City Council - workshop

Justin, can you hear us? Mic check. Yes, I can hear you. Thanks, Councillor Giles. Awesome. Welcome, everyone, to the Sherwood City Council Work Session 538.

Excuse me, PM. On July 7th, everyone had a good Fourth of July. We're not going to have a regular meeting tonight, but we have three items on our agenda for the work session. First is a roundtable with our planning commission and welcome planning commission and everyone is welcome to sit at the table. And then we're going to talk about public safety fees and transient lodging tax. But for the Planning Commission section, I'm going to go over to Eric.

Yeah, I'll just say we have, I'm going to kick it quickly over to Gene. I'm just going to say we have a few potential, welcome Commissioner Vance. have a few potential discussion items open format. We want to encourage from from any any either the Council or the Planning Commission of there's kind of burning items you guys want to discuss. Leave that absolutely open to be on the table. If these these four items help guide the discussion. Great. And with that, turn it over to Chair Simpson.

Hello. I don't know if we need to introduce ourselves.

Very good idea.

All right.

You want to Yeah, I'm Tim.

I'm the mayor.

I'm Renee, council.

I'm Joe, Joe Tillotson. I'm on the planning commission.

Kim Young, city council.

Rick Wydola, planning commission. Greg Schultz, city manager.

Kristen Zweitzer, assistant city manager.

Jake Mayes, council.

Eric Relich, staff. Sean Conrad, staff. Gene Simpson, planning commission. Brett Scott, city council. Dan Stamke, city council. Lorraine Adams, city attorney. And then then it's a planning commission.

All right. And I'm Taylor Giles city council. I'm just heading back into town.

And Justin Kai city council or sorry, planning commission.

No, no, no.

I'm I'm very happy with planning commission. Thank you. Well,

Thank you very much, Mayor, for inviting us and having this opportunity. And thank you to Eric and Sean for putting this list together. I always list down by sound a lot more intelligent than I would have been if I just walked in the door. So I think the one topic that I want to make sure we have time for is the legislative matter that's coming up for us, which is the tree code update. I realize it's not in that order, but it's a legislative matter. So we don't have ex parte contact, but we do have I need to understand like the council's goal and vision with the tree code. If there's anything pressing that hasn't already been put on the table, we don't want to go through a hearings process and then have it kicked up here. And you guys say, Oh, well you missed doing a heritage tree program. And we're like, well, okay, well let's get it back. So if there's something specific that we need to include or not include in the tree code, that's kind of what I'm, get direction from.

And that would be great. And that's not just that specific issue, but that's why we're having these conversations. We've been working on kind of closing the loop of how we work with our different boards of commissions. We started with the end of the year, used to be the SWOT analysis. Now we just get together and talk, but we decided it was really important as we start the fiscal year that we have conversations too so that that you kind of understand where council's at and you know at 50 000 feet on these ideas as you start looking at things and vice versa we want to hear from you and the rest of the planning commission or where your thoughts are if you're you are much more in the needs than we are you know and we value that the time and effort that you put into this and we value your your input and your thoughts and your processes that you go through and you're a quasi-judicial uh commission or board, you make decisions. So it's important that we talk. So anyway, didn't mean to hijack that, but yeah, let's jump right into the tree code. It'd be great.

Can somebody give the brief synopsis of the legislative update?

Yeah, so the tree code is on the council goals, of course. So we had one work session with city council maybe two months ago or so. We heard a few different ideas. Since then, staff has been ruminating on that and figuring out the best way forward. So first, there is a requirement that the code as it relates to regulating removal of trees has to be clear and objective. Planting doesn't have to be, but any regulations that govern the removal of trees moving forward has to be clear and objective. That's state law. So we have to check that box. After that is pretty open. We heard a lot of ideas floated at the city council at the city council work session. We heard a little bit about a heritage tree program in just doing the work over the last few years as staff. I think mainly what we've seen and heard is a desire to preserve trees during development was a big was a big one, especially residential development, commercial industrial as well, but in large part. Subdivisions that come in, you know, those sites are being designed. They're laying out a plat. And is there an opportunity to preserve, you know, large intact tree stands, you know, that have value. We can pull up one more chair for you, Commissioner Barnes. So that, I think that, from staff's perspective, is some low-hanging fruit, is like when a development comes forward, especially a subdivision, how can we preserve those large intact trees and not have clear-cutting, essentially. So I think that's one, I think that's a low-hanging fruit. After that, if there were kind of additions that you guys wanted to add to the tree code, heritage tree program, street tree list, you know, I'd say that's kind of like bonus stuff that we can definitely look at and advise on and potentially bring forward.

thank you for that what's a hair district and that's that would be the i was about to jump on that thank you is we have a historic chapter in our code this is my history which is but it didn't really get off the ground because you would have to go to owners of individual properties and say we're going to designate you as a historic building and people go to similar in nature, you would go to someone and say, your tree's a heritage tree and we value it. And so it would be problematic, but I've heard it thrown around a few times. And so if council is wanting us to, if that's your goal and vision that we implement that, I'd want it on the table. Or if you want to have a heritage tree light program where people can volunteer for it, maybe we do that. But I just wanted to hear from the council what your

If a tree is designated a heritage tree, what does that mean?

That's what we would be defining in the code. Under what circumstances could it be removed? If it's removed, what would it be?

And is that, I mean, I guess what we would determine what a heritage tree would be by age, by size, by...

Were you the one mentioning that?

Okay, maybe Dan asked something before I...

It was just an idea to identify in specific trees in Sherwood. When I walk Sherwood, I see specific trees and I'm like, that'd be cool if that stayed a tree. And so this would just be, and I think starting as a volunteer registry would be the lowest lift and building up the program from there to at least get something established. That would be my preference.

There's like, let's go have a heritage tree program. It was like, I remember something in the past that, They had something in that line that maybe has code we can look to.

I'm not sure if they do, but there are certainly heritage tree programs anywhere. I don't know about like a SWE specifically.

I can picture a heritage tree criteria being thought of just like for buildings where people would desperately want it, people would desperately not want it. And so having really objective standards of

I think that would be the way to go if you're forcing designation. To me, if you're doing a voluntary program, I'd like my tree to be as fair as trees. But I'd almost go the other way with it, where I don't know that you'd ever want to or be able to write such clear and objective standards that you know, like sometimes it may just be an interesting tree. Maybe it's not, does it meet the age requirement or a hydrograph or something, but there's something unique about its location or the way it grew or how it's used, been used by the community that would make it a heritage tree that maybe it wouldn't qualify if you had very specific parameters, so to speak. But again, that would be more in the land of an application or a volunteer process.

On the volunteer process, when the property owner changes. Yeah. Does it fall off the list? I mean, who tracks that?

If I may, this is where I've done a lot of my actual careers, harvest work and city planning. So for harvest trees, for carrot trees, it comes down to usually a size, a height, a character, or some value to the community. Once it's determined to be a heritage tree, it meets the criteria, it's a heritage tree, and then you have the teeth that come in to protect that tree. So if we're writing a code, you have to have the criteria and then you have to have the implementation so that it stays and that it's not necessarily tied to a location or a deed or anything like that. It's actually tied to a city code that says, the trimming of a heritage tree shall not occur unless approved by an arborist and

it's true that also with living some species might be great but if the tree means some criteria that that species of tree will not survive alone if it you know if all the non-marriage trees around it go away so big tall for grounded by by and all the siblings were gone, then that tree is going to be vulnerable to windstorms around here. So I just don't know, it's part of the, they worked on quite an objective standards of some species just aren't eligible. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but.

So I guess the question to go down the path before we go to hearing, As the elected officials, do you want to stand behind the tree code or a heritage tree program? Or do you want us to implement something that's a volunteer, see how it works, and then future day do something? Because without the code, it's going to be voluntary, so it's not going to have a lot of teeth in it. It's not going to be more than just a placeholder in the code, and it's not going to be clear an objective for removal. It's just going to be a voluntary participation.

What community did you say has a heritage tree program?

I'm not sure. There are many, I'm sure.

I'd like to see an example of one. But as I'm hearing you all speak, based off of an example, I think a volunteer program might be something to look into. but not a forced.

I can think of volunteer program in two ways. I think you were leaning into it's not by ordinance. It's just the direct recognizes dependent on the property owner. You could take that one step farther and say if a property owner wants to designate a 300 property that meets the criteria as a heritage, that's their choice. And then the code applies. That's what I was looking at. And she kind of.

Yeah.

And this question that property owner, you know, if that devalues the property in terms of future development stuff, they're taking that dead. That's their call. But I think for my view, I, I would like that level. But I don't think we should walk in and onto someone's property and say, sorry, that tree, you know, probably too far.

I'm going to agree with that position. And then potentially, if the tree becomes a heritage tree, and then there's requirements about maintaining it, then maybe the city can step in and support those good actions with a heritage tree. Get some money and some grants.

And I think we'll have people who will volunteer for sure with their trees because people love their trees and are not sure with trees.

And we can put a sign up that says, I have a tree.

I have a comment about that. So if we were to create a voluntary program, and I agree with the comment that said it should remain a heritage tree, when we do the design standards where we say, hey, you got to pick from this list of design elements in your plans, could a heritage tree be part of that so that it's like, hey, yes, you have to keep the the tree because it's a heritage tree, but it doesn't really diminish because we use that as a design element in establishing clear and objective standards for the lot or the thing that you build on the lot. Is that a possibility?

