City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, Camby. Welcome to the 04/01/2026 regular city council meeting. If you please stand for the invocation and then the pledge of allegiance. Dear heavenly father, I thank you so much for this great community. I ask for your blessing on this community every day in in every way, and especially during this holy week that we are in.

I say a special prayer for our men and women in service overseas. There's a lot going on in world and they are in harm's way and just keep them safe and bring them home. And please keep the astronauts on Artemis two safe on their journey around the moon. I ask these things in your name, Lord. Amen.

Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right. Miss Burnham, roll call vote or roll call check-in or a full vote time? Roll call something.

Councilor Patton. Here. Councilor Maldonado.

Here.

Council President Hensley. Here. Mayor Hodson.

I am here.

Councilor Davis.

Here.

Councilor Stearns. Here. And Councilor Waterman.

Here. Hi, Paul. Hey, Paul. Great. Like I said, we got a full vote. This is great. We don't have any staff introductions, so item four this evening is citizen input and public comment. It's an opportunity for citizens to address the council on non agenda items. If you are wanting to address the council, back on the podium there behind Pete Wood, our HR director, is these white cards that you can fill out, bring them over to our city recorder, and she'll make sure that I get it. Just a reminder, if you can't make the city council meeting, you can always, zoom in. Just need

to let the city recorder know the day of the city council meeting by 04:30. Yes.

04:30 on the day of our city council meetings. Just wanna remind those that are speaking that you have three minutes to address council. If we can address it tonight, we will. If not, city staff and I will figure out next steps regarding the question or the inquiry. I have one card this evening, and that's Jordan is it Ward? Yep. Welcome, sir. If you wanna come up to the table here and introduce yourself and you're addressing us on STC fees.

Correct. Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening. My name is Jordan Ward. I live here in Camby, and I'm a small time real estate developer. I recently purchased an old church on Manzanita Street here in Canby and converted it to 23 studio and one bedroom apartments. Live about five or six blocks north of there and got three little kids and they go to public school here in Camby.

The biggest line item on that project was for me the SDC fees. And I understand that the system development charges are up discussion for a substantial increase. I'm not sure how much, but I've heard that they could nearly double. So, I just wanted to give you a, kind of perspective from my point of view. I can't speak on the cost of going to running a city.

I have no idea what they need to be from, to keep the city afloat, but I can tell you that they directly affect the feasibility of projects like Vine. I do have two small apartment complex. Well, they're 12 unit two separate 12 unit projects here in Canby, and SDCs that will be charged for them are sort of unknown. I guess my biggest concern is that the time at which the SDCs are assessed is at the very last step of the project after you've been through CAMBI planning and Clackamas County Building, which it's like a six month process by the time you're all said and done. But you don't know what you're going to be paying for your largest line item until the last day when your permit is issued.

That's how can be Canby does it. I had a similar issue on my first project that I won't get into with when Canby utility raised their fees during my approval process and it turned into a little bit of a fiasco. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, thankful for the opportunity to have my SDCs on my first project finance. That was pretty helpful. I understand that that process has changed quite a bit where you have to use a different property as collateral and I think the rates are higher than you would get at a bank.

So, don't think I will be doing that on this project. And and I guess my time is up. That's all I've got to say. Thank you.

Yeah. So, Jordan, before you you leave, yes, we are in the midst of conversation on the FTC charges and what and how that is gonna look fees, guess, are gonna look like going forward. Don or Randy, the public hearing for that is coming up when? July. Okay. So our sec our second meeting in July.

Actually, it's probably on my look ahead here. One second. July 1.

The first. So our first meeting in July will be the public hearing on that piece between now and then. I don't know if you've met Don Hardy, our planning director, so you know who he is. He and his team can probably get you some more information on what that is going to look like. Plus, it will be put out a week in advance. Definitely want to encourage you to come and hear the public hearing on that and please comment on that evening as well. Sure thank you. Thank you. It's the only card I have. Maya, is there anyone online this evening?

No there is not.

Okay. We'll move on to item five. And this evening, we have, proclamation. It's National Library Week's coming up already again, Melissa? National Library Week two thousand twenty six, whereas libraries spark creativity, fuel imagination, and inspire lifelong learning, offering a space where individuals of all ages can find joy through exploration and discovery.

Whereas libraries serve as vibrant community hubs, connecting people with knowledge, technology, and resources while fostering civic engagement, critical thinking, and cultural enrichment. Whereas libraries provide free and equitable access to books, digital tools, and innovative programming, ensuring that all individuals regardless of background have the support they need to learn, connect, and thrive. Whereas libraries partner with schools, businesses, and organizations to maximize resources, increase efficiency Wow, say that three times fast, increase efficiency and expand access to essential services, strengthening the entire community. Whereas libraries empower job seekers, entrepreneurs, and lifelong learners for by providing access to resources, training, and opportunities that support career growth and economic success. Whereas libraries nurture young minds through story times, steam steam programs, and literacy literacy initiatives fostering curiosity and a love of learning that lasts a lifetime.

Where libraries protect the right to read, think,

and

explore, standing as champions of intellectual freedom and free expression, dedicated librarians and library workers provide welcoming spaces and inspire discovery, collaboration, and creativity for all. And whereas libraries, librarians, and library workers across the country are joined together to celebrate National Library Week under the theme, find your joy. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, mayor Hodson, proclaim April 19 through the twenty fifth, two thousand twenty six as National Library Week. During this week, I encourage all residents to visit their library, explore its resources, and celebrate all the ways that the library helps our community find joy. Marissa, you were here to collect this tonight?

Thanks, Marissa. Alright. Item five b this evening is a Camby School District presentation. We have the chair and superintendent here this evening. Hello.

Hello, ladies. Well, thank you so much for having us. Just a delight to be here, and I wanna just personally thank you, mayor Hodson, along with our liaison. So thank you, council president Hensley, as well, and for your collective interest and hearing from us this evening and the kind invitation as well. So thank you for your time.

My name is Jennifer Patterson. I'm the superintendent of the Camby School District, a very proud superintendent, I might say. And I have, I think, what's the best job in the world because I've got 4,100 kids to love and care for. So that's a role that I take very seriously and approach with great stewardship and great care and responsiveness. And I'll talk to you a little bit about about that in greater detail this evening.

I love this picture because it draws you right in to what matters most. It brings the faces of children up close and really resonates deeply with this community around what what matters. And it doesn't take long in Canby to hear about schools and children because evidence of our collective care for them is everywhere, just even in the the declaration that you just read, mayor Hodson, around libraries. So I love this picture. These are 91 kindergarteners out and enjoying a little bit of sunshine.

And it's true that schools are much more than buildings. They actually hold our future. There's my clicker. There we go. I do wanna start with what's going well because there will be a lot of heavy in our conversation later this evening around resource and budget constraints.

So I want to shine a light on the things that we should feel collectively proud of in Canby because you don't have to look very hard to find those things. And I wanna start by highlighting the success of our graduating seniors, class of 2025. They experienced a record high graduation rate of ninety one percent in which is phenomenal. And any student that is participating in our CTE programs graduated at a ninety eight point nine percent, so we'll call that ninety nine. So we know that our investment in vocational education here in Canby is paying off in really clear ways for students and children.

Our literacy rates are slowly improving. We have a lot of work to yet do, so I wanna be really clear about both things. We're proud of the progress, and we have bigger dreams ahead for lifting and continuing to improve levels of reading and writing at really high levels, k 12. But we're really proud. We heard from ODE this spring to say, what are you doing writing can be? And I said, well, we're doing a lot of things right. We're training teachers in the science of reading. We're paying attention to professional development, and we're investing in high quality instructional materials for the first time in over a decade. So we're really proud of that. You don't have to go far to hear people talking about our state award winning choir and band.

They are incredible, and the state competition tells us so, so we are really proud. They're getting ready to go to state again this spring and cheering for them loudly. We've got thriving athletics programs. Spring sports just kicked off, and we had our dance team win second in state over spring break as well as basketball. Our boys basketball team did exceptional, and we could just go on and on about the the strong evidence that supports that kids do really well in athletic opportunity here in Canby.

We have excellent CTE programs. We offer seven of them. For a district of our size, that's truly remarkable. They're thriving and our outcomes support that claim. We do a phenomenal job of supporting bilingualism.

I myself am bilingual, and this is really important. I know Mayor Hartzon, your own child has benefited from this program, so we have an incredible DLI program, and we have a very high number of students that earn a seal of biliteracy because of it. We have beautiful small neighborhood schools, which is such a gift. I mean, communities like Beaverton, they're closing small neighborhood schools and building ginormous ones. In Canby, we have a value for knowing children by name, strength, and need, and they're known in our small schools, and that's a tremendous value here.

And deep general generational roots really tie us together and connect us and hold the storyline of continuation in our district. So those are I could speak forever about what makes me proud to be the superintendent in Camby, Oregon, but certainly wanted to start with those highlights. I also want to talk about how proud I am of where we spend our money. In the business that we're in, which is teaching and learning, it takes a lot of big people to support little people. And so 80% of our budget goes to staffing.

And a question I get a lot is, well, how do you spend that money? And this is this is the evidence to look at it. So you can see that the majority of our dollars go right to the schoolhouse as well they should. So, we have almost 60% of our funding goes to licensed teachers and staff, and just under 40% goes to classified staff. So these are folks that help out in the front office.

These are instructional assistants that help with reading groups and recess duty and help help in lots of big and small ways. Also, school principals, we have eight school houses. You gotta have a principal in every school house. Our district office is very skinny relative to many of our neighbors, and certainly any district that I've been a part of, 1.4% of our total staffing is at the district office, and that's an HR director, a student services director, myself. We we also have, of course, this CFO, teaching and learning, and we take our work very seriously and and believe it's our job to to center students as well in in our service and work to the district at whole.

And then confidential supervisory, these are folks that work in payroll or HR. They're classified. It's a it's a category of classified staffing, if you will, that earns a little bit more because of the nature of the of confidential work that they do. And you can see here that this is where the conversation gets very real. My job as a steward of resources is to think ahead into the future.

I care a lot about that in Canby. I want to have a very long vision around what this community needs and how to steward schools that will thrive this year, next year, and long into the future. That's my job to think about the future of kindergarteners, the future of the kindergarteners that we'll greet next year, as well as the seniors graduating as part of the class of 2026. And that's a really important ethos. I think that's something we should feel proud of and can be.

There's a long, long history of caring about investing in the in the future, and part of that is having a real clear eyed analysis of how we're doing fiscally. When I came, I started 07/15/2024, so I have a lot of humility about being new in this community and a lot to learn for sure. And at the same time, got right to work clarifying that we needed to do some rightsizing and some budget budget reduction, and we did that work last year. We cut $7,000,000 and reduced 74 staff. This year, we are still facing a $6,300,000 funding gap.

We're not alone in that. This is not just a Canby problem. Anyone who's reading the news, paying attention in conversation with family members and others across the state, you know that Corvallis is closing two schools and and cutting 4,000,000. Our neighbors in Oregon City are cutting 7 to $8,000,000 next year. Eugene Fourj announced that their deficit just ballooned to 40 to 50,000,000, Portland Public Schools, Ashland Schools.

Corvallis is facing the closure of two schools as well as Westland Wilsonville. So this is happening all among us. This is a statewide issue around a failure to fund public schools at adequate and sustainable levels. There are eight drivers of our budget. I've gone and done at this point over forty forty informational sessions talking about this every anywhere that anyone will have me, including living rooms and candy, so thank you to citizens that are inviting me into their homes to talk to neighbors around this topic.

Also wanna just say thank you to mayor Hodson. Thank you to city administrator Randy. Thank you as well to our our council president, all who've come and spent individual time hearing this message and learning more. It really matters, and it really counts. So this is a conversation that matters, and people are showing up to hear and understand and learn more about how are we facing a budget deficit second year in a row.

It's a good question, an important one that I speak to directly. So I wanna be clear that this is a very long conversation to unpack all of these eight drivers. I don't have time to do that tonight, but I do wanna highlight and be clear with you that the confluence of these eight drivers result in our $6,300,000 budget gap. I'll speak to them briefly, and then I have some charts and graphs to show you. But at the at the core of this issue is inadequate state funding, and that's evidenced by the fact that you can see all across the state schools struggling to meet their bottom line.

