Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

All right, good morning everybody. Uh, welcome to our March 26th uh, formal session of the Yam Hill County Board of Commissioners. Uh, I opened this at 10 a.m. and I'm going to ask that, uh, Carolina lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Aliance 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.

Uh thank you for that. Uh before we get going into public comments, I just wanted to touch on something uh that happened a couple days ago. Um, one of our planning commission members uh had a family member that passed away from a tragic accident. And I just want everybody to make sure that we have their thoughts and have prayers for them. Um, as things kind of roll out and we get permission from the family, if they want us to give more details, we can, but I just want to uh mention that and that the Gabler family, they're um we're thinking about you and we're praying. So, uh, with that, I'm going to move on to our calendar session. Um,

is there any changes to be made? None. Uh, that brings us to our public comment. I have two general public comment cards filled out. If there's any others, please raise your hand. And, uh, we do have a public hearing coming up. So, if you're here to comment on the public hearing, fill out the green cards. If you're online, raise your virtual hand. With that, I'm going to ask two to come up at the same time. It is going to be James Goings and Charlie Rice.

Good morning. Name and address from both of you, please. My name is J My name is James Goings. I'm a resident of McMinnville. I live at 2126 Northwest Elm Street. Charlie Rice. Um, my I reside at 401 South Everest Road number 36 in Newberg.

I'll start. I'm here today on behalf of Shahalum Youth and Family Services where I have served as board chair for just over a year and I'm joined by Charlie Rice, our executive director who has dedicated nearly 30 years to this organization. I will be offering brief comment and then invite Charlie Rice to provide additional comment. Shahalam Youth and Family Services served Yamhill County for more than 50 years, working with youth to help obtain their C GEDs and high school diplomas while also supporting families in building strong and stable lives. Recently, I proposed a small personal funded incentive to recognize and encourage the young people who serve by taking them to a celebratory lunchon on their choosing. Importantly, this was not intended to use any organizational funds, but rather to give back in their personal way to the youth who are working hard to improve their futures. However, this year, our organization experienced significant reduction in grant funding. As a result, we were forced to close our McMinnville office and relocate to Work Source, Oregon, and we have reduced our staff compensation. These changes have placed a strain on our ability to continue delivering the level of service our community has relied on for decades. We are committed to continuing important work, but we need your support to ensure that Shahalam Youth and Family Services can remain a strong and stable resource for youth and family families in Yamill County. I want to thank you for your time and consideration. I would like to invite Charlie to speak and I won't be able to uh hear Charlie. I'm going in for spinal cord surgery at

noon and I love everybody here and I got to go for a special spinal cord uh implantation for a wiring harness into my brain stem and I got to leave. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck James

here. Good morning, Chair Johnston, Commissioners, Bing, Starret. I am the Shahalum Youth and Family Services Executive Director. Um, Shahel Youth and Family Services or CYFS for short has been serving families and youth in Yamhill County since the 1970s. We started by providing residential treatment for youth. In 2010, we began providing youth workforce development uh for youth and young adults who live in Yamhill County. This was um funded and still is through uh the Department of Labor by a grant that goes through the local workforce board in Salem Wamut Workforce Partnership. In 2010, CYFS also began providing supervised parent visitation so that non-custodial parents could visit their children and thereby maintain those important family bonds. That service, Shahalum Parenting Connection, utilizes grants to provide a sliding fee scale for clients based on their financial needs.

Our youth workforce development program, which we call YUP, relies on grants provided through WAMIT workforce partnership. Mr. Goins referred to a recent reduction of these funds in his remarks. We experienced a 29% reduction in these funds at the start of our current fiscal year, which began last July. in dollars. That was a reduction of $112,000. Our youth program has offices in McMinnville and in Newberg. That makes it more convenient for our participants to receive services. We moved our office in McMinnville to the Works Source Oregon building near Schmecka Community College. This move was to free up funds that had been used for the lease and other expenses of our former McMinnville office. These savings allowed us to reinstate staff wages and a portion of the direct expenses for our participants, but we continue to seek funds through grants to overcome the deficit that I mentioned earlier. In conclusion, we plan to present our financial needs to the county budget committee next month. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rice. I formerly served on that board and the last time I saw you, you were attempting to help us with a youth who was significantly challenged to, you know, to get his GED and and and driver's license and all that. Appreciate the work you've done. It's often thankless. You're working with some a challenging population, but you've you've just been you've been so dedicated. So, thank you.

Thank you, C Commissioner. Um, I don't know how much time I'm allowed. I would be happy to share a success story of one of our current participants, but uh I don't know what your agenda is like or what your time is like. We have all day and I could save it for the budget committee next month. Good idea. Okay, got it. Y and you'll have three more years to bend uh during budget committee. So, that'd be great. Hey, thanks for coming. Thank you.

All right, if there's anybody else, raise your hand or your virtual hand online. And if you showed up a little bit late, if you're here for the public hearing, make sure you fill out one of the green cards if you're here to give public comment. With that, we're going to move on to department updates from our sheriff's office. Welcome, Sheriff Elliot. Thank you, chair and commissioners. Good morning. Uh, good morning. Give

me just a minute to get set up here. So, All right. Thank you for the opportunity to come and speak with you this morning about the sheriff's office. I know that you have a full agenda today and I'm going to try to keep it uh relatively brief. uh in that I'm not going to talk about some of the facets of the sheriff's office uh emergency management in particular uh as it is uh its own department per se under the sheriff's office. So we're not going to talk about emergency management at all today. I'm not going to talk to you about the radio system. Commissioner King has been a part of several of our meetings lately and uh he can provide any additional information or I can at another time regarding some of the work that's being done on the county's public safety radio system. Uh we have a dog control work session later, so I'm going to gloss over some of that uh and just limit it to uh general information about the sheriff's office. So over the past year since the last time that I uh gave an update to you and and spoke with you, uh one of the big initiatives that I uh

really was focused on is trying to identify uh our mission, vision, and values for the sheriff's office. So, uh, I spent a lot of time researching and working on what I wanted, uh, the sheriff's office to reflect, and these are the new mission, vision, and values of the sheriff's office that we implemented earlier this year. Um, I'm not going to sit here and read to you everything that's on the screen because you can see it for yourself. Um but uh this was uh a pretty significant undertaking for me personally just because this is something that unifies the entire organization uh under a common purpose. So when when I'm setting the mission and the vision of the office, it's something that really rallies everybody together that we we can see what our common purpose is together uh as an organization. Um there's a lot of uh different approaches. you see some uh agencies that have a mission or they have a vision statement that's multiple paragraphs long. They're things that really get into trying to cover all of the bases of what you do as an organization. Um but if it's not something that you can commit to memory and recite uh you know easily, I think it gets lost. And so that's why these are simple. They're uh able to be put onto pocket-sized cards. Uh we actually have some new challenge coins that reflect all of the five values um of the organizations. So um we're putting it on materials in the office making it visible and accessible to everybody. And so, uh, again, it was, uh, maybe took longer than it should have, but, um, when I was really trying to, uh, bring my cohesive thoughts together on what the values of the organization should be, again, you know, you have agencies that, you know, have, uh, many core

values, uh, some that have a few core values, uh, trying to decide like what is the right amount. Uh, and honestly, the first four were really kind of easy. Um when I was looking at what are the values of the organization, you know, integrity, respect, courage and empathy, uh this is something that I put out to the entire staff and and offered the opportunity for staff to weigh in and tell me what do you think our value should be? What should be the focus of the organization and those were relatively easy to to come up with. And so I'm looking at it going, I've got four and that just doesn't seem quite right. uh you know, I want to have five and make it something that, you know, you can put on a circular uh challenge coin and and have it all be even. And uh five just seemed like it was really the target that I was shooting for. And so, but I was really struggling to come up with what that fifth core value would be. and uh was looking at some of the work that we do and you know what really resonates with the community and what generates a lot of the positive reinforcement in the form of letters and comments and emails that we get back and I think truly what is uh embodied in the office of sheriff and what is really something that is uh heavily um instructed on and recited within the state sheriff's association is kindness uh that's what people remember about their contact with a deputy sheriff or with a sheriff is that we do serve the community and we reflect uh that office of sheriff no matter what county you're in across the state of Oregon. And so that's how I came up with the fifth core value of kindness. So any questions or comments uh on this slide? Uh so talking about the organization itself uh we're going to start with the jail. Uh you can see you know uh we are

going to publish later today the annual report from calendar year 2025. That was something that last year uh we got back to creating and publishing. Uh I brought that annual report to you during my department update last year. U I'm not going to go through the entire report. It's like 38 pages long. Um, so I just have a few snapshots from the annual report uh for us to talk about today. And that annual report does give the comparison of last year plus the two years prior. So you're getting kind of a three-year look back. We're relatively consistent with uh our jail activity as far as the total number of bookings per year. As you can see from 2025 uh over the prior couple years uh our average daily population is uh 127 for last year which is an increase of 11.4% from the prior year. Um we do have an increase of about 60% in our Senate Bill 1145 population. So those are the prism diversion candidates that are um spending time in the county facility. Um, most notably, and as you'll recall from prior conversations, uh, with our expansion of our bed rentals with Washington County and the US Marshall Service, um, our average daily bed rental population is 21, which is a 50% increase over the year before and a 425% increase over 2023. Um, our average monthly bookings and our, uh, average monthly releases relatively constant um, over the prior year. Some of the things that we track um we have expanded the things that we're tracking in the facility, but it's important for us to know uh things that generate uh what we call an incident, something that gets tracked on paper, something that we're documenting, whether that be some sort of a misconduct, a rule of violation. Um

whether it's medical issues, uh suicide risk assessments, um you can see uh in most categories we are trending a little bit down. So we are seeing a decrease in uh a lot of the incidents the at least the reportable type incidents that we're having in the facility and I will tell you that it is my belief that the reduction in a lot of the incidents that we're having is because of the introduction of the tablet technology. uh the enhancements in the communication ability for folks that are currently incarcerated to have uh regular uh text message conversations, video chat conversations with family members, with providers. Um to be able to have uh the opportunity to do educational programs. Um it it is something that consumes some of their time. It's also something that uh allows them to have a little bit greater uh connection with the outside while they are current where they are incarcerated. Um that they don't lose that uh contact. It's much easier for family members to be able to do a a text chat conversation or a video con conference with uh their family member um because it's not limited to the periods of time where we can accommodate physical people coming in and out of the visitation booths and moving the adults from their housing unit down to a visitation booth and then back. um it has reduced the amount of movement uh and the staff time necessitated to accommodate that significantly. So um the tablets um are issued to every adult in custody that comes into the facility uh unless they engage in uh some sort of behavior or conduct like intentionally damaging it. Uh they don't receive that back. Um but the they get all of their mail um through the tablet. So, it goes to an off-site location

where it gets scanned and uploaded and sent directly to them in the form of um like a an email uh which is uh a great safety advantage for the facility because it cuts down on the contraband that gets mailed in. We don't get the paper that's been soaked in meth water. We don't get uh you know the acid tabs that are you know folded up into a small fold of paper. um we don't get uh powder that is put into a book binding or a fold of a piece of paper. So there are significant safety advantages on the introduction of elicit contraband into the facility by having the mail scanned offsite and then sent in an electronic format uh through the tablet. Uh we have seen those significant increases overall in our disciplinary issues as well as incidents of self harm uh suicide watches. Um, you know, we have a really, really great partnership with uh the staff from HHS that work in the facility that are there to u meet the needs of the folks that are incarcerated um to, you know, meet with them sometimes multiple times a day. We see uh folks that have never been arrested before that there's a lot of anxiety over that first experience. They're able to meet with those individuals. They're able to explain to them certain things that help put them at ease. And then the folks that we get in that do suffer from very significant mental illness. It is such a gamecher to have those staff in there to meet with them and work with the prescribing physicians and identify what medication they were on that they should be on that we need to get restarted on and help to stabilize them. Uh I will point out the biggest incident that we have is maintenance issues. Um and that just is because of the aging facility. We are seeing increased use with the amount of bed rentals and and uh with the amount of um use of the facility and the way that the facility was constructed and

laid out. Um that continues to be the predominant issue that we have is maintenance uh requests and maintenance issues in the facility. How's the kitchen remodel coming?