I understand.

I think the way I'm understanding that is that, Taylor, if I may, If you were developing either a property that had heritage trees on it that was undeveloped or maybe redeveloping an existing property that had heritage trees on it, that if you, because you have the heritage tree and you are preserving that in your development or redevelopment, you get some sort of credit, quote unquote, if you will, towards some of the other designers. Because of that, you get a little more leeway on a different part of your site plan.

Yeah, I just, and again, it's been a while since I looked at the code. but it was like, you know, Hey, you got to have two different materials and you got to have, you know, these architectural, um, elements. I can't remember what we call them interest or something like that. And there was a list of them and you had to pick five of them or something. And this would be on that list, right? So you get credit for that. And then the other thing I would say is that, um, I do think that if somebody volunteers it, that it should keep with it and it should be up for renewal. There should be some outs like safety of the tree and health of the tree and stuff like that. If it dies or if it gets hit by lightning or something, you've got to have a way to remedy that and say, well, we can take it. I assume that's a part of a normal tree code.

yeah that would be the part of a normal treatment but if i'm understanding it if you're the property owner that sought the designation as a heritage tree you could potentially get some kind of waiver on a particular design standard whatever that looks like i'd leave that to the planning commission to figure out but if you bought a property that already has that designation i wouldn't think that would flow through at that point

I don't know why not, right? I mean, again, if we're making your job harder to design around it, why not let that be something that you get credit for? I don't know. I would have to see it, I guess.

Most of my experience from citizen input and testimony during planning commission meetings around these treaties are, it's a developer sold, it's a private person sold their property to a developer and there's a tree in a corner, like the seven condos here on Sherwood Boulevard that it went in, there was a tree on the corner that that community all really liked and wanted that tree be capped. They didn't have anything to help them with. And then when Salvo over here was developed, a lot of the neighbors there, they just, how do you get people to do something with property that's not their property? You know, that's hard. But there's a need to recognize our history of the city. We just need to figure it out. But it's not, I'm not seeing like individual homeowners. I haven't heard that testimony where an individual homeowner wants to, you know, protect their tree from something because that just hasn't come up to the planning commission. I'm not saying it's not there, but mostly it's a developer and the developer is going to raise their costs. They have to work around the tree.

I would add one more thing, which is we're talking about an individual tree, but another concern is that when a developer comes in and takes out law and wipes it out, I would also ask if the council would be in mind of density transfers. You save a grove of trees, the amount of heritage tree growth that you save, the density could be transferred to another part of the property. So I still have to have 12 units per acre, but I'm preserving a third of an acre so that old 12 units can be built in a smaller section. So that I've reserved this grove of trees if that's I see people shaking their heads yes.

So in my practice what I do a lot of in California primarily and across the states are mitigation. And so there's a definition that we have to establish between a protected tree, a heritage tree, and a woodland, and what the city wants to protect, whether it's a street tree or a private lot tree. Those are the definitions that we need to establish. teeth for it. Like if there's some thing that the city has to do, that's one thing. But if it's a private developer coming in and we say we got Doug for you've got a nice stand of Doug for and that's a tree that we see as a protected tree in Sherwood, it meets the criteria for this protected tree. You have to cut that down. Okay, that's going to be a five to one mitigation ratio. You're going to be planting those on site, or you're going to preserve it somewhere else. I don't want to necessarily state that, you know, we're going to limit development because we're going to hamstring them. But if we are a tree city, and we are going to be maintaining trees, but we're cutting down at the lot level, we need to somehow replace those. And that should be part of an ordinance moving forward, I think, in my opinion. heritage trees, you know, if it's a heritage tree, there's additional protections that are on top of the protected tree setbacks and whatnot.

I would agree with that. As long as the underlining goal is with that designation, we are increasing the number of trees that would have been there otherwise. Because I am concerned with a lot of the pre-instruments coming from Salem. You know, next thing you know, they're going to... and say this out loud. They're going to say that we can't have any setbacks in the front yard. We're getting denser and denser and denser. And there's this voice out there that says we need more trees, but we're reducing the amount of land you can actually put those trees on.

What I've seen in practice is similar to clean water services, no net loss. So if you're going to be impacting one, you can't preserve another one. You have to

know creating the wetland it's not a one-to-one it's a two-to-one or three-to-one depending on how many you're taking down where they're located and the value of them so before we go into specifics is that are we on base off base okay so we're tracking on a on a mission and having the commission here with the councils here and y'all are going for this is

are going to be coming to us pretty soon so I'll just on the bigger picture of trees in general I think what sparked some of this conversation was the development on Oregon Street because from a community perspective all of a sudden there's lots of trees there's no trees right and you know the question that came up to my mind is and I think you addressed this but I'll just throw it out there that cutting down a tree for the convenience of construction that should be a line we don't They're obviously doesn't think but sometimes I wonder how much of the clear cutting is done in those bigger projects, just as it makes it easier for them to maneuver trucks and get cranes in and that kind of stuff so I would like to limit that.

Yeah. It's just not realistic. Especially if you're going to build you need to grade it but

With mitigation measures and making sure our code, because one of the things I wanted to ensure when we did some of this is that we don't just replace with deciduous because during the winter it creates a barrenness. And so making sure that we have a proper mix of evergreen and deciduous on those bigger areas.

I think in industrial and commercial zones, you know, Certainly we could probably do better at preserving trees along the perimeter, right? So on the edge of the property lines, obviously in the center, you're going to have all your building. I think there are times you probably could save more trees along the property line.

Taylor, did you have something else? Oh, sorry.

Can that, yeah. Can that be addressed by the ratios that we say, hey, one tree that's cut down for the convenience of construction is 10 new trees you've got to plant. You know what I mean? You can still give them the option, but we're going to get more in return from it if you're going to do that. I'm sure some city has figured that out already. If you absolutely have to cut one down to make it easier for your trucks to come in and out, Well, we're going to get 10 or 20 trees instead of just the five.

For commercial industrial, we already have tree canopy requirements. Yeah, okay. We need a like for like, I think, depending on everything. And we got that out of the Tolton Industrial Deployment Area. Spencer stepped up on that one.

Yeah, they did a good job in

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Making sure that one example I thought of is, you know that there's that and I didn't look at it all before it was developed that that the development program. HAB-Masyn Moyer- You know, we build some there's parks in there and I'm willing to bet those parks had trees on HAB-Masyn Moyer- Before the construction started so that those, you know, that kind of thing. That's what I wonder, those, those trees need to go.

Yeah. HAB-Masyn Moyer- All right, and then we have those Lots of other things that are coming up. They're not all as imminent. Next week, we're doing our, I'm going to call it the mission launch party for the TSP. I mean, we're not going to go to hearings until 2027, but Joy's going to come out and do an introduction to the TSP, so we'll have an opportunity to interact with the council. Thank you for with us. I'm sure we're going to have opportunities to have... multiple hearing sessions and film work sessions on that. I only comment on that.

As you're thinking through the projects, the priorities and those types of things, I think everyone's heard me say this before for the importance of everything we can do to get grant ready. You know, so we have the ability to go out and get state money and federal money. The more work we've done for like 30% design on a project, we're more likely to get the money from the state or the federal government. So as you're thinking through priorities and stuff, kind of have that in the back of your head. Does that make sense?

It does. And I know staff has already done exceptional work in getting a grant from Metro and they've got a, Another grant coming in for our housing needs analysis. So thank you, Sean. Thank you, Eric, for doing that. And then the housing needs analysis is coming. That's a deadline for end of next year with the new state processes that they're asking us to abide by.

Sounds like we might have some meetings coming up.

We might have a lot of very intense meetings coming up. Um, you know, I guess the other thing was the old town strategic plan, just kind of a debrief from the process. I guess as a commission, we just want to see how it's going to be coming through. It looked like it was going to be pretty high density, depending on what happens at the state level. If, you know, if we're allowing four stories and then they get a bonus story of a fifth story, I just wanted to, you know, since we own a lot, we, the city, own a lot of the land, just being mindful of how it looks and Any other commissioners had any comments on that?

Do we also need, I know that one of the purposes of getting that done was that we were going to get some recommendations on, okay, how do we now incentivize, you know, do a facade upgrades or do different things to get certain businesses that, and this is a partnership with Eric, And again, I don't know if now is the right time, but at some point we wanted to do that, give us some recommendations on what we can do to incentivize and get a code that's in place there so that all the new stuff that comes in or facade upgrades or whatever would be matching and we wouldn't have a mismatch of styles as much anymore. Is that something that's on track for the Old Town Overlay?

Yeah, I can speak to that. Yes, we're looking at a few different programs. One of them would be the vertical housing development incentive program. So that would be up to city council whether or not you ultimately approve that, be it be an ordinance likely, tax abatement on 20% of the residential housing. Floors above commercial. So it would encourage mixed use basically as a requirement to do commercial and then you get the tax payment on the residential. But in developing that program, the city can set approval criteria to qualify. So you could say you really want this tax abatement. Here's the design. guidelines. Is there some control back? Yes. If they take the carrot. Correct. But it would get you the ground floor commercial because they don't get the incentive otherwise and it would get you the design and they would get the tax abatement. Otherwise there is a risk if you don't have the program and they come in they could potentially take advantage of some state laws around both those issues.

