City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Good evening. Councillor. I love doing that to you. Welcome to Newburgh City Council meeting. It is July 6th, 2026. I call this meeting to order. Could we have roll call, please?

Certainly. Councillor McBrien?

Here.

Councillor Wheatley? Here. Councilor Yarnell-Halleman? Here. Mayor Ross-Ecker?

Here.

Councilor Tergesen? Here. And Councilor Carman?

Here.

And Councilor Kilburg is presently absent.

Thank you. Would everybody please stand and join in the Pledge of Allegiance? So this brings us to the first item on our agenda, which is the city manager's narrative report. Will, I hear you have something special for us today.

Yes, and of course, I usually like to inform all of our residents and folks at council about all of the amazing things that we do, since we are, of course, the most fiscally efficient city in Oregon, as we all know. However, I've got some bad news to share right at the top of the order, because it's not always all good news. Today a truck by a company who I will not name, until it is all resolved, backed up into our cable which runs out to the wastewater treatment plant. So right now they have ripped out the fiber optic cable that connects the wastewater and water treatment plant back here to the servers and because of that we're having to do emergency staffing tonight to keep the water plant running and to keep the wastewater plant running. The situation is well in hand. Our IT team are on it. They had guys from the contractors out looking at the repair as soon as possible. We have the insurance information of the driver who should have used his mirrors more carefully, and we're working on getting that remediated. And then there's another small piece of bad news. It's not always good news. So unfortunately, we are about to have to move... the mouse again. The mouse, which everyone is so delighted about its location, but the mouse has to be moved again.

Well, why would we be inclined to move the mouse again?

Oh! Well, unfortunately, a very well-meaning local resident, Mr. Soppy, put in a code enforcement complaint, and it was based upon the sight lines of the mouse. And, you know, Mr. Robert Soppy is right. There's no way we can not follow the code properly, so we're going to have to, because of Mr. Soppy, move the mouse. But he's doing the right thing for the community. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And now on with the regular Rest of the City Manager report. Engineering. River Street Ad Hoc Committee Meeting 2 was held June 25th to discuss hybrid design, typical section. This is part of the ongoing update to city design standards to make them easier for people to use. This creates as-builts for how concrete should be poured and how pipe should be laid and we're working on that. The Main Street water line project from the current CIP list is currently out to bid and we are actually trying to get the four-year project finished this biennium because pipe prices are really good right now and we're looking at that. City Hall roof. The staff have been incredibly patient because there's been all kinds of drilling and epoxy smells and all manner of wonderful things as we work on getting the roof upgraded to one that has good R values. That means one that can resist freezes, for example. So we're working on that. At this time, construction is underway and on schedule. Now, something I should mention about the amazing 4th of July event that we recently had. I would like to give a word of thanks to Melissa, standing behind me, who was so pivotal in... Oh! Well, when Melissa comes back in, you will know that it was her that organized the band and the schedule and did a ton of work. And all we blokey men had to do was put in some steaks and put up some caution tape. So that was pretty awesome. So here's to Melissa. Okay. Now, let's do it. Done for the night. Well, she'll see it on the video. Now, as you know, the city continues to focus on doing southern districts for Grind and Inlay and for improving our ADA. The picture on the screen, yes, the font's hard to read, but it's a bit south of here where we're sitting right now. This is the next two sections that are being improved with Grind and Inlay. We've already done all of the ADA ramps. We've already fixed missing sidewalk sections. And these sections are going to be repaired this week. And we expect that to be finished by Friday. Now, we've left a little bit of wiggle room in case the contractor's a day one way or the other, but it should be done by Friday. And that's just the next part of our ongoing focus on southern districts. Wood, for the month of June, finance did the following things. Auditors for interim field work for testing and assisted with the HR manager interviews, other interviews for the court clerk, finalizing a new purchase card policy to take account of some technical changes, and beginning the work on the next capital improvement list. And I can promise you that the items on that list will get done on time and equal or below budget, just like the last five capital projects did.

We will keep the ball rolling.

Library events, the first week of summer reading was busier than last year by 250 people with a whopping 2,659 people visiting the library that week. The first week of summer reading circulation, we made 80 new library cards, many for new residents. And for the second year in a row, over 30 teen volunteers worked in shifts to help the library staff keep the ball rolling for summer reading sign-ups. Good for the kids, good for the staff. More library events. Teens helped to allow library staff to continue reference questions, book recommendations and other things during the sign-ups. The mascot has been making its way around downtown Newburgh as usual. And the cultural centre staff came up with an amazing hiding place for the mascot. If only we had hidden the mouse so well. The outside library windowsills were repaired, the crumbling cells have been fixed, and thanks to Fatin and Danette for their work overseeing fixing those windowsills. And here is a cunningly. You see, they hid it in the form of a picture frame. Now, who would think that that was an Idaho potato? City recorder. Both the city recorder and deputy recorder attended the Clerks Institute, making progress towards further certifications, base level planning to bring our emergency management to the next level, explored new options for records management platforms, more to come on that this evening, and created and launched ethics training for all the staff as we do periodically. And yes, we have heard the public loud and clear, as we always do. And we're looking at a different platform for putting our records management into, rather than using ORMS. And we're going to have one that has a more effective web drawer, and you're going to hear more about that soon. IT events, as well as trying to fix the ripped out fiber, and thank you, Dave, for that, new system admin, Devin, started June 29th, bringing us back to full staff. Devin is a resident and has worked as a system administrator for Providence. Hubbard PD went live with dispatch, IT supporting dispatch through the process. IT began cleaning up the server room. As you know, by going to cloud-hosted systems, we have less and less on-premises servers. And so now we're able to start getting rid of some of the hardware. So let's have a look at that. And there is the before and after on the racks. And you can see the number of blades, if that's the right word. Is that the right word? Okay, Dave says it's the right word. The number of server blades that have been removed because we have less need for physical servers on site, less power usage, less heat buildup in the room. And... If you look at the back of the gubbins, and gubbins is a British word which means a big mess, you'll see that the picture on the left shows a whole bunch of spaghetti for cabling, and on the right, it's a lot tidier now, and there's even more to do. NDPD during the week of May 25th through June 6th, the center was receiving ghost 911 calls as a local phone carrier was trying to fix a 911 outage caused by faulty equipment. Despite these being incorrect calls, they still had to be answered, not knowing if it was testing or an actual call. This was extremely challenging for our staff and they had to battle through it. Two newest reserve officers, Jordan and Daniel, graduated from the MVRT Academy. It was a great ceremony, well attended by family and friends, and Jordan earned the award for top academic performance. And you may have seen some of these new blokes at the 4th of July fireworks. Wood. Corporal Link with new reserve officers, Chapin, Rivas and Sergeant Eubanks on the end. And there is Sergeant Hagen boldly on bike patrol downtown. And look at his haircut. That is a stylish hairdo. Here we go. Community development. Pre-application meetings were held for the following projects. Steve's auto site remodel, manufacturing potential apartment and other middle housing on the old DCI site at 350 North Springbrook. Updated turf grass at Springbrook Meadow Park. Minthorn Hall relocation. Yes, George Fox is moving another building. It's happening June 24th. That should have happened already. And I believe they were just turning it around. Is that right, Rachel? Do you know the scoop?

The pre-application meeting happened on June 24th. They still have to go through Historic Preservation Commission.

Okay. So it's not done yet, but they're moving another building to create a better configuration. Moving buildings. My goodness. Community development. Notice requirements for residential projects will be changing July 1st to meet the less democratic regulations forced upon us by our state. This means less notice for residential projects and appeals, generally limited to only 100 feet, and only applicants can appeal in most cases. Not really a good bit of legislation, but we're going to follow it. New ADEC parking lot submitted for a new design review, waiting on an IGA approval from the state for housing capacity analysis work. And as you know, the UGB 1537 solicitation, that one involving possible land swaps and stuff, that went out. And a report from HR. Our excellent new HR manager, Jenna Gray, started officially on June the 24th. Alison is over the moon and is now retired from that role. HR collaborated with Alan McKeel to put on our third Lunch and Learn of the year. Photos on the next slide. And HR attended the annual CIS Employer Benefit Renewal and Benefits Advisory Committee meetings, and our new HR manager was there meeting all the right people in CIS to represent the city. And here is the Lunch and Learn presented by rockstar mapping expert Alan McKeel, who said, you are here and so is the data. Community engagement happenings, drafted press releases and multi-platform content for the Water Quality Report, which went out, produced resident communications around summer paving, preservation work done by Eagle Elsner and Doolittle, collaborated with Community Development on a multi-format communication for Oregon HB 4037. that land use notification change. Yes, we're making sure our residents understand the things that we are not able to do anymore. More Engagement drafted a press release announcing our new HR manager, press releases around Public Works Day, which was smashing, continued promoting America 254th of July celebration ahead of the event, and finalized and publicized the amazing new budget explainer video. And if you haven't seen the new budget explainer video, you are missing out on something that is literally a good laugh to watch and explains how the biennium budget works. in a figure of eight pattern. It's spectacular. And it was done with no consultant money. It was used whatsoever by people in-house. Wow. I know I'm kind of on a roll tonight, aren't I? And public works treatment plan happenings. Repairs were completed to hypochlorate dosing system leak. flushing and leak repair on the water treatment plant dosing line, clarifier inspections, annual greasing for the composter components, and flow meter certification and crane inspection. Here are some of the many monthly water activities that we have been doing in June. And June is a good time of year for doing those things. Kashunk. And monthly streets activities for June. Phase 2 of crack sealing. Hillsdale Drive, Ivy Drive, Oak Knoll on track to be finished on time. Rehabilitation and grading. Medici Bells Road driveway as well as access road to the city shed. All being graded. There are some of the amazing sewer and stormwater activities which we have done. Cushunk. Monthly fleet management activities, fixing taillights, repairing police vehicles with preventive maintenance, school district van work, public works maintenance, vehicles, preventative maintenance of all sorts. and a whole, whole bunch of street sweeping and picking up debris from a few unfortunate wrecks that we've had recently. Plus, a truck going through downtown successfully dumped its entire 10-yard load of mud all over the street and made a big, disgusting mess. And then, of course, we had to clean it up. And the boys got it done, and it was cleaned up within 24 hours. Oh, you know, I'm almost exhausted from going through all of those things. But that's the end of the report for a smashing June. As usual, taxpayers' dollars very hard at work. Any questions, folks?