Kitchen is looking so amazing. uh they are done with all of the uh rebuilding of the kitchen or the repair work that was done after the fire. Um there are just a very couple of small outstanding items like a soap dispenser being mounted back over uh a handwashing sink. Um just a couple really small things, but the bulk majority of the work is done. They've moved back in. We're utilizing the kitchen for all the meal prep. Now we're out of the temporary trailer. They just did spring break, so they didn't uh they weren't coming up to pick it up this week. So, so huge shout out to Will Mina Customs for absolutely letting us use their portable food trailer. That was a huge help.

Very much so. Uh I plan to bring you something uh when we're all said and done uh in recognition of the support from Willilamina School District and Willamina Customs to bring us that. Uh it was immensely helpful and they didn't charge us anything uh for utilization of that mobile kitchen trailer. So, um, you know, I I know we will have our regularly scheduled inspection where you guys will come through. I'm really excited to show you the changes in the kitchen and what it looks like. Um, it's so much brighter. Uh, you know, we went with white FRP paneling on the walls. All the lighting is new. Uh, it is like a brand new facility. So, and the the staff uh are so excited about the the upgrades um to the surfaces, you know, for ease of cleaning and everything else. So, In terms of the uh insurance coverage for that, can you break that down for us? Will we out of pocket anything?

That would be a question for Kevin and Ken. Okay. Yeah. So, there is a we do have a deductible under that coverage. You know, uh 10,000 is our deductible. So, the remaining costs of the project to restore and uh repair, it's all um covered by our property insurance. Okay. So that deductible is covered by our extra insurance that did not come out of the sheriff's budget that 10. Correct. The that we have we carry funds we we carry funds in the insurance reserve to cover deductibles. So we cover the first 10,000 and then our CIS would cover the remaining amount for the that's covered.

Great. Thank you. Um, on the subject of the jail, uh, in February of 2025, our narcotics K9 handler deputy, who was a patrol deputy, um, he he took an opportunity with the Oregon State Police and moved on uh, over to that agency. And so we had Rojo, who is our narcotics detection K9, that um, his handler was leaving the organization. Rojo's um I'm gonna probably get this wrong, but I believe he's nine years old, so he's getting a little up in years for doing uh patrol work where he's jumping in and out of the car multiple times a day. Um he still has uh you know, a strong desire to do what he does. And so we took that opportunity and paired Rojo with a new handler in the jail. Um so he was paired with Deputy Holerson. uh and we worked with Deputy Holverson and the the rest of the folks in the region uh in the narcotics detection world and have utilized Rojo um in the jail. So uh every jail in the state of Oregon deals with um contraband and there is always motive and incentive for people to try to bring controlled substances into the jail. it's it's worth a lot of money uh to have those substances in there and it's dangerous for uh the population and it's dangerous for staff to have those substances. So, one of the things that we have done is expanded um the use of the canine by having him housed in the jail. Um you can see some numbers up there. So, Rojo's done a lot of work this past year um and he has done some work um for patrol. We've we've had to call him out uh with the work of the street crimes and narcotics team to help support them, but he's also done a lot of sniffs in the jail. Uh we've been asked and and

have provided some assistance also to the uh federal correctional uh facility in Sheridan. Uh they have a tremendous contraband problem. And so, you know, he did 118 uh sniffs in the jail or in the prison facility out there. Um he had four alerts and four confirmed finds um with that in the facility and you can see the totals of grams of the various controlled substances that Rojo is responsible for finding and that's a a cumulative total of the work that he did uh out on the street as well as in the correctional facility. Um so those are those are points right 18.9 25.7

correct? Okay. Um, so you know, he he continues uh to be very successful. Uh, he's still showing 100% reliability with an alert and a confirmation of a find of controlled substance. So, um, we're we're really pleased with the work uh that Rojo has done. Oh, it says right there he's 10 years old on his little uh ID badge. So, uh, he's, uh, he's doing a great job and, uh, you know, it it really is has been advantageous to have him working in the jail and making sure that we are using every tool available to make sure that we don't get harmful substances into the facility.

What's retirement age for Rojo? It really depends on the dog. You know, it depends on health-wise how he's doing, if he identifi, you know, if he wounds up with any hip problems, is struggling, uh, you know, to stay. He does get more tired now as he's gotten a little bit if he works uh like a housing unit and is sniffing. I mean, that's his work is is working through there. He needs to take a nap afterwards, but then he's good to go. So, good boy. Yep. Uh so, any questions about the jail before I move on to patrol?

All right. Um again, been pretty consistent, a little bit up in our total calls for service. Um but interestingly a little bit down in the number of cases resulting in arrest. Uh we're seeing that you know not just with our organization but um we are seeing uh a lot of success with our deflection program. So you know that does result in a call for service in a case being taken but the whole entire intent of that program is to not have that be something that results in arrest and a conviction in the criminal justice system. So, uh, you know, that is one explanation for why you're seeing, uh, cases ending in arrest being down is because of our deflection program that we're running here in the county. I always like to highlight, you know, where the activity is taking place. So you see that we have a graph showing all of our calls for service whether that be uh rural or that would be unincorporated in the county as well as um our contract cities. So the five cities that we serve as their police department and then our non-contract cities which would be those agencies that have their own police department. So, um, you can see the pie chart breaking down, you know, where the calls are being generated, as you would expect, uh, for a a sheriff's office. The majority of our work is in the unincorporated parts of the county. U, but those contract cities that we served, you know, when you add them all up together, that is also a significant volume of our work. Um, total calls, uh, you know, we're seeing AMD and Dayton are are pretty consistent. Uh Dayton's up a little bit. Lafayette is up quite a bit. Uh but Sheridan and Willamina are down slightly over the prior year.

Our patrol K9 program, uh I'm really excited about the fact that we were able to expand that this past year. So, uh on the left there, you see Valkyrie. Um she's now four years old. Uh you can see the numbers at the bottom. Uh Valkyrie was deployed 127 times. Uh and that resulted in 78 people being found and 67 arrests. Uh she continues to be very high energy. Um and and is doing a great job for us, but not every deployment is because we're actually looking for a person. We utilize the dogs a lot for building searches on alarms, um for article searches. Um, it's not that every time the dog gets out, it's because it's chasing somebody or uh that there's some use of force involved. We were able to add um another couple of dogs to our program. So, you see on the right hand side of the screen there that we have uh Koa and Delta. They actually are littermates, so they're sisters. Um, both handlers, uh, Deputy Baker and Deputy Banister, have completed all of their, uh, training through the Oregon Police K9 Association. They are certified now in the state of Oregon. Uh, they're out working. I didn't, uh, get an opportunity. Both of them are working graveyard right now. Um, but I believe that Deputy Baker and Delta had their first successful deployment over the weekend. um an individual um met up uh trying to sell a stolen ATV and decided that he didn't like the look of the buyer who happened to be um somebody from the sheriff's office. So, he decided to run and uh Delta found him and uh he was taken into custody for having possession of that stolen ATV and and trying to sell it. So, um it's really fun. Uh, I think that as far as we've been able to determine, we're the only agency in in the entire state that

has uh our complement of enforcement kines are all females and uh the two sisters, Koa and Delta, they are very different personalities. Um, so it's a lot of fun uh getting to know the new dogs and uh utilizing them as the force multiplier that they are when we get an alarm at a rural uh structure. uh you know we can send two people up there uh to safely search instead of having to send everybody that we can find um to have to cover every access point and every hideyhole. So the dogs are significant uh for us with the staffing that we have. I mentioned our street crimes and narcotics team that we started in 2025. Um that team originally was three members of the sheriff's office that we took folks from existing positions and repurposed them to try to address the significant issues that we continue to see uh regarding controlled substances. And really, you know, if you went to the opioid summit or have been a part of any of the conversations surrounding deflection or the work that uh director Manfrin is doing at HHS, we we know that we have a significant problem. Uh, if I'm recalling it correctly, in 2024 we had 17 fatal overdoses in the county. In 2025, just through the end of September, we had already had 20 fatal overdoses in the county. And that's just unacceptable to me. Uh, that we devote resources to a lot of other things and there was no dedicated drug enforcement happening in Yho County. And yet we know that we are losing family members every single year because of addiction. uh we will never arrest our way out of folks having uh substance use disorder u but certainly we can have an impact in trying to disrupt the flow of uh controlled substances into the county. So from uh

the beginning of June of 2025 uh until March of 2026 uh we utilized the team uh they had uh 70 cases total uh resulted in 96 arrests and 14 direct pipelines of controlled substances coming from out of county into Yamill County. Um, we seized uh 351.7 grams of cocaine, 1673 grams of fentanyl, 2,719 grams of methamphetamine, and then uh various dosage units of fentanyl pills, suboxone strips, bzzoizopines, and Xanax. Um, so they have been very very successful. Uh, as you know, we did lose some grant funding through the Criminal Justice Commission last year that was awarded through the illegal marijuana program. Um, that resulted in us having to take one of those three folks and and move him back into the sheriff's office. But we are currently in a pilot program where we have a detective assigned to the team from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ron Police Department. So, we are still a team of three. uh two being from the sheriff's office, one from Grand Ron Tribal Police. Um that has been uh very beneficial for both organizations and they are very appreciative of the efforts that the team is making in the Grand Ron community. So we continue to look at ways to sustain this moving forward because as I said, we took folks and repurposed them uh to do this work. Uh it is very important work. I I fully believe in what they're doing and uh they will continue their efforts to try to interrupt that flow of controlled substances. And I do want to point out that when I'm talking about uh the emphasis and the work that they do, it is not on individuals that are suffering from substance use disorder out on the street. We are going after the dealers.

We are going after the people that are making thousands and thousands of dollars by pedalling harmful substances in the county. Um I touched a little bit on our behavioral health deflection. I mean it goes handinhand with uh the work that the scan team is doing. They do deflect a lot of people that they encounter in the course of their work. Um we've had 227 total referrals through March 23rd. 172 of them were found to be eligible to participate. We currently have 14 people can still meaningfully engaged in treatment. We've had nine successful completions of the program and there's only two pathways for successful completion. One is 90 days of complete abstinence of use uh proven through your analysis and the other is six months of continued engagement with the treatment provider. So when you talk about the impact you know we continue to build on that a lot of folks look at it and say only nine people have been successful. We are one of the most successful programs in the state and we have more deflections than Washington County with I don't know 20% of the population. So,

and Clakammus County, correct? And Clackmus County. Yeah.

So, um also wanted to touch just briefly on our DUI enforcement. We continue to have a big focus. There was the campaign this past year. I partnered with public health uh and created some media materials that went out on social media. There was some billboards that went up around the county just trying to raise awareness and encourage people to make a plan and and be smart about uh how they are going to consume any sort of intoxicant and then get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. Uh we had 202 DUI arrests as an agency last year. 186 of them were alcohol, 16 were drugs and 38 of those incidents were the result of a crash. So, uh, we continue to see high levels of, u impaired driving, uh, resulting in crashes and also resulting in, uh, individuals getting apprehended.

What's the figure for how many times somebody drives impaired, um, before they're actually caught? Roughly 85, I think, is uh, what um, Nitsa and Mothers Against Drunk Driving put out is the average individual drives impaired 85 times before they get caught.

