City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the city commission meeting. This is our regular meeting, July 1st, 2026. And I'd like to say happy Canada Day to all of our Canadian friends and allies. It is their independence, 1867. It was actually the union of all of their provinces into one country. So everybody have a Tim Hortons or some poutine and fries with gravy on the top.

It is great. Like this dish of Canada feels like the most American thing ever. French fries, gravy, cheese.

Exactly.

How could it not be American?

It's delicious. I mean, yes, it's delicious. Yeah. The only thing I've ever had at Tim Hortons was some donuts because I don't drink coffee. So that's it. Okay. So we're going to call the meeting to order and ask for the roll call, please. Commissioner Rocky Smith.

I am here. Commissioner Scott Wilson. He's there. Commissioner Adam Morrow. Here. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Here. And Mayor Denise McGrath. Present.

If you are able, please stand and join us in the flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, and with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. So it is the City Commission's distinct pleasure to declare this month as Parks and Recreation Month. Whereas parks and recreation are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including Oregon City, and whereas parks and recreation promotes health and wellness, improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks, and whereas parks and recreation promotes time spent in nature, which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and wellbeing and alleviating illnesses such as depression, attention deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's. And whereas parks and recreation encourages physical activities by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, swimming pools and many other activities. Apparently you don't have the unpopular sports going on here. Whereas Parks and Recreation is a leading provider of healthy meals, nutrition services and education. Whereas Parks and Recreation programming and education activities such as out of school time programming, youth sports, environmental education are critical to childhood development. And whereas park recreation increases the community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses and crime reduction. And whereas parks and recreation is essential and adaptable infrastructure that makes our communities resilient in the face of natural disasters and climate change. And whereas parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provides for a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outside. And whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month, and whereas Oregon City recognizes the benefits derived from park recreation resources. Now, therefore, I Denise C. McGriff, Mayor of the City of Oregon City and the City Commission do proclaim July as Parks and Recreation Month. And I was just telling, sorry, I did wear my I Heart Park shirt, but it's a little chilly up here. So I have it on. Thank you, Scott. So we will sign this and it is so hereby declared. Thank you to everybody in our Parks and Recreation staff and ahead of our event on Saturday, I wanna say thank you in advance to all of the staff that has participated to make this event a fantastic success as I know it will be. And it's gonna be fantastic and I hope everybody can come out and have an enjoyable time at the end of the Oregon Trail. I think things kick off at 6 o'clock. Is that what I recall? There's two bands. I got it right 6 o'clock with a couple of bands. Honestly, I have to ask you, it said an Alabama tribute band. And I said, okay, because I had to think, is there a group called Alabama? I guess there is, yes. So anyway, so it sounds like it's a country theme for the July 4th. but I hope everybody can come out and enjoy the laser light show and keep our fireworks to a minimum so that we do not have any wildfire or fire activities and lessen the burden on our police department to have to go out on calls. so let's move on to our first agenda item which is let me turn the page which is the presentation of the 2025 police department annual report and there was an excellent uh synopsis in the brand new issue of trail news that just came out today in everyone's mailboxes so thank you chief davis good evening mayor commission uh it's my honor today tonight to present our 2025

in your report. First, I'd like to thank everyone for the mayor and the commission for your support. It means a lot to our staff. In this report, you're going to see a lot of the great work that our staff has accomplished in our stats over the last year. You're also going to see it's a very busy year. There's a lot of slides, so I'm going to try to quickly go through them and explain them. But if you want, feel free to stop me, ask questions about a slide, or we could talk about it afterwards. Last year, one of our focuses was hiring to make sure we're fully staffed to meet the needs of our community. We have 46 sworn officers and 15 and a half non-sworn officers. That's broken down by eight and a half for PD and seven for code. Last year, we hired two lateral officers, a recruit officer, a record specialist, a code enforcement officer, and a police narcotics canine, Alfie. So you guys remember all those swearing ins. Uh, we also had, uh, some retirements in 2025. Uh, it is always great to see when our staff, uh, makes it through their career and they go on to their next adventure. So last year we had, uh, uh, K-9 Slate, Slate retire. We had Sergeant Justin Young, Officer Tanner Curvilone, Sergeant Pat Lynch, and Senior Records Specialist Martha Manlove, who retired. Our staff has a lot of notable accomplishments throughout the year, and I wanted to share some of these. I'm not going to go all over all of them, but we had some very big anniversaries. They're very important to us. We had some academy graduates. We had several officers complete field training. We had Sergeant Alan Farmer, who was promoted to sergeant. And then throughout our career, we can get different certifications, including for our sworn officers, but also our non-sworn officers. So you'll see those there, including our property officer, Lacey Brousseau, receiving her certification. What's the basic certification? That's once they complete the academy, and that's the basic certification. So they've got to complete field training, complete a manual that gets submitted, make sure that they have all their first aid, CPR, and the other required training, and then they get their basic certificate. Awesome. And then as they progress through their career, depending on college and all their different training, is when they can get their different certificates, intermediate, advanced, supervisory, that kind of stuff. You probably remember in September we got reaccredited. It's a significant achievement for our police department and all the men and women who've worked for us, along with code enforcement. It's a continued commitment to public safety and holds us to the highest standards. That was a presentation in September. re-recognize jessica mott uh she's our proper she's our records specialist uh our property officer lacey brousseau our training sergeant jason lemons uh both captains dave edwins and joseph regano and patty stewart uh for putting this all together they have a we all do work on it but they they have the most components of accreditation and they worked really hard to make sure that we met those standards Next, we're going to go into our department stats for the year, and we're going to kind of see the increase that our staff had for calls for service, reports, and that kind of stuff. I know I've talked about it before, but a calls for service is anything that gets entered into our dispatch. So it could be someone calling 911. It could be us doing a traffic stop. It could be us self-initiating for some on-view report that we see. So you could see that in 2025, we had a 4% increase for calls for service. And then you could see of those calls for service that 26.9% of those calls for service was self-initiated activity. That's super important. I think it's one of our cornerstones for us to make sure our community remains safe and livable is that we're out there being proactive. We're making sure that we're enforcing traffic laws. We're not just waiting for calls to come to us. We're trying to prevent calls. So I'm very proud of our officers and our staff for being as proactive as they are. You can see in some of the stops data, if you ever look at some of those reports that's put on by the state of Oregon, CJC, we are one of the busiest cities in Oregon for self-initiated activity. And so I'm very proud of that. Some of these stats that people always ask us about is homeless related calls for service and behavioral health related calls for service. You're going to see that I believe it was about in 2018, we switched CADs. And we used to be able to do keyword searches. And when we went to the new one, it became more antiquated, I guess. It's a newer CAD, but we can't do keyword searches. So we had to come up with a solution. In 2019, we created a clearance code. So it doesn't mean that we're not having more calls for service. It just means... Those clearance codes that we are using when we get dispatched to a call, those have decreased. It doesn't mean that maybe we're not getting those and we're not doing area checks and checking on people and reaching out to services. It's just our officers have to clear with a certain code for us to be able to track those. And then the behavioral health, you can see those went up this last year, calls for service just slightly. This is a new slide for this year. I thought it was important. Clackamas County Dispatch or CCOM, they dispatch every police agency in Clackamas County except for three, Lake Oswego, Westland, and Milwaukee. So this is a good comparison of where we rate throughout the entire year. And you can see that we're very busy. We took 14.65% of all calls for service through Clackamas County Dispatch. That was a law enforcement call. We're double the nearest closest city, which is, I believe, Wilsontown. So we're a very busy city.

Where do the other cities do their dispatch through? Through LOCOM or Lake Oswego. Oh, okay. Milwaukee does theirs through LOCOM?

