Congregate shelters is essentially everybody sleeping in a very large area. And then we have a Gresham family shelter that we are just about to open up here in March and that's actually gonna serve 50 hotel units is what it is. So it's going to serve about 175 to two twenty five people on-site including, you know, the kiddos to go along with that. Really excited about that. I'm actually from Gresham, so I'm born and raised Oregonian as well too. So just excited to go back to my own hometown and be able to provide that. Case management, we offer a multitude of different case management. We have an eviction prevention program that I'll talk about here in a second, but we have HCMS, is Housing Case Management Services. It's more of a long term program.

I think it's about 70% of the individuals over there in that program are over the age of 60. So kind of our older population that have essentially aged out of their retirement funding and then essentially Social Security is keeping up with their monthly bills and housing prices are going up every year. I always like to mention here as well too permanent supportive housing. So we have a permanent supportive housing program in Clackamas specifically. Permanent supportive housing is kind of that.

It is a long, long term housing voucher that individuals get, and that's out in Clackamas. Eviction prevention, which is my favorite type of homeless services, which is actually keeping people from falling into homelessness, is really important. It's also part of what you all helped fund for our social grant as well too. And I'm going to talk about that here in a second as well. But eviction prevention, I think that we lost 75% of the funding from the state just this last year.

Just Compassion, the organization, was able to tag along to HRSN. I don't know if you all know about this. It's called Health Related Social Needs. It's a pretty major funding source through Medicaid. And so many of your residents you might not know around are accessing this service and they're accessing even through us as well too. We're the largest HRSN provider in the state of Oregon. So pretty important funding source to keeping people out especially with the reduction of eviction prevention dollars. And then like the money you helped provide, actually we had recognized prior to even applying that there were a bunch of families coming in from Tualatin into our programs. So we thought it was a perfect time to go and apply for this grant. So the $1,000 you were able to provide to us actually helped about a family and a half with some eviction prevention dollars.

And those were the ones that kind of fell through the cracks of the HRSN program. So the HRSN program is specifically oriented for those with chronic mental health and physical health conditions as well too and for individuals with children under the age of five. So it was for those individuals who kind of falling through the crack. The two that you were able to actually be able to help were in our older population. The HRSN program, it's tied to the average median income. It's the AMI as they call it. 30% is pretty low. And so that is the cutoff. So individuals that are just above that, it's like $30 something thousand on a yearly basis, get cut off from those services. So you all helped out with that as well too.

So we really appreciate that. And it's something that as an organization we're really trying to expand. We actually just recently received a grant from Trillium to help expand in those areas as well, too. So we actually now have a full time FTE who's going to work on those, what we call those individuals who are falling through the cracks or the gaps in the system. Safe parking, which I'm sure you I know Megan Cohen has talked to you all a lot about safe parking and the success there.

Safe parking is a really fun program because it's three spots. It's a pretty high barrier program unlike our other programs, which are pretty low barrier. So three spots. We actually just won a national award for the success of it, which is really cool. Washington County didn't think that actually, you know, no offense to Washington County, they're great, but they didn't think it was actually a suitable program to actually get people to go into stable housing. We proved them wrong. It's actually one of the most effective programs in the state to do those things, is why we won a national award for it as well. Safe parking, I'll just say as well too, we utilize this a lot. We've got actually some spaces that we call them our emergency spaces. So those are individuals fleeing DV.

And as you maybe all know our DV system is way overcapacity. And so we kind of use this as like a stop measure to be able to then provide resources to them in other ways. If not, then eventually get them into a DV shelter to go along with that. I just want to show some cool photos of this is our new renovated building in Tigard. First off, just a beautiful building. We have this one, which just finished in March. This accommodates 60 individuals upstairs. It has an additional 50 that we can offer for access center services. So access center services are from seven a. M.

To seven p. M. Anybody can come in and just get basic needs. That's just, you know, we serve three warm meals a day. Hygiene services will go along with that. There's there's a big, you know the difference between someone seeing them on the streets and then seeing them after they have a shower is like night and day. And so such a big resource, a lot of individuals from Tualatin actually have migrate into our shelter as well too, whether that be a permanent guest or access our services as well too. So really a great need and I mean a great resource that we provide to the community at large. There's just the outside of the shelter. It's kind of recessed in the property, which is really nice.

So it's a little bit of not, you know, kind of out of the way from individuals. Over to the left, you don't see that's actually the building. I forgot to bring a photo of this, but it's the building that we originally started in, which is really cool. Unfortunately, we're going to the building has kind of outlived its use. It's a more it's a residential building and we're more commercial. So we're actually just about to tear it down and finish up our campus project as we like to call. But again, providing more services. So on-site we have currently we're teamed up with Sequoia Mental Health. Actually maybe step back for a second. We believe in housing first.

We think it's a really great program. And you know at the end of the day our system wasn't built that way. We built things for shelters. And so not something that we prescribe, but something that at the end the day that's just what the system was built. However, I like to say what we do different here at Just Compassion is we put a Housing First hat onto a shelter. And so Sequoia Mental Health actually comes in on-site five days a week and is providing services to individuals from a variety of needs. That includes addiction to go along with that. A lot of the individuals we see are dual diagnosed. It's mental health and addiction. It's a combination of the two.

