City Council - Regular Meeting

I would call our meeting of August 10th to order and as always we'll start with a flag salute. Please lead us in.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So good evening. Can we have a roll call please?

Councillor Cornwell. Present. Councillor Bravo.

Present.

Councillor Schaub. Here. Councillor Wilk.

Here.

Councillor Cantu. Here. Councillor Grijalva. Presented. Mayor Lonergan.

Here. Thank you. Moving on to announcements and appointments. Start with announcements.

Okay, so we have several regarding the Fiesta that's coming up. First, the Show and Shine Fiesta Coronation and Car Show at the Downtown Plaza will be held on Friday, August 14th from 4 to 7 p.m. And then the Fiesta Mexicana Celebrating Family and Culture will be August 21st through the 23rd at Legion Park. And the Fiesta Parade will be on that same weekend, Saturday, August 22nd, starting at 11 a.m. And we will also have an All-America City Float for the counselors and the mayor at the parade. And then we have several school district announcements regarding back to school. Kindergarten Jump Start is August 17th through the 20th. Ballard sixth grade jumpstart is August 20th. First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth grades and success students start August 31st. All students K through 12 are back to school on September 1st and preschool starts on September 8th. Woodburn School District is providing all school supplies for all students for the 2026, 2027 school year. Thank you. Yes.

My understanding on the Saturday of the Fiesta, which I believe is the 22nd, around 2.30, the National Civic League is going to be making a formal presentation for the All-American City Award and Recognition. So obviously the entire council is invited. The entire city is invited to the All-American reception. It's a very big deal. We're very proud of it. It's not just a council award. It's not just a staff award. It is a complete community award, something that the people have been working on for years yet. We're very proud of it.

When is that again, Fred?

It is about 2 o'clock on the Saturday afternoon of the fiesta, the 22nd. 2-2.30, give or take the end of the parade and other things that go on there. And Councilor Wilk finishing lunch. We do not have any appointments. I have gotten several city council speaker cards, and several of them have mentioned item 5C that they want to discuss. Item 5C is Mill Creek Community Center that we're going to be having part of a presentation. And I'm not sure that is what really some of the people wanted to speak. A couple have been mentioned, the data center. Is there anyone out there that filled out a speaker card that wants to talk about anything other than a data center? Okay, then I'm going to assume that the roughly seven, eight cards I have here is regarding that. And since that is also not on the agenda, we'll take that under speaking from business from the public, item seven. So moving on, we do not have any community government organizations. We don't have a proclamation. We do have a couple presentations. The first one is the Woodburn Development Ordinance Review and Revision Project.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor. I'm Chris Kerr. I'm the Community Development Director. Appreciate this opportunity. to provide a presentation for you. No actions required of you. Usually there is when I come up here, not this evening. This is just to introduce a project that we're working on and the consultants that's working on it. This is our WDO amendment process. I was here in the spring. I've got you to sign off on a resolution for us to get started and to complete some necessary and required modifications to our WDO, our development ordinance, which is our zoning code. And the purpose is really clear. It's to be consistent with all the recent housing statutes that have been passed. I think there's 26 of them in particular we're looking at. We need to make our zoning code consistent with those statutes by law. So we went out, we've reached out and contracted with Cascadia Partners. They did this presentation to the Planning Commission about two weeks ago. And this is just starting the process. These guys are really great. We've used them before. They're doing this in other cities as well. They're very, very familiar with the statutes. The first part of the process for them was to go through and audit our code, take a look at where we need to make changes and fixes. And for this evening, they're just going to walk us through the timeframe for the project, give us some highlights of what they found in the audit, and really to kind of introduce you, because this is the first time you've seen them here. We'll be working a lot with the Planning Commission going forward. We expect to come back to you probably winter, and ultimately these would be adjustments that will require us going and having noticed public hearings at both the Planning Commission and back before you for final adoption of those ordinances. But we're probably nine months away from that before we come in. With that, I'm happy to introduce Jamin Kimmel and his team with Cascadia Partners. Can you hear me okay, Jamin?

I can, yeah. Can you hear me okay?

Great.

Great. Yeah, thanks for that, Chris. And let me know if you have any issues hearing me or seeing the presentation today. My connection seems to be a little bit, there's a little bit something wrong with it. So if I go out, I'll just switch off the video and that should work a little bit better.

You look and sound fine from here, Jamie.

Great. Yes, so good evening. My name is Jamin Kimmel. I am a partner with Cascadia Partners, and I'm serving as the principal in charge for this code update project. Oh, I spoke too soon. Compliance with, oh no. Can you hear me now? Yeah.

You might be stuttering a bit on us. Let's try one more time, Jamin.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and turn off my camera and see if that helps. Hear me? Yes.

We cannot hear you now.

Can you walk up front? I apologize for that, Jamie. Oh, I sure can. You want to try one more time, Jamie?

Hi. Okay. Yep. Now, can you see my screen that I'm sharing?

Yes, we can.

Okay, great. Sorry about that. So hopefully it will be smooth from here forward. Our scope is to audit the Woodbridge Development Ordinance and to identify any conflicts. And so... Okay.

Jamin, you're cutting out a lot. If you don't mind, I'm happy to walk through the presentation. And I can kind of cover, I think, the highlights of this and get us through this in about 10 minutes. And if you can come back on and answer some questions, that'd be great.

Yeah, why don't you go ahead and get us started, Chris. Sure. I'll try to fix the connection.

I have a PDF here I'll pull up. So just... Okay. I gave you all a handout. You don't need to read through all the exact details of it. But again, the real purpose of this project is to go through and cover the amendments that have come down from the state and to go through and get to what we call making sure we have clear and objective standards in our code. You hear us talk about that a lot. It's probably no secret that if you didn't know, even if we haven't adopted certain statutes into our code and made our development code up to date, we still have to meet all those statutes. So staff is in that sort of very tricky position of interpreting what's written at the statute in dealing with developers as they come in. I'm going to walk through real fast the kind of three areas that the Cascadia group's working on. They're going to go through stat story compliance, they're going to go through the clear and objective standards, and then some code cleanups. And I'll give you the time frame here at the end. That was sort of the slide I just covered. As we said, we're starting off with right here, we kicked off our initial meetings with PC and Council. We'll be going forward. There are more public hearings coming and there will be another work session, at least one more with you and probably two more with the Planning Commission before they move forward. I thought this was interesting. The first part of the first project that CastAid worked on was this audit of our existing code. And they went through each of these 26 state statutes. And they determined, what you see on here, that we're not technically in compliance with 15 of them for our sort of codification recommendations. They're not really clear, but they're going to bring them to our attention, things we should probably come in. Others were partially and technically only one we were in compliance with. That shouldn't be too scary for you because, again, when we're not in compliance with something, we have to kind of go through the statute ourself and interpret it. This is actually not all that uncommon. In fact, if you think back to the emergency shelter that we put together and worked on, we did very quickly over on Hardcastle for that Mid-William Valley group. That was a statutory requirement. It wasn't in our code. We didn't have a process for it. So we went through, opened up the statute, and rolled through it. So we sort of followed as it was written, but it's not in our code. So those are the kind of things we'll put in our code now. Just one example to let you know that that's typically how it works. A lot of this is procedure-based. You probably know where this comes from. Not particularly Woodburn, but other cities tend to sit on applications, stall them, and make it difficult to get housing done. And one of the things that they do is they use a lot of procedural slowdowns and issues that get in the way. So we're going to have to go through allow for expedited land divisions. There's these mandatory adjustments. I think I've mentioned these to you before. These are applicants can come in and get sort of mini variances for housing projects. They don't need to meet any kind of requirements other than be a middle housing project that is and it has to be a standard it's going to increase the cost of that housing and they can say I'm not going to need to say that design requirement these are usually architectural related landscape related things of that nature again these are already in the statute we already have to apply these we just haven't written our code that way and These are the kind of things that we need to put in so that everyone has assurances and understandings to what's expected. Some applications found inconsistent with the code. Applicant, this is interesting. An applicant, if we're moving forward and we find reasons to deny some of these housing developments, we have to give the applicant an opportunity to go back and modify their application. That sort of extends their clock a little bit, means they don't have to pay more fees for it. We have in other occasions denied applications because they couldn't meet the code. And because we decided there weren't conditions that we found or the city found they could meet, they could make it meet the code. And the applicants sort of fought back on it. Now there will be requirements where before we deny applications, certain applications, an applicant will have the chance to go back, figure out what's wrong, and modify their application to get it right. Not really a bad idea, but that's not currently a requirement in our codes. Conditions of approval are interesting. There's some more limitations and restrictions on the kind of conditions we can put on applications. Again, we're addressing middle housing. I think you all know what those are. I think every kind of housing that's not multifamily attached and not a single family home detached. It's for the rest of these. We're going to be making some more changes to our parking requirements, particularly as they relate to ADUs. We've already made the modifications to the middle housing for parking. I think you're all pretty familiar with it. We need to make a lot of changes to how we address manufactured housing, RVs, those are recreation vehicles, SROs, single residency occupancies, and the occupancy requirements, sort of how you define dwelling units, how many people live in them. These are pretty uncommon. We don't have a lot of manufactured homes that come in. One or two a year we probably have that walk in the door. I haven't had a new manufactured dwelling park since I've been here in almost a decade. But we're going to update our code because that's a statutory requirement. Part of this comes down again to trying to make housing more affordable, particularly for these middle housing and these non-single family detached homes. And the idea is if you can reduce the regulations a little bit, streamline the processes, it'll be easier. And I'll remind you one more time, it's a requirement from the state coming down on us to do it. Under affordable housing, we have to permit affordable housing outright and publicly owned, nonprofit, qualifying commercial land, adding density height bonuses for housing projects, and again, shortening this timeline, a 100-day final action deadline for certain affordable housing projects. That clock, as you know, it sometimes takes a much longer time to get through. They're going to get streamlined a little bit. And that clock basically falls back to us, the city, to get these things done, reviewed and adopted faster, or at least reviewed faster. Clear and objective standards. Everyone always asks, what is a clear and objective standard? In a perfect world, the code would be written just this way. All the standards would be very clear and easily understood, except for ones that we deliberately want to be subjective, such as compatibility requirements, things that we had, say, in our conditional use standards and our variances. Other than that, we want them to be as clear and objective as possible. So there's a good definition that our consultants come up with. It's basically if it's understandable and objective, it can be verified without needing interpretation or judgment. Lots of work to do in our code to clarify those. The audits already found 90 provisions across the WDO that they found were not clear and objective. So I'm not expecting dramatic changes to the code, but I am expecting a lot of language changes to the code with, again, the purpose of making it much clearer and straightforward for applicants when they walk in the door, which is good for the reviewing body, whether it's staff or the consultants or the public to understand exactly what's going to be getting built so that there's not a lot of ambiguity with that. Some of the, I'll skip over some of this.

