City Council - Regular Meeting

That's me. Is that all you had?

Thank you.

I love you. But I'm also presently here. So maybe you see me now. Thank you. Oh. Sorry. It's just.

Yes.

Yes.

703, I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order.

Will the recorder please call the roll? Councillor Irvine?

Here.

Councillor Hink? Here. Councillor Lammerman? Here. Councillor Merida?

Here.

Perfect. Councilor Sotomayor.

Here.

Councilor Wilson. Here. Mayor Sulzman.

Here. I'll rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. items to be added to the agenda there are none special presentations brown and brown presentation Vice President public sector team Marcus pits.

Hello everybody. here. i'm. Thanks for having me out. I'm Marcus. I'm with Brown and Brown. We are your insurance broker. So I'm going to talk a little bit about insurance today. I realize that's not the most interesting topic ever, but we'll take you through some of the numbers and this can be as interactive as you like. So feel free to ask questions as we go. Every year we come out and we talk with your city manager and some of your staff about what's going on with the insurance program, any changes that have been made, any premium jumps or anything major that's going on. And this is an opportunity to share that with the council too. So I pulled some of the statistics to show to you and to talk about the program so you know exactly what insurance you have. quickly, we won't read through this, but I wanted to show you the big players in the game. So there's Brown and Brown, we're the insurance broker, we're the middle symbol there. And we work with city county insurance services. So this is an insurance pool that's specific to the state of Oregon. And it has something like 95% of cities and counties in this insurance pool. It's not a traditional market insurance. It's specific for the counties and was formulated in order to provide services to you. We work with them quite a bit. And then we work with SAFE on the workers' compensation side of the house. SAFE is also an insurance pool and a nonprofit organization that serves the state of Oregon. And we serve as the liaison between the two of those. As a broker, we will also purchase additional insurance policies for miscellaneous things that you might have. Maybe you need a flood policy or a cyber policy or just have a major construction event that's going on and you need to purchase insurance. That's what the insurance broker does. And that's who Brown and Brown is. So a little bit about your program. I'll give you just the overview of what you've got in place. So the liability, public entity liability, that's the CIS policy. It's a package policy and it covers all kinds of liability. It could be a slip and fall. It can be any sort of assertion of negligence against the city. It can be employment liability, wrongful termination. All of that is wrapped up into the CIS policy. And what you have, if you look down in the middle, is a $10 million number for any occurrence of liability. So there's $10 million dedicated to any single occurrence that the city has to take part in, any claim that's made. is available for you. So that's a pretty robust type of coverage there, $10 million. That's hard to get out on the market and it's very expensive to get out on the market as well. And then you have $30 million in any given year. So you could have three $10 million incidents. We don't see that often or ever really, but there is $30 million in the policy altogether. $10 million, again, it's very robust. We have not in the past seen any claim go past the $10 million mark, although there is one that's on the books right now that might potentially pierce that. So it may be the first time that that $10 million is actually challenged. You have a deductible of $5,000. So any incident that occurs, you're on the hook for the first $5,000. CIS will pay the claim, then they'll invoice you back. On the property side, you have about $120 million worth of property on your schedule, and you have what's called a blanket coverage policy. The nice thing about a blanket coverage is that you aren't penalized. Let's say this building is on the books for $5 million, and it burns to the ground, and it takes $6 million to put it back up. A typical property policy might say, you're on the books for $5 million. We won't pay up any beyond that. The blanket policy says we'll pay it all the way up to $111 million or $120 million, whatever you have, all the way through your schedule, as long as they have certified that they will do that for the property. So that's an advantage that you have, and you have $1,000 deductible for any property event that occurs. Any questions? Okay. Numbers. I picked out a couple to highlight for you. The top cluster of numbers is the CIS policy. That's the big policy and it, uh, covers property liability. $411,000 this year is highlighted. That's how much premium you pay towards that policy. Look just to the left of that. And it's down from $436,000. So your CIS premiums, um, have changed from recent years. Instead of going up, it actually went down this year. So CIS had a pretty good year overall for all members, and they saw modest increases or decreases. You saw more of a decrease, and there's a couple reasons for that. One of those is you have a little bit less law enforcement, and that's where a lot of the premium comes from. And then your budgeted services dropped a little bit as well. And that's an exposure basis that they rate off of. So all in all, that's a good result because your premium has dropped. Workers' compensation. Oh, I'm sorry. Cyber is the next cluster there. And cyber just stayed exactly the same last year.

Yeah, go for it.

Is the insurance coverage, let's say for these police officers, is that whether the positions are filled or not? Or is that budgeted? Is it based off of budgeted positions or filled?

If a position is vacant for a period of time, it's based off of the number that are full-time employees that you have throughout the year. So if you have vacant positions and they're not filled, then you're actually not going to get penalized for that or pay premium on that, I suppose I should say. And each year you fill an application for how many budgeted law enforcement officers you have for the next year. And I think it went from 18 to 15.

double check for you okay i'm sorry i think i just heard two different things that i can't reconcile okay so you're filling out how many you have budgeted for the next year and then there's a reconciliation process many ft you actually had

Well, no, I guess what I'm saying is if you have a vacant position that you do not plan to fill throughout the year, then you would not count that in your application. So last year, and I'm working from memory here, I believe you had 18 budgeted for the 25, 26 year. 26, 27, you have 15, if my memory serves me right.

Right. I don't recall if we didn't actually drop people, we dropped budgeted numbers by one, but we saw a reduction. So that's why I'm seeking clarity on that. So potentially we were paying for budgeted positions, insurance on.

Chief?

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I believe we're budgeted for 17 sworn. So that would be police officers, sworn police officer positions. So the 26-27 budget that was just adopted was for 17 sworn positions.

Don't trust my standing memory right here. So we could look it up for certain. If you'd like, we can do that.

Yeah, that clarity would be helpful for me.

Thank you.