So we have that on-site which no other shelter in Washington County currently has. So we're really excited about that. We also teamed up with the Urban League of Portland to provide career orientations. So twice a week Urban League comes in to provide career orientations. It's a variety of things. You know, mostly we're just interested in getting a full job. But then it goes from a job to, hey, do you have a career? Do you want something that is in that, you know, in a specific field? That'd be great. I would say at least thirty, forty, maybe sometimes 50% of the individuals in our shelter have a job.

The problem is is they have severe debt and it is really hard. Not a lot of dollars out there right now to help individuals wipe out debt and specifically housing debt, which is the hardest thing to do. And I'll say, if you have an eviction on your record, I can house you as long as you have zero debt. But if you have zero housing debt or apartment debt, really impossible to actually get you into housing unless we really remove that. And so again, not a lot of services are doing that right now. This is just the break room. This is our street outreach room that is looks way different now because they put all their supplies in there. And then, yeah, that's the end of my presentation, and I want to open up to any questions.

Questions or comments? Counselor Brooks. I just want to thank

you for your work, first of all. And it's shocking to me that there's only one place for duly diagnosed individuals, especially with our homelessness right here. Anyway, so I appreciate that. As far as like debt or rental expungement, I understand there's an organization that's starting to do those types of services. I don't know if you are connected with them or?

Potentially, yeah, we are. I I will say we work with expungement as well too from records as well too and then the eviction prevention through HRSN as well. The difference with HRSN, you have to be currently housed in order to get the money. When it was originally made in 2024, it was actually supposed to be helping those who were houseless. That changed mostly because the need was so high and there wasn't an infinite money source to go along with that.

I'm not exactly sure where you are. So we just had that conversation around public transportation. Is there a way for people in Toowal to then to get to Just Compassion

Yes.

For public transportation?

I don't know the line, but yes, there is. And it's pretty heavily used as well too. We're right off the 99 on haul there, so very well.

Okay. And

we run up and down haul all the time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. It's a great question.

Any other questions or comments? Well, thank you for what you do. And oh, I wanted to just thank you for explaining the services and your examples. It was a great presentation.

Oh, thank you.

And then that was my last question. If people need your services, how would they get

ahold of Yeah. Info at Just Compassion e w c dot com. And then there's safe parking at Just Compassion e w c dot com. Both great ways. We always get lots of lots of things coming in as well too. And I'll also say that I will invite you all if you all wanted to come and tour, the space as well too. That'd be fun. We love to have people and showcase what we do.

Great. Well, thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

Okay. Next we have a backyard habitat certification program annual report. Welcome, Catherine.

Testing. Am I on? Hi, counselors. Nice to be here. I am lucky enough to be here for my second year, presenting on the backyard habitat certification program. So we are a program, that is co managed by two awesome conservation organizations in the region, Columbia Land Trust and the Brittle Alliance of Oregon. And I am one of the program program managers of that program and do work for Brittle Alliance of Oregon. And we've been this year, we are celebrating our twentieth year anniversary. We started out as a small pilot program in 2006 in the Southwest Hills Of Portland. And we've been operating Tualatin since 2019. Though

it's

just been in the last couple of years where we've really been able to get a strong foothold here, thanks in a large part to, funding, a consistent funding through you all. So our mission is to provide tools, resources, and recognition for gardening sustainably and creating wildlife habitat. And one of our main goals is to create climate resilient yards and communities. And we do this through, working one on one with residents and community partners to provide education and support on creating habitat in people's yards and in community spaces. And so our hope is that as participants engage with us, they become educated and equipped to take action in their own yards and beyond.

One of the great benefits of being a co managed program is there's infinite opportunities to get engaged if they, you know, do as much as they can in the yard and want to keep working. Also through our program, folks are encouraged to take steps, to mitigate climate change. These are things like planting trees and other plants that help decrease, urban heat island effect and provide cooling benefits to the whole neighborhood, and also reducing man made hazards like reducing pesticides, keeping cats indoors, things like that. And also it builds a sense of community and neighborhood connection. So just I I think you all are familiar with this, so I'm gonna try to speed through some of this overview here.

But if folks are interested in our program, they can sign up online for a sliding scale fee and they get connected with one of our technicians who provides about a one hour in person site visit, out of which comes, a written site report full of recommendations on actions they can take, access to things like discounts to 19 local native plant nurseries, signs that I'm sure you all have seen, and then a set of goals for them to work towards that align with what we call certifications. We have three different levels that people can work towards that then we work with a large team of volunteers to sort of check their work when they're done, celebrate with them, take photos, things like that. So our main focus is on six main categories. So managing plants we recommend for removal. These are things that are often referred to as invasive weeds, things like our ivy and our blackberries.

Planting locally native plants that we know are the foundation of healthy ecosystems and are crucial for our native insects and other wildlife, reducing pesticides, herbicides and other chemical use and committing to integrated pest management, supporting your wildlife through things like installing wildlife features in your yard, bird baths, mason bee houses, things like that. Storm water management and soil management, building the soil, excuse me, building soil health, installing rain gardens where appropriate, disconnecting downspouts where appropriate, things like that. And then of course, education and volunteerism. So this year we were able to work with a really cool organization called Earth Economics that put together a report of our benefits as a program and we're able to kind of put some numbers on a lot of data that we've been collecting over the years. So I'm excited to share some of that with you.

