City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you for coming to see your city council. It is August 10th. I'm Mayor Blackburn. I'll follow the order. First thing we're going to do is silence our cell phones. Second, we're going to greet Councilor Stepina online. Hello, Doug. We often do a land acknowledgement. I'm going to pass that over this evening. We're going to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic

Abigail, do we have any agenda additions or corrections? I see that one was added relatively late last week for animal control. Is that right?

Correct. That is the only change. What you have is correct.

Now, as Abigail mentioned, business from the audience, we have Lorraine signed up. Come on and tell us what you'd like us to know, Lorraine. Touch the white, the white dot. There it is.

Thanks for having me yet again, squeaky wheel. I just wanted to let you all know that after our last meeting, we wanted to make it really clear that we were here to talk about our services for the city of Hood River. and the difference between animal control services for the county and the city. I think, well, I know we had a meeting with Sheriff English after and we felt a little pitted against each other and that is not what we hope for. The board just wanted me to communicate tonight to all of you and I hope you all received my email following the board meeting or the meeting last time. that we just wanted to reiterate that we appreciate animal control. It is a big job and that we were looking to the city for funding for the services that we provide once enforcement drops dogs off to the shelter and that 50% of the dogs that are dropped off in shelter do come from the city limit. So that's more than $200,000 of our budget. So when you consider your IGA tonight, we're hoping that you keep that in mind. And that was all I really wanted to say.

Thank you, Lorraine. We have a presentation from Hood River Garbage. Welcome back, Jim. Same deal. Touch the white dot.

There you go. Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Councilors. Thanks for your time tonight. I'm here tonight, as I annually do, to present a proposed rate increase based on what we're seeing in cost of living increases in Consumer Price Index. And the static number we use for those increases are the CPI West Coast Index, which went from July 1st of 2024 to July 31st of 2025. At that time, the CPI was based on 3.04%. We asked for 85% of that because we know nobody likes a rate increase, and we try to do everything we can to mitigate the expenses to allow us not to ask for a full CPI increase. If you're a customer in city limits of Hood River and you have a 35-gallon trash can, currently you're paying $26.74 a month. The increase would be $0.69 a month or $0.16 per week, taking it to $27.43 a month. If you have the 65-gallon cart, that would have an increase of $0.19 per week, taking it from $32 per month to $32.83. On the larger dumpsters, containers if you will, that you see around town at restaurants and businesses, You have a yard and a half dumpster service once a week. Currently, you're paying $159.28. The increase would be $2.31 per month or $0.95 per pickup. And if there are any questions, I would do my best to entertain those.

Thank you, Jim. Any questions for our garbage service? Gladys?

Thank you for being here. I appreciate all that you and your staff do. I'd you know, saddened to see that increase in healthcare and fuel that that has impacted your business, some of the challenges of the federal impacts at a local level. Every year I ask you, can you please review any sort of financial support that any elderly individual or low income would review or would process to go through to potentially receive some sort of financial assistance? But I also wondered, There was something in your letter and it said the most recent July to July comparison increased 3.04%. And we believe that this is a good indicator of our overall experience. And I wanted to just better understand that. Is that an assumption of like customer satisfaction?

Um, well, it stems from the Wasco County landfill, which is our disposal, which is our biggest expense. We follow what they do and they use the 3.04 and they ask for 85% as well. So that's why we keep ours capped at the 85%.

Thank you so much for that. I also wondered, maybe it's on your website and I just didn't see it. The amounts of glass or compost, like, do you have some sort of breakdown of what? folks are disposing of?

We do. And I forwarded to Abigail tonight. It's a recycle collector survey. It's through the state. The only thing that you won't glean from it is city of Hood River versus county. It all melts together, but it'll show you the compost, the glass, yard waste, all the materials.

Okay, perfect. And since you're here, is there any upcoming event like mattress removal, anything that you want to share with folks?

I don't have a date yet, but there will be a mattress take back event in Q3. So I'm waiting to hear back from Bye Bye Mattress. And we'll definitely get all that information out. And it's a free drop off for the residents of Hood River County.

Nothing else we do need to approve this, I believe.

I move to adopt resolution 2025-26 for whatever garbage is proposed rate increase of 2.58% effective September 1st, 2026 on tonight's consent agenda.

Moved by Paulson.

Second.

Second by Cavallari. Any further discussion? All in favor?

Yes.

Any opposed? I noticed Stupina online with the aye. Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thanks, Jim. Thanks very much. Uh, emergency declaration, Abigail.

Thank you, mayor and council. I am here today for a small amendment to your emergency declaration. in regards to federal immigration enforcement actions. Your first original emergency declaration was really specific to working with nonprofits around listening sessions and town halls. It didn't have more opportunities or services that you could contract for. But since in July, you had asked for us to create funding agreements with the next door and gorge mutual aid. The first thing we need to do is to amend the emergency declaration to authorize that. So you have new language in your packet and just looking for a motion to approve that or other direction.

Thank you. Anybody.

I move to adopt resolution 2026-20, amending the current emergency declaration to authorize distribution of funds to organizations as directed by city council.

Moved by Rivera. Second. Second by Mitchell. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye, motion passes, thank you. Next door, I see Janet.

So now that you have taken that first action, now we can bring Janet Hamada from The Next Door. And Graciela, are you also coming up? Graciela Gomez to provide an overview of the services that would be provided in the funding agreement. And then when they are finished with their presentation and you've had your questions answered, there is a motion in your pocket. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for having us. I'm Janet Hamada, the Executive Director of The Next Door.

I am a community health worker from the next door. Yes.

And we submitted a proposal based on your very generously offering us some assistance to provide the services that we provide. And in that proposal, we gave a brief description of what the next door does. And then very specifically, because we have 36 programs under six different service areas and we serve about 50, 15,000 people a year. I made sure that you saw that it was, we're asking for support for three different programs. So one is for our, um, in for what we call our informal counseling, mental health counseling, that's given by our community health workers. The other is potential referrals to a next level of care, which would be to our behavioral health counseling through our treatment services. And then the third is for community preparedness, uh, community health worker who is basically a navigator and, and, um, uh, Graciela does both the informal counseling and the navigation through community preparedness. So that's why she's here. And I'm going to ask her to tell you a couple stories of what she's been seeing recently in our community. So the proposal was for $20,000, and it will support about seven hours of time per week for a year for a community health worker that works in these communities. If we need to refer to counseling services, we are hopeful that most of the folks are covered with Oregon Health Plan. We will know more about changes to Oregon Health Plan a little bit later and then we'll then we'll see because pretty much 100% of our clients in that program have Oregon Health Plan and we have a little bit of funding for sliding scale fee. So, but we're pretty much, we've seen over the last year and a half that most of the people who come into us, most of the kids who come to us for counseling services are covered with Oregon Health Plan and so they can pay So that's why I didn't add that into this actual proposal. But the grant funding, the contract funding for our community health work is really drying up. And so this couldn't come at a better time because we did not get some funding that we hoped to get. And so we're really, really working on trying to find funding elsewhere. So your generosity in this respect, and it might be the first time besides this, equity and outreach training service contracts that the next door has gotten any money from the city of Hood River during my tenure, which is only about 22 years now. So I'm going to turn it over to Graciela. I think she explains, I think, you know, because you heard the listening, you've heard what the, we, all of the testimonies and information we got in the listening sessions, but she has some current information. um they're probably just people she met with literally over the last couple weeks and just so you can understand the scope because this is the these are the stories that are so under the radar nobody unless you're living it or your family is living it you just don't you just don't hear it thank you janet and i'm pretty sure everybody know me because i came before and i shared with you guys some testimonies and this is the reality that we are facing right now about the

that I am an immigrant, I come to this country when I was 14, so I understand the pain of my community. And last, what Janice said, couple weeks ago, I receive a lot of phone calls for the peoples who really are in a really bad situation, like a mom, everybody know the lady who stayed with her two kids, and I took her husband away to Tacoma, and now he's in Mexico, that we had the opportunity in the next door to support the families with a little bit, not a lot. So when I went to bring some gift cards for the family, the mom told the kids, that lady is going to bring some help for us. And when I went to deliver the cards, the little girl, who is only six years, she say, can you bring my dad? And that is what I don't have words to answer because I said, if it's in my power, I can bring you your dad. But I can't. I only come here to give you this a little bit of help. So the next, right now, the lady, she have a court. And the 27th of this month, she's so scared because she's scared that she stay in the jail. What happened with the kids? Maybe the state is going to take the kids. So she's getting everything ready to send the kids to Mexico, the kids who born in United States, who born in who river. So she had to send the kids on a place that they don't have a house. They going to sleep with the brother. So with the uncle, they don't know Mexico, the kids, they don't know nobody in there, but she's so scared that she's waiting for the passport so the kids can go with the family. That is the sad story about this family. And I want, I try to be with her and the needs that she have. Sadly, we don't have too much in our agency because we don't have too much ingress. How can I say? I don't have assistance. But what we can, we can, that is what we have. And other person who lose her job because he's getting old, he was working in the orchard, he was living in the cabin, and the owner of the orchard tell him, you cannot work anymore in here. So they give you only 24 hours to live. That night, That day they called me that they need help. So I asked the next door for some gift cards and I was ready to deliver to him. But that night he have a stroke. So he right now he's in the hospital because he lost his job. And I'm facing a lot of needs that the community live in fear, and the fear is real. They are scared to call the police. They are scared to report things that they are having. So a lot of times I had to come with the families. I came here with a nice police. He speaks Spanish, a young police, and he helped me with this family. I really appreciate that. because they don't want to report. Sometimes it's more easy to report to the community health worker that they trust in us, so that way we can support in the needs of the community health. So I can stay here for hours and hours speaking all the things that we are facing, the Latino community and the immigrant community, but I don't want to take too much of you guys' time. Only I want to tell you guys, please, Help us with anything you can. Support we need. The Latino community need a lot of emotional support. We have a really good program in our agency, The Next Door. And I appreciate a lot to this woman, all the effort that she does to support our community. We live in Hood River. We pay taxes. We do our best. So thank you so much for your guys' time. And I really, really appreciate you guys' time. And I guess I want to say thank you.

Thank you very much. Thanks, you guys. Comments, questions? Motion? A motion.

I just want to thank you both for being here and for talking about some of the shared stories that you all had. One quick little snippet of the multiple pages of information that you provided, Janet, to us. There's one that I just, as I get to hang out with my kiddos over this last weekend, I really thought about. Recently, the next door CHWs have gotten calls from people hiding in the cold storage at Safeway because they heard ICE was in the parking lot. Seeking guidance on how to tell their children their father was deported or asking our CHWs to serve as legal guardians for their children should the worst happen. We know that when the community is in crisis, they turn to CHWs at the next door to help navigate uncertainty, fear, and trauma. What we're seeing here really is an emergency situation. We are seeing individuals be killed. We are seeing individuals that are being pulled over and assaulted. We are seeing individuals in cascade locks that are pretending to be ICE agents. This situation is unlike anything that we have faced before and I really just want to thank you all for the work that you do to serve our community and that this really is an emergency situation unlike anything that we've seen before. I move that we authorize the city manager to sign the funding agreement with the Next Door Inc. for assistance to children and youth impacted by federal immigration enforcement.

Move by Rivera. Second. Second by Gakey. Second by Stepina. Any further discussion? Thanks for your great work, you guys. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair vote time motion passes. Thank you. Next, we have a public hearing about murals. I'm going to read the script. I call to order a public hearing for ordinance 2097, an ordinance amending the Hood River Municipal Code, in particular, amending section 18.03.030, the maximum height that art murals are allowed to be. This is a public hearing on a municipal code amendment regulating original art murals. To date, we have held multiple public work sessions on this subject, but tonight is a public hearing on the proposal, and here is the order of events. First, a short staff report explains the amendment and what is before us in this decision. Then we will take all public testimony on the proposed amendment. Finally, we will close the hearing, deliberate and render a decision on the proposed ordinance. Final adoption will have to occur in the regular portion of our meeting agenda. Can I have a show of hands? Is there any member of the public online or present at City Hall that wishes to testify on ordinance 2097, either for, against or in a neutral capacity? I see none. Anybody online, Jen? That is the procedural introduction. If you have a question about how it's going, please feel free to raise your hand. Start with staff.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Thank you for letting me bring this topic to you. It was, I think, two years ago that Council, actually three years ago now that Council had conversations that this was a The concept of having murals was brought to us from community members. You had a number of meetings. We also had a small stakeholder group that included artists, building owners, historians. It also went to the Landmarks Review Board. So it had a pretty thorough process and reached the language that you see before you today. At that time, there was some discussion about a height of a mural, and 15 feet was... The one that was reached, it wasn't a recommendation from the small advisory group, nor I don't think it was a really specific one from staff either. It was 15 feet was suggested, and that's where we went. Since that time, we've received a couple mural applications. Some have been in the downtown, so automatically rejected because the ordinance does not allow them in a historical district, and I'm not looking to revisit that conversation today. But we have one application now in the Heights and of course Mariposa Village as part of that project included public art mural that would likely exceed 15 feet. So today we bring you just a language in the ordinance that would change the language. So currently says no part of the mural shall exceed 15 feet in height measured from the grade plane. to change it, no part of the mural shall exceed the roofline of the building. That is the only change not looking to open any other part of the mural code ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll kick us off. This is a First Amendment issue, right? Artistic expression, in my experience, they're super interesting and fun to talk about and can result in a whole lot of talking about it. Like, what if it was this? And what if, I mean, it just, it's, you know, we've talked this a lot. So if we can keep ourselves, myself, ourselves sort of to the subject at hand, that would be great.

Right. This is a, when we, you might remember when we reviewed this, we really talked about time, manner, and place. And so this falls under the time, manner, umbrella, not the content aspect of murals.

Harmon Zuckerman, Amanda.

Harmon Zuckerman, I feel like we're in favor of changing the number to 18 or not. Sorry, that's not that was never thrown out there just to the roof line. It makes sense. It seems like 15 was kind of arbitrary and Harmon Zuckerman, I don't see Harmon Zuckerman, Any point of like having shorter than the building itself doesn't really make sense.