And another factor too is your overall budgeted services. And we know that that dropped a little bit as well. So all in all, the city saw a... more significant reduction than other cities and counties throughout the state. And those are two factors that we believe played into that. Cyber last year was 10,700. This year, 10,700. That remained flat. We're able to market cyber out to many different carriers. And the competition that's out there right now is keeping everybody pretty solid and steady. Workers' compensation, on the other hand, went up a pretty significant amount. So this is more due to claims experience than anything else. And we're going to see that in a subsequent slide. I'll show you the actual numbers of your claims and how that affected your workers' compensation. Here's the overall CIS number. So I thought this was interesting because you can kind of see the three different categories that CIS has. If you're a city or county without law enforcement or jail exposure, on average throughout the state, you saw a 2.4 reduction in your overall rates. If you are a city or county with law enforcement, but you don't have a jail, on average, you saw a 1.8% increase, which is pretty modest. And then if you do have a jail that's in your city or county, that went up 2.5% on average. And you of course are that middle column. So you beat that by having a decrease. Don't even try and read this. I have an arrow and it's in your packet if you want to look closely at it. But this is just the overall. At the very bottom right, you can see 11.03%. That's your total insured value for properties. This was notable this year. It went up 11% because you had a property appraisal. Every three to five years, they come out and they actually walk the properties with an appraiser and they make sure that the properties are valued with market conditions. And typically when they come out, at least in recent years, you see a decent increase because building supplies, construction, everything has just gone up over the last five, six years pretty significantly. Yours went up 11%. That affected your property rates a little bit. General liability went down 10% though for you. And so it all in all, if you look at the blue arrow, netted out to about 4.21% in the rate decrease. Okay, here's the workers' compensation. I'll breeze through this pretty quickly, but I highlighted the things that I thought were interesting for you. It's the same setup. The middle column there, or the middle two columns is last year, and then the right two columns is this year. And you can kind of see the rates. For example, your parks department, they're handling trees. 7.17 rate went down to 6.42. So you can see rates are adjusted each year by SAFE. This is your workers' comp carrier. And then I highlighted police officers. That's gone up and that's just, that's not you, that's everybody. Police officers' rates have gone up because there are significant claims, you know, PTSD, those types of things are affecting workers' compensation. So that's actually the largest category for you too, because you have almost $2 million worth of payroll going there. It increased your premium from, you know, $50,000 to about $57,000. So it's significant. All of those filter down and then get multiplied by your claims experience rating. Your experience rating for claims last year is the 0.91. So real quickly, how this works is 1.0 is average. That's the benchmark. And they average that out between you and your peers, what they expect to see in terms of claims. If you're better than that, if you're doing better on average, they will actually reduce that down to a 0.91 in your case for last year. And they just take their premium and go times 0.91, you get a 9% discount. last year that saved you roughly $14,000. This year, claims increased a little bit, and so did your experience rating, and it bumped up to 1.03. So instead of getting a nine-point discount, you're paying a three-point increase, and that nets out to about $3,500. So that's how that works. You'll see on the next page the numbers that they use that go into that. They take three years. I highlighted the ones that they use, 2022, 2023, and 2024, because those are three complete years, fully matured, and they understand the impact that those years have. The incurred losses is the second highlight over there. Those are the losses that you had in workers' compensation for those years. and so those three years that are highlighted are factoring into the current year experience rating at the bottom you'll see forty five hundred dollars and seven forty five seventy four that dropped out of the experience rating so that was a that was a better than average year for you and it's gone out of the rating system it got replaced by the 26 000 so that's what made you bump up a little bit And using that logic, we can actually look forward to next year and see what's coming down the road. You see $15,828 for this year's policy. And I say this year, I should say 2526 policy year. That's going to roll in and 14,000 is going to go out. That's about the same. It's not going to have a major impact. So you'll be pretty flat right around that average mark. So 1.03 is not a bad experience rating, just so everybody knows that's pretty average. And you'll be right in that neighborhood as well next year. I'm going to switch topics on the next slide. So any questions on premiums? Okay, I like to bring this up when I'm speaking with councils or boards. So specific to you on the CIS coverage policy, we like to show you who is a board, who is a council member. who is insured and boards and councils are insured through the CIS policy for liability claims, as long as they are within the course and scope of their duties. That means if you're working as a council and you're doing your duties and some sort of claim is asserted against you, it could be a claim for libel or slander or some sort of impropriety against the city, you will be defended with the full $10 million per occurrence of city liability policy. The thing we always remind people is you have to be in the course of scope. You have to be in a council-sanctioned, approved, acting in an approved way for the policy to protect you in full. And so it's really important to understand what your duties are and try and stay within them and understand that when you're out and about and you're speaking on behalf of a council, you can pretty easily get yourself outside of the insurance coverage by misspeaking or saying something that isn't in concert with your council members or the quorum. So that's important to remember. And also we do from time to time, and I have recently seen some ethics complaints come through. And sometimes we feel like there may be a little weaponized, right? And people will file an ethics complaint in order to try and persuade or punish a council member for what they don't feel is a good decision by them. You have coverage under the policy for those complaints. But there's a couple of things to be reminded of. One, you have to win. If you lose, the policy says you actually did the thing that they said you were doing. And so we're not going to pay the defense costs. And so if you hire an attorney through the policy and you are found to be guilty of whatever you're alleged to have been guilty of, the policy will say, I'm sorry, we're not going to reimburse you for that. So that's something to remember. And then also at the very bottom line, the bottom bullet for defense costs, you're limited to $25,000 per individual in the policy, $50,000 as a council as a whole for ethics, specifically for ethics, not for liability, but for ethics complaints. So something to be aware of as a council member. Oh, I forgot to mention on the workers' comp side, you're actually, you're part of the workers' compensation program too. Not all cities and counties, elect to have their council members as a part of workers' compensation, that's a benefit that your city has elected to do. So you guys are actually covered under workers' comp if you have an injury when you're out and about or at a conference or doing something on behalf of the council. So that's one thing to be aware of too. Arizona Omissions, this came up recently, so I put a slide on it. So Errors and omissions, if an error or an omission causes damage to a third party, your policy covers that. CIS policy covers for any damages associated with an error or omission. We had a recent incident or a recent scenario where the question I think was raised of whether or not an internal error causing damage issues could be considered an insurable act. And so I did wanna just point out that it's typically a third party with alleged damages under the Oregon Tort Claims Act that is covered by the insurance policy. Internal damages or reconciliations are not actually covered through insurance typically. So the definition of enough damages I think is important here. And I'm happy to talk about that.