So here, according to their study, 5,300,000 square acre square sorry, square feet of our in our region has been nature escaped, which really just means concentrated and dedicated spaces for native plants and that habitat space connected with it and that translates out into over 21,000 native trees and over 327,000 shrubs and other native plants. And they also were able to put some dollar amounts to the benefits of our program and so they have reported participants support over $5,000,000 in environmental benefits for themselves and the larger community. And that's spread out over things like aesthetic beauty, noise reduction, storm water management, habitat, carbon sequestration, etcetera. And they also looked at the benefits of being engaged in gardening to supporting mental health and well-being. And I'm getting a little cut off on the top there, but I believe it's on an annual basis two eighty nine individuals who will have reduced risk of depression or anxiety because of their participation in our program and that translates out into a financial benefit of $687,000 saved in direct healthcare costs and over $800,000 avoided in indirect costs.

And here in Tualatin, we celebrated over 100 participants to date, is very exciting. And that just in the past calendar year of 2025, that is 20 site assessments completed. And then 26 of those have been certified and that's a that gap there is really standard because some folks will take a year to three years to sometimes more than that to to reach certification. And here just in Tualatin, that's over 20 acres that are enrolled and over 2,300 native plants that have been installed. And I will just note that that number of plants is calculated at time of certification.

So really that's just reflecting the 26 properties, not the other 70 some that are in progress. And here is a map for our map lovers. So each of the little triangles there indicate a site that's enrolled with us in some capacity and you can see which ones have reached different levels of certification. And we've been really engaged in the community in the last year. We provided a couple of presentations to a local organization as well as the Tualatin Public Library, which is also one of our sites.

And then we also attended the Arbor Day planting event, which was great. And my personal favorite highlight of the last year is that we've got to work with the Tualatin High School environmental design class. And so the instructor, Dan there, got connected with us and we provided a site assessment early in the year. I believe it was like February or March. And in just a few months, these students removed a ton of invasive plants, including lesser selendine, which I'm working on in my own yard, so I know how hard that is.

You really just gotta dig that thing out. And blackberry and ivy that was taking over a previously installed rain swale that was collecting the water from the roof of the school. And so they put in a ton of work. We're able to remove all of that and allow those already existing native plants and others they planted to really thrive. And the teacher has plans for future groups of students to work on a couple of other designated sites.

And so we got to certify this group of students at platinum and we're hoping to be able to continue working with them in the future. And here's just a little nice highlight of some of our other participants in Tualatin. And a thank you to all of our partners, including the city of Tualatin for making our services possible. And I tried to keep to the ten minutes. If anyone has any questions, I'd love to hear them.

Thank you for the presentation. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Councilor Brooks.

Just, well, first I just want to thank you for your work that hitting over 100 is a really great thing. And I know that as you're at Platinum, there can be like social and demonstration gardens. So I'm just curious if anything like that has started in our city yet. And a big shout out to the high school kids.

Are you referring to like the Open Gardens Project? Yeah. So open gardens project is something we do annually, and we're just about to kick off into our 2026 version. And, yes, everyone who, we have kind of a metrics for finding our best gardens that would be great hosts. And we reach out to them every spring, and they are able to sign up. And so in just a few months, we'll be posting out a calendar to all of our existing participants so they can tour those yards. And there are I think there's always I believe last year there were some in Tualatin and would expect them to be engaged again.

And is there a way that somebody that's not in the program can go and look at one of those tours? Or do you have to be enrolled?

That is something that we usually reserve for our program participants but if anyone here is interested just feel free to email me and I can get you access.

Okay, I just think it's a great way to learn and share.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you for your presentation tonight. It's pretty exciting. Okay, next we have Juanita Pols Center Advisory Committee. I see Sarah over there.

All right. Good evening, Council President Pratt and Mayor and to the mayor who's not here. But to the rest of the council, hi. It's nice to see you all. I'm Julie Luedeman, recreation manager. I am here tonight with Sarah Shepard, the Juanita Pole Center supervisor. And we also, I believe, hopefully still have Susan Nowak on online.

And

Susan is the Juanita Poll Center Advisory Committee Chair. So she is here virtually and I'm here just to help click next on the slide show. So I'm happy to present Sarah.

All right, thank you. Hi Susan. Okay, so here to present the Juanita Pulse Center Advisory Committee Annual Report. And we'll go to the next one. Those are our committee members in 2025, and happy to report they're all returning for 2026.

Before we move to the next slide, which will explain the committee role, I want you to see all their faces because next slide's picture is not of the committee itself. And I just wanted to let you know that each one of these members has input and suggestions and benefits the Juanita Pulse Center and is a key and responsible to the success of the center, whether they're sponsoring a program or event, leading a drop in activity, presenting about an Earthwise Crew subject, helping write letters for wintertime characters, going out in the community and getting raffle prizes for the vet breakfast. Everybody has a role in the success of the Oneida Poll Center and I'm very grateful and thankful for their help and their dedication. Next.