Yeah. Uh moving to our support services. Um we this is where we're seeing one of the greatest increases in the demand for our service. Um we see uh continued increase in concealed handgun license applications and renewals. We see a lot of uh warrants coming down to be entered and maintained. Uh our phone calls are up significantly. um our evidence processing uh it is down just a little bit and that really just trends with what types of cases we have and how many pieces of evidence come. But, you know, when you look at uh the volume of work that's being done, you know, we have one full-time evidence person that is managing, you know, 7,000 pieces of evidence. And that's from when it comes in to, you know, logging it, taking stuff to the crime lab, picking it back up, making sure that the reports get to the district attorney so that we can successfully prosecute cases. The amount of digital evidence that we now create, every deputy is wearing a body camera, including in the jail. uh just massive massive amounts of electronic media. Uh we're able to receive electronic evidence from folks in the community. We can send them a link directly from our cell phone. They can upload their wing camera footage. They can upload text messages or photographs. All of that digital content has to be managed. And so, uh I'm sure you've heard from the DA about the amount of work that it takes to prepare a case when you have three deputies on scene for two hours. uh you know that's taking and making six hours of body camera footage that has to be reviewed. So uh our civil process um we are seeing some increases but what I just wanted to point out in the top right is in 2025 uh you can see that um the gray column is new because we begun

tracking attempts. So when we go out to serve a civil paper, we obviously have been tracking forever the number of papers that we serve and the type of papers, but we were not tracking the number of attempts because as you can imagine, not everybody's home the first time we go to the house and sometimes people see us coming and they don't want to talk to us and they don't answer the door. Um and it takes a lot of time to make sure that we get a lot of those are under timelines that are dictated that we have to get them served by. So uh there is a lot of work. Um, we have one full-time person that that's all he does is serve civil papers. Um, but he gets a lot of support from the patrol division. Um, I myself go out and serve civil papers when I see the boxes getting full because it's one of the required functions of a sheriff in the state of Oregon is to serve civil papers. So, when I see papers that are starting to overflow, I'll grab a handful and go serve them when I'm driving home from work for the day. So, um, we have some new programs before I get into our volunteer stuff that we, um, have had to transition to and our support services primarily. So, we transitioned fully over to LEDs 2020. That's the, uh, the information with the state of Oregon on criminal records and how we track um, missing persons, stolen property, stolen vehicles. So um that is uh something that the state required. We launched our new evidence software, evidence on Q. Um that is uh a product that the city of McMinnville and the city of Newberg have been using for a while. It's uh a product that allows the district attorney's office to log into a portal and they can see all the items of evidence in a particular case. So, by us moving to this, they are able to log in and see evidence without us having to continuously produce a new evidence sheet and send to them on cases that they have in their office. Um, we're currently working with county IT who has been just immensely supportive and

helpful in developing a new civil processing and tracking system. So, all those papers that come in, um, the deputies when they serve them will be able to enter that right from their computer. It'll generate the return that goes back, the proof of service. It'll just really help with efficiency um to where every paper doesn't have to get touched like three times because it comes in, gets prepared for service, the deputy takes it out, serves it, brings it back with the notes on it, then they have to prepare the return of service to send back to wherever um requested that service from. So just trying to build in some efficiency and we are still on track to deploy our records management uh software in 2026 and that's that joint venture with YCOM and the city of McMinnville. Um we did deploy in January of 2025. Uh we upgraded to the newest version of the Axon bodywn camera. Um we deployed our Lexiple policy in April of 2025. So that's our entire office policy manual. And we also um moved to an online training platform called police one and corrections one. So this is a a platform that we can assign uh various types of training to uh our staff so that they can meet their requirements from the state of Oregon but also get up-to-date training uh that's produced in a very high quality manner that you see a lot of the trends from across the country especially when you're talking about some of the liabilities and like correctional environments and some of the trends. Um, so that has allowed us to create training opportunity that people can do on duty on their regular shift. We're not requiring them to come in on a day off or to stay late um to accomplish training so they have access to that at all times. Current staffing um we hired six new patrol deputies in 2025. Uh two of those were folks that transferred down from the jail. We currently do have one vacancy in patrol.

Um but we are holding that vacancy u for the time being until we work through the budget process. Um we have three reserve deputies that we onboarded in 2025 and we actually have onboarded another three so far in 2026 and we have one more who are almost done with his background. So we have been adding significantly to our reserve deputy pool. Um we did create and assign uh two individuals to serve as corporals in the corrections facility. Um this is to help with evening out supervision across the four teams. So we have uh a sergeant and a corporal assigned to each team so that they can help with overall supervision. We did hire three new deputies in the jail and we currently have two vacancies with folks in backgrounds that we're looking to fill um to make sure that we are completely full in the jail. We did hire two additional folks uh not additional but replaced two folks in our support services division in 2025 and we currently do have two vacancies in that division. Um unfortunately one of them being due to the passing of Carrie Hogal. Um so we have folks in backgrounds that we're looking to hire and fill those positions. So volunteers, I just put this up here to highlight again how significantly we are supported by the various volunteer units that we have within the sheriff's office. Um so we do have some admin volunteers. Typically those are um college students that are doing some sort of an internship. We currently have an intern from George Fox, Emily Adams, um who has just been uh great to work with. We have an intern that will be starting this summer who uh is actually a college student from out of state, but he's from here in Yell County. So, we're going to give him an internship opportunity for the summer. Our AR areas are amateur radio emergency service folks, cadets, cert community emergency response team, our jail programs, that

includes all of the religious studies, the um family supports uh that happen in the facility. Uh our mounted posi uh always leading the parades and representing doing a great job. search and rescue uh which you can see we're up uh pretty significantly. We're getting ready to start our search and rescue academy for the year and then our VRU or volunteer response unit. You add up all of their hours and the county is receiving according to what uh the independent sector would put as a dollar amount for an hour of volunteer service um 800 almost $21,000 worth of of volunteer service that we're benefiting from which is just huge. Uh we could not do it without our volunteers. You see them at the fair. You see them at some of the big events helping to support the county and and the sheriff's office. And uh I just can't thank them enough for their volunteer service. So um as I mentioned, we continue to expand our reserve deputies. Uh so in uh our annual savings of the work that we're uh utilizing them for um I just expect that to continue to grow and grow and grow um you know 315 hours of of service uh from reserve deputies last year and I expect that that will be significantly higher in 2026 as we continue to onboard additional folks. That's for the next section. So, uh, I will leave you with, um, that we have our annual, uh, volunteer recognition banquet is scheduled for April 23rd of this year. Uh, we are going to be doing that out at the community uh, room at FCI and Sheridan. So, that is going to be during National Volunteers Appreciation Week that we are

recognizing all our volunteers. Um we are going to have that uh event. We just got confirmation it will be catered by Summit Correctional Services which is our food service provider in the jail.

Um they uh have supported us with National Police Week, National Corrections Week. And so we've partnered with them uh to support us in our volunteer appreciation. So they're going to cater the food um for that event. and we'll be giving out some awards for some of our volunteers that put in exceptional hours and also got some recognition for um their lifetime achievement uh in the volunteer service that they do. So, I will uh end it there, but for any questions that you might have.

Well, you're always a a a credit to your you personally and your team are a credit to our county. So, thank you for all you do. A lot of sacrifices there and the wives and the families. Yes. Thank you. all the it's always nice to see the cadetses and also the patrol men come in city council meetings giving updates personally for all the cities that we serve and I can tell you that those city council members and mayors like hearing from them so it's great that we have that personal touch so it definitely represents uh the sheriff's office very well

I appreciated your uh first slide with you know your values and your mission and I I I see that in the community Um and and I would say the same thing that every single one of those that you guys do um excellent. So well done putting that together and I think just under your leadership the sheriff's office is doing fantastic. So thank you. Thank you with that. I wouldn't move too far unless five minute break. Okay.

All right, we're back and we are on to our work session now and we're going to kick it off with dog control. Welcome back, Sheriff. Yeah. And so this is actually going to be kind of joint uh between the sheriff and I because uh um you know we've had uh several work sessions uh about dog control. Um we've also had extensive discussions during last year's budget um committee week. Um and um without doing too much of a look back because I I didn't prepare a lot of materials because I think basically we've had several discussions and it's not really intended to be a a a look back but you know essentially to just say that you know we tried a program for quite some time. We amended the ordinance and we tried to kind of outsource uh dog control to a certain degree and and I think there's generally agreement that that's not working and the sustainability of that especially around the funding um has also created some challenges. Uh so the sheriff and I have had several discussions and um without you know and we prepared a proposed budget based on what we're looking to get consensus from the board from uh to have discussions next month once we get to budget committee. But uh based on the previous discussions that we've had with the board is uh approaching the angle of what it would look like to bring dog control back inhouse, have a staff person essentially a dog control officer um plus some u

part-time support staff to then really start focusing on licensing um and all other functions with dog control within the community. So, um, the proposal does not include kennel, you know, or building a a kennel or anything along those lines. It's still it, you know, we're still going to rely on those contracted uh uh relationships that we have for kenneling in particular, but then that's something that's probably long-term discussions. But, um, trying to identify funding sources and anything that we're probably looking at, we probably wouldn't be able to stand up until July. Uh anyways, with the adoption of the you know with the new budget um so right now like I said before staffing what we're currently looking at and what we've prepared uh as far as a budget what you'll see as a proposed budget next month the budget committee includes one full-time uh dog control officer um and then we have funds identified um for extra help. We haven't actually built a position, but we think there's sufficient funds for possibly a halftime um clerical support um to help with day-to-day like, you know, and we're the sheriff and I are still talking about licensing models because, you know, um about where you go to pay for your license and what that might look like. There's there's details still to be worked out on those elements. Um and uh and if we start going this direction, there's going to be a couple things at play. One, there's going to be the budgetary discussion that's going to happen with budget committee. The second part is we we need to start the process of amending the dog control ordinance to reflect uh bringing this program back in house. Um when we went the other direction with the other program, um you

may recall we we did a pretty comprehensive uh uh amendment to the dock control to facilitate that. And so we're going to have to undo that and hopefully make some improvements to the ordinance. So, I do look at there's going to be some costs associated with that as well and working with county council's office um uh to start doing that review. So, um I don't know there's my quick five minutes and sheriff if I missed anything or

um yeah, so as Ken mentioned, I mean we've had a couple of meetings and and trying to formulate, you know, what is the appropriate response to the community needs and the concerns that have been raised. Um I will share that final slide with you here briefly. Um just because I know when I was in front of you um in some of the prior dog control uh discussions um particularly when we were revamping the code and we were uh having some discussion about the um the fee structure and whether those would be uh amended or adjusted. Um, you know, one of the biggest questions that that we always get or look at is what is what is happening with licensing, particularly the compliance rate that we have. And you've heard me say many times that, you know, our licensing compliance across the county um is relatively poor. Uh, so you can see uh kind of our our look back when I look at this is in our annual report. uh the total number of dogs licensed, we are up and that was one of the goals that I had from our meetings was to try to get licensing up. We uh worked just inhouse with some of our folks um Carolyn Van Wart in particular, but she helped us create at least a mechanism for people to license online that they don't have to physically go into an office somewhere. Um it is a little bit uh challenging on the finance side of trying to reconcile uh you know on what date and did they pay the appropriate amount. There have been some challenges on the backside. I know Mike and Tara and Jackie have worked through trying to um identify efficiencies with uh online licensing. But overall we are seeing our licensing compliance start to trend up. Um, we do

still have a significant amount of of issues across the county and with the current model being decentralized. The city of Newberg has their own uh program that they're running. The city of McMinnville has their own program that they're running. We're doing our thing in the unincorporated and the five cities that we serve. You have some small cities with their own police departments. But I can tell you that the enforcement um side of particularly licensing is very inconsistent across all of those jurisdictions. So um the current fiscal year that we are in uh and you know you guys know this better than anybody when we were going through the budget committee last year. Um we are still under contract with Homewardbound for our C our licensing and clerical. that contract expires at the end of this current fiscal year. So the end of June. Um so you know I would uh be looking for some direction with respect to um notifications or renewals, whatever direction we're going to go. And then our sheriff's office or county um kenneling contract with Newberg is also up at the end of this fiscal year in June. So depending on the direction that we move in, um if we're bringing things back into more of a centralized model, um I will tell you that I've had some preliminary discussions with all of the chiefs. Um I think it would be safe to say that they are all highly in favor of handing off responsibility of dog control back to the county. um what that means in the long term or with any sort of a partnership arrangement. You know, they do stand to have some significant savings with not having all of the responsibility that they currently have. They also understand that they would lose the revenue sharing that currently exists under the ordinance model. um where if a