Thank you, Will. So next is public comments. We have four today. Three of you are on the subject of the Illinois streets. We're going to put those off until that presentation. So right now we have Jim Talt. Welcome, Jim. Good to see you.

Here they are.

Okay, how's that? Sorry. Sorry about that. Thanks for having me. Jim tall speaking. I only do a dump run every couple of years. So the long queue times you talked about during a recent council meeting was news to me. Two weeks ago, I experienced it firsthand. I showed up on a Tuesday at 1030 in the morning and I waited two and a half hours to get through the gate. Fortunately, I had been forewarned, so I went fully dehydrated. I'm here tonight with a suggestion. Maybe it's already happening and I don't know it, or maybe there's some reason why it's not practical, but I suggest you consider asking Waste Management to return in August with a corrective action plan to address the customer service issues mentioned by Councillor Holloman and the very long wait times mentioned by Councillor Wheatley and the Mayor and others. During my visit, waste management was emitting about one vehicle every seven minutes. They only had two fully operational bays because the other three were jammed to the rafters with garbage. If those bays were available for dumping, the queue time would be significantly reduced. The trash compactor they mentioned in the council meeting would help. However, that's a big capital expense that will need to be approved all the way up the management chain, and the management chain ends in Texas. And that is not likely to happen anytime soon unless you, shall we say, motivate them? A quicker fix would be for waste management to speed up hauling trash offsite to free up bays. That would increase their operating costs, but remember what they said in the meeting. I think I heard the manager say that gate receipts are up 1,000 yards per month. That's $40,000 per month on top of the $15,000 per month rate increases. they can afford to increase the offsite transport. Waste management should also look at the process flow and consider some changes. One thing I would do, I would direct customers to drop their garbage and then move out of the way to a nearby area reserved just for sweeping and cleaning. That would increase throughput speed by reducing vehicle time in a bay. Not everyone would correctly follow that process, but I think enough would get it and would do it that it could help. You gave waste management a nice rate increase, and all they gave you in return was some big hand-waving discussion. Waste management should give you a corrective action plan that tells you what they're going to do to fix the service and queue problems and when they'll get it done. Thanks.

All right. Thank you, Jim. Today we have something that I don't do a great deal of. Are the ladies here?

I was just looking. I don't see them.

Okay. We'll do it anyway. This is a proclamation declaring July 23rd through July 26th, 2026, as Newburgh Old Fashioned Festival Week in the city of Newburgh. Whereas the City of Newburgh is a family-friendly community that hosts many gatherings, museums, celebrations, and a variety of entertainment venues where the old friends and new ones can get together. And whereas each year, the City of Newburgh and many members of the community participate by celebrating community spirit during the last full weekend in July. And whereas the City of Newburgh welcomes the community and visitors each year to join them in the Newburgh Old Fashioned Festival activities and enjoy the camaraderie and sense of community built by the festival of this extent. And whereas the many Newburgh Old Fashioned Festival events that take place during the week bring the community together for fun and entertainment, the theme for this year is Then and Now. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the mayor and the city council of Newburgh, Oregon, do hereby proclaim July 23rd through 26th, 2026. Now, therefore, I bill as the Newburgh Old Fashioned Festival Week. Now, therefore, I, Bill Rossacker, mayor, and the city of Newburgh, Oregon... In witness hereof, I have hereto sent my hand and cause the seal in the city of Newberg to be affixed on this sixth day of July, 2026. Thank you. This year is going to be the final year of the fireworks at the Newburgh Old Fashioned Festival, unless they find another place to have them. So please enjoy that at the end of the month. We're also, something that we used to do when I was a kid, it was called the Berrien Festival, we had pie eating contests. So I volunteered to organize a pie eating contest this year. So something like 140 kids are going to be able to stick their face in a plate of pie and see who can do it the fastest.

That's amazing.

So it should be a fun time all around. I don't know why the Princess and Queen are not here. I saw them just Saturday at the St. Paul Rodeo, and I know they were planning on being here, so I don't know what happened. But anyway, they're lovely young ladies. Look forward to meeting them at the festival, and they're just a delight to be around. So I'm sorry that they're not here for you to meet them at this meeting. So this brings us to new business. And, well, the first item on the agenda is a Microsoft licensing renewal. It's a good thing we're all sitting down.

Hello, I'm Dave Brooks, interim IT manager and also a police officer, as you can see. The purpose of this is to get council approval for our ongoing Microsoft renewal. In a nutshell, what happened is we were just below $100,000 every year, and now we're just barely above $100,000, which exceeded the city manager's purchase authority. So now I need council authority to continue this. And this is all of our Microsoft licenses from servers to desktops to Microsoft Office, stuff like that. I'd be happy to entertain any questions.

So I'm I'm assuming you.

You've looked into this, but I was just amazed at how much this cost. Is there no other options that we can do to save or can we put it out to bid to somebody else? Are we on? Under a contract, does it come up for renewal soon? What can we do?

Yes, we're in the middle of a three-year contract. This is the state-approved contract. There's only one vendor that Microsoft allows us to get government pricing through, and that's through a cooperative purchasing contract. as far as alternatives, I mean, you would be looking at like not using Microsoft office, not using exchange email, things like that. I don't, I don't know what the alternatives would be. But we also have to pass audits. So we are on like a government tier of Microsoft. That's very specific to both our insurance coverage and our criminal justice coverage. So going to an alternative platform would trigger a lot of challenges there.

Mike, you're asking exactly the questions I'm sure we're all wondering, but go ahead.

I have just one more follow-up. I'm not into computers. I mean, I hate them, but anyway... If this is in the cloud, what safeguards do we have that will keep whatever's in the cloud from crashing or whatever? Do we have backups here in our buildings? that can help us in that or how does that work?

There's on-premise backups and there's also cloud-based backups. And so the reality of it is cloud is where everybody in the market is going and that's where the reliability is. So I'll use like Netflix as an example. Who in this room recalls last time Netflix went down or had an outage? You probably don't recall that. That's because they have a level of redundancy that I can't match. And so, for example, our dispatch software is cloud-hosted. I have an on-prem copy of it, but there's also a copy on the West Coast that is our primary copy, and there's like a 30-second old copy on the East Coast. So if a major data center goes down on the West Coast, we still have access to that. And so just the likelihood of something like that happening is – the number of guarantees is way higher than what I could provide myself.

So we are looking for a motion here. Mr. Mayor?

I move that we approve resolution 2026-4038 for the renewal of Microsoft licensing.

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second to approve resolution number 2026-4038. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. So our next presentation today is going to be on the ADA accommodation request policy. And I'm sure Rachel is the instigator.

I'm the instigator, so make me sound like a troublemaker. I guess that might be accurate. So this policy is coming for you tonight. I was asked earlier if this was because of a problem. It is not. We were looking at ADA accommodations, and this is not for employees. This is for members of the public attending city events or using city processes. And we realized that the only instructions we gave were to contact me if someone needed an accommodation, which is really not very clear, and we wanted to make sure it was clearer. Now, state law will still require us to put on the bottom of all of our agendas that they should contact me for accommodations, and we will continue to do that. But we'd like to put in this accommodation request policy so that members of the public who are trying to access city services across the board, library, coming to city council meetings and need any sort of accommodation for a disability to be able to participate fully in those things have a clear process for going through that and that there's an appeal process as well because we want to make it more straightforward for folks. So that's what this policy is tonight. What you see is kind of the guidelines that will follow the appeals process, which means that it comes to me. I make a decision. If people don't like that decision, they can bring it to city council and then you all make a decision. So it goes through that policy. And then we give you an example of what the form is going to look like. This form will be embedded on our website. So it will be fully ADA compliant on the website. And if someone is unable to fill it out on the website, any staff member can assist them in filling it out. So the idea is that we give lots of options. So anyone who needs an accommodation can request it clearly and know exactly how to do so. So that is what this is for you tonight. It was worked on with our legal counsel. So they went through it and helped to develop the whole program. That's what I have for you tonight.