Right. You remember 15 feet was an arbitrary number just to keep it at human scale more or less. So that's where that 15 feet came from, roughly-ish, one-ish story. It was an arbitrary number indeed. If we just make it the roof line, understand that it can be the entire side of a building, all the way up to the roof line, that opens the entire building wall side up to the roof, however tall a building is. uh that will mean that the entire side up to the roof can be a mural of any content uh meaning whatever goes goes we may have these sides of buildings look like billboards so if you wish to see buildings become billboards that can happen so that is a consequence of choosing to increase murals to these sides of buildings should we choose to go that route

I think the one that sort of kicked this off was like an 18 footer. It's like slightly more than 15. I appreciate your comments, Grant. Like, is there a 30 foot building? Like, do we feel okay about, like, do we want to have some maximum?

Yeah, I think I was a little bit to Mayor's point and to understand since this has been in place in 15 feet, my understanding is that there's only been four applications, right, that have talked about murals potentially exceeding. And so I'd like to understand.

I would say we've only received one application. We've had inquiries about murals and Jack, maybe speak to the number of those. I would also note before we finished the code, Cogginsville authorized the school district to put a mural on our own building, the Wilson Street Fire Station. That building, I believe, is 18 feet, which is probably where you got the 18 feet from. So we already have a non-conforming mural in the city that would, if we were to change this, either to hire or to the roofline, would come into compliance. Do you want to?

Yeah.

Jackie, please come to the microphone. Microphone. Thank you.

I feel like you covered most of the questions. But yeah, we've received, this is really the first completed application because the others in the inquiry process we quickly realized that it was not going to be allowed in that area.

So the one that we've actually received an actual application for, how tall is the building?

18 feet.

18.

I believe it's like actually 17.9 or something like that. Great. Thank you.

I just want to thank you for your amount of time and hours that you took to coordinate with these individuals for quite some time to help us get here. And that's all my questions.

There is motion.

I move to adopt ordinance.

Thank you, Dan. What's going on? Did Doug wish to speak?

Yeah, I just wanted to, sounds like emotions being made, but I wanted to voice my support for this. As we've seen, a lot of our neighboring communities have had some very amazing public displays of art being created. And I'm completely in favor of this change.

Thanks, Doug.

I move to adopt ordinance 2097 amending chapter 18.03 original art murals of the municipal code to change height limit to not higher than the roof line of the building.

Moved by Rivera.

Second.

Second by Gakey. Any further discussion? Grant.

Just to be clear, I like murals. My wife is an artist. We all like pretty pictures and art of the things. Just be aware of what you may see. So that's it.

All in favor? Yes.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Consent agenda. Oh, sorry, what's happening? Gladys.

Mayor, I do want to ask a question about item number three, the increased budget for the Waccama Park.

Great. So let's go ahead and take that off. We'll talk about that. See if we can do the other three and then we'll talk about that.

Is that okay, everybody? I move we approve the consent agenda minus item three.

Moved by Cavallari. Second. Second by Mitchell. Discussion? All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Any opposed to those three? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Now, Wacoma Sewer.

Councilor Rivera, you have a specific question on this one?

Yes, thank you. So I just wanted to better understand, let me get to my notes. I want to better understand some of the projects that essentially these dollars are now being pulled from, right? There's specific projects that will now be reallocated from the current CIP. And so this is the second time that this has come to council. It says that the cost is unknown at this time, and I'm just trying to better understand, do we foresee that this might come back for a third time, for example? Is 540,000 the absolute ceiling that we're gonna see for this project?

So I can start with that, and I'll let Chris answer the allocations. No, I can't guarantee this is going to be the absolute ceiling. We're fairly long, far along on on it. We are hitting rock on 9th Street, which $300 a yard adds up. I mean, we had it in the bid. We had 10 yards. We weren't expecting rock, so we had 10 yards. that can add up unknown like that's something and then anytime we dig in the streets in those older neighborhoods and we're working on these older lines we don't know what's there and that is what's happening on on these change orders um do your engineers do the best guess we we video what we can these lines we couldn't even put cameras down so Can't guarantee it. I believe we're covered. I mean, standing on the job site today, I think we're getting through the rock. That's a really general answer.

I will correct me if I'm wrong. I will note that the funds that were asked for with regards to the project include contingency. And in addition, there is, I think, additional contingency that was part of the original budget. So again, this is sort of the project funds that are asked for include contingency. But yes, but obviously the project costs are

And part of the reason I didn't come with just the exact amount is because there is no other meeting in August. This is not the type of thing that you can just pause until, which when they're digging along, they're making these temporary connections in the sewer line. you can't just have that temporary connection go for a month. So I asked for what I think is a reasonable additional, hopefully we don't use it all,

And then, on the reallocation that's less a function of budget and more function of just project scheduling. So the budget was created with the idea that certain projects be complete during the past fiscal year. This is one of them right that is continued into this and so it's just a function of sort of project scheduling that certain projects that have been planned for fiscal 27. either will not occur within the fiscal year or all the full costs that were allocated for those projects will not occur in the fiscal year. So it's not that certain budgets have been, sorry, certain projects have been sacrificed for this project. It's just scheduling.

Thank you so much for that explanation. Given that there's some rock surface, I'm not an expert to get into the specifics of it, but how does this potentially help scope additional conditions for future digging in that area?

I want to say, oh yeah, it's going to open, but this is a river. This is like one block. You can have sand that goes down 30 feet. The next block, I mean, we did sink a hole, didn't find rock. So I guess the short answer is like, I want to say yes, but I don't know that it really informed us too well. It informed us on that one bridge right before Wacoma Park. It's not an entire surprise, but it was a little bit of a surprise because it's just up on May Street. Yeah, you can dig down 20 feet in sand, so. It is something that we're always cognizant of. And we do attempt to estimate the amounts. But this one, we... So we had offset the sewer line by a foot and a half from the existing sewer. But we figured it was a very safe assumption that had been dug before. But somehow in the 1800s, they went through the rock. So...

Thank you, I appreciate that.

I'm going to move forward with the motion unless anybody else had any. I move that we authorize a budget increase of $42,712 for the Wacoma Park 9th Street sewer and 13th Street alley sewer project, increasing the total project budget from $497,288 to $540,000.

Move by Cavalieri.

Second.

Second by Paulson. Any further discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you, Randy. IGA with animal control.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm happy to bring you an intergovernmental agreement with the county for animal control. I really appreciate the time that you spent on this in July to give us some direction on things you wanted to see in the IGA. And I think this reflects the things I heard from you at that time. One that was very important to staff that it'd be a predictable rate. So this comes with a schedule of how much we expect to pay for the next five years. Previously, it was based on a percent of the Or a formula, based on how much the city use the service, so this is, I appreciate that this helps us to budget more accurately. You had asked that it include a catch up payment, so the first year we've added that with county and then it has a reporting requirement so there'll be some transparency and annual report from animal control. And then finally, some language that it does not preclude you from making a donation or a funding agreement in support of shelter services with another group outside of this agreement. So I think those are kind of the highlights. I'll look to the chief to see if there's anything more. So that's just the overview of the changes that were made or the highlights of this new IGA.

Thank you.

Anna.

um i had an opportunity to read through the contract and i had an opportunity to talk to abigail and chris about this um one of my concerns is um it was really great to have the county here and chief whole feet and adopt a dog to understand the distinction between animal enforcement and animal control services and shelter services. They're two separate things. And what I understood that Chief Holstey told us was that to date, shelter services have been included in with the services that we've gotten through animal control. The problem is that there's a third party involved, and they're not a party to this contract. And, and as far as I know, the the County doesn't have that shelter services piece locked up. We have a, I think it was a $50,000 line item in our budget for these services. And with this new rate that would be inclusive of shelter services, we're almost at the top of that. I'm not opposed to having like an animal control service contract with the county and I'm grateful to them for the services that they provide. But I'm concerned that if they don't have their ducks in a row and have the shelter services piece dialed in, then we are paying a lot of money for something that we're not getting. So in my mind, I love my analogies. I hire a contractor to do a deck and a patio for me. And in the contract, it says, if you can't do the patio, I can contract with somebody else to do the patio, but I'm paying you for the patio. And I would not approve this particular contract without the shelter services piece being in there for sure and i don't see a breakdown of like how much you know here's the cost that they want us to pay but how much is that actually going to the enforcement piece and like the work that they do that is the pushing paperwork and how much of it is actually going to the shelter services because i think what our community is expecting and what what we're hoping for is If we have stray dogs or animals picked up that are going to the shelter, they're going to be cared for. And that's not what this contract does. That's a shelter services contract. So I kind of wish as I was looking through this, and I appreciate Chris said, if the shelter services part isn't provided, we can terminate this contract.

Right.

Yeah, they would be in breach. But I think it would be helpful to have actual metrics and data that shows the enforcement piece that they're actually helping us with and what the shelter piece is. And then I think I'd prefer to pay for the enforcement piece separately and the amount that seems reasonable for that and shelter services separately.

And I asked the county for a breakdown of how much of the dollars the city provides to them. Go to shelter services and they said they don't have that breakdown, and I think traditionally we believe we have paid for part of the animal control employee. But we are dollars are not directly connected to the shelter services piece like we we always thought of it as we're paying for part of a person now. The whole program is the county's responsibility. However, they choose to deliver that. But there was not a through line that the county could give me of this dollar goes to enforcement and this dollar goes to shelter services.

Well, this contract that you gave us to authorize signing says that it includes shelter services. Yes. And my concern is if they can't deliver that. we shouldn't be agreeing to pay for shelter services. And the other thing that kind of bothered me, sorry, I'll let you guys have a chance here a second, but it says 3A, county shall provide animal control, shelter, and adjudication for city consistent with its dog control ordinance and consistent with the level of service provided within the county. If the county isn't actually providing the shelter services, then they shouldn't, you know, we... we should, like, they can't, we need some guarantees that they can do that. And I'd like to see the contract that they have that shows that they have that. Otherwise, the party that's providing the shelter services should be a party to this contract. Otherwise, it's not enforceable against them. So, right, Dan?

I mean, if you, yeah, if you wish to be part of managing that piece of it, I mean.

I think if we want, if we expect shelter services for our community, then, yeah, We should have some, and we're paying for it. We should be able to enforce that.

I think part of the conversation last time was a bit of a, we get to take a step back you know, in the, we don't have the liability or the responsibility for those pieces because we have contracted with the county and however they choose to deliver that service was up to them, whether they chose to deliver it directly or whether they chose to contract with the third party. So I just want to make sure, just in hearing, but I want to connect and say, I want to make sure that I'm understanding. And thank you for coming.

And the number we're seeing here, correct me if I'm wrong, is actual animal controls, wage, and benefits. That's the percentage we're taking that yearly cost from. We're not taking it from anything other than outside her scope of her yearly income. And that increase is based on probably COLA, you know, contracting and stuff like that. So that's what we're seeing. Traditionally how that's been. It's never been a contract where it has shelter service, X amount of dollars. wages x amount of dollars and then we get a percentage of that the county's always agreed to you're paying for service i.e the employee we cover animal control services or shelter services excuse me above and beyond that is it written in here no but that's that's where the dollar number came from it didn't come from the shelter part of this that's

Yeah, I mean, Abigail already said it. I like, I mean, it says in here that the county shall satisfy its shelter obligations, either through a contracted service provider or by directly operating the shelter. And so in my mind, like in terms of a contract, that's great, because the onus is on the county to do that. And I know they're doing it, you know, by a contract through a third party. But In this agreement, the onus is on the county to provide these services, not us. And I think that that's like significant thing to happen there. Like if they don't end up doing that, then they're in breach of the contract. So I don't a little bit leery about moving that liability. Doug.

Thank you. From what I recall from the last meeting with Sheriff English and Chief Holstein weighed in a little bit on this concern for shelter services. I think the way the contract is, and I guess Dan, please help weigh in on this or Abigail, Chief Holstein. I think the way that it's written currently is they will provide shelter services. Now, whether those shelter services are the same services that are the quality that Hood River Adopt-A-Dog provides. As Councilor Cavalieri said earlier, there's a certain expectation of what happens to those animals that they're cared for. Sounded like from the last meeting that there was no guarantee after the exhaustion of the Hukari fund that the county would be able to fund Hood River Adopt-A-Dog. So in light of that, does this contract allow for if those shelter services If we feel they are inadequate, speaking of the old ways that things used to be done, drop off a dog, go check on them every other day, that sort of thing. If we are able to support Hood River adopt a dog in that instance, after a discussion, budgetary discussions, et cetera, that's what I want to be able to understand is are we able to do that with the county? Would the county say, no, we're not interested in providing or contracting with Hood River adopt a dog anymore? What I would hate to see is the inability for us to try to bolster quality animal care if the county is not in a financial position to do so. So would this contract allow for us to support, say, could River adopt a dog if the county is not able to because of budget constraints?

Yep. Thank you, counselor. So the language written here in under city obligations, the last one is that the city basically has the ability or right to provide a financial contribution or donation to a third party for in support of, you know, animal shelter services, it's not that would be outside of the animal control piece, if you just wished to you know, financially support adopted dog or another third party outside of the enforcement piece, but just for the care of dogs, this agreement would allow you to do that.

And I guess my, the clarification I think around that is, let's say we get to the point next year where the county is providing animal control, which I think is important. And to Chief Holstein's point, what I think this contract is really about, if they choose to forego any support of Hood River Adopt-A-Dog, and they say, well, the service we have in the county is going to be a bare-bones shelter, and that's what you can – that's what's in the county – Are we able to have a conversation with them to say, what, what can we do as a city to help support her river adopt a dog? I don't want to be in the position where we have said, um, that, you know, in this contract that we want to contract with a third party service, but we get to that point where there is no third party service to support.

Amanda.

yeah and not I mean I could just see that getting super weird and complicated, because if. The county isn't using adopt dog, but we want to then we're paying for the city only dogs to get cared for and like are they even do they even still exists like I don't know that's just like. to imagine how that would go.

Great. Thank you for that question. What I understood from last time, and it was a long conversation, there's certainly parts I might have missed, was that council really wanted the city to have the ability to financially support Adopt-A-Dog, not necessarily to enter into a funding agreement or a level of service agreement or some other pieces with Adopt-A-Dog that would specify what kind of care, how they were delivering it, how many walks dogs got, but just a... You know, we, we recognize this as a essential service and we want to financially support it. So I saw it as something just wanting to have the option to provide financial support, whatever that might look like later, but keeping that somewhat separate from the animal control enforcement mechanism, which is what this IGA is.

Thank you.

And so The way I understand this is essentially the county and Hood River Adopt-A-Dog, they have their agreement, essentially give access to the building for a dollar a month, something of that nature. If they were to no longer have that agreement and Hood River Adopt-A-Dog ceased to be in that building, if Hood River Adopt-A-Dog moved to a different building or moved into a foster care model, we could then support them.