There was a gentlemen who sat on that old town strategic plan who we were sitting and chatting one time and he still had some concerns or he wasn't sure how it could be stopped. Like if one owner is buying up property after property, what would stop it from coming up strip mall somewhere down in old town type atmosphere instead of keeping like this old town charm.

The state laws, you know, they're, if you, like, creating incentives on property we do not own, I think will help us a lot because I do believe developers will be interested in those incentives. It is, especially if they're going to, whoever ends up owning it and managing it, those would be some pretty good incentives. And then, thankfully, a bunch of the undeveloped land is in the control of the city and the Their credit will continue to remind us that we own it, we control it, and don't give up that control when you have a developer. Is there an action plan or program that's funded for

a hearing to come through the Planning Commission to do that vertical housing incentive program so that we get the code in place before we get any applications?

Yeah, so we're in the implementation phase of Old Town Strategic Plan, of course. So city staff have been looking at that program and we're planning to bring forward Really, it's going to be a menu of options for city council to consider. Hey, here's the vertical housing program. Hey, here's longer-term urban renewal. And basically get the green light to go full steam. And then it would potentially be planning commission first and then city council for ordinance. This probably doesn't need to go to planning commission because it's just an ordinance. it probably wouldn't modify the development code it would be like a vertical housing it would be an incentive program somewhere in the municipal code or by ordinance that a developer just takes advantage of and there's a tax abatement for it so but if you guys wanted planning commission to look at the requirements to qualify we could do that but short answer is yeah we're we're yes the short the short answer is yes we're bringing forward a menu of options um targeting, it's really going to be both the publicly owned city sites and the private sites that we don't own and trying to incentivize the right outcomes on those properties.

And I would add that, yeah, I would love to have Planning Commission's input on what that looks like, because I think it's closely related to the incentives we create. What I'm hoping for is we can fund this out of our URA, because even a couple hundred thousand dollars a year out of the URA for incentives would go a long ways. And our URA is going to, I don't know what our balance is now, but total is going to generate 84 million over the next 30 years. So it's not a lot to pull out for these types of programs. And it doesn't impact our general fund, which is a different conversation.

And it's doing better than when it had.

It'd be nice if we can make the thing that we want to see the easy thing so that we, you know, you don't have to go through a full planning commission hearing to do something. If you meet, if your plan looks like our plan, then you can go right through. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Yeah, but I know that's what states. HAB-Masyn Moyer- They want HAB-Masyn Moyer- We want HAB-Masyn Moyer- Easy button on the clear objective.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Eric, isn't there a there's some design guidelines in the the old town strategic plan about like, oh, we're going to have it. Americana facades with brick and stone facing, and we're going to have overhead, you know, there's stuff like that. Can't the planning commission give us a first take on, on that so that we don't have, you know, French Renaissance and new age angled. And, and we say, Hey, this is the overlay for the design standards in old town, like they've got in Bend and other places.

Are they still legally enforceable through the state system? I'm just throwing out a softball for staff. Is that legally enforceable?

Even if it's not legally enforceable, we incentivize you by doing facade grants. That was one of the big points of doing the the strategic plan is to say, hey, we'll give you these incentives if you design it this way.

Yeah. I mean, most of the – so we have a base code now. I'd say it's a decent code. There are some – allowances in there that have resulted in some outcomes that we're not happy with. So as a starting point, we could look at a code update to close those loopholes, I guess, close those gaps. A developer, in theory, could still take advantage of the state laws. Even with some of those state laws, there's boxes they got to check. There's criteria. So to the extent that they qualify for that, yes, they could potentially get an out on some of those design standards. One example is 17 units per acre. So if they're not hitting that 17 units per acre, a lot of these concerns we have, the developer's not going to qualify for it. So it's not just a straight up blanket outright. You just get out of local code. They still got to check all those boxes. But if they check all those, in theory, they could get out of many of our design standards. But to your question, Taylor, really what we're talking about is an incentive program which frankly, it's really good timing for it. We have one project going in now. For the most part, market rate, non-incentivized housing is not moving forward in Oregon right now. Multifamily, single family is still moving forward, but mixed use, three stories and above multifamily, it's basically not moving forward. It's really slow right now. So it's a great time to adopt one of these programs and say, hey, we'd love to partner with you on the housing. We're just asking for these design standards. And by the way, now into the program, you get your project pencils, actually, potentially. And that's what we've been hearing. Eric and I have been doing a lot of tours in Old Town. We've probably given 10 tours to very, very reputable developers, looking at the city-owned sites and some private sites. None of them have moved forward in part because we're it's just not penciling. Construction costs are too high. Interest rates are too high. Rents right now, interestingly, are about the same and actually going down a little bit in this region. It's just not penciling. So it's the incentive-based communities that are getting housing right now. And if we put forward that carrot, there's potentially a match with the outcomes that we're looking for. So yeah, we'll bring something forward. Yeah.

I hit other commissioners have items on your list that you want to bring up. You're looking at me. You have notes and you have notes.

I was curious, Eric, the one I didn't understand at the very end, what, like, what's an example if, if it's, if what you're saying is true, which I strongly believe it is, um, what kind of incentive could. make someone want to build something that otherwise isn't going to pencil out as profitable? What's an example?

The one that we're looking at right now would be a 10-year tax abatement on a certain percentage of the residential portion of the development. That costs us something.

It does.

After lifespan of a building, at least 50 years. So you're still going to get at least 40 years of full taxes on it, plus the housing. S.D.C. waivers. You know, that's a very specific conversation that this council would need to have. But but any way that you can reduce the cost either up front or over the early periods of the construction and, you know, and life of the building, that's what developers need to see. They need to see the proof. They would they need help on the pro forma either at construction or in the first few years of the of the project.

Is that where you are? The whole dollars can come in and incentivize.

That's what I was leaning into the ERA monies, you know, because, you know, the fact of the matter is in many cities are feeling this right now are with a 3% property tax increase cap. And where our expenses are going, creating, binding those monies or giving up future revenue is significant um you know so it's one thing that um as mayors we're talking to salem about quite a bit because even on economic development they wanted they said i'll just give that business a property tax abatement and then bring in a bunch of new jobs and the state gets all the income tax that comes from that and the city doesn't so we're really pushing the come to the table, too, with funds to help these projects happen in our community. So, I mean, from my point of view, giving up property tax revenue, given where our general fund budget is right now, is a tough sell.

But a one-time SDC credit.

One-time SDC, or maybe funding that with ERA dollars, if we can smartly configure the map of our ERA, something like that. Yeah, actually, they started using SDC dollars.

We need to have a bigger conversation about can potentially do that but the time when you start creating that kind of program from from my perspective is when you update that sdc you update that sdc you build in there some opportunities for some credits so that you're still getting the the target the baseline yeah you need for that important core infrastructure of the city for your water sewer storm

And I assume we can target specific SDCs because I know some of our SDC funds are better shaped than others for long-term capital projects.

Yeah, but if you're, from the way my approach would be to look at it so that we're not at any risk with the loan.

No, I get it. I'm just saying that the ones that are, the ones that are.

We have control over, you know, sewer, we have really no control over. We have control over parks and.

Hey, Eric. When you mentioned the 10-year tax abatement, that only applies to city taxes, right? It's not relevant to, say, like school taxes or anything like that. Is that right?

It's a good question. I don't know the answer, actually. Certainly, before anything passes, we would take a look at that. And if there's outreach, to your point in your question, if there's impacts, we would certainly reach out to the impacted agencies.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

I don't think we have the authority to impact other taxing jurisdictions. Unless you have the enterprise zone from the state, which we don't.

Don't qualify for it. Would developers find any incentive in spreading their SDCs out over time? Yes. Like 10 years or something? I mean, we need the money. but we use it later, so could we, they pay so much up front.

That's a great question. Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't know. There are some state, there is state law that governs SDC, that regulates SDCs. We have to make sure that it would be a local program like that would be allowed. My guess is probably. It might be up to the local jurisdiction, but that's a...

That's a great title change. There's ownership changes in the course that window.

It would have to be paid off at sale or something. Whatever the contract would say.

Or to lean on the property. Lean on the property that they paid over a period of time or at time of ownership change.

That's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else?

I'm not going to stare at you guys. I need to step across from her.

Any other commissioners? Old Town talking about just kind of the design and all that stuff. So just to kind of piggyback on that with the height of the buildings and so forth. That was the one thing that struck me about that plan is if that all happened down there, kind of down toward Oregon Street, you have these four or five story buildings. The density is down there. Just when I compare that to what Old Town over here looks like, it just looked very lopsided. And that's what I would be mainly concerned about when we're thinking about that city-owned property down there and what we're building. If we're allowing them to go way, way up And very, very dense. It's going to look very, very different from what's over here. Despite, I know we have incentives and other things we're trying to do over here. That's going to take a long time to redevelop and do the rest of Old Town. So in the meantime, we would have kind of a weird lopsided scenario. And that was kind of one thing that struck me out of that.