Much. Is

it too much now?

Committee role, obviously we know that our committee members are dedicated to programs and services at the Juanita Paul Center. They share ideas for future programming. They advocate for active older adults in the community and at the center. They're out in the community talking about the Juanita Poll Center, bringing more participants into the center, which is huge. And they are supporting efforts to successfully continue to increase attendance and participation.

And before I get into everything the Pulse Center offers, I'd like to acknowledge our generous partners and sponsors. I'll highlight a few here. We've got Lam Research. They've been the corporate volunteer sponsor at the Veterans Recognition Breakfast for the past few years, and they also facilitate cards and games drop in activity group once a month. We've got Medicare Mark Fuchs, who's been a longtime Lunch and Learn program sponsor and also a presenter at the POLS Center.

Oasis Senior Advisors, longtime JPC Book Club sponsor and also provides coffee for our new coffee station, the Juanita Perks Center, which has become very popular. And of course, Washington County, longtime Yoga for Veterans sponsor. And some of the benefits that our participants get when they walk into the center and what JPC staff of what we aim to provide our older adults when we think about what type of programs and services and activities we want to offer them is improvement in health improve health and promote healthy lifestyles, life enrichment and wellness, greater life satisfaction, a sense of purpose, learning new skills, and probably the most important one is social connection and interaction, providing that sense of community for our participants, reduced isolation. The Pulse Center is a very safe place to engage and connect and socialize, make new friends, meet new people and have fun in our programs and activities. Okay.

So program engagement in 2025. In 2025, the Poll Center had 16,525 program participants. That is not including meal program numbers, by the way. That is a 27% increase in program participation from 2024 to 2025. And our program categories, I'll go through and the number behind each category is the total number of program participants.

So Arts and Culture includes life stories, writing program, acrylic art and watercolor classes and this is just a few in each category. Lifelong Learning is our lunch and learn program, Earthwise Crew which is environmental education, nutrition classes, sound meditation, wellness and longevity is our exercise programs, Tai Chi, Zumba, Lion Dance, Yoga, SilverSneakers, many more. Gather and Connect, we call our drop in our social activities or our special events. That includes billiards, day trips, bingo, coffee and conversations and many, many more. So some of our new Gather and Connect or drop in social activities in 2025 include Coffee and Conversations, Cards and Games with Lam Research, crafts, Bunko, trivia with Doug that we have at our meal program and gift wrapping.

And many of these activities were implemented towards the later part of 2025, so we expect to see an even higher increase in participation for 2026. And a little quote down there below is from our Coffee and Conversations group leader. That group is a very positive social fun group, and I'm so glad that they came to the POOL Center to hold their group. And they are definitely getting out into the community. They do crafts at assisted living facilities, and they meet outside of the Pulse Center as well.

Here we just have some pictures of some things that have happened in 2025, some special events and trips like our Veterans Recognition Breakfast, which we sold out in 2025, a 150 plus people. It was a great morning to celebrate our veterans. We had great speakers. We had fabulous prizes for our veterans. So another great year of that.

Our mental wellness fair, which Maryland is planning again for the eighth year in May. And then our overnight trip, they went to Shore Acres for their holiday lights this past December. And then we also like to keep our older adults active and moving. So we introduced a new mat Pilates class towards the 2025, and that has been very popular. We try to get out for some hikes during the year. Dropping billiards is always popular. Tables are always full throughout the day. And we took Tai Chi out to Hoyt Arboretum. We had a beautiful day for them to practice their forms. We've got some great pictures.

Okay. So the meal program. As you all know, the city took over the meal program 07/01/2025. Number of meals served from January through June 2025 was three sixty. That is serving twice a week, that's averaging about eight meals per day.

Number of meals since the city took over served between July 1 and 12/31/1800. That is averaging 72 meals per week. So we're still serving twice a day about 36 meals per day that we're serving. This is also a second half of 2025 number and our average is slowly increasing as we go on. It's a 400% participation increase from the previous nutrition program.

83% of participants pay the requested donation of $5 per meal. And we're seeing a 58% cost recovery through donations, sponsorships and revenue as of 12/31/2025, Another good quote from a meal program participant. And that picture was probably taken in July and our dining room just keeps getting more crowded and more crowded, and that looks crowded. So continuing on with wanting to thank our main course meal program sponsors. So this is a group or an individual that sponsors a meal once a month for an entire year.

We got Medicare Mark Fuchs. He's our I call him our main course plus sponsor. He definitely goes above and beyond with his support of the meal program and the center. And then we also have the Toalton Police Department and King City Senior Village. And I want to point out the last line of the quote below, lots of help and lots of smiles to make us feel special from a meal program participant. I also want to throw a huge shout out and thank you to our volunteers. They are the backbone of the meal program. They are very positive. They are very they have so much pride in their work and their time at the center. And they're also a huge, huge impact on the success of the meal program.

And future, looking towards the future for the meal program, the recreation team visited a good amount of Portland Metro Area centers to learn about their respective meal programs. We got a lot of great information. We toured kitchens, talked to a lot of the nutrition coordinators. So we're currently exploring potential funding sources that includes Older Americans Act, grants, sponsorships, caterer versus in house nutrition program options and adding more culturally responsive menu items in the future. And our meal program, North Star, our main goal is to work towards meal program sustainability, continuing to provide healthy and nutritious meals to our older adults and improving and increasing social opportunities at the POLSE Center.

