City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to the 04/13/2026, Toowalton City Council Work Session. Our first item on the agenda tonight is our Police Services contract with Durham. The discussion may live by the Chief of Police, Greg Pickering. Welcome, Chief. Well, evening, Mr. Mayor and Counsel. I am Chief Pickering with the Toowalton Police Department. Here tonight just to give

a brief overview of our the police services that we do provide to the City of Durham as we have began the contract negotiations at the as we will be the five year contract that we currently have, we are in our final year. So just a brief history. So Towalton began providing police services to the city of Durham on 07/01/1989. The original contract was for thirteen hours a month for $41 an hour. Obviously, since 1989, there's been a few changes in the contract.

And so tonight, just a brief overview of where we are today and what we do provide. So the current contract, right now, the compensation is the salary and benefits of a mid level officer. So using the span of officers in the police department, Don and Finance, we use a mid level officer and officer right currently that's at step right current contract is an officer at step four. The discussion for the new contract is we an officer that's at step two going to step three. That also includes a 10 overhead costs.

That's to help cover the cost of the vehicles, the uniform equipment and other supplies that, that officer would utilize in providing the services to the City of Durham. The current contract provides twenty four hour coverage. So it's twenty four hour coverage, seven days a week. It also provides a dedicated supervisor. So one of our supervisors is dedicated to each of the districts of our patrol districts, and we consider Durham as a patrol district in itself.

And so it has a supervisor that is a direct contact for the city of any questions that come up. The contract also covers traffic enforcement and any subsequent follow-up investigations that would come out of any type of call for service that were to arise through the city. So what do they actually get from that? So in their current contract, what they get is a full service police department. Obviously, the contract is for one officer for twenty four hours a day.

But most calls, as you know, calls for service are more than one officer response. So we treat them as though they're just a portion of the city of Twalton. So they get a full service police department. That includes patrol coverage twenty four hours a day, traffic enforcement, investigative support, so any investigative support that would come from either our detectives units or any other units that may be required. It also includes our school resource officers as children who live in Durham attend to Walton schools, so they do get the services of our school resource officers attend as well as administrative coverage.

So obviously the command staff, our records division, we also do their alarm permitting. So the contract does not cover code enforcement. So we do not do code enforcement for the City Of Durham, they handle that themselves. So again, as I said before, the City Of Twalton is broken up into three patrol districts for the City Of Twalton and then the small little orange up in the corner is the City Of Durham. We consider Durham as a District four.

We do that for statistical purposes so that we can pull out stats that we need to. We do provide Durham with a monthly report and then an annual report at the end of the year that I provide to their council. So this allows us to gather those stats that we need for that purposes. If we don't have four officers working as you know our patrol minimums are three officers at any one time, we actually take Durham and lump that into our District one. So our District one officer would cover the one district, which is pretty much the East Side Of I-five as well as the city of Durham.

So as we get ready to move forward, just quickly kind of where we're looking right now. So the Durham's contract again for 2025, this is for last year. We serviced seven zero one calls in the city of Durham, is an average of about 58 calls per month. There was 98 traffic stops that occurred within the jurisdiction of Durham, equates out to about eight a month. And there was 24 arrests of individuals in the city of Durham, roughly about 2% or two a month, which that all equates to about 3% of the total workload of the Toowalton Police Department.

So that's really what I have for a presentation really just to kind of give you an idea of where we are, where we've come from since July 1989 to the services that we do provide today. And again, really what this is about is to see if there's any questions or comments or concerns as we move forward in looking to renew the contract with the City of Durham.

Christopher Chief? Vice President Pratt?

Is it okay to ask what a mid level officer with benefits would make?

Yes, right. So the what it equates to right now is it's just a little over $200,000 of salary benefits including

And the you 10% that of

10% for the

So that's with the 10%.

That's with the 10%. Yes. Okay. Because I mean, just did some quick math, but your part of the budget is about $10,000,000 so that would be about $300,000 if we just did a 3% straight across the board.

Yes. So it's about 3% of the just it's like 2.71% of the call Okay. And it works out to about 2.14% of our annual budget.

Yes. So they're getting a deal, but they're a good neighbor, right?

They're a good neighbor and they're yes. Other questions?

Councillor Brooks.

Thanks for the information. I'm not going to make any jokes about the school children. That's I'm refraining myself. The question that I have has Durham been happy with their level of service with us?

Yes. And I have frequent conversations with the City Manager, Jordan. They're very happy with the service that we do provide. Like anybody else, they look at their bottom line of their budget and of course their conversations around how do they continue to pay for this, the service that they do get. I can say that they have reached out to the Sheriff's Office and other agencies to look what it looks like and they know that they're getting a good deal with DeWalton and they're very happy with the service that we do provide them.

All right. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't true, but thank you very much.

You bet. Other questions or comments? I just agree with Council President, Pratt. It seems to me they're getting a pretty good deal based on the rate and had lunch with the Mayor Durham just last week and he seemed very pleased. Of course, we'd like to get a better deal, but said no.

But there was no complaints from Durham about the service and I think they are getting a fantastic deal given that they are getting a 20 fourseven police department for the cost of one officer. That brings us to our next item on the agenda, our Climate Action Plan update led by Amanda. Welcome, Amanda. Good to see you again.

Good evening, Mayor and Councillors. Great to see you again. This is on. First council meeting, so forgive me if there's any technology issues on my part. My name is Amanda Watson.

I'm the Climate Action Program Manager for the city, and I'm here to provide thanks for having me to share an update on our Climate Action Plan and the next steps. So I'll start with a brief recap of Tualatin's Community Climate Action Plan, which as you know, was adopted in May 2024. And the plan includes both strategies and actions to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and to adapt to a changing climate, which is to help our community prepare for those climate impacts we're already experiencing, right, things like hotter summers and more severe winter storms. So following the plan adoption in 2024, city staff developed an internal or excuse me, an initial two year work plan that said, what are we going to focus on these first two years, outlining the actions the city would implement through the end of this current fiscal year. So the plan goes through June 2026.

The full community climate action plan has seven focus areas, which are these colored bars you see on the screen there, 28 strategies within those focus areas, sort of high level strategies, how do we meet our goals and then 119 individual actions. So it was really important that staff came together to prioritize how are we going to start with this plan. The two year plan included 33 actions, 20 of which that staff identified as being already in progress when that plan was adopted in October 2024. So we were already underway with quite a few actions, which is great. 13 were new, that staff said we can focus on these next 13 in the next two years.

And they covered six of the seven focus areas. The one focus area we didn't touch on was economic shifts, which has just a couple of actions around sort of business preparedness, but certainly covered other areas of preparedness in the two year plan. So how are we doing? Pretty good. It's, I think, good news overall. The majority of actions are completed or underway in this two year plan, which is fantastic. Six are either fully completed or they are ongoing programs that are kind of on track and going to continue to be implemented as we go forward. 20 actions remain in progress. Of the 20 that were already in progress when that plan was adopted, three of them have completed. So we kind shifted a few into the green category and the rest are continue to be underway.

The seven of the actions haven't been started yet, and the majority of those five of the seven are not started because they're related they would have been funded through the charging and fueling infrastructure grant, that federal grant that's been on hold awarded in 2024, but it's been on hold since the Trump administration and paused that program. And so we haven't been able to move those actions. And that was a big part of big focus in that two year plan was wanting to move that work forward. So still on pause there. So the next few slides, I'm going to highlight starting focus area by focus area.