Can you hear me now?

Oh, I sure can, Jamin.

Sure. Okay. I called it on the phone, so hopefully audio should be clear. Again, I apologize for that. I can take it over from here if you don't mind.

Sounds good. I'll click through for you.

Yeah. So yeah, the main places in the code where we found instances of not having a clear objective approval track for housing relate to design standards. And so there's a few different overlay districts in the code that apply some specific design requirements to housing and all development in those districts. And what we wanted to provide you here was just an example of a provision in the code that today is not phrased in a way that could be administered clearly and objectively, and then give you an example of how we plan to address that. So in the neighborhood conservation overlay district, there's some requirements related to the materials and finishes that are used on new development. And they say things like they must be the same style of character as the existing building. So that's a subjective statement, lots of different ways to interpret that. And so we have run across this many times before in other cities' zoning codes. And so we have some ways to try to make that a clear and objective standard. And so the idea there is to find a set of materials or finishes that are permitted and those materials are clearly defined. And so that if one of your planning staff is reviewing a development application, they have a very clear and precise sense of what is permitted and what is not. In some cases, this will make the code a little bit more detailed and prescriptive, and that's sort of what's necessary really to comply with this statute. At the same time, we'll provide a alternative option for any developer that if they cannot or do not want to meet the clear and objective standard, they would still have the option to apply under this more discretionary or subjective standard. And so that will stay there. But essentially what you'll see as we propose some code amendments here in the coming months is a lot more specificity in the code about some of these design standards and what are the specific benchmarks, quantitative, more descriptive of exactly what it means to meet the standard. That's really required under state laws. There is that clear and objective approval path. Again, there's always an option for the developer to depart from that, but there does need to be a clear and objective approval path for all housing. You can go to the next slide now. We also plan to update the code to incorporate a number of different clarifications and sort of administrative cleanups. that city staff has identified have been headaches in the past during all their review. And so here's a few examples of those kinds of issues, making sure that the Definition and the dimensional requirements associated with alleys are really defined both in development code and public work standards. Some aligning some definitions of a group owns with current state law. Same thing with cottage clusters. And then there's some ambiguity about what standards apply to manufactured dwellings when they're proposed on individual lots. So I'm aligning that with current state building code requirements there. Next slide. A few other cleanup items. So again, our goal with this update is mainly to comply with state law, make sure that WDO is consistent with the most recent set of housing statutes. But while we're in there, we wanna make sure we're taking advantage of the efficiency of doing one larger code update at a time and so a number of other things to update here related to some graphics in the code that depict key development standards and tables that format or that present those standards and some codifying of codification of existing practices that the city has instituted related to things like a model home in the subdivision So it hopefully gives you a sense of the kinds of things we're trying to incorporate into this code update. So while the city is complying with state law, they're also able to make some clarifications and administrative cleanup to the development ordinance. Okay, again, apologize for the connection issues, but now available for your questions.

so chris thank you i have a question for you so basically what you're doing is you're updating them to match the law and state law but when it comes to those specific clear and objective specific questions the staff is making recommendations you know if it has to be that and then that comes to the planning commission and the city council for approval that is exactly correct because that we have to at one point say no we want it to be three not four two not six those gruesome details ultimately are approved by the council so if there was a question while we're reviewing the documents we could at that time say what you're thinking about oh absolutely absolutely that's exactly correct and i think that clear and objective standards is where there's going to be room to say what did we mean and is this the right

language you want like right now it'll say you know the director shall have discretion to determine say which street a driveway will be off of if you're on a quarter in a lot in certain scenarios and that discretion will instead come away and be like no we're going to outline what those are that's exactly where the council and the planning commission are going to make that determination you'll get a recommendation a formal one strikeout underlined format from the Planning Commission for you to chew on. We'll do a review ahead of time. We'll cover each one of them and ultimately you're the decision makers on that.

All right, thank you. Sure.

Any other questions? Comments?

I'm glad to see we're doing that with all the development that's going on and given all the changes in law that have occurred, it's really a good time for us to kind of get ahead of the curve and get updated. I appreciate it.

I agree.

Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Chris. Sure. I just want to echo that same sentiment of the counselor. So there's a lot of cities that they wish they would have updated their code to comply with state law earlier. And when they get a development application where there's a conflict with state law, it creates a lot of headache, a lot of administrative time to sort through those issues, sometimes litigation. And so, yeah, I think this is a great opportunity for avoiding those potential litigation issues and administrative confusion. And that's really what we're aiming to do here is make sure that there's no question about whether the code complies with the most recent statutes and you avoid a lot of that administrative headaches and potential litigation by making sure you're consistent with the most recent version of state law. In general, that's pretty straightforward, but there are some instances where we're gonna have to defer to you to help make some policy decisions about how to comply with CLO. Yep.

Again, thank you. Okay, moving on. A week ago, we had a wonderful event in Legion Park, our Community Connection Day, and we have a presentation, a follow-up on that. by someone we don't get an offer or chance to see very often.

Thank you for joining us.

Really, your first time? Well, it won't be your last. No, definitely not.