I agree with you. I guess the reason I wasn't not too concerned is we own the property. Yeah. So as part of the sale, we can put conditions on it. So.

I also think, I mean, I don't know how that's not inevitable, right? Because if you eventually want the stuff to redevelop to be taller and higher density, like what an old town is supposed to be. But if you said you can't do that over there and you build smaller, then this eventually builds and now that has to get redeveloped again to match that, right? You're just, so it almost feels like somewhere you need to start with what you're, you know, ultimate goal would be somewhere, and yeah, it's going to take 30 years to get there, but if you don't start now, then it's going to take 50 years to get there.

Well, who knows, next year the state might say, well, you get a three-story bonus instead of one-story.

Just to be clear, then that is the objective of council. We want five-story buildings, packing, I don't know, five, I think we talked about three before.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I mentioned this to, certainly I'm talking about Pines, Right and not not like I look at old town and the grid there's like a diagonal line through it right and you have like the pine railroad triangle that I think is what I would like to see that built up into two or three floors. The other triangle is more residential and yeah I wouldn't I don't think any of us are really gung-ho about seeing that redevelop any time soon.

I think that's fine. We want to have a good, healthy mix of restaurants and shops and stuff in Old Town. And all the studies that people give counselors to read and maybe planning commissioners to over time is you need to have more bodies residing deep down here. And it can be Two primary categories. It's your short term, so it's your hotels, so you're still getting fresh people. They're there to yell, let's go see something cool and check stuff out. You want the hotel types or you want the live people who live here.

I understand it's balance, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like my wife, like why do you like Old Town? Well, because it's little. you know, okay. And if we build it up, it can still feel little in some ways, but we have to get there too. And that was one of the things brought up as parking. Like I have four kids, you know, when they were little, I'm not, you know, we can't walk from where we live down there very easily. We got to drive the minivan and get out. We got to park somewhere. So, but if we can't do that, it's not going to come, you know, and that'll be the case. I think for a lot of families, I'm sure too, if we're not carrying it.

As this stuff gets built up, there's going to be a need for parking, particularly thinking about on the perimeter of Old Town, right? Maybe some in the core as well. We talked about that a lot.

I mean, I've been through some nice old towns that are still utilizing the old buildings of their old town without having to make them now look not old town. With three and four stories that are very vibrant old towns in the downtown area.

We clearly have a handful of buildings that

A small house being used as an office is an example I use. A one-story house with a huge yard being used as an office space is not the highest, best use of an old town.

A nameless bank.

Eric, I know we've talked about this before. Is there any way to say, hey, we only want to incentivize these types of businesses so that we don't end up with know 11 of the same kind of business in old town because that kind of also seems like it would dampen the uh the flow of um people right if it's all from an incentive standpoint absolutely if the city's offering incentives you would set the parameters for the incentive yes Okay, because some of them are, you know, like what I'm not interested in is more appointment type stuff like doctors, lawyers, hair salons. I want more discoverable stuff like, you know, small shops, restaurants where there are things that are changing and it's always something to discover in Old Town versus, hey, I go there, I get my hair cut, I leave. That's not as exciting to me.

That's the whole point of incentives. Destination. We can be specific on what we're looking for. We can try.

I mean, let's take them.

So, I know I brought this up, so if there's any parting words or... We have no regular meetings.

Is there anything we need to know about annexation policy or anything coming that we need to work on?

I don't know anything about annexation coming to hearing.

There's no new laws, in fact, The current necessity for council is phased, rolled, annexation agreements as part of, you know, so we say, okay, let's do this. This is what we all agree that people get a contract. And then we decide how much of the granular details is in that. we are with that piece of land that comes in, that there's a very clear understanding of our community and the developments that know we're going to get is beneficial.

It creates certainty on both sides. There is some rumors going around Salem that they might try to introduce some legislation to preempt annexation rules. You know, so that's one of the reasons we asked the voters for that charter amendment change to kind of get in front of that, but we'll watch that closely too, so.

If the, Tim had said it in different spaces, but if we do this and we do it well, and we're able to deliver the mix of housing and the type of development that fits in our community, that we all like, there's some other, some various, you know, different housing options price points, the state should look favorably upon it if they give us a chance. There's nothing else you guys need our help with for now? Yeah.

The annexations will come to Planning Commission, which is new. They didn't used to come to Planning Commission.

We added that.

We added that. So we adopted new code. Like Councilor Mays mentioned, there's an agreement that's now required. Planning Commission will take a look and advise City Council on that agreement first. So we do have two annexation applications in now. They're a little slow right now. We're talking with the developers, but that code is in effect now. And so...

I thought I remembered that there were some qualifications. Some would, some wouldn't. Is that incorrect? Is it all annexation applications would come before? Very good memory.

Well, all of them would come to Planning Commission for sure. Whether or not they require an annexation agreement, that's at the city's discretion. But all of them require public hearing and would come to Planning Commission first. Yeah.

But can I change gears just a little bit? I'm trying to think like future planning with annexation, with old town. My background is a little bit more green engineering. Just trying to figure out with the notices we've gotten from, you know, we're drawing from the Willamette. Hey, retain your water. Don't be watering and whatnot. Are there any thoughts of including like subterranean cisterns or bioswales to capture rainwater as part of new development? Like in the city to say, I know we have our wells that we're pulling from the city or from Willamette, but more or less a way to supplement our water that we use here to water the plants, that we use to water the fountains, that goes to evaporation. Is there a way to draw from an underground source that we're using as part of development for future projects, things like that?

Are you talking about purple pipe stuff?

Well, I mean, perplex is one. I'm thinking more of an actual subterranean cistern. If we are redeveloping a downtown building to go, you know, four stories up at that time, I think that we should be thinking about, you know, all right, where is the rainwater going to go and can they put in a cistern as part of their development so that the city can tap into that and use it for water? I mean, obviously, it'd have to tie into subsystem. I mean, I'm just future...

One of the things we really have going for us is we have water rights of 20 million gallons a day out of Willamette right now. I think peak we use about five to six. We have the infrastructure with the exception of the intake facility to go all, we can push 20 with the exception of that big facility. So we have lots of capacity for growth.

use of that rainwater yeah that's environmentally friendly are you future looking for scarcity with water in the land well yeah we're gonna have far fewer snow melt things are changing we're gonna have more people drawing on it and if we're gonna have more people living in downtown utilizing the water right we're going to be pulling more and our capacity may be high but there's also opportunities to Peter Proof somewhat.

If we're capturing that, or is it, we're just preventing it from falling back into the strong water, which it all goes back into the system there anyway.

So temporarily, but this would incur less costs for most like what's the cost for us to pump it versus having a developer put it in as part of an incentive, like, Hey, this is part of our plan.

If we're capturing it and then like I said, using it to water the grass as an example.

Yeah, you can't, it's not, it wouldn't, you would never capture stormwater.

No, you wouldn't capture stormwater, it'd just be the rainwater coming out, it would be impervious. But it all goes into the same place.

Yeah.

We've talked about using our emergency wells. They used to be our primary wells back in the day, you know, for like watering school district lawns and parks and stuff like that. Yeah. That's been.

We have some really high capacity wells.

yeah um so well we have plenty of water plenty of capacity i understand where he's coming from as far as that yeah like green roofs things like that and now it's part of like hey

we're going to be using more power. We don't want a data plant. We don't want a data facility out there sucking up everything and charging us higher rates. Like maybe solar should be built into your system. Again, it's something that the developers would have to choose to do, but that could be like, hey, incentive A, level A, if you do this, level B, like almost like a lead certification. Like if you're going to go here and here, the more incentives you get based on the more improvements you do and the more feedback that you provide to the city, the more it comes off.

I have solar on my house, and I've had it for however long, and I'm thrilled that I have it. New construction. We don't need to buy another new cruiser.

Presumably the police equipment and technology don't need to be re-bought every year either.

It isn't every year, but it is more often than once.

Sure. I'm just saying that this is one-time money and ongoing money.

So some clarification on that. Some of the technologies, such as some of this, we're on big contracts. So we're paying on an annual basis for that equipment. It's not a one-time thing. So that would be picked up in the cost of this? Yes. What is that for you? Well, depending on what we do. Right now, our contract is $600,000 and some thousand for five years. That's continuing to go up. That doesn't include any VFR program.

And Andrew Adolph, there's been the cost increase? Yes.

Yeah, because everybody has to get this stuff.

Okay, so we have $440 per year for the two officers and $200 per year for the technology, more than we're spending now, but again, that's, that gets, that spends $640, that leaves about $80,000. which used to buy a police cruiser the first year where you're not buying another. So you have 80,000 extra the next year, year three, year four.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one thing, in the asset plan, you know, they're there every year where we're needing to replace these vehicles. And we've, we've actually stretched, I think, some out.

So you're saying on the plan, this would be like the replenishment fund as well that where you buy a new cruiser over here, it's not to replace when you bought the year before it's replaced the eight year old one.

Exactly. And we talked about and correct me if I'm wrong, that we've always wanted to have a spare police

Thank you for watching.