dog gets licensed in the city of McMinnville, the city is uh getting 75% of that licensed revenue and the county is retaining 25 for the overhead of of the licensing program. They understand that if licensing comes completely back to the county that that revenue sharing will not take place and um you know in so many words they all say are we ready to sign today? So, um I do think that there is support from those partners. What that looks like from a budgetary perspective and from a administrative perspective of, you know, what is the number of kennels that would be needed if we're picking up dogs in all jurisdictions across the county? What does that look like for us? What does it look like for the the the personnel needed to adequately um manage the licensing and clerical? Do we look at a different uh like software platform that has a online licensing component to it um where it's all integrated versus having kind of the traditional old school inperson provide your certificate of rabies vaccination and write a check or do you have a virtual platform because you can renew and get a concealed handgun license by submitting all of your documents through the portal and getting it. You just have to come in for your photograph and fingerprints. uh you know there I'm confident is a way that you can upload your certificate of rabies vaccination and all the information and do an online dog license. So just a lot of discussions I think that we need to have um as we look to the next budget year

and we don't have to reinvent that wheel because Dashuites County has Docupet. So, I know the technolog is out there and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to let us cut and paste what they have

because honestly, I mean, the licensing revenue is a big it is a huge component to this because if you if you look at the historic data, um, uh, the dog control program was pretty close to self-sufficient just on licensing revenue. and what you're going to see coming forward as part of the budget process because it's not realistic that we're going to come year one and see licensing revenue because we'll see an increase in compliance that licensing revenue is going to be able to fully support you know so we are you know I have some we've already the board had already approved an allocation of some general fund uh to go into this and then I have a further proposal of uh economic development funds to also basically act as seed money or or one-time funding. And I believe in preparing the budget for next year that not only does it have sufficient funds for the personnel, but also some of the startup costs for the programs and being able to cover some of the kenneling as well. But there's more details that we're going to have to work out between now and implementation and then also um as as we actually are bringing it back in house. You know, I just want to say having watched this from 12 years ago when we had it in house and we did have inmate AIC labor and we did have volunteers and we did have that cost covered. Watching the whole iteration, I I'm very proud of not only past boards, but but the sheriff's office for being able to pivot with the economic reality and to do this without a bond, to do this without a levy, and to do this without taxing people further. So, I appreciate the fact that we're continuing on that trajectory and the fact that your your office has has maintained this and taken it on despite some very significant challenges. So, uh, once again, appreciate that and we have been able to do this without, uh,

an additional tax burden to the constituents, which I know now, for instance, in Poke County, they just built a facility, a a prefab thing, but to do something like that, not only is it expensive, but we're also putting a another tax burden on people, and I appreciate the fact that we found a way not to do that. How much uh seed money are you thinking we would need for that first year out of economic development? Well, right now I have built in as proposed it's 130,000

and I know we talked about this it other pots of money other than economic development ONC or landfill what I don't know how much either of those ones have in

there's funds available that's why you know when we get into the budget discussion um next month I mean if there's concerns about using economic development and wanting to look at ONC or landfill license reserve or or some of those other more discretionary type funds or even a discussion around general fund you know um that's available for discussion but you know again it was kind of hard I I had to kind of take a leap and just kind of look at programs looking at ending balances and funds that are available and you know because of course I'm still putting together the proposed budget right now um and so I identified those funds to in order to kind of stand up a mock program what it would look like here, at least the funding portion of it.

Sure. Yeah.

So, for the current year that we're in, uh, we knew, you know, based off of the budget that was built, um, that we had some contractual obligations for this year. As I mentioned, we're currently under contract with Homewardbound. We're under contract with Newberg Animal Shelter. Um, that we have we have a deficit uh, in what the costs for this current year are and what we had projected for revenue. Uh while I can say that we are on track to exceed our revenue projections for the year because of licensing compliance, uh it is not anywhere close to what is going to bridge the gap for the remainder of the year. Um and so in addition to those known shortages that we have for this year um for paying those, we had a very significant expense um based off of a a criminal case in August of 2025. So, right after the beginning of the new fiscal year, we had a case um where we wound up with um ultimately it was 11 dogs uh because we we took I I want to say it was um seven dogs um in for uh emergency shelter and placement as a result of an animal neglect case. One of those dogs had puppies uh while it was kennled. Um, this was a a a kenneling provider that uh we went to kind of under an emergency because they had the capacity in the room to take them. Um, but to boil down, you know, that one case itself, we we had a couple of months that we had those dogs kennled uh that we paid for out of the sheriff's office um to to kennel them, you know, and it was over $50,000 uh for that one case. and that far exceeds uh what I have budgeted for investigations um for costs for investigations. So we do have some some issues in the current year that uh I

believe that we need to address um particularly for dog control. Um we we have some known shortages in completing the remainder of the year with our obligations with Homewardbound and Newberg Animal Shelter. I think Ken has um some suggestions or some discussion about um how to address that. And then, you know, as we get further into the budget process and have more detailed discussions about what would a county centralized dog control model look like, you know, I'll probably be back in front of you with um some discussions that we're going to continue to have when you start talking about hiring FTE and where are those people housed and under what department are they uh going to exist and and so um it is exciting to see some progress towards trying to be responsive to the concerns and the complaints that we hear. And I do believe that there is tremendous value in having um a couple of folks that are more aware and and able to track the issues that are going on across the county versus we're doing one thing, Newberg's doing one thing, McMinnville's doing one thing, and we're not consistent in our approach to those ordinance violations, whether it be licensing dog at large, dogs, you know, chasing and attacking other animals, people. Um you know, there's there's a lot to uh be considered. I've had uh one very very very good and informative meeting with somebody that works for a neighboring county's animal services, a larger county to our north. Got some great perspectives about how they're addressing it in, you know, a very highly densely populated area. Um so I have some good takeaways from that meeting uh that I can bring in to our discussions about, you know, how are we going to make this not just something that exists but something that is successful. Yeah. So, I think as far as, you know, what we were kind of hoping for today is

whether or not if there's consensus or questions or things if if if if we're heading the right direction, if this is the what the board is wanting to see as far as a plan moving forward as far as bringing this inhouse and and doing this work. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep.

My I've been fairly consistent with this message. This has been a mess for years and years. We slowly depleted our endowment funds. And this goes to lack of marketing, lack of efficiency. There's software out there that we can use, that we can do outreach with to get these numbers back up. If you go 10 years ago on what our licensing revenue was, we should be way more than that. So, I know it's out there. We just need to get it implemented and done. And like I said last time, I'm committed to one there needs to be one person that is in charge of this at a bare minimum. One person that's in charge of this to do licensing outreach and make sure that that number gets built back up cuz that's that's the key factor to this. I think we went from $30,000 last year to 60th this year on on licensing income

and then 10 years ago we were over 300 grand.

Correct. So, we have a long ways to go, but I think when we bring this in house, we have the one person dedicated to it. We have the technology there to where people on their phone can license their dog. And then, um, the marketing is going to be huge on this. And I think we can do the marketing pretty efficiently at all of the vet clinics where all of the rabies shots need to be done and just do a nice marketing campaign, do it on social media and on-site at the vet clinics. And then the one last thing I want to touch on, and this is just interesting that came down yesterday, but there's a vet clinic uh that uh the guy retired yesterday at and I had a realer reach out to me and the city of Sheridan possibly wants to see if there's not a combination between county and Sheridan to use that as a kennel out there at the old bed office that was um that the guy retired from. So, I'm going to go see that on Friday afternoon and just kind of start conversations there and see what they're looking for. But um there's options uh but I think the main thing is one dedicated person for sure software efficiencies and the marketing on this and I think we can get there. So

the other thing is is these investigations I don't think people understand when you talk about that over $50,000 when there is a a a significant whether it's neglect or abuse or dog bite or whatever then we are tasked while the investigation is going on with taking care of these animals and when we the DA decides not to prosecute for whatever reason we're still paying a bill that won't get repaid and so I I think we have to also factor in that these are devastating to a budget you have no control over that. It's it's a lot of times we have to understand is that people are not are not good stewards of their animals and maybe we get more of that message out there as well.

Agreed. And I think I uh one other thing that I've heard the chair um say a couple years ago, I think it is now, but um just the fee, right? The fee was stagnant for a very long time. And I think that in order to bring this up, we do need to make that a little bit more of a market rate. I don't know what the surrounding counties charge. We actually did uh when we had that conversation, we adjusted them to be uh pretty close to our surrounding areas. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And cleaned it up a little bit. There was some confusing. Uh

yeah, there was a threeyear, a fiveyear, you know. Yeah, I agree with you on the it this should be very easy on your phone. um should be idiot proof almost almost. I think things get easy to get mixed up, but I I think that we do need to bring this in house. I would love to hear more about what you see in Sheridan. Um because I think these are really good options. I think we've spent a lot of money on nothing in the last 10 years and um to most of us none of you past decisions have been made and so I think we're tasked now at this point with cleaning it up. So thank you for both of you guys for putting the extra work into this.

I don't think we've spent money on nothing. I think um our our kennel partners and our sheriff's office has done a wonderful job with the money that they had. But I think our kennel partners when they go from $300,000 down to $60,000 that's doing not that the partners there were not maintaining that. So not sure I'm following but either we do appreciate our kennel partners. Um Newberg has stepped up and I know they've dropped the rates for us to make it uh more reasonable. So we do appreciate what they do for us.

So I know there's going to be a lot of moving pieces with this. So based on the consensus so we'll continue to work there's going to be some things running in parallel you know we'll have the budgetary process so there'll be more discussion and we'll get more into the details where you can see the numbers um as part of the budget process but then the second part is I'll start the conversation with county council's office and we'll take a look at the code and getting those code amendments and revision you know that we need to make to have it reflect that we're bringing it in house and this is the path going forward. Um the the third part which there's kind of a third element which u the sheriff mentioned as well is about the budgetary impact for this current fiscal year. And the one thing that I just wanted to remind is as part of the budget adoption process last year we did um identify I believe it was $102,000 of general fund money that is in the discretionary fund that's fully allocated but it's in the discretionary fund. it wasn't distributed out to dog control. Um I don't know if that's enough to cover or what that total amount is, but if there's interest from the board to go ahead and take those funds even though we're not the intent was was to do what we're doing here to stand up. But we do have um you know it's taken time to get to this point and we've been incurring costs there and um I believe the budget can handle it. If if there's consensus I could prepare the necessary paperwork and come back before the board to make a transfer to do control to help cover those costs.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Agreed. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you, Sheriff.

All right. Our next work session is going to be transit and we're joined by Cynthia Thompson. Good morning Cynthia. Good morning. Good morning. Minute to get this set up and see if it's working right. And I guess while Cynthia's setting that up and before we jump into the the the work session, the the one thing I did want to kind of highlight and say thank you and recognize that uh uh Cynthia if Cynthia is retiring

um next week and and she's done an outstanding job for us for so many years now. And I know before we jump into this later discussion, I just kind of wanted to take advantage of the five minutes while you're setting up to just recognize all the work that Cynthia has done with our transit system over the years. Um both as a contractor and as our uh in-house manager uh for that program. Um it's, you know, I just I can speak for myself just the time that I've seen with the transit system. It's night and day.

Oh yeah. You could see it in public, too, that all of a sudden you're one day you're like, "Oh, we have a transit system." Before it started a few white buses running around, then all of a sudden there it was. It was the Yamahill County Transit System with the purple and the green and Right. Yeah. But I just want to again say thank you, Cynthia, for all your efforts and hard work. And I know we're going to she's agreed to stick around even though she's retiring. She's going to help us out while we still get through the recruitment process um for her successor. Not not a replacement. I don't think you can replace Cynthia. But uh um kudos and thank you very much.