Perfect. Okay, awesome. Yeah, so for those of you that don't know me or don't remember my name, I'm Emily Tierney. I'm our events and programs manager for the city of Woodburn. So I get the privilege of helping in some capacity overseeing most of our community events that happen here. in Woodburn. I've been with the city for just over four years now. So this is my fifth summer of events that we're kind of right in the middle of right now. But yeah, I'm here to talk to you all today about Community Connection Day that just took place last or not last Saturday, a little over a week ago on August 1st. So Community Connection Day and Kids Fest this year was celebrating a decade of connections in the Woodburn community, as we've been saying. So I'm going to share a little bit with you all about some of the history of the event, how it's grown over the years, the different community organizations and partners that help make it happen and kind of some of the fun things that happened on August 1st at this last event as well. So. go ahead and get started with some of the history of Community Connection Day. So this event did start back in 2016. Mr. Hubert Brown, which a lot of us in the community are familiar with, he founded this event as he saw a need in our community to connect people with our local police officers. So this event originally started in the Safeway parking lot. So you've probably heard him speak about this piece. And they held that event in the Safeway parking lot, had about 250 people attend and just kind of getting to know their local police officers, putting faces to names, building trust, building relationships. That's really how this event got started. The next year in 2017, it did expand to include other first responders. So our fire trucks and our ambulances were out there as well as a handful of local nonprofits. So the event expanded a little bit and it expanded enough to then move locations. So it did take place at Centennial Park for a couple of years. As again, it just kind of continued to grow before moving to where it now happens out of Legion Park. Back in 2021, this was kind of a big shifting point for Community Connection Day and Kids Fest, was the Woodburn Pediatric Clinic received a grant that allowed them to offer free backpacks to kids attending the event. So they were a big part of the planning committee at that time. and that's really when the kids fest piece of the event was added making it an event that not only connected people with local first responders but also in like in community resources but also allowed kids to come and get some supplies and backpacks and things to prepare them for the school year So that grant was in 2021 and 2022. And then after that ended, the planning committee received funds from Amazon. So the last three years, Amazon has sponsored the backpacks for the event. So we've just continued to see, you know, 2024 starting to see the event really grow at that point where, you know, we were seeing about 50 exhibitors. That's our local nonprofits, different businesses and organizations started to really expand having more entertainment at the event. Like what was going to like, yes, people are coming for those free backpacks, but what's keeping them there? What's getting them hanging out with their their friends and their neighbors and and just kind of having fun and making it feel more like that kids fest piece and a celebration um and then yeah that really takes us to this year 2026 where we celebrated the 10th anniversary of community action day and kids fest So what does the event look like today? So I mentioned a couple of these things, but some kind of fun information. We distribute about 1,500 free backpacks every year. And then we offer free meals to everyone in attendance. So that's typically over 1,000 free meals served. There's giveaway items for families, including things like books and clothing, toys. food, as I mentioned, we've had helmets the last couple of years. This all happens with, as I mentioned, like 50. Now we're seeing about 60 exhibitors from local nonprofits in the North Marion County area. And then We've added local entertainment that celebrates our community and celebrates the diversity that we have here in Woodburn. So we have some fun bands that play as well as, you know, over the years we've had our local Bi-Lithical Glory Co. from the school district come out and as well as the last two years we've had a russian singing group come out and share that with the community so it's been really great to kind of see all the elements of our community represented at this event so it's not just like a resource fair for everyone but also just a really fun gathering to enjoy as well Um, so at the heart of Community Connection Day, as far as, um, like the, you know, us who help with the planning of it, um, is really this acronym, um, that you were kind of came up with, which is REC. So recreation, education, celebration, and of course the connection piece. Um, so recreation, we kind of use this as like a guide when thinking about the event, um, of like, are we lacking in any area? Or if we have a new idea, being able to use this to kind of guide and make sure, that it fits with into the nature of the event. So obviously like recreation, providing free activities for kids to enjoy while they're at Connection Day, whether that's like cornhole or doing a craft or anything like that. And then education, obviously we do hand out the backpacks and there's like school supplies giveaways and books and things like that but we also get exhibitors that like are there to teach you about stuff so like republic services travis right there is a good example like they're handing out coloring books that teach kids about recycling um we've had osu extension that teaches kids about the water cycle so like there's just opportunities for families and kids to learn something while they're there And then celebration, there's always a piece of the event where we recognize community members, whether that's someone in our planning committee, like Jenny in this picture, or a local business and some of their accomplishments here in Woodburn. So there's always that celebration piece. And then the connection piece. So the heart and root of the event is obviously like connecting kids and families with our local police officers and first responders. So they have a huge presence at the event with their booths and their vehicles where kids can come up and get stickers and sit on a fire truck and check things out. So that remains a big piece of the event as well. So getting into kind of 2026 highlights. So attendance, this year we had probably the biggest event we've seen. We had about 3000 people out at Legion Park on August 1st in just four hours. It's not this all day event. It's a pretty brief event, but it has a really big impact. We obviously you can see in the photo like Safeway is still a piece of the event to this day. So ten years later, they're still actively involved. We handed out a little over probably about 1200 backpacks this year. We purchased a little bit more anticipating 10th anniversary and then all of the extra backpacks like go back to the schools. So any extras that are left over to get redistributed to kids that maybe couldn't make it out to the event. And then we had, I think, about 1,200 or 1,300 meals served this year. We had exhibitors, like you can see in the bottom right photo, where the little unity sign is, that's United Way of Mid-Limit Valley handing out free toys to kids in attendance. So they hand out over 1,000 free toys. So just kind of some of the stats from this year. It was definitely our largest event, not probably, definitely the largest Community Action Day Kids Fest that we've seen. And it all happens with these people, with our exhibitors. So we have a lot of people that have been a part of the event for a really long time. Obviously, like our police officers and fire district and those folks, we've got our book mobile out there. But we also, I think last year, I haven't looked at this year's numbers, but I know last year we had I think it was about 18 new exhibitors. So there's always opportunity for like new businesses and would burn nonprofits that maybe need to make connections in the community that haven't had the chance to do so to come out and be an exhibitor at this event. And they're getting that face to face contact with, you know, thousands of community members. So we had me catch up on my my list here. So yeah, so we had obviously all of our first responders, as well as, you know, organizations like Salem Health and Data Vision. We had some of our own local nonprofits, Liberty House Love Inc, and like many, many more. We had in total this year, 59 exhibitors. So right around that kind of average 60 amount that we've seen the last couple of years, which was really, really great to see. And with that, a lot of our, community community comes out to support this event. So like I mentioned, you know, Amazon, this is the third year in a row that they sponsored the backpacks and they also bring volunteers in to help hand those out and distribute them to kids. We had Oregon State Credit Union has supported the event a lot over the last handful of years. They sponsored our main stage this year. So that was a new thing that we added for the 10th anniversary was actually have a stage, make it feel more like a full kind of production and event. So they helped support that piece and were there as an exhibitor as well. Mega Foods was another awesome sponsor. They came to the event last year and I remember Ken there stopping me and just saying like, wow, this is incredible to be here and see all of these community members out. And so they wanted to be involved in it this year even more. You can see them in this collage here on the screen. They were handing out Haritos floats again this year, which was a big hit, but they also sponsored our lunch in the pavilion. So some of their distributors donated hot dogs and hot dog buns so that we could continue offering that piece of the event, obviously free to the community. They also had distributors come out with bags of flour and just extra food and things for people that's like, we don't need to run to the store after this. They were able to grab some of that while they were at the event, which is amazing. Another big exhibitor and partner for this event is Ray of Hope Thrift Store. They, with some of the funds for the event, they purchase like underwear and socks. And so they hand those out during the event. So again, like trying to make this event just be a place where all families can come and grab something that they need without having to make it feel like weird. They can get food, they can get snacks, they can get socks, they can get a backpack and books and all that good stuff. So they help with that piece, which is awesome. And then again, like Safeway, Salem Health, United Way, you know, providing waters and snacks. Salem Health handed out 200 helmets. I think they ran out about halfway through the event. So I was chatting with Shirley and she was like, we'll bring more again next year because last year they brought 100 and they ran out in an hour. This year they brought two and ran out about halfway through. So really awesome thing to be able to have at that event. and then united with midland valley again with like the toys i saw parents walking out of there with like giant cardboard boxes in their arms because all kids that um they get to pick up two toys that get in line until they run out so it's just kind of again a fun thing that makes this event feel like more than just a little resource fair um and yeah and that's all possible with with our exhibitors that attend and take that extra effort to bring something really meaningful and impactful And then there's all the activities. So with it being the 10th anniversary this year, we did want it to just feel more vibrant, more fun, and have more stuff that kept kids and families hanging out. So we rented the ponies. So there were pony rides that were for free for all the kids. That was a huge hit. I saw a line the entire time. The Woodburn Art Center came out, and they had a free craft area in the middle of the event, as well as there was a little gardening station. We had a free photo booth. There was free face paint, balloon animals. You name it, it was probably there. It was really, really fun. And again, a lot of this stuff is because of exhibitors and sponsors that help support it. We also did a mascot competition, which I think there's a photo on the next slide that I'll get to in a second. But we just had some more fun stuff happening on the main stage. So there was a little scavenger hunt dance off with some of our local Woodburn mascots and things like that. As well as just the other stuff that the exhibitors provide as far as cornhole and spin wheels with prizes. Wherever you looked, there was something to do. So it was very, very fun. then of course the celebrations piece um so as i mentioned we take time during the program to recognize local community members and hand out awards and recognitions and so um and this is a big piece that you know you work brown plans and puts together so this year um he recognized um some less schwab employees during the connection day kids fest event So Carrie Rucker, their manager, Albert, their assistant manager, and then Annette, their office manager. They all received recognitions for their service with Les Schwab in the community. And then we also had Jenny Marquez, who she was on an earlier slide. She works for the Woodburn School District, and she was recognized for her 20 years working with the school district. as well as her dedication to Community Connection Day and Kids Fest. She sits on our planning committee and is a big supporter and big helper of the logistics and planning of this event. So she received recognition. And then of course, Ewert Brown himself had to be recognized because 10 years ago he created this event. And so our Woodburn Police Department awarded him with the Community Services Award. So he was given that at the event this year as well. So yeah, so we try to take an opportunity to recognize all the people that made Woodburn great. And this event, just being what it is, is a really great opportunity to do that. Um, which takes me to kind of my last slide here, which is our planning committee. Um, so if you attended the event or attended in the future, you'll see a bunch of people running around in yellow shirts. Um, those, those individuals are mainly our planning committee members and volunteers that help make the day happen. Um, so ray of hope today. is a big piece of why this event continues on they help handle all the financials of the event they order off the backpacks the socks and underwear they help with the food coordination and all that the woodburn school district same thing helps with planning jenny and daisy were awesome this year with helping with the marketing of the event and the canopy coordination we provide the tables and chairs and canopies for all our exhibitors and then of course our police department and fire district are involved in the logistics as well aware food bank helps they store all the backpacks for us they haven't been as active on the planning committee this year but they help us with the logistics they bring all those pallets of backpacks to legion park and haul out any extras we have at the end at the end of the event which is a huge help and then city of Woodburn. So I get to sit on this planning committee. This summer was my fifth event, so I've been there for 50% of it now, which is pretty cool. And I handle all the exhibitor coordination. So the kind of outreach and communication to everyone that wants to have a table, where are they going to go? Where are we setting things up? That's kind of what I get to do in our other community events. So I also get to play that role here on the planning committee for Connection Day and Kids Fest too. But yeah, this event kind of to wrap things up, you know, it, it started 10 years ago with 250 people and here we are you know 10 years later it's not that long um with 3 000 plus people coming out it's grown so much and i feel like it's um even in the handful of years i've been a part of it with the addition of the backpacks and more exhibitors wanting to be there um i i feel like it's really a testament to what woodburn can do when when we come together with something positive in mind, we can make things happen and create like something really special for our community. So it's been really awesome to be a part of it. I'm really thankful for all the partners that continue to support it and make it happen every year. So with that, we'll just kind of leave it to any questions, or if anyone was there and wants to add anything, you're more than welcome to as well.

So Emily, I was there, and this is a four-hour event that I know that they started lining up long before it opened at 10.

Yeah, opens at 10, people were there at like 9.30.

But you and your team, this actually is a year-round event, getting it ready and working on it. And on behalf of the city, I greatly want to thank you and your team for the involvement you've done, this is the epitome of why Woodburn is an all-American city. It's that connection. The people, the vendors that I talk to out there loved it. They'll come back next year, they'll come back the year after that because it is such a happy event and giving back to the kids. And they enjoyed it. There were truckloads of toys that they were giving out. Yeah, it was amazing. But it was given out that day. But, no, thank you so much. And I saw you guys in action throughout the year. And I know how serious you all took it. And it is one of the great assets that Woodburn has. And it's amazing. And this could easily be other cities could pick it up. It could be a county event. It could be a national event. But right now it's a Woodburn event, and you guys have done an amazing job doing that. So thank you.

Any questions, comments?

It should come in on the chief. Your words for that day were fantastic. Right on for the presentation to him. He was touched. All right. Actually, I think there were some tears seen then. Yeah. You don't get that much from New York.

Anything else? I thought it was roundable.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, round.

Next up, we have a presentation and an update on Mill Creek Community Center.