Another option we wanted to throw out there was what if we charge $12 per ESU? You can see, of course, the amount's going to go up to about $873,000. And what we thought about is, well, could we look at funding one current officer as well as the two new officers, police crews or equipment technology, one current officers? We all know what we went through the last biennial budget. We had some layoffs. This would help protect a future layoff potentially in the police department. I'm not saying... That's what's coming down the pipeline, but it just kind of help to give the chief a little bit of protection of not losing what he's trying to build over there.

Basically, bringing up some funds in the general fund.

Yeah, but you said officer was 220. Yeah, this doesn't quite get us there, but it'll just help the part of that. Exactly.

Another option we wanted to look at, let me just see if I can move these folks a little bit there. Okay, so what if we take it, we charge everyone $12 per ESU, except for commercial and industrial. What if we cut them down in half, say $6? You know, or manufacturing, industrial. You know, one thing, these are large businesses. I know you folks still patrol out there. I don't know if it's quite as intensive as, say, other commercial buildings. I would leave that up to another big on the spot.

No, I mean, obviously, as we've talked about, we're a proactive agency. So we're there, we're in and out. We have a program called Night Eyes. So we're in there knocking on doors, checking parking lots. One of the things that I think I need to remind people is that although these big vacant buildings and parking lots are not utilized 24-7, people do go there. They do go and commit crimes. We contact them. a lot of people in these slots at nighttime. It's off the beaten path. It's not in the retail arena where they can be seen. So they'll go and do their thing somewhere else. We do spend a fair amount of time patrolling it. Now, is it a calls for service drain? Not necessarily.

This would encompass the same $727,000.

So this would be about $5,000, $6,000 less, but it would give those larger industrial

manufacturing businesses a little bit of a break. Because when you looked at them, I'm not going to get into the details, but some of these manufacturer industrial were paying maybe just as much as or more than some of the larger retails that consume a lot of the PDs. Yes. So we're trying to see, okay, if we didn't do equal across the board, how can we make it fair for some of these that might not be such a drain on the PDs resources? Last option is what if we did $11 per ESU, $6 for manufacturing industrial, and then $15 for retail, just all of retail. I know last time we had kind of split out small retail versus large retail, but we just put retail all under one

Well, you're already getting, because they're smaller, they're paying less units anyway.

Exactly. I think, too, complexity is compounded because you might have a landlord that controls a whole strip mall and the bill is going to the landlord versus the individual tenants versus someone who owns a small business like a restaurant that owns their own property. So trying to

Not that the landlord probably also won't pass it all down.

They'll pass it down, but we can't control how they pass it down. Exactly. And that was one of the challenges that I know Public works was having to summarize some of those multi use properties where you might have. A restaurant, say, a retail shop. A dentist office, and then some kind of fitness, you know, overall, I can know a Walmart area where it's really hard. You can't just say, well, we're going to put. This in restaurant. Well, you have some retail in there too. So we had to create a multi use category as well. And really, as the mayor, we're saying is it's up to that. property owner to pass that down if they would like to to their tenants.

So our proposal would be building this by lot, basically. By cat.

By meter. And then in the scenarios, it would then be by the use on it, not necessarily at the zoning. You have retail in light industrial areas. So if you were to do a variable rate, which I'm very supportive of, that retail should be the highest of any of the rates. I'm not saying option four is the right answer, but kind of a scenario. All right, what accounts are predominantly retail? And I would put restaurants in a retail category. Is that essentially? Actually, we did split restaurants out in non-retail, but we can- So if that's in a mixed use, I think you have to throw it in the bucket of retail. Yeah, from my perspective.

I love the idea of just keeping a commercial and that bundles retail and everything because it's so difficult to break it out because of all the different structures that are asked. We don't need an administrative burden.

Right, that's what I'm saying. Of the two options of a strip mall, is it a commercial strip mall or is it a retail strip mall? You look at it and it's like, that's really retail.

Because in this scenario... Some could fall under commercial, some could fall under retail in one of the same shopping centers.

But then they, and then making sure you look at the. I was using bad terminology. So, yeah, I think it's, and this, if we go, can we go back to option three real quick? I think it's going to be easier to administer by lumping retail, commercial and all that together because you have to, You can have a landlord that's controlling a little strip mall that has a mix of all that. So how do you do that? Right.

Because the bill's going to that one landlord. Well, maybe not.

Sometimes those have multiple meters on the building.

Some have new and some don't, by the way. Or maybe multiple meters and they're all built individually, maybe multiple meters and they're all built centrally. I don't want to deal with that. Yeah, because what's going to...

It shows that? Yeah. Do we have that data? Yeah.

Do we have the data that shows, like, which ones are split out? Or is it just one?

It's hard to tell. It depends what they developed. Okay, exactly. Yeah, that's why you got to lump them together.

Yeah. Because then you're just setting yourself up because the tenant's going to go, hey, wait a second. I'm really retail. You know, it's just you're billing me the retail rate. I'm not retail.

So the option three scenario, which I can't support, unless we put caps on manufacturing, because a big box retail would pay only double the rate of a large manufacturer. And the service needs of those two are massively different. Select a four.

I have a fundamental question on this. Does this actually meet our needs? I thought we needed four officers in order to get up to where the chief wanted.

Back from the, uh, when she talked counselor, it was, uh, four, I supported two with this fee at the time. And that's what we brought forward because we can't fund all four officers out of just commercial.

Okay, thanks. We're looking at the residential side.

Yeah.

Later, Nate. Yeah, I do remember that brand brought up, yeah.

That's my biggest concern is our, however many of our really large manufacturing companies putting a rate that's half the rate of what a large retailer

Let's go back. For me, four is a non-starter. I have zero interest in four. It's way too cumbersome for staff to try to manage. I don't want anything to do with it.

Go ahead.

My issue is the commercial and retail separately that four had. That's the whole conversation we just had about how hard it would be to...

I'm trying to understand case concerns because in both four and three, the manufacturing and investment rates are the same. Except retail is going from

12 to 15. Yeah. But go back to three. I mean, we can just tweak. We can tweak the rates on three to get to Keith's point.

Go to 15 on the per ESU monthly and commercial and $6 on your manufacturing industrial.

Or we go 13 and four.

13. Would you like to play around with some scenarios? I can pull up that spreadsheet.

Yes, please.

Okay.

Oh, I'm muttering.

Sorry. Which would also be an administrative nightmare is taking the number of ESUs and having like, if you have this between this many and this many ESUs in commercial, your rate is this and this and this.

I just think you're... Well, you also don't point to it because the ESU itself is already graduating your rate. Right. Like you're just double graduating your rate now.

Is it because of more administrative issues?

So, this is kind of just the makeup and let me just. We got the all other commercial category where it's auto bank construction. lodging, medical, and then I'd split out manufactured and industrial because we kind of thought about, okay, what if we charge them a lower rate? And then I just kept retail split out because based off the last work session. So from there, what would you like to see? Is it 15, 6, and 15? So if we did 15, 6?

Well, we're saying that even though on the spreadsheet you have all other retail split out, that we don't think that's manageable. So we would have to keep them the same. So that would bring us $863,000. Wow. That's higher than any. $13,000. $768,000.

And what's the amount that we need for those two officers? That's what I said.

Plus one.

Like $725,000. Yeah, about $725,000-ish, $727,000. The existing one, yeah, then we want to get up to about $824,000. Oh, no, $873,000.

So that would be... What happens if you change industrial to, or manufacturer to four?

And keep those at $3,500? I always want to go higher, but just to see what that is.

About $5,000.

So we need 873 to get two new officers and a current.

Yeah, just basically, it's kind of that buffer to, I don't know, maybe shield an officer for future layouts. What did you say, 12-5-12? 5-12. Okay.

And Keith, if you look there, it does have for manufacturing industrial, it gives you a breakdown of the average of the 38 accounts that fall in that category. So you can kind of see their average annual costs.

So each account at $5 is roughly about $3,300 a year per account.

And what does 14, 5, and 14 do? 14, 5, and 14? 14, 5, and 14?

790. I don't know if it's specific manufacturing, I still think it's too high for our large manufacturers.

That's what I want to incentivize. Do you think this would... Would it necessarily stop?

No, but it's just...

At five, what would the average pay?

3,300.

My question is, what is the high and low that look like, right? Okay, so 3,300 average, what is the 100,000 square foot placement?

I mean, we have some accounts in this category that have 300 ESUs.

Okay, so 300 times five. In the email that was sent out with some work session material, there was discussion about having a cap. Right.

I think that's what.

Specifically for, I think, the industrial.

It was interesting when I did the cap, say I did a cap of 50, 50 ESUs. And there was, I think it was 19 ESUs. 19 out of our 38 accounts, or maybe it affected customers, the savings was $528 by putting that 50 cap, 50 ESU cap, because there's not a ton of businesses over that 50 cap. There's a few in the 300 range, and then it gets down to the 70 and 60s, but there was a couple that were 300 ESU.

500 a month, I think, in that scenario. Yes. That was when they were talking at 10.

Yeah. So there wasn't like really much of a savings when you're talking 528 across every one if we put that cap in, or across some businesses messaging. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think your cap makes sense.

So I know in the email when I sent it out, it was at 75, but we also looked at it. When I said we were still tweaking around with it, we went down to the 50 and that seemed a lot better for the manufacturing businesses.