Other questions for Rachel? I do have one. I noticed in the, you talk about an interpreter, both for, and also somebody who does sign language. I have a friend who is deaf, and just a week ago or so, he was telling me how much his life has been improved because of AI, because of his phone. Would it not be reasonable to, instead of hiring an interpreter to come in, to make those sorts of things available and should

Yeah, we do make those things available. We do have closed captioning. We can do transcription for a lot of our meetings. In fact, some of the technology in this room would allow me, if we wanted to, to throw closed captioning live up on the screen during our meetings if we wanted to do something like that. But some folks, reading is not going to meet that need, and sign language is going to meet the communication need. So we have to be able to accommodate either one by state law. So we can do both. And we do commonly use phones and AI or something like that to communicate with folks who are hard of hearing or deaf.

Would it ever be something that we could entertain as a council to do something similar to the school district in that they have the headsets available in council chambers if someone that speaks another language came in using technology, not bringing in-person interpreters, but like in healthcare, it's called in-demand. I don't know what it is for here, but they have the whole setup. And I've used it in the past when we had the listening session And it's very easy once you get the actual equipment.

And I can, I do, I am aware of these programs and they're great programs that can translate on the spot live. You'll have to raise my budget. Sound good? If you want to raise my budget, I'm happy to do that because I think that'd be great. So I'm not just going to tell you guys, if you want the mics to work better, just raise my budget, all these things. So anything you want to do, throw money at me. So there we go.

Well, you put me on a roll tonight, too, I think. But yeah, I think.

Yeah. Katie's like, no, Rachel, you can't have more money. So 100 percent, we could look into several different options. I'm aware of vendors and I've actually watched their informational sessions to learn about how that could work. We do have a contract with a company called Linguava that can do live translation for us if need be. We also have some neat things like our police body cams can do translation live. So we have some things in place already.

As an interim step to not increase the budget. Would it be possible to do outreach to the school district to see if we could borrow those during city council meetings for maybe like a rental fee or something or some sort of exchange bartering system because they have been very open to it in the past?

I certainly think we could reach out to the school district and ask if they would be willing to let us share the equipment in the meantime. And the future focus to meetings are happening not that frequently, but frequently enough that I can get that on the agenda. And who knows, they might not even make me sign an IGA.

We will ask for sure. Are there any other questions on the ADA policy?

I just have a basic. Knowing that everything goes directly to you, is there a process like should you ever choose to take a vacation or be out of the office that like there's a redundancy for all of the amazing things that you do in this space? Yes.

Yes, thankfully, and I promise I'm taking a vacation soon. I have Melissa, who you heard high praise of earlier, is my deputy and is able to fill in any of these roles. And I also have two other staff members who report to me, our emergency manager and our public information officer, and both of them are cross-trained in a lot of these functions as well. So if I need to be gone or be with my family, they can all step in. Awesome.

And I would love, I think this is just a personal, so I'd be curious what the rest of the council thinks. I would love to look at some of the options, like having closed captioning live during meetings. I've started doing that. I'm teaching an adjunct class at a doctoral program, and I'm doing that for some of the students. All of the students have said it's very helpful, especially since I tend to speak quietly. It's a good extra. I'll out myself.

Well, I can see if I can turn it on once I get back over there even. So it's a very simple feature.

I just want to say thank you. But I do want to say thank you because I know that we've gotten feedback as a council on accommodations and on ADA accessibility and I feel like you always take things very seriously and it's greatly appreciated.

I'd just like to say that the newest and best technology seems to be on the phone that everybody has in their hand. So let's make sure we're using the lowest cost options. Would anybody like to make a motion?

I move that we approve Resolution 2026-4029 to adopt ADA accommodation policies.

Second. Second.

It has been moved. Did you get one?

I did.

Okay. Been moved and seconded that we pass resolution number 20264029. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Well, Rachel, you might as well just sit there and list the next item on the agenda, the ADA accommodation request policy.

Next, public records request. So we discussed public records.

Thank you.

No worries. I put myself on there back. So we discussed public records at one of our recent meetings, and you asked me to come back with some data. So I came back with some data and also some scenarios, which are real things that have happened in the last three years, all three scenarios I put in this packet, to explain kind of how public records repressed work and why these fees are helpful. And, you know, who's being charged these fees? That's important information. So this is looking at how many public records requests we are receiving on an annual basis. As you see, last year we had a huge jump. This year we're more on track to be back around the 80 mark, so it's gone down from that huge jump that we had last year. We credit that to our new website, making it easier to find the records request form, and so we had a lot more data mining companies show up all of a sudden. So as you can see, we're processing quite a few of these, and these can go anywhere from a few minutes of work to many, many hours of work. It just depends on what the request is and what someone is looking for. So staff time spent, as you can see, most of our requests are under an hour of work and we do not charge for under an hour of work. We start charging once we hit the hour mark. Most cities charge once they hit 15 minutes or 30 minutes. We wait a little bit longer because most of our stuff, it's not taking that much work and we're willing to do that for someone. And the vast majority of these really are five, 10 minutes. Once we hand it to the staff member who has the record, they hand me the records back and we're able to produce them right away. So if you take a look at this, we spent approximately 131 staff hours on public records in 2025. There would have been more if some of the scenarios I go over had come to fruition last year. But the vast majority don't incur a charge. Everything in that zero to one hour mark did not incur a charge. It only incurs a charge if we hit the one hour mark. So who are these coming from? In Oregon, records are open to all who ask. I don't get to say, no, you're selling this information. I'm not giving it to you. I don't get to say, do you even live here? I have to give them the records. So records are to anyone who requests at any point. So 24 of these requests came from data aggregators. These are companies who are requesting our data, and then they are reselling it to people. So they are taking all the data they can get from us and then they sell them to companies so that they can now try and sell things to us or have more competitive bids. And a lot of the time it's for purchasing information, court information, all sorts of things like that. And they will ask for mass quantities. We've had people ask for the monthly reach out and ask for everything we got that month or every three months they'll ask for all purchasing records. This gets really intense. We had, well, I'll go for that later. Others might be from residents or researchers or engineering companies and more. So I get from media, from all over the place. And I come from a library background, as you guys know. I love answering these. This is my bread and butter reference. We love to help people and give information out. And that's my goal. We want transparency. But I also have to be thinking about the city and protecting our staff time to do the work we're here to do instead of spending all of our time on records work.

Which, I mean, I would do it.

So last year, we had 124 total public records requests. And of those, only 10 incurred a charge. Five of those 10 were data aggregators. So you saw there were 24 data aggregators, and only five of them even incurred a charge. Even those, we can usually do for free. Six of the 10 who got a charge chose to pay. So the other four either chose not to pay or they narrowed their request or chose to just cancel and not make the request. One refund was issued, so we charged someone for an hour of work, and then once we did it, we realized it didn't take us an hour, and being the honest folks we are, we called them up, said that did not take as much, and we gave them their money back. And we will always do that. And then two of these, only two of the 124 involved legal, and neither of those were charged because it was a legal decision to decide whether or not the records were able to be released. Now that we are not allowed to charge for by Oregon state law. So if our legal counsel is looking at it, trying to decide whether or not something is released, we can't charge for that decision. We can only charge if legal actually does work on the record. So if we ask them to do redaction for us or something like that. In Newberg, I generally do all the redaction or Melissa does the redaction. We are well aware what redactions are needed for most of our record types and how it needs to be handled. So it would be a rare case where we would need to take it to legal and say, you're going to have to handle this one. We know what PII needs to be redacted. We understand what is not releasable. So it's very rare that we do actually involve legal. But there are some times that we do, which is why we have the fee. I also want to lean into this. We really lean into our customer service touch with these. I always work with anyone who reaches out. Melissa and I both do this. We'll say, okay, we see that you're looking for this. The way that you've requested this, the way you've written your request is so broad that It's going to incur many, many charges because this is going to take a week of staff time and we can't devote a week just to your request. So what if we, if you want to share with us more specifically what you're looking for or here's some ways we might narrow it down. Sometimes we'll break up the different aspects of a request and say this aspect would cost this much, this would be free, we can do this. And we kind of try and piecemeal it for someone, create a little menu and help them figure out how to narrow down what they're asking for. to reduce their costs and reduce staff time spent on it. So we put a lot of work into that, and I don't charge them for that time either. We have a conversation, we work on that. That's actually what I learned to do in reference in the library world. You sit with someone, you find out what their question truly is, you tell them you're here to help them, and you help them figure it out. Part of this comes from people using AI to write their public records requests these days. And AI loves to say any and all, any and all records, all communication, and it will detail things. It will also make up records that don't exist. It will say, well, there was a meeting on this date where this was decided. Send me the records. And I'll say there was no meeting on that date and this was never decided. So when we're facing those, that can be a big challenge, too, because I'll get this records request that's two pages long because it was written by AI and staff has to go through and make sure we're meeting every item on that. We also were working on some self-service options. As you know, we put up the ORMS web drawer, which is a place where folks can go in and search for records themselves. As we discussed a few meetings ago, the public access to that is terrible. It's not very easy to search. You have to know basically the exact title of what you're looking for and how to type it in perfectly in order to find it, which doesn't work for most folks. So we had made that live just to, you know, if we have the records, might as well make it available. It seems to look like it's causing more frustration for folks than help in a lot of ways. We've left it live, but we have been looking at changes to that, which I'll get to in a moment. I've also created indexes to really common requests. So we have indexes for all of our ordinances and resolutions that people can search, and then they can click a link and go straight to it. So I've created indexes. When things are readily available on the website and I get a request for it, we just send them that link. We don't charge. We just move on. OpenGov now has a permit portal where folks can go and look at their permits and learn about those. So they're not going to need to contact us for that records request. We've also have a website or a page on the city website that says what's happening on my street. If you click on that, it pops open a map and you can see every permitted thing happening in the city and click on it and read all about it. So that cuts down a lot. We're creating lots of different ways that people can learn what's going on here without having to go through a records request process. I don't care if they do, though, because I like doing my job. But I would love people to be able to help themselves. And then, like I said, we do most of our redaction in-house.