Milwaukee, Westland, and Lake Oswego, yeah. Interesting. But previously when I've looked, we've been busier than all those. Just a quick thing, just a reference of what stop data is. It went into effect in, I think, 2018 or 2017. And it's when we do a proactive stop on something not related to a call. So it could be a pedestrian stop. It could be a traffic stop. At the end of the traffic stop or the contact, we have to enter data. That's required, and it tracks that data. It doesn't tell who officer when they analyze it. It just tells who we're stopping and for what, if we search them or whatnot. So every year, the CJC analyzes all the state's data and does a report, and that comes out December 1st. But the stats for them are July 1st through June 30th. but we also have access so we can analyze our own stop status. So you'll see some of this data is slightly different than our others because I'm analyzing January 1st through December 31st. So you can see that we had 6,265 reported stops through the report to the state of those, the majority, almost 92% are traffic stops. And then you can break it down by sex. We had a slight decrease of 7.1% from 2024. This is the stop data that we compare race and ethnicity. And then we also can break it down by sex. So we can break it down and see what it is. But every year the CJC analyzes all that data. They review it and then see if there's any issues with any of that stuff. If there is, if they have some concerns, they'll reach out to those agencies. And I'm happy to report that there's no concerns for us. This is a big one for us. This last year, you probably remember during the budget cycle, we lost one record specialist that wasn't funded. Interestingly, we also had a very large increase of work for them. In 2024, we had 1,208 report requests. That could be something that's going to the public. It could be going to the DA's office. And there was a 28% increase to 1,550. We also, our officers were very busy. You can see writing police reports. We had the highest police reports we've had in five years. And that was a 14.4 increase over the 2024. So the graph on the left is calls for service. So that's dispatch data doesn't mean we actually wrote reports on that. But we always try to track of like property related calls for service. You can kind of see we say very similar to 2024. And then the graph on the right is the highest It's a reports breakdown of the highest number of reports that we do. So you can see DHS referrals. That's when someone maybe makes a report to DHS and they'll send out the 307 or a referral to us and we'll go out and investigate whether there was child abuse and whatever was in those reports. Theft is also a very high report for us. Citations and arrests, our arrests on the right went up 6.9% this last year. You'll see we were very active with traffic stops. our citation numbers actually went down significantly. So I was kind of looking into that. One of them, Sergeant Justin Young, he was on the traffic team. He's actually the traffic sergeant. He retired in January. He wrote a very, very large amount of traffic tickets. We also had one of our officers go into the school, Dan Shockley. He wrote a lot of traffic tickets. So between the two of them, that's a significant amount of those citations that were not written. Every year we do a use of force review. I'm proud to say that our use of force has gone down slightly. Last year we were at 5.65%, and now we're at 4.42. That's pretty amazing, though, when you have 1,400 over 1,400 arrests, and only 4.42% of the time we actually have to use force. It was actually 66 times. We had 127 individual uses of force reports, and that's if there's three officers on scene or there's five, If all three of them use force, each one has to write a use of force report. So that's why you see the difference between incidents and use of force reports.

Chief Davis, does that use of force count include like if they have to take Coco or Alfie and go after?

Yes, and I'll get to that in two slides or three slides, I think. Yeah, if we use to play canine on something, that's a use of force. So basically, it's anything other than cooperative handcuffing. So if someone were to try to take someone into custody and they decide to try to pull away from us or maybe are using some physical force and we have to use physical force to put them in handcuffs, that is what that is. So I'm very, very proud of our number. We do a really good job at deescalation. We do a really good job of successfully taking people into custody without having to use any level of force. This one is just a breakdown of the top three used forces when we do have to take someone into custody, uncooperative handcuffing, physical control and joint manipulation. And then this is a breakdown of use of force incidents by race. This is just a summary, and we just kind of highlight some of these things. Again, 4.42% of the time we use force. We did have two canine deployments last year. One resulted in a canine bite. Seven taser deployments. Three times we had to put spit shields or spit hoods on someone because they were trying to spit on us. One firearm was discharged, and one officer was injured during a use of force situation. 100% of the time, our officers gave verbal commands. And interestingly, 92.4% of the time, officers did not comply with those commands, and that's why we had to use force. Next is just a breakdown of our detective division. We have three detectives and a detective sergeant. They do a lot of different things. They're part of the major crimes team. They're on call 24-7 for serious crimes. They do a lot of work back there. They help with different missions. They participate in the human trafficking missions, organized retail theft missions. So in 2025, they had 152 cases referred to them, 493 police reports. They investigated four death investigations. One of those was a homicide. Again, they helped out with a couple of those different missions that are interagency. And they worked some big cases and attended quite a bit of training to help better their skills. This one is some of their notable cases, the blue hair and paper mill. That was a very large fire. At the time, we didn't know exactly how it was set. The suspect was eventually identified. He admitted that he set the fire, why he set the fire. He actually took a plea deal and was sentenced to five years. That Jennifer Ruth Stewart homicide, that was one where she was found in Clackamas County. It was a kind of whodunit, who was she? They figured out who she was. She lived in Oregon City. We worked with our detectives and determined that she was actually killed in Oregon City. And that individual, by her boyfriend, that individual has already pled guilty. And he was sentenced to 25 years. There's... Couple notable homicide cases that we also had some pleas. You guys probably remember Jamin Fritch who killed his live-in Kara Taylor in March of 2025. He pled guilty and was, and also Mason Esterbrook. He killed his father in November, 2025. He also pled guilty. So good work on our detectives and all of our staff to get a conviction and closure for the families. This is Lacey Brisseau. She is our property and evidence technician. She also does our crime scene forensics. So these are her stats of going out, processing scenes. The IBIS entries are when we get a gun, she'll test fire those. Each gun leaves kind of like a fingerprint on the casing. She'll submit those and put that together to see if those casings where that gun was used in any other crimes. Our special investigation team, that consists of 10 officers. Last year they did seven missions. I should say that they do this on either overtime or their days off. So they're very committed. You can see they're very successful. They executed two search warrants, one in Oregon City and one in Gladstone. As we know, drugs have no boundary, and so there's always a tie. We can do search warrant in Portland, and a lot of times there's a tie in Oregon City. Sometimes if we do an Oregon City search warrant, there's ties throughout the state. So we just don't focus on Oregon City. If a case takes us somewhere, we'll continue that. They were very successful. They also did some three luring cases, so luring of a minor. They worked on those. They started reinvigorating our GPS tracking so we can put out some bait items and try to, if people steal those, we can track them and we can hold people accountable for some of these other thefts that occur. Our traffic team and our traffic stats. Obviously, when they're fully staffed, we have three traffic officers and a traffic sergeant due to staffing. They're not always fully staffed. That's Matt Hespec there over there on the motorcycle. You can see they were pretty busy. Not pretty, they were really busy. There's 6,840 traffic stops that was conducted between the traffic team and our patrol officers. 821 traffic crashes and hit and runs through dispatch. They participate in different ODOT traffic grants and different missions. They partner with the school district, they teach driver's ed. It's a very good program for us and they keep our streets safe. This is a breakdown of when we participate in these grants of just some of our stats. So the darker number is that it stops, and the lighter color is the amount of citations that we write during those grants. So we don't always write tickets. It's about changing the driving behavior, but there's a lot of tickets that are written during those grants. Our K-19, they were pretty busy too. Officer Lossley and K-9 Coker on the left, they had 16 deployments and five arrests. Officer Pohl got a K-9 Alfie, as you saw. He didn't start the street until April, but he was very busy. He did 27 deployments, found about eight pounds of fentanyl and 136 pounds of methamphetamine. So very deadly substances in our community and around our community. There's no doubt that they're keeping our community safe. And then Sergeant Farmer had 16 deployments and 13 arrests. And he's got canine Ronnie. Last year, we lost two canines. They were canine Grendel and canine Mac. Canine Mac was already retired. But canine Grendel wasn't at the time. So, yeah, we just want to remember our canines when we lose them. So sad. Our behavioral health unit is staffed by Val and Chelsea. They had a very big increase last year too. 27% increase for total referrals and 13 over almost 14% increase on in-person contacts. They provide training to the community and our department. As you can see, they provide a lot of hours for that. Val, because of her certifications, she also provides clinical supervision to other outside agency BHUs that are trying to get to the level that she is to be able to put directors on. So she actually oversees them clinically and writes the reports that she needs to. So she's a very big asset for us and all the other agencies in Clackamas County. We do a lot of training. In 2024, there was a lot because we had a lot of hires. 2026 or 2025 wasn't as much, but we still provide almost 7,000 training hours between the patrol officers and I can't read the smaller number, but I think it's close to 1,000 for the non-sworn. We have a school resource officer. We have two of them when they're there. Last year we did have two school resource officers. And their whole role is to make sure that the school is a safe environment for kids to learn. But they also are a resource to the students and they do a really good job out there. Our homeless camp cleanups. We cleaned 13 different areas last year. Over 43,000 pounds of trash was cleaned up and dumped. We also recycled over 2,000 pounds of recycling. So we're out there. Every time we contact someone in an unauthorized camp, we're notifying the occupants, but most importantly, we're trying to provide outreach, and we work with our community partners on that. Next, I'll go into code enforcement. It's a seven-day operation. Their whole goal is to enhance the neighborhood livability through voluntary complements. They also assist us with different, when there's a crash or there's hazards, they'll come out there and help block the road and help alleviate some of our staff time to blocking those roads. They had an increase last year, about 5.4% of cases, and the graph on the right is what the cases breakdown is. Yes?

Can you just talk on that previous slide for a second?