Enrollment is also a challenge. I'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like and can be, but declining enrollment is something that districts across the state are also struggling with and facing. It's also a it's a national problem, so it extends far beyond Oregon. PERS cost, it's an extraordinary burden. You understand this well because it's a cost that you too contend with and deal with.

And if you are a fire if if you work in the as a fireman, if you work as a policeman, you also get get PERS, and it's something that challenges not only k 12, but other public entities as well because of that. We have our obligation to have a reserve at 5%. Our reserve in Canby is below that threshold, so my job as a superintendent is restore the reserves to 5% and present the balanced budget to the board. Our special education costs are not adequately funded at the state level. We serve over 15% of students on individual education plans.

The state reimburses us for 11%. It's also true that the $2,000,000 that we spend on high cost disability students every year, the state reimburses us at 20¢ for every dollar that we spend. Our operational costs and labor costs are going up. If you're a small business owner, you know this well. Cost It a lot of money to do business in Oregon, and that's true for us as a school district as well.

So operational costs, everything from our lighting to our water is increasing, even our the cost of taking out the trash is going through the roof. So we are burdened by increased costs as well as labor. So cost of insurance, cost of employing people goes up. We are really lucky to have some phenomenal staff in Camby, Oregon, and they're they're absolutely deserving of of the paychecks they they earn and employing them costs costs money. So that's just a reality.

We also have unfunded mandates from the legislature, paid leave Oregon, unemployment, things of that nature that continue to land, and we're asked to do more, but not given adequate resources or reimbursement to do that with. I'll talk more about driver number one. This is a graph that shows a real decreasing overall investment in public education in Oregon since 1999. So this graph shows the share of general fund, general state fund dollars, and lottery revenues that have been dedicated to the state school fund since 1999, and you can see very clearly the trend line there. Think important to note that while the trend line of the share of resources going to k 12 is declining, the amount of state revenue is absolutely increasing, so I think it's important to to really highlight that correlation.

I thought you'd be interested in this this data. This is recently new for us, and it goes really back kind of, you know, four decades to 1986. You can see the population of CAN be comparative to enrollment. And this is really helpful for us in a couple of ways. One, I believe very strongly that to understand the future and prepare for it, you should you should study history.

I think that's important, and it teaches us a few things. One, it helps us really kind of zoom out and look at the fact that while we did decrease in enrollment in COVID, we're actually pretty flat between that two, you know, like three thousand to just under six thousand mark, so we are hovering between that over time. What's interesting is that our city population is growing quite a lot, and it's not reflected in children in our schools, and and from what what we know from the research we've done, it's connected to this issue. And this has to do with two things. The cost of housing in Cambie is very high.

We build beautiful houses here, and they cost a lot of money, so new families can't afford to purchase them and move in. And it's also true that our birth rate is declining significantly. We have one of the lowest birth rates in Oregon has one of the lowest birth rates in the country, so we love to see new babies out on the street. I'm always like, oh, are you gonna be a future Camby grad? So, anyway, apologies ahead of time if I approach anyone with young children and cuts first and ask if you're coming to our schools, but we're excited to serve you.

So it's true that for every three homes built in Camby yields about one child on average. So we have a significant issue in that the the city's growing, but the enrollment in our schools aren't. This has a bottom line implication for us financially because for every 100 children that we lose, it comes with a million dollars away from our bottom line, so it has a real fiscal footprint for us that counts. This is another way to look at our enrollment as it relates to how many littlest kinders we have, so we have about a 100 fewer kindergarteners enrolling than we're graduating. Again, this is not a can be problem.

If you talk to the Menville superintendent, she'd tell you the same thing. They have about half as many kids in kindergarten as they're graduating in this year's senior class, so just fewer kids being born, fewer young families in Canby, and we have fewer kindergarteners. We are excited to greet them though. We have kindergarten meet and greets, so if you wanna get a good dose of five year olds, come hang out with us in a couple of weeks, because they're gonna be buzzing all around learning about what kindergarten has in store for them. PERS is a is a significant bugaboo for us.

There's just no way around this. Last biennium, the legislature this current biennium, rather, the legislature allocated $11,360,000,000 to schools. It's important for the public to recognize that of that 11,360,000,000.00, 2,270,000,000.00 of it alone went to PERS, so 19% off the top goes right to PERS, and that's representative of a $670,000,000 increase in PERS payments. So our PERS bill alone, I got hired on 07/15/2024, it's very very joyful day for me. October '24, we got a bill in the mail, $4,000,000 was our PERS PERS bill.

So PERS is a significant challenge for us, and we're not alone in that challenge, but I want to be very forthright with the public about this as one of our significant drivers in our budget conundrum. So we got to work last year, because that's that's our job, is to acknowledge the problem and then do something about it, and we did this last year. I'm very proud of the work we did. We did very hard work and very personal work. In Canby School District, our employees are our neighbors.

Our employees are our they they are part of our community. They live in Canby. They contribute tremendously, not only economically, but to the relational fabric of who we are, And so reducing 74 of our staff was a very significant reduction, not only in the quality of services we can provide, but also how it affected our entire community. We also reduced operational budgets across the board. We increased class sizes as well, but particularly in seven twelve in order to keep k three as small as possible because we knew from the community that was important.

We made a very difficult decision to keep some of art and some of music at the elementary level, but we did reduce 50% of art and music for our elementary students. We continue to be very committed to stewarding resources. We've been very fiscally responsible and accountable to the public dollar. We've taken a look at a long term enrollment study to try to predict again a decade out how many children will we enroll. Our best prediction, and it's always impossible to know, no one has a crystal ball, is we'll go from serving about 4,100 children to about 3,500 children over the next ten years.

We've ruled out a four day school week. It doesn't come with a lot of cost savings, and it turns out it's not good for children's learning. We are look we've looked at a boundary study to look at the enrollment in each of our schools to see if one school is getting particularly small. All of our schools will collectively get a little smaller, but not one school that stands out as atrophying significantly like they're experiencing West Linn. We did the very hard work as I named last year, reducing 74 staff, including administrators.

We've reduced our operational costs across the board. We've paused all non essential spending. We've kept vacant positions unfilled, and we had two district office TOSAs, and they've been reassigned to classroom positions. Teacher on special assignment. So kind of they lead PD and programming.

We have right sized staffing. I think this is really important, and I want you to see this and our public as well. So you can see that our staffing levels are lower in this year than they were in 2020, 2021. So you can see that significant decrease, and we feel like this was essential work in order to live within our means. And going any closer to that blue line is gonna have significant detrimental impacts to our programming and our people and the quality of the schools that we have in Camby.

So there's a lot at stake for 2627, and I wanna be very clear about that with the community. I it's my job to prepare a balanced budget and to appropriately reduce staffing and programming to reflect the money that we will have in coming, but it means that we will be making very significant reductions. We were able to cut 74 staff and 7,000,000 last year. We did it very carefully and very intentionally, and we did it with the voice of the community and staff at the center. We listened very carefully.

We held input sessions. We did surveys, and we were able to prioritize what mattered most to this community. And what I want to say very plainly is that going forward, there is no way to preserve things that matter most. I wish that weren't the case. I wish that very much.

But we will be making some hard decisions about likely reducing school days and reducing teacher pay along with those school days. Our union is currently voting on potential four furlough days this year, which is a reduction of school days, and four furlough days next year, which is a reduction of four learning days next year. That's also representative of a self imposed pay cut for all of our employees at every level. We will be increasing class size. I'll talk about that a little a little bit more, but this is significant.

We will have we will have blends in many of our elementary schools across the board, and we will also see record high class sizes in Camby. We will be reducing or eliminating two of two to three of our seven career tech ed programs. This is ag, manufacturing, construction, culinary, things that would get kids up and at them in the morning and get them across the line as graduates and into future career. We have some of the best and most robust CTE offerings regionally, and these are in many ways the crown jewels of our district. We have extraordinary dual credit and AP offerings.

I just had a parent two days ago tell me that their daughter graduated last year. She's now enrolled at Western University. She will get her four year degree in three years because the number of dual credits that she graduated with, and she said that's a savings to my family of $30,000. Thank you very much, Canby School District. I'm here to say that we will be reducing dual credit offerings and advanced placement offerings at the high school next year because of this budget deficit.

We will be reducing at least 50% of our reading specialists. We currently have a reading specialist in every elementary school. We will be significantly reducing counseling supports and nursing supports district wide. We will be reducing music and arts programming. We will be reducing, if not eliminating, athletics and extracurricular at the middle school level, and we will be making reductions across the board to athletics and extracurriculars at the high school level.

Equally important, without additional funding, the the school board will be directing me as a superintendent to conduct a process by which the board will consider with community input school closures for school year '27 and '28. One of the things that I heard from our community and continue to hear everywhere I go, programs count and so does class size, and we know this. You know this yourself from your own experience or your children's experience. This matters a lot to me as a superintendent, so I wanna be very clear about the impact. When I was hired, we were beautifully staffed.

We were really right sized. I remember saying that to the board chair. I said, boy, board chair Mogenheimer, I can tell you walking around, our schools are perfectly staffed, and you can see in our class size ratio why I said that. For every adult in a classroom, he had 22 kids on average. That's a beautiful, personalized learning experience for young children as it should be.

And in our secondary schools, we had an average class size of 27 to 30. You notice that this year we made some reductions, we did our best to preserve class size, and you can see that reflected in this data. Our class sizes this year on average, elementary k six are one to 26. Our k threes are smaller, and that was intentional, and our secondaries are high this year. So class size, and if you have a student enrolled in middle or high school, you know that this is true.

Our class sizes are high. They're big. Classrooms are full, and we have an average of 30 to 33 ratio for every teacher. Next year, without additional funding, the average class size in our elementary schools will be one to 30, and the average class size in our high school be one to 40. So we are at a real significant crossroads here.

I wanna be very clear that there's a compounding impact of two years a row in a row of budget shortfall. Last year, as I've stated, we cut $7,000,000 and we right sized. We did that responsibly. We did that in a responsive way to community voice and staff input, and we did it in a way that keeps us able to provide a stable, steady, and quality program to all students K 12 this year. Next year, that won't be possible because we're looking at an additional $6,300,000 shortfall, and that collectively represents a 21% reduction in our budget in just two years.

So there's a need to bridge the gap, and our board chair is here to talk about that with you this evening.

Alright. Well, we wanna just so the board has really spent a significant amount of time evaluating this issue and determining what's next for us. And when when we look at what is within the district's control, there's a lot of things, and those are the things that superintendent has talked through. But there's at this point in the conversation was really time for the board to look at what's within our control and how do we look at bridging this gap and what do we have that we can leverage in order to solve this problem. These are things that we have within the board's purview to review and and evaluate, and that's what we really got started doing.

And a testament, I would say, to our district and our superintendent and her team for bringing this to us early so that we had the ability to make some really hard decisions. I think as you look across the state, there's other schools who are in positions that don't have this information soon enough to make the choices that we were able to make. Once we learned and and really thought looked at the options, we really started to look at the local levy option. And I wanna be really clear, this is not an option that we wanted to pick up. It's not an option that we wanted to present to our community.

It was absolutely the last resort in order to meet the needs and of our of our of our children and with and create a stable and quality educational environment. So, we spent a significant amount of time reviewing what that might look like for can be and ultimately on February 23 during our board meeting, our board unanimous unanimously voted to move a local levy option forward to to the ballot, and that's what we are in the what what we did and what what will be what what is in the process of happening. So we will see a local levy option on our ballots on May 19 for our community to vote on. Other things within our purview that as we continue to look at this issue, we certainly are evaluating is the school closure and consolidation. We still need to look at this option.

So we have work sessions planned over the course of the next few months to both look at process. And then, ultimately, June 1, if a levy does not pass, the board will need to direct the superintendent to evaluate and begin the process of school's consolidation. We have the we have the the purview of adopting the school calendar. As superintendent Patterson mentioned, our union has moved forward with presenting the option of four furlough days or non school days, which, again, is a 2% decrease in pay for our for our staff for this year and and for next year to help mitigate the and help with the cost savings. We will then adopt a calendar that is four days shorter, so the board will be doing that this this year and next year.

We also will be planning to consider our assets. It's important for us to look at what at every option. So we will we will be looking during our May 9 meeting at the assets the district does have and ensuring that there is no other options for utilizing assets for any type of cost saving measures. The other thing that the board has the purview over is our ending fund balance. And I know as a council, you are familiar with ending fund balances.