We have a question. Counselor.

So if you in this explanation, if you could touch on what constitutes a third party, like with the residents of Cottage Grove constitute a third party, if they collectivized and made made a claim.

Yes, I think the claim it would be interesting to see what the claim in that case would be a loss of services. did monetary damages services would not would not be covered so it would have to be uh and actually the definitions up there any any sums recoverable by law from any liability covered under the coverage agreement. So you'd have to establish liability, which is duty owed, breach of duty, damages, approximate cause, all for those things. And then sums that are attached to that recoverable bylaw. The other side of it, there's a little bit of coverage for injunctive relief, but again, a claim or something would have to be filed in order to do that.

There's a concept in our ethics training of... you know, it's not just what you, someone would potentially give you a gift of monetary value. It's doing it, performing a service that otherwise would have cost you. And that's, yeah, there's an opportunity lost and that's a, calculable sum that goes against the $50 gift kind of threshold each year. So say if somebody no longer was able to access services and had to seek them elsewhere and incurred travel costs and excessive other costs, would that fall under the concept of a monetary loss?

I think proximate cause might be an issue there, but I'm not going to adjudicate that here. So it would probably be filed. I would guess I would be skeptical of a claim being paid out under the policy of this. That's just my off the cuff remark here in front of you all. But yeah, what they would do is you would file a claim, a tort claim notice and then a claim. The claims adjuster would take a look at it. They'd compare it to the policy definitions and then they'd issue either an acceptance or a denial with an explanation behind it. I think that they would rely on the damages definition quite heavily there.

It would be correct that this would this wouldn't even be a thing unless something was actually filed in a court where a judgment was being issued. Yeah, exactly.

Any other questions on that topic? I'm going to flash up your claims history here just because it's fairly good. So typically CIS looks back five years to see how your claims are doing and they generate a loss ratio. And if you're under 30%, you're in pretty good range. So loss ratio is just how much are you paying in premium and then how much is going back out in claims against the policy itself. So general liability, you can see your overall loss ratio is 20%. That's in a good range. And the 2021, 2022 year is about to drop out of the window. So you're going to be in better shape as well. And then you can see your average claim costs there too. On the property side, even better. You just had a claim in 23, 24th. That's a blip there for you. And then again, every time you see those, you can kind of see how many claims are each year. And each of those years, you have a deductible associated with those claims. So if you have four claims, you could potentially pay five times four, $20,000 worth of out-of-pocket expenses within the year for liability. Property, again, is $1,000 deductible. So that'd be quite a bit less. But overall, you're doing well. Oh, and at the bottom, I put in the experience rating. 1.111 from CIS down to 1.05. They rated a little bit differently than workers' comp. That's actually a very solid rating.

Other questions?

Okay. Thanks for the opportunity.

We have a special presentation about Middlefield Golf Course Update. Public Works Director, Mr. Stu.

Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, Council. So this evening, I wanted to share a little bit of history on the golf course and also the achievements that we've done this past year. First, I'd like to recognize, I believe with this, we have Roger Van Day, the course superintendent. Joe Simons is our assistant superintendent. And I don't think that Glenn was able to sneak out. He had to fill in for an employee that was not able to make it. So he was remiss that he wasn't. And he's our pro shop manager. And I just start by saying these three individuals are doing an incredible job. And we wouldn't be able to have these things that we're going to talk about this evening without the excellent work that each of them do and their crew. So I just share a little history that City College Grove bought the golf course in 2006. At that time, there was two motivators to buy the golf course. The most important motivator was that we were experiencing temperature controls on our discharge for our wastewater treatment plant from the DEQ. And we were restricted in the amount of water that we could put back into the river during the summer months. without it being cooled or find a different way to do it. So the city, one of the reasons to buy the golf course was to solidify the fact that we could reuse or treat it affluent at the golf course. And also the second item was water rights. There's some other items that really aren't probably deciding factors, but it is a wonderful amenity to our community for our citizens. It also is a beautiful entrance into our community. So there's some added perks to owning the golf course. So back in 2017, when I became employed and Roger, actually Roger was hired a month before I was hired to the city. The gross revenue for the golf course in 2017 was $265,585. So I jinxed myself when I spoke at the chamber event. I said, we were so close to, and I was cautiously optimistic that we would break the $1 million mark. But in 2026, our gross revenue was $99,363.42. If I wouldn't have known I was that close, I might've been motivated to drive in and buy an annual. just to hit that park. We got something to strive for this next year. So it's pretty exciting to see that much growth and that much change. And I would share also that the council might remember this, but we had traveling county come and they talked about what were the draws that brought tourism and tourists into our community. And 40% of the people that come to Cottage Grove come from out of Cottage Grove to visit the golf course. So it really is a substantial draw to our community. So some of the things that we did over the last, since 2017, nine years, we spent a lot of focus on improving the equipment that we had for our crews to use. Most everything. We had a wonderful mechanic back in the day when I arrived, and he is one of those mechanics that could do anything with baling wire. And so that works to a point, but our crews needed some really... reliable equipment and equipment that could prepare the golf course in a manner that kept people coming back. So you can see here we made investments in greens mowers, fairways mowers, rough mowers, a spray wagon, top truss or core harvester. We invested in software for the irrigation system. And we also ended up buying a used aerator. It was only a couple of years old, but we picked that up this last year. Leaf vacuum, wood chipper, and then some support equipment in the maintenance shop. Some of the things that we did outside the golf course over this past year, we opened a brand new tee box for hole number one. which has been a very successful and welcomed item to the golf course. We also, a few years ago, built a new tee box for hole number four, which actually moved the course, that hole from a par three to a par four that took us from an executive golf course to an actual rated golf course. So that was somewhat significant. And then in the 2024, we had the ice storm, which essentially devastated the golf course. It took three months for our crews to clean up the mess. And then with the support of FEMA, we got reimbursement for that and also paid for resurfacing all of our car paths, which was really good. This past year, our crew has worked diligently on fixing our irrigation and sprinklers. If If you happen to go out to the golf course, or if you're a golfer, you'll notice that this time of the year, last year and previous years, we had some, um, some pretty dry spots out on the course. And, and I can attest from golfing last Thursday. I don't think the golf course in my lifetimes ever looked as good as it is today. I mean, the greens were fabulous, the roughs fairways collars around the greens. I mean, it was just incredible. And what was that? Well, I will share that my son and I had our best game in the best ball for our Thursday night league. So we're still trying to work hard. We were five over, but we only. We did not three-putt a single hole, so it was awesome. But anyway. We also, during this period of time, we built a new golf cart storage barn, which doubled the capacity of our ability to store carts for private-owned carts. And also, the previous one was an outdoor shed. This one is an actual protected barn, which is much nicer for the folks storing their carts. And then we converted the old driving range at the sheds to golf cart storage because one of the significant things that we've done over the years is when I first got here, I believe we had about 20 gas powered golf carts with an average age of night. They were produced in 1998. So they were very old, not very reliable. And so we got to a point where we were able to buy 40 used electric carts. And then the past two years, we'd have been able to start renewing those 40 carts with brand new carts. So we're in a process of replenishing and upgrading our equipment that's used. And one of the things that you might see in there is we've probably... This past year, our golf cart fees were $227,000 that we took in. I bet we back in 2017, probably only netted about $30,000. So that was a huge opportunity and a much needed asset to improve the play. We also, uh, for events, we created a new covered event space. Um, this past month, we, um, We also improved the landscaping around our entrance sign and our golfer. We got more projects that we want to do. In the pro shop investments, I already mentioned we purchased new golf carts. We also, in 2024, purchased a software called Lightspeed, and that has really helped our point-of-sale system in the core in the pro shop. It's allowing people to book their tea times over the computer, saving phone calls or walk-ins. That's helping the staff a little bit. We've also created a new website. One of the things Lightspeed does is they do campaigns and they'll do four for us each year where we can push out campaigns to increase members in our men's and women's leagues or on tournaments or holiday sales. We can push out things through social media and various different venues, which has really made a difference. We also made a significant investment in security cameras around the course. Now we're able to attempt to watch how folks are playing during the day. We also can, if somebody comes out and vandalizes the course, there's a chance that we can get some footage that'll be able to help us determine who did that and then hopefully get some corrective action. So that's been very good. And then about three years ago, we built a simulator. Maybe it was four years ago, we built a simulator room. And I hope in our future improvements that we'll be able to take and remodel the pro shop and bring the simulator into the pro shop where it's more readily accessible, a bigger space that might accommodate more of a party or a group of people to come in and play and have an enjoyable experience. So we're still striving to do that. And this year we've also got planned to add security cameras on hole number 10 in our maintenance building and the private cart storage building. So we're just continuing to try to improve our security component to keeping our investment safe. Another item that we're doing here in the next couple weeks is bringing power out to the events area so that we don't have cords strung all over the place for sound equipment and everything. So we're trying to make that a more user-friendly safe place. And then hopefully we'll look towards trying to get an aerator to start aerating our fairways and just improving the course overall, even above what we've seen. I would also share with you just some, they're hard to read, but you can see on the screen, the multicolored component that is Book T-Times. I took that just, I think it was last, Friday or Saturday. And you can see the entire morning is completely booked with golfers. It gets to about one o'clock, then they'll start being spaces. And it's just really neat to see the amount of folks that are coming to use the course. And then the other thing that Lightspeed does is we can check the day-to-day activities. So Yesterday, we had 161 rounds of golf played, which is 50% of what's available at the golf course. And it generated $6,361. The software even goes into the point there was 53 soft drinks sold. that were alcoholic and 66 that were non-alcoholic. I mean, so you just kind of go through and you can see what people are purchasing and that to meet the needs of the folks that are coming. So I appreciate the opportunity to share this information with the council and it's really satisfying to see where this course has been and where it is today. So thank you.

Thank you, Director Stewart, I just want to mention that if everyone does not remember when the city first purchased the course, it was quite controversial. And there were a lot of people that were against the purchase. And so I want to commend all staff for growing this course and all your hard work. And it's been a great thing for the city of Cottage Grove. Thank you.

And I would just, I would say our employees are. Roger, he's not going to say too much, but he's actually been awarded superintendent of the year for the state of Oregon a couple, two, three years ago. He's an incredible individual. When I first got here, it was not uncommon for him to work 110 to 120 hours every pay period. I mean, he was putting in the time. He was managing that course with part-time employees. Today, he's got four full-time employees that are backing him up and taking the pressure off so that I think he still loves to work out there, but he doesn't have to work 120 hours every pay period now. So I'm sure that his wife and his grandkids probably appreciate that. And then Uh, he's doing a great job mentoring, uh, the assistant, uh, to someday our succession plan is, uh, he's, he's doing an excellent job learning from, uh, Roger and, and he's going to have a natural step into keeping this course, uh, in the condition that it's been in.

And he was not appreciating those compliments very much back there. Counselor Mary day.

Sorry, I had trouble with the muted factor. Yeah, I wanted to echo on your statement about the controversy of the golf course, emphasizing, again, the cost to build a cooling tower would have been more than the purchase of the land, plus the upkeep and maintenance of that. And the cooling tower would bring zero income What's happened now is we've acquired additional water rights. We've acquired additional real estate that should we ever get out of the golf business and go to a closed-loop water system due to drought, that could be used for housing. So it was a win-win-win, and I can't emphasize that enough to the public what a brilliant move this was by the city. The fact that it has become an incredible asset and bringing in income and will soon be paid off, it only increases the value to our community. So I want to pat on the back all the current staff that maintain it so well and is being directed and also to the foresight of our predecessors that viewed this as an opportunity.