And if you, you know, I'm fine with, you know, if somebody is truly, if somebody is in an industrial area and it's not retail, it's not commercial, but I don't know, more warehouse. I don't, I'm not as, you know, I'm not necessarily saying put a cap on warehousing.

But it's hard to, you get a catalog.

I know, I'm just saying it, you know, if you want to, my biggest, number one concern on this is the optics to a large, medium and large manufacturers that are here, coming here.

You know what would help is maybe looking at the other areas in the region that are growing in terms of industrial job growth and seeing whether analysis. What Kaiser are they going?

So the Kaiser went with a $10 and some odd cent ESU from July 1st to January. Then they're looking to go up to $14.38 or something like that in ESU January 1st. For everyone.

Yeah, residential and commercial. So they have a little different setup.

And to get the number, I'm buying whatever you want me to retell.

Is there any consideration for a discount for the nonprofits?

I know we had discussed that last time. And I think, Keith, you brought up a, I thought was a good point where they don't pay property taxes right now. So yeah, they pay for some city services, whether it's water, but they're not paying property taxes for other city services. So I think we kind of discussed a little bit of like, we thought,

ask chief about whether we get calls to non-profit churches and we didn't we didn't know how they helped them pay for our services but it is though because it's not all churches no it's not i just right you have the province on schools We don't have the Sherwood School District.

Sherwood School District is the one that's excluded.

What's included? Private schools, charter schools.

Yeah, charter schools. That doesn't seem fair.

Charter school is a public school.

I should say they probably paid through a church. So the church is probably getting charged. That's a good point. And the school district pays for it.

I said the question is how many nonprofits actually own the property? Yeah.

It seems like if we just say, hey, we're really trying to hit the people that use the services the most, that's not really why we're we all pay into the police department, even if we don't use it, we all pay into the public schools, even if we don't use them because it makes our community a certain way. And so if I'm a manufacturer and I want my people to be working in a place that is safe and that they feel safe living and all the other stuff, I feel like I'm fine with there being some sort of a cap, but I don't know that we want to say, Hey, we're going to stick it to the retail because we all can immediately visualize, Hey, there's, theft or whatever, everybody likes living in Sherwood because it feels safe. So I feel like we almost have to pay for that, whether you personally are committing the crime or not, you know, or whether it's happening at your building. So that's kind of my feeling on it.

Taylor, you're here. I just haven't been. Welcome back, Tim.

So is there a direction you want to move? Would you want to maybe another work session? Because I know...

Different directions.

Yes.

What are we on now? What's it look like now? What are our numbers?

Right now, the numbers are 14, 5, and 14. We're looking at about $791.

I like 13, 5, 13 better, I think. This feels like we're not enough to get the third officer. And... Well, it's the paper. Yeah.

We could still pay for the two new officers.

I'm good with that. And then what would, well, if we had the cap, rough estimate of what that would do to our number? It might bring it down a few thousand dollars.

What cap would we be looking at? Less than $5,000.

Okay. But it's meaningful to the few businesses that give a message. Yeah, there's a handful of businesses that show a cap of $50,000.

Or all or just industrial? Just industrial.

Just industrial. What if you do all? Is it the same message? Yes.

Yeah. Your large retailers are your major utility, major service. I think one large retail is 500 volts.

500 volts is more. Yeah. We're most now.

They don't have quite that.

Part of the conversation you missed is that it's very difficult to separate out retail and other commercial properties because of the . Just manufacturing. Just manufacturing, yeah. And industrials, you've got those places. No, that's what probably hit the cap.

I'd say none of the nonprofits would probably hit the cap.

I can check, but I just didn't want to get into details here, but I can look after the meeting and he emailed out to council.

You're talking about a cap of 50. You're talking about 120,000 square feet.

I guess here's an example. So nonprofits right here. Nothing pervious. Number of counts, 16. Number of ESUs, so 260 divided by 16. Yeah, they're not meeting that 50 cap.

Right, but Doug, isn't that like churches? Yeah, churches. Big church. Yeah, the big church.

Church, Providence. Yeah. All right, Providence, right? It depends on how much of the parking is applied to Providence versus not applied to Providence. I have no idea. Okay.

Yeah. I'm good with this scenario, although I would prefer to get some more to help the general budget on an existing officer, but we can future.

What are their conversations about? To me, I don't think, I think to Craig's points, to me, it's like, we're asked, we need four. We're asking the business community to fund two. That feels fair to me. Asking them to fund three feels unfair to me. I mean, residential still consumes a pretty high percentage of our.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah. Yeah. Good point.

Okay. So just to read. So cap of $55 on many true manufacturers, manufacturing and industrial. If it's warehouses, it's and everybody else is 13. If it's warehouses, it's 13.

Is it easy to split that up?

Well, I think it should be, it's the multi-use, as we talked about, is where we really need to focus. But if it's not manufacturing, then it's going. If it's just a warehouse.

I think it's really just, you're going to have two categories, manufacturing, industrial, all others.

Yeah. That's not by zoning, it's by actual use. And I know Public Works is going to, We're looking at when businesses actually apply for their business license here. We can get them in the correct categories. Exactly. Because we're just trying to make everything consistent between departments now as we go into this.

So this is like our second or third work session on this. Have we had any businesses reach out? Have we heard from anybody?

I haven't, but I would ask Eric about this.

Paying this. Commercial. Have you heard from anybody?

We haven't pitched this to anybody.

Anybody who might have listened to work sessions, have we heard any phone calls or anything?

Not from mine.

So next steps then would be to bring something back, probably at our

I don't know if we get everything by 7-21, but in August, if not before, go through two. Did you look that up, Brian?

So we can do it either way. They're going to return our resolution versus ordinance. Yeah. So it's really going to be council's preference on this. Some cities want two readings.

I want two readings.

I want an ordinance. There's a lot of cities that do an ordinance and then bring a resolution.

And then so if you probably see it at one council meeting in August we'll talk about it goes through twice then then we'll do some public education on this and Eric and Yeah, I would say right now looking at January 1st, yes there so and give us some tiny Might be good quality for you to reach out

I think so.

I think, yeah, I think we keep moving forward. Yeah. Yeah. I think we just need to get educational piece to besides.

Yeah.

There's been a few, I think, in the past, I brought resolutions to where we Okay, at this future date is when this will be. I think it had to do with parks or something like that.

When you've got the chamber exec here too, they could put it in some of the chamber correspondences and then the first reading on the 21st, they potentially show up.

So you'll see the ordinance will be a little, maybe more lengthy than a normal ordinance on something like this. One of the things that we really need to make sure we don't need is the difference between

I really like a balancing test on that without getting into it. But I think, you know, from the way that this is presented, it falls squarely within the fee type of analysis.

But I think we'll... And other cities have done it, and I would assume.

I haven't seen a successful challenge, if any.

So I think just making sure it's important that we clarify that in the staff report, the language that we use. So we'll make sure to do that. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thank you.

Holden here.

She's Holden.

I'm wearing a sweater on.

All right. Now we're on to, are we listening to TLC? We are. This is the TLC. There we go. All right. Thanks, Keith. Back up here. Thank you. Get one more.

Thank you.

Oh, there it is. Do you want to start to share on the wall now? It's not my fault, I'm wearing shorts. You should see me trying to use the CEP meeting. Technology. Ready, right?

We are ready. We're off to item number three, which is the Transient Larging Blocking Pack. And we have David and Eric and Eric here to help us out. And David, your name's on the sheet, so I'm going to kick it to you.

Yeah, and I'm going to kick it right over to Eric just to start it off.

Thanks, Mayor. We last talked about the PLT Trans-Atlantic Tax Point 4.5. At that work session, City Councilman requested some additional information. Really, that was clarification of all in when we take into account county, state, and city, you know, where insured would compare. So we have that information for you, true apples to apples with some other jurisdictions. And we just heard throughout the meeting that there's a desire to bring us back. So here we are. Go to the next slide, Eric. We're requesting some direction from you. There's really two main questions. Should the TLT be raised? And whether the answer to that is yes or no, there's still and remain the same or be changed. So potentially a yes or no on the first question, and then we still need to answer the second question. So that's what we're looking for feedback for you on it. Eric's gonna talk a little bit about the details.

Yeah, just a quick refresher. I think we talked to you several months ago on this. So just a very quick recap, TLT transient lodging tax, Just a tax on short-term stays. This is tax on visitors who come and visit our city. Hotels, Airbnbs. We've only got the one hotel. We have about one or two dozen Airbnb short-term rentals. Not a huge amount. Funds tourism promotion, tourism-related facilities and activities, economic development. Our state rate right now is 1.5% TLT. County rates 9%, which is the highest in the state. Washington County, very high. And so that keeps a lot of cities in our county very low. So we're at three. And that's our total TLT rate is 13.5%. And supports statewide tourism marketing, local visitor infrastructure.

Can I?

Yes.

Does any of that county money flow back to us? Yes.

And that is... We did present that in the last session. Yeah, we get about two and a half, 2.8% or something of that nine back to us.

And does that also go into our TLT account or is it just going to- It goes in the TLT account and then it gets split out across the three different funding mechanisms that council decided back a few years back.

Okay, thank you. So we do, thank you for- So we get about a third of it back, a little less than a third.

Almost, yeah, exactly.