And, certainly, as a board, we have taken a hard look at that in order to mitigate effect on the effects for for students. So last year, we made a conscious decision to decrease our end fund balance to what our minimum currently is in order to minimize the seven point the $7,000,000 cuts that we had to make, and we will again be evaluating that this year based on where we land at the end of the year with budget, and and we have the option to do that. I wanna just set the stage a little bit about the more we have looked at budget, and I think as superintendent Patterson mentioned, I have also looked historically, like, what is the pattern of funding and budgeting for schools, and how did we get here, and and what do we need to be thinking about long term? And what I can say in visiting with school board members over the last, you know, fifteen to twenty years is since measure five passed, it's really changed the funding dynamic of school systems. And, really, for thirty years, we've been living in a system that is is is failing our our funding as a funding mechanism.

We have moved from local tax dollars staying local. So before measure five, our local tax dollars remained within Camby and our community schools. After measure five passed, our local tax dollars for education go to the state, and from the state, they're parceled out across across the state in a way to equitably disperse those funds. But that creates a shortfall for our community, and and we've seen that when I look back over time, it's a continual cyclical effect of funding where we are always just barely making it. If there's any if any of those drivers that superintendent Patterson mentioned earlier become compromised or become a significant effect on the budget, you'll see shortfalls and and a pinch for our community in how we fund schools.

You'll see that over time, and and and we have evidence of that when Ackerman closed. There's there's definitely points over time within our our school history where we felt those pinches, and we had to make really difficult decisions. And, in order to mitigate that, what you've seen is in in 2000 and was it yeah. Schools had the ability to begin taking matters into their own hands and making some choices to mitigate those pinches that we've seen under measure five with when primarily through a local option levy. What this chart shows is schools that have taken that option and added to their budget level that is the yellow with a local option levy.

And I think the important thing to note here is early on in this process, I think we all think about schools that have used that local levy option to add to their district funding to enhance and to create a a more robust environment for education. But we also see in those, particularly the last five years, school districts who are middle or small size like ours, who are using the local levy option to just stay whole, to just maintain funding. This is an extra. They're not adding to it doesn't mean more CTE programs. It just means maintaining the teacher sizes size and the and the classroom supports that they currently have.

Examples of that, Niakani, Sisters, Hood River. Districts that are similar to in size to ours are simply using the levy to continue operations as is. And we looked at this as we were evaluating moving forward with the levy in Camby. Another artifact that we reviewed as we were looking at this option is what is the voter approved tax rate for Camby in comparison to other districts? And when I look at this and when we evaluated this, what I am really proud to say is CAMBI for a very long time has done a lot with very little.

We have we have powered through measure five without putting a levy on the books for a very, very long time, and we have done really good work in that amount of time. Our schools look good. Our we have a robust CTE program. We have athletics. We have a middle school athletics program.

We have counselors. We have a lot of really amazing assets to our districts, and many other districts do not have the same robust environment for their children. So I I'm very proud of the work. We all should be very proud of the work that we've done and the amount that we've supported our schools and our students with a very low tax rate within our community, whereas many others have added to. So the local option levy, few things to note as we move forward, and as I said before, this was certainly not an option that the board picked up lightly nor is it an option that we passed lightly.

It simply is it's a very it's very much a last resort to solve a state problem that we can either wait for the state to solve because of the changes in measure five, or we can and our kids will pay the price, or locally, we can provide an option to maintain a high level of standards in education within our community. Local levy or local can be dollars stay local for can be kids. They don't go to the state with the state remain here and we have the option and the responsibility to utilize those locally. As we just looked at the the rate for can be, we determined the rate of a dollar 50 per 1,000 assessed value. It's important to note this very similar to the fire levies.

This is not assessed value or it's not real market value. It is the assessed value. It was very important to us when we looked at this that we are not looking at even closing the entire gap we're just looking to mitigate the gap to the greatest extent possible so that we can continue to do operations and do what's best for children. The levy expires in five years, so in five years, the board will need to relook at is this the best option for our district? Is this the do we still need to have a levy on the books?

And they will need to vote on it again. And if they vote to move it forward, it goes back out to the community. The community would then have to revote and pass that levy in five years. So it's not something that stays on the books continue continuously. The the both the board and the community would need to re will need to reevaluate that in five years.

When the board passed this out, we have a very specific memorandum that we put forward that specifies that levy funds would go directly to classroom supports and programs for students. So, these are this isn't building a new track or adding two districts or adding adding to the district anyway, it's simply to maintain programs that we have and to stay centered for children in classrooms. We really believe that as I as you look at and as I've talked about school funding in Oregon, that the levy provides a level of stability to our funding mechanisms that we cert we simply don't have in the at the moment. The the drivers that superintendent Patterson talked about, can tell you in the last three years have become just significantly more volatile in their increases and decreasing, making it very difficult to plan and adequately fund schools. The stability that the levy would allow us as a district to maintain neighborhood schools, maintain a high level of standards and learning for our students is going to be felt and is is really necessary.

So, as I said, the the local levy with option is it brings forward to our budget a $50,000,005,900,000.0. As a reminder, our gap was 6.3, so we will still be mitigating and making some of the cuts that superintendent Patterson discussed. We don't want to put this entire issue on our community. We're working really hard to continue to be be frugal, be smart, use our funds as to the highest level possible, and also bridge the gap so that we can provide a robust and positive learning experience for our students. Without the levy, it is I wanna be really clear that we we've eliminated 11% of our budget already, so that's what we have already eliminated.

Without the levy, we have very real consequences within our district. Another artifact another way to look at it, if with a compounding dollar amount and the decrease in staff, that's almost 25% of our staff eliminated over two years, which is significant and it will be felt felt by our students and our families. It would mean imminent measures to close schools as we've discussed an an additional 60 teaching and support positions within our schools, larger class sizes, reduction of those career and technical education programs, and our music, our reading supports and counselors. It's very important as a board and to our community that we have a high level of accountability with these levy dollars. That was something that as a board we discussed and and put into them into the the work that we did as we set this levy forward.

We have a budget committee made up of the school board and community members who review our budget annually, and that would be reviewing the levy amount and where that those dollars went. It would be a specific part of the duties of that budget committee and a yearly part of the budgeting process. We, I said, the as have very clearly lined out how those dollars are spent, and that would be something that we would be very transparent both with our budget committee, our school board, and our community so people see very clearly where the what dollars we bring in and where those dollars are spent within our school community. We have, as as you all know, in budgeting and the we and line items and all of the things, we are it's very clear that those levy funds will be their own line item. They don't just get dumped into our general fund budget so that we can track them, understand where they're being spent, and understand how they're being utilized at the school level.

If approved, if the levy if the levy moves forward and as a community that we they approve the levy, we it helps us to maintain the things that, as we've talked about, are really vital to maintaining us a high levels and standard of education within our community, the future viability of our neighborhood schools. When we did our community and budget talks last year and this year, the neighborhood schools within our community are a significant part of the values that they have. It is it's we and we know this if you're in our communities. The people are very attached and have generational attachments to in in large part to many of our our schools. Our teaching positions, as we talked about, are members of our community.

We have a very high percentage of our staff who are who live in Camby, many of who graduated from Camby and are highly tied to our community. The they are connected in in many ways, and, also, the Camby School District is one of the larger largest employers within our community, so it really resonates. All of the things we've talked about, our career and technical programs would would remain stable. We would continue to be able to have the counseling and nursing supports we have, which are, as we see in our students, a very vital part and continue to grow as a high need for students in our care. Our reading supports, music and arts, and athletic and extracurricular activities will maintain the level that we currently have.

Wanna talk really quickly about timelines. So there's a couple things that are will be happening, and I think it's really important that our community and you as a as a council understand this. So we have as I mentioned on the twenty third, the board adopted the local option resolution. And on April 27, we are required to complete and notify our staff of reduction in force. So regardless of what happens, we to move forward with balancing our budget and we are in the middle of doing that and that work is happening.

So we are balancing our budget to that that that deficit that we have this year of $6900000.06300000.0. So those those reduction in force notifications will be going out toward the end of the month. We will begin meeting as a budget and a board in order to start balancing our budget, and we will all we need to do that all before May 19, which is election day, and when we when we know if the levy has passed or not. So you will that will be felt in our community. We will we will be as we go through the process of cutting programs, notifying staff, and doing the hard work of balancing the budget with this with the deficit, you will hear that.

It will be felt by our families and our teachers and our staff and our teams. So we wanna be really transparent about that. We have done a significant amount of outreach to our staff and our families, and superintendent Patterson, as she's mentioned, has done multiple meetings around this and we will continue to do that over the next few months to continue to make sure that people are aware of what's happening and what's next. And then June 1, we we adopt a budget. And as we've talked about, we will lead through where we are.

We're very hopeful because it is best for children that we're able to lead through with a levy in hand. If not, we will make the the hard decisions that we need to make to balance our budget and continue to do the best we can for students in school. I think it's really important to note that this isn't just a school problem. I think we we know and can be a great example of this. We're very connected.

Schools matter, and you see that wherever you go. And the impacts that this will have to our community are going to be widely felt. Home and property value, we know that that healthy schools equals healthy communities, and healthy property values, healthy businesses. The connections that we have with our families and the generational connections that we have across the board are extremely tight and you see and feel that wherever you go. We talk to and work very closely with and really want to appreciate the partnership we have with Camby PD, Camby Police Department.

We have they're just amazing partners and we know that the health of our schools absolutely affect the safety and livability of our community. It's it's a very close tie and a strong relationship. At the end of the day, the health of and wellness of our community make it makes a difference to to our of our schools makes a significant impact and difference in the livability of our community, which is why we wanted to make sure we're connecting with you all and partnering as we walk down this road. At that, we've we've wrapped up with this not so happy news conversation, but wanna make sure that as a as a council, you understand and are aware of what's happening with the schools. It's a like the what's happening with schools is clearly aligned with what's what's how well the city works and the decisions that we both make affect each other, and we wanna make sure that you all are aware of that and can ask questions and provide a level of support as we continue to walk down the the next few months.

I always like to end with a a really great great quote. I don't know how many of you know Doc Harms, but Mhmm. A longtime servant of our community and school board member. And he was known for saying communities are known by the schools they keep, and I think that may never be more true than it is today and something that we all need to be thoughtful about and how and what we want to to our community to be known for as we look at what's ahead. So wanted to just end with that. And with that, we're happy to ask answer any questions and just really appreciate your your time with us this evening.

Counselor Davis, you have a question?

I have question. More comment, Mayor.

Thank

you both very much, and thank you to the other school board members that are in the audience as well. And thank you for the time that you've put and the commitment that you've made in making those tough decisions on the cuts that you've already had to make in the event that this does not pass. I think you've laid it out very well for all of us. Thank you for your time. Thank you for going around in as many meetings as you've been attending trying to educate the citizens of Canby the need for this.

That's crucial and then they can make their decisions with that information. You have done an excellent job with that as well. I think moving forward I think all government agencies not only the school district but the city as well as the fire district and other government agencies were all challenged with funding dollars for projects and for staffing and for PERS increases and things like that. And I think that collectively, together, if we better understand, what's going on in our agencies and within the city, so the school district in the city That's why I've encouraged the city administrator to put together a joint meeting with the school board as well as the city council. I'm going on four years now and I keep wondering what's going on over there and what's happening in the school district.

You've laid it out really well for us, Tide, of what's happening in the programs that are going on in the school district. At the same time too, I know that the city council's dealing with a comprehensive plan update. Well, in that comprehensive plan update, we're dealing with housing and housing needs and what does affordable housing look like and all those things which to me are critical, for the school district and input from the school district on that as well. And, I know you have a strategic plan. I've been fortunate to be at Rotary and hear the strategic plan but I'm only one person.

That's why I think it's so important for the city council and for the school board so we can hear your strategic plan. At the same time, Don Hardy has done an excellent job in laying out the comprehensive plan, going over our comprehensive plan, we'll be approving very soon so that you can have not only see what the community has provided input to the city council and what does this comprehensive plan look like, but you can see what we're doing our best to try to come up with some affordable housing, whatever that that is. But, you know, we need to we need to bring back a vibrant community, know, and in the vibrant community means activities. And you can kinda look at one of our cities up in Clackamas in Washington County, Sherwood, which is a very vibrant community and supported real real well by the schools. With that brings in excellent schools, which we have here in Camby.