A few of the actions and I won't go into every single one, but I'll share some highlights as we go along. So for the Natural Systems Resources and Infrastructure focus area, three of the actions are in progress and two haven't been started. We're going to plan to work on that first action, 1.1.7, creating park design standards that improve resilience to extreme heat, one of those risks we're already experiencing. We're going to do this in the context of the Riverfront Park project. So it hasn't been started, but it's in our work plan.

We're actually starting right now, we're talking about that. And then 1.1.8, working with TriMet and Ride Connection to increase shelter at bus stops hasn't been prioritized because the city's focus with TriMet has been on service continuity and service expansion right now. So still a priority, but not at this moment. And the other three actions are on track. The next category, health and safety.

Both of those actions remain underway and these are really ongoing areas of work that we'll continue to continue and expand on through work with partners like CERT and County Emergency Management Programs, but we are currently sharing information about shelters and emergency preparedness resources as needed. The next category is building and energies, and one of those actions has been completed and two are in progress. This first one, 4.1.7, the City Council, you actually heard about this in October 2024, and the city developed a water management and conservation plan. One of the pieces of that plan was developing tiered water rates, and the Public Works Department is working on that right now. It's something they're working on this year.

Another really interesting area of work for this goal is a Purple Pipe project. So Public Works is working with Clean Water Services on this project at Tualatin Community Park that will supply clean storm water for irrigation rather than drinking water. So that saves us money and it saves us energy. So that's a really great project. And then finally at this building actually, the micro hydro in pipe project that is final stages, I understand, it's not quite switched on yet, but very close, also kind of meets our water conservation and energy conservation goals.

So super exciting stuff in that goal happening. And then 4.2.1, participate in the SoulSmart program. SoulSmart is a program that recognizes national best practices in supporting solar energy installation in communities, and we actually received SoulSmart bronze designation in January. We have the plaque right outside. So as people come into the space for council meetings, they can see that the city cares about having solar in our community.

And there's more we can kind of continue to implement based on recommendations from that, but we have participated. Unfortunately, And that program is kind of on pause right now, so we got in just under the wire, which was great. The next category, urban, farm and land use. We have three actions in the two year work plan, and all of them are underway. The first relates to work that the Community Development Department is doing to implement state housing mandates, so kind of on track there.

The second one, 5.2.2, updating Tualatin's approved Street Tree list. The Parks Department is leading this work and they're very close to finalizing that as well. So I'm sure you will learn more soon. And then this is a great update because it's Arbor month right now. We are continuing as a city to partner with Friends of Trees. Just had a planting event on Saturday that I went to and I know the mayor was there and something like 100 community members. I know our volunteer services folks will probably be able to share even more about that. But that work is ongoing and we continue to work with Friends of Trees. They're a great partner for our climate work. So the largest number of actions in the plan, the two year plan were around transportation.

Three of those actions have been completed, three are underway, continuing to be underway, and then five are not started. The three that are completed, two of them actually relate to the transportation system plan that was just updated last year. And that plan, that update really aligned with our climate action goals and it looked at promoting lower carbon and active transportation options like electric micro mobility, which is e bikes, e scooters and active transportation. The first one, 6.1.1, again relates to state action. So the climate friendly equitable communities rules and require 40% of parking spaces in new multifamily and mixed use buildings to be wired for EV charging.

And so we updated our code to align with that. So we've completed that as well, which will we will see the impacts of that as new development happens. The five actions, as I mentioned before, that are not started are pending that charging and fueling infrastructure grant. I know you're all very familiar with that, but if we have members of the public who are listening, as a reminder, Tualatin led a consortium of cities, and we received a $15,000,000 grant back in August 2024 from the federal government. But we've been unable to access those funds since then, since administration paused the funding.

Our consultants, Thorn Run, I'm told they expect we'll eventually get that funding. We just don't know when. So we're hoping this is a pause, not indefinite, but just for now. The grant would have helped us hire a staff person coordinate this work. And so we really haven't had the staff capacity to kick start it in the meantime. But I think we can continue to be opportunistic if there's other funding that could support this in the meantime. But that's why these actions, we haven't been able to move them forward yet. The last category, consumption. There are seven actions in our two year work plan in this area, and all of these are in progress. Many of them are ongoing programs.

And so they'll kind of continue to be in progress or we could say they're ongoing. So these are things like our Curbside Compost Program with Republic Services and the Library of Things that's run through our library. For Action updating the Public Works Construction Code to Require Low Emissions Concrete and Asphalt Materials. The Public Works Department is actually just starting this with requiring lower emissions concrete in sidewalk maintenance projects. I believe this is something that you might have heard about recently for the sidewalk maintenance program.

But Public Works just had updated their code and so going forward, they're going to be able to learn from those projects on our sidewalks and see where else we might be able to also use those lower emissions construction materials. So really interesting stuff happening there as well. And finally, two of the actions in that twenty twenty four to 2026 plan were about funding, and they focused on developing sustainable funding for implementing the Climate Action Plan. Both of those have been completed. So the first one was analyzing what options do we have for funding and the second one was implementing those options.

So you received that report from Echo Northwest in February 2025 and then approved three new funding sources based from those in October 2025. Those three were the Pennies for Climate Action Program, which I'll share a little bit more about next. Privilege tax on PGE that increased that electric franchise fee by 0.3. I just received confirmation today that that is showing on folks' bills and as of City of Tualatin tax 0.3%, so that's underway. And then you also approved a 5% increase to the building permit fee.

So we've implemented those first two, and we're still working on the building permit fee increase. We've run into a couple hiccups in kind of how it was recommended. And so we're doing a little more research into that and kind of more to come when we can move that forward. So for the Pennies program, this is a really, I think, an innovative model, a new model for us. And this was a $0.99 optional charge on monthly utility bills that started in January 2026.

Customers can opt out via an online form. And we did a couple of months of public public information through our city channels and bill inserts to let folks know. So what I have in this chart here is what we've received for the revenue and our opt out so far. You can see that people did receive some of that early communication and opted out before the program started if they didn't want to participate. And but people are continuing to opt out.

I think as they notice the charge or have questions, they reach out to me and our billing folks. And so we have seen a few opt outs. Overall, we're still seeing really good participation in this program. So the fees are based on utility rather than each account, it's based on units. So for a multifamily building, there'll be multiple units.

And so I think we have roughly 12,000 units here. So that five thirty four opt outs is less than 5% right now, which is still really, really strong participation, which is good. And we'll continue to monitor both the opt outs and the revenue going forward. And then the PGE program, we receive our franchise fee from them annually, and so we will see the revenue from that 0.3% increase in twenty twenty early twenty twenty seven. So as I'll go into next, we're developing a five year work plan that will inform how we're using this funding.

But broadly, it can go towards things like projects or program implementation, matching funds for grants, staff salaries, that sort of thing. All right. So this two year work plan, as I mentioned, goes through the end of the current fiscal year. So we're now starting on a process to identify what's that next set of actions, right, that we want to focus on over the next five years. So that's roughly 2026 to 2031 if we're looking on a fiscal year basis.