When you took over, Cynthia, you had um quite a bit of cleanup to do. So, thank you for getting us on track and being such a great advocate for transit. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Um so, Let me just get this so I can

if we're filling time. I I'll back up what Commissioner Johnston said. It's, you know, I've only worked with you for about a year now, but um really over the past seven or eight I've seen, you know, you could see the night the very big change um just as somebody paying attention in community about, you know, where buses are at and where people are are standing waiting and those types of things. So, thank you for everything that you've done and our transit system is night and day different and wouldn't be what it is today without your leadership. So, thank you.

I appreciate that very much. It's been it's really I never imagined when I got here that it would be it was supposed to be like a three-month project and then it turned into a six-month project and then it turned into two year and then a five. And I think now I've been in Yam County longer than anywhere else. And so in my 35 years of be doing this, I've I thought Wilsonville was about 11 if you combine both times that I was there. But here or 10, I think it was. So here is the longest. Um, now how do I promote this on here? Let's see. What did I do? Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, good morning, Commissioner Johnston. Good morning, Commissioners and and everyone else who's here today or online. Um, I shared this quote a long time ago. I think in 2022 one time when I was giving an update, but I thought it was appropriate for today because um I feel like when I I kind of when I was preparing this presentation, I'm looking back over the years and I'm think well, you know, we really did have planted a tree. We have planted the seed. We've made investments. You I shouldn't say we because it really you've made all the decisions all along the way. And I think the tree is maturing. It's not fully matured, but it's getting there and it's providing shade. And I think it will provide a lot more shade over time for and it'll be a an improvement for quality of life for many, many people. And I think it's something that we should all be proud of really. Everybody who's been involved and it's definitely taken a lot of people. It's not it's not

the it's not my show. Let's put it that way. Um, how do I hit just enter? Where network space bar? Sorry. Usually this is maybe I have that. So, what did you do? Just this one. You should just have to space. Okay. I want to go back. Go back. Okay. Cool. Thank you. All right. So, we're going to get started. Um, so I decided I when we met last time, I wanted to give kind of a this is a I always say this, it's like the high level 30,000 foot view. Um, I do have lots of presentations with lots of charts and graphs and all those numbers. And if you want to see any of them, in fact, I'm going to put them all into packets. So, some of the things we're going to talk about today, you can dive deep and go and see all the numbers. But today we're going to kind of talk about the state of the system and kind of over the past decade we've gone we've kind like you said it's undergone a significant transformation. Um Yam County Transit secured over $41 million in federal and state funding. We invested in buses, technology, facilities, infrastructure across the county. It's a $50 million total counting uh the county has contributed over the last 10 11 years about $5 million. The rest of the local cities and fairs and other income is around 4 million. So grand total it's about 50 million over the course of since 2015. However, we are now at a critical point where we have rising costs. We have we have limited funding and it's going to re and then we have to make some pretty important decisions about you're going to have to make some pretty important

decisions about that focus on long-term sustainability for the system. Um so today I'm going to do an overview of the system like I said at a high level kind of what are some of the major projects that we've completed or are near completion look at some of the financial trends and the cost pressures that we're facing. discussion some service adjustment that I think are just are going be required to do and some key decisions for 2026 and beyond. And I hope that this briefing will be helpful as you um you know make some of these decisions in the future. I'm going to just do this for the I know you know this information but maybe for the benefit of those who are not as familiar with what about our system I'll do a very quickly overview of our system. We have um 10 cities. We connect to Salem. We connect to Trimett and you can also get all the way to the coast. So we make connections broad far reaching. You can get to the airport. You can get to Hillsboro. You can, you know, we we we reach out pretty far. People can get to both the Salem metropolitan area and the Portland metropolitan area. Um there are four county employees including myself. We have a contract with First Transit now called Transdev and they employ between 30 35 people. We have 30 buses. You know, sometimes we'll have one that's ready for disposal. So, it might be range between 30 32 buses, but that's the fleet. We offer a local fixed route McMinnville. We have four commuter routes, four local routes. We have demand response that's both paratransit, which is one that's um in McMminville only, and that's for elderly and disabled, and they have to be certified. And then we have general public dialer ride for anyone who can call. Currently we're fairless and we will touch on that a little bit later. The operating budget has pretty much been the last several

years between about four and $5 million operating not including capital. Capital depends on if we're getting grants for buses or other things. It's ranged anywhere between 500,000 a year to this last this year we're in which the largest budget we'd ever had because we had the five buses. So that was a, you know, $3.5 million per capita. We're primarily funded 80% with federal and state money and about 20% with county and local money. Um, and over the last decade, a little bit more. I I went back to two I really went back and looked at all the numbers from 2015 on and really I've always said I thought it was 50 million, but I went and actually looked at all of it. that it actually is 41 million from the but from the grants and and the rest from the others. So um this has been a multi-year investment and we have you've invested in fleet modernization, technology deployment, bus stop infrastructure, customer amenities, facility improvements, um and also getting into compliance because like you said when I arrived not in compliance at all with with anything and so now that in compliance includes you know all these plans that you have to create every two to years, you know, ADA plan, civil rights plan, on and on. Um, but I want to say that, you know, I can go into all these numbers and talk about this till forever, but really it is about the people and I don't want us to forget about that. You know, I'm going to talk about some of these projects and you can say, "Oh, cool. You got a bunch of technology or you did this or that." The reality is, what does that look like to the regular person? and and it imagine like there's a person in

Newberg who can now go out look on their phone see when the bus is coming walk out to an actual bus stop sign stand there and the bus will come and she can actually watch it on her thing and know that it'll be there at a certain time the driver can the person can board they can push the button on their MDT and they can count who the person is they can take what type of writer that is they can the person can sit down, they can watch the little screen that goes across the top that tells them what the next stop is. Then it announces the next stop automatically. So all the things you see in this slide, we have all of these things except I think the only two missing is we didn't go with automatic passenger counters and we don't have traffic signal priority. And we even have engine monitoring and driver monitoring, but that's owned by Trans Dev. So they handle that part. Everything else we don't have fancy fair boxes. We have a very basic fairbox. But we soon will have you can purchase your once you can purchase your ticket on your phone. So that will be happening in the very near future. And the benefits for this it's like I said it's it's obviously beneficial for the drivers. It's beneficial for the riders. It improves our operational visibility. It's it's real time dis just information for dispatch. It's efficiency. It's a lot of a lot of a lot of things play into this and it's a lot of it is unseen behind the scenes. And there's not that there's not challenges with all of these things as well. I mean, it has been I think we wrote the grant for all the technology, mobile radios, cameras, surveillance cameras, all of those things. I went back and looked, I think it was 2018 or 17 maybe, and it literally has taken us till now to where I feel like it's it's there. We've got the info now we're getting down to the hands-on training, stepby-step training.

Not that we don't have training, but you know, improving the training. So, things are going well. Even the demand response technology, it's we have mobile data terms on all those vehicles. real-time tracking dis, you know, all of this is just, you know, doesn't mean anything to you. But what it means to like a customer that uses our dialeride is they can make a phone call. They can get better information. They can know that they're going to be picked up at a certain time. They can get the ride to their doctor or to their friends or to a meeting or whatever. And and that's what it really is about. And it does help with efficient scheduling. It improves our on-time performance. It helps with coordination between drivers and dispatchers. And the reason that I even wrote the grant originally was for the data because I really the goal and the vision was get this data, make collecting the data simple, it's all there and then it can help us with all these reports. Yeah, county transit has to submit 15 to 20 reports annually. Some are pretty intense, some are not so intense. So, that was the whole kind of the vision for it when it originally came out. I can't say that. Well, it's it's happening, but it's was much slower than I I ever envisioned. Um, bus stop project. You've heard me whine and moan and talk about this in more times than you want to know. But I do want you to know I have a slide really good in-depth slide presentation about this project. And there is a spreadsheet that I don't even think you want to look at because it's so detailed and has every little thing you'd ever want to know. GPS locations, everything. The permit number, you know, you name it, it's got it. You know, we had to do drawings for how the designs and all sp

everything. I didn't want to bore everybody with all that, but it's been an eight-year effort and it's complete. I mean, all the signs that we're going to put up that aren't there's a few left that just have some challenges that are going to have to happen later, but basically it it is up and it's significantly improving visibility. I think accessibility for writers I think it's the largest it's weird for me to say this but the largest infrastructure project for Yam County is don't really think of it as infrastructure but really what is the infrastructure for a bus system it's a bus stop sign you know we haven't had it we've had people have had to go out there since when I got here you just went out and guessed you know you'd have to know you're going to be I'm going to ride the bus go talk to somebody hey where do I catch it and they're going to have to tell you or we used to do you could flag the bus down if you were in town. Right.

The portable ones did quite well for a year and a half. I'm actually amazed that it worked as well as it did. The biggest challenge when I first got here was that the drivers would not all stop at the same place

and there was a lot of debate about where's the stop and you know and even once it was all online you have all that still. So now you've branded signs, you have stop ID numbers, you have um we had to work with 10 cities, 18 permitting jurisdictions. Um and then I do want to just touch on this briefly, but why do they matter? I mean I it seems like a no-brainer, but they are they really are so important on many levels. They're they are the gateway to transit. You now know where you can catch the bus. Um, it does help market the system because you know, oh, I didn't know there was a bus here. Now I can catch a bus over here. Um, it helps with our operational efficiency, safety. Um, and it's just something that you wouldn't think would be as difficult as it has been, but agencies don't have full control over a stop location. You know, there's lots of in people involved. You have land owners, you have the state, you have the 10 cities, you have other transit districts, you have developments and so on and so forth. So that it can be very complicated and it's subject to various local, federal, state regulations and a lot of the regulations are not very clear. They're like go talk to your transit agency and then everybody has a different opinion about what you should do or what you shouldn't do. This was a slide that our one of our consultants created when we did a presentation on this at the Oregon Transit Association conference. And I'm not going to go through it all, but just so you can kind of see there's we have all of this has been done. We did a stop analysis figuring out, you know, every little detail that you could I didn't even know you could want to know that much about a stop, but we have an inventory. We have an identification system. have a assessment of every single stop whether how accessible it is

or unaccessible it is um then all the permit applications and then the biggest challenge really I think was staff changes we had so everywhere every jurisdiction you when we first started we had a comprehensive list we invited everybody in fact a little story that that shares that's is kind of funny but when we first started we got you know everybody involved if they had a public works director, if they had a city manager, anybody who we thought would be involved in it. We brought everybody together. Of course, we didn't know it was going to take four years. And so, we did keep going back and back, but we just when we put the signs up in Willamina, and I think this is kind of funny because one of our committee members, uh, Craig, he he's probably the most well, he's always giving updates about transit at his city council, but they got a new city manager, I think, and a new staff person. So they were out putting in the sign and they're like, "No, you can't put the sign in. Stop." You know, you have to get permits. We're like, "It's on an O do highway." So we had an O do permit. And we had talked to them, but it had probably been a while. So I I did realize I should have sent a letter out when we were actually right before we rolled everything out to remind because people change. And so I do think that a lot of the issues were that issue. You'd have to start over. You'd get you'd make progress. In fact, one time we were so close we couldn't get them to ODOT to approve the semi seats, which is the little seats that are attached to the fold. And then we finally got there and then the person's like, "Oh, I got a new job. I'm going to go over here and work in this department." Next thing you know, new person, oh, they didn't agree with anything. So, you'd have to tell your story. So, there's a lot of history. If you want to go research everything you ever wanted to know about regulations and what is actually there and what is actually not there, we've got it. We got a we got a datab. We got so much information that I don't

I will never forget the email that you sent to me and you explained that whole thing. You're like, I think I just fast forward my retirement. I'm like, well, well, pump the brakes. We We'll get through this. That was like a year and a half ago. And then I gave a presentation OT and I I felt like I'm just complaining. But then I realized my whole career has always involved signs. I got into transit by selling bus signs and advertising on buses. And every place I've been, I've had some element, but this was I was ready to go get a roto hammer and just Sunday night just start popping them in on the sidewalk and just go from there. It was so frustrating to watch you go through that process.