And the JPC is a busy place seven days a week. We are still doing rentals during the week, in the evenings and on weekends. Those include business meetings, private parties, special events, church groups, and those are our numbers for 2025 for our private rentals. And exciting changes are coming to the POUL Center, the interior of the poll center, I should say. The 2025 CDBG grant building updates include upgrading our restrooms ADA standards and replacement of exterior doors to sliding doors.

Could be additional interior updates as the budget allows as well. So very exciting. And action plan for 2026, continue to expand our high quality programs and services for active adults, focusing on physical health, mental wellness, engagement and social connection. Obviously, continue to grow and develop the One Eat a Pull Center meal program. And we're always looking for new sponsorship opportunities out in the community.

And on behalf of the Pulse Center, I want to thank members of counsel for your support of the meal program and the ongoing changes at the center. It's had a huge impact on the success and the growth of the mill program and our ability to continue to serve the community of older adults. So thank you so much. And now I want to turn it over to Susan Nowak, our Committee Chair, see if she has anything to add or any special personal experiences from 2025 with her time at the Hole Center. Try to say something, Susan.

Try to say something again.

Alright. Go ahead.

Go ahead. Are you good? Sure. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Sorry. And I my apologies for being there in person, but thank you for letting me share my personal side to my call center. And as you know, I've been this for years, and I come every year and tell you how fabulous I think Sarah and Marilyn are and the whole park staff that support our building.

But, I have a little story to tell, and as you know, I like to tell stories. And, it's very pertinent to how, blessed I feel that we have JPC in our community and what we're doing for our seniors in our community because I will always be that loud voice and advocate for all of our seniors. That's my, encore role in life, I think. You know, I'm 80 years old. I retired when I was 63.

I found the senior center when I was 65. Didn't know we had a senior center because I decided I was not a senior until I was. And joined the center and, have been moving forward ever since. So I've lived through a lot of history. I've lived through a lot of people going through the center.

We were thriving when it was Meals on Wheels, and then when it turned over, the city took it over, went through two different managers before we got Sarah and Marilyn, went through COVID, which, we all did. And, being a retired event planner and fundraiser, my my my my brain works a little differently when I walk into a room. I want to see how many people are in there and how much energy there is in the room, how noisy it is, how vibrant it is, what people are doing, how much money is coming in from fundraising, and JVC hits the top of the mark every single time. And that's because of the staff and the support of the community for this building. And, there are so many things going on now.

It is so vibrant when you walk in the door. You walk in and you can be a stranger to that building and not know a person in there, and within a half an hour, an hour, you know people in the room, you're coming back a second, a third, a fourth at this time because it is such a welcoming place. If, we can ever impress upon how, social isolation and loneliness is such a a huge senior health issue, when you're at the center, that doesn't happen. You are you are embraced, and you are loved, and you are taken care of, and you're supported. And that's what this center is supposed to do.

The meal program is fabulous. The food is good. The volunteers that run that program and Cam and Cam, the catering company, do an excellent job. If you have a minute lunch as a council or city staff, you need to do that. I implore you to come and have lunch. You have to sign up ahead of time for sure, but please come to lunch. It is you will be amazed and energized by the activity in the room. We all know each other. We all support each other. We miss people when they're not there.

We make sure we take care of people when they're having illness or an issue, and we're supportive. It is just it's the right place to be. And this is a jewel in our community. We are in a. We have a vibrant senior community.

They need the senior center. The city supplies the senior centers, and it is, you should be proud of yourselves for what you do. You're a jewel in Toowalton, and all of us who participate know that. And we appreciate it, and we thank you for that and for giving all of us as seniors the opportunity to have a safe, vibrant, energizing, lively place to be. So thank you for that.

It's, I just can't say enough. I will tell you my my tagline is I didn't know I needed it until I needed it. And now that I know I need it, I'm there, and I support it, and so does everyone else that comes into that building. And thank you to the city for keeping us alive and well. Thank you.

Thank you, Susan.

Any other questions?

Any questions or questions? Okay.

Councilor Brooks. All right. All right. Thank you, Susan, for coming and sharing with us today. And thank you, Sarah, for your work, and Marilyn, and Julie, for all your work too, and the whole department.

It's a lot of work that goes into it. I'm really proud of the work that you're doing around, especially the meals and what we hear is meeting the need right now. And I don't know if I really have a big comment except for just like way to go. And I'm into it. I feel sad I couldn't go to the veterans breakfast this year, but I was out of town. But it was my first year I missed, so it was kind of weird. And it's kind of funny just like you said, Susan, once you get used to spending time. Last year, had a lot of health things, so I couldn't do my yoga and stuff as much as I used to. So I'm just giving them warning that they might see me around a little bit more this year. Anyway, thanks.

It's a great place. Oh, and I'm so glad about the grant. And it's really nice when the city comes and presents the grants at the Community Development Block Grant presentation. So I just want to thank the city for preparing themselves so well and for earning the trust of the grant committee that we could disperse those funds and really give the help that's needed over to the community center and have more accessible building where we really need it. Thank you.