We have excellent schools, but we're still missing activities for kids. We're missing whether it's a very nice aquatic center or a very nice community center or ball fields, things like that. We're missing those things. And I've received a lot of input from citizens with that as well, You know? But I think collectively, you guys or the school district in the city want the same thing.

Mhmm.

You know, we've got the school piece, but we need to tie in our comprehensive plan in looking at how do we bring in younger younger families into Camby. So I just wanted to thank you for your presentation tonight, and I've talked to the city administrator about trying to get this joint meeting set up as soon as possible so that we can better understand the city and the school district moving forward. The one question I had is what is is being done at the state level to turn this around?

That's a good question. And I think I would say that we continue to advocate at the state level for to solve this problem. And as I mentioned, that is going to take a lot of time and work and will from those that are in charge to make those changes. As we and we have spent significant amount of time in Salem talking about this issue and certainly last session when we when they passed the biennium funding for the this two the the two year period that we're in right now. We spent a significant amount of times talking about the high cost disability and the cap that superintendent Patterson talked about with our our higher needs students to try to lift that cap.

Almost made it over the line, but didn't. And so I think as we get to the next biennium when we it is the time to, again, continue to advocate and speak to this problem. I as superintendent Patterson mentioned, I think what I just my percept perception as I've studied this is we're getting to a breaking point for many of our schools. Mhmm. And you're seeing that as we look at the local news and one school after another, millions of dollars deficit and schools closing.

It's we're getting to a point where, hopefully, it catches the attention of those who are making these these decisions, and and and we can create some changes to how we're funded. I we hear a lot about the funding mechanism of schools in Oregon, but I think it's really important to understand the entire picture and not pull out one piece or another and make make assumptions. And I think we see that sometimes. So the more we can talk about budget the way we are talking about it and really providing a full picture of what this looks like for folks, I think the better, and we will continue to do that as a board, as a superintendent as we get particularly closer to the next biennium. Superintendent Patterson, I don't know if you have anything else you wanna add to that.

I think you okay. Okay.

Counselor Maldonado and then counselor Stearns.

Well, he had asked the question I was gonna ask, but I will echo. Thank you for the presentation. It was absolutely phenomenal and and informative. I I definitely wanted to know what was going on in the state level as well. I mean, with Oregon being, I think, ranked 47 right now in the nation. That's horrible.

Yes, sir.

And I'd like to see something better changed. I definitely grew up on different times where the community did help the the schools, where we didn't have as we didn't have the schools closing down other schools or the district closing down schools. So I would be I'm very interested to see where we move forward on this. I have quite a few things written down here that I will be, asking questions on and beating some doors on. Yeah. Thank you again for showing up tonight and giving us this presentation.

Of course.

Thank you. Councilor Stearns.

Presentation, I know it's really hard when you come with shortfalls. I have background in the accounting profession and I deal with this situation a lot with clients. One thing about Canby, school district I've noticed ever since I've moved here about fifteen years ago is that there seems to be a lot of vacant or nearly vacant land owned by the school district that doesn't seem to be any particular obvious purpose. I once did count at least a 185 acres that the school district owns and probably on my own prejudiced estimate of maybe about at least 30 or 40 of them don't seem to have a particular purpose. And, of course, the obvious ones are we have a vacant school, Ackerman, and we have a lot of vacant land around Troast and Baker Prairie, that whole lot.

And so I don't know if the school district district has considered, you know, selling off some of those assets. And there's also around Caris. There's a lot of, lots or at least two of the two extra ones besides the one the school's on that the district owns. And so a lot of times when when my clients are in money problems, we have to go talk about shrinking the balance sheet, the assets on that. I'm I'm wondering if the school district has considered taking these this land that at least doesn't seem to have a a use and getting somebody by selling it maybe, and also if there's houses built on it, you'd get, you know, maybe more school students as well. But I was curious about that.

Yeah. I can I can ask that? That question comes up a lot, so it's a good question to ask I'm happy to answer that. As far as land, we I I know, actually, when I was first on the board, so probably it's probably been seven years ago, we did a really comprehensive analysis of the land and the assets that we had as a district, And, really and we did sell off lands that we felt like we're not continuous to continuous to schools or would have a long term that we felt would be needed long term for our district. So we kind of went through that process of of of selling off land that we made the the the very intentional decision to do that based on where they were located and the the under clear understanding that they would not be necessary long term.

The second thing I would note is we in that same process we did we did part of this land sale included lots that we're saving for our construction program, so that's some of those acres, which is actually a really amazing program and one that no one else in the state has. We have 10 lots that are over in Timber Park, and the first lot that we've started, it's almost actually finished. The students in our high school as part of the construction program, they build one house every two years. So, those lots will extend that program out for a number of years and allow us to continue to provide that opportunity for students. They walk through the whole process, and it's actually a pretty phenomenal program and something that's really cool to see if you're ever interested in doing.

So those acres are included in that, but we're they're very intentional, and we have a a very clear purpose for that. The other thing that we we certainly looked at this last year when we looked at we looked at all the pieces, and I it's on our radar to look at coming up in a meeting here in the next few months. But what I will say, and I think what's a really important note, is a couple things. One, I wish we could go back to the one graph, but if you remember our enrollment, that's been pretty stable, but our population within our city has definitely spiked. And we have a significant we have many more houses and people than we did twenty years ago.

And those of us who grew up here know that to be true. It's a very different landscape and a much more robust community with many more houses than we've than we've had in the past. And one of the things I think it's really important for a board for us as a board to remember is we're here for a minute just a short part of a short block of time and we have to look at a problem that we have in front of us and a solution right now, but we also have to be thoughtful about the future. And we can't make decisions right now to solve a problem that might negatively impact our community in the future. And when we look at them when we look at that continual rise in population and the and the increase in houses and the potential for a larger student body in thirty to fifty years, We wanna make sure that we're making really prudent decisions now for later.

And what I would say, and one thing to think about if we did need to if we sold off property or sold off schools and then had to build a school in twenty, thirty, forty years, that comes at a very high cost to our community. That's only done by a bond, and our community would have to pay that bond. So, again, it's not it's not it's a decision that would impact the taxpayers as well. So I think we're looking at all of those things as we make these decisions and trying to look both short term to solve our problem, but also long term as we're the stewards of this resource for our community for future generations. Does that hopefully, that helps a little bit.

Certainly something we look at, certainly something that we we haven't put it on the shelf, and it's not something that we're not talking about. We have it on our agenda, and we will be talking about it. But it's but there's many facets to what that looks like and what we have to consider.

Doctor. Calderon Waterman. When we're in

our discussions with drawing down the urban renewal agency, I felt I can remember there were being a line item on there of funds that were going back to the junior districts and the Camby School District on those. Is that included that money coming back included in this budget?

That's a great question, councilor Waterman, and I got really excited when I learned that there may be some money coming our way. That was quick that bubble was quickly burst when I called it down to the Department of Education. It's complicated. I'm happy to speak more to this and follow-up in an email with you. But essentially, when you earn more revenue and property tax, then the state lowers the amount that you get from the state school fund.

So it's unfortunately not true for us that because that property tax came back to us, we weren't able to keep it. So we ended up having it it all it all came out of the wash is another way to say it. So back to back to the original thesis statement that our board chair had earlier. So I, regrettably, thought of every, creative way I could, because that would have been very helpful revenue, but ultimately, wasn't up to us, and the state, did essentially reclaim those dollars.

Thank you.

So, yes, councilor Patten.

Again, thank you for coming in with the presentation.

I do have a couple of

questions and some things I'd like clarification on. This gap, you're gonna go about for a five year levy. Mhmm. It was seven million last year. It's 6,000,000 more this year. You're gonna request 5 point some odd million. Long term, is next year's gap going to be 5,000,000? And

the

one after that, 5 more million? Mhmm. And the one after that? Right?

Yeah.

So I guess the problem that I see is that this Band Aid for five years, I never see the wound underneath healing. Like, at some point in time, more revenue has to come in above what the levy is in order to build up those funds so that when the levy goes away, that money is there. And if you folks have some magical way of figuring out how to do that, we would love you love for you to share that calculation with us because we could use it. In fact, we could pretty much every taxing district could use it. Right?

One of the other things I will I'm curious about, in your presentation, talked about, you know, 80% is going to, staff and and the various breakdown of stuff. But where is the cost of maintaining the buildings now? Is that in a different fund that's not tied to this one through a different levy, which is kind of what I think? Or where is that? So are you keeping all of the staff and everything running, but now you have no money to actually keep the buildings up?

Yeah. Good question. Yeah.

I'll take I'll take the question about, so essentially your question, as I best understood it, was how do we pay for operations and facility maintenance?

Yes. Was that in in one of those bars in that chart or is that a different chart?

It's a it's a great question. This is one of the the reasons, that you don't have to look very far to hear, I mean, I think our neighbors in Malala had water coming through the roof of their middle school, and that is because the cost of facility maintenance is incredibly high. And I would say if you talk to business managers and facility directors across the state, as well as superintendents, they tell you that the state school fund allocation is inadequate to meet the needs of maintaining facilities and buildings. So, what's true is that districts are left with options often to go forward to community with bond levies, excuse me, bond measures. Bond measures are for buildings, levies are for learning and teachers, so they're different mechanisms, different taxi mechanisms that are legally used for different different purposes.

And in Cambia, I'll tell you, we our schools are like old classic cars that are well cared for. I'm very proud of the quality of our schools and wanna give a tremendous credit, only to the staff that maintain them in operations and facilities, but importantly to our taxpayers because you have always approved bonds and bonds maintain buildings. So, our last bond was far be long before I was here, but it was approved by voters overwhelmingly in 2020 to keep kids safe, warm, and dry. And, we're able to do that in our school houses because of that investment. So, if you go to '91, yeah, it was built in the forties and it's a beautiful schoolhouse, it's very well maintained, and we've had facility condition assessments done by the state just recent as recently as last spring, and by and large, our schools are in good condition.

We need a new roof at Baker Prairie. We have some boilers that need care, a chiller at Trost that needs care, so we have some big ticket items, and the truth, Counselor Patton, is that our ending fund balance is far below the 5% threshold, so we have very limited reserves in our ending fund balance that would not cover the cost of a new roof or a new boiler or something like that. So, it's it is extraordinarily important that we right size our budget and are constantly looking forward to how are we going to both assess the needs of facilities in the future, and then what's our plan to pay for them going forward. It's probably also one of the reasons that the state has the awesome grant, which is really receives a lot of bipartisan support in Oregon, and the awesome grant is essentially dollars that are allocated to districts that move forward and successfully pass a bond, so there's matching grant dollars to meet and help essentially extend what districts are able to do to take care of their buildings. I'd close by saying Jervis was a good example of this problem.

Jervis almost closed their schools because they could not pass a bond and their facilities were failing to such an extent that it was not safe to house children. Their community came forward and passed the bond and kept that kept that from happening, but I think that's another reflection of the fact that our state school fund dollars are inadequate to meet the needs of ailing and aging buildings, that many districts across the state are faced with.

Okay. The last two things I have are just sort of thoughts and a question amongst us. So we have been contacted individually, I believe, to sign on to letters supporting this. But have we considered doing a letter from the council as a whole to support this measure, or are we only relying on us each individually doing a letter in support of this?

That's a great question. I think something, I think something jointly, again, it would depend on where everybody is feeling you know, individually to do a collective letter. I don't know if everyone is where everyone's at on the topic of supporting the levy or not supporting the levy. So I think having an open dialogue around that may not necessarily be the best thing to do regarding having putting everyone on the in a position of maybe stating their opinion on it right now. So doing a group letter, I don't know if that's something that I would say if the council is interested in doing that, then, you know, email Randy and let him know your opinion on the matter.

And if, you know, we get a unanimous piece of it, then we will I would say we should draft a letter. But we won't know that and so I mean, does that seem appropriate, Randy, am I tracking correctly on that?

Yeah. I'll I I need to keep my hands off of it as much as possible as as staff, but I can help facilitate, if that's the director of the council.

But

I won't be writing anything on use of city equipment. Mhmm. Personally, the letter would be walked to you from maybe a school board chair or someone another elected official for consideration so I can just stay, you know, like the superintendent and I have to keep a bright line, of course.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So, well, so in that case then, would that be something that we use Emily for?

Yeah.