The reason I bring all this up, I want you I want to put that information because it's valuable information. And now the state I just got an email yesterday. We're going to give them all all of our data. They're going to do some statewide database now. But I want it to be someplace where you know where it is. It's not just, you know, I don't I want it to be available. Not that you're going to have to use it all the time, but there's a lot of lessons learned. So, right now, what we're doing is we're creating a lessons learned presentation that we will leave and and then also it'll include any of the unfinished things that you want to maybe add to your capital improvement project down the road. Um, so fleet modernization. Um, I couldn't I I was so happy I actually came across old bus pictures from when I first started. So, it truly has our fleet has truly transformed from the time when the buses were unmarked. They were pretty unreliable. They sat on the side of them stretch limo for the rest of us. I was like, yeah, no. Um, and they would smoke and they did and they were you could they look like a I don't know what I I'd be rude

street Vegas. They were not. Yeah. Something the sheriff would use to transport his guests.

Yeah. Yes. That's what I was going to Thank you. That's so it um as you know, I've talked about this quite a bit. it it's a you have to constantly be writing grants for buses and because it's a 3 to five year process from the time you submit a grant till you get the money till you get the bus and and now especially since co with all the things that have happened it's um it seems like you know we don't need this we shouldn't be doing this but the truth is it's like an ongoing ongoing thing that you constantly have to be aware of um let's See the at the Gilligs, the new Gilligs, that's a picture of one there. They had a very long story because they came from four different grants and it was during the COVID where we had gone there was supply chain issues and some of the grants have been cancelled and we had to modify. There was a whole process. you you you you as a board approved several different iterations of grant agreements, but these buses are great buses and I think long-term they are truly an as an an investment a good investment that you've made that will last. They're 12 year 500,000 but they'll last longer than that if they're taken care of. And we did include some training uh for um some more in-depth training for maintenance staff and operators and everything. And then the technology that I talked about previously is all built into the new buses. So that's nice because we had I don't know if you recall, but it was when we added hardware to our buses way back. Um it's a lot more difficult to add it to an existing bus that's already built, but when you build it into the bus, it's better. it works better and you don't have as many issues. Um, so I think the fleet modernization is a huge accomplishment and it's also probably your biggest investment. You know, it's

worth a lot of it's worth a lot of money and it's a and it's it's more than just, oh cool, I have nice buses now because really it is all about the customer. I just don't want to quit coming back to that there. Low floor ramp access, equal access. So a older person, a young person, anybody can get on that bus. They can walk on it like anybody else. And there's new modern securement device in there that is lets the person who has a disability, maybe they're in a wheelchair. They're just have independence. They can do it themselves. They don't have to have a driver get out of the seat and come and secure their wheelchair. You know, it's there's just a lot of wonderful things about it, including so it's a better experience for the rider, better ADA accessibility, etc. Um, so as you may recall, we've been also working in investing in facility improvements and I can't believe it, but I think it's been 2 years ago. We actually leased the Durham Lane building a site. It's currently underway. Um, tenant improvements are underway. It's almost a 10,000 foot facility and it houses transdev staff. It has place for all of the parking of all of our buses, a place where you can wash the buses. It in it it's I think it'll meet the needs of Yamok County Transit for 20 years really, unless you somehow magically wildly grow larger. But um it's it brings all the staff together, both the contract staff, and so I think it really is helpful with improving operational coordination and support all the things that have been going on. um the transit center. I have a sort of a little vision and I have some concept drawings done of what the future of the transit center, but we have done some good work at the transit center. The things that really needed to get done. We remodeled the bathrooms. So now they're, you know, you can go in there and hose them off the pressure washer for the public restroom. We it

has a push button access with a screen so the dispatchers can then allow the people to get in, but see if in case somebody's in there for 4 hours, you know, something's wrong, you can go check that out. So, it's helpful. We have security cameras at the transit center. We reid the inside, new carpeting and new paint. And then we re just last year um had the mural done on the side. There's also next bus information uh panel on the back. It's not in this picture, but it's right above where those bikes are in that photo. And that just tells every all the riders when the next bus will be there. And that's all linked in with the um real-time bus information. Um, and I think some of the work that we've done, we did some conceptual um, drawings for all the things that really think would be good to to to modify at the transit center or upgrade. And all of that information could be used if you if in the future you want to write a grant, it would be very helpful to have that information. You could include that. Um, this took a long longer than I thought also, but a new website. Um, it took several years and uh, but it's it's up and it's very nice and it has so many great features. Um, it helps with trip planning information. It has um, rider alerts that run across the top. You can see all the things that people tend to go to there on the right. You can get your bus times, find your bus, the automate, the real-time bus information, the map and everything is there. And and there's the other I think one of the best features is that all the forms now are are online forms, fillable forms and then you can um we can change the schedule you know in the old we were in a very old system old platform and so you could download a PDF of the schedule. Now let's say we needed to change the services we can change it go in there and actually change the

change it in the website immediately. It's very fast and easy. So, it really helps for and it's ADA accessible and it's um I think it's a great addition to to the overall to to our communication to our our um customer information program. Um as you know and I'm sure you've heard, we aren't the only ones that are facing um some challenges with cost. Costs have been rising. labor, fuel, maintenance, insurance. Um, I came across this article from Tri TR tryt they warning about cuts to transit service if the funding package, you know, is overturned, which I think it will be probably, but I don't know. And we have similar problems. Um, obviously the key pressures that affect us are labor costs, vehicle maintenance, insurance, fuel, all of those types of things. And I wish I could say we were immune from it, but we are not.

Yeah. And purchase costs, too. How much have those gone up in the last four years? I mean, just a those Gilligs that we just got. Oh, all the bus, they have doubled. Yeah. We used to be able to get a minivan for 50,000. They're a hundred. The last one we got was almost $100,000 for a minivan. Minivan. And then midsizes were you could get them around 120. They're they're anywhere between 250 280 and then Gilligs are like 600 somewhere in that range. And no end inside either. I mean when we were down there touring that facility 2,000 bus order from

what was that? LA Transit or something. Just amazing the buses that are going through there. And they're still behind. Fortunately, they plug you in as you don't have to wait for 2,000 buses to come off the line. You actually get put in. Yeah. Very nice of them.

No, they actually treat you very fairly. I I appreciated their system. It was pretty amazing. Um and then, you know, unfortunately, our funding has remained it remains relatively flat. It has pretty much been the same. Um and and actually, I think stiff formula funds are less coming in less than what they had projected. So this year when we were doing the budget it we had we had some challenges that are related to that. We still don't have a local funding source. We have got been have gotten a lot of capital and discretionary grants which has helped us make all these investments over the years but they require match dollars and they don't resolve your ongoing your ongoing um operational challenges. As you know this is something you know too but I broke it down a little bit different. Obviously the major cost is the service provider because our service provider provides all the drivers, dispatchers, maintenance, you know, everything really to for the bus for the system to run other than the county administration side. Fuel and lease is, you know, because now we have a lease for the building and then fuel, who knows what's going to happen with fuel. So that's a bigger percentage than it used to be. The personal services section is is basically myself and the three staff that that are there and then the M&S is the rest whether we have contracts, consultants, etc.

What's our main consultant for or grant writing? Actually, I've done grant writing. Um I really haven't ever hired anybody I don't think but for the studies that who who Nelson Nygard has did the bus stop project. Waterleaf has been helping with the their architect with the Durham project and um and then has some small firms. Cojat has been helping with the public outreach and that those are the three primary ones really recently. Yeah. Nelson Niger did the plan. They've been doing the bus stop. They've done a fabulous job. I have to tell you. I I don't even I think you have to

they're kind of like trans the transit planners really. We don't have a transit planner and I would say you're probably going to need them. Maybe not as much because we've we've done a lot of work. So, we have a lot of the plans of what we're going to do, but I think you'll I think it'll be an ongoing need. Um, so there is going to be a need for service adjustments. And I talked about this a little bit, but after preparing the budget, it's it's even a little more severe than I had hoped. Um, and so we have to align the services re with the resources that you're going to have. Um I think the bottom line is that we're going to between even now and June we really have to cut back on some of our general public dialeride. We may have to stop the Saturday service that we have in dialeride and um and then the plan is we're doing the public outreach which I'll touch on in a minute for the fair structure and the fair policy and going over all the service adjustments. But if there's no new funding, if there's no local funding, I think by January of 2027, you're going to have to get down to like 25,000 hours. That's a significant We've been at 35,000 hours pretty much give or take since I've been here. Right now, we're our plan was to, you know, the ideal scenario for us would be that one in the middle, the 37,000. Without new funding, I don't see how that's going to happen. We're going to make these immediate reductions and get ourselves really probably closer to I it's not the 28, but between now and June, probably the equivalent of the 32,000 hours, total hours. And what that means on the street for the people is I think we figured out a way to just a lot of it they won't really feel it's a few might changes on some of the routes that will save us some money. It's mostly going to be the dialeride and there are people

who use our dileride that are not certified as ADA. So they use it they may go to kidney dialysis but they've never been certified. So what will probably happen is if we have to reduce that they'll go over to ADA. The problem with ADA is ADA paratransit is only required you within threequarters of a mile within McMinnville. So we aren't required to do it in Newberg and other places. Now I don't want to not serve that. So we're going to do our best to just make the adjustments that we have to make but um you know keep in mind those

I think about a year ago maybe a little bit longer. We had conversations about some of these interconnect routes, the longer ones where the larger counties or cities uh actually were willing to foot the bill long as we kept those routes and service, but that came off of our hours of service. Is there other opportunities like that out there for

Well, I don't want to speak too soon, but I happened to stop by and talk to Grand Ron and he actually mentioned it and if he's watching, I'm sorry if I shouldn't say this out loud ahead of time because we haven't had a conversation about it in we're going to have a meeting and he talked about possibly helping us more with our route 22 and possibly this Saturday because we really wanted to add back Saturday from Grand Ron to King City. The thought was if we went to King City, there's a lot of retired folks. They might want to go to the casino. We could charge the higher fair. That might be a great thing. They seemed very open to that. I went to go ask him about their community grant fund because they have a community grant funding opportunity. So then we got into a conversation. So he said, "Let's get together and talk." So they right now with just the portion of 22 that they pay for they we we've increased it and it's up to this year it'll be $120,000 that they're contributing. So if they were to pay for the entire route 22 let's say I'm not saying they will. I'm not making any promises but if that were to happen it's around $389,000 a year is if if some if an entity like that were willing to pay for a route. Let's say that's

so how much does the uh for instance the uh Medicaid funded non-emergent medical transport that's funded for instance through the CCO how much does that take pressure off doeride have you noticed that I really I don't know how to measure that they tend to go to different pl they tend to go to areas we don't necessarily serve we way a few years ago we had tried to figure out how we could coordinate better, but the places that their client wanted to go weren't we didn't serve that area like Salem or we go to Salem but not like you we don't have a doortodoor type service that goes all the way to Salem. Okay.

So, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, other than I have a list of what they do, but I don't really know how much it's taking the pressure off.