Pressure's on. Good evening, City Council, Mayor, Jesse Coleman, Community Services Director. So yeah, we wanted to provide you a quick update on the Woodburn Community Center project as well as the Seminole Park project that is now underway. Moving here. In our last presentation to council, we had the former building and then basically an empty loft other than our current auditorium. Now you can kind of see that from the piece we had here. Once I can bring in the little cursor out. Now, instead of just having kind of that dirt outline, we've obviously poured foundations. We have the whole flooring kind of poured here. And then we've started going vertical steel. You can see the roofs coming off the building. So kind of a lot of movement happening now. It's starting to take shape, starting to become a building. Obviously, again, as a reminder, we took off this front portion of the building, of the old building, and then we only kept the natatorium, which will make us question a lot of things in life. But we'll get there later too. And then obviously you see Settlemyer Park surrounding the community center as well, tennis courts and other things that are underway as well for improvement. Here's just another view looking to the northeast. Again, you can see kind of that roof. It's kind of a little hard to see here, but there's these little kind of boxes on top of the roof. These are where those solar tubes will be going. These are the frames for those, and they're going to be positioned as well. So they're about two feet wide, each of those. So they'll be pretty significant bringing light into the facility. So obviously if you've driven by the site, you've started seeing kind of the exciting part. We're starting to see that building take shape. And so this is the vertical steel installation piece. And so all of that foundation, they obviously, a lot of planning goes into that process. You're laying your foundation, but you're also setting all of the logistics for where this steel is going to be bolted into the foundation. Before this, you can remember in our last presentation, we did all those aggregate piers that are holding up this building. So we did 150 aggregate piers that are holding up this building here and just kind of keeping it stable. So with this here, you're going to see, pretty soon you're going to see what's called pan decking. It's this silver metal that's going across the deck. They're also going to start framing in some of the walls. as well, you'll start to see that in the next coming weeks, and they're gonna start doing rough-in for the plumbing, electrical, things like that. So, it's kind of a lot of pieces going on with everything that's going. And then, as you guys know, and you'll continue to see there's these pieces going on but we're also doing some of the other legwork for this project like purchasing equipment and things like that we'll probably have another contract in the next couple months of like the furniture that's going to go in the building things like that they'll be coming across your desk as well So again, I like to point this out because this is where it gets interesting. Again, this is the new facility here. This is the space you all approved the contract for the fitness equipment. This is that 2,100 square foot fitness space, as well as the exercise room, and then our locker rooms, all that. And then we're keeping the piece in the red box. I always like to point that out because that has been our HGTV moment, is this red box. So, our natatorium demo and plumbing issues. This was natatorium and kind of structural issues last slide, last time if you remember. Now we're coming into the other part of what we kept is the plumbing for the pool and the spa and the wading pool. So currently, they're working on doing the, they framed in the new spa, because we removed that old spa. If you remember the old spa, which was there, there was that support column that was right next to it, and there was that fun water that was getting in there one way or another, rusted away our column there almost all the way. So part of the new design is a brand new spa and they're also demoing the wading pool. The structural stuff is going to stay the same but they're just taking off the plaster in this photo on the left and then this is them framing in the new spa on the right. What they'll do is they'll frame that all out, they'll have this, they'll put all this insulation through and then they'll end up shot creating it, so spraying in concrete. And then it will be tiled and everything else. And same with the wading pool. That will be getting tiled in the wading pool. I wish we were able to afford to tile the main body of water, but it is just not within budget, especially with the other issues we're coming upon. So this is where I was getting a little interesting. As they were demoing the spa and then they started to kind of test the lines that were coming to the spa for pressure testing to make sure they were still viable, they found that four of the nine pipes that were going to the actual spa failed. So they weren't holding pressure, whether it was a return line or a supply line. And so what we decided to do is these pipes run from one corner of the building. Let me go back here. They run from over here where the spa is, they run down this pool deck, and in this corner is where the slide and things are. Well, we didn't know where the failure was, if the failure was in this straight run that goes in the pool deck, or if it actually was in the mechanical room. So what we chose to do is, this is right where that slide's gonna go, and the mechanical room is right behind this wall. And the reason we dug this up is because we were hoping we could be able to isolate to see if there's failures within the mechanical room, which is going to create another ball of wax for us to uncover because we have to remove equipment, tear up the concrete, and things like that. Or is it just in those lines where it's just concrete, we can pull that concrete, relay the pool deck, things like that. And so we're still in the process of investigating it. We haven't got a formal report. I'm not feeling great yet. We'll find out more on Wednesday during our weekly meetings. I think we might have some issues within the mechanical plumbing going that way. They're also going to be doing the same testing for all the pool lines as well. So the main body, main body of water. And so they're currently in the process of doing that as well. I don't know if we'll have that full picture yet. Hopefully it's looking a little better on the main body. We haven't seen, the couple we did know about, they haven't failed, unlike the spa and wading pool ones. So that's just, again, we kept this because to redo a whole new one was significantly more expensive, but this is where most of our contingency is going. And so with that, our contingency was very healthy. I mentioned this before. And I really want to mention this with this whole project. This whole project is, again, it's about a $22 million project that isn't going to touch a dollar of general fund dollars. Since the bond did not pass, this is the scaled down version of this project. And so all of these funds are either the $15 million from the state grant we've received that are dedicated for this project. Park STC has received several other grants and other things for this project. So I really do want to make that clear. that this isn't coming out of the general fund or creating any other issues for the budget as we're going through this project. With the contingency, we were fortunate, too, because as I mentioned before, when they bid this project, it was kind of a very competitive time. Triple Wellman said that they have never seen kind of bids come in so many and so fast and furious as they have for this project. And they've done tons of school projects, large projects, a lot of things. With this, it allowed a very competitive bid process, and so we were able to get a pretty healthy contingency. So we have a total contingency of that 1.58 million, but we have a significant amount tied up in these current projects that were of the portion of the building we kept. The total kind of between approved change orders, COs, and pending or open ones is about $945,000 with about almost $800,000 of that or right around $800,000 of that just being the issues within the natatorium. Other things are always going to come up during construction. The plans aren't lined out exactly right. We need to add CMU for this door opening. The crease in the concrete needs extra support. You're going to have those types of change orders throughout a project. But these major ones are really what are eating up a lot of contingency is just trying to make the building we decided to hold on to viable and usable for the future. So we're getting there. We still have a healthy contingency. We're still in a good position. But it's just this is the part where we're running into issues with and where we feel like we're on a reality show almost. where it's just every wall you open up, you're like, oh, great, here's another thing. But I think, like I said, once we move in, I keep on telling them, can we just move into all new building now? Because we know what issues we have. It's not going to have many. And so that's where we're kind of standing with this piece here. And so not the most positive thing, but we are trending in the right direction. and it's going to be a facility as we know it's going to be so much better off it's going to have we we are going to do this once in in my time with the city or um and we want to make sure it's viable for many years past that and so we are doing everything in our power to make sure this facility not only feels different than it did before because it's going to feel drastically different when you walk into this space even though we're keeping the same box um but we just want mechanically like it's one thing to make it look pretty but it needs to be able to operate And it needs to be able to not have plumbing issues and all these other things. So just wanted to really point this out because it's very important. Any questions of the community center before I move on to the part? OK.

Perfect.

All right, now Settlemire Park. I'm pretty excited. This just kind of broke ground a couple weeks ago. And so you've probably started to see the retaining wall was removed. They've started demo on, Scott has a question.

Just, yeah, can you go back a slide? Is that the actual piece of playground equipment that's being constructed as part of the project?

That's a portion of it, yeah.

Holy smokes, thanks.

Yeah, yeah. It's a significant playground. So yeah, that is one portion of it. There is several other components, and this is kind of that... I think this is probably like that seven to 12 range, maybe five to 12 range. And then we have kind of a taught area too, which is separate, kind of a little more secluded. So you don't have the big kids running over your little kids. And so, yeah, it's pretty exciting. Again, here's just kind of a layout. Here's that big piece that I was just talking about here. And then we have that little totter, we have swings, we have a log scramble, which is kind of a more nature play. You can climb and go crazy. We have several different other features within the playground. So this playground is going to be very significant. As we talked about before with all kind of like ADA type of things or inclusive type of things, really thoughtful. One of the merry-go-rounds, or like it's an actually inset in the ground merry-go-round, so you could wheel, chair onto it. Mobility issues, you could get onto it easier. We have different types of swing options as well. And so, unfortunately, you don't have the merry-go-round of death that you used to like throw your sibling off of, where you're like, oh, just hold on, you'll be fine. We have, you know, it's gonna be a little different, but we're really excited about this opportunity with the playground itself. New shelter. We are removing the old playground, getting it kind of, We're just opening this to open lawn space. We're keeping the shelter that's here, but we're putting in a pretty significantly large one here, the basketball courts. Where the retaining wall was, we're berming that grass there. And so we have the potential to maybe host events and have this as kind of a seating space area if we chose to as well. and redoing the tennis courts. And if you've driven by, they're kind of currently underway there. Again, this is one of the components we're holding on to. And so they were just tearing up the asphalt last week and they didn't know there's a complete concrete slab underneath that asphalt. Usually you just do your layer of your three-quarter minus and then you toss here and you compact it and then you do your asphalt but this had a whole layer of concrete so we're trying to see what we need to do there if that's a change order for this project or not but we are gonna have all new tennis courts and slash pickleball courts in this facility as well right here No, sorry, it's not listed in this. We are redoing the restroom at skate park, and then, yeah, sorry, it's right here.

So the skate park will get a redo?

No, there's nothing going on at the skate park specifically, no. We have looked in a few different options, walked in with a few people. It doesn't have any major deficiencies at this time. As this project goes, I actually have, I'm hoping in the fall I can nail down some folks that focus on skate parks, I've reached out to a couple, just to come walk it with us, but when we walked it, it doesn't look like the coping, so where the rails and things hit the top of the ramps, they're actually all in pretty good shape. Doesn't look like there's any major cracking and things, It's kind of one of those things where it's a 25 year old skate park It's gonna look like a 25 year old skate park because it's just concrete, but it's actually in relatively good shape I have ran into several skaters that are like I wish this layout was different because of the flow and the lines and things like that But you know this was made by a committee 25 years ago local kids who came came together came to City Council meetings like this and advocated for a project. I think Mayor Jennings was really big behind this project back in the day is my understanding as well. And so he really pushed for this project to happen. And so it's really kind of unique. And honestly, I just found out last week, and I didn't know this. I talked to one of the former park directors. Randy Westrick last week, and he mentioned that the contractors that actually built the skate park had never built a skate park before, and so they were super nervous that they were gonna get quality, and it's held. Again, minor things are happening, but it's nothing where I think there's any safety concerns. And I'm going to reach out and just see if there's some touch-up things we can do, but we're not going to be doing any major renovations because it would be a significant cost for sure. Again, this project is fully funded. It's not even touching an SDC dollar at this time. We're getting funds from Leslie Munoz's office. We're getting, or the state through Leslie Munoz, as well as Andrea Salinas and several other, Woodburn Rotary, Moda Health, and the Trailblazers, And then we received a $1 million grant from the local government grant fund for this project as well. So again, another project that's happening. So about $25 million of investment that aren't costing our community anything to construct.

So Marion County also?

Marion County is involved with the community center. Community center?

Correct, correct. So yeah, this is obviously those tennis courts that are getting tore up. You can see kind of on the south side here, more of it's probably even gone today. And then this is the retaining wall where the dugouts and things were that's coming out. You'll see a lot of infill and a lot of the dirt that's behind the police department from their project will actually be utilized in this project. So we saved a lot of money on infill because we were utilizing that filled dirt there. Kind of timeline for this project as well. We did hit a little bit of a delay due to some of the Salinas funding because it had some federal ties to it, and we had to get some letters and things put in place. So we would have liked this to be probably three months earlier start than we did, but we had to wait for certain things to come into play. We didn't want to turn our back on $250,000 in funding, so we had to kind of pause. And so we did that. It's going to possibly put some delays on the project, if I'm being fully transparent with it. So we had the fund development piece, we had the funding delays in spring of 2026, and then we started construction. um we're hoping substantial completion in november one of my concerns i will say with this project and we've talked about it earlier is that we might have everything kind of installed but the painting of the courts it might just be temporary lines so just the white lines on the court until the spring when we can do the full paint system because they're worried it won't have the correct cure temperatures and things like that. So we're hoping we can kind of speed things up and get it going, but that is one possible delay with this project, just because of how everything lined up with getting funding allocations We couldn't put it out to bid until we got the letters and things like that. But yeah, we're hoping we can kind of put everything in there. And I'm sorry, it should be, you know, we're probably looking, maybe doing a fall, it should say 26 there, fall of 2026 if we want to do it then, or we might wait until the spring to do it when it's all kind of, everything's beautiful. Any questions on either of those projects?

How old is the tennis courts that are being replaced?

The tennis courts? Well, they got an overlay done. I think they were built in the 70s initially through a grant through the state. It's a federally funded grant through the state. And so there's some interesting kind of verbiage in that that because of the type of funding it is, there has to be some form of tennis courts within the park in perpetuity. So originally, when we had the community center design, we were going to move the courts and things like that. And so we're just modifying to kind of fit the need now, right? They can do tennis and pickleball. We're even putting in a tennis wall so people could actually practice on their own and things like that. So there's kind of several components. Both of the sports courts also have lighting, new lighting and lighting. So the basketball court as well as the tennis court will have lighting on it as well.

