City Council - Regular Meeting

anywhere. It's only 14. Well, that was Dr. Yeah.

All right. I have 706. I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. Will the recorder please call the role? Councelor Irvin here. Councelor He councelor Lamman again. Maybe not. Here. Councelor Merid here. Councelor Settlemire here. Councelor Wilson here. Mayor Solsby

here. I'll rise for the pledge of allegiance. standy for all. Thank you. And thank you all for being here tonight. Items to be added to the agenda. Councelor Lamman.

M. Council. Well, I don't have anything to be added to the agenda, but I would like to make make a motion to move item agenda item number five in order down to take place of agenda item number 10 and move number 10 up to position five. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I opposed. Motion carries unanimously. We have a special presentation tonight by South Lane Fire and Rescue, Fire Chief John Wooten.

Good evening, Mayor Counselors. I'm going to ask you to bear with me. I'm losing my voice, which some at this station might say is a good thing. But I'm joined tonight by Deputy Chief Baird and Director Ron Hood from our board. Um, as you know, I have certain limitations on what I can ask for and not ask for. So, we brought one of our elected officials to hopefully kind of close this out tonight. I'm here to raise awareness and let folks know and I think the council needs to know and the community needs to know the situation that we're in with staffing. As you know, we put a measure on the ballot last November and it failed. and it fell for various reasons and I understand um you know what was going on at the time and I think there was just a general lack of understanding of what we were trying to accomplish. We have a desperate need to add staffing. We have not added staffing since 2018. Yet our call volume has gone up 62%. This fire district is funded has the second lowest permanent rate in the county. We are funded exclusively on property taxes and some ambulance revenue which does not cover the cost of providing EMS. What I can tell you about the ambulance is it is not a funded service. Property taxes were not meant to do that. They were meant for the fire district to provide fire protection which we can't do. So, I'm here to let the communities know in Creswell and Cottage Grove in our 132 square mile fire district and our 800 square mile ambulance service area that we are currently providing service to 33,000 people with an average of five people on duty a day running 15 calls a day. It takes two hours to run an ambulance call. If we get 80% of the time when we get one call, we get two calls or three.

I know everybody in this room, everybody in this community hears our sirens going up and down the road nonstop 24/7. When I got here, we had a call volume of about nine a day. And now we're approaching some days 16. I've seen days where we ran 24 to 30 calls in a 24-h hour period. So, let's do some math. If an ambulance call takes two hours to run, in other words, to respond from the station to the scene and then to Riverbend or Mackenzie Wamtt where most of our patients go and the turnaround time is 2 hours and we have two ambulances and we're running 15 calls. That means that most of the time we have nobody to staff a fire engine. We recently just had another fatality fire and I'm sure everybody saw the news on that. Another tragic event. We were so overwhelmed that I had to go to the board and engage a private ambulance to come into our district to handle inner facility transfers from Cottage Grove Hospital because we simply cannot do them anymore. People would say, "Well, that should alleviate some of your call volume." It did. It took about three or four calls off of our already overwhelmed system, but it also took about $2 million of billable revenue off of our budget. If we don't get this levy to increase our staffing, we July one will have to cut to one ambulance for both communities in Creswell and Cottage Grove in order just to keep two people on a fire engine. I can no longer as fire chief in good conscience allow our district to be without personnel for hours at a time. And as I expressed to the board of directors at their last meeting, if that ends my career, if that statement ends my career, then so be it. I've been

doing this for 35 years, and I have never seen it get to where it is right now. Our folks are leaving because they are overwhelmed with calls. We had three people turn in resignations this week. And not because they dislike the fire district, not because they dislike this community, or not because they dislike working here. It's because for 48 hours in a row, they are nothing but hammered and they get no rest. Some people would say, "Well, cut your daily schedule down to 12 hours a day. That means we have to hire a third as many people. Where's that money going to come from? I have squeezed every dime I can out of the budget to increase staffing. I can't squeeze anymore. The only choice that we have left now if we cannot get more staffing is to cut service. And that service is ambulance service. We recently had a member in this community wait over two hours for an ambulance to show up to help her up off the floor. Think of what can happen in two hours when somebody's laying on a cold floor in the middle of winter waiting on an ambulance to show up that used to be there in 8 or 10 minutes and now takes several hours to get there. That's the reality we're facing. It's not pomp and circumstance. We're not asking for a levy to go buy new fire trucks. I made a promise to these communities back in 2015 that we wouldn't do that. When we got the bond approved, we actually got the taxpayers out of that bond six six months early and saved them a ton of money. Our two fire trucks that we just bought, we financed so that we wouldn't come back. I said, I will only come back and ask for money when we have a dire need. And I'm here to let everybody know this fire district