Absolutely. Yeah. We're all going to post this to you on our website. I can send it out. Thank you. You probably heard about this, keeping Oregon City clean. This was an idea from our code enforcement. They saw shopping carts laying around, right? There's a vendor that comes around and picks these up. There's trash laying around with these shopping carts. Since its inception in April of 2023, they've picked up over 1,200 shopping carts and over almost 250 bags of trash. Last year, they did, what, 421 and almost 100 bags of trash. They're out there when they're driving around, if they see something, they're trying to keep our city clean. And then they work with the stores to get their shopping carts back.

Do we collect a ransom from the company that we take their shopping cart back to them?

Interestingly, there is some Oregon laws on that where we could. But there's a disadvantage, you have to post them, you have to let them know where it's at. So essentially we would be leaving the carts there, kind of like an abandoned vehicle and following our process to get a few dollars that I think it's just better for us to clean it up, work. It's a burden on our staff, but they're doing it because they want to make sure it's clean.

That makes sense, thank you. Yeah, we've looked into it.

Our favorite things that we do is community outreach, and I'll run through those real quick. Last year we did our summer camp like we do every year. We do about 30 grade school kids, teach them all about the police department and law enforcement. We also do the Citizens Academy. Our favorite one that we do is National Night Out. Coming up. Coming up. Is it August 4th? Yes. August 4th. Trick or treat on Main Street. This is Rob Lipke's last detail that he did and he loved to do. So we're down there always. It's another fun event that we like to do. This is a breakdown of just our staff hours that for all of our community events of what So I thought it was important to show that we do a lot of community events, but there's a lot of time that it takes for us to do those things, just like when Public Works is helping out on the parades and stuff like that. These events are very important to our community, but there's a lot of hours that it takes for us to be able to make sure that the events are safe and they go on without any issues. And then finally, the last two slides are our future challenges. Just want to talk about that, you know, obviously the growth of the city as the city grows, we need to maintain our level of service, just like every department in the city. You can see, you know, our FTEs and our officers, we just need to make sure that we're in a Able to be able to provide the level of service. We're seeing that the calls for service and the reports are going up. So we just need to work on just be cognizant of that and figure out solutions. So you'll probably see I'm working with TriMet to get some TriMet officers or transit officers. So we're trying to come up with creative solutions to increase our FTEs.

That before around their areas. I'm sorry? That's around their areas.

Transit police? Yes. It's actually there is zero transit officers working in Clackamas County. Currently. And so I've been working with Multnomah County who actually oversees transit police. I got an IGA coming forward with and July 15th that you're going to see. But they're trying to open up the South Station to get staffing in the South Clackamas County. We have two end of the lines in Oregon City. So currently today we're taking all the calls for service there anyway. So why not have officers assigned to them? get compensated for it and be able to make sure our mass transit is safe too. I would totally agree with that. And then our last one is obviously, you know, you've seen this before, succession planning. We're always working on that. We also need to understand, always be cognizant of the continual evolution of policing. What does that look like? What are the equipment that we need? How are we going to do that? How are we going to provide transparency for our community too? And then finally hiring and retention, so.

I hope that was quick enough. I tried to go through it. Oh, no, that was very, very good. I think one of the things that you've noted here is besides the continual evolution of policing, it is challenging to find good people who fit into the Oregon City model that we have. And I know that that has been an ongoing challenge forever.

Yeah, I mean, you can see we're very busy. We're one of the busiest. And so coming to Oregon City is different than coming to some other smaller agencies. We're very busy. We're very fast paced. We have very high standards. And so yeah, trying to find the right people It could be a challenge, but I'm very proud of the people we're hiring. They're going to be great. They're going to be serving our department and our community into the future. So we might not be seeing the numbers that we are, but we're seeing very, very good applicants. And they're choosing Oregon City, and we're choosing them. So it's very good.

Yeah, I know we're always recruiting. Absolutely. I just happened to talk to somebody the other day that they were interested and I told them who they should go talk to at the department. We're looking for great people. Yes. Well, I don't know. I just said, here's who you need to talk to.

Yeah.

Any questions, gentlemen? Rocky?

No questions. Just great report. Adam?

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for all the work that your department does to keep Oregon City residents safe. Could you remind me when the college resource officer program ended and why that occurred?

Yeah, so originally, let's see. Chief Band was still here, so we had to pull the college resource officer back for staffing. And we were only having them there during school, when school was in session, so for like nine months. We weren't able to get someone back there, and Clackamas County, the college, they ran out of funding for that. So they would love to have it, they just don't have the funding for it. But we still provide the level of service. We still help with graduations if they need it. When they have different events that they need help for, we still go help them. Great, thank you.

No, just again, thank you for the report. Thank you for everything you and your team does for the city. Thanks.

Michael?

Yeah, I'll just echo those comments and the number that kind of jumped out at me is with everything that goes on over the course of a day and a year, that 94 point whatever percent of graduates incidents that your officers are on do not require any use of force. That says a lot to their training. And it says a lot to their reputation in the community, too. I think people in the community that do encounter your officers know that if they don't get out of hand, your officer's not going to get out of hand with them. And that just says a lot to the way you train officers, you and your team. So thank you. Thanks.

Yeah, I think we all feel the same way that we appreciate the police department and we many of us go out of our way every time we see them to let them know how much we they're appreciated and all the work that they do and putting their lives on the line every day even though some days maybe you know it's shoplifting but you know sometimes those things don't always stay benign but just being out and about in the community is also uh helpful and i think you know the participation and the the leadership that the police department provides for neighbors night out i think is another good way for the community to interact and uh it's just you know it's good thank you again and again and again thank you uh and we'll have this published on our website either tomorrow or the monday So before I move on to item number seven, I know there's, is there anybody who hasn't already submitted a slip that wants to speak under public comments? Because I did skip it because I didn't have any, but I just want to go back and ask. So I'm asking. All right, we're good.

Before you move on, I have a question about one of the written comments we received. There was one about a hazardous situation at the corner of Central Point and Skellinger. Has that been passed on to Public Works to investigate? Great. That was a positive response from our Public Works Director. So thank you.

I think they got it the same day that it came out. So that's good. We got jumped on that. Absolutely. Thank you for checking on that. We have item number seven. Do we have anything on the consent agenda that is a question or do we have a motion to adopt?

I just would like to pull item 7G for a quick question. Okay. And apart from that, I move to approve the consent agenda. Well, do you want to just go ahead and ask your question? No, second. I'll just do it as it's supposed to be done. Okay. Move to approve the consent agenda without item 7G. Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Adam Morrow.

Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye. And Mayor Denise McGriff. Aye.

Motion passes.

And could I?

Please, yes, because we're going to be talking to the city recorder about that. Could you talk about why the minutes are so skeletal?

I have the same question.

You think it needs to have more meat on the bones? Well, there's an error with that item, so I would just ask you to, we'll just pass on it and we'll bring it back later. Okay.

Okay, so we'll move to table item G to the following meeting. So let's have a motion. So moved. Second.

Okay. Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Adam Morrow. Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell.

Aye. And Mayor Denise McGriff. Aye. Motion passes. All right. So we do not have any public hearings on the agenda tonight, but we'll move directly to item number nine, which is general business. Second reading of ordinance number 26-1008, adopting amendments to the Oregon City Municipal Code, Title 13, updating the Public Utility Service Billing Code. Are there any additional comments from staff? And before we get to the public comments, I'd like to ask our city attorney to address some concerns that were brought up and make some clarifications and further explanation. Please.

Thank you, Mayor McGriff and commissioners. The commission received some additional public testimony on this item, and I just wanted to provide a little bit more background. Ordinance 261008 doesn't adopt a new stormwater master plan. It doesn't change the rates. It doesn't change the way the assessment happens. The reason why the city pursued these amendments was because you'll recall the blue at Abernathy credit request brought to light some ambiguities in the existing credit code. and also brought to light the lack of parity between stormwater and water and how our other utility credits and collections work. So staff went back and revisited those questions and then we had a work session to talk about how to achieve parity and how to address the credit question in a way that was less ambiguous. So that's what the mission was here with this effort. These amendments will eliminate the exception for the blue at Abernathy because these except these amendments require in order to qualify for an exemption that you are doing onsite treatment. So that exemption and exemptions for pre-existing old development that doesn't have modern stormwater treatment will go away. These amendments do not change how we treat vacant property. Vacant properties are not assessed under the old way and they're not assessed under the new system. The master plan assumed that that would be the case. So from my perspective, we're not making changes to the way assessment happens to the rates. Again, the goal was to address the things that came to light at the Blue and Abernathy and we're taking that away. So I'd be happy to answer any other questions that the commission might have.

Commissioner Smith, do you have any questions? No. Commissioner Mitchell? Commissioner Merrill? Commissioner Wilson? No. Okay. So I'd like to call, we have one request for a comment. I'd like to call up Mr. James Mesita.

Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners. James Nascito, 302 Bluff Street. I'd like to add to the record of this proceeding, my follow-up to my latest set of written comments. First, I've had additional thoughts on how the stormwater utility fee could be applied to vacant properties, which is an exemption. And this, as the city attorney said, is a proceeding about the exemptions. Another way to secure payment from vacant properties would be to withhold development permits or approval of stormwater management plans for developments from vacant properties, unless the stormwater utility fee is paid, if they haven't paid it otherwise. Secondly, OCMC 1316 applies a development intensity factor to non-residential land uses. Vacant and improved properties could be assigned a lower development intensity but you could still get a lot of revenue from vacant properties. And it's simply, as I said, unfair that whole classes of properties be exempt from the stormwater utility fee when smaller properties are forced to pay extra because those vacant properties aren't carrying their fair share. Ordinance 89-1010, which established the stormwater utility fee ordinance, was adopted by its own terms pursuant to the general laws of Oregon. That includes ORS 454, which I mentioned requires that those properties that don't use the stormwater utility fees can't be assessed stormwater utilities fees. Ordinance 93-1025 was enacted. It gave us the current code exemption. for properties that do not discharge into the drainage system. So it was consistent with ORS 454. So I'd like to close in saying that these comments are not 11th hour quote unquote. I'm not the city attorney and I'm not the city manager. I believe this commission should have been presented to these comments or these issues. It should have been presented a legal memo on the sheets case. It should have been presented the city's 2021 rate utility fee at the work session in February, instead of just at the last issue as the city attorney did so. So thank you.

Well, that was a whole lot of stuff in a little over three minutes. And maybe the city attorney can clarify this. I am trying to understand what is the real underlying issue because I feel like I got a big wall and a lot of spaghetti got thrown at it. And some of it's sticking. So I'm, there's just a lot of stuff going on here.

The city is not adopting a new stormwater master plan where the allocation of assessments is determined and where these questions about whether you charge vacant properties or you don't charge vacant properties, it was never within the scope. OF WHAT THE CHARGE WAS. IF THE COMMISSION WANTS TO GO AND REVISIT THE UTILITY MASTER PLAN AND REVISIT ALL OF THOSE PRIMARY ASSUMPTIONS, WE CAN DO THAT. BUT WE DID IT IN 2021, I THINK. AND SO THAT PLAN IS STILL VALID. AND IT IS Mr. Nisida's suggestions about collecting on vacant properties, those are all relevant to that master plan adoption. The only thing we're trying to do here is clarify some ambiguities in the code and to make it clear that non-conforming properties that are just dumping into streams don't get exemptions from the stormwater standards. Those were the primary objectives and I believe that these code amendments respond to that.

That's kind of what I thought was the impetus of it was we were trying to deal with the mismatch in the existing ordinance regarding properties that were not Again, it has to go back to that. We asked a lot of these questions when we were dealing with that request that came from the Abernathy Road properties. Just as an aside, we did recently adopt, I mean, recent is within the last five years. And so we will be taking a look at that document at some time in the future. If there are any, I mean, I don't know what cycle we do the master plans on for the utilities, but I know we've cleaned them all up since I got on the commission to bring them more current, to make them all align basically with each other. So I'm not sure when that is, when we will be doing that again, but these are some things we maybe could put in a parking lot. I don't know if this commission is prepared at this time or any time in the near future, and I mean next few months to reopen the master plan to deal with some of these issues. So I would say they need to be in a parking lot When we look at the update, that's when we would bring these things up at some future date. Does that sound reasonable?

Jump in. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciated the comments that Jim got in and they made me go back and forth about my opinions on this because I think at the core of what Jim was trying to get to in his comments is kind of what I've been trying to get us to look at wholesale for all of our ways that we tax and fee our residents, starting with making sure that the... that the institutional jurisdictions within the city that do not pay property taxes are paying their fair share for services, looking at the ways that we're tiering our SDCs to make sure that we're encouraging the kind of development that we would like to see that has a smaller footprint and less of an effect on our land supply. And we did that, which is great. And then also wanting staff to look at potentially restructuring the C-SAFE fee to see how much of an effect it would make to increase the rate for the larger customers and decrease it proportionally for residential. And coming to realize that it wouldn't have made much of a difference. However, which isn't to say that the suggestion here wouldn't have made much of a difference for our rate payers. But just what I'm trying to say is that a lot of what he was saying gets to a lot of the concerns that I've been trying to get us to look at, which we have. And I'm proud of that work that we've been doing. And so that did give me pause. However, remembering... what initiated this policy discussion in the first place and that this is not, in fact, a wholesale look back at our entire methodology and rather just looking at getting certain users to pay their fair share and make sure that those who don't have the onsite access treatment are paying into the system even though they may not think that they have the effect that they actually do. And so I'm going to be supportive of this and will still be open to a lot of the suggestions because I think they're worth it and they're merited just at the appropriate policy discussion and not at the expense of stopping this one from moving forward.

I We have been making really good progress on cleaning up some of these things. My initial concern is that we did get two letters from citizens that live in the Ely neighborhood. And I think there is misunderstanding about what it was we were doing. We are not prohibiting any comment on public utility stormwater. That is not what this ordinance was about. There are many neighborhoods in Oregon city that don't fully have, like the new developments, although I would say stuff that runs off of my property, there is a storm drain at the end of the block and it runs in there. I'm concerned that there was some misunderstanding about what it was we were doing. And I was gonna open up the second letter here. I did not print them this time, saved a tree. Where was that other one? Okay, yeah, the second letter, and I'm not dismissing them. So the second one is saying that it's unfair to give an exemption for stormwater runoff to industrial and commercial properties, and that's what we're trying to correct. So there, again, there's a little bit of a misunderstanding about what we're trying to do. We're saying no more. We're not exempting them anymore. This is what we're trying to do.

Unless they have on-site treatment. Yes. Unless they have on-site treatment. Not just on-site treatment, but on-site treatment that meets our current stormwater standards, which were recently updated.

Yes. So no, the county building did not get a discount. That's why we're here. Go ahead, Michael.

I agree with what Commissioner Marl said. And this concern that I have is not going to keep me from supporting this tonight because I think it's a bigger discussion that we could have at a later date on this particular thing that concerns me. And that is... how we handle a property that may have impervious surface, like a parking lot, which is adding stormwater to our system, but does not have a water meter, so it isn't charged. And I'm concerned, I don't think that whether or not it has a water meter is the logical distinction. If we got two parking lots next to each other, both impervious surface, one has a water meter because maybe because of a building that used to be there or something, and the other doesn't, one's paying, one's not. But again, I think that's a discussion for a later date. I'm in favor of going ahead with this second reading, but there are some things that and some of the other things that Commissioner Mauro mentioned that we could continue to investigate.

Okay, so let's ask, I'd like to ask for a motion, please.

I move to approve the second reading of ordinance 26-1008. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

Ordinance number 26-1008, an ordinance adopting amendments to Oregon City Municipal Code Title 13 public services.

Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Adam Marl. Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye. And Mayor Denise McGriff. Aye. Motion passes.

Item number 9B, is that you again, Dana? Just stay up here. Thank you. So the second item, 9B, is an amendment number one for the personal services agreement for Mall, Foster, and Olongi, Inc. for the public works Center Street Property Phase Two Environmental Site Assessment PS26-002. Maybe I should have abbreviated that to Center Street Properties. Okay, thank you so much.

Good evening, Mayor and Commissioners. Dana Webb, Public Works Director. So typically a contract like this would go on your consent agenda. I've placed it tonight on general business to give you just a little bit of an update on the Center Street properties as it is a commission goal. And then just to get a little bit of confirmation from you before we move forward in our next steps. So quick reminder, the Public Works properties are these four properties outlined in red. The two larger parcels have structures on them, and then there's a paved parking lot, which is the larger of the undeveloped sites, and then an unpaved parking lot. So we have moved forward with a phase one environmental site assessment on the four properties. And those preliminary findings show for the gravel parking lot that there are no concerns going forward. The paved parking lot has a DEQ issued no further action letter for a 5,000 gallon gasoline underground storage tank that was removed in June of 1997. So the phase one felt there would be no concerns going forward. We have that no further action letter from DEQ and the appropriate documentation for that site.

Are we going to do any just to check and see?