Because again, I'm going to also be sensitive to meetings law, you know Yep. Serial meetings and having each of you I mean, I'm not a voting member, but it's, you know, so I don't know. That dances really close to

the line

of having it come to me to tabulate that and put that together.

So Yeah.

I will chat with Emily about that or we can through Perfect. Emailing about that.

Okay. I was just curious about that. The other the and this is and and finally, here's here's the thing that just I I just don't I just don't get it. So people complain about paying taxes, and I understand. Paying taxes suck.

You wanna keep as much money as you have because you need that money. But then, on the other hand, we all rely on services such as the school and roads and when we flush our toilet, the poo needs to go somewhere and all of these things and all these things cost money. And one of the things that I find fascinating and I and and I don't know why other people don't key in on this, is when you look at all of these bar graphs, in the state of Oregon, you can only levy more tax, 33% each year. And for several years, it's the cost of everything was more than 3%. So for people to not to sit in the present day and say we have no clue how this happened, it just baffles my it just boggles my mind.

And people are going to have to come to the realization that if they do not wanna pay for things like this, then they're going to need to go away. We won't have great schools. And if you don't pay for it, then don't complain that the students aren't well educated. If you don't wanna pay for roads, don't complain about the roads being crappy, and on and on the list will go. So I am I am a proponent of paying for this even though I don't have children.

I never will, and it's just it's my choice. It has nothing to do with my health or anything. But I have an obligation as a citizen of as a as a person in a society to help make sure that other people are lifted up. And so I just hope that other people can can see that. And that's all I have.

Thank you, councilor. Representative Patterson, Madam Chair, thank you very much for coming this evening. Often people will comment to me about how challenging or hard being a mayor or city councilor is and I always remind them that being a school board member is 10 x what it is to be a city councilor or mayor because you're handling and making decisions regarding people's children. And so I commend you and the rest of the school board for the work that you're doing. This is not an easy lift of any kind.

And so thank you for coming. I know you've been on a whirlwind tour and that will continue probably until what was that? The nineteenth? The nineteenth. You know, so thank you. I have follow-up calls with a couple of the board members. I apologize. I was really sick for a week and a half and so but I do wanna reach out and have conversation on how I can help. Mhmm. So thank you all.

We appreciate that. Thank you for having us, and I appreciate the the thanks, but know that as superintendent Patterson said, it's a great job to have, and I I think we are, as a board, we're very committed to our our community and our students. So thank you for your time tonight, and we really do appreciate any support that you can provide as we as we navigate the next few months. So thank you for your time.

You got it. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Thank you very much. Thank you both.

Thank you.

Okay. Superintendent Patterson.

Do you have

a extra card?

I do.

I can

get one.

Thank you. So, we're gonna go jump down to item seven, the consent agenda.

Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the consent agenda that includes the approval of the 03/04/2026 City Council regular meeting minutes.

Second.

Motion's been made by Council President Hensley, saved by Council Maldonado to approve the consent agenda. Any question or comment? All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Anyone opposed? Alright. That passes. Wow. Six zero. Moving into item nine and nine, ordinances and resolutions. Nine a, ordinance number sixteen sixty five, an ordinance authorizing the interim city administrator to enter into a purchase agreement with Seal Master to purchase new asphalt crack sealer equipment, and this is a second reading. Just sounds pretty cut and dry there, Spencer, in terms of

Here for questions if needed.

Are there any questions after the reading from two weeks ago? Yes. Councilor Patton.

I move to adopt ordinance number sixteen sixty five, an ordinance authorizing the interim city administrator to enter into a purchase agreement with Seal Master to purchase a new asphalt crack sealer equipment in the amount of 9 d $3,864.20. Second.

33¢. Oh, there it is. Motion's been made by councilor Pann and seconded by council president Hensley to approve ordinance number one six six five, an ordinance authorizing the interim city administrator to enter into a purchase agreement with Sealmaster to purchase a new asphalt crack sealer equipment in the amount of $93,864.20. Any discussion? Roll call vote.

Councilor Patton. Aye. Councilor Maldonado.

Aye.

Councilor Davis.

Aye.

Councilor Stearns. Aye. Councilor Waterman. Aye. And council president Hensley. Aye.

The motion carries six zero nine b. Considering ordinance number one six six six, an ordinance authorizing the interim city administrator to enter into an agreement with Xylem Water Solutions USA to purchase four raw of Influent pumps in the amount of $94,602. Who's gonna talk to us about that tonight?

Mister mayor, I I can carry this one. Great. While we get a picture put up on screen. I'm talking about rotten floor. Another, $93,000 item for your consideration. This is the first reading. So we'll just hit the highlights. First of all, very proud of our wastewater treatment plant here in Camby. If you'd like, we can set up a tour. If you have not toured yet, I went on, one right when it my first week here.

This is the entrance of the first stop for effluent as it's collected from the boundaries and into our system. The workers are very proud of this plant. They keep it finely manicured. But these four pumps, you only see three in this picture, that we're going to replace pump up to the clarifiers. As you know, we have capacity to handle about three MGD million gallons per day, and we're at about one on an average day.

So we've got nice capacity there. Uh-huh. But, these four pumps, Patrick Mahoney got three bids. This is the the lowest bid that he solicited. He got from from Exlem. He also got one from PumpTech and Abara, which were much more. So we bring these for your consideration. These have been a bit of a hassle to maintain and over the past course of the couple years and they're in our capital budget for replacement.

Okay.

That said, I'll I'll pause there.

Any questions for yes, Councilor Stearns?

There's a question. If there it's 93,000 for four of them, would that mean it was about to be about $23,000 apiece? If it's $23,000 apiece, why are we doing this as an ordinance Our list, we're doing it altogether. That was just my curiosity.

Suggesting that I could buy them individually on my own per the budget in our my my 50,000 limit.

That was just my curiosity.

I think, maybe I should ask Patrick, but buying in bulk might have got us a better deal. I don't know, but I will pass that along for the second reading.

K. Councilor Molinow.

What's the what's the lifespan of those? Out of curiosity.

Spencer, do you have any idea? Or I don't know. Steve?

No. Don't know how the existing ones are.

I just picked one up today that

they had to repair to be

able

to put back in the place. I know that there's a lot of maintenance involved with them, and my understanding is that they're at the end of the, like like

Do do we have a idea of how about how old the ones that are currently there are?

I'll ask. No.

I was just always curious on how long yeah. That's again, because we were talking about the school district and maintenance and

Yeah.

You know, when you're constantly having to replace the duct

tape and bailing twine to hold

it together, it might be time to invest in in new equipment. So it sounds like that's where we're at. So, yes, councilor Davis.

Are you ready for a motion? I think so. Do you have another question?

I have a yeah. I have a couple

of questions. So this is for four pumps. Correct?

Mhmm.

And so this will be putting a fourth pump in the unused vault. Correct?

Mhmm.

So, essentially, if we will have capacity for quite a while with these four pumps in there considering we're making we're you said each like, we're only at 1,000,000 and we can handle how much?

It's designed for 2.8 MGD Oh. Million gallons per day.

Okay.

And we're at one.

So that kind of alleviates that question. And one of the pumps will still kind of act as a backup. Like, the fourth pump will act as a backup if one of them breaks down.

Was that covered in the staff report from Patrick? I I don't know the answer to that.

The it it did mention that there was, like, one that was sort of influx as a backup. Okay. I guess my question would be is if we put it in the fourth and now we're using what would be the backup, maybe if there's capacity, we should consider putting in another vault for a fifth pump, looking towards the future. If we're gonna do this work now

Mhmm.

Then maybe it would make sense. Like, if there's gonna need to be some blasting and some jackhammering and such, maybe it would be good to look at, putting in a fifth vault in preparation for a fifth pump in the future, save you spending that money now to save it later sort

of thing. Okay.

That was that was what I had.

The pumps are about 25 years old.

Okay. Okay. Good

to know. Does that answer your questions?

I'll check on the fourth.

Okay.

For

k. Councilor Davis. Mister

mayor, I move to approve ordinance number, one six six one six six six, an ordinance for, an ordinance approving the interim city administrator to enter to an agreement with Exelon Water Solutions USA to purchase the four, REW Influent, pumps in the amount of 93,602 to a second reading 04/15/2026.

Second.

Motion's been made by councilor Davis and seconded by councilor Maldonado to approve ordinance number one six six six an ordinance approving interim c administrator to enter in into an agreement with is it Xylem? Mhmm. Mhmm. K. Xylem Water Solutions USA to purchase the four RAW Influent pumps in the amount of $93,602 for a second reading on 04/15/2026. Any other discussion or comment? All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? That carries six zero.

Nine c this evening is ordinance number one six six seven, an ordinance authorizing the interim city administrator to enter an agreement with three j Consulting regarding the UGB expansion and code audits. Good evening, sir.

Good evening, Mayor Hudson and council members. I'm gonna try to make this simpler than maybe the staff package that you all have to kind of boil this down. We've received a $75,000 grant from the Department of Land Conservation and Development, which is helping pay for the code audit that we're already budgeted for for this fiscal year, which combined together that gives us everything we need. As you might recall, last year during the budget process it was important to do the code audit and start that work and you all funded that, but it was recognized that was not fully funded. So we're getting $20,000 from Department of Land Conservation and Development, which will match up with the funding that we set aside in this in our budget that we currently have.

So we're up our budget that we currently have in our planning budget now with that money. And then there's another $15,000 that DOCD is providing for additional urban growth boundary expansion work. And then another $40,000 is given to the city to pay for existing contractual work with three j Consulting. That's not been completed, but that will be will receive that directly, and we're not actually giving that to the consultant that's paying for work that's already scoped and contracted. It basically merges $66,000 of already budgeted work for the code audit and part of that there's like 10,000 in there for SDC work to update the SDC program which we're working on system development charges that's matched up with $35,000 so 66 and 35 of 101,000 that's the contract to three j and then 40,000 we're keeping which is part of the grant.

And this is a bit complicated so we end up ended up putting a contract together since the thirty five thousand is not ours until we get it from the state. We have a contractual arrangement that the consultant will sign that they agreed until we're paid they're not getting paid. So that's the contract. We're not out anything beyond what that is. This is continuation of work that we are already doing with the comprehensive plan in urban growth boundary expansion.

It's a continuation of that work. We've vetted this with our legal counsel and everything as copacetti on that part of it. So we're just simply seeking the contractual authorization from you all to and we'd start the code audit work in May and move that forward. We'll be seeking other grants for the code update work and the code audit and code update a lot of discussion and Randy will cover a bit of that this evening probably later on in his report. He and I were at a presentation this morning presenting to the CABG realtors.

We understand the school board issues and housing is a really big deal and housing costs are a really big deal. The code audit and code update are intended to create opportunities to have more flexibility and housing product type, which I think the city badly needs at lower price points and dealing with other things which we will also be addressing and we've talked about with counsel in our housing production strategy, which deals with things like how do we create opportunities and synergies with developers and partner with them on, like, workforce housing and those kinds of things that the city needs to do more of, and what park can the private development group provide, and what park can the city provide. It's a two sided equation. It's not one-sided. And so that's something that's coming.

But the code audit will give us the ability to start that work and identify those areas where we need to bring these things up to speed, to be consistent with more housing affordability product type, and then the code update will happen subsequently. Again, we'll be seeking grants for that as well. A bit more information than you maybe wanted to have tonight, but just some context.

No. So, Don, I guess my my question is our code is our city code is huge in regards to buildings and housing and all that. So is this and forgive me for not remembering this from the report, but is this a matter of looking at just specifically the code around housing?

It would be the entire title 16, which is the development code.

Okay. It's the whole The one that we've been talking about Yes.

Wanting to get done for mean, there are other sections of the code that will, you know, kind of be tackling a bit separately in the SDC part because that's actually in section four. But let's kind of be separate. It really would be the entire chapter 16, which is the whole zoning and development code. Okay. And so, yeah, that so we're just trying to, again, move it forward.

Initially, you know, it was a bit clunky where we were, like, trying to work with the LCD, and they were a bit flexible, which is great about how we were gonna do this and carve it out. And we have a great relationship with them, and they've been a great partner. And so they kinda got what we were trying to achieve here, and it felt like a win win. And then they're also knowing that we're trying to advance the housing issue as well, in addition to urban growth boundary expansion, which is also part of the housing thing as well. Because and if we don't have enough land, we're not gonna have houses, and that's that's a big part of it as well. Mhmm.