has a dire need. And I've heard all the comments. I'm not voting for any more taxes. That's your right. I get it. But I want people to understand that what's going to happen is ambulance service is going to get cut. We have we should have 14 people a day on duty. I'm going to pose the question. Does anybody know how many we actually have on duty per day?

Five. We have five responders on duty today. We have five responders on duty. So, this is a serious situation. The communities need to be aware that the fire district is not funded to add more staffing and the only way we can do it is with more property tax revenue from a levy or we have to cut service to provide fire protection. So, the choice really belongs to the voters. They get to decide the service. I 100% agree that that's your right to decide the level of service you want, but I'm not going to put it out there without all of the information and facts and let people know what exactly the impact of that decision is. If we can get the funding, we're we plan to add three more people a day, which would take us to a staff of 10 and give us an average daily staffing of eight. That means we can staff an ambulance in Cottage Grove, staff an ambulance in Creswell, and have a couple people that do not shut down a firet truck to go on an ambulance call. Working in conjunction with the private contract we just signed, that would give us three ambulances a day or we could have one. That's really the That's really what the choice comes down to. So, I brought Deputy Chief Baird. I don't know if he has anything to say or if there's any questions about the information that's on our website that we've brought here and left um at the back of the room. But if there's no questions for me or deputy chief parrot, I'll turn it over to our board member, Director Hood. So, I'm Ron Hood and I am the latest addition to the board at South Lane. been there for a little less than a year and I had an opportunity a couple months ago to spend a day with the crew here in Cottage Grove and I rode with them and as would be expected um most of our

calls are medical since that's the bulk of our calls and I found just what Chief had said that you burn about two hours from the time you leave the station get to the place pick up the patient go to the hospital hand off care restock the ambulance and get back two hours for every call so the eight hours I was there 5 hours we were out in the station Um during those 5 hours, three additional calls came in for ambulances. We dispatched Creswell, which is great, but while Creswell was out, we had no resources for additional medical calls. We could not staff an engine. So, you know, we were bare in terms of support. And if we ignore the fact that we're burning out staff, which shouldn't be ignored, um the fact is we don't have the resources to meet the needs of the community to provide the services that we really need to provide. The system is broken. The system has to change. The good news is we're going to have an election in a few weeks and the levy will pass or we'll fail and things will change. We will either amp up the resources to meet the demand or we'll scale back the services to match the resources that we have. Both of those will provide some level of emergency medical care for the community. But they're going to be really really different levels of service. I believe the best value, the best quality of care comes by supporting our existing department. We got great leadership. We got fantastic staff. We have um buildings, equipment, facilities right here in the community. Um the staff is well trained and experienced. We work well with the other agencies. That's the best way to support the community. Um and it's cheap. It's it's eight bucks a month for the median priced home. And so I would um really advocate for that. I'd make two requests for you. One is to the degree you can help people to understand the issues at play here. Um folks don't realize that the department is is a standalone. We're not part of the city. We're not part of the county. Um, our primary funding comes through the operating levy. Um, and and we're stretched thin. And if you can, I'd ask you to advocate for passing the levy that you can you can

support the department and and help us to continue to provide service to the community as hadn't passed. That's it. Thank you. Questions? Councelor Lammerman. Madame Mayor, council. Uh, so quick question. With the two-hour turnaround time of having to take individuals up north to the hospitals there, is there something wrong with our hospital here in town?