Right. I think you could provide financial support at any time. I think at any time. Yeah. I mean, regardless of their relationship to the County, that's the intent of the language here. Maybe that that's not how you're reading it.

And I would hope that we'd be able to have a conversation with our, you know, our counterparts at the County to say, you know, what can we do to, to ensure the survival of the physical shelter and the building that it's in prior to, you know, river adopted dog moving offsite or somewhere else. But yeah, ESA Architects, At least the way I understand this is that we, we have the option to support now or support later, whether or not the county decides to renew their contract or their radio was adopted August really not within our purview correct. ESA Architects, So. ESA Architects, Okay, I think I understand fully now, thank you. and

I think that this is kind of misunderstood. It's not about the parties. It's about us really understanding what this contract is for. And are we getting the services that we're paying, like that we're contracting for and paying for? Like, and that's, you know, I think that What I'm hearing you say now, Chief Holstey, is that we're paying for one third of a employee's time. But this contract also says that we're paying for shelter services and that the county can subcontract that out or they can perform it themselves. That's a separate issue. But what I guess I'm asking council is, do we think it's worth... you know, $46,000 or $48,000 to pay for somebody to, you know, working business hours, which we understand to be seven or eight till three, four days a week, that that person is on call to come and answer animal control things and then issue tickets if there's, um, and then deliver dogs to the, you know, the, to the shelter. Um, and you know, I, I look at it from the perspective too of, you know, if, if outside of those hours that that person is working, um, our city police officers are delivering dogs to the shelter. They are out of our city limits and are not helping the people who live here. So I'm just wondering if if we're getting the value that we are supposed to be getting out of this contract. If our expectation is, if we need shelter services outside of this, I think that that's a separate contract. If this is worth it to us, if the shelter services piece wasn't included with this, would we still think it's worth it to us? And is it worth it to the city to have you know, this contract for this dollar amount. And I do think that like what I've heard you say is that, yes, this is, we don't have a city ordinance about animals. We have that is controlled by the county. We decided that back in the eighties or whenever it was, and that this actually does relieve a lot of, you know, extra work on our police force that it is assigned to the county. But are we getting what we're bargaining for here is what I'm asking council.

I don't know that we're getting what we're bargaining for, given the fact that in the information that has been provided to us, it's your officers that are still doing a brunt of the work Thursday through Sunday. My understanding is like that is the high influx of hours. So if they're receiving $47,000, $789, but then there's still additional time that your officers are allocating on top of that. I mean, I share the same concern. Are they really providing all the services that they should? And to be quite honest, I don't think that the city should get into a specific contract for shelter services specifically. If the county, if that's the only local option that we have, I could understand that, but I have concerns about subcontracting, and then I just have concerns about the shelter agency as well.

Doug. From my understanding from the last discussion we had with Sheriff English and, you know, from the last meeting and from what I've heard from Chief Woolsey, this does sound like an IGA to me for animal control services. It also seemed that they made some compelling arguments for what happens in terms of animal control services after our police do work and we'll pick up dogs on the weekends or off hours, that there still is follow up, there's still paperwork that needs to be done. There still is the issue of liability that's carried there. So I'm convinced that we need an IGA for animal control services. When it comes to shelter services, all that we could glean from the last discussion was that they provide bare bones shelter services. And I think this contract allows us to say, well, we don't think that's sufficient enough. We can go to the county and say, can we work something out where we provide funding if that's what council decides to do? And I think that we have to think about these in two different buckets. One is animal control services and one is shelter services. If we don't feel as the city council, that the shelter services that the county are able to provide are adequate. And it sounds like we have the ability to contract elsewhere for that piece of it, but we would still need animal control services. I guess my question is if the county was to shutter the existing shelter, and they manage the shelter on their own, are we paying for animal control services that would only bring animals to that shelter or would animal control services continue to work with a third party that will provide quality care? It's not a question I think anybody here can answer, but that's my current concern here is that we come to the point where we've decided as a council that we don't feel that the shelter services are adequate. If they are not adequate, are we paying for animal control that only is gonna be tied to inadequate, in our opinion, shelter services? Or will the county continue to work with a third party if they're not providing shelter services directly? I don't think we can tell that from this contract.

I'm not hearing any of us say that we feel good about the value of the animal control in this contract. And I'm not hearing any of us say that we're totally convinced that the quality of the shelter would be up to snuff under this contract.

Grant. It sounds to me like we're asking two different questions. The two questions it sounds to me like we're asking is, do we value the animal control contract that's in front of us from the county? And then the other question is, is there a separate value of the shelter contract, a value difference in between the value proposition of level of service? between what's being offered as a shelter from the county versus the level of service that perhaps we expect from the shelter service side of it. And those are two separate questions that we may want to answer if we want to split it up that way. If we want to answer it in that way.

Amanda?

I'm going to take a stab at trying to bring this all together. I feel like it's kind of you know, we're, we're asking is $50,000, approximately $50,000 a year. Like I feel, okay. Personally, I feel good about that. If we're having adopt a dog, take care of the dogs and all that. Right. But if that goes away, then that seems like a lot of money to be paying for. Like we're paying for half time of a, of a person to, I don't know if we use half the time or whatever the ratio is. And if we do, then okay, I guess that's fair. And I can't remember, I know we had statistics at the last meeting about like the percentage of city dogs versus county dogs and all that. So that might be a good reminder. And if city dogs are half of it, then I feel like, okay, paying that percentage of somebody's wage is fair.

I think the assumption is that generally the city is 33% of the animal control calls. I don't know of the actual dogs.

I think Hood River Adopt-A-Dog says half the dogs come from within city limits. Is that about the percentage of the salary that we're paying? Is that in alignment?

What we've traditionally done has been a third of the salary or of the The program costs. And that's also the foundation of the numbers you see in Exhibit A as the next five years. That was the starting place.

I don't know. I'm just trying to. I definitely think, yes, I want an IGA for animal control. And I want, yeah. So I get how there's two different things. They're just so intertwined. It's hard to like separate.

Yeah, they're really intertwined. And that's, I understand that this is a contract with the county for animal control services, but we do know that they are subcontracting with the Hood River adopted dog and that we have not seen any sort of contingency plans from Hood River adopted dog that I don't believe that $50,000 would be enough to maintain the services that we are keeping here. I would really like to understand this methodology that you're all referring to about a third of staff time that we're paying for because Just again, given conversations that I've had, we're giving additional dollars, right? But it is still your officers that are providing more support on top of the $50,000 or close to $50,000.

I think what we talked about last meeting in regards to this is we're not seeing the back end responsibilities. I think Doug pointed on a little bit earlier in his conversation is we are more than, yeah, 80%, probably 90% of picking up dogs throughout the day through the week because of our 24-7 coverage service. And she's a 40-hour work week. But then she also handles the back end. So we drop a dog off tonight at 6 o'clock. Tomorrow she'll go in. She'll try to find the owner. Once we find the owner, she'll work with the owner. Has it been licensed? Rabies? They do all that. Fees? Maybe it's a history of it. She might cite someone for a dog at large because it's the second or third time. I don't know the protocol there. So there's a lot of back end things statistically that I never see. What we gave for numbers in which I 100% agree with you statistically, we're a high percentage of picking up dogs within the city and dropping them out there. Then it's the back end stuff that we just, we drop and go, no liability, we walk away unless she's not around. And there's an ordinance, Anna stated that earlier, the state statute. I mean, the ordinance came from state statute. We've cited under state statute. So it's not like we don't have a mechanism to do that. So, and we have done that before. So really it's the backend stuff that we don't see. And I think the sheriff had stated last time is how much she does on the backside of this pick up a dog.

And that is what the methodology for the third of that position. Yes. Okay.

And that's as long as I can recall, it's always been one third of that position is the way that's been broke down.

The interesting thing is though, if there is additional paperwork and stuff like that, like, so if there are fines or if there's, you know, the county maintains, retains all of those additional, like they retain the revenues from those fines, which should also go towards the payment of that person's salary. So I think that that's kind of an interesting thing. But I agree with Amanda. I'm in favor of having an IGA here. I think what I PB, Lupita D Montoya, What I would feel better about signing one is, I think the report at the end this exhibit be would be great if we had that information in front of us today we could like you know, for the last year, the last couple of years, then we could say okay yeah I see this is the value of that. PB, Lupita D Montoya, I also like. I would like to have some assurance from the county that they have a contract in place and a plan in place to have shelter services at the level or the standard that we've come to expect. And so I think that that should be in here. I do appreciate, as Chris had told me before, There is a 15-day termination per cause, like if the shelter services were to go away and we were concerned about that, we could terminate this IGA, renegotiate it at a level that we think is, you know, we'll pay for the animal enforcement piece of it, minus the shelter services piece, and we'll contract that separately. You know, I think I feel, you know, I'm more having an IGA, but I feel better about signing this particular IGA if we had some assurances for what their shelter services contract looks like today. And, and some actual metrics based on like the report that's in here that's filled out for the last year or two years. They've got to have that information.

I think we can ask them for that. They have provided this information for us in the past. This actually, this exhibit comes from when they presented to you in 2023, 2024. So we can, they totally know that we were going to put this in there. So we can ask them for that information today for the last calendar year, and then we'll be in the habit of getting it.

Doug. Thank you. I think for me, the central question here is this. If we are paying for animal control, I'm personally convinced that animal control and the amount allocated and the amount in the IGA is worth it if they bring dogs to a shelter where there's care. If we are locked into this contract where A week from now, a month from now, a year from now, there is a shelter that was described in the last meeting about how things used to be prior to Hood River Adopt-A-Dog. I don't think we want to be locked into animal control services that are tied to that shelter, right? So that's the difficulty here. Because let's say that does happen, Hood River Adopt-A-Dog in the county, go their separate ways, Hood River adopt-a-dog goes off-site. The animal control services that we would be receiving at that point would be going to the shelter that the county maintains, and we're paying for the services to go to that. So I would like some sort of opt-out where if there is not a shelter service that is provided that is quality, that we have the option to terminate the IGA so that we can provide animal control from the city or a third party or someone else. I think people say, let me know if this is completely off base here. I just want to avoid the scenario where Hood River Adopt-A-Dog is gone and we are locked into an IGA that's animal controlled just for a shelter that we feel is subpar based on the services that have been provided by Hood River Adopt-A-Dog. What happens in that type of scenario?

So if you look at the IGA under number nine, section B and C, that whole number nine is actually termination of the contract. And that actually is in there. So we can actually go to the table whenever we choose. If you felt the services Above and beyond, they're saying they're doing shelter services. And even though they're doing enforcement fine, we can come to the table based on a determination and go, we don't feel like this part of it's okay because they're stating in here that they're providing shelter services. So we can come to the table and talk about that.

You have two options. One is if you could say for cause you can terminate in 15 days, just for convenience, we're unhappy. You could do that with 90 days notice. Either of them, I would think the major part would be bringing them back to the table.

Okay, good. Well, to me, that that's the most important element here, because we have some leverage, we have some leverage, we can we can we can determine that, you know, not based on a set of necessary criteria, there is a shelter is that there is not a shelter, but that we feel that it's a quality shelter that the community feels that it's a quality shelter, if the community and we feel that it is not at that point, then we can terminate the contract.

Ben and Gladys.

Can we define a little bit the, I guess, kind of this level of service that we're talking about just in case we, I don't know, it sounds like this may not end up being signed this evening. I'm not sure which I mean, this expires even in the month, so I don't know where that leaves us. But if we're going to hash this stuff out, can we, I mean, Doug, I feel like you have a better memory about what was discussed the last time, so this is escaping me. What was the before times and then, you know, what we consider quality in terms of obviously we have concerns here about a decline in care. So I guess I'm asking what the vision is in terms of the care that we want versus the care that we don't want.

And maybe the chief has a recollection of, of prior to whoever adopted dog with those services were like, it's, it sounded from what Sheriff English said that they provided a shelter. They would go check on the dogs in the morning, that sort of thing versus, you know, the, the, the incredible amount of work that whoever adopted dog does to make sure dogs are healthy, make sure dogs are rehomed, make sure dogs are fostered, all that sort of stuff that the county can't provide above and beyond what they were able to do before.

You're talking about walking the dogs, playing with the dogs, actual adoption element?

Yeah, it sounded to me just basically that shelter services prior to Hood River Adopt-A-Dog were fairly bare bones. And I'm not trying to make a, no pun intended there, but it sounded like it was pretty bleak. And Hood River Adopt-A-Dog is providing quality services. Hood River Adopt-A-Dog is doing fostering services. They have trained professionals to work with animals, those sorts of things. The county can provide animal control. can provide a shelter, but little more than that. So I'm not sure what happened when the county was running with their limited resources, you know, adoption services or other sorts of things where they kill or not kill. I don't think we got that much information on what it was other than certainly not the quality of service that it is now.

Without the Hukari money, do you think we will be able to have a level of service that we are comfortable with.

Gladys.

I don't know that I can answer your question because as I think about just the question that Ben mentioned, the level of service and part of what Anna mentioned that, you know, in some sort of contracts, you have a breakdown of what those services include. And then, you know, I work in healthcare. Normally there'd be some sort of site visit to affirm that quality is there. I don't have that understanding when it comes to the shelter services, so I wouldn't be able to say here's what good service looks like versus not good service, but not having that broken down of here's what all that means. I don't know.

Anna, and then Doug.

I think that there's a lot of local legend around the Hukari shelter and the fund and all of that. My understanding is there were two very lovely people that cared about animals a lot and left some money to the county for the construction of a shelter. It's kind of been lost in the records of whether or not the use of that building had to be only for a shelter. And I think that the county provides That building to the current shelter services provider, which is adopted dog who's been around for 10 or plus years, I think. 15 years yeah oh 20 since 2015 thanks and but like. The money that was left over that the county was responsible for that was intended to pay for those shelter services. What I understand is that it is that fund has dried up, but I I've also done some due diligence and I looked at the contract that was between the county and it's not our business. It's, it's between the county and the shelter or between adopt a dog. And it just says that they're required to pay them. It doesn't say where the money comes from. So I, That's where like the local legend of this fund and whether it was intended to be for that or if the building was for, you know, it'd be great to have some clarity on that. And I'd love to see some documentation about, you know, was there a deed restriction or some kind of a trust something? I mean, I'd love to see that so we could have a better understanding of that. But all that to say, to come back to this of, I'm just used to seeing contracts that say, we're contracting for this service, and this is the amount you get for it. And if it includes this service, then that's the amount you get for that. And I would not recommend, I mean, I realize we have a deadline. I'm not for signing this contract in the form that it is, but I might be the minority here. I am in support of signing an IGA, and I do appreciate the work that the county does for us. And I appreciate the shelter services at the level that we're currently getting. I'd like more information.