Yes, as part of our phase two, we'll do one boring on each of these two lots just for kind of that final confirmation. On the two developed lots, The 122 South Center, which is the office building in the shops, that site is identified for soil contamination under the existing building's foundation. So there was a removal of three underground storage tanks in June of 1997. The contamination from those underground storage tanks was partially under the footings and the foundation of the building, so it was not fully remediated. So that contamination remains. And then the report identified possible contamination from the adjacent Cameron building. And so additional investigations would be needed on that 122 South Center Street property. And then the 116 South Center Street or the Cameron Building had, it actually has a DEQ no further action letter from December of 2009. And that was related to the benzene soil vapors. And at the time, they met the current standards. In 2022, DEQ updated the the standards for that. And so now it would be flagged as a recognized environmental condition. So additional investigations are needed on that site. And so tonight's contract in front of you is to move forward with those phase two reviews on the two primary sites and then just some small investigation work on the two parking lots for just kind of a final confirmation. So that's the contract in front of you tonight for approval. The other item I wanted just to confirm with you is the property zoning. So as we're moving forward with these phase one and phase two, The other item that we're kind of running parallel will be the rezoning of the property. So back in December at the work session, I believe I heard consensus to move forward with the R3.5 zoning. So this was that map shown. So assuming I kind of get that head nod tonight, I'm moving forward with a pre-application meeting for the rezoning and comprehensive plan amendment that requires a McLaughlin neighborhood association meeting and a traffic impact letter. So I'm currently getting a scope for that traffic impact letter and I am scheduled for next week in the McLaughlin neighborhood association to discuss the rezoning of these properties.

Any questions or comments? Yeah, a question on the map, on the, well, let's just call it the right side of the map, that real unusual property line. Is that kind of following the bluff line?

I believe it is, yes. Okay. We had a lot of discussion about that with former Public Works Director John Lewis when they did the initial review of this and were going to be moving from Center Street to First Street. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. I've been really supportive of just making sure that we move forward with the residential here, but I also think it might be worth it to consider the possibility of some mixed use in this area, the potential of very small commercial nodes, especially considering there's the Museum of the Oregon Territory and the event center there, as well as a couple of restaurants nearby. And just given the very rare opportunity we have here to not only put some more homes in, but also some areas where the people who will be living there and who currently live there could walk to and enjoy in their neighborhood, I would actually think that would be something worth looking at. And in my haste to want to just dispose of all this and put some homes there, it was something that has just kind of been at the back of my mind. But now that we're kind of in this position, I just wanted to throw that out there.

I appreciate it. I actually haven't given that any consideration, but I don't disagree with it.

Rocky, is there anything you'd like to add? No, I mean, I agree that if we do talk about that component being some mixed use, then it would, I assume, would be on the left side.

Well, we can't assume anything. I guess I would say at this point... Well, it would make sense. Yeah, yeah. I would say at this point in time... that when Public Works was talking about expanding there and being up above and down below, there was a lot of negative feeling about it from the Neighborhood Association because of the increase in traffic. I know that when there was a proposal to put a brew pub in Elevate Plaza, the first thing that came up from the adjacent neighbors was the traffic and the parking. I think that if we're gonna have additional commercial, that it should be on the zoning where the commercial is already, which is on High Street. I know that the Neighborhood Association has long wanted this to be reintegrated back into the neighborhood. So I think it'll be, I know they're gonna be hosting Dana on the 8th at their next neighborhood meeting. But I think that we are being very prudent in retesting i think it's you know important for us to to do a little bit more due diligence than may be necessary and i think i mentioned several times that many years ago i went into the cameron building with our fire marshal at the time was clark polton and we were in hazmat suits that was a scary building before we bought it and got it cleaned up, but there's still obviously residual. So I'm really glad that we're not going to take it for granted that we have a, a no further action because I've had that happen in my professional life where we got that. And then we just said, well, let's just test and see. And then guess what? You find something. And I think we were being very, uh, very responsible in doing additional testing here. And I think this is the right way to go to make sure that when we do put it up for sale or however we're going to dispose of it, that we can say with a very clear conscience, we've done everything possible. And if whoever wants to buy it wants to do more testing, that'll be up to them, but we've done our due diligence. We're gonna go over and beyond. And I really appreciate the fact that the city is taking these steps steps to uh you know to know more we know what we know but you know both of those lots on the opposite side were both had they all had houses on them at one point in time and underground storage tanks were not uncommon at that time plus the above ground ones so thank you for um moving this forward okay yes yeah i appreciate you bringing up the past neighborhood concerns i mean that was something that i thought about as well because i know there's a history there um and i just want to clarify that

anything that I would envision possibly being here, depending on what the market were to drive here, would not be parallel to an intense use like an expansion of a public works facility. So I don't think that any indications of past hesitance for this ought to be something that keeps us from at least having that conversation one more time. Again, thinking of this as a neighborhood scale commercial and in fact talking about ways that we can reduce the traffic because it would be targeted toward the people who live there who would be able to walk there.

We always have those people that drive. Okay, so do we have consensus on, I'm sorry. Thank you.

I've always in my mind wanted to put as many call it workforce housing units on these properties as possible. Commissioner Morrow's comment just kind of made me change, made me wonder because I think purely residential zoning in huge chunks of any city, our city in particular, spoils what neighborhoods used to be like. And I don't, I don't, here i am i'm gonna sound like the cranky old guy but i used to be able to walk down the street to the grocery store and you know if my mom needed milk i could go buy milk now somebody's got to get in the car so like a corner market yeah exactly so i'm looking at our r3.5 and this is live work dwellings are a conditional use in r3.5 and would something like a bodega type market or like the Oregon City Market that's down off of Main Street now. Would something like that be a live work dwelling?

Ms. Kelly, would you like to come on up? No. That's okay.

Thank you for being honest.

Could you please come up?

Ms. Hart. Because I guess what I'm getting at is...

I don't think a retail would be live work. I think you're thinking of an attorney's office.

Where they have a...

Otherwise you're into mixed use kind of.

I think that's normally what we do think about. I guess my concern is... Not a store. To your point, I think we'd all agree that the vast majority of this ought to be our 3.5 for housing. But would it make sense to have...

you know a complete you know walkable neighborhood by having a small part of it i don't want to close the door tonight on that no we're not saying that we do have the high street market which is unless it has a different name now i could i think they changed the name but i call i've always called it the high street market it's down at high and um it's it's walkable i see a lot of the neighbors walking down there you know grabbing a

I apologize for putting you on the spot. You're perfectly fine. I'm not going to be able to give you a 100% definitive answer right now as I'm trying to search through the code and answer at the same time. But generally speaking, the residential zone allows for offices, home occupation, secondary type uses that are minimal to no actual, like customer inputs as part of it. So to the city manager's point, it would be more of a, somebody is operating their home office and doing remote work as part of that, as part of a live work office. So it's the opportunity to provide a commercial enterprise and business enterprise in a low impact area. I think the other point that I would consider as part of this, the property has lots of different constraints that we had talked about previously with the landslide buffer. The geohazard buffer as well as lots of different utility easements and stuff that needs to get figured out. So perhaps a conversation with a real estate agent to identify once we know what the scope of size of the property is that that's going to actually be able to be developed. and how it might be able to be worked would then help to dictate whether or not it does get limited to residential or has the opportunity to consider what would have to be a mixed use zone here.

Thank you. All right. Do we have a motion to approve amendment number one for personal services?

So moved.

Second. Moved and seconded. Yeah.

Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Adam Morrow.

Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye.

And Mayor Denise McGriff. Aye. Motion passes.

So before we go on, Jacob, can we bring the map up again, please? So I think part of the request, we have the two parking lots. And then we have the Cameron building, the office and the yard with the commission like us to do take no action, start no actions, no land use actions or one parking lots or both the parking lots and leave the, the bluff side, the east side of the street with no movement or

Well, I'm going to jump in. I think further discussions can be had since she's going to the McLaughlin Neighborhood Association meeting on July the 8th. And that question could be asked. I don't want to slow up the process. at least getting things.

I don't think it's appropriate to ask a neighbor to say, I mean, it's a commission decision on what you'd like to do with the property. I don't feel comfortable sending a staff member in there.

Okay, then I take that back. I would like to know what they think about it.

Okay, that wasn't the intent of the meeting.

Not having her do it. I'm sorry? I said, I didn't mean to have her do it. I'm just saying I would like input from, since I obviously live there and I have been involved in this conversation since Public Works decided to do the expansion. I mean, there's a long history of that particular site and that property. And I think it would behoove us to get some input from the folks that are in that neighborhood. If it comes back favorable, I think then that's great. I don't want to create a big fight. I would like to know what they think. Informally, formally, whatever it is, the process.

I guess I need some direction. Are we doing a public engagement process to decide what to do with these properties?

No, I don't think we need to do that.

I mean, you want input from the neighborhood association, but we don't have anything to propose to them. I guess I'd like, this seems like a commission discussion to come up with some idea of what they'd like to see that then we ask the community. I don't know what we would be proposing to them.

In answer to your question, the two parking lots are going to be easier and could be developed faster. So I would be in favor of moving forward with those at R3.5 as soon as possible. Except, and I don't have the answer to this, is would this property be more desirable, more valuable to a developer if they could get ahold of the chunks on both sides of the road? Or would we be better off financially to hold off to answer a couple of the questions that Commissioner Mauro brought up before we move ahead piecemeal? And I don't know the answer to that. That'd be my concern.