That's a great question. I appreciate it. Our hospital does not have the capability to take care of critical patients. So if you have a heart issue, a major respiratory issue, you crash your car and you suffer major trauma, you have a stroke or even high blood pressure, the hospital does not have the beds and it does not have the surgical capability and the diagnostic capability or the treatment capability. That's why over 90% of the people that we transport go north. And that's also why the hospital calls us as many as five to six times a day to take people from that hospital to facilities up in Eugene.

So is that just a simple lack of bed space or actual medical training? It's not training. This is a critical access hospital, meaning that they are federally subsidized because they are unable to provide services that a bigger facility would provide. They lack the treatment capacity. It's not the training. They're all trained the same and licensed the same just like like we are. However, they lack the service delivery capability at this hospital to do what bigger hospitals do. Okay. I had another one, but it it is escaped me at the moment. So, see if anyone else has anything. Any other questions? Counc.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, thank you for coming and presenting just the brass tax of where we are and the impact. Um, I would like to know if you can characterize the call volume. Um, so I think probably some in the community would like to know where it's gone over the years. What's what is its makeup? What is its trajectory look like? You know, what can policymakers at a city level do to help alleviate uh some of that if possible? So the current trajectory predicts a 30% increase from where we're at now by 2031 and it's a 62% increase since I got here in 2014. The average makeup is about 85% medical calls and then a spattering of other service calls, lift assists, and fire calls. We do average about three calls a day uh for fire alarms, crashes, and things of that nature. in the summer we add an additional two to three calls a day for wildland fires which further exacerbate the problem. Um so if you look at the trajectory you look at the aging population um with in particularly uh the baby boomers they're aging out and they're uh putting a big demand on the health care system that currently can't be met. Medicare and Medicaid are constantly cutting funding uh which means they're cutting our reimbursements for ambulance service. So to kind of characterize that, we collect about 28 cents per dollar build, which doesn't even cover the cost of running the call. Um, so like director Hood said, the system is broken. It's broken at a national level. What's going on here tonight is not germanine to South Lane County Fire and Rescue. This is happening all over the state, all over the region, all over the Northwest, and all over the nation. Uh what hampers us is measures 547 and 50 which doesn't allow us to go out and increase our permanent rate which is why we have to survive on levies. So when we need to increase service, we have to come ask

the voters for a levy because of our capped funding. Um but if you take 15 calls a day and you add 30% to that and you don't increase staffing, you can see where we'll be in a few years. We will have people literally waiting probably 10 or 12 hours for an ambulance to show up. Oh, does that answer your question? Yeah, because our population growth is not at that percentage over those years. So, it's it's you're primarily um aging population

primarily. And we do have u you know there's the aging population, there's a transient population, there's I5 where you know any minute of the day there's hundreds of cars passing through our district. We've seen major crashes out there. We've seen what the ice storm does to I5. We've seen what snowstorms do to our ability to provide service. So, it's a compounding of a lot of different things that have led to where we're at with the call volume. Councelor Merid Day,

thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chief, and Vice Chief, um, for being here. And board member, um, you mentioned measures five and 50. those I want to emphasize that the city is also impacted by these what it has done for the listening audience. It has locked our property values at an um unrealistic level and allows it only to the assessed value to only increase 3% per year. So we're starting way behind the finish line. we're uh locked in at a rate that will not match the rise in cost. So the exact same thing is happening to the city, to the county, and the state as mentioned by the the fire team. And so I would urge every citizen to support all public levies. the cost, you know, it's it's when you spread it out over per month, it is very reasonable and to for the level of service that you would receive. Again, as the chief emphasizes, the voters get to choose the level of the service. I hope you choose the best service.

Councelor Lamman. So with the passing of the the urbal urban renewal district, how did that or did it even impact the funding for South Fire? So it will have a negative impact on the fire district in the long term when it kicks into full swing. Uh we were able to mitigate some of that by agreement with the city and the urban renewal district to help replace some of our capital equipment, particularly the ladder truck. The estimated total impact to the fire district was $5 million and you know how estimates are. So now we've got that down to about two and a half million, but that's still $2.5 million that we won't have. Thanks,