Doug. Just to speak to the question about do we think that the shelter can provide quality services without the Hukari Fund? From what we've heard from Hood River Adopt-a-Dog and some of the testimony they made and some of the public comments, it sounded like the Hukari Fund is not the primary funding source for them. It's mostly donations and those sorts of things, but that they're already sort of in trouble at the levels that they're at. And to take away the Hukari fund and just have the county provide the shelter, the building would just be another deep blow to them, right? So it sounded like that's why they were looking for funding and that sort of thing versus the Hukari fund is 90% of their funding. It didn't sound to me that that was the case. it sounded like it was maybe going to take them to the point of no return underneath the floor that they could go no further, that they're operating in a razor sharp sort of funding margin at this point. So I think the question is, if there is no more Lucari fund, they would have to make that up. community donations or, you know, what they've asked for from us and from the county, which is, you know, additional funding. So I can imagine that the Hukari fund is exhausted. You know, the county does not know and has not told us that they are able to fund anything. It sounds to me that probably will not be funded. So we have to kind of go into this IGA with an understanding that, you know, whoever adopted dog after the Hukari fund is exhausted may not be able to fund the level of care that they've been able to provide before without assistance from the city that's what they told us as much right so I think we have to think about this as we need animal control we need shelter services animal control to me at least seems clear what we're paying for and the services that are being provided for that what is going to be the question as we go forward and it's not tied to this IG as far as I can tell is what happens when the Hukari Fund is exhausted and the county decides hypothetically to not fund anything further with the exhaustion of that fund. At that point, what happens to the River Adopt-A-Dog? Do they require funding from us, from the county? If they can't make that up, do they move to a different model? And can we support that model? And can that model be supported by the county? If it can't and the county says, no, we'll have a shelter and these are the services that we've provided that shelter, and we feel it's inadequate, at that point, we terminate the contract, right? And we renegotiate for animal control services, or we work with the county to have those animal control services support a shelter that provides quality care. So personally, I think I'm ready to move forward with an IGA, knowing that we have these mechanisms to... in the event that shelter services are inadequate, in our opinion, in the community's opinion, that once the Hikari fund has been exhausted, et cetera, that we have the ability to terminate the contract or renegotiate the contract under the new model. So that's how I see this. I think Cote River Doctoral is in trouble. They've told us that. They've asked for funding from us, from the county. The Hikari fund is going away. The county hasn't indicated they're going to be giving any more money. It's really going to be, what does that look like when that day comes? And can we support Hood River Adopt-A-Dog or a version of Hood River Adopt-A-Dog that is not directly contracted with the county? And can the county also contract with them at that point to provide animal control services, perhaps? Maybe at that point we could say, Yeah, that's okay with us. And maybe we can talk after we move past this IGA about some funding for Hood River Adopt-A-Dog and have that discussion as well. So I don't think that I personally need the IGA to look different than it does now because of the mechanisms to pull out of the agreement should we feel that the services are inadequate. If others feel different that the services are not, yes?

Is that a motion?

It's not.

Okay, it feels like you're quite close. It feels like you're quite close to supporting this IGA.

I will support the IGA. I want to give the fellow counselors an ability to speak. But my questions have been answered. I just wanted to provide further thought on this for fellow counselors to say, I think that this IGA is okay to move forward with. But the reason I feel that way is because I feel like we have the language within it to move forward. to terminate the contract and work with Hood River Adopt-A-Dog and the county under a new model should that day come.

Thank you. Go ahead.

I just want to make a comment, and I did not have a chance to join the last county commissioner's meeting to understand any additional updates, but public safety is one of those items that is in our letter, right, that they want to consolidate services. And so identified four different categories and public safety was one as we're having this discussion it just makes me think is is this something that they're potentially trying to say hey city how do we collaborate and maybe send that off to you all and you can provide this service something for us to keep in mind um i have not had a chance to reconnect with any of our county peers to to have a discussion around this i too want to support an iga for animal control services um And I just want to make that comment.

And I'm just going to point out one last thing, and then you guys can make a motion or whatever. But it does say in the contract that the city use of the shelter is provided through this agreement. And that's the port where I was like, we don't have a contract with the people who are doing the shelter services. So that sentence is not enforceable. I mean, the county owns a building that is leased to a third party. And so they can't just say, you guys can walk in there at any time and you can use this and you can use the services that go with it unless we have an agreement with the people that are running that shelter or the we can see that the county can make that assurance and they have to provide those shelter services. So that's part of what's getting me heartbroken.

But when you're building your deck, you hire the general, he hires the guy with the hammer, he hires the guy with the sheetrock, he hires the guy with the cement. Those guys are working for you. The county is subcontracting with somebody to run the shelter. We contract with the county for control and shelter. Doesn't work for you?

Well, I think that if I go out and tell the guy with the hammer exactly what to do, but it's not safe and it's not like to go build me a tree house, he's not going to do that because that's not in the contract. So I don't know if that analogy works.

I think the analogy being that we hold the county responsible, right? If the shelter services are not provided, then we hold the county responsible and we don't have a relationship with the contractor that they've used. Just like if I'm a city manager, I am your one employee. If you're unhappy with Neil, that's my problem because you've hired me as your general contractor. Since you're just standing right here. Bad example. But I am the responsible party. I mean, in this case, the county is a responsible party. They're the ones with whom you'd have an issue on how it's being done.

Dan, I was just curious to hear your thoughts since you're here.

The contract says that the county will provide shelter services. If you have a particular idea that that should mean more or something in something particular, then you need to put it in this agreement. Otherwise, they're providing shelter services, black box, they're going to build the patio, whatever. If they don't do that, you have an out. One problem I have is, it's weird, you should always have the ability to pay someone else to provide shelter services. I don't know why it's in here. It seems to me that if they're breaching their contractual obligation to provide shelter services, you can't say that it's a breach because you have this other remedy. So if you have a particular idea of what shelter services means, it's not clear enough in here, this contract's too ambiguous, make it more specific. You have this termination provision. If it doesn't measure up to even amorphous ideas what it means, you can do that. I don't think the county is going to say, no, you're not getting out of this contract because we have a shipping container where we shove these dogs. That's shelter services. And you didn't ask for more specificity. I don't think they're going to say that. They're going to say, fine, do it yourself. So this, given the ideas that I see in people's minds, I think this is probably sufficient enough, but if it's not, if you have a particular idea of the services that should be provided, it's not spelled out here, and you think there's gonna be a problem, then make it more specific.

About that exhibit B, Anna, you were talking about, could that solve this problem?

HAB-Juliette Boone, and things to that i'd be happy to have that information to help us decide like I don't like. HAB-Juliette Boone, Exactly what are the animal control services that we're paying for and what is the shelter services that we're paying for because this this contract as it's written covers both but. To Dan's point, it's not specific of what the shelter services are or what our expectation is.

It's in there. It's in there. The shelter services as a black box. It could be great. It could be, you know, adopt a dog or it could be a shipping container down the waterfront.

Well, and we know that adopt a dog is a no-kill animal shelter operator. And to Dan, talk about what was the alternative and what times were before. I think that euthanasia was an option. And it was also, hey, you found a dog. Hold onto it until we can figure out who the owner is. So I mean, that's an onus on our community. So I don't know. Yeah. I will not make a motion in support of having this. I'd like additional information.

Um, I'm ready to make a motion with one final comment. What Dan just said to me is sufficient rather than get into the specifics about what we feel quality care is and put it into a contract, which the county, by the way, might say, we're not going to answer it to that contract either. I think rather than, you know, get too far into the specifics, as long as we have the ability to terminate the contract, if we are getting feedback from the community, feedback from Hood River Adopt-A-Dog, in which there is a case where the shelter services are inadequate. We have the ability to terminate the contract and work towards whatever we can do to support a workable model that is going to provide quality services. not no kill or, you know, a no kill shelter, you know, not as Dan said, you know, a shipping container down to the waterfront and that sort of thing. So in here, it's really, are we just authorizing the mayor to, there's not really a motion here, so to speak. It's just authorizing the mayor to sign the IGA.

Abigail, can you speak to that? What's the ask?

Yeah, I am seeing that now, I apologize. If you just read the staff recommendation there, we moved to authorize the mayor to sign the new IGA.

Okay, I moved to authorize the mayor to sign the IGA with the county for animal control services.

Moved by Doug. Second. Second by Ben. Discussion? All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, Aye. Any opposed. PB Sarah Silver, Nay. PB Harmon Zuckerman, Nay from cavalry. PB Harmon Zuckerman, Chair votes I motion passes. Thank you.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, seismic PB David Ensign, Hey, um, Mayor and members of the city council have a request for a contract amendment with FFA architecture so that they can support us in applying for a state seismic grant if we are approved for a bond and go forward with the police station renovation and expansion project. State seismic grants are available up to $2.5 million. for direct seismic strengthening activities. We think that the bond, the police expansion being a critical public safety facility in a 100-year-old unreinforced masonry building would be competitive for this grant. But it does take a lot of technical engineering reports and as well as we could use assistance with people who have experience applying for it regularly and FFA architecture can supply that for us. So we chose FFA to help us do the initial architectural design for the renovation to the police station when we solidified on that alternative back in 2025. And so this would be an amendment to that contract. This is separate from the Bond Information and Engagement Activities that they've done around graphics work. That's separate. This was really about the floor planning work that they did for us before we even started the bond campaign. And this would be a contract amendment to that contract. So the proposed fee is for $11,700, bringing that total contract up to $27,400. And that would need to come from budgeted contingency in the general fund, as this was not anticipated. If we choose to not get this help, we don't have expertise on staff to do these technical seismic reports. We could wait to see if the bond is approved, but we would miss this grant round. And so we would have to reapply in 2027, which would mean pushing construction out to 2028. So just be like a big a big idling of our of our time if the bond is successful.

That was my question to Dan. Thank you. Ben?

Just a couple of questions. Say we don't wait and move forward with this and the bond fails. If we were to go out for an alternative bond again in the future, can certain elements of this application, such as reports or something like that, be reused for the purposes of not redoing the whole thing again and cost savings?

Well, and we could reapply for this grant again in the future. This grant program has been longstanding and they accept applications every year. So, yeah, the information will be useful for reapplying. Whether or not it would be useful generally?

not sure uh and then my second question if the bond because i know this is you know coming out of the general fund contingency the bond passes are we able to reimburse the general fund uh you know from the money from the bond measure is that like an allowed expense in terms of you know planning or permitting or whatever

reimbursement of bond eligible expenses is allowed and it was in your enacting resolution. Whether or not this qualifies, we would need to look at more closely. So we can pay for capital. Anything that is considered a capital project under generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP accounting principles. So anything that adds to essentially the asset value. So that's It includes architectural, engineering, design, permitting, anything that under GAAP would add to the asset value is a capital expense and is bond eligible activity. This is more of like a technical report to go for a grant. But it is engineering and it is pertaining to the facility. All that is to say we'd have to look at it.

Thank you.

Gladys?

I'm in full support for this grant. What I was curious to understand is, do we know how competitive this grant is? How many other Oregon jurisdictions are also applying for it?

Yeah, we think, well, our architects tell us that they think that we are highly competitive. Like I said, it's public safety facility, so kind of the tier one of standards that need to be met, and they're currently in and renovating brick masonry building. So for those reasons, we think we're competitive. Generally, it's about 50-50. They have about 50% of their applications get approved every year. So it is highly competitive. But from what we've heard, we may, architecture folks thinks that we'll score well.

And if I remember correctly, I think this was last year when they came to present to us that they have had success with other jurisdictions and supporting them with their grants as well. Am I remembering that correctly?

Yeah, in fact, even John Pete, the architect assigned to us with FFA, helped not during the application, but he helped administer some of the monies. We got this grant for our fire station.

Amanda, and then Grant.

I mean, other applications do before the election, would we know the results before the election? Or do you know when they?

No, they don't have the exact even application deadline yet. It's just generally in the fall. And then that's a whole month long process months long process. So I think we would know in like early 2027, if we were successful.

Okay. And I'm just curious. I mean, hopefully the bond passes and we get the grant and all things go forward. If the bond doesn't pass and we get the grant, do we take the money and save it for later? Do we, could you have to have a plan in place or do we pass on it and apply next year or another time? What's the...

yeah i don't know how long the grant award um lasts for how long they'll hold on to the money for you so for instance if we want to just go right back out for a revised bond in may or november i could check into that if you'd like that information um But say we abandon the bond, we would need to come up with, at minimum from some other funding source, enough matching funds to meet their requirements. And I'm sorry, I don't know off the top of my head what their matching requirement is in order, if we wanted to just sort of piecemeal certain seismic improvements to the basement.

Yeah, I was just curious. Thank you.

I assume we are successful in getting the bond. How much would a year delay opportunity cost be in escalation interest? What have you?

Well, I guess this is going to tell me what construction costs are going to go up.

Yeah, ballpark. More than $11,700. I would say undoubtedly. Significantly. Yeah. So if we pushed this grant off a year, the difference in between the two would be magnitudes?

I would think so, yes.

Thanks.

Do you need a motion? Yes. I believe there's a suggested motion on page 91.

I move to authorize a city manager to execute a contract with FFA Architecture for technical support for the city of Hood River State, Hood River State of Oregon Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program application.

Moved by Rivera.

Second.

Second by Cavalier. Any further discussion?

HAB-Jacques Juilland, All in favor.

Yes. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Any opposed. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Motion passes. Thank you, Chris.

HAB-Michael Leccese, I get talk about water from parking and that's something controversial. So it's helpful. David Ensign, So on June 9 2026 City Council approved an addendum to the downtown parking study which extended those guiding principles to analysis on the city's waterfront district. David Ensign, rick Williams and his group conducted data collection in July and August of 2025 they've assembled. a report that is part of your packet. And Rick and his team will present the subsequent analysis and key findings, as well as conclusions for discussion. So I will refer to Rick. I will try to set up his presentation.

Thanks, Chris. Good evening. Good evening.