So Melissa and I are doing most of that work.

So as we discussed, we charge $60 an hour after the first hour for staff time. So for the first hour, we don't charge anything. Once we hit that hour mark, we'll charge for it. and then we charge after that for every hour. We'll also charge $400 an hour if legal review actually occurs. Like I said, we didn't charge for that at all last year. We used it to address some of our scenarios and help narrow our scopes. We have also minimal duplication costs if there's a physical copy. So if someone wants us to print something out for them, we're going to charge them our actual cost for printing something out. I think it's like 25 cents a page, not much. And I've had one person use that three years. Everyone else wanted digital. So... In Newburgh, we believe that a flat rate for these things increases some transparency around fees. A lot of cities in our area, which we're going to get to in just a second, will say that they will charge the actual loaded staff rate for any members of staff involved. which means they have to track the exact staff members who worked on it, how long they worked on it, get their loaded rate, and do those calculations every single time. There's no good way to estimate for someone easily what it's going to cost. So that's one reason why we like our flat $60 an hour and $400 an hour. Now, that's not our full cost to the city. The average loaded rate for employees, if you took all the employees, the highest paid to the lowest paid, and averaged it out, is $71.50 an hour. And there are employees that it's a lot more an hour. Now, loaded rate is including your insurance and all the extras, the retirement plan, and things like that. So we're not all getting paid $71 an hour. That'd be great, but we're not. So that's our average cost for having an employee work on this. For legal, a fee could be anywhere between $315 and $800 an hour, depending on what service is being provided to us according to our contract. Now, most of our services are in that $400 range, which is why we stuck with that $400 range, and I think that is appropriate. Like I said, for all requests to take less than an hour, we just need that cost. And for all requests we charge for, the actual cost of the city is higher than what we're charging members of the public. So surrounded cities, I did a look on this and as you can see on here, every single city in this area about our size is working on the loaded rate for the employees involved with doing the work or something equivalent. Happy Valley has just calculated a rate for each person and they published it, which I think is really transparent. McMinnville says actual cost, which I would assume is also their loaded rate. And most waive only the first 15 to 30 minutes. So they charge sooner and they charge more. And loaded rate would mean also that their legal rate is the full loaded rate for the legal team or the actual cost incurred by the city to have the legal team work on it. So this is what I saw around. So this is generally what I saw with cities around us. With legal is internal. It is the full loaded rate when legal is an external firm. they charge the actual cost to the city. So these are a couple scenarios I pulled. These are actual things I dealt with over the last couple years with, you know, anonymized for us to protect the innocent here. This scenario, we had someone request five years of data and a specialized report that we did not have in our system. The way that they requested their record would have taken us years to produce and it would have taken years for staff to pull out and redact and find everything and would have involved extensive legal review because it involved juvenile records so we had to be very very careful with this one so when i first looked at it and we started quoting it out we realized it was going to be over 400 000 and we wouldn't be able to give them the records for years so this was a waste of their time our time everyone's money this was not a realistic thing But because I had those legal fees, I was able to say, look, the way you've requested this, this is going to cost $400,000, and I assume you don't want to pay that. However, if you're okay with this set of information instead, which was a report we could produce from our system easily, we can produce it with only three hours of staff time, and it'll cost you $180. And when I presented this to the requester, they looked at it and went, well, that sounds great. Let's go. And we went that route. They were thrilled with the data they got. And we were able to save staff time and city time and also get them the information they wanted. So I didn't just say no. I didn't just give them the quote. I worked on a solution to their problem. And they actually got the records they needed. But it really helped to say, because it's going to cost you $400,000 because of the legal costs. For scenario B... It was a request for emails that would have taken over 24 hours of staff time for search and redaction. And when we looked at this again, I realized it was 24 hours just to conduct the searches. So that wouldn't have even been all the redaction time. The starting quote just to conduct the searches would have been $1,440. So that's 24 hours of work. And then basically it usually takes us, we estimate one minute per email to redact. We have to go through and redact them, check them all out. So I reached out, discussed, gave a quote, and said, look, tell me what you're looking for. Let me help you figure out a way that we can do this better. We realized in this situation they really only needed two email addresses searched from the city emails. They had asked for every staff email. We narrowed the search parameters and were able to offer the records free of charge. Didn't have to charge them a dime. Scenario C, this is our most common scenario. This is what happens most of the time. I get requests for building files for a random address. We quickly locate the records in our digital system and give them free of charge. Now, if our ORMS web drawer was working well, I could tell most of these folks, just search your address here, and there you go. But unfortunately, it does not work well, and so you can't. But I have a solution for that. Okay, we are allowed to charge fees. ORS 1923244A allows fees that are reasonably calculated to reimburse the city for its costs. As I showed, our fees are actually a little bit lower than our actual costs. So that would be a reasonable calculation. We are also right now going digital. When I began this job in 2023, we had over 620 physical boxes. I can't give you an actual amount. I know we had 620 we had counted, and then I have found rooms full of boxes since I started, as happens in every archival situation. It's been fun. We are down to less than 100 boxes. Today, I pulled three more and identified six more ready to go. And so we're getting rid of more boxes every day. Now, we're not just throwing these away. Now, there were some things that were past retention that we did not need to keep. We probably don't need every receipt from about 20 years ago. We can get rid of those, right? Um, but we started digitizing them and putting them into our web drawer. So this ORMS is, um, the Oregon records management system. And it's actually, the platform is actually called content manager, and this is the state's, um, subscription to it. And we have put over 38,000 records in there. So I've been digitizing, scanning, adding information, putting these up live, putting information in as fast as we can. This is with, um, two full-time record staff who do a million other things like throw firework shows too. And that was pretty fun. And this is with dispersed staff who do a little bit of records work on top of their other duties as well. I have about six people throughout the city that do records work for their departments, just a little bit on top of everything else. So we've done an immense amount of work in the past three years, just shy of three years. Next month will be three. And we put a lot of digital records management practices in place. Can I throw you under the bus a little? Yes. I just got rid of 48,000 finance records that we no longer needed that were digital. So thank you for letting me throw you under the bus a little, Katie. So we've done a lot to clean up our records across the board because if you keep what you're supposed to keep and keep it in an organized way, it's a lot faster for me to produce records for someone. When I started, there were times I had to go and look through physically like 24 boxes to produce the file we needed for someone. There were not indexes. There were some indexes, but not very many. And no shame to the people before me. It's a huge job. So we've been going digital. So here's kind of our status. Prior to our current website, we did not have a self-service window where people could go and search our digital records. And that's what that web drawer is that you heard complaints about a few weeks ago. We decided to make it go live because, you know, it's there. We'll let people use it even if it's not perfect. Now, maybe that's not worth it because it's not perfect and it's not working well. However, on the old website, all meeting agendas and minutes were available from the time that website was established. So you had many years, a couple decades, I believe, on that website, maybe too long, of minutes and agendas. When we moved to our new website, we only moved six months' worth of agendas and minutes over. So we moved the last six months over with us and created a little bit of history, but everything else was put into our archival system and links were created. And the plan right now is that after two years, we will archive past records. So we're not going to put everything and keep all minutes just on the website at all times. They're going to be available online for people to go to, but they'll need to go through our archival system. Otherwise, you have a webpage now that's, you know, you're scrolling for 10 minutes to get to the bottom of it. And we don't want that. We also added a public records page that's readily available from the header. So people see public records. Okay, there it is. And that explains the self-service process. It has the indexes, our request form. It makes things a lot more visible. So that's kind of what we're looking at right now. This is what it looks like. We're talking about ways to make it even more beautiful in our next revamp of the website. Part of our contract is that we get to zhoosh things up this year. So there'll be a little bit more cleanup and things going on this year. So you can see this is just the top of the page, but all sorts of things. So here's our next steps. When we talked about it, we were discussing staying with ORMS and putting a cataloging system over the top of it where I would have to go in and catalog every record and create links or moving to a new system. New systems do cost more. Sorry, Katie, I keep talking about money tonight, but we're making a plan. I promise I've saved you guys a lot of money since I started, too. I'm putting the money where it needs to go. So a new system costs more, but it will take less staff time to do. ORMS is not meeting our transparency needs, so we are looking at a new system. I'm not going to go into too much yet because I don't want to tip off the vendors that we want their system yet. But we have been working on this. We are about to get our third bed in place, and then we'll figure out where we want to go. And this new system uses AI to help enhance staff time with metadata entry, which is the keyword searching. So it will help us create those keywords and actually have good addresses so that we can do that. And it also has a browse function. Currently, you can't just browse the city records. You have to search for something specific. So we'll be able to make them browsable so people can go, okay, I want to look at city council minutes from this year. Boom, there they are. So it's a much better, more robust system that we're looking into, and I'm excited about it. If we can get started on our contract very soon, we are hopeful that by the end of October or November, we'll be live with the new system. So it's moving along. As you know, we don't move slowly in my department. But some records will always need to be through the public records request process. There are things that are too confidential for us to put out there for people to browse. There are things that have to have some staff intervention there. So that will always be happening there. All right. That's my total report there. What questions do you have?