So Great. Any other questions for Don? Yes. Councilor Patton.

So when it comes to the code update portion, are we talking we're gonna really actually dig into that 2027, 2028?

So we're going through the code audit probably about be about a year process code audit, and then the update will be through another year. So we're looking at a couple years.

Okay.

Yeah. That's I mean, again, we'll try to do it more quickly than that, but, I mean, that's generally the the time frame.

I'm just glad to see it's finally getting done. I'm sick and tired of hearing people say we need to do it. It should have been done years ago. Yeah. But you know what?

At least we're getting there. The last thing I will say is I went to the Clackamas City's dinner meeting, and Estacada is doing this big project at their old mill site. And they were saying that they had, like, different blobs on their map about, you know, high density residential, commercial, cottage clusters, all of these various things. And they had said that they had turned the entire property, the mill property, into its own special zone so that they had more flexibility within that zone to then create little sub zones within it. I will be very curious to see how we do those sort of things for the future. Like, if the ability to do those sort of things

That planning and development yeah. And I I ironically heard about the same thing from someone else on that they have very expensive homes and also small homes mixed together mixed altogether. So you have million dollar homes next to homes that are substantially smaller that would be affordable.

Correct. And whatever that's whatever is going on over there, we need to make sure that that's baked into our code to be able to do that for the future. Because I think that is going to go towards what we're talking about here with the school district of smaller entry level homes where folks can and ultimately, the goal would be similar to a reverse sort of situation like to have at Hope Village where people come in and then they go out. This would be you start out with a small house and then you move up to a bigger house and then go out from there. That's that's what I would like to just put on the bubble for as you start to do this.

Well, and that goes into the conversation too. I mean, from the the we're talking about cluster development, you know, and and a lot of the conversation around being able to pull that off is gonna be, I think, through the PUD process and doing it that way versus trying to find a developer that's gonna commit to, you know, cottage cluster type developments. No.

I think the refinement, we do have some of those tools. We have cottage cluster, and we did update our PUD ordinance. I think some of this is and Randy and I have some ideas from the discussion with county us can be realtors this morning. They were very interesting to they've had a ton of, like, great observation. I mean, they were not shy at all, and they, like, brought forward a ton of stuff about, like, housing affordability. It was a very interesting conversation. But I think, you know, trying to find this partnership with, like, this is the target we're trying to get on price point. This is to a developer, and we're willing to provide x. Can you get us to the price point of what is the act what is the compromise? It needs to be at that level, I think, to be successful.

Market rate is not gonna get us there. It has to be addressed on the the synergies have to be related to what price point are we trying to target and how what can city do to help with that, and then how do we get to an agreement on that. Mhmm. Sure.

K. It sounds like a ton more to come. Council president Hensley.

Yeah, mister mayor. I'll make a motion to adopt, approve ordinance number one six six seven, an ordinance authorizing the interim city administrator to enter into a contract amending the contract adopting for the urban growth boundary final system development charge methodology and adoption hearings and commencing the CAMBI code audit scope of work and budget for FY 2526.

Second.

Motion to be made by council president Hensley and seconded by council Waterman to approve ordinance number one six six seven in ordinance authorizing the interim state administrator to enter into a contract amending the contract adopting for the urban growth boundary final system development charge methodology and adoption hearings and commencing the CAMBI code audit scope of work and budget for FY 2526. Any further discussion or comment? All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed?

Thank you. Perfect. Thanks, Don. Appreciate it. Item d, ordinance number one six six eight, an ordinance authorizing the mayor to enter into an amended employment contract with the interim city administrator, Randy Ealy.

It sounds like there was some conversation at the last city council meeting about this. And so it looks like according to the ordinance, I'm gonna just touch on a couple of the whereases. The city of Cambia has employed mister Ely as interim city administrator since 06/23/2025, and the current contract expires on 06/30/2026. And the counsel stated that Mr. Geely has been and continues to be in good standing with the city of Camby in his interim role, and the parties wish to amend the interim city administrator contract to expire on 12/31/2026. Comment? Yes.

Thank you, mayor. At the last council meeting, I, council president Hensley and myself were asked to sit down with the current interim city administrator, Rene Ealing, which we did and, with with also Pete, the HR director. And the the highlights of this discussion were based upon that we ensure continuity within the city with the current projects that we have going, extending the contract to December 31, as you stated. A potential of, we do have a charter committee that's currently looking at the city charter and possibly looking at making changes to the city charter. The, some of the major projects that we have going that I think it's important to maintain our interim city administrator are, parks transportation, sewer storm adoption, the TSP study, the comp plan adoption, adoption, Walnut Street extension, revised street maintenance fee.

Police chief, retiring here very soon as well as filling a public works director, and another round of council goal setting amongst other things. The main highlights in the contract that we talked about, a little bit difference is, no change in the salary. For, again, for November and December 2026, only the city will pay, the interim city administrator $2,000 per month stipend for his the purchase of his, medical insurance, which he currently has, which will be terminating in November. And beginning November 1, the interim city administrator will be given opportunities to continue his deferred comp, which would be current up till November is, $1,500. Starting in November would be a 5% monthly, salary monthly match for his deferred comp.

And the city also agrees to credit in the, city administrator some executive leave. We, in our discussion, found out that there he he spent a lot of time, obviously, which we all appreciate, attending the various committees and is much more than we even knew that was happening. But it wasn't spelled out that he'd have any executive leave for making up of some of that time for night meetings and things like that. So we, recommended a forty hour, executive leave match, which would be, in this extension of this contract. But very much appreciate, the work that the city interim city administrator has done to this point.

I've heard nothing but positive comments from around the city for the work that he's done, but I think more importantly, the continuity of these projects that we currently have going are crucial. That's why I recommend, this, contract extension to the council. Great. And, Tracy, anything you wanna add?

I you pretty much covered the whole meeting very quickly too, I might add. Thank you. With that, I guess I can just make a motion that we adopt or approve ordinance number one six six eight, an ordinance authorizing the mayor to enter into an amended employment contract with interim city administrator Randy Ealing.

Yeah. Second.

Alright. Motion made to approve ordinance number six one six six eight, extending the interim c administrative contract to the end of the year, 12/31/2026. And this will come up for a second reading on 04/15/2026. Any further conversation or dialogue? All those in favor? Aye. Great. Carries six zero. Thank you. No. Thank you, Randy. You've been doing a great job and really appreciate it. So thank you. You're you're okay.

Well, I'm staying here and

they're talking about vacation time?

Come on.

Really? Ugh. Man, whatever. Don't you get to come and go whenever you want? Like What's vacation? Yeah. What? Yeah. Alright. Skipping We're 10 because there is no public hearings. Moving into item 11 a, continued SDC discussion and schedule final public hearing.

Good evening, mayor and council. We're continuing our discussion on the system development charge.

Hey, Don. Can can I interject? Yeah, please. Yeah.

Sorry, mayor. Eight minutes.

Yeah. No. I I just saw that.

So And he's got a stack, a a deck, and

19 slides.

So first one. It is 08:51. We generally should be done by nine. I guess I need a motion or thoughts on from the council on whether or not we wanna extend till time certain in the future.

I, unfortunately, cannot stay with me.

And I personally have to have somebody I gotta pick up at the airport.

Okay. So I guess that still would leave us a quorum to continue business. If that's the case, the rest of the council wanna stay or

How fast

can you talk to them?

Think I I to be honest with you, I if if you all are in agreement, I think we could get to the end of this pretty quickly. I mean

Yeah.

There I I don't be intimidated by the number of slides. We do not need to go through every No.

Well, I I no. So some guys don't wanna shortchange you. Yeah. I don't Yeah. This is important stuff, and I don't wanna shortchange it, and then there's still four additional items after that to talk about. I that's where I yield to the council on on that piece.

I'm fine with staying as well.

I will regretted the stay, but I'm gonna go to the realtor.

Okay. I'll be back. And we'll speak for chief councilor Davis. He can stay as well. So So are we that's what happens when he gets a web.

Are we going to set time for 09:30?

Or It's your guys' call. You think ten minutes is fine?

I'm thinking fifteen. Fifteen? Yeah.

Yeah. Will shoot for 09:30.

Five?

Shoot for 09:30? Thirty is on five.

I mean, if you want

We can send it again.

And I can I have a page of stuff to go through

I know you

comments? And so next week, if next time, it will just be two pages. So the longer we wait, the longer I need.

So I'm gonna have to probably.

Take my leave. Take your leave right now.

An hour later.

We can I mean, we can leave early, so it's due

09:45? Great. Well, we leave before then, we'll take the gift of time. Okay. Okay. Don, the show is yours, sir. Please.

We wait for councilor Endsley and Davis to

No. Just plow on through. It's alright.

Okay.

Okay. Yep.

So and we'll and councilor Davis should this should be secondhand because he was at the Parks and Rec meeting. And so the the context here is we met with you last time on March 4. This is regarding the Parks twenty year project list, and the direction counsel gave us is to go back to Parks and Recreation Advisory Group. We did that on March 17. They came back with a revised list that is very close to what we call the Davis Patton combined plan.

And that plan that twenty year list is what we'd like to talk with you all tonight about is and so that's just kind of the first few slides here. Gonna go through this quickly. So did that. This again is Thanks, chairman. This is what the Parks and Rec Advisory Committee came up with, and that's a $103,000,000 over twenty years.

They did add in a couple projects that the Davis Patent Plan did not have, which was the the dog park and the Ivy Ridge Estates Neighborhood Park. Those are the two that they added back in. And so that difference between that and the Patton Davis plan is this one here. So you can see a 100,000 100,000,000 versus 103 So million over 20 those are the the differentials between those two, and I'm going back and forth too fast probably, but essentially that's it. Then I wanna cut to the chase, like, does this materially mean?

And so we looked at the three year phase in and a five year phase in of that parks plan that the parks and rec committee on March 17 provided. And this this is what the three year phase in looks like. And then the five year phase in is the next slide. And so that's it. So I think part of this is we have FCS consultant, have Todd Chase online as well.

He's directing this whole process in terms of the consulting piece of it. What we'd really like to do is be able to give direction to FCS to do the methodology report. I mean, when we get to the hearing, these numbers can still be adjusted. This is not a vote tonight where we're you to commit to everything that's here, but we need the general direction that, like, we're okay so we're not going back to Parks and Rec again, and hopefully we're there on that piece

of it.

So you need from us tonight, are we good with the 103,000,000? Yeah. 103,000,000, or are we gonna cut those two projects and go with the patent. David, is it the Davis patent patent Davis? Davis patent.

Just gonna call it the plan.

The hybrid. And then if I remember correctly, our conversation last month was at least it seemed to be that the council was interested more in the three year scale up instead of the five unless that's changed. So That's correct.

That's correct.

Okay. Three.

And the one part that we do wanna just acknowledge, and I think it's in your packets, is we did receive a letter from the Home Builders Association of Portland. Yep. And they You said Portland? Portland. Yes.

Yeah. They don't count. Okay.

And their comments are related to the parks in specific and the suggestion that that be handled not as an SDC, especially for the regional park elements here like sports complex and the aquatic center, but there should be a bond is what they were suggesting for those kind of improvements. That again our consultant Todd Chase is here to respond to their letter if needed, but I wanna, in fairness, make sure you all receive that and we can discuss that as as needed.

I don't think it's needed.

Well and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think specifically in these plans, it's not the money is calling for land acquisition for such a thing, not the actual construction of the thing.

It's actually both. I mean, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And and I think the the key issue and maybe maybe boiling this down in that letter that they provided is that the identification in their minds for homebuilders that this is correcting a deficiency versus creating capacity. I do not believe we are on the same page as that, they are stating that because I don't believe it's our belief that it's making up a deficiency.

So let's say this, Don. So I think so the two two things you need tonight, are we in sync with the BART board? That's the first question. Second question is three year or five year, and I would say let's table the homebuilder Portland Home Builder Association conversation Mhmm. And look at that or is it and add the public hearing date? And Or do we need that solved tonight as well?

I I don't think that needs to be solved tonight. That is definitely a hearing item. And so there'll be sixty days from the methodology report once we hopefully get direction from you all and then July 1 is hopefully the hearing date. That's what we're targeting. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So yes. Councilwoman?

Yeah. I'm good with the parks plan and the

three I'm good with that too. Parks plan, three years. Councilor Patton?