It's good to be here. Thanks for having me back. I was here last month. Time flies. My name is Rick Williams. I'm senior partner at Rick Williams Consulting. We're a parking and transportation demand management firm located in Portland, and we've been in business for 35 years. And I was looking at our list of Oregon cities that we've done parking studies for, and we've now exceeded 40 cities. But Hood River is one of our favorites.

Good answer.

Thank you, sir. It's good to be here. As Chris said, we've actually done a pretty extensive data analysis of the waterfront in 2025 in July and August of 2025. What we call the high season was not in your report, but will be in this in this PowerPoint. We came back and did some additional work in the low season. and actually came down and measured how that same parking system works in what you call your low season. We're here in November. And so you'll see those differences and hopefully that will help when we get to recommendations and considerations. We've heard some public comment about seasonality. And so that was one of the reasons we wanted to make that adjustment. Okay, thank you. I hope I can navigate this.

I hope you can't see because I cannot help you.

Okay, we've got some topics to go over. I wanted to give you some background, the project area itself, the objectives that were part of our scope. So when we're down there collecting data, what kind of questions are we trying to answer with the data that we find? show you some performance, how we measure performance. It's a simple industry technique for communicating performance. It's a color-coded based program. Our data approach, what our methodology was, what the on-street supply looks like, what the off-street supply looks like, and then key findings and some recommendations for you. So the objectives, when we were asked to come down and take a look, was one, the city is very interested in making decisions based on data. Because parking is a very emotional topic. And so sometimes it's good to have real data. It tells a story and it helps people separate out perceptions from reality. There's a desire to increase trip growth within the waterfront district. get more people to come, more people to enjoy it, more people to support the businesses down there and enjoy that beautiful part. I was lucky to come early today and I spent a couple hours down there just to make sure that the data was still relevant and there it is, but there's a couple of changes that have happened on there that I think are important to note. Really important is to facilitate the ease of use of the area. It's getting congested. And so the strategies, look at the data, what's going on, and then what type of strategies are going to contribute to that goal of making it a customer-friendly place to be. Maximize available supply. In other words, oftentimes we're brought to cities and the first thing they ask us is build us a garage. And the first thing we ask them is, let's look at what you have. And so I think it was neat that the city says, tell us what's down there, what's available, how's it operating? What are our opportunities? And then finally, any suggestions that we would make for changing the way you do parking management down there that we can help you look at, are they self-sustaining? What's going to cost the city? And can those costs, if there are new costs, can those costs be covered so that you're not in the middle of it? Our data approach, like I said in your report, it's the high season. We went back and got the low season. So assess parking when it's really busy and when people say there's always a parking problem, let's look at also the off season to see what's happening down there and would you manage it differently based on the data. We did a complete inventory of every parking stall in the waterfront area. We went down block face by block face, and I'll show you a graphic here in a second, counted every stall and located every stall, and then identified what the stall type was. And then we identified and located every off-street facility, port, and private, and have complete stall counts for you on that. So you have a very accurate inventory of what's down there. We went down and did occupancy counts off street. So we just counted parked cars every hour on the hour for 10 hours. And then on street, we did a combination of occupancy and turnover. So we did hourly license plate catalog so that we could track every vehicle down there. Once we get those license plates, we get rid of them. But we can look at how long people are staying, are they moving their cars, and are they violating the time status. that are down there. That's called utilization. 100 percent sample of both the on and the off-street systems. We think our data is pretty statistically significant with 100 percent sample. This is the thing I told you about measuring performance. It's easy for people to understand that when a parking, and this is a parking industry technique, when a parking system, whether it's a lot, a block face, or an entire supply, is constrained is generally parked for some significant period of time at a level of over 85% occupancy. So if you have 100 stalls and you have 85 cars parked there, people are going to start to feel constrained. It's more difficult. If you get above 85%, it becomes frustrating. And so that's that level of constraint when you really need to have a discussion. Again, whether it's a an entire system. We use this same measures of performance for parking garages, for surface lots, for neighborhoods. So it's a really good technique to at least communicate to the public what's going on. Your goal for any type of supply that you control, would be to stay in the 70% to 84% range. What it means is you don't have to drive very far to find a parking space, but it's robust enough to be healthy for the area and to be healthy for businesses there and to attract new businesses that might want to come. When you're down in the yellow and the green range, you have opportunity. Doesn't necessarily mean that's a bad thing, It just means you have parking that you can expand into and attract new businesses, attract new visitors, or direct new visitors into. That's how we measure performance. This is a little data wonky. That's what I'm known for. But this is a map of your study area. It shows in the different colors, the off-street system. This is not occupancies yet. This is just where they're located. And you can see that in the off street system, there's about 1673 stalls of parking down there. They're broken up into nine private lots, basically associated with the private land uses. And there's two sites that were Port of Hood River and then there were two developing sites that have now been completed. that were gravel lots that people were parking on that are now very good looking parking lots, surface lots. But those new surface lots did not add any supply to any new supply. It's just simply made a better looking, more accessible and sort of industry standard type of lot. So there's 13 sites down there. There's also that purple area to the east is a big, giant gravel lot. And a lot of our data doesn't include occupancies there, but we measured it because there were cars parking there, even though at that time they weren't supposed to. So that was demand, and we wanted to track that demand. So that's why that 700 stalls says additional one site down there. Because it's a development site. It could be a spillover site. We don't know. But they've got better signs. I was down there today. There's better signage up there, but there were still 10 cars on the lot. I say don't park there. The on-street system is interesting because there's 289 total on-street stalls on the streets in that area, and you can't see them really well here, but the red dots belong to the city of Hood River, and the yellow dots, can I do that? Yeah, the yellow dots here also belong to the city of Hood River. The red dots are three hour parking, which is the primary use that you allow visitors and these yellow dots are no limited unregulated parking. Anybody can park there for any length of time. The green dots belong to the port of Hood River. They have 128 of the 289 stalls available for on-street parking. They are pay to park. And they're both on the east end. I'm sorry. The east end and the west end. So overall, you have 161 parking stalls that you control in this larger waterfront district. So 161 stalls, which is only 8% of the total district supply, and 56% of the on-street parking offered to the public. And I'll begin with my color system here. The top two rows show that on a given peak high season day, on the weekdays, 911 vehicles will use the on-street system. And 1,102, which is a 21% increase, will use the on-street system on a Saturday during the hot weather and the peak season. If you look at the total number of on-street stalls, 294, they're only 58% occupied in a peak weekday. If you take the port and the city. And then on a Saturday, you take those 294 94 stalls and they're 84% occupied. Kind of the high end of that efficient range moving to constraint. The bottom two rows is city parking. It's fully maximized. So those 161 stalls are 95% No, 95% occupied on the weekday, 100% occupied in the no-limit stalls, and then 99% occupied on the Saturday. So your stalls are fully maximized. Interestingly, your time stays three hours. And the average length of stay for any use, port or city, is around two hours. So, you know, when people say, there's a lot of employees parking in the on-street system. We also did some measuring reparking to see if cars were moving, and it was less than 3%. So a lot has happened. Again, that perception from reality. Are employees maximizing the on-street system? It doesn't look like it right now. Commissioner?

There's also the 9-11 peak occupancy that also includes somewhere in here it said that three to four like the peak hours.

Yeah, we have that for you. I'll give you a peak on the map. Thank you. That's a good question. In fact, that's the next one. Okay. I was very thrilled. Thank you. So what we did is we took a bar chart and we recorded every hour of our survey day to see how many cars were actually parked on street by hour. And as you can see, oh, I'm sorry. I must have skipped one. Here it is. That was the off street system. I said, that doesn't look good. from a parking point of view. So hopefully this answers your question. This shows you by hour how many of those 161, I didn't give you the 58% and the 84%. I just want to focus on your supply because that's what you can control right now. We have that data, but I thought this was more important. So as you can see, hour by hour, the red line being the high season, the summer, the green line being the high season on a weekday, the red line, the high season on a Saturday. And then I told you we had new data. We came back in November and the blue line is what happens in the off season, low season, winter months, November and beyond. And as you can see, Saturday, it's constraint. And like I said, if you take that average two hour time stay, that means the stalls are turning about five times a day. You've designed your system at three hours to allow it to turn at three stalls a day. So you're getting more out of your system than it's designed for, which is good because we're not saying change your time stays because you're getting that turnover that you need. And 5.0 turnover a day is very, very good as an industry standard. Retailers would die for that in other cities. The green line, you can see it takes a little bit longer to get there, but it gets into the red zone one, two, three, four, five hours of the 10-hour day. So right around 12 o'clock, things get squirrely in the on-street system. And we see issues we've heard from the public, traffic issues, safety issues, congestion issues, people circling around. And so the peak hour, as you can see for the Saturday, it's a three-hour peak hour, 98%, 98%, 98%, three hours in a row, which literally means that you've got to go by probably and then come back, which I did today. drove down to the intern around and came back to see if I could get an on-street parking stall. So it's really jammed. And the same thing happens in the later hours of a weekday. Here's the off-street system. So this is the, I think what really boils down to the importance of where we'll end up with our consideration for you is that the peak hour in the entire 973 stalls that are Again, this does not include the 700 stalls that could be there. The peak hour is 61% on the Saturday and 63% on the weekday. What that means is demand is basically low to moderate in the off-street system while you have this huge pinch point and high traffic volume with just 161 stalls. So that's an opportunity. Weekday or weekend, there's always 300, just take the third bullet point. There's always 370 empty stalls, regardless of the day, off street. So there's a lot of opportunity. So if you were to look at this as a system, which hypothetically, but you have other entities who control parking. But if you looked at this as a parking system serving a public park, That's a parking garage. 370 stalls is a decent sized small to medium sized parking garage.

But we don't own those.

Pardon me?

But we don't own those.

You don't own those. And that's a challenge. And that's a part of the strategies we have to look for. So thank you. That's a great question and a great point. And again, it does not include the 700 stall travel lot. So here's the peak season peak hour. So for the counselor, between 3 and 4 PM on a weekday. Here's what it looks like within our color scheme. Green meaning low demand. Red meaning constraint. And you can see a lot of green and orange in the off-street system, primarily green. And this is on a weekday. So this is the low end of my 370 average. There's about 360 empty stalls in this area. Whether they're available or they want to be available is not an issue. Back to your point, Mary. It's just simply there's a lot of empty parking. And now it's actually gotten better because in the original total, we had those two gravel surface lots. And now we have real vibrant and really well-designed surface lots that are out there. And they're charging for parking and they have their signs up. You can use your app to pay on those two lots now. And you can use apps to pay for parking in these lots here. When we first came here, it was kind of a 50-50 mix of off-street parking that was free versus off-street parking that was charged. Now most of the off-street parking is paid apart. That's a change that's occurred. But we're not seeing the occupancies changing. I was down there today and really the occupancies, it's the same dynamic as occurring. So here's Saturday. So again, your system is red. We know that. And it's red for three hours on Saturday straight. And then it drops a bit and it comes right back up to red for the last hours of our survey day. The big change occurs, and rightfully so, on the port lot, number one, up here in the east corner. A lot of sailboarding activity, kiteboarding activity. It just makes sense. It's well controlled, well managed. You've got a one way, you're one way in, you're stuck, you got to pay. And then you go. But you can see there's not a huge change other than in this little, on this, this band of parking. You know, from Stoked all the way down to Fermat. right through the middle of the off-street system. But those two lots where that red band in are about 60 stalls. But they're currently paid apart. We do see more activity in the ports off street system. I mean, on street system right here along the southern edge of the lot one and their on street system. And then it wraps around to the east side of the big lot 14, the 700 stall gravel lot. So port activity does pick up on street a bit. not significantly. But yeah, the biggest change that occurs on Saturday off street is in the port lot up here in the lot number one, we call it. I'm not sure what they call it.

It's a little confusing because 14, you're 14, we call lot one. You call one. You're one, we call it the event site. So, but you're doing great. You're doing great.

We didn't know that. We just gave mom number. It's okay.

No, you're doing fine.

Thank you, Noah. Sorry to confuse you. But again, you can see the on-street system is just where it is both days, which is creating a pinch point. And I'll get into it. But people are avoiding demand. They're avoiding where they could go, I think, because there's things we can do. But here's that new data on the off-peak. Completely different system. There's some red stalls right here. right in the middle, but it's very few stalls in the total of the 161 you have. Yeah.

That is the pizza right there.

You know, and so as we look at considerations that we'll get into, we look at considerations. We have a way different approach that you could possibly do this in by using what we've heard from some folks in the public is talk to us about seasonality. How do we manage this thing to reflect the data that I think we've substantiated? Do you have a parking problem in the peak season? Yeah, in the on-street system and in the on-street system that the city owns. Do you have a, from a parking manager's point of view, if you had a systemic approach or if you could, do you have a parking problem? Not necessarily. You have a guidance problem. You have a directionality problem. You have a choice problem. And that's things that, you know, we'll try to address. So key findings, like I said, the duration of stay, the three hours works. You're not having people abuse it. I think the violation rate was less than 10%, which is really good within the industry. You try to be within five to 10% violations, because you don't want to be so draconian that you're giving tickets every, you're one hour over. I mean, you're one minute over. We're going to give you a ticket. So three hour time limit works. The turnover is outstanding from an industry point of view. Within the city supply, these are just findings related to your supply. You've reached your maximum capacity. If you want to drive new trips into that district, you're not going to do it on street. You're at maximum capacity and you need to be able to capture or direct or encourage Use of the off street supply. So as I said, the trip growth potential. There's no room for new trip growth in the city supply as currently managed private supply, which includes the off street in the port. The off street is underutilized. I talked to you about the empty stalls at the peak hours. On street parking right now, the paid parking that the board has is parking of last resort. You can see even when it does approach even the yellow or the orange level of demand, it's occurring later in the afternoon. I mean, it's the point when you're maxed out that people go And they're still, they'll go to the port. And it might be different now because most of the off street parking is paid for. But people weren't even going to the off street system. It was your system and then the port. So anyway, the trip growth potential is you have a lot of potential. If you could get 370 stalls to turn three times, that's a lot of trips that you could put into the district. And still, but it still requires that you're going to need to do something with your supplies. The system is in an imbalance. The current parking management approach is inefficient. There's a lack of integration within the supply. When we go back to that objective, which is to maximize the supply that's there, because I think you'd rather have new development rather than new parking, particularly when you have an opportunity, but that opportunity is challenging. There needs to be some communications and awareness. As I was down there today, some of the signage is very confusing. and that includes everything from signage to pricing to guidance. A lot of people, when we talk about systems like this, like you have in your park, is like, think of airports. You know, I should know what I'm going to do as I'm coming in, not once I get in. So there's need for that. So our recommendations is manage the parking strategically, explore pay to park, within your own system. We're not recommending, we're saying explore it, but it is a pinch point. All decisions are being made now because of your system. People want to be right in front and they will do this when you're surrounded by some empty parking. The challenge, better integrate the existing supplies That you provide a balance of access on street and off street and a balance of cost choices. Doesn't all have to be the same price. It doesn't all have to be managed uniformly, but people need to have a choice. If I want to park here, maybe I need to pay more. If I want to park less, I'm willing to walk a little farther. And so we need to explore that with you. And communications and awareness, I won't hammer that one anymore. Signage guidance and things like that. With that, yeah, that's the questions.