So just another recap, the Hampton Inn, 73 rooms. I called the Hampton Inn sales director and got a number for this year, January through June, 62% occupancy rate so far this year, not the greatest, but their bookings are very high for the remainder of the year, a much higher percentage of that. I don't know what that's going to put them for the year, but they're at 62%, just something to keep in mind. They're feeling good now.

What's that? They're feeling... On the positive side.

Yes.

Bookings are very good for the rest of the year. Do we have any idea why they were so low? Is it just weather, economy, everything? Okay. Yeah, because historically it's been much higher than that. I just didn't know if it was like we didn't have sports tournaments in town or if we didn't have, yeah, it's probably the economy.

I think wine tourism is down a little bit as well and some other factors. Gen Z is screwing that up.

I'm making up for it, don't worry.

Seriously, have you seen it? It's like $13 billion down to $2 billion or something.

That's a lot. But the positive thing is they're looking good the remainder of the year. And then the rest of our funds come from short-term rentals, which is approximately two dozen. And I'll hand this one over to David real quick, just kind of a breakdown of how it goes.

So this is a few years ago, we held a work session, Transient Logitech's work session, just to try to determine how we were gonna spend the resources, prior to the hotel opening, we would receive maybe $4,000 to $5,000 from the Airbnbs that are around the city. And then we all of a sudden, we started accumulating a large balance once the hotel opened up. So what council decided at the time is, let's just, you know, we approximately get about 160,000. So out of that, under the old state law, you could use 30% of that for unrestricted expenditure so 30 of that goes to the arc center right now but technically that is one actually eligible tourism related facility that can be funded by a transient lodging tax so we kept 30 of the total in the general fund And the remaining was split up 66.6% to the development promotion fund and 33.3% to the public art fund. So that's kind of just how things are split up currently. But like we said, that could be a topic for discussion tonight.

If you as counsel, we are funding the whole town thing with 66%.

Yeah, that came up. Did that come out of my book? I think that came out of

Part of it came out of my budget. A portion of it was paid for from the community development fund and the general fund and a portion of that was paid in the development fund contract.

That's from the TLT revenue.

My memory is just wrong.

That's right. They paid for it out of that.

I thought my memory was we had this project it was in a cost blank. So we said, okay, let's pay for that, you know, out of the gate with this dollar amount with that, with that 66%. And then once that project is paid for, then we would re reassess where that money went. But if we're, and I'm, you know, free for the conversation, if I'm misspoken and we're just saying, we're two thirds is going to the economic development and the economic development department is paying for this project. and it's still potentially ongoing.

I would like to, like the 30% to the art center that, I don't need any information on cost money to run the art center. Public art, 37,300. I know we probably paid for those deer and the basalt and all that. I don't know what else so far. But besides the Old Town strategic plan, what else... is the $74,000 covering in the ECTA.

Like, what are we using it for? Part of Eric's salary.

Oh.

Part of his salary is paid out of that fund. And then some of the expenditures. You know, right now, Eric's, part of his time is over in the URA. Part of it's here in the ECTA development fund and a little bit in the general fund. But since that's kind of his job, you know, economic development, there's travel, some travel costs in here that kind of get split between the URA and ECTA. and the economic development.

Yes, I missed that. We always had an economic development person for years.

But this was kind of a newer created fund, probably within the last two years.

We're just using that for moving money here so that it's less pressure on the general fund.

Yeah. Makes sense. I'm very excited.

like the idea of TLT helping things like the Art Center break even, is that number, as the Art Center improves bookings, I mean, it's busy, busy, busy, but it do...

It used to do better financially?

Yeah, or if at the end of the day, the the delta shrinks, then do we... We lower that to 20%. Right. And then because... I mean, I don't want the Arts Center to ever be a general fund, you know, have an impact on the general fund. And with this, I think it's not. Similarly, like with the Fieldhouse, if the Fieldhouse isn't being house, one way or the other. I like that concept.

They'll have to pay for themselves.

Yeah. I mean, the field house used to pretty much pre-COVID. It was really close. And we haven't got back there.

What's the new state law percentage breakup? 50-50. Oh, OK. All right.

Can the library be considered something that draws tourism? Could that go in here?

It's interesting the way the law is written. I think it's other tourism.

It's unclear.

Yeah.

It's very well back about friends too.

You'll find a lot of gray area in the TLC. Yeah. I mean, it's very gray with a lot of cities.

library for all those women are going to be to our public library. Otherwise, you would go to the other.

Yeah, so what they what the well, but because we're on the county line here, we went to listen to this stuff. If they had a better release on it. And we're not that far from another jurisdiction.

Yeah.

Sometimes we would literally go just for a change of scenery, right?

And put some of our summertime programs, such as Music on the Green and Movies in the Park, that type of thing, be considered part of this.

Yeah, I think I could argue that. The question is, would a reasonable person say that this would draw tourists?

I'm just curious as... another way to think about it, because it does provide some relief to the general fund.

You know, in the transient lodging tax law, it talks about tourism-related facilities and other improved real property, but they don't define what other improved real property is. So that's kind of where... It does. A tourism-related facility is a conference center, convention center, visitor information center, and other improved real property that has a use of life of 10 or more years and a substantial purpose of supporting tourism. So you might be able to argue the library, you know, because I know the library also has a lot of various programs they offer that brings in folks.

Science that are directing tourists to the library now. Right. So you can talk about that.

We've also talked about, they just said the visitor center, which the chamber hosts the visitor center. We've talked for years about TLT. When we knew the hotel was coming, it's of course the TLT going to help our chamber who heads off all the visitor hotels.

I think that would be good news. The promotion fund, maybe as we're looking at a city brand of some sort of

I like the idea of protecting some of our core services, like the Arts Center and some services like that. I don't want to be in a position where we have to choose between police officers and art centers. We can make the Arts Center self-sufficient and the Fieldhouse and other related facilities. I think that's great. I think the other good news is this is going to grow. We do have I think we have an app in for a new hotel. It's just a question of when they're going to do it. I think we're going to be coming back to this.

Did the approved hotel go away or did it get extended?

Our understanding is that right now it's on pretty solid hold.

And how long is that approval valid for that developer?

Until they develop the site with something else. It's vested because of the other improvements they made on the site. So they can pull building permits anytime. Great. Perpetuity, unless they develop something else. Don't want to speak for that developer, but we've

But not forever. It could be a couple years.

As I look at these numbers personally, speaking solely for myself, I think the 30% continuing for the general fund for the arts center, if we look at the 70%, the only one that I would feel comfortable having up for conversation is the 33.3%.

Yeah, because otherwise, if you make a change to either the 30% or the 66%, you're just shuffling money. Exactly. Right. we're not going to, let's just say, we don't want to pay for FDEV out of this anymore because we don't want to pay for this. Well, that frees up this money. That's not going to pay for FDEV out of the job.

I mean, it's just... Yeah, and this is just a recap. Most of you there at the budget committee in June, you know, we're We have a little bit of hole in the general fund we're looking to try to fill with why we're coming up with other ideas. So yeah, if we did strip away some money, we'd have a bigger hole to fill.

And 37,000 is a huge number. What else could you do with that? Do we have any more public art conversation coming up?

So on the art side, there is more ideas. It's just a matter of Is that a way to build something else? Building a balance and then do something. There's some low-cost things people want to do and then there's higher-cost things. It's just a matter of if you want to continue to put money into that socket.

I guess I would say if we add this money flowing into the public art fund for years and we spent six figures on public art, maybe if we're going to keep the 33% going to trails, maybe it's library, maybe it's three other different things, right?

It doesn't, it feels like... Or in other scenarios, you grow the pot and you look at the rate.

Can it be shifted to active?

Well, or to, we can shift more to the art center too, because now we can go up to 50%. So if the art center's, if 40,000 isn't enough to break even, the 60,000 goes closer.

I recommend we have a few other slides that would help. Because I could help you answer this question that we're on now of allocation. I think one question that could answer first is, do you want to rate increase?

Because then those numbers are going to change. I guess I was thinking that at first too, but I'm also thinking like, well, I don't know if I want to rate increase until we know how we want to spend it. It kind of goes, it's a chicken and egg conversation. Yeah, 100%. Do you want to skip this one?

Yes, go ahead.

Which one?

Yeah, go back one.

Okay.

This one? Yeah.

Okay. So we're just going to look at some scenarios. You know the state law is going to go to 50-50. Well, this allows cities to be flexible. It's not a requirement. So you can see we're at the orange one baseline right now, 13.5%. We bring on an average of 160,000 a year. It could fluctuate, you know, based on how many visitors, 800,000 every five years. Okay. If you're to go up 1% to 4%, we've laid out all the numbers of the amount that will come in over the next few years. The three-year total will go up almost a couple hundred thousand, 180,000 or something like that. The five-year total would go up significantly as well. And you can do whatever percentage. It doesn't have to be four.

Any of those changes puts us at the highest in the county, correct?

We'll talk about that, yeah. But my last point was just you can even do 4.5. It doesn't have to be an even number. But yes, so here's where we are. The orange baseline right there lays out where we are right now. If you were to go to, say, a 4% citywide TLT, so put us at 14.5 for the combined rate at the hotel. And that would put us right up just below Portland and Gresham and right at Warrington and near Troutdale. If you're only at 5%, you'd be one of the highest in the state. But you'd still be right at where the several cities in Portland metro area are. So again, we had an example a few months ago on how many dollars does that add to $170 a room night? It's a few bucks.