Comments, questions? It's looking good. Perfect. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you all. Okay, moving on. Do not have any communications outside of, I think we each were given a letter from Sonia tonight that I don't have a last name on address, but basically she's against data centers that will be entered into the record. So next up is business from the public. This allows the public to introduce items to the council of consideration that's not already scheduled on the agenda. And again, I'll ask, I have nine speaker cards here. Is there anyone that turned in a speaking card that wants to speak on anything other than a data center? So I have nine people that I will let come up and speak. Let me begin this by saying the city has not received a project or plans to build a data center. There's nothing we have to go from. When that happens, it'll go through the planning commission There will be a public hearing there. It will go to the council. There will be a public hearing there. So it will be time then to speak. I certainly believe in free speech, and I believe that if people have something to say, that is great. We will hear it tonight. Do not need to hear the same thing nine times. We have a very smart council here. If people say they don't want a data center, That's good, we get it. If you have something more to add, that's fine. We have a regular meeting we're gonna have tonight, so there's other business that we will be attending to. It is not our position to respond to comments that are made tonight. So again, I appreciate you all coming up. I do know that there have been issues in other surrounding cities on the way that it has been handled. I expect full respect in decorum from anyone speaking tonight. That is how we treat people here and expect the same and I know you all will do that. So with that, with no particular order, when you come up, I will give you three minutes. I'll try and cut you off at three minutes, so please keep that in mind. There's a timer there. Like I say, if you just want to agree with what's been said before, that's fine. Your name will go on the record for that. You do not have to give your address, but just your name and what city. So first up, I have Cesete on Yonge Street in Woodburn. SEISS IETE congratulations you have the honors of going first

Hi, my name is 67. We demand that no data center is built in Woodburn. As students, we already go through a lot and feel so much anxiety about our future. How will our future look like if corporations are exploiting us, contaminating our water and pollution our air and killing us? We can't live in a world like this. Students whose parents can't pick them up after school because they're working two to three jobs have to walk to school every day and walk back home. They will be breathing in that contamination. Farm workers already breathe in harmful chemicals and have a life full of medical issues, and a lot of times they die at a very early age. The harmful effects of data center will make life even worse for them. If you care about our families in Woodburn, farm workers and students, you will make sure no data centers can exploit Woodburn. Protect the community and step up. Our health and future is more important than greedy corporations.

Thank you. Could you put your name on record, please, and where you live, your address?

You could just give your first name and what city you live in.

Nicole and Salem.

Yeah.

Thank you. Next up, I have an Alex Sosa. Perfect.

Can y'all hear me?

You have Alex? Yes, Alex. And what city?

I live in Salem but serve families here in Marion County and Woodburn. My name is Alex Sosa. I'm a community health worker, peer support specialist, youth organizer with Latinos Unidos Siempre, an organization that serves families in Marion County. I'm here to share our concerns regarding the potential development of a new data center in the city of Woodburn. AI data centers are developing quickly. Technology is advancing more than ever before. However, communities across the nation are experiencing devastating impacts of their environment and the cost of living to the development and establishment of data centers in their communities. The overuse of water, electricity and pollution data centers have impacted the health of residents while residents see almost no return in investment to public services. Woodburn City Council has been taking the right steps to protect Woodburn families from passing an emergency fund for families who have been impacted by immigration enforcement, to declaring a state of emergency due to ice rates, ending the flock camera uses, and now considering a moratorium for AI data centers in development. We applaud those steps, and we hope you continue to stand with the community by setting the example for other cities by implementing strong protections around AI data center development. First, we recommend that the City of Woodburn pass a permanent policy that eliminates non-disclosure agreements between private and public entities. This would allow the public to know the development projects in progress and give the public the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback. Second, establish a permanent community benefit program for all and any type of economic development projects within Woodburn. This would ensure that the people of Woodburn truly share the benefit of development and that it doesn't stay concentrated amongst the rich people on the planet. Fourth, eliminate all tax abatements for multi-million dollar projects, especially data centers. This would ensure that the corporations share responsibility of giving back to schools, healthcare systems, library, public transportation, just as our working class families do. Lastly, I do want to remind you that 47% of Woodburn's workforce is in the agriculture industry. Our Woodburn farm workers make the entire state's economy run. It's also our farm workers who are the true force behind the economic development. It's our farm workers in the city who invest and ensure our policies serve them. for housing access, living costs, food, health care, and our families deserve a better system. A giant Amazon warehouse was built here. Despite of this, we have not seen any local families being able to afford to live here more than ever. On the contrary, all current projects including housing indicate Woodburn is making the space for economic classes that does not align with the experience of farm workers. Therefore, standing strong on how you move forward with AI Dental Centers is not only important for all residents, but especially for the workers who are the backbone to the city. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Next up, I have Debbie Ross.

Good evening, Debbie Cabrales from here from Woodburn. I'm here today not only as a resident of Woodburn but as the executive director of a local nonprofit that serves your constituents and most importantly as a mother of a nine-year-old child. The decisions being made today will affect far more than those of us sitting in this room. They will affect the kind of community, economy, and environment we leave for our children. At a nonprofit, we see every day how difficult it is for families to make ends meet. Community members come to us needing help with rent and utility bills. I am now hearing that PGE and Pacific Power are having conversations about potentially increasing utility rates by 8.6%. For families already choosing between paying rent, keeping the lights on, and putting food on the table, another increase is not just a number on a bill. It can be the difference between stability and crisis. So when decisions are being made about bringing large energy intensive businesses like data centers into Woodburn, we have to ask, who benefits and who pays the cost? Data centers require enormous amount of electricity. That demand can put additional pressure on our electrical grid and utility systems. And depending on how that electricity is generated, it can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. As a mother, I have to think about what that means for my child's future. We cannot make decisions today that create greater financial and environmental burdens for the next generation without fully understanding the consequences. That is why Woodward needs stronger policies before these projects are allowed to move forward. We need clear policies that establish what type of large scale energy intensive developments are appropriate for our community, what their impacts must be before approval, and how our residents and existing businesses will be protected from increased costs and strain on our infrastructure. And just as importantly, we need transparency. There should not be secretive conversations or agreements that prevent the public from knowing who is trying to come to Woodburn, what is being proposed, and what commitments are being discussed on behalf of our community. I'm calling for an end to NDAs between city council members, city staff, and corporations or businesses seeking to develop in Woodburn when those agreements prevent meaningful public transparency about projects that could significantly affect our community. Our residents have the right to know what is being considered before decisions are made, not after. We should not be creating policies after a corporation has already entered the door. We should create the rules first so that every company is held to the same standard and our community's interests come before corporate interests. As a constituent, as a mother, and a representative of a local nonprofit serving this community, I'm asking this council to put the people of Woodburn first. CREATE STRONGER PROTECTIONS, REQUIRE TRANSPARENCY, END THE USE OF NDAs THAT KEEP OUR COMMUNITY IN THE DARK, AND TAKE A STAND WITH THE CITY OF WOODBURN IN SAYING NO TO DATA CENTERS. OUR COMMUNITY SHOULD COME FIRST, OUR FAMILIES SHOULD COME FIRST, AND OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE SHOULD COME FIRST. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. NEXT UP, I HAVE A NIDA LEAVE. THAT'S ALL I HAVE. N-E-I-D-A.

Hello, my name is Neva and I live in Woodburn. I'm a community member and a community health worker. I'm here to oppose the development of a potential data center in Woodburn. Growing up in Woodburn and attending elementary, middle school, and high schools, I've seen how much Woodburn is changing. With the population growing at a 4% increase and rapid housing development, it is notable that gentrification is occurring. A data center will only make this worse, benefiting corporation profits rather than keeping the long-term health of the public a priority. It is difficult for its working class migrant population to keep up with the increasing cost of living. Data centers like various would not only pose an environmental threat, but it would also accelerate increasing living expenses. The average living cost is already up by 6% compared to the national average. If a data center would arise, it would also increase the cost of electricity like mentioned before. The financial burden will be put on the shoulders of the people of Woodburn. which is why I demand the following, the demands listed by the fellow people earlier. Listen to our demands and prioritize the community's long-term health. Thank you.

Thank you. Next I have Alondra Sanchez.

Hi, my name is Alondra. I also live in Salem, but I also serve families here in Woodburn. I'm also a community health worker and a peer support specialist. My name is Alondra. Our communities already bear enough burdens. We already live surrounded by pollution and projects that are often built near our homes without considering the people who are directly impacted. Now we are being asked to accept even more of the data centers to fuel an artificial intelligence industry that continues to grow without us asking who will pay the true cost. Data centers require enormous amount of electricity and water, generate heat, and require infrastructure that ends up directly affecting the communities. where they are built. While some companies profit financially from this technology expansion, it is the people who live here to have to face its consequences every day. And we have to ask ourselves, who are the people being directly impacted? They are our farm workers who work hard to feed our communities while already facing the impacts of pollution and environmental injustice. They are our families, our children and our youth, our elders and communities, people who have been carrying the consequences of pollution and the lack of investment in our basic needs for far too long. We are already seeing gas stations and other projects being built near our communities. How many more projects do we have to accept before our lives and our health are considered a priority? We are saying that progress should not mean sacrificing our communities. Artificial intelligence and big tech should not take over the water we need, the air we breathe, and the safety of our families. and I'm demanding that the data center shouldn't be building our communities as well with other peers. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Next up I have Alita.

Hi, my name is and I live in Woodburn. I'm here to oppose the development of data center in Woodburn. They're looking to potentially build a site here in Woodburn. And I just wanted to talk about how data centers in other cities have also caused dramatic increase in the cost of utilities. This means that the virus would not only pose an environmental threat, but it would also accelerate increasing living expenses. And as mentioned before, our community is filled with farm workers and they're already dealing with other issues such as mental health, just trying to meet basic needs and also other expenses. Verus claims that the new data center would generate economic development for our local community, but at what cost? In February, ITEP reported that four huge tech companies with pro-Trump CEOs paid just 4.9% of their profits in federal corporate taxes in 2025, and Verus is one of these companies. These companies are not here to serve the community. Private companies like bureaus are here to pollute our communities, endanger the long-term of our communities, and skip on paying taxes. They put profit over people. And I also want to push forward the demands that Woodburn eliminates NDAs between any private and public entity, eliminate non-DAs between any private entities that hold public services and impact the public, and eliminate tax abatements for multi-billion dollar projects. Thank you.

Thank you. So I think it's Fabian.