So way back at the first few slides, there was four people, entities, vendors, whatever that did not pay. So do we flag our system somehow? So if they come back at another time and go, Oh, I would like you to research and get all these records. Do we go, thank you very much. You'll pay for it up front or you don't get them.

So here's the thing is if they don't pay, we don't give them records. We don't even start the work until payment has been made. Payment must be made before we start the work. Um, If so, usually I think in those four cases, they just ghosted us. They just didn't respond for most of them. And what that means is after 60 days, we close the request out. We always tell them that when we send a quote, we say, this is how much it will cost. If you'd like to pay, here's how you do it. If you want to talk about other options, we can discuss that. And if we don't hear from you in 60 days, we'll close this request. And if 60 days goes by, we hear nothing. I close it out. And then they have to submit a brand new request the next time they're interested.

So the ones that you determined were aggregators, that was just mining information. Is that legal if they're going to sell that information? That's legal to do?

Yep, it is. And the state of Oregon is legal for them to do that. It's public information and it's not copyrighted as government information. So it's in the public domain. And so they can do that. In the state of Washington, they're allowed to say, oh, you're selling this and you're making a profit. We're not going to give you the public records. However, I did discuss this with some Washington City clerks, and they said we don't ever do that because it's too dangerous. If they say, well, I'm not really selling it. You're just keeping records from me. So they have the right. They tend to not use it.

All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next is item 7.4, surplus of properties near the airport. Welcome once again.

Good evening again, Honourable Mayor and Council. The item that lies before you right now is a resolution, which is the very first step to declare two small parcels of land near Sportsman Air Park surplus. And this is the same exact structure of resolution as we used before your placing unfamiliar, the Butler property resolution. And so before we are going to do any other steps,

Look at that, it's picking up Scottish accent really well.

Wow, I'm impressed. Okay, so the purpose of this would be to make the two sections, surplus, real property of no value, south of Sportsman's Airpark, with a view to in a future time, after we have an agreement negotiated and drafted by the legal team, we would be able to move on and make that part of the deal to gain access for the sewer line. And this is the second time this particular item has been to council. So staff are seeking a resolution to approve this action. So we can move forward.

Questions for the... All right. Someone like to make a motion? Go ahead, Robin.

Well, I move we approve resolution 2026-4036, declaring two small parcels of land south of Sportsman's Airpark a surplus.

Second. It has been moved and seconded to approve resolution number 2026-4036. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

All opposed, nay. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Will. I guess you get to remain there. So the last item on our agenda is the Illinois street closure discussion.

Yes, sir. And this is a discussion about the trial Illinois street closure topic. And as an executive summary, Due to a lack of value in which you may recall of running an engineering study, approximately $200,000 or maybe a bit more, to look at the juncture between Main Street and Illinois that could have little practical value to the city, the city council approved a trial closure of the area under discussion in 2025. The reason why the engineering study at that time was seen as of no value was because there could be no practical outcome to such a study. For clarity, ODOT has said it will not pay for any signalized intersections in Newburgh. And they've said it more than once. They have a financial crisis and they don't have the bandwidth. They have told us to do that. The second thing is the only other solution that an engineering study could possibly create would be a street realignment, possibly involving a miniature roundabout. Were such an action to be taken, the city would have to pursue condemnation of some of the properties near that junction, as well as ODOT permission to do a roundabout. Obviously, with neither of those things viably being on the table, it didn't seem like a good idea to waste the money on an engineering study, so we did not do so. Instead, it was decided to follow up on an idea that the mayor had, a really good idea, to do a trial to see whether over the course of half of a year, how things would perform if we were to close the Illinois Junction, and to see whether or not there would be a more positive lack, frankly, of complaints about the problems of taking the left-hand turn to join that traffic, or complaints about the traffic backing up before the 240 Junction. So the trial has now run for over six months, and the trial is being discussed at the next Traffic Safety Commission. We know that the cost of doing something different would be in the region of a million dollars or more, and that's not including the study work. So at this time, for a fiscal impact, the city has saved at least the $200,000, and we are therefore simply wanting to wonder or see With a spirit of curiosity, what are traffic safety commissioners, how they will weigh in on the matter. And of course, traffic safety commission is the board of the city where traffic safety complaints are directed. Those volunteers have volunteered to help the city and hear all of the traffic complaints and have them on the active traffic safety log and see if something can be done about them. So it would be staff's recommendation that we should wait for that meeting, which is just around the corner, and see whether or not we get a recommendation from the Traffic Safety Commission that it has proved to be a successful trial closure, or just as likely perhaps that it's been an unsuccessful closure. So that is really the summary of the staff report. And it's really more here to open a discussion between councillors and see how they feel, because the council could choose to do something different right now.

So I'm going to suggest that we table this item so that it can go to the Traffic Safety Committee this next week and then come back to council at our next meeting. Is there any opposition to that?

I'm not in opposition to hearing from Traffic Safety Commission by any means, but I am in opposition from not hearing from people that are here today to give public comment on this. And considering that we received a number of public comment written and then also a pretty extensive report completed by a business owner, a property owner, I think it would be the right thing to do to hear that information tonight. And if we want to discuss, then... That would be at a future meeting.

My intention is to table this and give those folks the option. If I were, I would recommend. that they take their comments to the public, to the Traffic Safety Committee next week, and then they can have new comments to come back to us with that are more appropriate given the additional information. On the other hand, since they are here, they signed up for public comment, it is absolutely their right to speak tonight, so it would be their choice. So is there any objection to that? All right, let's table this till the next meeting. Oh, Mike, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I... I would like to talk about, I want to also declare that the Myers are clients of mine, although I am not the agent of record on the building that they own on Illinois Street. So I believe that if I was to talk about it, James, you can correct me, please, that as long as I'm not getting anything financially out of this, I have a right to to talk about it or discuss it. Is that correct?

Thank you, Councilman McBride. You're correct. And even though council is considering this item, at least with respect to today's agenda as an informational item, there could be future points in time where council has to use other tools other parts of its authority to make certain decisions. So now is a good time to disclose that we appreciate that.

I mean, my feeling is council is that I mean, I like the process. You know, we have a process. I like following the process, but my feeling to to see with this council how the rest of you feel. I think because the situation is that they're losing their tenant, they have other tenants that are going to be interested, and I think it just makes it easier for them to be able to fill that space if there's a tenant that knows that you have that opportunity.

If we're going to have this discussion, then the next order is going to be the public comments. My question is, and always has been, do we want to continue with this discussion tonight, or do we want to wait until the next meeting after the Traffic Safety Committee has had a chance to weigh in? Robin?

I would like to have this discussion tonight.

So next will be public comments. And Liliana, thank you. Sorry about that. Welcome. Good to see you.

for an hour, so thank you for hearing us. I'm not a business owner. I'm a resident of East North Street. We bought our house in 2023. What attracted us to this house was the quiet residential spot. I have a nine-year-old who's here with me today, and as us, there are several kids in our street. I loved seeing kids playing basketball outside, kids on scooters playing safely outside our doors. One day, without notification and to my family's surprise, there was heavy traffic just flying down our quiet residential street from one day to the other. I asked around why East Illinois Street had been closed so suddenly, and nobody of my neighbors seemed to know. As an East North Street resident, I was not notified of this closure or the fact that our quiet residential street would become a major corridor in Newburgh. This street closure has made our street unsafe for our children. I called and emailed the city of Newburgh on September 2025, asking what had happened and requesting some safety measures as cars drive at an unsafe speed down our street. I never received a response to my email, and I have that on record. My questions are, What are the protocols? How is it possible to make such a major decision to move a corridor without notifying residents of the quiet residential street affected? What safety studies were conducted to make such a decision? And can we as residents see the safety studies that led to the closure of East Illinois Street? What traffic safety studies were conducted for the consequences this closure would have on East North Street? What is the plan? In other words, I'm curious to know what are the steps, studies, and protocols implemented to close such a corridor and redirect it to East North Street? It's a really small street, but the concrete is being affected. My neighbors across the street used to play basketball right across. They don't do that anymore. In conclusion, this decision has affected the safety of our street, of my child, of me backing out in the morning to go to work. And I would like to know, as a resident, what the plan is so that the safety of my residential street be reestablished and please considered. as making East North the redirected route for East Illinois as a corridor has significantly impacted my quiet residential street and the safety of the families and children who live there. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Brianna Oliver-Palmquist. Hi, Brianna. Welcome.

Hello.

Hi, I'm Brianna Oliver-Palmquist, and I'm also a resident of East North Street. I'm a single mom of an almost eight-year-old and a three-year-old, and so thank you for listening to me today because my time is very limited, and I'm only able to be here today because my mom's able to watch my kids. She flew in. She appreciates... The captions. Thank you very much. And so I, in addition to my eight-year-old and three-year-old, have a cat who likes to escape, a dog who likes to go on walks, and again, the three-year-old who is uncontrollable. I did not receive a notice of the change of the closure of Illinois Street, and it has directed a significant amount of traffic down East North Street. It has personally caused me to have multiple close calls with accidents. with cars coming down the street, both for myself, my roommates. My unique circumstance is that I do live on a flag lot, the one flag lot, so then I can also see the Illinois street folks behind me, which makes visibility even less for me. And it sounds like prior to the closure, because I've lived here since 2018, that this also happens for the Illinois street folks as well. This traffic was going down their street. It was going very fast. And so I understand that the goal for everybody, both the Illinois neighbors and the North Street neighbors and for you all is safety. And it appears that this solution to solve a safety problem didn't solve it. It just moved it and amplified the problem by using a more narrow residential street for commercial traffic.