Yeah, I'm not opposed to hearing more from the neighborhood association. Again, recognizing something that the mayor brings up, which is that everyone has a right to be a part of the conversation, but it doesn't mean you necessarily get a veto over that. You don't get your way. Exactly. So I'm not opposed at all to getting the neighborhood association involved in that. Again, with the caveat that, you know, this is... that we are only looking at a very small slice of our residents when we do look to our neighborhood associations, which isn't to say that those voices are to be discounted, but it's something to keep in mind.

Any thoughts, Rocky? My thoughts are they can speak to us at a public meeting when we have these conversations. Scott?

I see the merit and the intent in both. Regardless of how I proceed, I think it would be, given the thoughts that were brought up tonight, I would like the opportunity for us to just sit down and have more of a discussion on ultimately what we want to rezone these as. And I do have that same question that you just brought up about, is this going to be more attractive with all four versus the two? So I think whatever we do, we need to... make sure it's done intentionally. And given that there's some additional thoughts to what to do with these properties, I'd like the opportunity for us to sit down and talk about it at a future meeting.

I don't wanna bifurcate the process. I know what we have to go through to do a plan amendment and a zone change, and I don't wanna do that piecemeal. If we're gonna do it, let's do it all at once so that if we have other properties that we're thinking about throwing into the mix, we do one notice, we do the whole thing, that way it's cleaner and we're not doing this now and this, because it's double the amount of work in my opinion. I wouldn't wanna be processing that. I don't think, well, a few weeks ago we were, okay, we're moving forward with this. This is where we're going. I don't have any problem with having having additional discussions about what the rezoning might be. So let's just do that at this point in time, have one more session on talking about that, and then see if we can move this forward. I think one of our goals is to get this back on the tax rolls, get it to be a productive part of the neighborhood, re-knit the neighborhood back together again, because this has been kind of out there. I know that a couple of property owners that have vacant lots nearby we're not going to build. They matter of fact, one of them went all the way through historic review, got approval and then decided to pull it because there was indecision about what was going to happen to the left side property. And I understand their concern. You know, I said, that's just, you know, the way it rolls, I apologize, but you know, things have changed a little bit. So I think you have some direction that we want to have further conversation about it.

I guess, I mean, do you want us to reach out to, I just, I, My gut is that this is not a prime commercial location with all the limitations there. I would agree.

We did speak with one realtor that has assisted us in the past, and his recommendation for highest value was to leave it industrial as its current use, and we shared with him that that was not the... preference of the neighborhood in the past and the effort to, as Kelly mentioned, all the encumbrances and the easements. So it is a big effort and to get all four parcels ready at the same time I don't have an exact, but it's six months to a year to clean those up. We have to move utilities. We have to vacate easements. On the bluff side? Yes. We have to move PGE poles or leave an easement through the middle of the property, which really leaves it not, you're not going to get a row of kind of like a townhouse or some other kind of a structure because you've got all these easements bifurcating the property. So I think that what we'd be looking for is if the goal is to get some of it back on the tax rolls, the two parking lots could happen quickly.

That's what you talked about, Mike, from a few months back that moved that forward and finished dealing with all the encumbrances on the bluff side. Because again, and I'm going to not speak for you, Commissioner Smith, but one of the goals that we talked about was making whatever we had there compatible because we have a charter park, we have Water Board Park, and we want that to come into its own, and I think leaving it industrial is not going to help facilitate that. So I don't think any of us really want it to stay in an industrial use at this particular time, and I don't think that really benefits the city.

And I don't think that is kind of where we were heading. The realtor just was kind of acknowledging that with all the encumbrances, easements, and the geologic hazard overlay, and the landslide overlays, it leaves a very small sliver of developable land. By the time we demo the structures and mitigate the contamination, There's very little building footprint, even on that larger bluff side.

Yes, I think you mentioned that before, and I think John Lewis also mentioned that to us as well.

Isn't the rezoning a separate process than figuring out all the easements and encumbrances and whatnot? We would rezone all four tax lots, R3.5. And we can start that process. And then we've got to figure out how to deal with the bluff side of the street.

And they're kind of multiple processes all kind of running. It's just, you know, getting kind of one going in this idea of do we do it in one or two packages of a rezone? It's... it's application fees, it's pre-application meetings, it's neighborhood meetings, the traffic impact letter, am I scoping that for two separate applications versus one application where I'm doing all four properties?

So. I'd be in favor of going ahead with all four at once.

I mean, I don't think that the easements and encumbrances are going to stop the rezoning part. Right, that's what I'm in favor of. And if we get it rezoned. We could be already talking to somebody about taking a look at the two parking lot side, and who's to say that it might not be the same developer, maybe it's two different developers. It doesn't all have to look the same. I mean, the neighborhood doesn't all look the same. So I don't have any problem about us looking at a development potential in two phases. Because again, the parking lots are really the easy side. Like you said, we do that one environmental assessment that's phase two on the UST that was there. I think we're gonna be, we could move that forward much easier than we can the other side. As you said, it's gonna take more time. I think I always anticipated that we were looking at a two to three year horizon.

Yeah, especially if we're moving forward with full demo of the sites. Yeah, and we haven't decided that yet, so.

First of all, I'm sorry for throwing a wrench into this, but I would have been upset with myself if I hadn't brought up at least the potential. And that's exactly it, the potential. Recognizing that maybe there's no developer who will want to do something there, and that's fine with me too. I won't be upset if it's just a bunch of housing. I think that's still going to get at a community need. But I just think that with the unique opportunity we have here right in the middle of a residential area, why not take some extra time to maybe be creative about it?

And I'm just smiling because I don't think that is the middle. The middle is it's closer to where the city hall is. That's more of the middle. The 7th Street bubble, that's the middle of the neighborhood.

okay this is kind of at the i didn't say neighborhood i said residential area yeah okay well it's at the end of that residential kind of the end as you go up the bluff and then you get and especially given that point the fact that there are other mixed uses right there so this wouldn't be the first in that in that well the garage is a non-conforming use I'm not talking about the garage tenants. Which one are you talking about? I'm talking about the Highland Steelhouse. I'm talking about the museum that's just there and the event center. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, those are properly zoned. Right, and we have the power to dictate what the zoning is, which is why I brought it up.

Yeah, that's okay. We're all good. I know it is, yeah. We're all good. So is that clear as mud?

Yeah. So we'll hold off on doing anything with land use. We'll put it on for a work session and the commission can talk about the four pieces. Is that what I'm hearing?

Two and two.

Two and two.

What was that stuff on the bluff side that's parcels and we got non... left side parcels so that's only that's i mean i think of them as they're together but there's i think the intent is to discuss all four all four and we're not going to take any action land use wise okay thank you so much thank you kelly appreciate it thank you dana sorry folks in the back 40 there so come on up um closer so we're getting to item c approve um review and approve of city-sponsored public event grants. One would be for the Three Rivers Artist Guild Festival of the Arts, and the other would be for Porch Fest. That's cool. So Three Rivers, you can come on up. I don't know if they'll have any questions, but you'll be teed up. Thank you, Ann.

Well, good evening, Mayor, and good evening, Commissioners. I'm Anne Griffin, Economic Development Coordinator for the city. In May, you approved two city-sponsored public events for this summer, and we have two additional events that we'd like you to consider for the city-sponsored public event grant. We have two community representatives here, and I'm just going to introduce them and allow them to talk about the events that they are representing. To my immediate right is Max White, who works as a volunteer for Oregon City Porch Fest, and then we're also joined by Kristen Nazeri, who works for the Three Rivers Artist Guild. Max, why don't you

Hello, commissioners and mayor. Like Anne said, my name is Max and I'm an Oregon City resident and a homeowner as well. And it looks like they got pulled up. Great. Yeah, so I'm here to... Is this a new logo? We're playing with logos. Okay, cool.

Mine is fantastic.