We usually have the same questions anyway, but hypothetically, how would your recommendations change if the city owned all of the parking down at the waterfront?

They wouldn't change much at all. It would be that integration. Then we could really look at price differences, how to integrate permits into it. Can you reallocate employees? Can you, you know, some areas, all that middle area would become visitor parking and you could put the employees outside. So it gives you, the recommendations wouldn't change. It's what I've been hinting at of how can we integrate this? How can we balance this? If a single entity had control, cost options, access options, guidance and directionality would be much simpler.

Trying to go back and look at your data points around what was considered a weekday on Monday was completely different than a Friday. Oh, yeah. And so I was trying to quantify that information that you provided, but can you help us understand?

We were there on, it was either a Wednesday or a Thursday. We never collect data on Mondays and Fridays. Thank you for that. That's another one of like my red color coded system. Yeah, that's an industry standard. Don't collect data on a Monday or Friday.

I also just realized I wasn't speaking into the microphone. So apologies.

Thank you for that. Yeah. So we made sure that what we could get as close to typical as possible. Okay.

You answered the question about any additional data that would be really beneficial. I wanted to ask a question about your overall process. So data-driven decisions, important, but there's also this other part that isn't as quantifiable, which is, you know, the stories of the business owners and how that impacts the overall data that we receive as far as like, and as well as the recommendations. So can you help us understand When you are conducting this, do you reach out to the businesses to just hear their thoughts? I mean, I know personally, I've been down there to see those big vans with all the surfer dudes, right, parked, and they do stay for quite some time. So curious how that, those stories show up in the data that you've presented.

In this go around, we didn't. In the past we have, we've done work down there for you before and we've had those conversations with the businesses. Part of that moving forward would be as we said, explore pay to park options, explore minimizing the current imbalances. We would assume that we would have conversations with the businesses, yes.

Totally anecdotally, this cropped up on my radar this spring.

Somebody said, Paul, you guys charge behind ferment now.

And of course, they think we own everything. But I was like, nah. And then I realized, oh, they're not totally wrong. Like the amount of change that happened coming into this summer by those other owners. And you've been down, you've seen it. Right. Tofurky only or pay or employees only or like that really changed.

It's so interesting. A two hour parking, two hour visitor parking, and then you get in and it's paid. Yeah, right. So, you know, it's okay to say we have two-hour stalls, but you get into it, then all of a sudden you have to pay.

And then, of course, I believe it's true, Chief, correct me. Nobody has enforcement except us and the port. And the port has enforcement, but they don't have a, like, a cop. So it's funny, the, like, threat versus reality. Like, is this, talk about from your data perspective, like, those have an impact. People believe those signs.

Yes. Well, I think, you know, there's, and when we, we didn't show you the data, but I explained it. I was surprised by the low violation rate and all of the history of input we've heard from, it's just employees parking on street all day. Well, amazingly, because in a lot of districts we work in a situation like this, it'd be packed with employees.

What did you say? It would be packed with employees.

So we were surprised, the consultant was surprised by your turnover rate and your low violations and that because we were able to track license plates, we weren't seeing a lot of people moving. You know, we're seeing the same car, but we're seeing it in different places. So that's good news. What we don't have a lot of data on other than occupancy is how the internal lots are actually being used. because all we did was go in and count parked cars. So we don't know how long people are staying or whether they're moving within the lots. But the big surprise to us was that so much more of that off-street system now has gone to paid parking since we were here last year. So that's actually a positive. It's just how do you balance it? Because that was a challenge in the past was owners saying, we don't want to charge for parking.

Thank you. You just spoke to the internal piece, and then I also just wanted to mention the enforcement and the fees. The ticket price the city charges is much different than the port, similar to what Mayor mentioned. Those are the complaints I get. How come it's so much more expensive when we get a ticket down at the waterfront when it's technically a port parking lot and that the fee structure is completely different as far as like what we charge overall, but also the ticketing as well.

Well, some of that's that communications awareness, but that's a hard one. When you have multiple owners, the balancing and the messaging is as far as you can get through a conversation to want to capture that unused supply. Because if you can capture it, it's The one thing that would sell to businesses is that if we can capture that unused supply, that's new business. And so that, you know, I would kind of start with that in any conversation is we're not here to take over. We're not. But look at the data. We could grow so many more trips if people, because some people come here and, you know, locals probably get it. But when you're on that off season, that peak season, you're getting a lot of out-of-towners. They run into it and they say, that was fun, but it was way too congested. So how many trips are you losing because you have this pinch point?

Counselors, how concerned are you guys about taking heat when we start charging for our on-street parking down there? Are you pretty sensitive to that? Am I? Okay, that's, I just, that's on my mind. Can I just quick get the answer and then back to Amanda? Yeah, Ben?

Oh, no, I was raising my hand and that I am sensitive to it because anytime we talk about parking, like, yeah. Yeah, good, sir. Thank you, guys.

I just think about the wage inequities that we have in our community and to one of the public comments, you know, that the kiddos play out in the park, right? And I think of that. If we start charging and it's, as you gave recommendations, my first thought, well, what if we had something that was, it was gonna be controversial, but something that was for locals versus visitors versus employees to potentially help offset the potential cost piece that could come of this for local families.

Amanda, sorry, back to you.

That's okay. And since this study was done last year before a lot of the lots were paid, do you, I mean, I would assume that there may be even more demand on our parking because it is free. So it could even, I mean, 98, where do you go from that? But like even in less than 98, maybe it's all a little bit higher.

Well, you're, you're, I agree with you on your point. So I think that's why I wanted to go down there today. Um, so anecdotal, um, HAB-Jacques Juilland, Looking at the change the two big changes were just upgrading those two lots the salt total didn't change, but they actually look like parking lots right HAB-Jacques Juilland, And then the change of how much more off street paid parking was HAB-Jacques Juilland, And in seeing that HAB-Jacques Juilland, I would agree with you without data anecdotal professionals point of view, the on street system is still driving the whole thing because there were lots of spalls installs available off street. The two new lots, they were empty. So I think, yeah, that imbalance is still there, even with that positive step that the private sector took to charge for parking. The problem is the imbalance is in your systems. because people want to park there and they're just going to do that.

That's interesting. For me, anecdotally, like I'm driving down there and I think, man, if I go behind like Dakine, like I'm sure there's some rule and I'm going to get like randomly in trouble. But if I'm like on the street, like the signage is going to be correct. So that vague signage is on my mind when I'm down there.

I think you're dating yourself. I don't think Dakine's been down there for years. Yeah. PB, Lupita D Montoya, But that's not what I was gonna say um I. PB, Lupita D Montoya, Oh no I lost my train of thought, but I think it was interesting that you said that both those parking lots and new parking lots that had been paid are were empty today because. PB, Lupita D Montoya, When I was reading your study today I almost jumped in my car to drive down there, just to see like how many spots are down there, but um. PB, Lupita D Montoya, i'm curious, you know what was interesting to me in your in your presentation was. HAB-Masyn Moyer- You said we basically have a parking garage sitting down there. That's indeed that are unused space. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And I'm just throwing this out as an idea of like how expensive would it be to for the city to like cost analysis of to acquire the parking that exists there consolidated so that it is under a single ownership and invest in transportation, so that we can get more people downtown with free parking at the waterfront versus building a garage. Because personally, I mean, as a local that's been here over a decade, I avoid the waterfront in the summer. I just don't go down there or I go early in the morning and walk with my friends and we park at the marina, not even down there so that we don't have to deal with this. I hear complaints as a council person about parking downtown more than I hear about parking at the waterfront. I think it's interesting that you looked at this a year ago. We heard about it a month or two ago that you were going to be giving us some information on the waterfront. But you did this study a year ago. And I'm glad that you did. And I think it's interesting. But I feel like the bigger alligator near our boat is parking downtown. So how can we use this information to help alleviate that?

I just want to add to that. after the port completes their roundabout than the idea of a trolley that's doing that. And the trolley is shuttling people up and down.

Well, the political gripe I hear that I'm sensitive to is if I want a slice of pizza, it's free to park at Solstice and I pay to park at Andrews and I'm dating myself. So, you know, I'm sensitive to that too. Like, oh, let's go to the waterfront because it's free. Let's go to teacup because it's free. Like...

Well, if I could just quickly try to answer both your questions, thanks to you, you know, we are coming in later this month to begin our assessment of your downtown. So thank you for that. And we would next step is we'll be helping you to assess some, some strategies that we could work with you on assessing the financial impact of anything we might do differently down there seasonality. So I, From a consultant's point of view, one we're very thankful, but we're going to be continuing to analyze the waterfront and the downtown for you. And so the degree to which we can connect them, you know, we try to our best ability to do that.

I just want to add to my comment. I wasn't stating that the waterfront remain free and everywhere else that we charge, but that we do have this trolley system that's helping us move people around, whether you are parking downtown or at the waterfront.

I was waiting for the recommendations and they were a bit, no offense, like lighter than I was thinking they might be. I don't think you're saying we should get a screw gun and change signs this summer.

No, we want to be able to come back with you that you're comfortable with our data, comfortable with our findings and comfortable with our sort of light considerations so that we can come back and say, we think you should do this and it might cost you this. And that we think it would result in better balancing the system down on the waterfront.

I would also add that we could generate this. X amount. I think that's something that I know I'm looking to better understand. Yeah, like revenue generation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess that's really a powerful statement because to me, that's a question about how severe is that 98% number? It's not like, you know, stop the presses. Like you're at 98%, you're generating negative publicity.

Like, no, like we're at 98%, we'll get to it. Right, well, I don't know if this is fair, but it's kind of an, if that was just a 161 stall lot somewhere, it would be much easier. We would just say, you got to raise the rates. I see. But this, what we learned is you're surrounded by other users. But I think, Mayor, to your point, 98%, if it was just you, you would be losing business right now. And so we would come to you with recommendations. In my history, I used to manage parking garages and parking lots for the city of Portland. If I had a lot that was where your lot, which is on-street parking, is now, yeah, you are at a critical point in the peak season. You are losing trips. You are creating a less than friendly environment. There's frustration. I don't want to say it's less than friendly, but river's friendly. there's frustration on there. So if I could just, yeah, if you could just focus on your system, yeah, you're at a critical point. The good news is there's opportunity. There's 360 stalls around you.

Good, thank you. Amanda.

I guess this is more of a question for Abigail, but do you see like a potential, I mean, yes, there's 300 stalls around us, but how do we work with that considering they're not ours? And is there potential to work with the port to, is that, and are you, is it Rick? I'm sorry.

Yes.

Are you like, I know you're not suggesting that we like take over the port parking, but like, is that part of your scope of like bad possibilities of working with them or.

So. Unclear. I mean, the, you know, the idea is, is that this is, this does get more difficult because it's not just one entity, right. That controls all the parking. So there is a conversation to have to be had with the port. it is unclear what we would go from that. I think some of the difficulties we have and Rick's not making specific recommendations at this point, that's really a sort of staff request, right? This is the easy conversation with regards to sort of Do you agree with the analysis, the process, the results, the conclusions? Does it warrant us going into the next conversations? The issues that I see that Rick and I have just started talking about is the disparity of ownership, the disparity of potential pricing with regards to do you solve the issue of the greater Utilization of the city spots if they're not free, but the cheapest spaces right and what's the impact there, how do you sort of. Best influence the overall area so that you are utilizing the 300 spaces right that you are sort of help your spaces are helping. better distribute parking throughout the entire area. And the last part is, is sort of, you know, just does just charging for parking at certain periods of time, just alleviate safety and traffic issues, right? Like do you not get people sort of driving through, right? The main business area and the mouth of the park is, and sort of creating, are you able to alleviate some of that traffic, but then also still have the right turnover of the business? So I'm acknowledging that there's a lot of questions ahead, and I think that the next conversation is more difficult. Really what we're asking though here is sort of, to what you asked is that, right? The threshold, right? Does charging parking at the waterfront in any capacity, right? Sort of create a significant issues in the minds of council.

Doug, I see you, but is the port parking price the same as downtown parking price?

No, it's not.

Higher?

Lower.

Significantly.

Doug? Yeah, I was going to make a similar point to what Chris was saying in terms of what I'm trying to consider for this. It seems like the data is fairly sound that we have to consider some things. It is obvious to me, too, in the changes in the last few years that You know, a lot of the employers down there have, you know, dedicated parking for employees. The port is charging for all their spaces and it's kind of like our spaces down there are the last ones that are free and everybody's taking advantage of that. And that's the last, you know, they go the first and they're in the most desirable location to a piece of the park down there. If people are windsurfing, you know, they're gonna launch over there. If they're going to the restaurants, HAB-Jacques Juilland, You know, to the point earlier that council of rare was making is, you know, discussing with the businesses understand the quality of all this in addition to the quantitative HAB-Jacques Juilland, Like I'm compelled to have those types of conversations. I think it's worth our time to kind of do that. And that's what I think we're kind of discussing tonight is, is this worth taking a look at.

And I think that this HAB-Terry Palmos- And I take a stab at emotion here.

Yes.

We'll do that. I move that we direct staff to return to council with a recommendation parking management of the on-street parking spaces in the waterfront area, taking into consideration the seasonality and equity points we received in written public comment.

Moved by Cavalieri. Did you just write that? That was very good. Thank you. Second. Moved by Cavalieri. Second by Rivera. Further discussion? All in favor?

Aye. Yes.

Opposed? Aye. Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thank you.

Voting aye as well, by the way.

Okay. Thank you. I was just slow. Aye. All ayes. We're going to take a five-minute break.