So I wanted to share with you all sort of the proposed process for developing this plan, get your feedback, let you know how I'm hoping to engage you all in this effort. So I'll be engaging with a work group of city staff, with you all, city council, with external partners, advisory committees, and then informing folks in the general public who are interested in this work. So using input from this engagement, these different stakeholders, we'll be developing a set of prioritization criteria that helps us understand what do we care about and therefore what actions should we move forward. So the idea is to develop criteria, we can apply to those 117 actions in the plan, right, to get that short list, right. So we'll apply that criteria to the actions, we'll check what that tells us in terms of results.

Is this the right list? Do we need to revise our criteria? Are we missing something? Is it balanced, right? We'll do kind of that check partway through.

When we have a list of actions, right, based on the criteria, we'll then develop some metrics, performance measures, so that we can understand how are we making progress, we can communicate about that progress going forward. And then finally, finalize, adopt this work plan and then get to implementation. So in terms of who will be involved, as I mentioned, I have a city staff working group across representation from all of our departments, so we can be coordinated and we can provide input internally on that. City Council, I'm hoping to have a few work sessions with you all, right, talking about criteria, doing that review of kind of the draft and then finally adopting our final plan. And then external partners, and this is a pretty big group, right?

We have a lot of different stakeholders that we need to have at the table to implement our Climate Action Plan. It will be things like other government agencies, Washington County, Metro, obviously our utilities, PGE, Northwest Natural, Clean Water Services, as well as businesses. So Toalton Chamber would be a really important stakeholder and our nonprofit groups and community partners, Riverkeepers, Friends of Trees, there's a large group here. And then advisory committees, this is sort of one way that we can get public input on this process without redoing that really robust public engagement work that we did for our CAPP. We got a lot of community feedback to develop the Climate Action Plan.

So we don't want to ask the same questions to the same group of people again. We want to use that feedback, but the advisory committees will help us with this criteria development. And so I'm planning to seek input from T Park, the Planning Commission, the Idea Committee, because their areas of focus really align really closely with our Climate Action Plan, but also to update other if the Library Advisory Committee is interested or other the Arts Committee, if they're interested, I'll also offer presentations and updates to those groups as well. Then finally, general public, more of informing them about this rather than doing extensive community engagement more broadly than the advisory committees. I think that's all that I have on this.

One note on the criteria as well is that I'm hoping to bring hopefully by the time we can have this work session with the City Council, bring an early draft based on the stakeholder engagement we've done so far. But I also I had the pleasure of meeting all of you when I first started, and we had some good conversations. And I have a little bit of a sense of some of those early priorities too, right? I heard from many of you, you want to have some quick start actions that we can use to demonstrate the value and the impact of this work on our community. I heard folks are interested in actions that will have an emissions impact.

So we've already talked a little bit about criteria and we'll definitely dig into that a lot more deeply the next time I'm with you all. So I think that's it. But I'd love to hear what questions or feedback you have about this proposed process to develop our next work plan. And then if you have any questions on the 2024 to 2026 update as well.

Okay. Thanks, Amanda. Questions, comment, feedback for Amanda? Counsel Brooks?

Thanks for the report. Starting with the chargers, I understand that there's a group of cities that have been in they mentioned that the National League of Cities that they're in some kind of legal process together. And I'm just curious if we are with that group or if we know about that.

I know we know about it. I think I'll have have our city attorney remind me exactly our relationship to it.

Yes. Thank you, Counselor. My understanding is that it's there's a federal case that's pending in the Seattle Federal Court, is State of California et al, and that includes a bunch of states, including the State of Oregon, and the Oregon Attorney General is handling Oregon's case the state. That case is pending and we have reached out to a representative at the Oregon Department of Justice. And right now, there are no cities that are part of that coalition of states.

But the states are trying to get one of their prayers for relief is to vacate the pause on CFI funding. If they are successful, they anticipate that that prayer for relief will cover not only the states that are plaintiffs in the action, but any CFI awardee, including local municipalities. And that's the current status as we know it.

Thank you. Appreciate that. And I guess my next question is, as far as criterion go, are we can you help me understand exactly what that means?

Yeah. So the idea is what are some how can we articulate our priorities in terms of what we want to take on? So an example could be emissions impact or cost, right? It's kind of a way of rather than picking the actions we're most excited about, about having some objective set of agreed upon criteria we can use to select among those 117. It's sort of how do we want to prioritize? What's important to us as we think about what we want to take on in the next five years? Does that help?

Yes, it does. I'm just curious too if the one of the things that I'm really interested in seeing throughout is understanding what our baseline is right now from the beginning of the study and understanding effort versus impact into our goal.

Thanks. Yeah, that's definitely important. And we'll definitely get a lot more into criteria. And as I'm preparing for that work session, we can get a sense of what's most helpful for you to kind of set up that in-depth discussion. But yeah, that's a good thing for us to keep in mind.

I appreciate your work and I'm glad that we figured out this three braided funding system and I was bragging about it a little bit and so some leadership might be interested in talking with you. That's awesome. Great. I have heard

from other cities that are really interested in that pennies model. I think we're the only one that I know of, at least among the cohort of cities I talked to in Oregon with that type of climate funding. And so we may see that pop up elsewhere too.

Yes, the EENR committee, and I don't remember all the words for it, but I'll tell you soon. Sounds good, thank you. Thanks.

Other questions, comments?

When we were talking about eleven point seven, the parks and the I forget exactly how you described what we were doing there, but are we also including preserving Hedges Creek, which is one of our only natural creeks that

we have?

My understanding is that is part of the Riverfront Park project. Yeah. That goal was about sort of preparing for extreme heat and how we plan and develop parks so that they're safe places even on hot days and shade and access to water and things like that. But I know that the parks team is looking at habitat management and restoration and invasive species control, all of that as a context of the park too. They're definitely focused on the creek.

Okay. Great. Then excuse me, last one. I think Oh, and then as far as when we were talking about stakeholder groups, I was curious if there's any students in the stakeholder groups because there's a few environmental groups that are involved with the not only the curriculum for our public schools. I know Mitch has a viewpoint, and then, which the mayor is probably stronger at explaining than I am.

And then I know that there's also, like, extracurricular groups at the high school. And then the other one that I was curious about was if there are going to be any like, I get emails from professional groups that are environmentalists and that are regional. So they stem a lot of times from educational opportunities from local universities, work opportunities, and then just different kind of groups that are already available to us here. I'm just curious thinking through something that would include some people that are because it's such a fast moving

Absolutely. Yeah. Would love to connect with both of those. I was thinking youth advisory council for that, but also if you have contacts at school groups that you want to send my way, I'd be happy to connect with them and same thing with professional organizations. I'm still connecting with all of our community groups here, I'm very happy to just let me know who you'd like me to connect with and I'd be happy to make that intro.

All right.

Thanks. Yes.

Vice President Pratt.

Okay. On 1.1.8, I have to give the mayor some kudos because he did get one covered bus shelter for us. Sorry that I missed that.

Kudos, that's great to hear.

One was tough. Councilor Gonzalez, you have something?

Yes. So thank you very much for the updated information. It was very nice to meet with you and talk through some of the things for the Climate Action Plan. My subject is around 5.22, which is the updated to all of them approved treat trees. Yes. And you may not have the answer now, but I'm hoping you will is, who are we working with? I know that there's a lot of surrounding cities that have already done this kind of

work

and to get a head start. So could you share a little bit about if we're working with those cities or look at different cities plan? And if so, what cities?