I will just say a couple of things when I was reading through this. I am still I would still like to see more allocated towards the emerald necklace, but I'm not gonna die on that sword. I'm gonna save that fight for another day because I think that's something that the city's been talking about for a long time. And I am a big proponent some of us not cutting future council short. And if we have the ability to get those right of ways, we need to be able to have the funds to do that. And so that's what I will say about that. I was under the impression the reason the dog park was removed from both of our plans was because that money and the and also the Ivy Ridge Park was because that money was already budgeted. Is that not was that not the case?

I believe that is correct. I mean, there we've kind of that kinda went back and forth, and I I don't think it was budgeted. So I think that's the reason it went back in. Was that Yeah.

Okay. And oh,

go ahead.

Yeah. At at the meeting, pointed out that that was a priority for the council, and it wasn't on the list, and I asked that it be put back in.

Okay. And then I will just say with that dog park, what this is a this is for a question for later. Mhmm. And some of the initial plans that I had saw in an effort to get restrooms up there for the dog park, there was also talk about putting in an RV sewer dump because it would be and I wasn't sure if that's still part of that larger plan.

It is.

It is. Okay. Fantastic. Can just source. That's it for me. Wouldn't you know? Great.

And and the one I just wanna make sure, Todd, does this give you the direction that you need if we three year phase in? And I wanna give you a chance to speak.

Yeah. I think that the importance of these long range planning lists is that they need to be adopted before you change the SDC methodology. And so if you're okay with this list, when we do get to the hearing, there will probably be one one hearing on adoption of these long range planning lists, and then you'll close that hearing. And then we'll open up the hearing on the SDC methodology. So, yeah, that's great.

We and and again, as Don mentioned, we can change any of these assumptions right up to the end of the second hearing. And so that's great. We could put this on the table in a in a draft methodology now and let folks chew on it for sixty days and then come back to you with a public hearing with their input and then decide what to do at that time.

And Todd, on the letter from homebuilders, thoughts on that in relation to the SDCs you've done for other cities, which are numerous.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I think, you know, I I have no issue with with what they have to say. Bonds are a great way to finish off some of these big regional facilities. SDCs are a good way to get them started, acquire the land, maybe do a modest first phase, wait for the community to get behind a good plan, and and, you know, whether it's through a regional, you know, parks parks district formation or through a local bond.

We can have that discussion in the future, but this will certainly get you started with what needs to be done with acquiring the land and then, you know, master planning the the development. As far as their level of service comments, we have no concern about that. I know we've we've we've talked with your your city attorney before about this issue, and we're fine with with the way we're framing this up with the eligibility shares calculated the way they are.

Thank you. So question really, I think I know the answer, I'm gonna ask it anyways. So our goal is to get to that 8%.

Actually, less than if possible, like six to 7% on the sensitivity analysis.

Okay. Yeah. So my question being is if we are generating ahead of schedule STC fees, does then that not necessarily mean that we need to institute year three's increase?

I mean, part of this is premised on the the list. Do you mean it? I mean, I mean, it's aspirational in the sense that we're trying to do this over twenty years, but, I mean, all these projects are, in concept, going to be hopefully completed in twenty years. I think part of the decision process here for you all is the value that we put on these that's in your control. And I think that's part of it.

Then also the realization of what we do collect. And to your point that if the collection is, you know, some let's say we get a huge spurt of growth, we could come back and revisit this again based on those I I would suggest that would be the appropriate way. I don't think we can build it in and say, well, we're not gonna charge No. For that final year. But I think I would suggest we revisit that at that point if we have that abundance, which I'd love to see if the interest rates went down. I mean, would help everyone on the housing prices just in general. I mean, interest rates are a killer, I mean, in terms of the cost. Just are. I mean, it's almost as bad as the price tag of the home that we're dealing with now, but it does soften that a bit. No.

And I I like I said, I pretty much knew that answer going into it because it is such a long term piece and that is not something that you collect in three years by any stretch of the imagination. So it was just, again, going back to the homebuilders piece about bonding versus spreading it out amongst all everything that gets built. So thank you. Councilor Patton.

I did forget one thing from public comment earlier at the meeting. The comment was made that the fees are paid at the end of the permitting process and that they can change throughout that period.

That is not correct. Yeah. I mean, go ahead.

I'm

sorry. So I guess my question is, are the way we doing are the way that we is the way that we do it standard operating procedure or do other cities collect those fees at different times?

I believe a lot of them collect them at the building permit phase. And part of the reason we collect them at the building permit phase is because the county building department takes care of all the building permit processes that we deal with. And from the point that we actually issue the permit, we have a sign off, It's a 100% the county. We're not doing any reviews. I mean, works is doing some reviews on connections of sewer, water, those kinds of things.

But planning is basically done at that point. We're relying a 100% on the county to do the inspection and reviews of those buildings. That's part of the reason. At any point in time, can ask how much is my system development charge going to be. Now, in our situation here, we are changing that rate after thirteen to fifteen years for parks and transportation in particular, which are the heavy hitters here.

We have not changed those in that time frame. So this year is unique. But I would say, generally speaking, after, you know, we go through these, let's say it's a three year phase that you all support, you're going to see only the ENR index, the inflationary index, which ironically is going down for the first time this year, meaning inflation is actually going down. They're going for a short amount of time between the time that this gets adopted and and by, like, July 15, a second reading. So between July 1 and July 15, they're actually, you know, they're gonna even be lower than they currently are because we will adopt a new fee schedule for that.

It's very short time. But from that point on after there'll be an e and r after the third phase third phase of this project and that's just an inflationary index which can go both ways.

Okay. Yeah. So we're we're we're we collecting the fee when pretty much everybody else is

collecting. I think I believe so and I think I don't really part of this is

Well, what I would say is if I would like more information about that. Rather than trying to skin that banana right tonight Okay. Let's go ahead and hold off on that. But I would like an update on when we are actually Okay. Doing that.

Yeah. No. Don't

because we have a public comment

Sure.

And if it's wrong, we need to make sure that it's the education is done. And if it's right, then we need to talk about do we change it. That's what I'm asking.

And it's in our ordinance right now. I mean, it this is not something I'm determining. It's in our ordinance.

It's in the ordinance. Yeah.

Okay. Very good. Yeah.

Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Oh, sorry. Councilor Wagner.

Just a reminder too that we're currently in, like, the bottom 20% of SDCs In the in around in our whole surrounding area. These changes that we're making aren't because we just want more money, it's because we're falling behind on keeping up with our infrastructure as it is as far as funding. And so, and but the three year even with doing the three year part going out, what we've even once we get into that three to five years, we might be close, we might initially be hired to the top 60%, 80%, but even by the time we get there, everybody else is gonna be catching up, and so we're gonna be

in a spot where we're

probably still around the average at that time. So, it's not like we're going,

stretching, reaching out, anything crazy

on

this.

I was trying to get the slide. I think it might be hidden, Maya. There's a slide that actually shows that. Yeah. But to your point, you're absolutely right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, even with this implemented, we're not the top, we're not the bottom, we're in the middle. So, okay. Alright. You got the direction you need?

Three year phase in with the March 17 parks plan. We'll move forward with that. And so the next process will be Todd and his team will put the methodology report together. We'll post that on our website and that's sixty days in advance of the hearing and then we'll set the hearing hopefully for July 1. And thank you all for your input. Good discussion.

No. Thanks, Don. Good job. Thanks.

Thanks, Don.

Great. 11 b has been removed from the agenda. So the housing project production strategy piece. So we're that's not on there. We'll take that off.

Mayor's business. Item one is I got a couple of things. So c four, Clackamas County Coordinating Committee is tomorrow, so nothing to report on that. Region one Area Commission on Transportation, that is next Monday. So I'll report on both of those at the next meeting. Chief Tro's retirement, he's not here, but I do I was it was a bummer to hear. I knew that was coming. We've known it's been coming. I think chief Trow has done an amazing job Mhmm. Carrying the torch of chief Smith and and keeping Camby being Camby and safe and keeping us in that that top five of safest cities in the state.

So I'm sure he's I'm sure he's at home watching in his pajamas eating popcorn. He's watching baseball. Oh, it's baseball. Yeah. Never mind. It's baseball time. So the Dodgers must be No.

He's a doctor fan.

Yankees played earlier.

Oh, so anyways, I appreciate all that Chief Trow has done and we'll definitely miss him as part of our police force. I had a meeting today with a couple of staff Randy and some staff members and Pete, can I have you come up? Because I wanna talk a little bit about the police chief recruiting and interviewing process. So do you wanna just lay out kind of loosely what we were thinking?

Yes. Pete Wood, HR director, so members of council. So we met, kinda went over the timeline with the mayor, Randy, with Chief Trow. So, just kind of outline, hoping to post the job posting tomorrow. We'll leave it open for the month of April.

Then the May, we'll do our HR analysis scrub and then interview one is looking at May 20 for and we'll do a two panel concurrent panel. So, one panel will be five police chiefs and two members of the Cambie Police Union. And then, the other panel will be some can be leaders, members of city staff, directors. And then, so the candidates will interview with both panels and then from those panels, we'll come up with a list of two to three finalists and then sometime about the May, working around Memorial Day, have our finalist panel.

Our finalist panel.

Yes.

Yeah. So, again, the conversation last time, I mean, Chief Trow was kind of, he had been in the wings and we really didn't go through a really, arduous process, but back when Chief Smith was being interviewed, it was a different time and we did a lot more

Mhmm.

There was a lot more outreach and a lot more I mean, it was a pretty extensive series of interview gauntlets that the candidates went through. We hired a firm to help in all this. Pete and Randy think that it can be done internally so we don't have to go through a firm Mhmm. To do that. There seems to be, according to Chief Tro, a lot of local, local being state of Oregon, nearby, Southwest Washington, potential interest in in the position, so we don't have to cast a night a national nationwide search like we did the last time or two times ago.

So, again, we just wanted to kinda get the feel from the council in terms of, again, you know, as Pete laid out, they'll do the first blush of candidates and weed those out, bring it down to, you know, the top two or three, and then it would be another, like, kind of round robin interview with, you know, counsel and and then kind of, again, two panel group to kinda go through and and then reconvene after that and then decide, you know, make a recommendation. My big piece is, again, at the time, the chief position is a high profile position in the city in any city. But, again, that's not really under the purview of the council. It really is under the purview of the city administrator to make that decision. Though I still think because of the the high profile piece of it that we'd be involved and have community members involved as well.

So that's kind of where we're at right now. Thoughts? Concerns?

Yes. I like I like the way it's laid out and perhaps the way the council could be involved is if you did a meet and greet with the top three members and at nighttime, you just have kind of a meet and greet and have them introduce themselves and and things like that, and that's where the council can participate in that meet and greet with the top three people and provide input back to our city administrator.

Okay. That sounds great, councilor. We can do that.

Councilor Waterman? Yeah. I like

it too. I do have a question, though, about how the process is going to work with citizens being involved in this, like, who gets picked? How does that get chosen? How does how does that work? And then making sure that our citizens are equally represented in this because the police chief is is for everybody in this community.

Invitations to our school board chair and superintendent are already out, but there will be others for the panel. Okay? That's the panel. But to your question, councilor Waterman, we might have a public night where anybody can come

Meet and greet.

A meet

and greet like councilor Davis said. So we make sure that there is representation from anybody who's interested.

Okay.

Is that Make sure that I mean, they should Businesses. Can still provide some feedback and stuff as well. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

We and that's the piece too is we wanna make sure that, you know, decisions have an opportunity, you know, if they feel warm fuzzies or they're like, oh gosh, no. Not don't please don't hire this person. You know, that's feedback. We've very similar feedback forms at the end. People can write their comments and that kinda helps tailor our conversation or, you know, what will ultimately end up being, you know, Randy and Pete's decision and chief Trow. Yes?

Yeah. I guess I I like where this is going, but I wanna echo Paul's point that if we're gonna involve community, a group a a dichotomy of community needs to be involved and not the same old not the same characters that normally get involved. Okay. To that point, what's being talked about here with the council having involvement in this runs afoul of the city charter because, technically, we do not. We should not have any hiring this position should be no different than hiring any other director here at the city.