That's a great one. You like this, okay. I love it. We're making notes. Okay, so yeah, Oregon City Porch Fest, this is our fourth year this year. Each year's been steadily progressing, which has been wonderful. So if you don't know what Porch Fest is, it's a free music festival that's centered around the main stage at Pioneer Center, and participants perform on porches all over Oregon City, lawns, driveways, parking lots, and nearby homes and businesses. It's community-led, it's a grassroots event, it's organized by our volunteers and neighbors, it brings neighbors and tourists all together in our neighborhood here. It's designed to be free for attendees, making live performances accessible to everyone in the community. An event for all ages, promoting a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. Let's see if I can read some of this here. Yes, we have talent from all different kinds. We have performing arts, we have music of all different types, tracks local performers from around the metro area to the state. We have performing artists that have unique opportunity to share the talent with local community and visitors to Oregon City. We're building connections, tourists connected with businesses and landmarks encouraging the return visits. Community members connect with each other and the resources in their neighborhood. We highlight public space, so we do it all over throughout Oregon City, the top of the elevator. We have some historic places that have joined up that will put some performers as well. And performing artists who have limited opportunities to perform elsewhere are welcomed all over Oregon City. This year we have so far, which is the highest so far, 115 bands that have signed up. We have just over 88 porches and still getting inquiries as of today. Some economic benefits, it supports local businesses through increased foot traffic. Tourists are returning to the area and the businesses they discovered during the event. It enriches local art scene and provides diverse entertainment. and fosters a sense of pride and shared experience among the residents. Welcomes visitors to the Oregon's hometown. It is sustainable fun. Our environmentally friendly event relies on walking, biking, and existing spaces. So lots of people with their wagons and cruising around the McLaughlin area, which is wonderful to see. This year we are going to incorporate downtown a bit too. We could use a little love. This is a pie chart here of some stats we've been collecting. So a large percentage of Oregon City residents, obviously, but we're gathering more people from Portland and Clackamas County in general and out of state is present now too. Some of the marketing plan that we have. We've been on some morning shows recently. My partner, Mandy, was on a, oh gosh, what was the name of it? Thank you, thank you. Public radio, KABU, Shady Pines Radio, Willamette Week, and Portland Mercury. Social media is getting over 10,000 views each week, so that's increasing drastically. And then we have weekly interviews, major TV, radio, print, news outlets, and throughout the Portland Metro. We have lots of mailers that we do. We had lots of banners. We had a... We shared a... Oh, the postcards as well as the large sign that was on the street there. Billboard, thank you. And posters that we have throughout the community, Oregon City, West Lincoln, B Gladstone area. And here's some of our partners. Like I said, we progressed each year. This year we have Freem that's joined, Bob's Red Mill is joined as a sponsor. Subaru's coming back. And so each year is gathering more and more momentum. So it's been a great success for the community.

Do the commissioners have any questions for Porch Fest?

I don't have a question, but I wanted to continue to compliment Porch Fest on the neighborhood notification. I thought that was really good so that people were aware that their neighbor or maybe an adjacent neighbor block away might be having an event. We don't know what everybody's doing with their personal lifestyle. And I know in our particular area, we got a bunch of new babies. So I'm sure that they will be appreciative of knowing when things are happening. So thank you for continuing to do that. It's been really helpful and it's a great public relations tool as well. So you talked about incorporating some of downtown.

It wouldn't be during the day, but probably after. We end at 7, 8, and then after we're going to encourage bands to be downtown, some of the businesses to support downtown and promote it, as well as we're part of First City Celebration, and we try and help put bands down and businesses down there too.

I know that I wish that I could remember Mayor Beatty from Milwaukee. I mean, which is kind of what we've patterned ours off of. I don't know. I'm trying to remember when she told me theirs is. But they're having theirs. I think they've had it for much longer than we have. But it's a great idea that is just kind of, like you say, homegrown. And they're not taking any offense or saying, oh, it's ours, because they think it's great that we're doing it as well.

They were kind enough to have us, the first year we did it, they gave us their spreadsheets and budgets and stuff, so it was really helpful. They have it over several weeks, whereas we are keeping ours pretty potent, and we also have a main stage, which I love it because it gives an opportunity for all the community to gather, and it's been a pretty successful thing, in my opinion. Awesome. Well, keep up the good work.

Any other questions?

Anyone want to hear the other presentations? Or should we just have a motion on this one?

We can.

I'll make a motion to approve the $12,000 request for Porch Fest 2026.

Second. Second. Commissioner Rocky Smith. Aye. Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Adam Marl. Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye. And Mayor Denise McGriff. Aye. Motion passes.

All right, and now for the creme de la creme event. How many years have we been doing this? 10th? Wow, okay, yes. I knew it was 9 or 10. So Anne will give the intro.

So if you haven't marked your calendar yet for the weekend of August 7th through August 9th, Porchfest is the 7th and the 8th at Friday and Saturday, and the Festival of the Arts is the 8th and the 9th. So Kristen Nazari is here from Three Rivers Arts Guild.

Hi, thanks for having me. I am sorry, I'm not as formally prepared as Max.

Anyway, get that a little closer to you so you can move the mic. You don't have to move.

The mic can move to you. Thank you. Yeah, sorry, I'm not as prepared as Max in all that. But I am a member of TREG. Name and city of residence. My name is Kristen, and I live in Oregon City in the McLaughlin neighborhood as well. I've been a member of TREG for several years now. My first year with the festival I was assisting and then last year I ran it and this year I'm running it as well as a small group of volunteers. I'm also an Arts Commission member and so trying to get the Arts Commission involved in some sort of participation as well. So yes, we are the Saturday and Sunday at the end of the Oregon Trail. We, last year, I gathered we didn't have much data prior and I like data so I tried to get as much as I could this past year so after the main parking lot entrance we had a count of a little over 2,500 on a little hand counter but know that the rest of the park right is wide open to people just walking in so at least three other entrances that we don't have a count of. last year the high temp on day one was 89 degrees and the second day was 101 degrees we had twice as many people the first day as the second day so my hope is that we will have comfortable weather both days this year um we have 61 artists last year 61 artists again this year kind of running out of space trying to reconfigure but i think that's kind of our top number We are going to bring back the silent auction this year, which we didn't have last year, but lots of people requested it. So that'll be in the main lawn. I reconfigured it. So we are using more of the space of the park than we had previously. So it opens up a big area. I'm hoping to draw kids out from under the covered area where Soul Flags will have children's activities. I'm making hula hoops and then I bought cornhole for them to play with. Plus the silent auction will be there. Plus the main stage music will be facing that main lawn as well. Out of the artists that participated last year, I got surveys back from 29, so about 50%, which is pretty average for surveys. 100% said yes, the event met their expectations and that they would encourage other artists to participate. I ALSO ASKED THEM FOR THEIR AVERAGE SALES THAT THEY GOT OVER THE WEEKEND. SO IT AVERAGED ABOUT $1800 PER ARTIST. SO IF YOU MULTIPLY THAT OUT BY THE 61 ARTISTS, THAT'S AN INCOME OF ABOUT $111,000 INTO THE COMMUNITY. MOST OF THE ARTISTS ARE LOCAL BETWEEN VANCOUVER AND And in Corvallis, so mainly in the Valley, we had a couple from out of state who are not participating this year. They were not going to travel. It is a juried entry. What else? I think we have a lot more exposure this year than we had before. I was looking at our Facebook event from last year. We had about 3,000 interested people last year and already this year we had 5,000. So we're just getting out somehow, which is great. I think we started a little bit earlier. We also have Salisha Johnson with Travel Oregon City helping us out with some marketing. Ray Garden is gonna be the one to help us with the silent auction. So I'm hoping with her popularity, she will help us out as well. The end of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center is also going to host some of our artists inside that can't be out in the heat. So that's a nice option for some artists as well. I think that's all I have.

Unless you have questions.

Any questions, gentlemen? I know I left some money on several of the booths last year because I found a bunch of great Christmas gifts. That's what I'm going to be doing. But no, I thought it was, I went on the second day. I didn't think it was exceptionally, I mean, it was warm, but it didn't stop people from coming. I mean, there were some people that came on Saturday, which is to be expected, but there were quite a few people there. And I thought it was a great event. It'd be really nice. Linda Orson, if you're listening anywhere in Radioland, come back to us. Come visit, come to the event. Rocky, any comments? No. Gentlemen, what's your pleasure? Any other comments?

We have a motion. I move to approve the city-sponsored public event grant application for the Festival of the Arts. Second. It has been moved and seconded.

Commissioner Rocky-Smith. Aye. Commissioner Scott Wilson. Aye. Commissioner Adam Marl. Aye. Commissioner Mike Mitchell. Aye. And Mayor Denise McGriff. Aye. Motion passes. Anyway, thank you.

Thank you so much. We'll look forward to seeing you that weekend, which everything is happening that weekend. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ann. Communications.

The only update that I have, I will be at the OCS Oregon City County Managers Association meeting in Ashland next week. But I'll plan on zooming in for Tuesday's work session. But Alex and Carrie will be here to help in person with that work session. That's all I have.