Chief. It's really difficult for me not to nod my head as you speak because as you know my husband's the fire marshal and I can tell you from experience that there's been many times he's called me and said I really hope we don't get another call today because I'm the only one here at the station right now. And that is a very real thing and it might not affect you until it does and you or a loved one when you are needing an emergency uh ambulance to come and save you. So, I really appreciate you being here tonight and uh I'm I am really hopeful that people will see that essential services like the fire district uh should get this levy passed and uh and you have given us a wealth of information this evening and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mayor Council. All right. So, we, as you heard, Council Lammerman made a motion to uh switch our agenda so that we can hear from the city manager on the proposed budget preview. And we're hoping that that will answer some of the questions from the audience ahead of time of the appearance of interested citizens. So, city manager, Mr. Sarowine.

Well, good evening, your honor and members of the council. Um, what I'd like to do this evening is just give you a quick preview of what the budget officer's report is going to be presented to the uh budget committee meeting um on Tuesday, April 21st. You know, as we've often talked about before, I strongly believe in a no surprises rule and I always want everybody to hear the same message the same time, the same way. So, next slide. Uh, what I'd like to do this evening is cover basically four things. First, I want to talk about some of the unique challenges that we had for the 2026 2027 budget. I want to talk about city staffing. I want to talk about our proposed water, wastewater, and storm drain rates. and then I want to give you some highlights of what each of the departments is going to be doing um in next year's budget. So, first off, uh you'll recall back in May of 2025, we talked about closing the gap between the annual revenue and expenditures in the general fund. The budget committee recommended that over the next three years, the city reduce the 16% gap between expenditures and revenues in the general fund budget with the goal of reducing that gap by a third in 2025 2026 current fiscal year by approximately $500,000. Uh on July 14th, the city council endorsed and approved the budget committee's recommendation. Fast forwarding to this year, uh, in January, our interim finance direct director reported that at the midpoint of the fiscal year, our personnel costs in the general fund were at 43% of budget and our materials and services costs were at 41% of budget. Uh, Eric had also identified an increase of about $125,000 in general fund revenue. The combination of the increased revenue and the trends in the personnel costs and the trends in the material and services costs were

projected to result in a $900,000 reduction in expenditure. And that equates to closing the gap by 52%. Not bad when our goal was to decrease the uh gap by 33% or $500,000 and we're able to reduce it by 52% or $900,000. I think as everyone is aware uh the delayed audits uh has led to some difficulties in establishing our beginning fund balances. In May of 2025 about a year ago uh the city staff prepared the 20252026 fiscal year budget. We had the most recently completed audit was from fiscal year 2021 2022. This resulted in two years of missing actual data which would have been used to accurately establish our general fund beginning fund balance. Uh in September of 2025 after the budget had been established, we got draft versions of the 2022 2023 audit and we're pro and were able to uh use that as a starting point to review the beginning fund balances going forward. In other words, as we got the data and got the information, uh we were able to act on it. So, in November of 2025, uh this was really a bit of a turning point. In preparation of the next for the next audit, our interim finance director reviewed the city's fiscal year 2023 2024 financial records and found substantial critical accounting errors, including budget columns that didn't balance was a clear indication that there were some serious accounting problems. In addition, only portions of the fiscal year 2023 2024 supplemental budgets had been entered into the city's accounting software. Now, let me emphasize at this point, these

situations have been rectified and city staff has implemented policies and procedures to prevent these problems from reoccurring. So, that brings us up to where we are in the present. In March of 2026, all of this has resulted in the need for significant adjustments to our current year 2025 2026 budget. In total, the budget was reduced by $4.54 million by reducing our capital by $2.52 million, reducing the ending fund balances by 1.26 million, and utilizing uh 62 million and contingencies and various other adjustments in the budget along with we adopted a supplemental budget resolution. So, this is what you call cleaning up a mess, guys. This is how we're writing the ship. Now there have been some practical impacts of what we've done for the 2026 20227 budget based on these changes that we made in the current year budget and one of those is to library services. Now let me be really clear about this. The goal is to keep the library open and functioning, but we need to be intellectually honest about how much we can afford and making sure that it's going to be uh sustainable in the long run. So, the proposed 2026 2022 budget reflects a new library business model moving from a staff facility to a full-time head librarian supported by community volunteers. Now, let me hasten to say that this is is only one of a number of options we're considering. We're meeting with our neighboring library districts and seeing if there's a way that we can work together uh to provide a higher level of service for all involved. We're continuing to work on this and see what our options are available to us.