Councilor Rubin.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to echo all the same. It is a jewel of our community, and it was really good to see the numbers from that Zartico data from Travel Lane County. Do you have the... kind of from that 2017 point to now what the operating expenses were in relation to the revenues. Have we moved towards cost recovery of operating expenses or is it net positive and injecting back into the water funds?

Mayor, Councillor Urban, yes, we can go back through the budgets and you can view those online. They're 2017 on forwarder accessible online and you can see what the actual budgets were, revenue and expenditure, like with the increases that we've made. this past year in our fees, that we're going to be very close in being able to cover our expenses to operate the course. We have not gotten there yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic this year we're going to be very close when we see the end. And I also want to say, too, is that weather can be a good thing or a bad thing. We had five days of rain the last week of June. That's why we didn't hit that mark that I was really hoping to hit because we saw a substantial decrease in folks using the course. So there's no guarantees, but we're doing everything we possibly can to provide an excellent experience, wanting people to come back and have an enjoyable time and want to be here. Um, I've taken the opportunity to go golf a few other courses recently that are comparable that I would consider comparable to our course. And we're still, um, a very, um, a very good, um, uh, what do I want to say? A bargain in, in the golf. Some folks may not agree with that, but you go up to Gresham's, um, we still have some, some opportunities. room to grow and still and still be comparable uh and in market with everybody else but long story short is is if we continue to have good weather with the increases i think we're going to be very close to uh breaking even with the course yeah thank you for providing that just when i first heard this i was like okay how much is going back in as a rate payer okay if i see big numbers i expect to see my rates go down kind of thing and that's really what it's doing is it's

Paying pretty much paying for itself and outpacing the alternative that counselor married a brought up of the operating costs of the alternative to meet the EQ standards, but I just appreciate you sharing that context. Thank you.

With the opportunity to grow.

Anyone else.

Thank you, director. Thanks. Appearance of interested citizens. This is a time for citizen comment. The council will first take comments addressing items not listed on the agenda for a maximum of 30 minutes. The council will then take comments addressing action items on the agenda. For a maximum of 30 minutes, individual speakers must be recognized by the presiding officer, provide their name, identify whether they are city resident, and if so, their ward. Please limit comments to three minutes or less with council approval. Comments regarding any matter scheduled for a public hearing may be provided only during that hearing. The council will not make any decisions based on public comment. However, staff and council may choose to ask questions or comment following the conclusion of citizen comments. We only have one person signed up and that is Donald Norton.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. I'm Donald Norton. I live in Ward 3. I've spoken before you a few times, three times, I think, about the Coast Fork River, basically, and the growth of the invasive species of blackberry and English ivy. In November of 24, I spoke about organizing the Benny Hubble project, which then was an opportunity to honor an earlier resident who took time to try to clear the blackberries away from the riverbanks. And I noticed his plaque out there on Woodson Bridge and realized that, hey, Benny had a lot of work to do yet. And that project took on in November of 24 and pretty much through March of 25 and had cleared the Blackberries mostly from the Chambers Bridge project. down South River Road. Now that's mostly the project was to work on publicly owned property, but most of the South River Road was privately owned property, although the people who lived there were happy to have me come and cut blackberries along the river. And I think that's one of the best observation points of the effort because we'd also gone into Prospector's Park and Riverside Park, and I managed to get some volunteers coming down from Eugene to help. We did probably a third of Riverside Park when it became the thing like, well, we're not allowed to do that because of the maps that are drawn from, you know, the Corps of Engineers presents the maps for the floodway and the floodplain and, you know, where the color changes on the map. We're not allowed to clear the blackbirds, although subsequent investigation myself, there's really not a prohibition there. It's more of like getting a waiver. So as I said, one of, well, a couple of times I come to the council before it was like, all we have to do is fill out the form and then the Corps of Engineers will provide the waiver. In fact, University of Oregon had provided grant money to do essentially the same money, the same thing that any Hubble project had done So if you, I invited you all to go look at those parks last year, but now if you go now, you can kind of see, okay, this is what happens when we don't do anything. We just let the blackberries go. The proposal was to invite the public to put up a few pouches and some tools and hang them along the course of the river. And of course, we need permission from the council to do that. And they would have some instructions and an invitation and hopefully engage the community as much to get involved in this. Just the actions from last year proved that this is possible. It's just a matter of invitation. We didn't ask for $1 from the budget. We didn't ask for one hour of time from the community or Public Works. This is just an opportunity for the community to become involved and just give us the permission to hang a few tools up and put a sign out and invite the public to do it. And it can be done with simple hand tools. And so I'm asking you now to put this project on the agenda and for a future meeting, you'll find the proper place in the calendar where it all fits and stuff. But invite the rest of the public to come in and have this discussion. And if you don't want to do it, then at least come together and say, this is not the right thing for this council to do. It's not the right thing for this community to do. But at least have the discussion, invite our community to come in and say, hey, this is this opportunity to try something out. And we know. All along, all the rivers of state of Oregon are covered with Armenian blackberry. And when you cut it back, it just makes it like a park. We enjoy, I mean, the Riverside Park is partly a Riverside Park if you can't even see the river. It's behind the blackberries there somewhere. But if you cut them away, then people can access the river. And you see that all along South River Road. The public is going down, accessing the river. You see the little pathways. And you walk down the river, you'll see somebody sitting on a rock reading a book. There'll be the kids out in the stream playing. There'll be people with their dogs and people walking by. It's a very active place and invitation for the community now. If we had the software that Faye presented to us earlier, how much could we show a gain for this community if our rivers were open and available. Would we be renting kayaks? Could we put that into the software? Would we be having more bicycle activity because the paths are there? And we do have a community path project that I guess is going to be worked on this year. I certainly hope so. You guys were all involved in that budget decision. I don't need to go on, I think. I've said this before. I just ask you now to consider it, put it on the agenda and give the chance, the community a chance to have this discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Norton. And I just want to comment that I did see blackberries for sale at Walmart and I was thinking, hi, but does anyone have any comments for this? Appreciate it. Thank you. Now public hearing, McKinley Avenue Zone of Benefit. I now open the public hearing at 7.53 p.m. for McKinley Avenue Zone of Benefit. Director Stewart, may we have the staff report, please?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. So on June 2nd, 2026, Dan Rhodes submitted an application and associated fee to create a zone of benefit under Cottage Groves Municipal Code 13.12.020. The application included the project invoices, documenting the expenses that occurred to install the public water and sewer lines in McKinley Avenue. Branch engineering reviewed and verified the expenses, which totaled $162,420.56. Branch also determined which loss would directly benefit from the new public water and sewer lines for inclusion in the zone that's being proposed in the attached ordinance. The ordinance also identifies the fair share each zone parcel will pay for the extension upon annexation and connection to those now available services. The value per existing or new dwelling unit is set at $5,800.73. So I would share that a public hearing is not required, but in an effort to hear from everybody, we are hosting this public hearing. 12 certified letters went out to notifying each of the property owners. of the proposed zone formation were sent on July 2nd, 2026 per Cottage Grove Municipal Code 1312.020. The city also chose to place, excuse me, a public hearing notice in the Chronicle, which was published on Thursday, July 9th, excuse me, yeah, Thursday, July 9th edition legal counsel assisted with the preparation and attached proposed ordinance. I would share that during our work session last Friday, there was a question about interest or increased value over the years. Say if somebody decided to annex and they wanted to attach to the water and sewer lines, how would the cost increase? And essentially, according to our code 13.12.030 in the charges, the construction cost index shall be determined from figures published in the engineering news, new record magazine for the 20 cities, a pro-rata share of the original cost of the extensions, which are accessible to each property in the zone of benefit shall be included in the ordinance. So essentially it's the same thing that we do each year when we increase our SDC fees each year by the increase in cost of services that are provided. To date, I have not received any written or correspondence from any of the folks that we sent public notices to. I also want to expressly say that Nobody's, they can't take advantage of hooking to these services until those properties decide to annex into the city and want to hook to the city to these services. If they do, this is a mechanism to reimburse Mr. Rhodes for the investment over and above what was needed for serving his parcels that he hooked to. So are there any questions before the public comment?