I just pulled up my receipt from the hotel this weekend that I was at. And I'm like, I don't even know how much I paid. I'm like 18 bucks a night on my taxes.

I know, but you don't even know that until you're checking out. Yeah.

So it's like when you book it, I mean, I mean, you can find it.

Yeah. Go to Disneyland. You pay now based on location.

Yeah. So that just kind of lays out where a lot of other cities are.

All right, we'll go back to the other one where it tells you how.

So these are some of the small ones right here. Does the city want to do that?

They're just their piece is 9%. Their county rate is only 1%. So it's pretty low.

You can literally imagine back in the day which jurisdictions

spotted that and acted first. Yeah.

I'm in favor of 5%.

I'm in favor of 6%, actually. I'm good with that, too. I think, I mean, I'd rather get it from people that are visiting us on vacation in good moods than get it from our citizens. So...

Do you have loans for this income then?

I want more trails. I want more of all that stuff, right? I want all the stuff that we just talked about. I don't want to take it out of the art fund. In fact, I want to say, hey, I want to see $50,000 worth of art every year or at least $100,000 every two years. And I want people to be able to notice it, right? If you don't drive down Oregon Street, you don't notice that we've got new art.

But I think we have to set priorities.

I know, but it's not going to be like, hey, we can do that by cutting it to $5,000 a year. And so whatever the discussion is, the first discussion, I think, is I want more.

What is the deficit on the Arts Center per year?

I could run upstairs. You guys could continue this conversation. I could be back within three minutes. I'll let you know. I'll be right back.

Is the Fieldhouse making money?

Fieldhouse too, David. Just staff, right? The buildings pay for it.

I don't know the intricacies, but You also have the before and after partnership with the school district played a role. I don't care about before. I care about them. I know. I don't know what it is.

We had parks board last night. Lance was actually there and did a presentation. I think we run in $175,000 in revenue at the field house this year, which is the best we've done since 2011. The cost is probably... It's higher than that. I mean, it's definitely higher. I'm going to say maybe as much as 40% more. Where's the salaries?

It's management.

And we have two full-time employees and the rest are on top.

And is it still hosting all the different...

So we're still driving people? During the day... The uses down quite a bit because public works is so busy. There's no place to park. So if somebody is busing kids in this, you know, that's so so operational hours and operational hours is is is a little page basically four to midnight. And then Lance also schedules and coordinate stuff at Snyder Park. And so we bring in revenue there, but that goes into the turf replacement fund.

And it's a bunch of Parking works from employees or just from our own city-owned vehicles?

Employees, yeah.

So I'm supportive of the buyer rate. I'm supportive of at least in the interim freezing the art contribution and then looking at where else to allocate if there is a Whatever type of program is mine.

What are the different things that we'd like to fund? We've heard continue to fund our trails. Is there anything else we want to put on the list and then we can debate the priority of those things relative to each other? It's right.

We talked about

You know, we haven't really funded the new park structure over it. I mean, we talked about the all accessible parking or a place structure or not, you know, we don't, you know, so we could say, Hey, that would be a tourism destination. If it was, what's that? We decided not to put that in. Not the full, not the whole thing, but like the surface or something, the spongy. Yeah. Anyway, That kind of thing, if it is a, again, that could be a tourism, you know, thing that we could also protect public money or, you know, general fund with.

I think the chamber should be part of the conversation. We've been saying that since I've been on council. I agree.

I don't think it's a great policy to try to drive tourism to a new red park that doesn't have, like, that doesn't have the,

And parks has revenue. They have a very significant revenue.

Well we talked at one point about finding some quick wins on connecting trails so that we have more of a throughput and we could say we connected this extra 50 feet we would have a I don't know if we actually did the work to figure out what that would

The library gets a lot of funding, and they just are going to get a bump in funding.

I was going to say, with the WCCLS levy and the increase, we will be at a break-even point right now. It's not going to stay that way necessarily for long. It's going to be a break-even point when it's been at $400,000 or $500,000?

That's it.

Correct. We're going to be bringing in 1.5. We haven't taken that into consideration, have we?

Yes, we have. Once it passed, we did. We don't yet. We're getting on the route. It'd be different.

I could say...

I could give you a ballpark, but I don't have any. If you did the bridge over, you're probably looking at one four, one five, somewhere right in there. That's just a rough, you know, that's about the same price.

Yeah.

But it's not a long doubt for me. That'd be a great way to help.

It might not be less than that. Just call it off. It would have to be the, whatever there's, we have park SDCs. Yep. That's it. Social parks. Eagle Scouts.

Yeah.

And if we're needing some trail money, there's some of this. But we have park STCs typically to put stuff on trails.

Yeah.

There's park STCs.

Absolutely. New trails. You can't do maintenance. You can put new features on a trail.

You can expand the capacity of a trail. With SDC? Yeah, you can't replace, you can't do maintenance of a trail. Maintenance is the thing, yeah.

So why have we not talked about that at Park Sport?

SDC 101, sorry.

We have with Cedar Creek Trail. I mean, we've got SDCs.

Actually, since the last couple of years, the recurring conversation on Park Sport is how do we get these trails built that we have no money for and we've never talked about. What's the USDC balance? 3.3? Yeah, 3.3 million, Doug.

I'm not arguing with you.

I'm just wondering why. So we've got one of the...

He's been acquiring land and... Acquiring land. Acquiring land was the main priority. So, yeah.

So no, I honestly, we said that priority, but we can pick away a little bit of it to do some of this trail work.

It's not three. I think we talked about it. The council meeting was Murdoch Park acquiring land and then the fitness equipment at Langer Park. So those were the three priorities. And they talked about again last night. But you don't mean. And that's it.

It was all just. Well, and we're going after grants for that.

So David, what'd you find out about the word center?

Yeah, so the Art Center right now, based off the 26-27 budget, running a deficit of about $160,000, just rounded up. And the Fieldhouse... We have to combo. I assumed if I don't combo with the recreation department, it's about $140,000 deficit. But if you put the recreation in there, it's about $176,000 deficit. But you have to remember, we are shifting over $88,000 roughly that the field house, the recreation that that department earns and putting it over in the general construction fund for turf replacement. So just kind of take that into consideration a little bit too. offsetting that but it will but we're just yeah make sure we can replace that turf so we're losing 150 grand a year running the dealings why do we keep putting putting the money yeah yeah but now if we were to reduce by that 80 let's say 85 000 now you're looking at probably about 60 70 000 deficit the field houses keep running

Potentially. Good question. I certainly don't want to replace that if we're going to be moving in.

I don't want that stuff.

The turf is for Snyder. Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, for that. And the money that comes in paying for the turf is mostly, how much does Snyder Rentals bring us?

It's about $86,000. $86,000.

Roughly what it would. So the Snyder Rentals alone almost cover the cost of turf replacement.

No.

The rentals at Snyder Park, if you just took that money and set it aside, it would pay for it. And then some because you're collecting $85,000 a year.

So you've got to remember that $85,000 a year that we're collecting, it replaces the baseball turf, the football turf, as well as the field house turf is how we've used that money in the past.

And right now that balance is near about $700,000 over in the general construction fund. Just accruing for that. You mean by the human?

Through loss of the field balance is probably not.

So the point of the conversation is to determine if we want to continue with the 70-30 or the 30-70 split or go 50-50. And if we want to raise the amount, correct? All right.

I'm fully supportive of obviously going 50-50.

But it must begin to cover the cost of the art center.

And the art center, the revenue from the next door rental of the art center goes towards the art center, right? As far as, okay.

And it's not just that gap we can close from both sides too. We can be looking at getting creative with our fee structures, finding ways to get people to rent it when it's not only being rented. I mean, we don't have to attack it all from just the fee side or the tax side.

And one thing to be careful at is if you reduce a little bit in the economic development and promotion fund, those costs are going to have to come back to the general fund because you'll be operating in deficit. Great.

So I would raise rates, increase the pod. Yeah.

The question that I had is if you go 50-50, what does it look like as far as the monetary value in each of those?

If we raise it to something?

Stay where we are first, and then what happens if we raise it? So if we go 50-50, what's that difference between what we're doing now?

And then if you raise it, So right now, economic development is getting 46% of the total collected.

Yeah, I'm visual, so I have to see it. Sorry.

It would give about additional, without raising the rates, it'd give it about additional $25,000 to the art center.

But it's got to come off of...

It's got to come off of the public art and that economic development promotion funds. They'll lose $25,000.

If you froze the economic development amount so that you didn't decrease it, that would basically be 5%. 4% for public art fund. You'd have 46% going to economic show and you'd have 50% going to the general fund.

Okay. So we wouldn't necessarily have to decrease what's going into economic development.

You have enough headway. Yeah. Cutting out everything else. Okay.

That was going to be my concern if we stayed with our current rate and we went 50-50. I like the idea of 50-50. Now, do you have it broken down if you go 4%, 5%, or 6% with the differences in 50-50? I'm sorry. I looked at the slides, but I can't remember.

I just have a printout that I did internally. Okay. So he did.