There's also been an impact on our community promotions budget. Now, the city staff estimates that we'll receive approximately $103,000 in transit room taxes. And past years, the community promotions budgets been augmented with additional general fund revenue. Other words, the budget for this year on community promotions was $200,000 because we added $100,000 of property tax revenue uh to the money that we received from transient room taxes. We're not doing that in the proposed budget. What is proposed is for the chamber of commerce to continue receiving 25% of the actual taxes that we receive. Now, this goes back for any number of years that the city gets uh payments from the state on quarterly basis. When we receive a payment, 25% of that is immediately we cut a check to the Chamber of Commerce. We also have continued to support the Chamber of Commerce's visitors center uh by providing them with $18,000 a year specifically for the visitor center. Now, as you might imagine, there was a lot of discussion and any number of drafts that this uh project went through. In fact, at one point, we were talking with the uh Chamber of Commerce about helping them add an additional administrative assistant position. We've since moved away from that. included in your budget notebooks. Uh there's a memo at the very beginning and that memo lists all of the groups that are asking for community promotions uh donations and the memo clearly states that the chamber gets $18,000 support for the chamber visitor center. Also included in your budget notebook uh under the uh city manager or the budget officer's report. Um again you'll see that we have listed chamber of commerce $18,000 support for visit for visitors center.

However, if you were to turn to the page in your actual budget uh that talks about community promotions, you will note that it says chamber admin assistant. That was a mistake that was not corrected when we went through multiple drafts for this. I take full responsibility for it. If you want to blame somebody for the mistake, blame me. But I want to be very clear about this. We are not increasing the amount of money that we are giving to the Chamber of Commerce. They're getting the same 25% plus $18,000 next year that they got this year. Now, there also are a number of other programs, as I said, that are requesting uh funding from the community promotions, and again, those are all listed um in the memo that's included in your budget notebook. And uh it'll be up to the budget committee and the city council to ultimately decide what of those projects uh requesting funding um receive the funding. So, uh can I go next? Yeah. Uh hopefully uh what you're gathering from all this is that our general fund budget is really extremely tight. The bare minimum that we need to have in the bank in the general fund unappropriated ending fund balance to meet our expenses from July 1, 2027 into this fiscal year going into the next fiscal year is $1.7 million. Now, anybody that runs a business understands cash flow. Um, our cash flow uh starts with property tax revenue. We don't get it till December. So, on July 1st, we got to have enough money in the bank to be able to pay our bills until that property tax revenue starts to come in. As I said, 1.7 million is the bare minimum that we can have. Uh, we're

budgeting 1.6 six. And now we're also budgeting $200,000 in contingency, but that's really cutting it close, folks. Uh if the HVAC system in this building goes out, we have another big storm. Uh we can burn through that $200,000, unfortunately, fairly quickly. So, just the message and the takeaway is just how tight our general fund budget is. So, just some final thoughts on the general fund budget. Um, you know, this proposed budget is largely what I call a zero sums game. There's little or no flexibility in it. Now, look, reasonable minds can disagree on allocation of resources. That's why we got 14 people on the budget committee, guys. We want to hear a lot of different input and a lot of different opinions. But what I would recommend is that any changes that people want to make to the general fund proposed budget be balanced and you know not only talk about the things you do want to fund but also talk about the things that you're willing to reduce. So with that I'd stop for a moment and take any questions the council might have.