Hello, can you guys hear me? Yeah. My name is Fabian and I live here in Woodburn. So VAERS is looking into Woodburn for a potential site for its data center. Woodburn is already dealing with rapid growth and changes that is making it difficult for the working class migrant population. Woodburn has a population of over 33,000 and over 47% of them work in the agricultural related fields. The living cost here in Woodburn is already up by 6% from the national average. Now, if there would be a data center in place, it would only just increase the living cost in Woodburn and surrounding towns, as well as killing a lot of the environments surrounding us, consuming mass amounts of water, even though VAERS has quote unquote claimed to use a closed loop cooling to reduce water consumption, but there hasn't been any report or data about this at all. nor is there any report about how much water various data centers consumes. Not only will it affect us short-term, but it will gravely affect us long-term. Artificial intelligence is already displacing workers out of the workforce, making many of them lose their source of income. Woodburn would be one of the first towns to quickly lose jobs as the pollution and consumptions of materials by the data center would ruin the agricultural-based workforce here in Woodburn. We need to keep Woodburn's community safe and serve the community, not work against it while collapsing the community for profit. Just because technology is more advanced doesn't mean it's right to install it. We need to look at the consequences and what it causes to the surrounding environment, materials, and most importantly, the community. Thank you. Thank you.

Next one. Valeria? Sorry if I didn't get that right.

Hi, my name is Valeria, and I'm here today as a resident of Woodburn, and also somebody that works as a case manager here and has worked in soil conservation in the past. So when I talk about land and community, I do know what I'm talking about. I'm not guessing. Also, Oregon has some of the most beautifully well-managed land that I've ever seen, and I've lived in three states. But it is abundantly clear that land conservation is something that our community values and at the same time I've seen what bad land management looks like and also bad policy like allowing data centers to be built. But I'm here to ask you today to say no to data centers. One of the reasons is because of the health disparities that it causes, like many of my peers here were saying already. But a study that was done last year at Alcorn State University by Dr. Babu projects that data centers will cause up to 1,300 premature deaths and 600,000 new asthma cases annually in the US. And by adding data centers in Woodburn, where our community is predominantly farm workers and production workers that are already exposed to harmful chemicals and pollutants. They will further exacerbate these health disparities. Data centers are also being sold as an economic development that would increase jobs for Oregonians, but they create almost no permanent jobs while competing for land and water that if taken would take jobs from many of our residents here and heavily impact the industry that actually does sustain our city which is agriculture by polluting the water that is already scarce and we're already trying to fix and the soil that takes generations to build and also to restore. um and as i said a lot of times it does use a lot of water in the dalles they use about 40 of their city's entire water supply and 70 of that is evaporated and it will not return to our local cycle um Yeah, and then also just please keep our community in mind. We are a community that does experience a lot of health disparities and not always thought about, especially like migrant farm workers. So please protect us and keep our land safe.

Thank you. And our last speaker, is it Marlin? Marlin?

Hello, my name is Marlene, and I live in Woodburn. I am here to oppose the potential data center. VAERS is looking into Woodburn for a potential site for its data center. Woodburn is already dealing with rapid growth and change that is making it difficult for its working class migrant population to keep up with the increasing cost of living. VAERS would not only oppose an environmental threat, but it would also accelerate increasing living expenses. Various representatives have continuously said that a new data center would generate economic development for our local communities. However, there is a clear traceable trend that points to various companies actually skipping on taxes. As a committee, it is your job to say no to these companies and keep your main focus on the community. meaning keeping the public health of our community a priority, keeping focus on establishing affordable housing, housing that actually aligns with the income of our low-income working class. We don't want housing that targets high-working white people and then calling it affordable. Rather than looking into projects that side with greedy corporations, invest into the well-being of the community. 60 percent of the woodburn identifies as latino and his majority of working class and migrant background if a data center is built here the cost of living and will increase systemically pushing out majority of woodburn protect our air water in our communities say no to ndas and data center proposals thank you thank you

So that was the end of our speaker cards. I want to thank you all for coming up and sharing your opinions and thoughts. They certainly will be received and taken with due course. Like I said, we have nothing to discuss or go for. tonight and we don't know if there ever will be a anything presented to the city but we certainly will let the public know what the future holds so thank you for sitting through our presentations and and again being here so with that I will move on to our general business which is our consent agenda Items on the consent agenda are considered routine and may be adopted by one motion. Any item may be removed for discussion at the request of the council member. May we have the city recorder please read the items out loud that are on the consent agenda.

The items on the consent agenda are as follows. Woodburn City Council minutes of July 27, 2026. Liquor license application for Red Robin. Quarterly investment report and building activity for July 2026.

Thank you. Anyone on the council who wish to pull anything up? Any questions, discussions? Then I would entertain a motion to adopt the consent agenda as presented. I move to accept the consent agenda as presented. Second. Move and second it. All in favor signify with an aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up, we do not have any table business. We do not have a public hearing tonight, but we do have under general business council bill 3308. Can we have the council president please introduce council bill number 3308. Yes, I'd like to introduce council bill number 3308. Council Bill 33 already has been duly introduced. Meeting ordinance requires two readings. May we please have the first reading by title only if there's no objections.

Council Bill number 3308, an ordinance amending ordinance number 2433, master fee schedule to establish user fees for Woodburn owned and managed electric vehicle EV charging stations.

Thank you. We have had our first reading of council bill 3308. May we now have the second reading, but again, by title only if there are no objections.

Council bill number 3308, an ordinance amending ordinance number 2433, master fee schedule to establish user fees for Woodburn owned and managed electric vehicle EV charging stations.

Thank you. We have a staff report.

Yes. Hi, Mayor. Renata Wakely, Special Projects Director. Short staff report. In October, I'm sorry, June 2024, the council accepted a energy efficiency and conservation block grant from the Oregon Department of Energy. It is federal funding. It has taken us some time to get to this point with getting contractors and electricians on board, but I'm happy to report that by September, we believe that the STATIONS WILL GO LIVE. SO THE PURPOSE OF TONIGHT'S ORDINANCE IS FOR THE CITY COUNCIL TO ADOPT A FEE SCHEDULE FOR PUBLIC USE OF THESE CHARGERS. AND I HAVE SOME SLIDES WITH A COMPARISON OF WHAT OTHER CITIES ARE DOING AND PRESENTING THAT INFORMATION FOR YOU TONIGHT. This map is showing where the red stars are the locations that were selected on advice of a technical advisory committee. So along with city staff, we had a planning commission member, fhdc representative and a representative f8 pge that served on an advisory committee we when we accepted the grant award each community that was awarded funds received approximately a hundred thousand dollars so we knew that we would be limited to five or six locations through town they needed to be city owned and managed properties And the priority of the funding source was reduction of fossil fuel emissions in a manner that maximizes public benefit and promotes equity and inclusion by making EV charging more accessible to the general public and specifically those in a diversity of housing types and locations. So we again looked at city-owned properties where we could install these. near parks and near denser housing and multi-family housing units specifically those that were built maybe you know 10 years ago before we started to see new multi-family developments installing Chargers and making them available for their residents so with you know advice of the technical advisory committee we selected these six sites those include Burlingham Park Legion Park, Post Office Municipal Park, the City Hall Accessory Parking Lot across the street, south of the Aware Food Bank, Settlemire Park, and Centennial Park. So those are our locations. The past three to four months, we've had contractors doing excavation, making sure that power can be pooled to these locations, bollards are being placed in the base mounts for those chargers and the chargers have been ordered and they're in facility storage right now waiting for our user schedule to be adopted and then ultimately be installed and available to the public. What I've also put on Blue Stars on this map is a fairly new program through PGE They call this the neighborhood charging program and PGE a couple months ago started installing these in a number of Communities in the Willamette Valley Woodburn was fortunate to be one of those I have some This information is available on their website for those that want to kind of get more specific addresses but on the left-hand side are these pge neighborhood charging programs so you have charging on a pole you create an account you go scan that qr code and you have to have money available uh once you you know on the account uh and then you say you're ready to charge and this kind of charging unit pulls down pg's really happy with these because they um damage, you know, like people aren't, the potential for hitting them, right? They've got the infrastructure there, they're placing them on utility poles. So PG has their own program for what they're charging users. What's on the right, and I'll show that in a table, kind of what PG's rates are. On the right is one example of our bollards being extolled, curb, changes uh the mounting where that that you know safety pole is in the center that's where the new mount will be installed um and in these locations that were selected throughout town we have had to go from three parking spaces down to two we reviewed with planning making sure we're meeting accessibility requirements so going from three parking spaces down to two will have an access aisle in the center of those two parking spaces. So while these will not be marked as ADA accessible parking spaces, they are designed to be accessible to all users. Working with finance department, Jim's been very involved in this project. We did some comparisons of what other communities are charging. I'm going to highlight in red what we learned from other communities. and what we use to kind of come up with the recommendation for you. There are a lot of third party run EV charging units, private property, or in the case of the city of Portland, they oftentimes are just permitting these to be installed in public right away, and they're not really involved in this process. This funding source was Department of Energy Award to communities. So we will own and operate these on city property, but again, available to the public. There will be options for us in the future if we choose to kind of turn over all management and operation to a third party, but we will always kind of have these. They'll be on our city property. We do have a third party called Blink Chargers. That's who we bought the units from, who will help us. They're already under contract. It was part of that purchase in the collection of these fees, and then the city will turn over what our share is, but that is based on what the council adopts as the fee schedule.

What we set as a charge, Yes. That is going to be city money. Yes. And then at some point, PGE will charge us for power use.

Yes. So what we know is PGE has already presented to us what they will charge us on a metered system. They call it Schedule 32. So working with finance, there's some assumptions or estimates here, because it depends on how much energy is actually being pooled, how much these are being used. If it's like over 5,000 kilowatts hours a month, which we don't anticipate, Second tiered rate kind of goes down. So the more we're using this our rate can go down We don't anticipate there's going to be 5,000 kilowatt hours run through each of these meters so they have presented us with the schedule and Working with finance like we believe we're going to be charged by PGE 11 cents a kilowatt hour So that's what it will cost the city to make these available to the public. So the purchase, the install, all of that was covered by Department of Energy grant. What the city does, what staff is proposing, and that's that first column here, Woodburn proposes the ordinance. Compared to what other cities are doing, we propose charging $0.25 per kilowatt hour rate initially. That's basically doubling what PG is charging us. But we need to be prepared for not only staff collection. Finance is going to set up an account for this. They've got to manage this project, but we're trying to create a reserve fund so that future operation and maintenance of these, we have a one-year warranty under the blink chargers, but if there's replacements, tubing, there's some damage done. That's what that's what staff is presenting to you. We're not proposing an initial initiation or connection fee We're not at this time proposing peak time fee usage and we're not proposing idle fees the next time the city Updates our master fee schedule because this will be added to the city's master fee schedule. We can re-examine this We'll provide a report to you if it appears the 25 cents per kilowatt hour is is It's not going to be a major revenue stream for the city. But if it appears the $0.25 per kilowatt hour is not enough to keep up with maintenance operation if we're having issues with this, we'll bring it back to council sooner than later. But I will note, Kaiser has some of their own. They're charging $0.30 a kilowatt hour. They don't have idle fees. They don't charge peak time usage. And they don't have connection fees. wilsonville does have a much lower base rate it's 17 cents per hour but to initiate a charge it's three time each time you connect um like us we go 49 cents every time you connect and they're charging nine cents an hour so we're we're proposing just a very basic flat rate no extras on it and we'll come we'll come back to the city council if finance or jim or i or public works are identifying concerns that either it's maybe we're charging too much or it's too little If it's too much, people aren't using them, we will come back to the city council and kind of provide reports periodically on this.