So thank you for listening to me.

And next we have Johnny Zimmerman. Hi, Johnny. Welcome.

Thank you. My name is Joni Zimmerman. I live on West Sheridan Street, just outside the city limits. For nearly 40 years, Illinois Street has been my main route to the other side of Newburgh, and I know I'm not the only one. The high school swimming pool, our dentist, Bi-Mart, the ReStore, George Fox, friends and relatives, and community meeting places are all that way. Also, connecting with ODOT Highway 219 to go up over the mountain to Shoals or Beaverton or Hillsboro. The closure of East Illinois Street left me with no good route to all those places. East Illinois is a major collector road and the direct route to the other side of town. It is generously wide, designed to handle heavy traffic, truck traffic, and emergency vehicles. Now I must go several blocks out of my way. Alternate routes involve gravel roads, speeding traffic, zero visibility intersections, narrow streets, never meant for through traffic or a combination. Using 99W takes me way out of my way through downtown unnecessarily, adds 10 minutes to my trip time, and requires entering 99W at the dangerous second way intersection with speeding traffic from both directions. The route suggested by the city is to turn onto North Street from ODOT Highway 240 left onto Washington Street and right onto East Illinois. This recommendation forces residential side streets that weren't meant for through traffic to suddenly be major collector roads without modifications to handle the traffic. If an emergency vehicle came through at the same time as a car, because of parked cars, there probably would not be room to pull over. Turning left from Main Street onto North Street is dangerous because there is no left turn lane, and 240 traffic speeding into Newburgh has to stop and wait while I turn, making me worry about being rear-ended. And now there is a bumpy rough patch as North Street meets Main Street, most likely caused by heavy vehicles that the road was not designed for. So one has to turn extra slowly to avoid a big bump and damaging the car. I'm not sure what problem you were trying to solve by closing this major collector street. The city acknowledges few crashes and no fatalities at the intersection, just congestion during peak traffic times. I understand the decision was not informed by a traffic professional and that the previously approved engineering study was canceled. The mayor said he and the city manager took a walk and decided to try this without professional consultation. And I understand there was an informal survey, but only of 20 nearby residents most likely to benefit if the closure actually reduced traffic and still only 12 favored the closure. This trial closure has not encouraged Highway 240 traffic to obey the speed limit, has not reduced congestion caused by cars trying to turn, has not made it possible for pedestrians to cross the street, and has not improved visibility. I wonder if you considered the ultimate added cost of closing the major collector road to save the city money. If the closure continues, you will have to widen Washington Street, North Street, and Main Street, and maybe Sherman and Sheridan as well. The intersection of Main and North now needs immediate repair. I ask that you immediately end this trial closure and that you review the current city transportation plan to determine how decisions you make will further the goals of the plan. I also ask that you proceed with the engineering study that was approved in 2023 so that the ultimate solution will be a data-driven, evidence-based result of professional research done by people with the knowledge, skills, and experience to consider the complexity and find the best solution. As an interim solution, I suggest you, with professional consultation, make the intersection and always stop with six stop signs. This will slow traffic and allow people to turn more easily onto Highway 240 without traffic backing up. And finally, I find it ironic that we have reached the point where we must consider tearing down people's homes to make more room for cars. When people are forced to use cars for lack of alternatives, congestion is the inevitable outcome. Had we invested in public transportation and safe bike routes years ago, we would not be dealing with the volume of traffic we have now. But better late than never, so let's learn from this. Thank you.

All right, Mike, did you want to continue your discussion?

Well, again, it's just my feeling that it makes it simpler counselors. It just makes it simpler if they're going to be leasing out the space, if there's an opportunity to be able to go out on the west end of Illinois. Now, I know, as the rest of you probably already know, is that if somebody comes in and they've got a major big truck, they're probably not going to go out that side. I mean, I used to drive trucks before I got into the business that I'm in now, and I wouldn't do that. But if you had somebody that had the Cub or cube vans and stuff like that, it'd be advantageous for them to be able with those size vehicles to go out. So I just feel like because where they're at in trying to lease this space, I think we ought to be doing whatever we can to help our business community. I don't care whether it's clients of mine or whoever it is, I'm pro-business and I want to be able to do whatever we can as speedily, just like we kind of did with DCI when we did an emergency, well, you guys weren't on then, but we did an emergency declarations, and I, you know, I was great that we did something like that. So that's all I'm saying, guys, is let's take a closer look and move forward.

All right. I was, it has been pointed out there are four more public comments. So our Our normal time for public comments is three minutes. We let it go to five when there are fewer. So we're going to do these last four at three minutes, I hope. The next one is Kathy Meyer. All right.

Thank you for your time and opportunity to speak tonight. This matter is very important to us. My husband and I own the former PBN Technologies building in Newburgh in the Newburgh Enterprise Zone, and its viability depends on, in part, restoring the transportation access. Last September, PPM's parent company, Duravant Corporation, informed us that it would relocate its operations to Walla Walla, resulting in a loss of more than 100 family wage manufacturing jobs. Our responsibility now and our opportunity is to bring manufacturing jobs back to Newburgh by attracting a new industrial employer to our approximately 103,000 square foot facility. Unfortunately, the trial closure of East Illinois, North Main, and Oregon 240 intersection has made that significantly more difficult. One of this property's greatest strengths has always been its transportation access. This is more than a local street. East Illinois is the city's only direct major collector connecting oregon highway 219 to 240. closing that corridor affects not only an important east-west connection across the community and newberg's transportation grid but also is an important link to the oregon state highway system For generations, East Illinois has functioned exactly as the city has intended, as a major collector carrying freight, industrial traffic, emergency responders, and community traffic between 219 and Oregon 240. Our property also borders the railroad, creating a unique opportunity for future manufacturers to receive raw materials by rail and efficiently ship finished products via 219 and Oregon 240. That combination of rail access and direct highway connectivity is exactly what modern manufacturers look for when they're deciding to invest. Yet neither we as property owners nor representatives in the enterprise zone received direct notification before this closure was implemented. But the impacts of the trial closure extend far beyond our property. Traffic that once was used as an established major collector is now being diverted onto our narrow residential streets. We have observed motorists using our industrial parking lot as an informal U-turn because the corridor is blocked. These are unintended consequences and there are more of them that should have been identified through engineering and evaluated before, not after the closure was implemented. I believe that the city was on the right path in June 2023 when this council authorized a professional engineering study to identify both the problems and the appropriate solutions for this intersection. That study was intended to provide engineering foundation for ODOT's pre-phase assessment because this is not simply a city intersection. It's a connection between two Oregon highways, making ODOT an essential... essential transportation partner and determining the most appropriate is between two Oregon State highways, making ODOT an essential transportation partner in determining the most appropriate long-term solution. Instead, the engineering study was canceled before it could answer the very question it had been commissioned to resolve. This isn't simply an intersection. It's a community connection, it's a transportation connection, and it's an important link to the Oregon State Highway System. Today, we're working to bring manufacturing jobs back to Newburgh. We're already in discussions with a prospective tenant, including a winery that requires dependable freight access to 240 and Oregon's wine country. Reliable transportation is not a luxury, it's an expectation for a modern manufacturing distribution and economic investment. I respectfully encourage, urge, the council returned to prudent course it originally chose. Reopen the intersection, complete the professional engineering study, and work cooperatively with ODOT before making permanent decisions affecting not only Newburgh's transportation network, but also one of the city's principal connections to the Oregon State Highway System. Tonight, the council has an opportunity to help bring back manufacturing jobs to Newburgh to strengthen the enterprise zone, to restore one of our community's most important transportation corridors.

Thank you.

And to reconnect an important link in the Oregon State Highway System.

Thank you. Next on the agenda, we have Kim Trask.