Whoa.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Go ahead well.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, For counselors to Pina. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Okay. Mayor and members of the City Council, this next item is under the project title of the City's Next Affordable and Mixed Income Housing Project, which was assigned a critical priority in your 2025-26 City Council Goals and Action Plan. So one of the ways that we've been approaching this is to look at all of our existing publicly owned property in the city, understanding that some of it was acquired many decades ago and thought to be a marginal value, but with real estate being in such short supply into the river, it may have viable uses now. So back in September, we looked at a list of six properties and City Council whittled it down to two to focus on. One being the Sherman, parcel between Sherman and State Street above the State Street lot. And then the other one being over on Westcliff Drive. And I'll share my screen here. See, I'm actually going to go to this one. So this parcel over on West Cliff near the Jaymar site. So this 2.4 acre property was once part of a 35 acre contiguous parcel that we purchased back in the 1920s and have whittled away on carving off pieces for the interstates, for those homes that are along the cliff side, for Morrison Park, for the Rotary Skate Park, all of those were little bits and pieces. And this is one of the remaining unused portions of that big 35 acre parcel that we actually bought to be a campground at the time. And I believe it was back in December or February, I went through the whole 80, 90 year history of this parcel. But suffice it to say, it's never been used. It's never had an intention for its use. So we looked at what would it take to make this property developable. And so you would need to, it's actually already served with municipal water, a four-inch line runs over there. All those homes along the cliffside are city water customers, and this is within the city limits. But we would need to extend sewer in order to develop more than just a handful of homes and Roughly speaking, if it was served by sewer, you could have about 18 town homes on that 2.4 acre lot. So city council authorized Grayling engineers to look into the feasibility of extending services. And they've come back with numbers that are in your staff report. One is for the sewer extension, but they also found that to increase development density over on Westcliff Drive, we would also need to enlarge the water line. So that wasn't on the radar, but a four inch water line would not be sufficient and we need to enlarge that. So altogether, the sewer and water improvements came to just over $3 million. And so if you divide that over 18 potential units, you're at about $140,000 of infrastructure improvements per unit before doing any other pre-development work. And so that essentially knocks it off of the potential list for affordable housing. So we're not recommending continuing to move forward with utility extension and recommend that if we do want to use this property to further affordable housing in the city, the highest best use would be to just surplus it and sell it. As discussed in a prior meeting, we do believe that this qualifies for a public vote before it could be repurposed and surplused. It's never been used as a park. It's never been signed as a park. But it has been on inventories of parks. And if you look on this map right here, there's a label on it that says Morrison Park. So we're safer to just get a vote out of the way. Do you want me to stop for questions now?

Yeah.

Okay. Defer to the mayor. Okay. So we would recommend that. Don't recommend doing that immediately. We have the housing bond. I think this would confuse a lot of people if we had both on the ballot at the same time. So mostly saying stick a pin in this. And if you want to revisit that after the bond, this would be something maybe to put onto the May ballot of 2027 to open it up. And yeah, so there's no suggested action, just that information and ideas for the future. So with that, I'll stop and answer any questions.

Will, I don't remember if you gave us like a potential estimate for what it could sell for.

I don't have that.

Okay.

It's yeah, it's developable. It's relatively flat. It would need septic. Doesn't have a view is right next to the interstate. Yeah, we could get it appraised.

This is kind of a right.

How much would it cost to have it appraised?

Oh, less than $5,000. Okay. Um,

It's kind of a tangent. I heard some community scuttlebutt recently about camping availability within the city limits and that there isn't any and that there was somebody wrote or did a YouTube post about being a PCT person. Did you guys hear all this? A PCT guy that had gotten a bus from Cascade Locks and came over here to watch a movie and then couldn't get back to Cascade Locks so he camped somewhere and he posted it on YouTube and now there's all this scuttlebutt about, oh my gosh, are all these people going to come and I'm camping here. So with that information in the back of my mind, I was looking at this and I'm wondering, first off, if, um, the whole park issue, uh, would a campground be considered a park use and something that would be allowable because you did say that we have water and sewer there, just not enough to support affordable housing project, but maybe, um, You know, if we were looking to expand our housing, not permanent housing options, but options for places for people to stay in this community, maybe like, I don't know if this could be a campground site. Is that a potential use for this area and would the existing infrastructure support it?

Yeah, great. Great idea. Great question. So it's served by water and definitely enough for a campsite. There is no sewer of any kind. So it would have to be outhouses, you know, pumped out. When we bought this, and I'd have to look it up, 1927, 1928, we bought it to be a campground. That's why we bought it. So, yeah, I would think that would be allowable. I don't know if the city attorney would like to apply for a campground. Who knows?

But from what I recall from the charter amendment, it would, it would qualify as a park. I mean, recreation, public park, those are what you're looking for.

I did see that. Thanks for bringing that up because I completely spaced. And it sounds like it would also have enough for potential hookups as well. Electricity? Yeah.

I believe it has, yeah, electricity.

Okay.

And actually, in response also to Councillor Cavalieri's question, I know Chief Holstey has spoken to me in the past about maybe how being able to direct people to a campground could be useful for their officers. I don't know if you have any comments to add.

No, we just always thought of it. No comments. No comments, Jess. When we were looking for raised revenue back in 08, 09, we talked about an RV because law enforcement always gets, hey, is there a place to pull an RV or campground? So very calm.

And you don't have any place to send them right now.

Or we could make it into a park.

Well, there is the RV park in Bingen as well. And I mean, it's a really nice park. And my understanding is that it has great use and turnover and whatnot. So thanks for bringing that up.

And we don't need to solve that tonight, but we just got that. Yep. No sewer. Roger that.

Yeah.

Thank you. I'm so glad we pondered whether we should do the sewer analysis before we pondered the charter amendment. I'm so glad we did that. Good job, us.

Anything else on this one, Yul?

LOC legislative priorities.

Thank you all. So every two years, the League of Oregon Cities asks each city to provide input on what you would like to see as legislative priorities, how the advocates and lobbyists for League of Oregon City should spend their time and energy. So that's the exercise today. I have made little voting charts to record your recommendations, and then Dan and Dustin are available to help us kind of process that. So you get five priorities, and then when you give me this input tomorrow, I will submit your ballot. Every city gets one ballot or five priorities, regardless of whether it's a small city or a big city. So You have the priorities in your packet. And I thought the easiest thing might be to just simply ask each of you to tell us what your top five are, and then we'll do a quick count, see if there's consensus on top five or at least top couple, and then we can narrow the conversation down to just the pieces that are not, don't have a majority. Does that make sense? Cool. Oh, I see Councilor Stepina has a question.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Doug. Top five in order or just top five?

Top five in order, so that, yeah. Yeah, I guess either way.

I have a process problem. Yours says 114, but my 114 is in the middle of Rick Williams, so.

It's because I have the old packet.

Old packet. Does anybody have the new packet, new number? 138.

138.

Okay, good, now I'm happy. Uh, Doug, did you have your hand up? No, you, you have the ranking. Yeah.

Right.

So, uh, so Abigail, your, your proposed process was that I would say number one, six, nine, and three like that.

Yeah.

Okay.

But I need you to give them names because I don't think they have numbers.

Right. I'm just trying to keep up. Go ahead, Anna.

I'm ready to rock. Can I give you my five? I'm going to even put them in order for you. Okay. Um, trans 2027 transportation package. strengthening economic workforce development, infrastructure funding, water workforce development, and administrative procedures act reform. That's how it's done. Perfect.

That's the way you do it.

Did we capture those?

Water workforce development.

Who wants to be like Anna? Ben. Full funding and streamlining for housing production. Infrastructure funding. Funding and coordination for shelter and homeless response. Invest in community resilience slash disaster planning. Support municipal cybersecurity proficiency.

Boom, they like Ben.

Number one was full funding and streamlining for housing production.

Next. Now you need me to rank them. Infrastructure funding, transportation package, economic workforce development. Actually, I want to change that. Three is energy generation. Four is economic workforce development. Five would be streamlining for housing production.

I couldn't find energy development. What was it? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Six six support expedited local yeah PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Right.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Close full funding and streamlining for housing production is number one. Number two, strengthening economic and workforce development three invest in community resilience disaster planning for funding and coordination for shelter and homeless response and 520 27 transportation package.

Amanda? I'm going to say full funding and streamlining for housing production, support expedited local renewable energy generation, infrastructure funding, transportation package, and HAB-Masyn Moyer- The. HAB-Masyn Moyer- funding for coordination shelter and homeless response.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Anybody else, or my oh Ben Doug go ahead. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Just wait to be called on.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, All funding in streamlining for housing production number one funding and coordination for shelter and homeless response number two. I'm sorry, this is all out of order now. Where did it go? Strengthening economic and workforce development, infrastructure funding, and 2027 transportation package, in that order.

Okay. Me full funding and streamlining for housing. 2027 transportation. Infrastructure funding. Strengthening economic and workforce. and funding and coordination for shelter. Do we do it?

While you guys are telling, can I ask a question? How come there isn't anything on this list about property tax reform? Can we put that on there and give them our own idea? I think changes to measures 5 and 50 should be a priority on here, and I don't know why it's not.

Grant, did you want to say something?

I did not suggest this or talk with my peers in any way, shape, or form. That's fine.

Grant and I, two years ago, LOC came to Hood River at the fire station where there was a discussion about measures 5 and 50. And actually, I did mention this to Abigail during our check-in about financing, sorry, financing reform specifically to measures 5 and 50. And I don't remember your response.

So two things, I guess, specifically about that, when League of Oregon Cities was here two years ago. They do small city meetings. That's why they were here. They have started a process where they're looking at a really long-term project in order to try to address 550 because they don't feel that the legislature is there at this time, that they don't think it's going to gain any traction. But they were starting with what they did two years ago was they had done some scientifically statistically valid polling around the state to get perceptions of how do people think cities are funded and what are the property taxes pieces that people might be interested in. Um, so I can certainly find that report and send that back out, uh, to all of you. Uh, but that was LOC's kind of first baby step into that conversation. I have not heard an update on what they're looking to do. Um, I see council Cavalier and then I'll talk a little bit about the process of how these priorities were determined.

Um, Google told me today that, um, that the legislature, there are some house committees that are reviewing it and they're supposed to have like some kind of a plan by December 1st. So that's what Google told me. But I would be willing to change my fifth option of Administrative Procedures Act because it was so wildly popular amongst my peers to property tax reformation. And maybe it's cheating to like have something that's not on the list.

I don't think we get any... There's no bill in the blank. Ah, okay. I can certainly pass that message along that when we went through this exercise, that that was a priority. Our council was disappointed to see.

I do remember when Senator Drazen came that I know I brought it up. I think Councilor Polson brought it up separately. And then during a meeting, I feel like we said something about a letter of support for measures five and 50, but I don't recall the specifics. but I know we brought it up after Senator Drazen's visit.

I'm happy to make contact with her as well and just see. if she has any input on that. So they're still tallying. Maybe there's a better tool. I'm sorry if this has been complicated. Just a little bit about the process of how these were determined and opportunity for you to be involved next time. Each of these categories, broadband, general government, housing, energy, et cetera, are committees that League of Oregon Cities creates. Two years ago, I sat on the Water and Wastewater Committee. I believe Will sat on the Housing and Land Use this year. They get a real mix of staff, subject matter experts from within cities, and elected officials. I think, in my experience, there were probably 50 people on my committee. I don't know what yours was.

Five-oh? Fifty?

Yes.

Wow.

From around the state, right? They try to get representation from every region. They try to get, you know, a balance of small cities and big cities and that kind of expertise there. 30. So Will says his was about 30. So then they go through the process of each of those folks talking about what they see as priorities and then kind of doing that winnowing down. So they have a fairly complex, long process to get to this list. So I'm sure. And then I think the LOC staff probably look at this and say, what's realistic. So that might be, I don't know if the I think it's finance, taxation, economic development committee. I assume they talked about measure five and either decided it wasn't feasible or the LOC decided it wasn't feasible. I don't know, but that is how these are decided. And if you wish to apply to be on any of those committees, I think it's a two-year term. Is that right? So you have one more year. So in 28, 29, it would be awesome for you to be involved. Okay, how are we doing? I think I can guess some of them. I've got one, two, three, four, five, at least five, six for housing. That feels like a top voter getter. Transportation has one, two, three, four, okay, five, oh, there's six, okay. So I just write those down really fast.

interested infrastructure those sound like right things yeah great those are the time top five so they seem to be like a couple of anomalies like cyber security fell off sorry

Well, there was fewer votes for it. I mean, that's how it worked.

I just realized you're not next to the microphone.

Top vote getter, transportation package, infrastructure funding, followed by funding for housing, economic and workforce, and funding for shelter and homelessness.

That's what I heard. I mean, fair enough. Does that seem fair enough to you guys? Great. Thank you.

Okay. Then I'm looking for a motion. that's in the packet with that list. So whoever's going to make the motion, I'm gonna give you this piece of paper.

Go ahead. Bingo, it's right there.

Okay.

I move to identify the following five issues as the City of Hood River's top issues for consideration by the League of Oregon City's Board of Directors for the 2027-2028 legislative agenda. And those are loans package,

No. Bottom left corner. Maybe it's just not .

Oh, transportation package, funding, housing, infrastructure funding, economic and workforce funding, shelter and homeless.

Moved by Rivera. Second. Second by Gakey, by a hair. Any further discussion? All in favor? Yes. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye. Motion passes. Thanks, y'all.

Great. Thank you all. I will submit your vote tomorrow, and I will send a message to the head lobbyist for LOC of your desire to see addressing the structural issues of Measure 550. Great.

Thank you. All right. Joint meeting.

Right, so you have received, it's in your packet, but you've also received the letter from the County Board of Commissioners asking for a joint meeting. So the question today, one is, do you wish to have a meeting? Yes, no. And two, if so, if yes, what topics might you wish to cover? And then the next step, trying to find a meeting for Mayor, the County Chair, the County Administrator and myself, and then we will work out the logistics and details.