Any questions? We will now hear public testimony. Please state your name and address for the record. Is there any public testimony? All right. Does anyone on council have any further questions? I will now close the public hearing at 7.57 p.m. Consent agenda. Councilor Irvin.

Thank you, Mayor. The council approved the consent agenda. Second.

We have a motion with the second.

Will the recorder please call the roll?

Okay.

All in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Mindy. Resolutions and ordinances. Item A, resolution designated a certified officer. City Manager, Mr. Sauerwein.

Well, good evening, Your Honor and members of the City Council. As we've previously discussed, the city was awarded a $400,000 community loan block grant from Business Oregon to create a regional housing rehabilitation loan program. As a condition of accepting those funds, there are I think four different items on the agenda this evening that the council needs to adopt. I think it's important to note that, you know, designating me as a certified officer and a resolution on a fair housing program. These are policies that we already have in place and it's simply recognizing them again as a condition of accepting the federal money.

Resolution number? This will be resolution number 2184. Councilor Irvin.

Thank you, Mayor. The move that the council adopt resolution number 2184 designating a certifying officer for executing site-specific environmental reviews related to the Rural Housing Rehabilitation Loan Program. I second.

We have a motion with a second. Any discussion? Will the recorder please call the roll?

Councilor Hink?

Aye.

Councilor Merida?

Aye.

Councillor Lammerman.

Aye.

Councillor Irvin.

Aye.

Councillor Settlemyer. Aye. Councillor Wilson. Aye. Mayor Soulsby. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.

Resolution for fair housing program. City Manager, Mr. Settlemyer.

Well, good evening again, Your Honor. As I said, this is a policy which is already in place, but we're required to adopt the resolution as a condition of accepting the funds.

Councillor Irvin.

Thank you, Mayor. Move to adopt resolution number 2185, adopting the Fair Housing Program.

Second.

We have a motion with a second. Any discussion?

Thank you, Mayor. My question, and I think it was more pertaining to the previous item, there are a number of conditions stipulated in receiving these funds. And I was wondering which part, did we have a representative from this contract speaking? The one that just stood out to me because it looked like it was maybe culturally and timely relevant was about not putting gates or fences up around buildings where there's protests. I'm just, it just got me thinking, how often are these revised? And when did that go into effect?

You know, honestly, I'm Andy Clay with St. Vincent de Paul. And honestly, I can't really answer that question. I don't know. It doesn't sound really that relevant to what we're trying to accomplish. It's just individual single family housing rehab.

That's why it stood out to me. I was like, how is this relevant?

I'm sorry. I don't know. I just don't know. Thank you.

Thank you for your honesty. Okay. Counselor Mary Day. Counselor Mary Day. Mary Day, can you hear us? All right. Will the recorder please call the roll?

Councillor Lammerman?

Aye.

Councillor Settlemyer?

Aye.

Councillor Wilson? Aye. Mayor Soulsby?

Aye.

Councillor Heinck?

Aye.

Councillor Irvin?

Aye.

And we have lost connectivity with Councillor Merida. So I'm going to record that as 6-0 and then make a note in the minutes.

Thank you. Item C, ordinance approving the McKinley Avenue Zone of Benefit. Public Works Director, Mr. Stewart.

Thank you, Mayor. So city council has held a public hearing. regarding the creation of the McKinley Avenue zone of benefit. It's now appropriate for the city council to deliberate on the proposed ordinance. Staff is recommending that approving the McKinley zone of benefit. And this would be ordinance number 3209. Councilor Irvin.

Thank you, Mayor. I move that the City Council adopt ordinance number 3209, approving the creation of the McKinley Avenue zone of benefit.

Second.