Yes. I can get back to you on that in terms of specific cities. I know we're working with a consultant. I believe it's Parametrics, unless I'm just remembering that because of Climate Action Plan. I know Morgan Hole And Associates also was in the mix. So my understanding is they would have looked at kind of other cities list. I know when we had a meeting, they talked about Portland's list, for example. But I'll get back to you in the exact list of other ones they consulted. Yes.

Okay. Thank you for that. And in reference to 5.12, the expanding housing variety choice, how is that going? Are we having interest in ADUs throughout our city? Have we had many applicants and interest around that?

That's a good question and you'll have to forgive me. I'll have to get back to you on that one as well. I don't have that off the top of my head. Yeah, I'll talk to your community development folks. Yeah.

Thank you. That's all the question I have for right now. Thank Any

other comments, questions for Amanda? Thanks very much.

Thank you.

All right. So we're a little ahead of schedule and I don't see Joe in the audience. So flip around here and we'll do our council meeting agenda review and roundtable and then give Joe twenty minutes to get here. So on the consent agenda, is there anything glaring at folks that they would like to have something pulled off the agenda the consent agenda tonight? Okay, I'm not seeing any.

I have Councillor Hilliard as the leading the pledge tonight. We have five proclamations, so you each get one So to do the first one I have is Vietnamese American Remembrance Day. Would you to do that one? Okay. You want to do Parkinson's? Older Americans month. Parkinson's? Thank you. The Volunteer Appreciation Proclamation.

And

Kristen gets autism. All right. Now if I can remember all that. What else we got to pledge, we got to attend, we got preclamations. We'll go ahead and start the roundtable and we'll start with our City Manager, Cherilyn.

All righty. Few things. So we are testing the website prelaunch. I know a couple of you are helping us with that. We've got tablets at several of our public counters that we're getting feedback and then we're doing two focus groups at the library, I believe, this Saturday, this weekend.

And so really excited about doing that. The library, speaking of the library, has two significant programs in the coming week. So on Wednesday, this Wednesday at six p. M, the Oregon Humanities Conversation Project is to what do we pledge? And it's associated with the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the of America, and we expect sizable crowd.

And Oregon Humanities Conversation Project is a really intriguing facilitated discussion that if you get a chance to be part of it, I'm sure you would find it worth your while. This Sunday, the nineteenth at 2PM, we're doing music at the hearth. It's this group called Mel Brown and the b three organ group. If you have find them on YouTube, they're really great. And that'll that'll be a good time.

Earth Day is, of course, the April 22. On Friday, the twenty fourth, we're partnering with River Keepers and Friends of Trees at Tualatin Community Park. So that will we have a big contingent of volunteers working on that. Blender Dash is June 6 and that is always a wacky fun time. We've divided it this year into two segments so you can be at the ten or the 10:45 and hopefully it will break down between different aged kids.

And we've got a big contingent of volunteers working on that as well. The water division is sending out backflow notices. It's that time of year again to get your backflow device inspected for the safety of our water system. The pavement maintenance work is set, slurry seal on 50th And Wilkie, Edel out in our business area, 120th Seneca Street, multiple parking lots. And then we've entered into an intergovernmental agreement with Washington County for them to pave Graham's Ferry as a part of their work.

So that's great. The sidewalk backlog project is out for bids. This summer's work plan includes over around 150 locations. And that contract will be on your May 11 agenda with an update from the team. The CDBG funded project at the Juanita Poll Center is underway.

All the JPC programs have been moved to the Van Raiden Center during construction and Sarah and Marilyn have done a great job, been very creative with the space and have been able to keep approximately 9095% of the programs running through construction. The parks team and Kate, our volunteer coordinator worked with a group from Marco Ideas Unlimited to plant 120 pollinator and butterfly friendly plants at Saracen Sarian. Is that how you

say it?

I think it's Sarianen.

Sarianen. Yes. You're right. Know. Sorry. That Wayside Park on April 2, this is of course in alignment with the council goal related to B City programming. And then summer camps have filled up. We have 600 plus youth currently signed up for camp. Just a real quick update on the one hundred and eighth reservoir project, which we're calling resi. It's our own personal nickname.

So on Thursday, this last week, the contractor poured the floor slab for the for the reservoir project, the first of eight large concrete pores for the project. Approximately 500 cubic yards of concrete, about 45 concrete trucks, was poured for this slab foundation. The next big pours will be the wall sections starting in a couple of weeks with most of the reservoir shell to be built in the next few months. So if you drive past there on 108th, take a look at you can see action happening. We're in really close contact with the neighbors, been working really closely with all of them in our communication. That's it.

Thank you. Councillor Gonsaz.

I have no new updates on anything, but I do have a question to City Manager, Sherilyn, in reference to the RFP for the sidewalks. No, it's okay. I do have a question in reference to I'm happy to hear that the RFP for the Centerworks is finally going out. My concern is always around cost that when the RFP is issued out that my hope is that we don't go for the lowest bidder that we go for the correct bid. Similar because we've had contracts increase adjustments often and in my space in the contract world that rarely happens where we eat the cost.

If we bidding correctly with concrete work, it's pretty standard square footage cost and so on and so forth. So my hope is that that contractor comes that contract comes to be an actual cost versus a variance. I'm just trying to plan to see here and we don't know who's going be awarded, but when the time comes, just want to make sure we at least address that.

We are on the same page and the desire to make that happen.

Right. Councilor Brooks.

Thank you, Mayor. All right. So on the where are we? March 25, Council President Pratt Council Reyes and I went to a tour and pre assembly, pre housing assembly meeting over at St. Anthony's and had a really interesting discussion.

It's Council Reyes. Council Reyes will be speaking at that, and I'm sure that Council President Pratt has more to say. On the April 1, I went to the LOC Women's Caucus Board meeting. A lot of what we discussed was our plans for the Pendleton Conference and what we're organizing for our participation in the Pendleton Conference. And there continues to be conversation around women serving.

And I don't even know if I want to but there's an incident recently in Lane County. And I'll just say an aside, also there's information that came through from the National League of Cities about a deputy mayor that was in Coral Gables that looks like victim of domestic violence. And she was very involved with the Black Caucus, the Women's Caucus, her local party, as well as she was an environmental scientist, really young, bright, great lady. And she also did some consulting for the environmental group at the NLC. So there's just that ongoing conversation about how women are feeling serving right now and between intimidated, shut down, and then there's just this other kind of violent stuff.

On to better things. On the April, I attended the TV FNR Community Academy, which was great. I mean, it started at seven in the morning. And we did the whole training, like people have talked about, with the heavy boots and gear. But the real interesting part was the collaborative ideas that the chief has around working with EMS to more laser focus how fire people are going out to calls, especially with people having trouble accessing health care.

And then I went over to our local fire department and went out on calls. I think there were five. I didn't have any horrific experiences. But the first call that came in that we did not go on was a suicide call by gun. So that's another like, this gun violence thing this week has been kinda crazy.

Then I will They were really great and explained so much to me about where they're at and how they're working. I got a chance they're also one of the only hazmat units. They cover all the way out to the coast. And probably many of you know these things, but watching the drill and seeing them set up the fire station and walking through the case study with each other, doing the critique, and also talking about the number of younger service people that are in now and the changeover from the older group of people retiring and after COVID just making sure that we're connecting with our fire department. So I think they really connect really well with our police department and the the TVFNR.