Mr. Sour Wine, would you be so good as to explain the TLT a little bit more just so that people understand that that is earmarked for tourism? Sure. So that they understand that's not coming out of a general fund,

right? Uh the transient room tax or transit lodging tax is a tax that you pay when you stay at a motel. So, if you stay at the Best Western Cottage Grove, uh, when you check out, you pay a tax. Portion of that goes to the state, portion of it goes to the county, portion of it comes to the city. And we don't know the exact amount we're going to get in a year because it fle it fluctuates based on how many people stayed in motel, you know, that that particular year. So I want to be clear that we can't spend it on anything else because the state requires that we spend it on tourism and we spend and we spend it to support tourism. You know, you may have followed in the last state legislative session there was a lot of discussion about it. Those things really don't affect cities like Cottage Grove so much as they do cities like uh say Lincoln City where you know you're talking about a town where 10,000 people live but 40,000 people may spend the night and you know they're trying to figure out how they can provide police and fire services uh at a level that a city of 40,000 would have to be would have to spend. So, you know, to the mayor's point, uh, we can't take the transit room tax dollars and use it to pay people who work in the water and sewer plant. Um, we need to spend it on tourism promotion. And that's what we've largely done with it in the past. And tourism promotion may fall under the category of supporting the chamber, may come into the category of supporting, you know, events within the community. Uh we use it to buy things like ads in publications saying come to Cottage Grove covered bridge capital of the universe uh and you know other things like that. Does that make sense?

It does. Thank you. That's good clarification. Sure. Anyone else have questions?

Councelor Merid. Uh just a comment that um in the in this barebones no flexibility budget um that is working with the funds that we anticipate or currently have. If we could secure additional revenue that could change our budget but working with what we got this is our our constraints. However, if if we could agree on some additional funding of or find additional funding, then we could change our budget. Is that correct?

That's certainly a policy decision for the city council to make. And whether that additional revenue comes in the form of, you know, some form of taxation or grant funds, for example, uh you know, yes, th those additional funds would be available uh for programs. Any other questions? Any other questions?

All right. Um, well, now I'm going to shift gears a little bit. Uh, I want to talk about some of the changes in staffing levels that we've made over the last couple of years and going forward. Starting in 2024 2025, uh, we eliminated the assistant uh, city manager position in the city manager's office. We eliminated a permit and code enforcement specialist in community development and public works a maintenance worker and we also uh reduced staffing in the police department by one police officer and one sergeant. Uh following year in 2025 2026 within community services that's our community center uh we eliminated the community coordinator position and the community coordinator assistant position transition to be our deputy city recorder. Uh and also going forward uh in community development we've made a lot of changes. uh the community development director position. Uh we did not have an incumbent in that position in 2025 or 2026 and it's not included in the 2026 20227 budget. Uh we also promoted our community development manager uh to be a community development uh manager and building official from our residential building inspector position. um are really that means we're not filling the residential building inspector position and we're not filling the building official position. Uh for those of you keeping track at home, that means that Melanie is now wearing three hats um and has been doing an amazing job with it. We did add a part-time commercial building inspector and an associate planner and we were able to put our police sergeant uh back into the budget. Now, looking at next year, uh, in the last couple of weeks, we've done some reorganization to our finance department, which will allow us to reduce the staffing of the finance department by one FTE. And we're also in

the process of doing some restructuring in our golf staff. U, thank you, Mayor. Um, so with the reductions in the in building inspection department, will we still be able to honor our contracts with the outlying communities?

We will. Yeah. Uh, there'll be there'll be more to come about that actually for the council is we're in the process of renegotiating and restructuring those contracts uh with our contract the contracts. Uh one of the things that we've been asked is to provide total compensation uh information for city staff and also distribution of how the costs are amongst funds. So included in your packet are two spreadsheets showing the total compensation and total uh the compensation distributed by fund. Now, one of the questions that we always get is how is this going to impact the utility rates? And uh in in front of you, you have a list of all of the components that go into the utility rates. And I would just note if you were to look at water improvement, uh, wastewater improvement and storm water improvement, you will see that all three of those capital uh, costs are actually being reduced. And what's going up is our operating costs. Unfortunately, like everybody else, uh, with Bonnieville Power Administration raising their rates, we use a lot of electricity uh, to produce water and take care of sewage. We also use petrochemicals which uh the price of petroleum certainly is being impacted and so as a result our operations costs are actually increasing. So what's the real impact of that? Well when we do an estimate we try to look at what the typical single family home using about 5,000 gallons of water a month is going to be charged. This is the proverbial family of four living in a three-bedroom two- bath house. They use about 5,000 gallons of water a month. In next year, we are estimating that this their cost will increase by $10.76