We have a motion with a second. Is there any discussion? I see none. Will the recorder please call the roll?

Councillor Wilson?

Aye.

Councillor Settlemyer?

Aye.

Councillor Urban?

Aye.

Councillor Lammerman? Aye.

Aye.

Councillor Heinke.

Aye.

Mayor Sulzby. Aye. And once again, I'll note in the minutes that we've lost connectivity with Councillor Marity.

Thank you. All right. Item D has been removed from the agenda. Mr. Sauerwein.

Just as a quick explanation, Your Honor, when someone applies to annex their property into the city, they are allowed to apply for what's called an expedited procedure, which essentially means that the neighbors are notified of the annexation, but we don't schedule a public hearing. If any one of those folks who is notified or another neighbor actually requests a public hearing, only takes one, then we, you know, John Potter, move on to have a public hearing, so in this particular case of this annexation we will be scheduling a public hearing in the coming months.

Thank you. All right, business from the City Council award of 21st street water line replacement contract and I have a conflict of interest, our son is the owner of Pacific excavation.

All right, we have the staff report.

Director Stewart. Thank you, Council President. So on Friday, May 29th, 2026, city staff posted an invitation to bid for the construction of a new 12-inch waterline starting from East Main Street and 21st Street to Hilltop, continuing south to the connection at Madison Avenue just below the city reservoirs. The project involves saw cutting, excavation, trenching, removal, compaction, asphalt paving, and construction of the water, main extensions, water laterals, water meters, fire hydrant replacement, and site restoration. The engineer's estimate for this project was $562,107.20. Sealed bids were due by 2 p.m. on June 25, 2026 at Branch Engineering, which is located at 310 5th Street in Springfield. The intent to bid was advertised on May 29, 2026 in the Daily Journal of Commerce. Three bids were received and opened on June 25, and they were as follows, Pacific Excavation, Inc., for $451,408, H and J construction, which was $482,335.50 and BAP construction for $575,065. Bid packages have been reviewed and found all to be responsible and responsive Branch Engineering's recommendation is to award the contract to Pacific Excavation as the low bidder. And that is what staff's recommendation is also. And with that, there is a motion here to... Mayor Mrakas, approve or award the 21st street water line replacement contract to Pacific excavation for 451,408 dollars and direct the city manager to sign the contract and all associated documents.

Mayor Mrakas, So lemon.

Council, I moved that the City Council award the 21st Street Water Line Replacement Contract to Pacific Establishment, Inc. for $451,408.00 and direct the City Manager to sign the contract and all associated documents.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Is BAB Construction the same thing as Delta Construction?

Yes, essentially the same company. Will the recorder please call the roll?

Councilor Sotomayor?

Aye.

Councilor Wilson?

Aye.

Councilor Lammerman?

Aye.

Councilor Hine? Aye. Chair Ervin?

Aye.

And the minute's going to reflect again that Councilor Merida, we've lost connectivity, and Mayor Soulsby has refused herself from the discussion and vote.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Item B, approval of grievance procedure and designation of non-discrimination policy. Compliance coordinator, city manager, Mr. Sarawen.

Good evening again, your honor and members of the council. So I previously stated the city applied and was awarded a $400,000 community development block grant. Try saying that three times fast from business Oregon for a regional housing rehabilitation loan program. And as a condition of accepting those funds, we need to establish a grievance procedure and also designated a compliance officer. Hmm.

Councilor Rubin.

I'll try to say it one time slowly. I move to approve the regional housing rehabilitation loan program grievance procedure and designate the city manager as the compliance coordinator for the non-discrimination policy and authorize the city manager to sign related documents.

Second. We have a motion with a second. Is there any questions? Any conversation?

No.

Councilor Settlemyer.

I tried to sort out all of this in piles. I'm sorry, I was missing Friday, but it isn't that I don't like this, but I think this is the last time we're voting on this. And I wanted to shove in here somewhere, the celebration that there's gonna be $300,000 of grants for people in the community but it's over two years is kind of our timeline. Is now the time to ask, do we anticipate that that's gonna be a problem getting that kind of funds out in our community and that timeline with these kinds of guidelines?

Well, actually, I think that we'll have pretty good success because we have a very strong list of people showing interest. But yeah, you're right. There's a lot of administrative tasks that have to get cleared before we can start really helping folks. But we're actually knocking quite a few of them out today.

um tonight and uh i'll be working on the area-wide environmental review um while we're uh finishing up some other administrative tasks wonderful council urban thank you mary and just yeah for those listening if you would just what should the community anticipate how can they um who should they contact what what can they expect uh from this coming to the town

Yeah, so they can contact me, Andy Clay, St. Vincent de Paul, and they can call me on my cell phone. That's one way of contacting me, 541-501-0894. I can be emailed at andy.clay at svdp.us. Can be contacted through our website as well. Right now we have about 40 people on an active waiting list. Once we get to the point where we have most of our administrative tasks out of the way, I'll be mailing applications out directly to them. But folks that are interested can still let me know and I will get them on our mailing list as well.

Mr. Sarawin.

And we also plan to publicize this. I think we'll get the information out starting with like this Friday's Friday update and we'll make it available in the future and other formats as well.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

concerns from council. I'm sorry. We need to call the vote still. All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries.

Oh, there he is. We have Dana back.

Good. Motion carries unanimously. And Dana, did you have your hand up?

Yes, please. I missed part of the thing because I got dropped by the weak internet here at the country fair. I was just wanting to, I noticed that we are losing one fourth of the funds due to administration and was wondering if there's any way that we could get more of the funds to the people.

Come on back up, Andy.

Well, the answer to that is it's very difficult. We, for the overall program, have traditionally been spending about 25% and more to operate the program. We've reduced our budget for the environmental review. Most of the work goes towards program management, which is actually operating the program and doing home inspections and so on. That said, we have in the past had a little bit of money left over, which then can be flipped to doing owner-occupied rehab. But it's unlikely because costs have all been going up. It's even difficult to serve the number of homes that we're trying to serve. We haven't changed our loan limits for years. And that's mainly because You know, if we increase it, then we can only serve, you know, that many fewer folks. So it's difficult. It's a good question. But I think it's unlikely that there'd be much money left to be able to put towards owner occupied out of the administrative portion of the budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now concerns from council. Councillor Sotomayor.