And I think they also would love to feel more integrated into the community somehow. So if people have thoughts on that, let's talk. Then on the eighth, I did the recording for the state of the city like you guys did. And then also attended the regional water providers executive committee where we discussed our plan for the following year. And there was a lot of conversation about water being a limited resource by the professionals and the historic drought that we've had this year that's like the driest drought since a long time ago, I think he said.

I forget what he said. So we tossed around ideas about what we want to talk about in the coming year and with a new director who's delightful. And she's been working there for a long time. And then I was at the PAB meeting the next night, and that was a public hearing for our plan. And if there's any feedback, we did well with that.

And then there was just updates on where everything is at, a discussion about the great job that Lindsay did on the podcast talking about the community development block grants that came here. And it was interesting. And the roundtable was interesting as far as just people going through a lot of changes with staff. And then I just want to do twelfth and Arts Advisory Committee update, which I wasn't able to be at. But there's going to be three new signal box wraps.

And there's location selected now, art selected. So we should be seeing something new in the community in June and as some other community updates but not for this. Thank you.

Councilor Sacco.

Thank you.

So

we had the CCAA last week. We had some great candidates come through for budget and arts committee. And it was, you know, like always, we just have amazing volunteers out there in the community and excited to put those in front of you all in the next couple weeks. And then we have the CAC, where we, reviewed the college student projects and, some of them. We haven't gotten to all of them, but it is, they're amazing.

And, the teams evaluated, elements, that folks liked, didn't like, and and real what really represents Tualatin. So I'm excited to

see what comes out of

those conversations and see how they're implemented into the community. Thank you.

Councilor Hillier.

Thank you, mayor. I have nothing to report at this time.

Council President Pratt.

Thank you. As Councilor Brooks mentioned, we did, a tour of St. Anthony's and they're having an event where, Councilor Reyes will be on the panel and they're focused on coordinating communication at the apartment complexes for emergencies and other things and for helping people on the path to immigration. And the thing I learned is the extraordinary cost it takes to go through that process. Then, oh gosh, the mayor and I went to Estacada, Clackamas County Cities Association dinner, and I got to take him.

We got there early, so we did a tour of the reservoir because he had never been there. That was pretty fun. And they talked about their development. And because they're a small city, they have different issues. Like, they can't get a big grocery store there because their population isn't big enough. So they have different growing challenges than we do. Then they went to the Clackamas County Business Association Mayors Forum, where Mayor Bubinec and I think just about every Clackamas County mayor's

vote.

Two missed.

Two missed, okay. No one's from

Certainly Lake Oswego and Canby. Yeah.

But it was interesting and there were some good questions and it was interesting to hear. There's quite a variety of priorities, so I thought that was very interesting. Then I attended the Legacy Women's Caucus Board meeting, which was very interesting. And then the CAC meeting that Councilor Sackam mentioned and starting to go through those architectural studio projects was really, really it was fun, I guess. Then I went to Clackamas County Coordinating Committee and we got to hear about the County Local Workforce Board and they're a resource Clackamas County to help people with employment workforce training.

And they try to focus on workforce training for jobs that are needed in the county. Like health care is a big one. And they go through everything, like even helping people prepare resumes and train to do interviews and the whole works. Then on the sixth, the mayor and I attended the R1 Act meeting, which suffice it to say, think that was the least productive meeting I've been in in a long, long time.

And then,

oh yeah, the CCAA, we had a couple of candidates and like counselor Sacco said, we're always so impressed with the quality of people we get and their enthusiasm to be on the committees.

You. Thank Early in the month, I had the two meetings with our County Chairs. On the Clackamas County side, Chair Roberts gave a heads up that Clackamas County's budget is severely crunched this year even more than last year. So we'll probably see some cuts in County Services in Clackamas County. There was questions about the levy, I think it's the levy for the Clackamas County Sheriff and especially when it comes to the sheriff's responsibilities in cities.

So there's some discussions going on there how to better present that to the public. And then he finally mentioned Mayor Wilson of Portland's request of Clackamas County for some several million dollars to help out City of Portland where there are housing issues and the Chair basically mentioned again his budget situation and that they probably were going be too amenable and several days later Clackamas County did turn down the City of Portland for that request. On the Washington County side, Chair Harrington mentioned that this week the library IGA is supposed to be going to the commissioners for their review and comments and that it should be heading should come back to them in May. And then once they've approved it in May, it will come out to city councils to then approve. So look forward to that.

She also mentioned that the City of Portland's request for Washington County of their several million dollars and asked for our opinions. She listened to those and then Washington County also voted against sending Washington County money to the city of Portland for homeless services. Our one act total waste of time, mentioned that today to coordinating committee, Mayor Hu of Tigard put a great word. He mentioned that he'd love to get those two hours back of his life, because it was my opinion was a waste of time. We were supposed to pick on 10 additional projects for the CIP for ODOT.

We went round and round. We got to six projects that we're going to add to the CIP for ODOT, but then a motion was put out to reverse that decision and start all over, which was approved. So now we'll spend the next several months hopefully coming up with the additional list of 10 additional projects on the top five required ones that we all did agree on for the region one.

Was that confusion if it was supposed to be project types or

actual projects? It was total blood. On Saturday, attended the Arbor Day Friends of Trees event over in Browns Ferry Park. I want to thank Carpenter Forbes, PGE, the ECIO and the Girl Scouts for helping out each in their own way. We had financial help from the ECIO who helped purchase the 1,200 plantings that went in that day on three different areas of the park.

We had some very eager Girl Scouts that helped me plant the Mayor's Tree. It's a was it a creek birch, river birch, especially one of the birches that's not susceptible to the bug, Creekside Birch. I want to thank Tom and the parks crew that were out there helping out and Jackie and Kate were out there.

It was good to

see Jackie in post retirement. The funny thing about the Girl Scouts is that the Mayor's Tree was supposed be planted by PGE and the Girl Scouts, but the Girl Scouts were having no part of that. They wanted to go and we did it. So that was a lot of fun. Today, we had the Washington County Coordinating Committee, TriMet presented their service cuts revisions.

So they're going to have a 5% cut for this upcoming fiscal year, which will they're more likely will go in effect in August 26. Their board is having the second reading of the cuts on the twenty second, assuming they're all going to go through. Fiscal year 2028 cuts will be approved and implemented by August 2027 and it's additional 5% cut to TriMet's budget. They did mention the adjustments they made for the Line 97 here in Toowalton that we share with Sherwood that that line will be retained, but combined with Line 38 that goes through Lake Oswego, it will still stay as a peak hours only bus. I did ask about the progress on the discussions with Smart, on our other bus lines and they could not tell me that yet.

We have to go back to Tom Mills because I guess he's leading that discussion on where we're at with Smart providing that dual service with TriMet when TriMet is not running here in town. They also presented on the Metro future vision engagement. So Metro is going through their fifty year vision plan. They are going through their update and I was having flashbacks on my Twalton tomorrow days where they're trying to galvanize partners to work towards their goals, which is a big thing that we did here in Twalton and mostly the partners who are responsible for getting a lot of our things done in addition to the city. They have 23 members across the region, part of this future committee, Mayor Beach Pace is a member of the committee representing Washington County Mayors.

They have looked at the different cities previous work in terms of visions and we'll build upon that and try not to redo things we've already done. They're hoping to have this whole process completed by May '27, the vision update. Last item on the Coordinating Committee was the Metro Regional Transportation Demand Management Strategy. It's kind of interesting presented to the coordinating committee, but they're going to approve it on April 16 at JPAC. And what it is, I had to dig into it because I'd never heard of it before.