So, this I just already mentioned. We're going to make a few changes. We want to try to we'll keep the ADA and then we I will come back when we're ready to actually do this. We'll send more details about that. Um we're nearing the end. I know this you guys have got to be worn out. Um so the public outreach for the fair policy and the service adjustments is planned for April. It'll probably go a little bit into May. Um the consultant is Coaton. they have developed a really excellent um they call it something else but I'll call it a stakeholder list for back because it has businesses and nonprofits and it'll a huge much broader reach than what I had developed in the past. Um and just I did send a copy I think to um Bailey I think that I have a copy of the engagement plan that looks like this and I can I'll have them emailed to you if you didn't get that. We have that

that gives you the yeah the details for that. Um and really what the plan is if you recall is that you had directed us and Yamma County Transit Advisory Committee to come up with a fair structure and policy and that is what they have done and now we're taking that out. We're taking that out and getting feedback on that. Um, and then when we get done with that, we will bring all that information back and then you will need to make a decision about what you want to do as far as fairs go. Just one quick question because knowing the budget situation um and things like that um is there a a reason or or what's contributing to having this so far out between now and final implementation? We're we're

probably the it's more just knowing how long things always take. I want to say it could happen July 1. Um because I'm imagining we do the outreach, we bring the information to you, you could approve it, let's say maybe you could even approve it in May and then we get probably the biggest question is we wanted to use this software called UMO for collection. But that could be more time consuming. So I have been looking at an option of what if we add that but we do a more manual process. It'll mean we maybe have to print some passes and do some things like that. So I was trying to weigh is it because I did learn that one of the challenges is that these systems that collect the fairs and and they always say oh we can do it in two weeks. No they can't. Nothing happens in two weeks. And then you they started having issues. Clackamus County was doing it and they were having issues with the bank taking a long time. So the bank that's connected to the system that collects the fairs they w they were working on it for literally four months. So I think if we want to move fast so we can start collecting fairs, we may need to do that where we have a manual more manual version while that is getting set up. So that's

but there's there's some implementation processes that are going to get thrown away instantly whether it's dealing with cash on site or checks. I see that being a mess. Yeah. And and also the budget implications. So without that information, we've got budgets coming up in a couple of weeks and it's sort of an unknown and a big unknown. Correct. And we budgeted I think I think I budgeted 200,000 fairs which maybe is I think if you implement it by August

budgeted like a placeholder in the budget, you know, again to where you can, you know, within the budget document, it's it's a placeholder. So if we receive the funds, we're ensured that we've received it and they're fully appropriated and you can use them during that fiscal year. So um yeah, I just you know

I agree with you. We need to probably move faster. That's what we need to do. I think we're I mean the public outreach we have to do it legally because we'd be changing services and affair but we are doing it rather comprehensively. Now the advantage to that I think considering the budget issues we're facing is maybe we want to at least mention the fact that we may have to in another year like by January there's could be some fairly significant service adjustments that are beyond what we originally put in like your engagement plan that you have in front

because thinking processwise it's um because when we stopped doing fairs I don't think there was an official action We didn't change an ordinance or we didn't do anything. We just we sent out a press release because it was we stopped it during co you know because of concerns around cash handling and you know a lot of things that came up during that time. So, you know, I get, you know, I 100% agree that, you know, don't want to give shock where all of a sudden today we're not charging fairs and then tomorrow I catch the bus and right, oh, I wasn't prepared for this. But I also just,

you know, wearing my budget officer hat and knowing the circumstances that we have is waiting until August, September into the new fiscal year before you know, we start potentially realizing some of those revenue gains because there are needs within that budget, especially for the escalating operation cost, right? And so I just wanted to put that out and apologies, but I have another appointment and had to leave. So uh before you go, where are we at with second round interviews? Defer Academy. Yep. Okay. Thanks.

So we are second round interviews will be the end of next week. Okay. um and hopefully have a decision pretty quickly after that. Um we've got two really fantastic candidates. Um either one I think will serve us very well. They're very different candidates, so um each one will provide different benefits and and need different assistance, but um I'm really happy with the way the pool turned out and and with these two candidates. Fantastic. That's for transit manager, correct? Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah. And as Ken said, definitely not a replacement, but a successor. Oh, yeah. I didn't mean that as he was leaving to make it think it was 10. Yeah, I want to make sure we we understood. Thanks for the clarification. Think that's how we would prefer to exit though. Thank you.

Good luck. Good luck. I'm almost done. I promise.

All right. Thank you. So unfortunately, even though we have a new we got the new proposal and we you just adopted the 18-month agreement with with uh first transit transab there is going to be more work to be done um to get things aligned and adjust service levels a little more than what we had originally thought. So I in my after looking at the budget and all the different things, I really think that the process for doing a request for proposal needs to probably happen very quickly starting probably July because that process takes a good who knows 3 to four months, maybe longer sometimes because I there will need to be changes made by January of 2027. I don't think there's enough funding otherwise. I I really think we're going to have to do something. And it could be that maybe proposals could come in a little less. I'm I'm not really expecting that they'll come in significantly less, but they maybe there's comp competition. Um, and so yeah, that's

it definitely will be interesting to see what is out there because I know we've what a year and a half ago now or two years ago we went through the whole first first student to transdev and we really haven't gotten our feelers out there to see costwise if we're kind of on track with what is normal.

If there is such a thing anymore. I I everybody I've talked to it sounds like it's it's all you know it used to be it was a lot less it was a lot a lot less expensive for agencies and organizations to have a service provider because they saved you a lot of money but now because of every the whatever is going on in this world we live in everything costs more and labor costs more you know I know it does cost them more they have their insurance you know insurance rates have gone significantly up they ensure all of our buses they ensure all their employee you know so it it is what it is. Um, so we're rounding down almost done. Um, you do have a strategic opportunity I think to the I talked to the owner the other day and there he is open to the idea of potentially selling that building and I think there are some funding options out there, but it's worth pursuing that I think because I don't know really what your options would be if you don't. the the lease payments for that building are around 175,000 a year. So, and I I when when I had talked to him about purchasing it, it's this is be a few years before we moved in. He had a number of around three and a half million. Now, it might be more than that now, but

not just for the four acres we have for the whole just for the just for the three acres with the building. Interesting. That's actually very inexpensive. If you tried to build something, the cheap the last two I was involved in, they cost $16 million. I'm not joking. And they had the land. So I don't And then you have to get federal money, which takes four years. And I don't, you know, now granted, I know that um public works did an excellent job and they got their building built. They own the land. They did they got it front or two, but I don't know what his asking price is. I'm just saying I in my head I would guess it's somewhere in the street and up more but I don't know

but it is it I wish it was a little bit bigger but it's that whole where all these buses you can see it's that kind of a of a triangle shape and um I mean I there's a lot of benefits if you owned it to you know I think it'll help with you know long-term cost um all sorts of different benefits if you did but that's that's one of the decisions that you're going to have to wrestle with as we go forward. This looks really horrible, but I'm just going to be very brief about this. I just kind of for my own benefit, I wanted to like look at a timeline of since 2015 and kind of say this didn't all happen overnight. It was deliberate. It was a multi-year transformation. We started really in 2015 to 18 we building the vision um and that included transit development plan getting into compliance kind of created a blueprint for the future. Everything we've done since then has really come out of the transit plan or the stiff plan and that which the stiff plan is really modeled through the transit plan. So if you go back and look at the trans I think it's a very good transit plan. It's changed and it'll be about time to renew it here soon because can you believe it? It's almost going to be 2028. Um and then we got early grant funding. We got the fleet fixed up. We got some new mobile radio systems. Then in 18 to 20 we kind of did some of the early investments more more investment in fleet did the initial you know getting the technology started. The stiff came along dispatch system. We got surveillance camera. Surveillance camera system is really important because it it really helps with risk management and lots of things like that. And then the bus graphics project was around in that 18 to 20 time frame. So we went from these buses that look like the one there in the picture with the white, you know, not very attractive bus to, you know, color and people knew that what they were what

they were getting. It probably felt a little more comfortable getting into it. Then COVID and of course things were great. We were we were probably collecting close to 280,000 in fairs. Pre-COVID writership was around 300,000 and then COVID affected so many things that writership of course couldn't get that service adjustments we had to adjust we had to cancel service um we had we had supply chain issues we had all sorts of things that's when we went fairree because we knew we wanted a new fair policy I had no idea it would take so long it's been ridiculous really in a lot of ways um and then we did the request for proposal back then and we got the updated contract with first transit which was in 2020 you adopted that and so it was through basically a seven eight year year contract. Um then the buildout we really kind of the 21 to 23 was really about rebuilding and implementation all the tech smart bus technology dispatch system transit center facility planning we did this pilot project for the mobile technology which I don't have time to go into but it's pe it's being people all a lot of other transit agencies are looking at what we did and implementing the same thing. They're doing a very similar approach because nobody there was a big gap in the industry for smaller systems and how you deal with ongoing support of your maintenance. Um then 23 to 25 was getting all those things coming together bus stop permits and getting buses ordered and moving to Durham and you know new website mobile technology asset management. I would really like to talk to you about asset management system but we don't have time so I won't. Um and then now I think we are at a crossroads and the good news is we've got a lot of investment capital is in place. I think writership's starting to recover. We're getting close we're about 170,000

right now for the year. So I think we'll break we'll go over 2 probably 20 this this fiscal year. But operating costs are increasing. Um, we're going to be doing the public outreach so soon with the fairs and I think we just don't really have much choice but to probably do an RFP. And then you looking at evaluating your facility purchases. So this basically kind of says the same thing. It's just showing you that you're at a crossroads and you've got you've made all these investments. Here's your current reality and then those are some of the decisions you have to make. And um I think really what my final comment would be is that the next phase is not building the system but sustaining it. And I know that you will, you know, do everything in your power to to make that happen and do a good job. And and um these are a list of all the the kind of upcoming tasks that we need to do. I'm not going to read through them, but I because I just already mentioned that sort of duplicates my other slide. Um, but um, we've had a lot of challenges, but I think we've also made a lot of pro progress and I think you now have a modern system and I I do look forward to witnessing it from afar and seeing where it goes and where the evolution of county transit goes. And I'm I'm confident you'll find good solutions and you'll get a good leader and you'll continue to provide a valuable service to the public even if it's different, even if it's limited. You know, it's I think you the bare minimum. I think if you you were the I like to call it the quote train. People freak out when I say that the train model, but like if you're the core system connecting the to the regions, like if that's even if that was all the

county could eventually afford, you didn't want to have a local tax or local fee or anything. If you kept the commuter routes going between the key areas, Salem, Hillsboro, Portland or Tri Tiger, Grand Ron, that core link, people can get their mother to the hub at the, you know, like on 99, they can't maybe drive them all the way to Salem or all the way to Hillsboro. So, at a bare minimum, if that's all that that that could be done, then the cities could figure out maybe they need more in their city and they could figure out a way to pay for it or maybe even some of that comes from stiff. I don't know. But, you know, you do have you basically have around four and a half$4.6 million in revenue and you got to stay under that. And if your contract is 3.9, you know, for just you can't. So, that is the real bottom line challenge. But I'm I'm um I just want to say thank you and I'm sorry that was so long. Um

thank you. But I do appreciate everything. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia.

You don't have a long agenda, I hope, after this. We have a public hearing coming up, so we'll see. All right. You want Yep. Five minute break. Okay. Yep.

All right, we're back. We are on to item G, which is our consent agenda. I would make a motion to approve. Is there any further discussion? None.

None. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. H is old business. H1 is consideration of approval of a board order and findings in the matter of planning docket number P10-25 a request to partition an approximately 37 acre property into two parcels of approximately 2.0 parcel number one and 35 acres. This partition application is possible due to a measure 49 final order and home site authorization E122333 approved by the Oregon Department of Land and Conservation and Development. This request involves a transfer of the development rights granted by measure 49 final order E122333 from tax lot 3210-02400 to the subject lot 2323- 0200 0 to facilitate the clustering of major 49 dwellings applicant Delboka Vista LLC. I would make a motion of approval. Is there any further discussion?

None. None. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I one is other business. Consideration of approval to authorize Lindseay Manfrren or designate on behalf of Yhill County Health and Human Services to submit an application for funding from the Oregon Health Authority in the amount of $10,000 for suicide prevention coalition efforts. I would move approval. Motion's been made. Any further discussion? None. None. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

I. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. That brings us to J. I'm going to open up the public hearing portion of this meeting at 12:21. And I'm going to call for any abstensions by members of the board. None. None. In a rare case, I don't know them from 15 years ago.

Um, we're going to ask uh parties if there's any objections to the jurisdiction of this board to hear the matter before it hearing none. Pretty light audience. Um, does any board member need to announce and state on the record the substance of any exparte contact or any on-site visits? No. No, I have none. All right. And then we're going to be reading of the statements by Ken.