We must have got some deal because everything's in Ashland this year. It's part of the rotation. Exactly. OMA is there. City managers are there. Something else is happening this weekend coming up after the 4th. There's another professional organizations meeting there. I said, okay. And the festival is going on, of course, as well. So it's going to be busy down there.

um gentlemen anything i saw that c4 got cancelled um because it's the holiday weekend so that makes sense i do have please go right yeah somewhat related to c4 because it's something that i keep bringing up at c4 which is um the clackamas county transportation system plan update and i know that this is something that the mayor and myself have a lot and i think we all have a lot of strong opinions about lobbies yeah just The situation we're in where this TSP update only contemplates improvements to county transportation facilities that are in unincorporated areas. And so I went to one of their open houses. They had an open house in Oregon City at their transportation facility. And I thought that it was an interesting exercise, but I brought up the point of the equity over the fact that We know that the transportation dollars come from the gas tax and it isn't just the unincorporated residents who are paying these gas taxes. All of us who are drivers pay these gas taxes and why shouldn't at least a portion of those dollars go back into the communities that are paying those taxes, especially when the county has plenty of transportation facilities that are their jurisdiction, even though they're within the city limits. And so I brought that up to one of the staff members and they were like, I never thought of it that way. And I was like, well, maybe you could start. We would really appreciate that. And I brought up the example of Redwood Road and 213, recognizing that 213 being a state facility adds some complexity, but just with the moving of the courthouse and that now being a failing intersection, it would be really nice to get some help from the county, from their TSP, with for a facility that does belong to them and that also contributes to the livability here in our community especially because a lot of those trips are from people who are unincorporated residents so it's just a frustrating saga and i'm going to continue to bring it up at c4 but it was a good opportunity to be in a more informal setting up that open house and hopefully people will continue to be engaged because there is an online I don't know if they call it open house or online survey that's still open, I think till the 13th. So I would encourage folks to make their voices heard because we already as city residents subsidize a lot of our services that are provided to unincorporated residents. And I think that we should be taking a stake in these dollars that we are paying.

Well, obviously, you and I have been saying the exact same thing. I've had some informal discussions with at least two commissioners, and I have mentioned this, and it was a revelation. I said, are you aware that the TSP does not include, and it was like I told them, you know, Martians had just landed. Um, so I have brought up as Adam stated several times to staff and the last time I brought it up to one of the transportation staff, they said, well, we have a great deal for you. We'll enter into an MOU and you can take over the roads as is. And I said, you know that that is not going to happen. I said, you will need to improve the road to our standards before we consider taking them over because that is the right thing to do. And they said, well, we offered. I said, well, that was a specious offer, so.

Just so the commission is aware, I've asked my staff to follow this. And actually they've sent me a letter that I'm gonna be signing and we'll send to the county tomorrow, requesting a meeting with the county's TSP project team and decision makers to discuss two issues, planning for county jurisdiction road segments within city limits, in compliance with goal 12, and then also evaluating offsite transportation impacts of County land use decisions. So we are tracking it. We're going to start with requesting the meeting with the TSP team. We may be bringing something to you as a commission asking for approval or having the mayor sign a follow-up depending on how this goes.

Yeah. So the other thing, too, is that having flagged this when I heard they were going to start this, there was a lot of scrambling going on to try to answer my question when I said, why is this not happening? So we have their attention, whether they plan to do anything about it. I think now... We're going to, I think we need to just apply some steady, consistent pressure. And I brought this up to other jurisdictions. Now, Gladstone doesn't have some of the same issues, but they do have a few county roads that are in their jurisdiction. Milwaukee didn't seem to think they had any, but I said, I'm sure you probably do. And, you know, we've got Westland and Lake Oswego. So they're all aware of it. And I said, you need to be looking at the TSP from the county's TSP from the standpoint of how your city fits into that or doesn't. So it's been brought to their attention. But yes, thank you for pursuing this because the way it's going is not... they're just not looking at the big picture. And thank you again for that comment, because that's exactly what I said to the staff. I said, well, you know, 90% of the roads in Oregon City are being used by your residents, not people coming from Oregon City and going out to your roads. It's the opposite direction. I said, you could just stand out on any of the roads and see that. So, Michael, anything you'd like to add?

I just have a quick question. If we don't have the information right now, that's perfectly fine. I'm just curious what the letters went out to all the properties on the promenade, kind of where we're at, how many are left, how many have complied, who hasn't, and kind of what the status is on that.

Yeah, so we sent out letters based on our last session, and Specifically for parking, what we've done is we've sent out notices notifying everyone that the promenade would be closed or promenade street, I should say, would be closed to vehicles coming this fall. We wanted to give everyone a chance to adjust to the change. So notices went out in writing. And then in addition to that, I've actually spoken to code enforcement. We talked today. about starting to put up signs, just notifying everyone again as a reminder and starting basically an information campaign where we're just going to hand out warnings, no tickets, just telling people. So it's entirely possible that when it comes to parking, that there might still be people out of compliance, but we want to be careful about easing into that a bit before we put up the bollards and start issuing tickets, things like that. There were two properties that, based on an inspection by Parks, looked like they had not complied. So those folks I did send to code enforcement, just for the history of all of the times we attempted to reach out to them and communicated with them. and also all of the meetings that were held so that we can show that this was held in a public forum many, many times. Those properties, gosh, off the top of my head, I want to say it's 406 Promenade and 306 Promenade, but don't quote me on that. I would have to go check. Aside from that, we do have... it does appear that most everybody else has either, either they had complied by the original date or they were requested to comply by, or they did work with code and ultimately did come into compliance. So we are working on the charter, the ordinance to create the charter park and, you know, we'll obviously be including notes on all of the encroachments that were allowed and those that were removed. And then the, the vacation for the Yates property that was recorded, and then the lot line adjustments for the DFW that we're on the process of recording right now.

No, I very much appreciate all the work that you've done on this. I was particularly curious. I haven't gone to check the property and I don't remember the address. It had the grid pavers and trucked in all the gravel.

Yes, 118. So I did have Parks go out and check that particular property. It looked like all of the pavers had come out and they put down sawdust or bark chips. So Parks felt that that was appropriate. So we weren't seeing any cars parking on that or any pavers any longer. And it did appear that they had brought everything back into their property line. So from the maintenance staff, you know, park staff perspective, they said that they felt that that was appropriate and it did appear to be in compliance. So, you know, at this point, there was no further action taken with that particular property.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Just wanted to bring up a couple of things. Commissioner Smith and I attended the Association of Water, AWWA, American Water Works Association Conference, which is why we were both gone. We attended several sessions on fire resiliency. We attended sessions on communications from your water provider to your community and how to get ahead of anything like a disaster. We heard about a big old giant sinkhole in Washington DC that literally it just opened up on a Sunday and impacted a 30 inch water line, which was like yikes and how they handled that through. I attended a session on AI and your water service, which was very interesting. And again, I have to compliment our staff and our city. We are way ahead of the game on any of that stuff. I did find out that AI is a marketing term and the I part is not really valid. It's not intelligent. It only as good as whatever gets inputted into it. So I said, we gotta come up with a different name. Probably something else that was brought to my attention by some citizens, and I'm pretty sure that I know the answer to the question, but you can help us in the future. So a number of the neighborhoods are feeling severely impacted by social service uses that are in spot zones, particularly, I mean, I'll just say the McLaughlin neighborhood is one of them, where they are really impacting the community with too much staff, no parking, activities going on from eight in the morning until nine at night and how that is impacting the adjacent residential properties. And they said, well, can't we do something about zoning? And I said, well, that is a very long topic and something for Another time I said some of the residential, not the office parts, but some of the residential homes are allowed to go into residential neighborhoods because they're considered to be a family. Now, I know that some of the people in the neighborhoods are saying that there's more than five or fewer living in these. There's more than five people living and they've been doing chopping up. And I said, well, that's a code issue. You need to send those complaints and concerns in.

Five's not even, it's way higher than five.

It's higher than five, yeah. But I mean, you got a single family dwelling that's a three bedroom house and they've chopped it up into half a dozen bedrooms, which again, you've got exiting. I mean, there's other issues besides that that are involved. But I said, there are some state exemptions that we have. The other thing that I have tried to bring to the attention of the county chair is that there's this so-called, and I say so-called, Metro SHS, supportive housing, I don't even know what they're called, a committee or whatever it is, but it's pretty much well dominated by Multnomah County. Our representatives are city of Lake Oswego and city of Milwaukee. They have not made any movement because the county, Multnomah County is being what's the word I want to say? They want to keep all the money for themselves. And then you read in the paper today that they're closing what 1200 shelter beds. And it was very interesting that a recent meeting with mayor Wilson and all the other mayors, he mentioned that, uh, there were some facilities adjacent to our County line. And he specifically said, well, when they're open for the day and people are pouring out, they're going to father's heart. Of course, that hit a raw nerve with me. And, uh, I asked him, I said, well, how can you claim that you are solving the homeless problem when you're closing, when the county is closing all these beds and you're just basically moving the deck chairs on the Titanic because they're coming here and we're not in the social service business and neither are many of the other cities in Clackamas County. So that is all I have to report.

So we are adjourned.