Good evening. I'm actually reading a letter from our neighbor across the street who we're unable to attend. I live on East Illinois Street and the neighbors are Jill Jacobson and Richard Smith who live at 201 East Illinois Street. And I'm just going to read this verbatim, and I'll submit this to the recorder. Dear Council and community members, it has long been known that the intersection at East Illinois and North Main Streets is a hazardous situation for the City of Newburgh. Over the past few years, after many discussions and meetings between the City, citizens, and consulting companies, plans were formed to improve the function and safety of the intersection. Unfortunately, these plans did not come to fruition after it was determined funds for such improvements were not available. Thus, in order to mitigate the inherent dangers of the intersection, it was ultimately decided that the most cost-effective and available and cost-effective plan to ensure safety was to close East Illinois at Main. The intersection is oddly angled. It has blind corners. Longbed trucks would make their way into the intersection and end up blocking lanes and causing hazards. Even PPM did not want their trucks driving down East Illinois because they recognized the unsafe position it put their transporters and trucks in. Unfortunately, truckers frequently did not abide by the rule and still used the road and intersection as a regular thoroughfare. There were regular vehicular accidents at the intersection due to the poor design, exacerbated by people driving too fast and without caution. If new regulations were made and actually followed to both lower the speed limit and restrict long trucks, it would be a positive step towards increasing the safety and of the intersection. However, it would not address nor solve all the inherently dangerous characteristics of the space. To make it safe, the whole intersection must be redesigned. Anyone who lives on East Illinois Street will attest a large portion of drivers do not follow posted speed limits, and many drive outright recklessly, endangering local pedestrians, families, children, and pets. We have even had speeders hit telephone poles in front of the houses. Truly it is unfortunate that aggressive drivers who once drove down Illinois Street have diverted to driving down different streets now that Illinois Street is closed. I feel for the residents along these roads. But this highlights the fact The problem herein is the inability to change driver behavior, not whether certain streets or intersections are open or closed. Perhaps speed bumps and or more effective stop signs may help slow traffic. I would think either one of these solutions would be relatively cost effective. The inherent danger of the poorly designed intersection at East Illinois and North Main Street has not been mitigated. As it is well documented, the city recognizes the intersection as hazardous, even to the point of closing it. A reopening of the intersection without resolving all the hazards will open the city to an extremely high level of liability and accountability when, not if, but when, someone gets injured or killed there in an accident that shouldn't have happened or could have been prevented. Yes, the closing of East Illinois Street at North Main is an inconvenience for many people, but the unsafe conditions are, but until the unsafe conditions are corrected, it must remain closed. Safety trumps inconvenience in every situation. Thank you. I'll submit this.

So now I have Barb Presk, I guess.

I'll just sit right next to her, she's my wife. I'll spare you hearing me again for another five minutes.

I'm Barb Trask. This is my husband, Tim. As you've heard, we lived on Illinois, East Illinois, 130 East Illinois, so three houses from the corner with Main Street and its junction with 240. I submitted a written comment, or we submitted written comments, and I know that some of you have read them, and I appreciate that. I realize that some of you may not have, and those who are in attendance may not have had the opportunity to do so. So I'm going to read those comments, but probably make some paraphrases along the way. It's our understanding after a discussion with city residents, TVF&R, and PPM Logistics, City Council voted to close East Illinois Street approximately 10 months ago at its intersection with North Main or North Main Junctions with Oregon 240 to address safety concerns and traffic congestion at this unusual intersection. Closure has rectified some of those issues on East Illinois Street, but resulted in the transfer of many safety concerns to nearby residential streets, specifically North Street and Washington Street. And we are sympathetic to those residents of those streets. We've experienced some of those same issues from years living on East Illinois Street, including vehicle speeding well above the 25 mile an hour speed limit, difficulty leaving our driveways, and safety risks to children who live on our street. We would suggest, however, that the safety concerns that those on neighboring streets experience are magnified in East Illinois for two main reasons. One is the intersection that we've been talking about, the three-way convergence of East Illinois with Maine and 240 makes crossing that street, that intersection as a pedestrian particularly precarious. It's much easier when cars don't have the opportunity to turn onto East Illinois or when cars aren't coming from East Illinois as you're crossing. There's still limited visibility and cars are coming quickly off of 240. Secondly, in addition to that precarious intersection, there's approximately 0.3 miles distance East Illinois running from Main Street to College, and that 0.3 miles allows for traffic to gain speed pretty easily along that longer stretch. And that same long stretch doesn't occur on North Street or Sheridan or Sherman because there are stop signs along the way. Before the Traffic Safety Commissioner decides what to do about East Illinois Street, reopening it or mitigating some of the issues, we feel it's necessary that measures addressing the original safety concerns be taken. These might include addition of speed bumps and a three-way stop at the intersection of East Illinois and Washington Street to shorten the uninterrupted length of road. An additional approach might be to convert East Illinois Street and North Street to one-way streets, obviously going in opposite directions to minimize the traffic volume that either of the residential streets experience. Note that these address the speeding issues, but we're still left with the questionable safety concerns of the three-way intersection at the west end of East Illinois. Although we do sincerely appreciate the city's efforts to minimize costs for its residents by developing innovative solutions to traffic congestion and safety concerns, we feel that this may be the time to invest in a longer-term or expanded expensive and extensive study to develop a traffic plan that is the safest for all nearby residents of Newburgh. Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

So don't bring us time as well. It didn't be registered. Sorry, without registration. Okay.

Council.

This is a tough one because, of course, this council is very pro-business, and when I hear about a business coming to us, feeling like there's a large barrier, that's what got my attention initially. I want our businesses to be able to recruit people and hire people and have people work here. That's very important to me. And also, I'm not faulting anyone. We didn't hear from these people. And I think if we had heard from them initially, we may have made a different decision. So it was okay with PPM, but now it potentially is not. But I am also concerned with the people in Illinois speeding there. So there's a lot of things going on, but I would like this business to be able to... We're losing another large business. If they feel this closure is affecting their ability to lease the building, that's a big red flag to me. So that's why I mainly wanted to discuss this now is, you know, we want businesses to come here. But I am also concerned with children and safety as well. I think those side roads, I've driven down them recently and they are very, very narrow. I mean, I was being tailgated by someone and I was going very slow. So I know if I lived on that street, I would be very irritated. Anyway, thank you.

I agree with everything Councilor Wheatley said. I think carefully stating all of this, obviously I think that we had very good intention of that road closure. I don't think that all of us are trying to do the right thing and all of us care about public safety quite a bit and everything that Robin said. I also feel pretty strongly that this council has been unified in our goals and priorities, of which one of them is to expand light industrial land, and that we have a 163-acre deficit, and that we're all working towards it, and that we're all very frustrated collectively with the state of Oregon and our land use laws and our ability to expand that land. So I think it's a little ironic that we're not doing everything in our human power to protect our current industrial land and get business back to our current industrial land. And given that within the next 18 months, we're going to see now 550 manufacturing jobs exit Newburgh. This is like actually an emergency in my opinion. And I've talked to Truly over 20 people now on all of the roads, door knocked, talked to businesses. I have not found one person. I do now have people here. But I have not talked to one person that's happy about this. And I am concerned that we are going to develop a pattern of making decisions based on anecdotal feedback. And I am concerned that this was a subjective decision outside of true data. A survey of 20 people is not scientific data. That's concerning to make a large, sweeping decision. And on top of that, I think we all collectively also agree that it's not going to work to work with ODOT. So to whoever's point it was, there is not an answer. And there's not an answer that's workable for all of us. Um, but I will say with all the love in my heart for all of my friends in the back who live on side streets and have little kids and dogs, and I'm the queen of my dog running down the street. And we bought that property and they brought the property of Newberg industrial park with access to transport to a transportation Collector Street. So I think it was a problem. I don't actually know the answer to this, so I'm going to... But did we send this information to our Traffic Safety Commission to weigh in preemptively before us making this decision? Because I remember our Traffic Safety Commission chair coming and expressing the frustration of the commission that we have not been utilizing them to what their intent of their... committee is. And looking back on this, I feel strongly, I will speak for myself, that I made the wrong call. We should have gone through the Traffic Safety Commission. We should have. This is I'm having deja vu to River Street. We are not doing good enough outreach as a city. I love our team. I love our lean team. This is not a knock on anyone, but we got to have more intentional, real outreach to not do outreach to the business owner of one of a few industrial parks that we have in our in our town is highly problematic. So I actually would motion to open it today. and that it goes to Traffic Safety Commission to come up with an alternative, we know that we will not have an answer from ODOT. We will not have a magic million dollars coming our way. So Traffic Safety Commission is going to have to come up with a creative solution. They are equipped to do so. They are incredible. They want a hard project. This is a perfect hard project, but it's got to be reopened. I want it reopened. So I will put it on the table that I want it opened.

All right, well, that's a great segue. By the way, I take exception to any comments that this council is not business friendly. We've done more to attract business in Newburgh than most councils have done in my lifetime. You're correct. We did not take this to the Traffic Safety Committee, and they did come in here and complain, and That's why, before we made a decision on this, the city manager said we were going to take it to the Traffic Safety Committee. I see no harm in stopping this discussion today. Let the Traffic Safety Committee listen to the citizens, look at the comments. I'm not saying you're wrong. You may be absolutely right. But let's listen to the Traffic Safety Committee. If we're not going to, then let's suspend it because, frankly, they're frustrated as you are. I would like, I would like to, I think we should table this until after the committee's went in. Go ahead.