Well, I think Susan kind of spoke for your thing. I I keep thinking that food is so good that you currently have that if you make changes, but I think you've got a committee that's gonna make sure that it's gonna always taste good. So thank you.

Thank you all.

All right, Cherilyn.

Get through this and the night is over. Well, we've got more stuff. But, so the so maybe it's not over. So you held your advance, 2026 advance on January 17, a day well spent in my opinion. And of course, this is a mid cycle year.

So meaning that you have been working together for a number of years. And I think it shows in the ease of yeah, of getting through and productive work quality that you produced. I'm not sure why oh, there we go. Okay, sorry. Okay.

So the seven vision statements were not revised, although next year I would expect there to be some discussion around this. For one thing, 2030 is not that far away. So those touched. So the seven priority categories also are remaining the same, and in most cases, the outcomes you've priority area is neighborhood engagement, and there are three changes to the outcomes. The first was rephrased and expanded to include content from one of last year's actions.

The last two were also moved from the action list up to the outcome list. Everything else is remaining the same. So in 2025, there were eight actions in this category. Several of them were completed and taken off the list. A couple were rolled into the outcomes that we just talked about.

Point four was rephrased and then two new ones were added, one point five and one point six. I don't know if you want me to walk through them or okay.

Can

we just comment as we go so we don't

have to go back? Sure.

As far

as 1.1, I just was wondering if we're going to use best practices. And I'm just wondering if you say including from other cities, Because it seems kind of strange to say we're using another city's best practices.

That's rolling forward from the previous year. And is you know, it's on the plate right now to do the backlog of sidewalk maintenance and then come forward with a revised sidewalk street tree program compiled from a variety of research, but including what other cities do and what are best practices out there and not

I just don't know if you heard yeah. I just think there should be an edit.

Uh-huh. Okay.

Best practices including from other cities.

Including?

Uh-huh. That's it. Okay. Because we're not just using best practices from other cities. Sounds very weird to me.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. So noted. All right. So no other changes. Housing outcomes, the second category is housing, and these outcomes were left unchanged from 2025. So moving into the actions, there are five actions under housing, one and two continue from 2025. Three was rephrased to be specific about Metro's oversight committee, and then, four and five were added. Four was kind of rephrased.

It was, but the eviction prevention was the main theme that came out of the conversation at the Advance. Alright. The next category is economic development. Again, the all the outcomes remained the same and weren't, so they were just moved forward. Under economic development one, two and six roll forward from 2025, three and four were split out from each other to focus on each urban renewal district.

So these were combined in 2025 that said you're going to we're going to provide updates to the council and the community on Cora and Basalt Creek, and so those were or split

include prioritization of urban renewal projects that Aquila

talked about in the budget committee that the recommendations that came out of the Sebildos report and are coming from

Five

the University of Oregon program. And then there were three new actions, seven, eight and nine are three new ones.

Okay.

Our next category is transportation. Again, the outcomes remain constant and, just rolled forward. One and two stay on the list from 2025. Three was rephrased to include regional partners. I think the specific comment was changed to be specific on who is providing updates.

And then four and five are new. Five refers to the TriMet discussion without calling that out, but this will be a study. We're moving into a study of what does transit look like in the Burbs. The next category is environment and the outcomes were left alone. So they've all rolled forward.

One, two and five were not changed. Three and four were reframed and revised to include a connection with the Climate Action Plan and also to make it specific about raising awareness and visibility. So they were both rephrased. And then six and seven are new. Under parks, again, the we did not touch these outcomes.

They're constant from '25. Under the actions one, three and four all rolled forward. They're on the list in '25. Two is a combined action. Two actions were in last year's action list that were very similar, so they were both combined to make one. And then we added five and six. Maybe in the final, I will spell out PTSD. I don't like to use acronyms.

All

right. What was that? It's a new it's new. Oh, it's not an acronym. What does it stand for?

And our final category is culture on identity. And again, these outcomes remain constant. And one through five all roll forward, and then six practices back on neighborhood engagement. Other than that, if you want to approve them tonight, we will take this back and then come back with a revised placemat and then be on schedule to give you updates quarterly on these.

Oh, Councilor

Brooks. I'm curious, where is the policy part? Like working with Thorne Run and Oh,

that was

in

it got dropped off the list as an action. Mhmm. Let's see.

I think it was something we considered ongoing. We dropped a

lot of items like that.

I I will find it here in just a second. I'm sorry. It's okay.

I think we know that it's happening already. It's been motioned, so I didn't think we have to call to action because nothing has to be done other than it's continuing with the updates.

So it was under transportation and the it was utilize the lobbyists to help Tualatin effectively advocate for priorities. And on your list, it's that one got cut. Okay. We took it off.

I just my personally myself, I think that part of the role of the counsel that's important is our policy role. And after getting the policy brief and information about the letter without a conversation of advocacy. I am still concerned about communication. And so I am requesting to consider adding clear communication and scheduling around our policy decision making.

Specifically about legislation?