I did some pre-work with Chair Ewer And I said, it seemed to me like last time there was about 50% of the energy in that meeting was we were excited to be like working together with our neighbors and collaboratively. And about 50% was specifically the annexation question. And I said, kind of where are y'all at right now? And she said there was broad interest on her commission for a variety of topics. And then honestly, we got into some fantastic like political, like dialectic, like, If we require exactions from developers, then the cost of building housing goes up and we have to pass a bond to raise money to get affordable. Like these are legitimate questions and challenges and what's the best way to skin a cat. So I appreciated that. And I thought that if Jennifer and I and Abigail and Allison kind of got together, we could continue to kind of further those pre-development discussions. to prepare for a meeting. Now, also, we're trying to pass a bond and we would sure love the county to be raving about what a good idea our bond is. And I could imagine that will be involved in this discussion with the county. So do we want this before the election? After the election? I can see lots of arguments.

First question is, do you want to have it?

Thank you. End of report. Gladys.

I vote for yes and agree with the mayor. We need to be much more specific. Annexation is definitely a tool, so if it's about a housing strategy, completely open to that. They did have those four buckets that was mentioned from the Baker-Tilley study, and I'm not sure if Those are the four pieces that they wanted to talk about. They don't necessarily include the MERL, but that could be housed or grouped as a housing strategy overall. And my vote would be for Mayor to continue having conversations and potentially at the end of November that we have this discussion.

Thank you, Gladys. Grant.

um i would say yes we long time ago um talked about having more meetings with all of our peer groups uh in my opinion we have not had enough um uh i at least regarding topics i think we should at least uh talk about annexation and consolidation anything beyond that great but we should at least talk about those two thank you you got a timing preference grant The sooner the better. No time like the present to get stuff done.

Thank you.

Amanda.

Excuse me. I agree with Grant. Yes, would love to meet. Soon is great. And I guess what I'm most wanting to talk about is the consolidation, especially with all the talk about the shelter services and just ways to work together. in the future and ways to yeah um you know help each other out and collaborate and housing seems like a great thing to talk about as well um and if we do meet where i mean yes before the election i think it would be worthwhile to talk about the bond as well thank you amanda

City Council Chambers, i'm in favor of meeting i'm fine with this list and i'm with counselor Rivera in terms of like the late November.

City Council Chambers, ditto with everybody, yes, let's have a meeting i'm with the sooner, the better i'm not in that camp and I like the consolidation and annexation conversations in the housing, so the topic.

City Council Chambers, Thank you. City Council Chambers, Doug good.

I agree with Councilors Rivera and Mitchell on the timing for November and happy to have a conversation with the county about all this and also the Councilor Rivera's point. Let's spend some time with the county also just refining this and getting things really in order so we have a really productive meeting.

Thank you.

As far as the timing...

Wow that hurt if we talk about annexation it would be really helpful to understand like cost right we we know that the county has expressed. annexation but it's also important to just talk about the finances of this, even with the consolidation so I don't know how much homework staff would have to do on both ends to. kind of give us baseline cost estimates of like here's what it would look like so that we can have a really meaningful discussion of here's how much we can help with and here's how much we could help with just to really get the needle going.

Yeah, and I definitely agree. I want to be prepared for a meeting. I'm not saying, like, let's have it next week where nobody's prepared. But if we are prepared before November, why wait? You know, I don't know. I feel like we could be flexible on time just as long as everybody's ready and we can do it. So that's it.

If we have it before the election, I could imagine there would be negotiation about the county endorsing our bond. Gladys.

I hear that. But my understanding is the county doesn't necessarily need to endorse the bond for it to happen. I think we at some time have to go to their meeting and give them an overview of the bond and you know, the different projects or whatnot will be done with the bond. Two different governing bodies So I hear you and I don't think we need the endorsement of the county to go forward with the bond. We definitely would want their support. Your bond is already on the ballot.

In fact, it was assigned measure numbers today, 14-85 for housing and 14-86 for public safety.

Do we know if they're still not doing a voter's pamphlet? They're not doing a voter's pamphlet.

What's that?

The county cannot be convinced to do one otherwise. It is not constitutionally required, and they have not done it for elections like this.

So I feel like what you're saying is that we can still work with the bond and having them endorse it without having this be a meeting topic for this meeting. Is that what you're saying?

We can still move forward with the bond, even if the county doesn't endorse it. Obviously, we would want them to. But if they decide not to, that doesn't prevent us from still going, you know, all that.

No, but I'm just saying there's other routes to get there. Not just like we have to have this meeting before for that to happen. Like it could happen in another way. Okay.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. So I think I heard Mayor and I will work with our colleagues at the county to put together a meeting. And so the next piece will be trying to identify possible dates. So I would really appreciate any flexibility you have. Monday night is also when the county meets. They tend to have special meetings. If they have a special meeting, it's on the first Monday of the month. So that'd probably be the first place I would look. I'm guessing that's probably Labor Day, but for October. uh or i guess just asking like if you can keep your monday nights free um or be available that would be great um the other thing is my it's my assumption that you have lots of business on the agenda um and you would not want to give up on your regular standing meetings in order to meet with the board

I agree with that.

Okay. Cause I know you're, you're generally all here on this day. So, so we will work through those details, probably send out, you know, some kind of poll to get your availability. Once the four of us have talked about what the, what, when we are available. So, you know, there are 12 elected officials plus the supporting staff. So it's a lot of people to coordinate, but we can get started on that. I think we're all meeting on the 19th to start from Wednesday.

Yep.

Great.

Thank you.

Cool. Thank you all.

Did we all vote for the mural ordinance or was there an opposing vote on that?

I think it was unanimous.

So we could do first and second right now if we wanted, right? Jen, can we have 2097 for first and second time, please?

Yes, Your Honor. I'd like to entertain a motion for the first and second reading of Ordinance 2097 by title only.

So moved. Moved by Folsom.

Second.

Second by Rivera.

Councillor Mitchell?

Aye.

Councillor Rivera? Yes. Councillor Poulsen?

Aye.

Councillor Stepina?

Yes.

Councilor Cavalieri? Aye. Councilor Gaeke? Aye. Your Honor? Aye. Ordinance 2097, an ordinance amending the Hood River Municipal Code, Title 18, signs and related regulations, Chapter 18.03, original art murals, Section 18.03.030, allowing original art murals to limit mural height.

Ordinance 2097 has passed its first and second reading by title only and will become law in 30 days. City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of quick updates for you. Our fire chief had hoped to be attending tonight, but he had a family, something came up. So he wrote you a memo. I will email this to you, but I'm also just going to read the memo in this moment, just as an update about the Grasshopper fire. So. He says, as of last evening, the Grasshopper fire has grown to 57,087 acres and is 23% contained, with approximately 1,656 personnel assigned to the incident. Today, the Blue Incident Management Team is being deployed for additional resources into portions of Wasco County to continue structure protection and home hardening efforts. There are also ongoing concerns regarding the potential impacts to the Dalles watershed, which continues to be closely monitored by incident management and cooperating agencies. Since the Grasshopper fire began, Hood River Fire and EMS has supported the statewide mutual aid system by deploying our task force leaders. These are regular firefighters who have gone through special training and have been the assistant or shadow two crews in order to become task force leaders. They were served on July 25th to 26th, and our brush truck apparatus was there on August 5th with two firefighters, one of the firefighters from our wildfire seasonal staffing grant that we get through the state fire marshal's office to assist with wildfire suppression. These deployments are part of Oregon's coordinated response to protect lives, property, and critical infrastructure. Statewide, more than 1.2 million acres have burned in Oregon this fire season, making 2026 the most active wildfire season in Oregon's history. With numerous large fires burning simultaneously across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, firefighting personnel, specialized equipment and supplies continue to be in high demand and remain limited. While Hood River is not currently under an immediate threat of the grasshopper fire, the conditions across the region are a reminder that wildfire season is far from over. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant, follow all local fire restrictions, be mindful of activities that could ignite a fire, and continue preparing their homes and property. Working together, we can help reduce wildfire risk and keep our city and community safe.

Thank you, Abigail. Thanks. And thank you, Josh.

Yes, of course, and if you have follow up questions, let me know and I will be happy to share this with folks. On a connected note to that I would note that the Hood River County has a five year grant from the Bureau of Land Management. They just recently hired wildfire mitigation coordinator she started last week and will really be focused on prevention and firewise neighborhoods so really looking forward to the county being able to offer that service throughout the county, including the city.

Thank you.

Yep. And then my last piece, maybe I'll just ask Dustin to come up and make this announcement of the Oregon Planning Association. OAPA has an announcement for you.

Yeah, we applied or will receive a statewide report from the Oregon American Planning Association for Mariposa Village building tomorrow, today. It's a statewide award that is granted to a project that has really almost a program. So looking at Mariposa from the time of the 2015 housing needs analysis and strategies that came out of that through the, really through today where it's becoming home. so we'll be recognized at seaside in a couple months uh for the project uh there'll be a ceremony and reward and we'll get more details but we were notified today it's good work so state is taking notice uh it's good uh our partners throughout the entire process have given us kudos our peers uh looking up to us and i think the fact that it's a we are still rural in spite of uh You know, what we experience here, I think there's a lot of acknowledgement that rural Oregon can step up and do difficult projects and has to bear with all the pull-off, long, complicated deals such as this that lead to homes.

Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you.

Congratulations to you all.

Congratulations, Council.

Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Committee reports. Anna.

Nothing for me.

Kat meets Wednesday the 19th. Gladly.

Um, at the next meeting, I will bring you MCAC's annual report so that you all understand the just data for the year. No update on Saruta. I did not have a chance to join the county meeting. So I'll give you an update at our next meeting for that.

Great.

I had the regional one act meeting a week ago a number of items were discussed and added to the. I can't remember the name of the thing. Either way, the port project was discussed and raised on the priority list from, I think it was number six to number three at the airport. The other list that we submitted, Commissioner Levy, And I submitted a list with comments regarding the cat bus system and some other priorities for Hood River were all included in feedback for ODOT and that group. And those all got elevated as well.

Thank you, Greg.

Amanda?

No reports for me.

Doug?

None. Council comments. Doug?

Nothing for me.

Amanda?

I just, I wanted to, I should have said something when they were here, but I was just a little speechless, but I just wanted to say, thank Graciela and all of the community health workers for what they do for our community and the people that they care for and assist. And it's really important and hard work and I'm sure emotional and all the things. So thank you guys. I really appreciate you. And last, again, things come to my mind later, but last week we briefly mentioned about like all the sewer work that's been going on in town. And I live on a street that that has been happening. And I just want to give props to the Ajax crew. They have been so accommodating and friendly and just awesome this whole time. It's, you know, been a while, but they're great. So best circumstances. So thank you, Ajax.

Great. Uh, yeah. Uh, first of all, when folks were here, um, taking time to care for our friends and neighbors. It doesn't necessarily cost anything for anybody to go spend time and listen to our friends and neighbors. It takes time and commitment. We as elected officials can do that. It doesn't cost a thing to look out for your friends and neighbors. So if you have the opportunity to do that, lend a helping hand, do so. Look out for your friends and neighbors. The other thing is I sent... us all counsel, email with some things that are in our code which I've called embedded assumptions and I wanted to ask you all and get your feedback on that list and just show of hands. I'll do a quick straw poll on if you guys agree with those, that 10 things or not. I have, so. That's just a question that I had for each of you, and I would just like some feedback.

Thank you, Grant. Gladys? I don't want to do that at this hour, but I read the list and have been pondering it myself.

I request feedback on that.

Okay, I read the list and I responded back to you. I'm happy to go through each of those in an email just so that you know where I stand. Council comments, I just want to thank all of those who are involved in all the fires that are taking place. In our entire state, over 2 million acres have been burned in Oregon, one of the largest fires. And as you all know, the air quality was really impacted, especially last week. Should that ever happen again, like a lot of smoke, please know that there are organizations here locally that can support with N95 masks, One Community Health being one of them. I did reach out to the CEO and she did confirm that they do have and 95 masks to give. And of course they have a limited supply as well. So just wanted to thank the first responders and all those involved in these fires. I also wanted to let you all know that One Community Health is celebrating their 40 year anniversary and the launch of a foundation that will take place August 15th from 3 to 7 PM. They are having a little block party. So if you can support, please do. This is an organization that's been around for a very long time, doing incredible work. I am biased. I used to work there, and yeah, love that place. I also wanted to mention the Hood River Latino Festival is going to take place Saturday, Sunday, Sunday, August 16th from 2 to 8, and that is at Jackson Park. Lastly, I just want to thank Fiona from Wild Wind and Water for They invited me to go out to speak to the intern staff that they have and a lot of high school kiddos that are getting very well paid to talk about water safety with kiddos. I was also really happy to see that they partner with the Migrant Ed program for summer school. So bringing a lot of the school kiddos that are there Water safety is so important given that we live right next to a large body of water. And so really appreciate all the work that they are doing. And if there's an opportunity for us to continue waiving fees, I think that we should absolutely do so. It's a really good return on investment given the number of individuals that it reaches. I think the report that I read on her website, that over 3,500 have been served so far. So I just want to give them a big thank you for all the work that they do and all the kiddos that they get to connect with.

Thank you, Ben.

Yeah, just also want to say a really big thank you to the firefighters. As many of you know, I work for Mount Hood Meadows and we've been on a level three evacuation for about a week now. And so I haven't been up to, you know, my place of work and we haven't been, uh, open and so i've been you know getting a lot of briefings on this for a while now because pretty much had a you know somewhat front row seat of seeing that thing get bigger and bigger and bigger and it's a You know insanely very challenging. situation they're dealing with both in terms of terrain and just how the fire behavior keeps changing it's like it's gone east it's gone west it's gone north like. I know I know the work that. You know they've been. doing up there just because of my my job and i really only know a very small amount of what is going into that but um i have a pretty decent idea so big uh big thank you to to all of them

Um, as I listen to you guys in your comments, it makes me realize, like, you know what, what makes our community so absolutely amazing is all these different entities that like support each other and are doing things. And, um, in addition to the firefighters and our police and everybody else that, like, you know, we're just really lucky to be here, the next door and public works and their subcontractors and, you know, this is and you know wild wind and water like this is what makes our community so amazing so i am also grateful um grant i have to say that most of the embedded assumptions you gave us i do not agree with so i have notes to share with you i'll give you feedback but i want to keep this because um we'll just we'll we'll have to talk about it later but i'll give you that feedback and other than that i have nothing else

I have no mayor comments for this evening. We are not meeting at the end of August. Thank you. I'll get you, Doug. Not meeting at the end of August. And there's a fifth Monday in August. So it's going to be over a month before we meet again. Doug, sorry. Thank you.

No, you called on me first. I didn't have any comments.

What? I'm sorry.

You did call on me first.

Yeah, I started. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. So all good.

Anything else? We are adjourned.