So it's a pretty simple process setting up an account with them?

Yes, it'll be through Blink. So people will use their smartphones. It's an app. Yeah.

So what is the Woodburn Transit Center?

Okay, so that's the I-5 connection. Oh. Yeah, and so that's a high rate. They don't have idle times, but you know, In conversation with Jim, they have Type 2 and Type 3, so the Tesla fast chargers. This transit center location is kind of considered ODOT's electric highway. So these are folks that are maybe commuting all the way through Oregon and want to make sure that they have connections. So the rate's a little higher. Why? EBCS and that rate was chosen, I think it's more in line with this is someone who's traveling up and down the I-5 corridor. That very last column is how PGE has established their neighborhood pool charges that I showed you. So you need to have $20 minimum in your account. They have different peak rates. So if you're charging at noon, they're $0.12 per kilowatt hour, much lower. Basically, it's what it costs them to provide or what they would be charging us. to provide power. But they have peak hour rates, too. So between 5 and 9 PM, they add $0.28 per peak hour. So somebody who wants to charge between 5 and 9 PM is being charged $0.40 a kilowatt hour. So they've got a different scale depending on when you come and charge. They also have, I will note, we're not proposing that this time, but 10 minutes after you're done charging, at pg's power pools they will start charging you an additional 10 cents per minute no matter what time of day what they call idle fees get out of now you don't have to move that parking spot but get off of our connection um and that's a way you know in the future if we know that folks are sitting in these spots, using them, not charging. It's something we can talk about in the future if it becomes an issue. We don't know that this is gonna be an issue for us. Each of the poles or the blink chargers mounted our dual port, so we've got two parking spaces. Again, this is fairly new for us, so we're proposing a really kind of basic flat rate. I have had conversations with PG and was They're happy to report, and I thought it was quite interesting. They've got 13 locations in town on these local residential streets. It's only been live for a couple of months. They've got 13 account users in town, and these folks are charging non-peak hours after 9 p.m. says is that these are residents who live in town that don't have a garage or don't you know their house doesn't have capacity so they're actually charged so it appears at least the PG neighborhood pool chargers are serving our local residents because people are charging overnight we hope that these will be you know again not only for those that are in older multifamily housing units that they'll have, you know, greater access, they can use PG, they can use what we've provided. But the idea with putting these chargers in our parks in our downtown is come charge downtown. We have a fairly competitive rate. Do some shopping. We're not going to penalize you at this point if you're here for three hours because your lunch went long or your shopping went long. But kind of trying another kind of service downtown.

Do you know, from other cities that have had this for a while, even if it's only three months or so, what's the average time that somebody will go plug in?

So Jim, I think, knows a little more than this. I think your typical time is going to be, if it's a type 2, you're getting about 10 kilowatt hours. What's a kilowatt hour? It turns it around to how much mileage you're getting.

so do you counselor do you have experience with this i mean a little bit i mean it's the same as like miles per hour but it's the amount that you're getting that the charge is coming in how many kilowatts per hour to like fill your tank yeah most folks are not going to try to fill on these going from zero to complete full but if they can get you know one to two hours of charge that can get them up to 50 capacity on their car they've got you know and then they carry on with their day um so these chargers that like the city ones are level one two type two or type two yeah so they won't charge as fast as like the tesla supercharger so you can go to a supercharger station and you can do it in like 15 minutes But on these city ones or the PGE ones, you might have to sit there for a couple of hours, park, and then move your car. Yep. Yeah.

So how much does it cost if you sit there for a couple hours and charge your car? I don't understand.

Well, so, I mean, they're charging $0.12 per hour, and that might only get you, like, 10 miles. Oh. So you have to maybe charge longer. Yeah, I mean it just depends.

Yeah. Okay. So after you achieve a full charge from PGE, after, you know, whether on their pool charges, let's say that you're there for, Six hours, because you want to go from zero to a full charge. Once your car is fully charged, they will start charging you, after 10 minutes of the completion, an additional $0.10 per minute. So that base, if you're overnight, at $0.12 per kilowatt hour after 9 p.m., but they will start charging that idle fee. And so folks need to pay attention even if they're charging overnight because it goes up to 22 cents basically then per kilowatt hour, which is still pretty reasonable. We're not proposing any sort of idle rate or kind of penalty if you're there until such time that we determine the demand is so high that we need to start moving people along and we want to add an idle fee if that ever comes up. we just don't know uh how you know i anticipate the next couple of months the the ordinance if adopted tonight or whether any changes are made it's not we're not doing an emergency ordinance so we'll go live in september and then it will be a matter of some social media and outreach pg has offered to come down and do some what they call drive change events kind of training people on how to use these public education, I think it's going to be kind of a slow initial rollout to get people the information that these exist. And then, you know, in three months, we'll kind of see how the program's running and if any changes are needed.

And you said online it lists where they're located?

The PG neighborhood polls. And we'll do the same thing with our social media, kind of like with this, you know, map, putting the information back.

The map is kind of small.

We'll provide addresses and cross streets. Yes, just wanted to show the distribution that we're trying to get throughout the community, not only that the city tried to get, but that PGE is putting in these neighborhoods.

Now, aren't there charging stations out by Elmer's?

Those are the Tesla superchargers. Who runs those?

Who gets money from them? Tesla.

Well, and I'm sure PGE, I'm sure they have some partnership. They will charge Tesla for whatever it is to... provide the power to it if Tesla chooses to add money.

And they do like surcharges. So if it's, I mean, like sometimes they'll charge like 52 cents. So, but like, I think 25 cents is fair. So at home, I figure... Off-peak hours during the middle of the night is when we try to charge. We pay like 13 cents per kilowatt hour.

And PG's charging, okay, 12 is what they say. That's what I think, yeah.

And then a peak time, 5 o'clock, I figure we're paying like 43 cents. So I think 25 cents is fair. It's in the middle.

and you're not monitoring peak time and off-peak time. There is cost to the city. We're making sure that we're having cost recovery. And our expectation is the difference between the 11, 12 cents that PG is charging us to move it up to 25 cents that we can start to create. And finance will create a project code and track this. and we can provide reports. And we want to make sure that we can build up some sort of little reserve fund for that first time that we need to change some tubes, there's some damage we need to do painting, you know, new signage for folks. So, you know, once we build up a little bit of a security fund on this, because that was not grant provided, then we can kind of reassess and see how the program and implementation is running.

I appreciate all the hard work and the higher math that has gone into this. It's a very energizing topic of discussion. I wanted to just make sure we're all clear that the city isn't proposing to make a profit on this. We've tried to figure out a fee that will basically allow us to perhaps have some additional money if necessary for repairs or whatever. And we'll revisit this promptly to make whatever adjustments. I think it's a great thing to have public power and I just want to make sure everyone understands we're not trying to make a lot of money off of people by having electrical vehicles.

Some of the communities, again, it's policy direction. Similar rates between 25 cents to 30 cents per kilowatt hour. But at the higher end, if it's council's intention to say we want to use some of this money that we're putting in the project code, if any, outside of operation and maintenance so that we can purchase more and install more to be determined at a future date, we just need to kind of track this for the first three to six months. and see how it's doing. But for sure, we want to make sure that we have some sort of operation and maintenance for the six dual ports that we've installed at this point with grant money. The grant is set to expire in October. I've had some conversations with Department of Energy. They might be able to get us their kind of running to the end of their federal dollars. So I have proposed some projects to them, additional chargers throughout town. We are placing some chargers at the Settlemyer Park Community Center project right outside of the community center. So if we can get a little more money from them to cover, to be determined, I haven't heard back. But they have covered what we've gone to so far, for the most part. So here is, I'll make one other note. When looking at Kaiser's, we modeled the ordinance similarly to what Kaiser had done because they had done those via ordinance. Not all cities have. We're making this part of our fee schedule. I will note that the city of Kaiser did exempt their city vehicles in their ordinance. staff is proposing not to exempt the city vehicles we should charge what we're charging the public you can charge you can adopt a different rate when that time comes if we start electrifying our vehicles um that will be a policy consideration for the city council but we place in the ordinance that city vehicles shall not be exempt we don't have any electric vehicles at this point But that could change before we bring the master fee schedule back to you. You can also have a separate fee schedule for city vehicles. The two vehicles in the talks for charging, we have a electric bus that's soon to be purchased, again, with grant dollars. That will be charged to be its own charging unit at the city's transit yard, so that's separate. And Jim and Kathleen and Transit are also looking to get a dial-a-ride electric vehicle, but that would also be charged at the transit yard, so that would be separate from what you're seeing here. So you have what we tried to determine to be, yes, reasonable, accessible to folks, right? Not a fee that's so high that we're creating too large of a reserve. We want it to be competitive. We want folks to use this. We want to get information out there.

No, just to clarify, this is an emergency. So the council can adopt this attached ordinance tonight, and then it goes into effect in? 30 days. 30 days. Correct. And that's assuming the council wants to adopt this as presented?

So we're not in the packet. Is this schedule 32? Looks like this is from PG. That is PG. That's what they're going to turn to us. We're not approving that. This is already.

Correct. That is a PG adopted. That's what they charge municipalities. That's for your reference. That's how we determine what we believe we will be charged. There's some options in there. At this point, and I actually didn't, you know, we could at a future date, they do have the limited term or peak rates. We're not proposing to enter into that contract right now. Those would be future conversations. But they do give us some lower rates if we choose that. But then higher rates they would be charging us during peak time. We're not ready to make a recommendation on that yet. So we're just doing the flat.

I like the idea, waiting to gather some data before we really solidify. I mean, this is a good starting place.

Any questions, comments? Councilor Cantu, thank you for your input on that. That helped the discussion.

What little I know about kilowatt hours.

Could we have a roll call vote, please? to approve the ordinance as presented. Yeah.

Councillor Kentu? Yes. Councillor Cornwell? Yes. Councillor Bravo?

Yes.

Councillor Grijalva? Yes. Councillor Wilk? Yes. Councillor Schaaf?