I understand where the mayor is coming from, and I echo his comment. But what I think we should do is use this as an opportunity to vet this process. And if this is the way if this works well, then as we make our city charter updates, we need to make sure that there's some sort of language in there so that in the future, if this if this is really considering the, you know, the gravitas of the filling of this position, then maybe there needs to be some look at how we make those adaptations to allow future councils some sort of involvement in the process or set things up so that way future councils aren't running the foul of the city charter to be involved in this process. So that's just something to keep in mind. Thank you.

Yeah. Now we did have that bit of that conversation today too of just not wanting, yeah, the counsel to get wrapped up around the actual on this one necessarily. So okay.

Yes. Just to clarify, Jason, counsel involvement would be the same as the citizens. Mhmm. Yeah. So in other words, we would just be a citizen there and provide an input back just like a a normal citizen would be, not as a counselor.

Because in years past, when we did chief Smith, counsel was its own interview group. Right.

Yeah. And we'll look at trying to do that the same the same day that we're doing the finals interview just in case we have folks traveling, candidates traveling from a great distance. So

Okay. We'll get that scheduled. Great. Thank you, Pete. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks, Pete. Couple more items here real quick. So Amy Nguyen of Dragonberry Produce is planning a kind of a well, it's her and people from state level to do a trip to Vietnam as part of kind of the sister city piece as well as, again, kind of we'll call it a trade mission to represent the Pacific Northwest and whatnot. And so she has asked if I would attend the trip as well as being a representative for the city of Camby.

And so talking with her, bringing it to you all because, again, it's got budget app implications in terms of the cost. My understanding from her is that accommodations, food is all covered. It would be the airline ticket for the most part to get there and get back. And so I guess I'm coming to the council to say, give any objections or thoughts, and we're looking at probably between three and $6,500 for the cost. I did have a conversation with with Randy about that in terms of counsel budget and whatnot.

And so I wanted to get your thoughts and an approval before I commit to mister Nguyen about being able to go.

Yes. I understand the I understand why they'd want the mayor to go. I don't have any problems with that at all. I have a problem with the budget amount. We're already without looking at this year's budget and and not knowing how this year's budget's going as well as next year's budget cuts in the budget, I'd have to a better idea of where the money's coming from out of the budget since it was budgeted for. Okay.

Yes. Councillor Patten.

I agree. I think we should. I am I'm not opposed. So here's my thoughts considering this is a new thing. It is this an this be more of, an annual thing or is this a one time thing?

One time thing.

And then no one ever goes back again?

No. I don't sorry. I can't say. I don't know because the plan I think is then, as Amy explained to me, they're hoping to come this direction at the end of the summer or first part of the fall. Would it be an every year thing? That I don't know yet. Okay. I can't speak to that.

So here's what I recommend. I am all for us sending a city representative over there as part of a thing. What might make sense is to get an idea of what that back and forth looks like and what that cycle looks like and then build into the budget that a representative from this from the council or the mayor goes. And maybe it is a rotation thing where one time it's the mayor, the next time it's open to somebody else on council if they're interested in going. Mhmm.

And I would also say that for a flight like that, if we're going to budget numbers, you cannot I strongly recommend that it not be, like, an economy ticket. We need to budget in at least business or some other thing because that is a very long flight, and it is gonna be excruciating for someone to sit in that. So if you are budgeting for it, it needs to be budgeted and not the seat behind the toilet. Okay? But that's that's what I think we should do is look at it, get some more information about what this cycle looks like, get a better understanding of what that cost is for that ticket, and build some sort of plan about how we're going to be part of this process.

K. Seems reasonable.

Councilor Waterman? I when the when

this was first kind of brought to us, you know, we we had put over whether we were gonna have whether paying the $400 for to join the organization to be able to redo this thing, and now we got another 4,000 here. And we last year we cut the budget of council training and etcetera and travel. So it seems a little tight for me right now to be able to say, we're gonna cut other departments, but then we're gonna just randomly show up and say we're gonna fly across the world. So, I have a little harder

time with that.

Okay. That's why I asked.

Mayor? Yes. Maybe go back to them and just explain that we're in a budget situation and we'll look at possibly budgeting in the future, but can they pay the pay that if they really want the mayor to attend?

Okay. Thoughts, council president Hensley?

Nothing to add. It all sounds reasonable to me.

Okay.

Great. Last piece I have for you all, I know I've been as of late springing on fund projects on on you all, but I have another one just to bring forward. So I've been working with Randy and city staff kind of parallel to the comp plan and having conversation at the county level as well as at some people at the state level about have had conversations with the neighboring city of Barlow about possibly combining and bringing Barlow under Camby jurisdiction. I don't know if that's the right word, but under our make extending the Camby boundary to include Barlow.

They're an incorporated city.

Well, that's why I would yeah. That's why taking that to state in the county to get support for that. And so we're kind of moved to a point where I'd like to bring this forward as conversation in the future meeting to lay out those details, but just initial first thoughts on it. Councilor Waterman, any initial thoughts?

I don't even know where I would even start right now, honestly. Okay.

That's a big what?

How much how much is it gonna cost us and how much can is it or can you bring

in for revenue?

Well, and that was the piece looking at it was, you know, Barlow is it's you know, you've got the gravel pits that will have a an end life coming up and what could that look like from a housing or economic development standpoint, resources for them, like, you know, we're part of the water treatment aspect coming up and being able to, you know, do we move into that aspect of it being a regional water supply piece and therefore we're supporting, you know, Barlow already in that regards. So that's kind of why I was, you know, kind of looking at that. So, yeah, those are those are questions. Yeah. We kinda got I didn't wanna go further down the road and start having numbers crunched to see what that was even how that would even look like.

Yes. Councilor Davis.

I would support a work session on that just so we can get more information from the city administrator on what our options are with that, but also looking at what are their water systems, which I know, which are nonexistent, and, you know, some of those things that could be very costly. So, you know, we we need to have a work session on that.

Okay. Council President Hilary, anything?

I I would say at least a work session. This was a big wow. What does their mayor and council think of this idea? Have you even brought it to them?

Yeah. There there's interest.

Okay. A work session would definitely be in order. It's too much to flush out right now. It's that was a that kinda threw me for a loop. Okay.

Councilor Ben?

So so here's my thoughts on this. I'm not opposed to something like this, but the thing if you you look at the rural reserve map, there is a there is a delineation of rural reserve in between Barlow and the city. So I don't even see from what I like, how do they even how would they even become part of the city if there is land that will never be developed in the next forty years in between us? So that's that's one thing. The next thing I will say is this, and this is no offense to you, Brian, but here's the deal.

This is huge. This is a huge conversation. And to me, this sort of thing, before you were having conversations with the county or this person or that person, this board should be involved in that because that's our job.

Okay.

And so for us to now find out that you've been having these conversations with county leaders and stuff and it's like, oh, now we're we're we should have been included in this when the ingredients were when the ingredient list of the bread was being made Mhmm. Not when the dough was already ready to start mixing together. That's what I'm gonna say. Okay.

Randy, what's the date today?

April 1. It is. And what is April 1 generally?

You butt.

Oh, wait. April 1. You're doing? Oh, I was gonna have to get out my blood pressure cuff.

You wasted five minutes of our life

doing that. That was fantastic.

Oh, I was fired up.

Thanks. You sweating bullets. I was fired up.

If I I looked at you before I start there

you are. I thought I was getting fired.

Thank you all. That was a a fool joke. We're not looking to annex Barlow.

I have

not talked to any state

So many. Anybody I

made it till 09:30 almost without getting tricked. You You

know, so that's why I started at this end of the table. Thank you, sir. Because I knew your head would explode, and I was banking on that. Whoo. Nelly, that

was fantastic. Myself together pretty well.

Oh my god.

Oh, no. Really, please. Yeah. Oh, I could've been a lot. I did not stand up. Calling the mayor

to task on outside planning.

You told him, Brian.

Well and when he when Don when Don left, I was like, oh, this will be good because I think Don would have blown it because he had no idea that I told Randy yesterday that I no. What? Yeah. Randy. I could have done that to Randy and and or I I showed

my card there, obviously.

Did you

know he was gonna do that?

Yesterday, I thought.

I I told him yesterday I was gonna do that. Guacamole.

So okay. He

says to me he's like, whatever you do, don't look at me because I'll crack. Yeah. And I'll start laughing because I know it's coming. So I'm

sitting right next to Jason.

Yeah. Never heard Jason.

He's not in my crosshairs yet. Alright. About that.

Pretty close.

Alright. Counselor comments and liaison reports. Counselor Waterman. Nothing has happened yet. Alright. Councilor Davis.

Park and Rec, Don covered, long long work and discussion by the Park and Rec Committee in regards to the comp plan and the FTCs. The we had discussion around, Erneston Park. Is that Erneston Park? Yeah. By Fred Myers. He works hall a few years ago. We did a cleanup there, and they wanna get in there and do some more planting and and cleanup and things like that. They wanted to see about cleaning up some limbs, which they've been doing. I've seen a lot of cutting going on in there, so thanks for doing that. A lot of windfall down there.

There was some discussion around Redwood Landing, putting in a deck at Redwood Landing, is at Willow Creek there above the creek. There's a lot of lot of work that needs to be done on that to see if we could even get close to that, at this point. So that was that was brought up, as far as an observation deck. And Auburn Farms, the park is moving right along. I did notice the bathrooms are in and the gazebos the roofs aren't on the gazebo classroom I went by, but the gazebos are going in. They're probably April now. Probably completion date

We're still in Memorial.

Okay. Memorial Day. Yep. So anyway but with that said, they discussed the name of the park again, and there is a procedure in place for people to submit names for that park. So we ask that be posted on the city site as far as the putting suggestions in, but that will go through the park of our committee and then ultimately approved by the city council. And just waiting on parks for the splash pad, and that's of the delay in wrapping that park up.

That's it. Great. Thank you, sir. Council President Hanzley.

Yeah. This is the first, so everything is coming up in the next week. But I do want to remind folks, I did mention it at the last meeting, but I'm trying to open an I'm trying to open up attachment here. It won't open, so I'm just gonna try my best to remember. The Prevention Coalition is having a parents' night at Baker Prairie Middle School. Good. She's nodding. I got the right school. Thursday, the ninth of this month, so next week. And they're doing 06:30 to seven is in Spanish, and seven to 07:30 is in English, if I have the times right.

I'm gonna Jennifer's looking. I couldn't get this attachment to open, but I wanted to make sure everybody was aware. There's gonna be some speakers there. Officer Walters is gonna be going over, vaping information for parents, not how to, but how to watch out for, and also some online security stuff to keep your kiddos safe. So it's very good information. I encourage everybody to go. That's Thursday night, April nine.

Great. Thank you. Councilor Patton.

Nothing I will say in my thing is an April fool's joke. So just so you know, I did not come prepared for this, obviously. So it's been a very busy couple weeks, so I'm gonna try and get through this as quickly as possible. For you, council president Hensley, and you, Randy, I did have a concerned citizen come up and say that they find it odd that there is no crosswalk at Maple across Territorial because people are coming from those developments across Territorial to then get to Maple Street Park. And so it would seem to make sense that there was some sort of striped noticeable crosswalk there.

So if you are listening tonight, person, I'm sorry I forgot your name. It duly noted.

I will take it to the traffic safety commission. Spencer, didn't we talk about that intersection before? We will revisit that.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Some other things, the charter subcommittee group met with the folks at Canby Utility and we had a really great discussion about, some of the changes that we really wanna make in conjunction with Camby Utility because something that I've heard for many years is Camby Utility is sometimes hampered by what is in our city charter because it was set up decades ago. And so really partnering with them to get a better understanding of what we can do to amend the city charter to help make their lives easier as well as take some of the burden off of us as a council.

For the Wyomuth Falls Landing Heritage Area Coalition, and this is in the capacity of my, work as the projects and programs committee chair. For years, that group has been talking about once they get into the historic Westland City Hall, what they're gonna do in the exhibit center or the visitor center downstairs. They spent a bunch of money on various plans, and I actually convinced the group to get together in a work session. And we actually put some stuff on paper, and we're excited that we might actually make some headway for installations in that facility in the next twelve months. There are some installations there, that talk about various historical sites and such within the city or within the area.

I strongly encourage you to visit them and check those out, but, good work being done over there. I also attended the city council field trip, with council Davis and, council president Hensley, and we toured the Sherwood YMCA as well as the Shehalem Aquatic and Fitness Center. Really impressive facilities. Mhmm. I do not see how we could not I I do not see how we can't pull something like this off in the not too distant future.