a month. That's the total utility bill taking into account water, sewer, and uh storm water. Now, what we're hoping going forward is that we'll be able to over the next three years after that reduce that uh increase to where it will be at basically the rate of inflation 3 to 4%. Having said that, if you've been following the news, there's a good chance that the rate of inflation is going to be a little higher than 3 to 4% uh going forward. But that is our target is to keep the increases for the next 3 years after this at 3 to 4%. We also do an estimate and I've just included the numbers here of what a main street business um kind of a normal water user like a bookstore and also a main street business that may be a little bit higher water user like a restaurant uh a business with a large parking lot because they've got a lot of imperous surface um how this would affect them like for example Safeway um and then also large businesses that are located outside the city limits that use a lot of water um there's really only one business that falls into that category. But again, we try to give a good estimate to not just the residents but also the businesses of what's going to happen with their utility rates. Again, any questions? So, finally, I just want to give you a few highlights of what's included in the budget next year. Uh, in public works, we'll start phase one of the Lincoln Middle School Riverwalk path. Uh we'll also be doing phase one of our waterline um replacement from the reservoirs on 21st Street. We'll be completing our storm drainage master plan and we'll also be uh completing the construction of the ADA lift over at the Armory. Community development is going to be working on advanced long range planning,

supporting housing and development, promoting resilience in the community, maintaining a stable and efficient building. to the point of Council Member Merid Day in our police department. They're going to be working on sustained reliable emergency uh response capabilities with our minimum staffing levels, maintaining their accreditation, increasing their proactive policing efforts and strengthening the partnership with community organizations and and continuing their community engagement with all of the outreach uh events that they do dur throughout the year. And finally, uh, the city manager and city recorder and our leadership team, we're going to be spending a lot of times working on Wall Dogs, uh, and Animal House, uh, anniversary celebration. Um, but let me hasten to say that there are no city funds budgeted to support Wall Dogs or the Animal House anniversary. We will be treating this with inkind support the same as we do for Bohemia mining days for rock roll and rumble uh for Halloween uh for any of the other events that take place in the community that city staff supports them whether it's putting up barricades and cones or delivering equipment all of the things that we do uh to support those events and we'll be doing the same for the Wall Dogs and the Animal House anniversary celebration. So, with that, I'd be happy to take any questions you might have.

Any questions? All right. Thank you, councelor Lamman. I'd just like a little clarification on your motion. Did you reverse five and 10 or did you put five right below it? We just councelor Irvin.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, took a second for that to sink in a bit. Um, Mr. Sour Wine, can you cast the uh vision of the opportunities that we have in front of us to find our way out of the situation that we're in. Um, I think you've done a good job of articulating where we are and what uh means or budget means are being used to um see ourselves through this year. Um, but we do have some things in play um that you know if well executed uh will address this to be in a better position uh going forward. And I think it'd be be good to just paint some of that picture of opportunities.

Well, let me refer you back to uh the beginning of my presentation when I talked about closing the gap between annual revenue and annual expenditures in our general fund. Now, the fact that we were able to reduce that by over 50% uh in the first year of a three-year process gives me a lot of hope that we're going to be able to get to where it is we talked a year ago with the budget committee and with the city council about where instead of drawing down reserves uh to have spend money more expenditures than we bring in each year, we'll be able to put money into reserves and be able to set money aside for future future programs and projects rather than drawing down against it. You know, I think over the three-year process, we're going to get there. Uh for the reduction, I also understand that, you know, our goal as staff, and we've talked about this before, was by July 1st of 2026, this year, to write the ship and to resolve these past issues. I mean, it's not my place to uh question decisions that were made before I got here. Pointing fingers and assigning blame is a complete waste of time. We are where we are. We move forward from here. And I know I believe that's what we're doing with this budget. You know, I think we're going to be in really good shape rather than, you know, dwelling on, you know, to be honest, we had a mess we needed to clean up. I think we've cleaned it up. You know, I think we've rided the ship and I think going forward, we're going to be able to reduce the gap within our general fund over three years. I think we'll be in a pretty good shape.