So I, um, I have three areas of concern and I'm probably going to echo a lot of what was already said, but The first is business impact. I think we absolutely need to address the impact on our local businesses. You mentioned protecting light industrial. That has been a top priority since I've been on this council. And so, yes, absolutely, that needs to be a priority. We need to look at how do we manage safety and support the light industrial business access with that priority. that corridor and the access to the different highways. I'm also the really mindful about safety and I really resonated with the statement that I think you made it first and then you echoed it of by making this decision we just kicked the problem from one street to the other and now honestly we're going to kick the safety problem back from one street to the other street and so I am concerned that we didn't take this to the Traffic Safety Committee on the outset, and now we're on the verge of making an impulsive decision to move it back that is then going to re-impact safety in another area. And this concern with traffic safety and appropriately utilizing our traffic safety commission is not isolated to just this area. I think it was my first meeting where I was like, I have submitted multiple intersections of concern to our traffic safety committee. And the response I got was, yes, we have received them, but we don't have the information that we need or the financing or the ability to appropriately act on them. so what is our liability as a city that we have all of these high risk accident related intersections just sitting on a spreadsheet that nobody can effectively look at or act on and that if we're going to have a traffic safety committee we need to use them use their expertise and equip them with the information that we need if we can't just put up stop signs for safety on these high risk areas, we need to prioritize what a good multimodal transportation plan looks like for our city so that we can actually start working to it rather than saying, I hear that Meridian and 3rd is a concern, I've put it on our list. That is a conversation I have literally had multiple times over and it does not feel good to say that. for the fifth time. So we need to think about safety, but we also need to think about it from a bigger picture with traffic calming and connected corridors and what does Newburgh value around safety, transportation and connectivity. The third concern that I have is around community communication. So since I've been on council, this is the second project where the perception around diligence and outreach and communication to the larger community has not been felt by the residents. I think everybody here said we didn't get a door knock. And while I do not doubt the incredible work that has happened by members of the city and the intent we are clearly missing that our thought on what we are doing for outreach and our thought on what we're doing is clearly not landing. This happened with River Street. It has now, we have the same area. And so we need to really rethink what our communication plan is as a city and how do we come up with some sort of structured standardized process so that we are having the reach that we are hoping that we are having. Maybe I'll just stop there.

I agree with most everything Councilor Turgerson said. And I'm okay opening it up. I'm okay waiting for the Traffic Safety Committee to evaluate this when they have other professionals from the city there. Maybe we can have police data for the surrounding streets. Just so we have, you know, again, you spoke of anecdotal information. That'd be good to have, I think, for that traffic safety committee. I know that's a short amount of time to get any real data, but I think that would be great. And wider messaging to the broader community. Because I know this is all, for me, this seems to have come out of nowhere. Like I heard a business owner say, I'm not happy with this. And now we got a bunch of other people here saying, I'm not happy with this. Like within a couple of weeks. And I don't know, there might be more people that might be happy with this closure and want to see it stay. So I'd just like more information.

And here's the bit where I have to do the moral courage thing and speak truth to power. The council has prioritized controlling our rates carefully, having very tight budgets, and keeping the costs of living here down. The downside of that is that we have a very small team of staff compared to other cities of our size, who have far more staff to do community outreach, data collection, and more money available for traffic studies, which typically cost between $10,000 and $20,000 per intersection. Now, it's all very well to say that the process needs to be changed. Resources change processes. If our commitment needs to change for higher rates, more property taxes, that can buy more staff and more studies and more engineering, then council can do that. This particular intersection, there is no good solution. One of the things that we heard loud and clear tonight was talk about a closure. This was a trial to see what would happen. It was never intended to be the be all and end all. It was intended to see if it would make things better. Because of not having the availability to spend the money of a million dollars or more on a signalized intersection, which we don't have the money for, folks. And ODOT will not help us. So I think we're all playing from the same playbook here. But I do have to just resonate this one thing. The staff here work harder than the staff in other cities of a comparable size. Because there are less of us. And if we want to change that, you guys have got the power. It's called rates increases. And that will do that. So that's all I had to say.

Can I clarify my motion? I don't know why you're visibly annoyed with me wanting to discuss, but I'm getting frustrated here.

Go ahead.

No, it's not cool. So my motion is... I hear you. By the way, I hear what you're saying. This is not... We all agree, I'm sure, that this is not about knocking on city staff. This is about clarifying from where I'm sitting... that I really want to get back towards less anecdotal feedback. Because frankly, my street also has the same significant challenges that are being addressed today. And I would love to see stop signs on the south side of Newburgh. You know, there are lots of things to do with traffic safety that are important. But to clarify, my motion is to reopen the closure that was a pilot. And I totally know what you're saying, that we had to try something. and that it goes to Traffic Safety Commission for them to be tasked with a creative solution if they can come up with one. then come back to council i know that there is not going there's problems with both with both keeping it closed and opening it but i also do not want to see one of our prime and light industrial spaces not get leased on the verge of dci exiting our community i think we will drastically regret that decision if we are not able to get that space leased.

Mr. Mayor, can I clarify that motion for... Because it kept going. Okay. Hold on.

Hold on.

Okay.

I got this.

You got it.

Thank you. So I heard no motion there. Motion starts with, I move that, and it's short enough that Rachel can write it down.

Okay. I move, Mr. Mayor, that effective immediately staff, in the time that they can make it happen, open up the temporary closure on East Illinois, Main 240. Second. Second.

All right. It's been moved and seconded. You want to read the motion again there, Rachel?

Yep. The motion was effective immediately as soon as staff can realistically get it done, that they reopen the closure at Illinois Amage.

Is that correct? And keep the trapezoid.

I know that there is more discussion. So who would like to begin? Robin, you had your hand up.

I agree with Elise completely. Well, depending on how this council votes, if we do vote to reopen it, we have an amazing police force. I see them throughout problem areas. I know their speed little counters or whatever, if they can sit and possibly just be there. I don't know how they feel about that, but I know that it definitely changes people's traffic. I mean, it slows people down. So I don't know if that's something that they would be able to do just for a while. So I'm in support of that.

I guess I might add, I would be curious about, are there other, and again, this is like the Transportation Safety Committee, are there other traffic calming measures that could work or be effective, whether it's having our amazing police force spend more time there, or maybe this is an opportunity for another experiment? red light camera situation that we could frankly slow people down from a monetarily standpoint that way if there's a safety concern. And I guess the other piece I just want to put out is I know I highlighted the communication and that is in no way a knock on the incredible work and effort of the city. It is just a pattern that maybe we do need to address from a staffing standpoint, that if there's not the staffing to address the communication that we need to make sure that our residents are hearing what is happening, that is a worthwhile conversation.

The message we've heard loud and clear from TVFNR and also from law enforcement is that the speed bumps can be problematic depending upon where they're deployed. The deployment of speed cameras, however, is a viable solution that would slow down traffic on Illinois traffic. And it's not a hard solution. It would just take some time. But that is a solution. And also, other signage could be deployed to attempt to alert people to the risks of speeding. And some of them will obey. So, yes, that stuff has merit. And I'm not blaming, by the way, I'm not blaming any councillor for the fact that we're understaffed at all. We're all on the same team here. We've just tried to keep the residents' money in their pockets because some of them are struggling. And we've all felt that way. And maybe we lean too far that way. I don't know. But, yeah.

Can you clarify, though, that my motion is still that this goes to Traffic Safety Committee? No, but it still goes to – I'm not saying that this shouldn't be discussed at Traffic Safety Committee. I'm saying that the solution of which Jerry is giving options and Councillor Wheatley is giving options would be discussed at Traffic Safety Committee. Thank you.

I believe that that contradicts what your motion was, which is to tell staff to change it or open it immediately or as quick as they can. So, no, that's not what your motion says. The thing that I would like to remind council of is where we began here. That is an odd intersection that was created 15, 20 years ago, that bulb out there was to slow traffic down coming off of Main Street or off of 240 Head and straight up Main Street. And the problem was that it created a site problem for the people who are on Illinois trying to turn left. And a lot of times, there are double stop signs there, so they'll pull through the first one so that the next car on Main Street can't get in front of them, and then that blocks the intersection. Anybody that tries to come off of 240 can't go because that person is blocking the intersection, especially if he's pulling a trailer. Our staff solution was to spend $400,000 on a study. And this council authorized that study to be done. And that study was begun. And we spent over $100,000. And if you paid attention to it, where they were going is exactly where we knew they were going to go. They were going to design a roundabout for that intersection. And to do so, they were going to have to take out two or three homes to do it. So not only are we, so I guess what I want to know from council, are you trying to tell the city that we're going to go back to what it was with no improvements? Are we, well, all right. So yeah, I've said enough. Thank you. So the motion once again is Rachel.

So I'm going to clarify because there was some confusion from what I heard on the motion. I think what I heard you restate. So for the minutes, I want to try and clarify it and make sure we have it right. Okay. So I heard that a move to effective immediately reopen Illinois at the intersection with Main Street and keep the traffic safety decision involved.

Is there any further discussion on that motion?

I hear that Councilor Yarnell-Halleman maybe didn't feel her motion was heard correctly, and I want to make sure I've got it right for the record. Can you clarify?

That a solution is crafted by Traffic Safety Commission at the upcoming meeting and however long they want to create that solution to come back. That's what I said when I gave my long-winded that you got mad about. So yes, so both. It opens now. The solution comes from Traffic Safety Commission.

Well, perhaps I can wordcraft it to make it simpler. Does that sound good? Okay. So moving effective immediately to reopen Illinois at the intersection with Maine and that a long-term solution be addressed by the Traffic Safety Commission.

Should we go through the process of... The first motion was moved and seconded. Are we retracting that motion and restating it in this new fashion?

Okay, for you, Bill, I will retract my first motion and I move what city recorder Rachel Thomas just read as my motion. Can I please have a second? Second.

All right. It has been moved and seconded. Rachel, one more time.

All right. The motion is to effective immediately reopen Illinois at the intersection with the main and that a long term solution be addressed by the Traffic Safety Commission.

Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed nay. Nay. Motion passes. Thank you, everybody. This meeting is adjourned.