This thing has been in progress for two years since October 2024 and is a strategy to resolve demand for driving alone and encourage use of shared transportation options in the metro region, which sounds great. So what they're trying to do is improve system performance, increase reliability and equitable options and the piece I'm really interested in is once they adopt this strategy they will then start on a three year work plan to support this strategy. And again that part of the thing is buses, vans, getting people out of their cars and I know in JPAC we're going to bring up and Mary Dillon and I discussed the JPAC strategy for Washington County is to look beyond the Metro region. We have a lot of folks coming from Yamhill County, Marion County, driving down I-five and Metro really doesn't look beyond its borders. So we encourage them to look at that and we'll strategize on getting those folks into vans, buses, who knows one day maybe light rail, who knows.

And then last thing today, attended the aging task force. They're looking to grow their membership. They're looking to take on some more task in the coming year. So it's basically a check-in with them. They're going to formalize how they add people to the committee. So it's pretty interesting and we met in the Van Rating Center which haven't been in for a while because the Poll center being closed. All right. So with that, we're done with the council roundtable. I see Clean Water Services now here in full staffing. So come on up, Joe and Kathy.

And this is a Clean Water Services presentation on rates. It's terms red. There you go. Thank

you, Mayor and Counsell. Sorry, we were out in the hall. Didn't realize. Were early. So anyway, we're slightly behind where we thought. I'm Joe Gahl, I'm the Chief Utility Relations Officer for Clean Water Services. I was here a few months ago and we're back. We said we'd come talk to you about rates and the cost of service study. So I brought Kathy Leader, our Chief Financial Officer is gonna be the person that's gonna give the presentation and is certainly the subject matter expert. But Rick Shanley, our Interim CEO GM for a few more weeks is also here to answer any questions for you as well.

So we have about ten, twelve slides. If there's something on the slides that pops out that you want to have a question, please don't wait until the end. Okay. We want this more to be a conversation. Just All talking at you. So with that, I will let Kathy go.

Thank you, Jeff. Good evening, Mayor. Welcome. New Jersey Castle. Clean Water Services provides the regional sanitary sewer and storm water services for customers in the city of Twalet. So today we're going to talk a little bit about our rate projections forecasting in this year ahead. So we're going start out first talking about our historical rate increases that we've done at the district. And then we're going to give an update on the cost of service allocation process that we recently finalized at the district. And key to that is defining then these regional and local services that we provide for the customers in our area. And then finally, we're going to update the ten year rate forecast for the group.

So Clean Water Service has a history of modest and predictable rate increases. This graph here is showing you the combined sanitary sewer and storm water rate for an average customer, customer that clean water services bills. So it has the regional and local component to it. So over that ten year period, we've had about average annual 3.38% increase in the rate over that period of time. For the cost of service study, this was a request of our Board and actually the member cities.

The last time we had done a study was back in 2008 and there was a concern that the service levels had changed not only within each of our utilities, but also with regional and local services. So we started that study update in 2021 and it was a comprehensive review of all the different departments and programs within the district and how they allocate their time, the different utilities and regional services. We hired Bartell Wells and Associates to kind of finish up that cost of service study and help us with the ten year financial plan and rate projections just recently, just finished it in February 2026. As part of the study, it did reveal what was thought that the local rates that we were charging were not covering the local program for both the sanitary sewer and storm water programs. So going forward, you're going to see some different rate differentials between what we're doing rate increases on regional versus local services.

And finally, customer study is the basis of our long term plan and rate development for the district going forward. So three main objectives of the cost of service study was first, we wanted to review and update how costs are allocated between the sanitary sewer and storm water program and also the regional and local services within them. We've used that information then to prepare a ten year financial plan where we are the goal of that was to meet our annual operating debt and capital needs to correct that local service area funding deficit that was there and then ensure that the Clean Water Services is maintained for sufficient reserves to operate effectively. And finally, this plan was then used to do some calculation of rates and looking at impact on customer bills. Clearwater services are going to those rate increases are going to vary across the area.

So what you see here is a map and the green area outlined in black, that's Washington County. And inside of there you see those blue areas, those are the customers that we provide the regional service to and they build the customer directly for the regional remitted to clean water services and they have their own local program. So that would be Twalet and Forest Grove, Cornelius, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tiger and Sherwood. They do the regional. We provide regional service for them.

The light gray brown area, that is the area that Clean Water Services bills directly and we provide both the local service and the regional service to those customers. And that's urban unincorporated areas of Washington County and then the cities of Gaston Banks, North Plains, Durham and King City. So when we talk about this regional versus local service, this gives you an idea for the regional services, we provide those to all of the customers in Washington County. And it relates to constructing, operating, maintaining the treatment plants, sewage pump stations, the pressure lines and convenience lines 24 inches and larger. And on the storm water side, the compliance reporting oversight for the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and PEDS permit, including the municipal separate storm sewer system, MS4.

And also the results in maintaining minimum stream flows throughout the region and service area restoration enhancing of stream corridors as that regional component. On the local side, so for those customers we provide local services to, it's providing that design, build, maintain and repairing store lines 21 inches and smaller, also like cleaning and inspecting lines. And then on the storm water side, it's designing, building, maintaining and repairing local storm water facilities and street sweeping program, maintaining water quality facilities and cleaning the catch basins and water quality manholes. So this graph here is showing you for the regional rate for both the Sanitary Sewer and storm water for a average residential customer. Rates that currently in fiscal twenty twenty six, the combined rate is $49.39 And right now, fiscal twenty twenty seven, these are the proposed rates that we are going to be putting into our budget document developing for the 2027 budget year.

It was a 4% increase. It resulted in $1.97 an additional fee on a monthly basis to a residential customer. And as you look out in the outer years, when you're going '28 on, those are projected rates based on a current plan of capital spend and our operating. But every year we go in and we update those operating numbers, we look at our capital program and we would adjust accordingly. So those are just projected numbers at this point.

But currently it's 4% on all out years for regional service. And just for an awareness, we do very responsive to containing costs and in this past year as you may have remembered, we had projected, we planned a 4% rate increase. We ended up getting approved a 3% and the Board had asked to go back and find $1,800,000 in savings, which we did through some of the positions that we did not fill in the year. We also in the '27 budget, we've added no new FTE and part of our capital program of that five year period, we leveled out capital to kind of help with the maintaining the rate, no rate spikes. So this is a graph of the operating the costs related to regional sewer.

And so the bars are the operating maintenance, debt service and capital plant projected by year 2026 through 2035. And the dotted line is the revenue we project with the rate increase we're proposing at 4% per year over that period. As you can see from the graph, we show a slight deficit through fiscal year thirty and then we begin to recover some of those costs beginning in '31 with these plan rate increases and existing spend. This is also showing you there too the impact of dollar amount impact by year for that program. Similarly, this is the regional charge for surface water.

And once again, 4% per year over that ten year period and then it's showing you the dollar impact per month for an average residential customer. It's mapping out the operating debt and capital costs and the dotted line showing you that revenue forecast over that period with those rate increases. And we do show with that 4% we're covering costs in all years in that program. So one of the big drivers for us is capital, capital spend. And so what we're showing you here is this is coming from our capital improvement plan, the five year plan, and it's showing in the current, so 2026 through 2031, we plan to spend $754,000,000 in capital projects, 90% of those are regional.