There's a spirit of Bohemia celebration that's happening towards the end of this week. And a little chunk of it I want to make sure and draw your attention to. Friday night, if you're up to exercising a little bit, you can saunter around essentially a couple laps of our beautiful River Road from Maine to Harrison. area in what is called the Gold Rush 5K. And some people have been known to only do one lap and it's such a thing where, you know, that's fine too. So if you want to go and do something kind of a little different, I invite you to. um South Valley Athletic is a partner with us um if you go to their website if you go to runcgrun.org on the internet there's uh essentially some more things to talk about and then If any of you are around little kids at the beginning of the parade, we've been granted permission to try what we call the gold dash again. Right before the parade hits Main Street, why not let the kids run up and down? Well, just in one direction on Main Street. We'll meet at 10th and Main and some people will run to essentially 7th Street and some will run from the same intersection down to the very beginning of Koiner Park. That's about 250 meters and they get some kind of ice cream, not ice cream, ice pop thing at the end of their efforts. And then maybe they can sit and not vibrate as much during our wonderful parade.

They're tiring them out. And I'm not sure I've ever sauntered before. So I'm going to maybe have to try that. Anyone else? Councilor Irvin.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, I appreciate Mr. Norton coming back out. The concept of having beautified rivers when we have such an asset in our town is waterways going through town is something that I'm in full support of. How we get there, I have met with some staff on this issue. It seems like there are some hurdles, but in the general concept, I'm in full support of beautification efforts. I love the volunteer spirit, but having the right parties working with the right folks to do that seems to be where, where the misses have been. And so whatever we can do as a council to encourage that or, or blaze a path forward so that, you know, it's done where we're, respecting private property, respecting public property, and all the like, and the various concerns around the waterways, I'm in full support of.

Anyone else? Councillor Wilson.

Along those same lines, we've got an upcoming work session on citywide cleanup. That's part of the city and it needs cleaned up. So as part of that discussion, that may be a topic that we could banter about and see if we can maybe make some progress. I do absolutely support cleaning up the waterways and making them an asset for people to enjoy.

All right. I just have one thing to say. I have talked about before that the city of Cottage Grove was incredibly fortunate to be gifted a beautiful mural from the Portland group that has joined the wall dogs. It's a group of 30 artists and they painted a teaser mural for us. And it was absolutely free. All's we paid for were the supplies. And so I don't believe that's ever been done in the history of wall dogs that they have just came together on their own and gifted it to a city. They're so excited about coming to cottage grow that, They wanted to get the word out for us and they even drove it to us and dropped it off. So it's amazing. Cottage Grove has some good karma coming our way right now. And I want to announce that We actually had to get a sign permit for it and our city manager actually put in for it. And so we had to jump through all those same hoops and we are going to unveil that on Friday at noon. And that is going to be the backside of little Caesars and it'll be put up and then covered until then. And then we're going to unveil it. And so We are really hopeful that everyone will come and join us. It's a great time to show some appreciation for the talent and the generosity of all the artists that are going to come to our city in 2027. So hope that you'll all be there. All right. Oh, the lights hit just right where I can't see his hand. Counselor Mary Day.

Well, as mayor of Bohemia City, I would not only encourage, I would almost demand that the citizens dress properly, as bespeaking the times. Dress the part this year in Bohemia Mine Days and to create the effect of turning back the clock for 100 years or more to the times we are portraying in our festival. So hit your thrift stores, dig through your closets, and put on some airs to show up. We'll be having orkart races, youth orkart races, the kiddie parade, costume, beard contests, pie-eating contests, the feud games. There'll be history talks, wonderful music. The vendors will be also involved in recreating the look in their booth and clothing, many of them. So join in and dress the part, please. It'll be Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. check the Bohemia Nugget and this week's Sentinel or go to Spirit of Bohemia Mining Day's website to get a complete schedule and come play in Bohemia City.

Thank you, Councilor Mary Day. I just want to state that I didn't know that America demand, and it's not really right that I'm just learning this at the end of my term, All right. No one else. Business from the city manager.

Well, good evening again, Your Honor, members of the Council. As we've previously discussed, the Under 20 World Track and Field Championships are coming to Hayward Field next month. And our friends from Botswana will be here again with the team. And first off, I just want to give a huge thank you to Georgia, who's here in the back. She loves applause. And also to Sean and I, who are the two folks who are really taking the lead on this project. So the folks from Botswana will be arriving on Friday, July 31st. And we have several events over the course of the weekend that we'd like to get everybody involved in, more details to come forward later. But on Saturday, August 1st, they'll be over at the Speedway and we've sponsored a box and they're gonna let the team drop the flag at the first race. On Sunday, Georgia and Shawna are going to be taking them out to Cottage Grove Lake. We've got paddle boards, we've got kayaks, we've got bikes. Everybody's going to be welcome to join them. And then on Monday, this is where the city council fits in. We'd like to have a farewell dinner with the elected officials on Monday, August 3rd. So don't have to let me know in the next three minutes, but let Mindy and I know if you're going to be available that evening. We're still considering a couple of different locations for dinner, but we'll get you more information on that. But please let me know if the council members are available for a dinner on Monday, August 3rd. Then on Tuesday, August 4th, we'll be having an exit parade out of town as we did with the last group from Botswana. The chief is going to be having some of our police officers lead the exit parade, and we'll be getting a lot of information out to citizens so everybody can wave goodbye to them. as they drive 20 minutes up the road and check into the dorms at U of O so that they can compete in the under 20 championships the following days. So again, more details to come. And I said huge thank you to Shawna and Georgia for all of the work that they've done on this project. And that could conclude my report.

Thank you. There is no city attorney tonight. Items removed from the consent agenda. There are none.

This meeting is adjourned.