Oregon law requires that persons who attend a land use hearing be advised of certain rights and duties before the hearing begins. First, with regard to standards for approval, state laws 197.797 requires that we list the applicable subsidive criteria that must be uh met in order for the county to approve the application. The standards will be listed by a county planner in a moment as part of the staff report. Testimony, arguments, and evidence must be directed for uh towards the standards for approval. Second, the raise it or wave it rule. Under Oregon law, any issue that might be raised in an appeal of the county's decision in this matter must be raised before the record of this hearing is closed. Failure to raise an issue accompanied by statements or evidence sufficient to afford the decision makers and the parties an opportunity to respond to the issue precludes appeals to the board based on that issue. Third, and this is directed to the applicant under OS 197.796, failure of the applicant to raise constitutional or other issues related to proposed conditions of approval again with sufficient specificity to allow the county to respond to the issue precludes an action for damages in circuit court. Mr. Chair,

thank you very much. And that leads us to the staff report.

Thank you. The subject parcel is approximately 18.8 8 acres in size. Parcels immediately to the northeast and south are EF80, exclusive farm use. Parcels to the southeast are within the city of McMinnville. The parcel directly to the northwest is zoned public work safety district and parcels to the west are zoned F80, the forestry district. The property is currently planted with grass seed, hay, and some commercial tree species. The only development that currently exists on the property is a pole barn that was permitted in 2019 for the storage of farm and forest equipment. Neighboring lands are growing trees, both Christmas trees, and commercial timber. Other uses in the area include farming, rural, residential, and public utility services.

Thank you. Uh, with that, that brings us to the applicant's case. And I'm going to make an assumption that that's Katherine Wright in the audience there. if you could come on up. Sorry for the long meeting today. Not a problem. Go ahead and uh state your name and address for it, please.

Up and right. My address is PO Box 625, McMinnville, Oregon 97128. Okay. So, I represent Damian Mecll, who's the owner here. Um, and the materials, the staff report, our application show that we meet the criteria for this zone change. Um it's the proposal is to change it to a forestry use because the property has not had any real success doing anything else and there's a um surrounding properties do a lot better growing tree species. Um I don't need to keep you here would take a lot of your time. Um I think the staff report it's clear that uh we meet the criteria and that they support this. Um if you have questions I'm happy to answer them. I am not going to drag you through all the criteria and keep you here any longer than necessary. Um I'm happy to address things on rebuttal if we need to.

Any questions? None for me. I have none. Thank you. I have none either. Thank you. Appreciate your rebuttal if we need to. Thank you. Thank you.

Um is there any testimony and support of the application? I didn't get any other comment cards. Uh if you're online, raise your hand. Seeing none. All right. Uh, which brings us to the appellants case. If you're online and you're an appellant, raise your hand or if you're in the audience. Seeing none. Uh, so we're going to move on to any other testimony and opposition. Seeing none. And then rebuttal, which doesn't look like you'll have any. Okay. And then we're to staff recommendations or actually public agency report.

Yeah, there was no comments received. Okay. Um staff believes that the applicant has addressed the requirements of the relevant comprehensive planning goals, administrative rules, and sections of the Yam Hill County zoning ordinance. Our office recommends approval of the zone change. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for that. And then I'm going to close out this hearing at 12:26 and we're going to deliberate and I will make a motion of approval based on staff recommendations. Is there any further discussion? None. I have none. None. All right. All those in favor signify by saying I I I motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We have uh findings coming back in three weeks. Okay. Is that okay? Does that put us at budget or no? A week before. I think we'll be all right.

Yeah. All right. Thanks, Ken. Thank you guys for sticking around. Thank you.

And with that, we're going to move on to K announcements. Commissioner King. Um meeting with some staff department heads and as we've heard here today, this a lot of the same departments uh you know, just budget concerns and um some of them have minor changes and some of them a little bit larger. um with a few other uh have a few other conversations around the county and be better partners of our leading industry and like hospitality um weird how much that happened all of this week. Um Lipick heard from the sheriff today. Um he the sheriff gave a presentation on deflection numbers and I just he said something and I meant to say while he was here um you know those overdoses that that he had mentioned we're at 20 so far or since September of 25 had 20 um and I was trying to think he said this and I and I'm trying to think of other ways and I can't but you know that there is no other outside force of deaths being caused by, you know, car accidents or something, you know, in Yam Hill County, right, of fatalities of a year, right? So, uh, that just that stuck with me and I really appreciate the the work that has gone into deflection and I know it's a low number, but um, the work that is there is being is is really impressive. Um, and I'm really proud of them for the Lindsay Manfran and the DA um for the amount of work they put in and and how much they do there. Um, because I do think it is making a difference.

Um, I was able to connect with the and the PCC government affairs um person. We're going to contact we're going to try to have a meeting I think next week if not the week after. She's waiting for some spring breakers to get back to me. Um was able to connect with new businesses, a new business starting in Carlton. We'll just go over some of their vision and potential problems. And while I was there, I drove uh out Meadow Lake and really look at those those bike lanes that we're talking about. And those are really it's a really narrow road. And so I don't know what, you know, I'd love to have that conversation a little bit further about what that million dollars or so of bike lane monies or bike infrastructure that we have, you know, what that's going to do.

And pedestrian, it can be pedestrian. Pedestrian. Sure. Um, yeah. So, I just I'm I'm concerned about what that looks like. Um, and I know that I I've had after last week, I've had a couple of user groups um reach out to me and and say that, you know, they're concerned about putting bicycles on Meadow Lake and that um that they they would never. So, um so something just something to keep on in the back of our minds as we're having that conversation um to really make sure we're we're engaging there. and um would love to flush out that plan a little bit more. Cool.

Yeah, I think there's going to be some great opportunities coming up for do public outreach, community outreach, have kind of the ideas that uh we put in for replacements into the TSP and have all those part of a an event, community outreach event the next few weeks and looking forward to the input on that. Yeah. Um and I'll leave it there. All right.

All right. Thank you, chair. Uh met with the housing uh housing authority board of directors and talked about the um progress at Stratus Village. The occupancy is moving uh right along 54 units in phase one. The grand opening will be next week on the 31st. Housing authority is working with the Yhill County HHS to strategize on the lack of emergency housing vouchers that we're faced with. the discussion with HHS director uh Lindseay Manfrren on the options and what it's going to look like is cobbling together funds to alleviate the shortage of those vouchers coming from from HUD visit to the Newberg animal shelter you know they're a kenneling partner they're doing a wonderful job with the limited means and um facilities that they have the suicide prevention coalition met on Friday we talked about plans for upcoming projects involving youth students we discussed various outreach opportunities and the suic suicide prevention training that was in McMinnville last week and one coming up on the 23rd in the school district which will be basically focused on training youth in three steps to save lives and that's the QPR question persuade and refer and get some kids uh in the school system who'll be able to do that in a peerto-peer capacity the local government advisory committee uh which is Elgak OA director behavioral health director uh were there at our meeting and Dr. Pinels who is overseeing the Oregon State Hospital compliance which continues to be an issue preparation for providers regarding the July 1 implementation of the HR1 eligibility requirements for Medicaid and that's going to be actually just to get people up to speed on what those changes are going to look like and partnering with OADHS and some of the counties regarding the changes to the SNAP benefits which will happen on July 1. had the opportunity to um meet with Judge Easter Day and some other community members yesterday at a lunch meeting and also got to meet a gentleman who had spent half of his life in prison

and uh quite a number of visits to the Yamh Hill County Jail. He is now um a a recovery mentor and works with outreach in the community. And I have to say it was was one of those really encouraging meetings because we got to hear a story of of recovery um and somebody who's taken it upon himself to work in our community to help others in that recovery process. So I appreciated the opportunity to do that. Nice.

All right. Uh last Thursday we had our fair board meeting. Uh I think the main thing coming out of that is uh coming up we have ambassador interviews. Uh there's six applications all fantastic applications. So that's going to be tough. and I'm back on the committee again. So, looking forward to that. We're going to change our main arena, our main um writing arena fairs to be more competitive with the state fair. So, there's going to be a slight adjustment there. Uh Friday had um fantastic u dedication, bench dedication for Jim Colbert, who is our uh ex parks board um chair. Fantastic guy, very dedicated to parks. I've never seen anybody more dedicated to a committee in Yamok County, let alone our parks committee. So, great guy. Um, huge shout out to all the parks board members that did come in person and uh to say a few words. Uh, Zach Gary came from the city council, McMinnville City Council, gave a few words. So uh all of them were uh just great stories about Jim's dedication and his his back history with u just knowing anything about plan. I just I'll never forget when we we had a property uh that was uh we had property owners that were looking to dedicate or donate to our our parks um portfolio. And I remember going out there with Jim and just how every almost every single plant we're walking by, he knew the name of it and just nerding out on it. It was just great. He was just a great guy. Um anyway, huge shout out to Casey Heacker for building that bench. it. If you ever get if you get a chance, go out to um Ed Grenfell and it's right there as you cross the main uh Baker Creek and you'll see it just sitting right there in the in the lawn facing the creek and it's just a great well-built nice engraved plaque on it uh uh in dedication to Jim.

So, thank you to Casey who's a parks board member. He built that, mounted it all and u and had it all power coded and it's going to last us forever. So anyway, great event. Saturday, uh, my family and I volunteered at the Saturday morning breakfast. If you get a chance to do that, I recommend it. Um, there is a very high bar set for making pancakes, and I am the self-proclaimed best pancake maker so far, so you might want to get in there and try to outdo me. Um, Wednesday, um, I had Wednesday morning had Will Mina Chamber. Um, they're moving forward. They have a community service, uh, or community center out there that they're been trying to rehab. The main thing is the bleachers for now. Um, they're still still are looking for more grant funding to kind of help out with that, but they are they do have enough and they have the permitting almost in place to go ahead and start the reconstruction process. So they will have nice bleachers open for use hopefully by the Fourth of July fireworks. Um that's coming up in well. So that's going to be great. Yeah. Legendary. Absolutely. Um and then I got some just community announcements going on. Uh we have Yamh Hill Carlton FFA state convention. uh their first first in state agriculture marketing plan and Tucker Van Djk was first in the state uh for job interview. Uh they will all be heading to nationals in the fall again. Tucker van Djk is also the new FFA state secretary. So congratulations to him on that. Uh Khloe Bingman from AMD who if you recognize she used to be one of our fair ambassadors. Um she is the title runner up for Oregon Dairy Princess. So, that's going to be fantastic. Uh, AMD Daffodil Festival is coming up on Saturday. Uh, my oldest will be out there playing

violin from 12:00 to 2, so keep an eye out for her. Uh, the Oregon Memorial Traveling, uh, wall. It's a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It'll be set up in McMinnville from March 27th to the 29th. Uh, the American Legion Post 21 is hosting the walls visit. Uh you can uh members of the public can see the outdoor display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum. Um there is a short program uh program planned for 11:00 a.m. on Saturday the 28th. Um I got a MAC Fireboard meeting tonight, so I'll update you next week on that. Uh chat with the chair next Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Government Services Building. Uh there's a there is a planning commission hearing next Thursday at 700 p.m. in this room. Um, and then Saturday, uh, is Gaston's FFA's, uh, dinner auction. It's 6 PM at the car, uh, Carpenter Creek Winery in Forest Grove. The reason I bring this one up is this FFA is now going to be at the Amhill County Fair. So, it's a new FFA group coming in.

It's just outside of Grove. Uh, Carpenter Creek. Okay. Yep. Carpenter Creek Winery is in Forest Grove and that's where they're going to have their auction and dinner. um on Saturday night. Uh anyway, so brand new FFA chapter coming into the Anh Hill County Fair. I think that's super exciting. A little bit smaller group, that's why we were able to bring them in because we are busting at the seams, but I think it's going to be a great addition for our area. So, with that, I'm going to close this out unless there's anything further for the good of the order.