So a significant portion of our rate is regional backed and 10% is local. And similarly for the surface water management, over the current next five years, we're planning to spend $11,700,000 in capital projects, 76% of those are regional, 24% local. So once again, regional is our larger program and spend. Yes.

Can you just give me an example of what the capital projects would be?

Do you want to share with us?

Do the sanitary program? The

slide right before this.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We're completing, there's construction at Forest Grove. We're building primary clarification out there in part to help with the new copper limit. One of the big projects is actually at the Durham Advanced Facility, which is close to here.

We're building new digesters, which are necessary for our solids treatment process. So that one is more of a capacity driven project. And there's an awful lot in conveyance projects. So we recently completed we did an East Basin master plan, which you are all in, and then we completed the West Basin plan, which showed some significant needs for capital spending on the conveyance part as well. So there's some trunk line projects as well as some pump station projects that are driving those.

And some around here?

Yes. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, you're welcome.

I think there's at least two if not three pump stations that are either in design or going to be in construction down in Salt Creek just to serve the Tualatin area.

You. I forgot we're supposed to be asking during,

so You can You can work.

Will you please go back

to Slide 11? I'm just curious if the digester and the projects that you're talking about right now, it looks like FY '31 that maybe you're saving up for some things that are coming in '32 potentially with the projected income there. I'm just curious, that true? I mean, I know that I would guess that agencies like yours have to plan ahead for all the replacement and all those things. So I was just curious.

And when you

yes, and when you see as we roll out the full Sani and Swim that there's reserves being spent. So the idea being in in after year five, we start to build back up some of the reserves that we spent on these projects.

And so it's the projects that Councilor Brooks asked about that, yes.

Yes. And some of the some of what you're seeing in the dollars and the out years, I would we flattened correct me if I'm wrong, Kathy, but we kind of flattened on today's dollars, we're averaging about $120,000,000 So those are escalated costs. So when you go out five years and you escalate 3% for inflation, that's

part of

why you're seeing bigger numbers in the out years. The others are some of the bigger conveyance projects and the pump stations that we initially thought might have to happen sooner, but growth has slowed down some. So we every year, we spend a lot of time trying to get our crystal ball as close as possible. And so we'll evaluate those each year again and see where they land.

Awesome, thank you. And I know this is a little bit separate than the budget, but I just want to make sure I understand that each of these projects benefits, like I don't speak your language exactly, I apologize, but each of the projects that you're speaking about, we're interconnected, right? Like what happens for local or regional, we're all interconnected and it supports us all. So we're all supporting for ourselves and our neighbors. Is that

true? Yes. Correct. Thank you. Watershed based approach.

Thank you.

Mayor, I do have a question as well. I also forgot that we have to need to ask questions along the way. So thank you so much for this update on and I know we're still going through it. Can you share a little bit with me about the human element? I'm more concerned about not even a concern, but can you share a little bit about your employee retention and training program because those add heavy cost, especially when the heavy equipment kind of projects. That's question number one. And number two, I'm sorry, the safety record of Clearwater Services.

I think our well, we have a robust safety program. I think our safety record is excellent with respect to that. As far as retention and training, we have budget wise, we've kind of flattened that from last year to this year. So we're feeling like we're in a good spot, but there are significant dollars that's really important for not only retention, but for recruitment as well. I think there are certain areas that are really hard to find people and particular some of the technical areas and so we have to be competitive and make sure we've got good programs that we can advertise.

We have leadership programs, leadership cohorts every year that we've that our internal staff and and they move through the program and and mentorship programs. Am I answering your question though? I'm not sure.

So I I I was gonna clarify. So Okay. Thank you for that information. Yeah. With With rising cost everywhere, employment is probably one of the highest cost. Maybe you can get back to me on the retention percentage that your organization has because that also leads to future cost and because training is the most expensive thing we have to do is we have to retrain somebody, a new person over again. Probably small numbers, but I also want to get down the record on what your training looks like. It looks like you have a good growth trajectory for a good career for people. So that of course hopefully would help for safety and culture and those kind of things. But I would be very interested to know what that retention and the training and safety record for. And

do track those numbers, we have metrics.

Yeah, wonderful. Okay. Well, thank you. I look forward to that information. Okay. You bet.

So this is the slide that I mentioned before. So this is total costs for sewer and storm water, regional and local. So this is mapping our whole utility operation over that starting 2026 through 2035. It's showing you then the lines that are the expenditures and then the dotted line is the revenue collection based on rate increases. And when you look at 2026, we are anticipating we're going to spend about $30,000,000 in our reserves as we've got some of these big capital projects that are in construction mode right now.

And similarly, we do right now, we're mapping that we're going to be spending reserves through 2031 with the rate increases that we're proposing. And in outer years, we'll see it'll above the line will go above the operating expense and that's when you're going to start replacing some of those reserves that were spent earlier on to get to our target reserves in that time period. And this is the other side of that, so this is our reserves. So the blue line is reserves starting in 2026 through 2035, the dark line is our target reserves and we do show that over that period through 2030, we would be spending down some of our reserves, 2031 for operations and then we start to build those back up with the rates, hopefully kept it more level predictable amount over time with inflation. And next steps for us, so tomorrow, April 14, we are going to the Board and they're cost allocation methodology that was the basis of our forecast and rate development and also our reserve policy.

So both of those are going to the Board tomorrow. On April 20, the proposed budget for fiscal twenty twenty seven where we talk about that rate, the rates for 2027 will be built into that budget. Document will be out for public view on Monday, April 20. And then on May 8, have our budget committee meeting, where they will review the proposed budget, amend and approve a budget that goes then for a public hearing with our Board on June 9, where they'll consider adoption of the Board and the rates at that time too for one year. And those rates would be adopted July 1 for the fiscal year 2027.

And just for an awareness, so we currently have a utility billing feasibility study that's going on and a key part of that study is an ask that we look for ways that we could provide an option for emergency assistance or customer assistance program for the customers throughout our Washington County. There is served by the regional only customers and the regional local.

Just wanted to put a plug. If you've not had a chance to tour any of our facilities, the Durham facility, which serves Tualatin close here, there's a couple actually three opportunities, Saturday, May 16, Friday, June 12 and Wednesday, July 8 for any member of the public that wants to tour the facility, any of the counselors, others. I think we have a big group of Tualatin folks staff coming in May to tour Durham who have not been through the treatment facility. That's really where you get a sense of how we do things and why things are so expensive in terms of capital projects. I was very amazed when I joined in terms of how these projects, the clarifier, how what is a clarifier, first of all, and how expensive is a new one and it's always much more expensive than I ever imagined.

So we wanted just to put that opportunity for education about what we do for you and members of the public. And then I think we'll open it up to any questions you might have.

Questions? Council Brooks and Council President Fratt.

I had two questions. I'm going to do my easy question first, easy for me to articulate question first is, can you talk about since we're looking at doing Purple Pipe project, I remember doing the presentation on the question

think

give the Purple Pipe project so that people the can understand it and why it helps the whole regional system.

I'm looking at you.

I'll be

taking the course. Yeah.

Purple

Pipe, recycled water. We are recycled water is a big component of our compliance strategy. So at one point in time, we were doing this dam raise that became extraordinarily expensive and we're not doing that. So one of the real keys to thermal compliance is recycled water. We're fortunate we have a lot of recycled water out of our Durham plant and we are looking to expand and continue to grow that program as much as possible.