Yes, we're going to be advocating and that's going be the direction that we're trying to ask for money. And we are learning like I'm not even sure which part of the letter that we just wrote in support of HB whatever it was, if that's part of the settlement bill or not. But I don't agree with that bill. And anyway, I just think that it seems like it gets truncated and we don't have a conversation, we get a memo. It's a lot of information for people to read between sessions and have a discussion on what we're going to be supporting or what we've decided to support. That feels like a gap to me that we keep running into.

I

was just kind of remembering that it was under continuation with the partners, like where it says where it rephrase, regional partners. I'm like, I think that was part of the whole. But if it's gonna be on do do we want that on transportation if we consider what you're saying, counselor Brooks?

No. I think it has to do with strategic planning.

So it's to be outside any of these five any of these goals that we have.

I almost think this I think it's because our city logo in our update we received from Megan, it said our city logo was added in support of that increasing the land, and I don't think any of us knew about it until we saw it on the letter today. And I'm not sure if that's what you're speaking to, but just that we're, like, informed. And I know it's great if we could have input, but I know sometimes there's not enough time to have the council meeting. I almost feel like it's a discussion we should go into a little further at some point.

Point well taken. That specific bill was the mayor brought up at the last council meeting under his communications and talked about its relevance to Lam and the tax exemptions. And I guess I took that as we we took that as as as something specific about that.

I'm just curious, like for me the communication thing would be if we look at the League of Oregon City's calendar right now, they have the exact calendar of everything that's going on. Short session is not that hard. We know when it's going to be. If we had like a summary conversation the week before it kicks off or after the LLC does its legislative communication so that we can talk about what these are. Because a lot of even the bills that end up in short session might not pass that we're keeping an eye on.

But just like the recreation bill or the hot dog bill for the counselors to eat or whatever that we've been talking about these things for quite a while. And so just to stay on top of why we don't, or why we would, or why we wouldn't. And there's a lot of details in those conversations. That's just something that I feel like since we're at the policy level that we should be not taking not just like checking off, but that's where our job is to provide leadership from what how I read the council responsibilities.

So might I suggest that it's not that this is a separate conversation than the council priorities and actions? And I I've I can bring this conversation back on February 23, perhaps in work session to talk about the process and the communication and making sure that you're in the loop in a defined way.

Or just that we have a chance to talk about policy because we can't do it in between this format. As it stands right now, we do not want to talk about policy on our own. But those policy decisions and how we stand for or against them impact the future of the city. And I think it's important to be informed and be part of the decision making process. That's all. But I'm not complaining. I'm just saying I think we could be stronger in planning and communicating around larger policy advocacy that we're doing. And it's helped us in the past, so I want to be good at it.

Any other comments? It's getting late. So is everybody okay with what Cheryl's proposing without any changes?

Okay. Thumbs up. Wonderful.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Next, we have items removed from the consent agenda, which was nothing. And then we'll go to council communications. Oh, I should have just had you stay up there, Sherilyn. How about you go first, Sherilyn?

All right. So let's see. My report consists of telling you about the January, we had an all employee meeting where we celebrated service anniversaries. We welcomed new employees, and we recognized good work that's happened in 2025, including unveiling the employee of the year. Let's see.

Gerri Ann and I have continued to be involved in library meetings, the Washington County Cooperative Library Service. We're working on crafting an agreement, an IGA to govern the cooperative for the next five years. And that needs to be in place by July 1. And so we're in the early stages, but when we're far enough along we'll come in work session to kind of talk through those the policy things in there. Let's see.

There have been several meetings between Sherwood, Lake Oswego, Westland and Tualatin regarding the study about subregional transit service and there will be many more to come. Last week, I attended the key leaders breakfast where the state economists spoke along with several of you. It was a very good presentation and I appreciated being part of it. We are working on an agreement with Tiger Tolton School District on the athletic fields. Dustin and I Dustin has been doing the heavy lifting and we're pretty close to being able to bring it forward and have a discussion with you about it.

The fields at Tualatin Elementary, it's very exciting and will be a huge add to the community. And then of course, just a reminder that it's a holiday on Monday. City offices and public counters will be closed. The library will close early at six instead of eight. So keep that in mind. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Councilor Sacco.

Thank you. Okay. So we have the CCAA. Forget. Was it just last week?

It was this week. Yeah.

And we interviewed, of course, some great candidates, some of which we met tonight during the budget meeting. They came and listened in and were able to participate, which was great. And I think we'll bring those recommendations forward next meeting. I believe it's on the agenda for that day. And then on the fourth, we had the CAC, which the meeting before the c this last CAC meeting, we created this set of evaluation criteria to evaluate the recommendations from Civillas and then also from University of Oregon and the Oregon State classes.

And so we started that work on the fourth, and it was very engaging. Quinn brought forward this great tool to use digitally so we can input our feedback and then review it how everybody scored real time. And so we'll continue to do those evaluations for the rest of the civilis report and then again for those classes as they finish and their reports are submitted to the committee.

You. Councillor Hillier.

Thank you. Nothing to report at this time.

Councillor Reyes.