Yes. Council Bill 3308 has been duly passed. Thank you. Moving on, under other business, let me bring up the fact that our next meeting is scheduled for August 24th. At this point, we do not have any business to really discuss, so we're looking at canceling that meeting. And I think the staff is in favor of that, too? Yes. So then our next meeting after that would be September 14th. If everyone's in agreement, then that now is the rule. So we'll move on to our city manager's report.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We've got a couple of things.

It's been amazingly quiet all evening.

Yes, yes, I know. I've been cracking jokes to our city attorney here.

I'm sure.

Mr. Mayor, we had quite a bit of comment tonight, articulate comment presented from the public concerning data centers. And I do want to brief the city council a little bit on some data center activity that's occurred in the last... So the council knows that there is no pending development application for a data center in Woodburn. That remains true. And the city is aware that the Veris, the data center company that's currently focused on a project in Salem, has done diligence on sites in Woodburn. And we're not surprised that there's speculation on Woodburn's industrial sites. Woodburn is one of the few communities on the I-5 corridor that has a significant amount of industrial property, all of which is in private holdings. So the city's not privy to any data sales or data centers or any other industrial negotiations between private parties. So the city has done a couple things. As the council knows, on June 8th, you amended your zoning code to make data centers from an outright use to a conditional use, meaning that conditions can be imposed upon them by the city to address public concerns and infrastructure concerns that the city has. Then... week before last i can't keep track of my days the city did file notice of dlcd that the city council may consider a data center moratorium at the conclusion of the 45-day notice and in oregon that is a a process a moratorium under state law can only be for a limited duration and it requires the city to address the concerns of the moratorium from a planning standpoint It can be extended, but the moratorium does provide a window of opportunity for the city to make an assessment of what's being proposed and the ability of the city to accommodate it and their infrastructure or other issues that have to be addressed. What has became apparently clear to staff is that We don't have the technical expertise on staff to assess the current technology associated with data centers. We read newspapers. We hear concerns from the public. But we don't have the kind of technical expertise that's required to grapple with a project of this scope or size. And so today I signed an agreement with a consulting company called Thomas Consulting out of Louisiana that provides technical expert level consulting for for communities like ours on data centers not because we have a data center project but the city feels that we need to have resources available technical experts that can assess what impacts are so that we can make comparisons to the wastewater master plan for example that the city council wants to develop findings on the road to support a moratorium that's going to require a level of expertise to develop those findings that will stand up with dlcd and and hold water if we want for example no pun intended if we want to do that So I did that today. That company is now a consultant for us and available to provide that information to us and the city council if we need to cross that path down the road. I did read in the media, we read the newspapers like everybody else, that Veris did say that they're focused on the Salem project and not on Woodburn. They don't necessarily tell us. what they're doing and so I don't have a direct pipeline with the company and I'm not included in what their plans are. In fact, we didn't know about Salem until we read about it in the newspaper, for example. So I want the council to know that we continue to try to put the pieces in place and develop capacity that we can remove to address concerns, that the council has the authority And the planning commission has the authority to impose conditions and now we have the level of technical experts available at our disposal should we need to try to do that. So we are building capacity inside the organization and building options for the city council and for the community to participate in any process should the need ever arise. And again, I don't know if there'll ever be a data center proposal submitted in Woodburg or not. But in the event that there is, I want the council to know that we're trying to develop the resources that we can grapple with effectively and that we can make accurate assessments and impose conditions and requirements that protect the infrastructure of the city and address any environmental or other concerns that the public may have.

Scott, at some point, can you see this

person that you've contracted out with having a workshop and educating the council we could for sure you know one of the things we are now that this is a data centers are a conditional use that means that the city council could conduct a hearing and weigh conditions to impose and so we we want to the council and the community to be educated for sure I'll tell you that it is difficult to sort out what the impacts are based on what we hear from people and what we read in the newspaper. It is hard to know what the current technology is or what was. We have to discern that. I think we could do that, but we don't want to create any kind of environment where the council has biased itself in a way that you can't participate in any kind of judicial process. our quasi-judicial land use proceeding because of that. So yes, they are here to help inform us, and they're here to support the council with technical data. They're non-biased. They neither for or against data centers. They are providing technical information. There may be an opportunity for that down the road. But if that opportunity occurs, it will be because it's been vetted by our attorneys and others to ensure that we don't somehow impede the ability for the council to conduct a hearing and impose conditions. That's only my concern. We cross this with other types of land use decisions all the time. It's no different with the data center. but i wanted to tell you that to know that um you know we're working on that we continue to think about it and we continue to try to monitor what's being proposed in other communities i'm not saying that woodburn will ever get a data center proposal but we have a lot of land that's available and we want to make sure that you know we're prepared for any anything down the road that may may arise Any questions about that, Mr. Mayor? I do have a few other things, but I'll entertain any other questions you might have.

Council good with that? I think it's a good move. OK.

Thank you. I'm happy that we can forward more information to the council about Thomas Consulting and what they do and the proposal. The scope of work is quite comprehensive. We could utilize them to help us develop findings to support a moratorium, for example, that were technical in nature enough that would be justified and effective under the moratorium requirements under state law. We'll need that level of assistance, should we ever come to that. The other thing, if I can move on, Mr. Mayor, and I can come back to this any time, but the other thing I want to tell you is that we did receive an appeal to the to the approved winco project so the appellants that testified in opposition in front of the city council on the findings that supported the winco have appealed it to landy's board of appeals um i you know it will move forward uh the city attorney's office is going to be you know very involved in that we've been down this road before I think we're very optimistic that the project will sustain challenge but I just want you to know that it has been there has been an appeal filed with all any sport of appeals on your on your decision to approve one Co I'll let the city attorney.

So appeal to the land use board of appeals requires what's called a briefing schedule. So we will expect to receive the appellant's written arguments at our office in the next 45 days. And then we will have 21 days to respond. And then there's what's called an oral argument that's scheduled in front of the three judge panel that reviews both of those briefs. That's usually scheduled about six weeks following, so we're looking at mid-October, and then that three-judge panel has time to make their decision. So my guess is that we would know, I won't say by the end of the year, but maybe by January, there'll be a decision.

And finally, Mr. Mayor, I think on a light note, there have been a lot of comments from the community and the councilors about the highly sought after and coveted Woodburn t-shirts. Yes, the All-American City sleeve. And over here, I think we have some for people. And I know that we all participate in the Fiesta and Fiesta parade. I think we're going to highly encourage people to wear their shirts during the parade and during the event. But you can see Jesse for a T-shirt.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. And, yeah, Mr. Mayor, that's all I have unless there's any questions about anything I've said tonight in my report.

Any questions before I move on?

I had someone point out something to me tonight. They're concerned about EV scooters and their prevalence and popularity in the city and the safety of those of us who are not on scooters or are driving cars and they're suddenly there. And I think we have ordinances in place already about them being on sidewalks, riding in parks, That was this person's concern as she was at Trillium Park tonight, the little park, and there were two kids on one bike just, you know, buzzing around the park.

I agree it's a problem I see them come around the library all the time.

Yeah. don't know i don't know if we have ordinances but when they are riding on sidewalks and we are trying to drive or trying to use the sidewalk it's just really uncomfortable and dangerous because it's so unpredictable and so much speed and all that do we have an answer

So electric bicycles and scooters are prohibited from operating on public sidewalks, and that's not a local ordinance, that's actually a state statute. I think Maricela pushed out some information about this through the e-blast about midsummer. kind of with, you know, know the law and then also for like safe operations. So things like kids under 16 can't operate e-bikes or electric scooters. And then, you know, also just recommendations about wearing a helmet. So I think probably the biggest thing that we see is probably use under 16 on e-bikes and scooters and under state statute that is prohibited. It is a violation. Parents can be cited for basically permitting their, underage kids from utilizing e-bikes and e-scooters. So, um, but those are all state statute specifics. We do have a park regulation around e-bikes, um, which is more specific about the types of e-bikes people can use. So there's, um, three different levels of e-bikes. So we do permit e-bike operations, um, which are level one and level two, which are e-bikes that do not have a throttle. They still require pedal. push those are okay in the parks like on trails they are supposed to be shared use trails for bicyclists and pedestrians but those are permitted but e-bikes that have a throttle would be prohibited under local ordinance okay i was super impressed you knew any of that i didn't know anything thank you that's all okay

I just want to say I learned a lot tonight and I echo Councillor Cornwell's concern about e-bikes only because as a pedestrian I've found them coming up at a high rate of speed behind me and without being aware they're like suddenly whipping pot so there is some danger to pedestrians in particular Of course, we've had a number of accidents involving just regular bikes and vehicles lately. So again, safety is something we just constantly should be making sure we're aware of. Other than that, I just really am so proud of our city and really appreciate the public participation on matters of public interest and appreciate when, you know, residents take the time out of their busy lives to come and tell us how they feel about things.

I do appreciate that.

I'll just echo what he said. I appreciate everybody coming out and sharing their opinions and especially the young people. It's really great to see that they care so much about our community. They are our future so keep fighting the good fight.

A couple of things I have. We've had a couple ribbon cuttings in the last couple of weeks. And I want to thank the council president for doing one, the U.S. market gas station and the apartments around them. was a well represented ribbon cutting. Well attended. Thank you for stepping up. Sure. And I could not make that. But the one I did make was the week before that was downtown at the Office, which is now a beauty school. Celeste, it's a wonderful beauty school, something offering jobs downtown and work.

Certainly a higher and better use than a law office.

She did a very good job putting that together. It is a first class beautiful building both inside and out. They spent a lot of time and welcomed them to Woodburn in putting it together. And the other thing is I guess I want to thank you all for sending me to Ashland to a mayors conference this last weekend. It was very enlightening. A lot of mayors was put on by the League of Warring Cities and then the Warring Mayors Association. Kind of the rule of thumb was that I need to get along with the council members and work it. I'm supposed to be a cheerleader for the staff and then totally invite ad hoc committees in and actually listen to them. What I got out of this was a lot of networking with other mayors. And I think it was Councilman Wilk at a prior meeting had mentioned how good Woodburn is. And we all know that. But talking to other mayors, there's problems out there with other cities. There's a lot of special assessments. They have problems with maybe the police department or certainly right now a lot of them have problems with staff and city managers. The counselors, the counselors have problems with the mayors. Guys, we don't have that. It is a pleasure. being part of Woodburn right now. And the people that we have working for us and my opportunity to work with this council, I thank you for that. We do not have anywhere near the issues and problems that Woodburn has, I mean that other cities have. One is a lot of foresight, trying to handle things before they happen. So again, I thank everybody who's involved in it and I can see why we are an all-American city. So with that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. We're out of here.