We're always looking for partnerships with cities. HOAs have approached us for some things and certainly the ag community as well. So it's a win win in a variety of ways. It's very sustainable. It's cost effective for compliance.

And we are in the process of completing a recycled water master plan that helps us develop the strategy to implement that. So we know how much we can meet compliance needs as well as we've created some tools to help us define the value of recycled water because it can be expensive especially in the urban centers. But when you look at all the environmental benefits and the compliance benefits, it is very cost effective and having a tool that actually puts numbers to that is something we're going to be utilizing a lot as we evaluate all the different projects.

And I think I know what you're going to say in a second potentially.

Oh, well, if I can interject the we'll be in front of council at the next council meeting, April 27, with an intergovernmental agreement with Clean Water Services for the Purple Pipe project. And so we'll have a presentation about what it means going into community park, the new Riverfront Park and the Lake Of The Commons I believe.

Yeah.

Which is very exciting and Charleston Country Club is a customer of ours. They use recycled water to irrigate the golf course.

Great. So that was my first question. I'm looking forward to that presentation. Thank you. And I'm also curious when we have that conversation about innovations around recycling water since it's a big conversation right now with the larger conversation around data centers, etcetera.

The other question I had was the when we're doing new development in the Salt Creek for instance, is there like a breakdown that we can understand about how the tax system goes because we have those development building development taxes. What do we call that? Yeah, SDCs and those kind of percentages and how that affects what the rate payers are paying. Is there information on that maybe they could even send or?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. Currently the SDC that we I don't have it in front of it's 7,300 something. But it's split 90 six-four, 96 regional 4% local. But jurisdictions have the ability to set their own rates to cover their local program And we are actually in the process of updating those SDCs now that both of the East and West based master plans are completed. That's our next project now that we've gotten the cost allocation and rate projections done. We're start the SDCs.

Okay, so you have your own SDC and we have our own SDCs and so you wouldn't tell us how we compare to other cities or if we're covering what we should be with ours?

You might have your own. I don't know if you guys do any own. Okay. No, they probably charge our rate, this component of local and regional and the regional is set remitted to us and the local stays with the city for their projects.

But I will

say because we get those questions often from cities and developers. It's time for us to look at our STC methodology. It's been a long time and after this project that's the next heavy lift that we'll be working with all the cities. Community.

And do you think when we go through that, it will change any of what we just saw?

I mean, it could if development happens and the SDCs collected in and if the rate went up and a larger portion was going to new development and development was happening, yeah.

Okay. And then my final question is about I think that the quality of our treatment centers and the whole fact that we have this one basin is just an amazing opportunity that we have here and had a lot of great planning and foresight, which I don't always think is going on with every single thing, like maybe transportation. So but at the same time, I'm just curious because I understood that there's maybe some increase in things that you don't want in the water, toxins or whatever, from further up the channel of our river. Then I also just want to hear what you want to say about that. And then I also want to thank you for taking good care of our river as we're doing all these improvements on the river and helping our city face more forward to the river.

So I just want really appreciate that from I think we're the only city that has a downtown that's on the river of the river basin.

And you'll be able to get to it easier

to park.

Yeah.

And see that it's there. But I'm just curious about that increase of

I guess one avenue I would point out is we do have a natural systems group. They spend a lot of time looking at the watershed as a whole and what we can do with the tributaries and other impacts to partner with other groups and try to really do the best things that we can do beyond just building hard infrastructure. We love our Durham plant, we love that you're coming to tour it. But anything that we can do to enhance water quality in other ways with tree shading and those types of things are really important. Does that Yeah.

Yeah. I would like and then I would just like to know about the increase specifically. So I'd love to get some information about that and maybe like top 10 things we could do to help protect our river.

I see.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Could do that.

Thank you. And my name is Bridget.

Okay.

Thank you. Council

President Pratt.

Hi. I'm gonna go back to a prior issue. Counselor Brooks and I both had the opportunity to go out to your Jack's Bottom and get the training. It was fascinating. Of all, what a mess our river system I mean, raw sewage was dumping in our rivers before Clean Water Services was formed.

And secondly, that how much our river depends on the storm water runoff from your system and the need to have a robust system. But a year or so ago, there was some bad press. I know we had asked about the possibility of billing being separate, like through Clean Water Services instead of the city. And is that just something you do with

the local

communities that you serve?

Correct. Part of this utility billing feasibility study, that will be a question to ask. And the consultant, they'll be going out to all the member cities and all other stakeholders, asking certain questions, trying to find how we ways we could bill. Pros and cons, risks.

What it would cost? Yeah. But one of the alternatives is what if we took over all the billing and we didn't partner with the seven large cities. And what would that look like? What are the pros and cons? What would it cost?

Things like The

other is, okay, if we're gonna continue to partner with the cities, can we improve that that situation compared to what it's been done?

It needs

to be

looked at. And we should have results of that study by fall of

this year.

Great. And then on your second slide, you were showing the 3.38% increase over And the 10 that was for regional or no, that was for local. And I was wondering if regional was comparative. Yes.

And so that was a combined regional local, that's the total rate increase. But previous to this date, we always increased each component regional local the same percentage.

Okay. So it

would be the same number. And this is a change going forward that there would be a different rate for local versus

That's the big methodology change. Yeah. It's actually going in and right sizing the so we're getting the right revenue for program. That's

where you're going

to see a shift a little more on the local side.

Let me make it real for where we are. King City residents, assuming that our rate increase gets approved, they will see a 6.4% increase because the local rates need to go up. And they will actually see over the next four to five years fairly high percentage increases because the local is not governance costs. So their fee their rates are going to continue to go up at a higher rate than I think what we propose for regional rates for Tualatin. Now your regional rate, you put your local on top of that. So we don't have that figure in there to

No, got you. You're doing your regional portion of it. Yeah. Just that your 3.38% is really close to what salary increases were over that time. So the four percent is a little hard, but I'm really glad that you're looking at assistance for the people. Some people really struggle and it's harder and harder. So I'm glad you're having looking at a program like

that.

And we always remind folks to look at the actual costs, not necessarily just the percentage because that 21% for the local sewer is a pretty big number that people are focused on and that translates to $2 a month for the average right there. And that all adds up. So even if it's $4.5 a month for CWS, that's on top of your PGE bill and your Northwest Natural bill And and your water any increase is very difficult It's in today's

really tough for everybody. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Other questions? I just have two and Councilor Pratt took away one of mine was about the effort on billing, Clean Water Services takes it over and takes it away from the cities or does a better job of compensating cities for billing. Most

of

your all your slides focused on residential. What's going on with commercial?

It would be the same, but EDU based, you write equivalent dwelling unit. So, same rates.

So same rates.

Same rates, but it did.

Commercial is not seeing a higher or lower, about the same.

Yes, same rates.

All right. Those are my two questions. Anything else? All right. Appreciate you coming out tonight.

Thank you as always.

Thank you.

Great to see you.

All right. Right. With that, that wraps up the work session agenda for tonight. So we're wrapping up a little early. We'll go ahead and recess the work session. We'll call back into session at 07:00 with our normal city council meeting and where we're gonna have we have a lot of our volunteers out in the hallway with volunteer appreciation and other things on our agenda. So we'll be back at 07:00.