Again, just following what Councillor Saka said, we had our CCAA meeting on February 3, great candidates and yes, we had some today at our budget meeting, which was really cool to see the younger generation getting involved in a committee that sometimes it might seem a little not boring, but definitely very numbers driven and very quiet. So I was glad to see the the young the young generation join the committee. I'm really excited about that. And other than that, don't think I've I don't remember if I attended another official meeting, but that was the the meeting that I attended this week. Thank you.

Councilor Gonzales?

Nothing to report on. Thank you.

Councilor Brooks?

On the January 27, I met with representative Walters and discussed policy and local challenges in the upcoming session and events in the city and made sure to invite her to come. Talked about the concern around local control, especially. And then on the twenty seventh, I also talked from a gal named Dakota that reached out to me from the Clackamas River Basin Council, who has a grant that partially covers Tiger Twalton School Districts and was asking for partners with educational field opportunities for high school students from Tualatin High School and our river. So I've connected them with our parks department and with the river keepers so far. And then on Thursday, I went to the Washington County PAB review meeting for the community development block grants and home grants, listen to grant presentations, including a good grant presentation from the city.

And one interesting organization that I learned about that I'm going to follow-up with now that it's after the grant Scoring time is a group that does gardening for, food, and, it might be something that's of interest to the city. I'm just going to learn more about it. But it was a really interesting program. Then I went that same day over to the Perlow event for the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce Titanium Committee. And the mayor's wife, Donna, spoke about HR and problem solving.

And it was a really good presentation. And she's got a beautiful speaking voice, I have to say. On the fourth, I went to the first tier suburbs meeting through the NLC, which is a committee that I'm now on. And then I went to an in person meeting with representatives of community outreach people from Twalton Valley and the Twalton Arts Advisory Committee. On their website, they have art that's a little bit outdated.

So I talked with them and wanted them to meet each other. They're doing more public outreach. So there's a poll that you can go on. And we should encourage everybody that we can to take that poll so that our citizens are really being heard in this countywide and even bigger, I think, at least countywide program. Yeah.

They get all their money from Washington County tourism dollars as well. And there's a lot of interesting activities with them, but it was a nice connection. And I'm looking forward to continuing that conversation. I attended right after that the League of Oregon Cities Women's Caucus meeting. And we worked on our goals and game plan and which committees we're going to be on, which means I'm events.

And then NLC housing, I attended a virtual housing webinar on that same day. And then in the evening, I went to the Regional Water Providers Consortium. And

I'll

be sending out the slides from that. The new director was there, and they gave overviews from three different project leaders and multibillion dollar seismic upgrades that are happening all over the regions. So it's a good educational piece about where a lot of money is going and where we're supporting the growth, economic growth of our area. And then we had a titanium happy hour at Ancestry also on the February 5. And then last the Saturday before last, I went to the community meeting that representative Niran Mislan had over at the National Wildlife Refuge, learned more about the issues that are going on over there as well as other issues that are going on in the community.

And then last weekend went to the Toalton River Keepers annual meeting, which was out at the Jansen Estate. And they had a presenter from the Xerces Society. And the invertebrate they talked about was freshwater mussels, which we have three different types of freshwater mussels in the Tualatin River, and they are very endangered. They do a lot to clean the river, and they have an interdependent relationship on two plus types of fish. If anybody has any questions, let me know. And I also got some resources from the county that I'll pass out. Thanks.

Thank you. I went to Yeah, we had our CAC where we had some great people interview and then Oh, the CAC. Sorry, I'm mixing them up. The CCAA where we interviewed people for the advisory committees. The CAC meeting, I thought the input was great.

People really dug in, I think almost everybody there, and there were 19 of us, spoke up. And so, I was really glad that people were that, into it. It was kind of a great meeting, I thought. I went to the key leaders breakfast, and then I had my Clackamas County Coordinating Committee meeting where they talked about TriMet Avenue project update, which is their most used route, and it's pretty amazing. They came up with a number of $343,000,000, but that's only a part of the project.

It's going be really great when it's done, but it's gonna be quite expensive. And then Clackamas County is doing their TSP update, so they'll incorporate our TSP into that. The r one act meeting, was really interesting. They asked us ODOT switching to having a capital improvement plan, a ten year plan, which they've never done before. So they asked us to pick an arb giant region, five projects.

None of them are close to us. The Rose Quarter, TB Highway, Sunrise Corridor, Columbia River, the last this is pretty exciting. The last mile of the Columbia River Trail, and then it'll be a complete trail. I think it goes all the way from just past Gresham there, Troutdale, and then I think it goes to the Dalles. It's pretty amazing.

And then we're supposed to pick 10 more projects at our next meeting that are like tier two projects, I guess. And I see the Boone Bridge is on that. The two that I think we could really push for is the Boone Bridge and potentially Highway 99. So that well, I'll kinda make sure those get mentioned. I think that's it, except I want to mention, and it's on the city's social media, that there's a Red Cross Blood Drive on Tuesday, the seventeenth of this month and the eighteenth from ten to four, and you could sign up at redcrossblood dot org. And just a reminder, we have an exec session to

follow this. So anybody And,

counsel president, just for the record, you you will wanna state that we are you are adjourning to executive session and will not be returning to the regular meeting.

Okay. We'll be adjourning to executive session, and we will not be returning to the regular meeting. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? So moved.

Second.

All in favor?