Councelor Lamman.

Madame Mayor, Council, uh, Mr. sour one. I I just want to end that presentation by saying I I just want to give you and the leads for all the different departments a a big high five on being able to tighten the belt and find out exactly where we we absolutely can make adjustments without hurting our city's infrastructure and ability to take care of the community in a responsible way. Um, so with that, I' I'd just like to thank everyone on the city staff and city manager for doing what you did. I know for a lot of the community, they see these cuts and they they see the uh adjustments that have had to be made and they instantly get read in the face. But in the end of it, if as you said, this helps write the ship, it's a very good step in the right direction. So again, thank you. uh you know, I owe uh a great deal of the credit to the good folks that I work for. This is the best management team I think I've ever worked with, and I've been doing this a really long time, guys. I'm old. Um and I was going to say, I can't say enough good things about these folks. Anyone else?

Counselor Mary Day. Um, one of our biggest um, accounting errors was the mis misregistration of the land purchase, the loan for the land purchase and um, that is I've met twice with this finance director and I'm still not sure I understand completely all the ins and outs about it, but that is in the end an asset that is being developed. veloped and will provide uh a boom for both uh residents seeking housing and uh additional tax ro. So while it has knocked our books for a loop um it is an asset that we do retain and will will add to our resources in the future. Anyone else?

Thank you, Mr. Sarine. Thank you, your honor. That would conclude my report. All right. Public hearings. There are none. Consent agenda. I would move the approval of the robust consent agenda. Second. We have a motion with the second. All those in favor signify by saying I.

I. I oppose. Motion carries unanimously. Well, I just want to recognize in that there was the 57th annual professional municipal recorder week proclamation and I want to acknowledge our amazing city recorder. Thank you, Mindy, for all you do for staff and all of us. Resolutions and ordinances. There are none. Business from the city council. Budget officer appointment. I would entertain a motion for that. Council,

I move the approval. uh the council that on April 27th, 2026 uh reading the wrong one, my apologies. More to come on that. It's another short one though. I move to appoint the city manager, Mike Sour Wine, as the budget officer. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion with the second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I opposed. Motion carries unanimously.

Item B, cancellation of city council meeting. Mr. Sourwine.

Well, good evening again, your honor. Members of the council, uh, as we discussed on Friday, next week you have, uh, the Wall Dogs dinner on Monday night, a, uh, budget committee meeting on Tuesday night, a budget town hall meeting on Thursday night, and a Friday morning agenda session. In other words, in three in four nights, you have three night meetings um, and a morning meeting. and uh city staff is suggesting that you give yourself a break and cancelled the uh April 27th city council meeting. And I just note that uh from a staff level uh the items that we have for the agenda for that meeting, there's nothing that cannot be moved uh to the May council meeting.

Council can tell I was excited to make this motion. I move that the April 27th, 2026 city council meeting be cancelled. Second. We have a motion with the second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries unanimously.

So, I'm going to go ahead and move into concerns from council, but then we will hear public comment. And if anyone from council wants to comment after, you can. Right. Concerns from council. Councelor Settlemire. Um, April is child abuse prevention month. We've tried to find positive actions for families to be able to participate in um events and things. And I just want to say um the library does some pretty neat things each week. And at the end of this week, um the pool is available free to the first 70 swimmers. Um hopefully some families can get together and go and swim. Um, this event is found a sponsor and so from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. the first 70 swimmers are welcome to come and celebrate their energy with their families.

Thank you, Councelor Urban.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, I have uh one thing for the C with within the council here. We're seeking to uh schedule a time for us to go and see the warehouser uh facility. It's expanded. There's new capabilities uh and also in the spirit of fostering how we can work together as community partners uh to um ensure the best possible future um for the community. Um so that that's something that if there's kind of a thumb in the air day of the week, well one yeah support for that and then um you know talk about how we can schedule that if there's a particular day of the week and maybe we can send out a a poll or a survey or something like that their support but we'll work to get that on the on the calendar. Um also um at the Lane Economic Committee meeting this today uh we had a representative from the governor's office come and give a presentation on the prosperity council that's been assembled uh with um different representatives from around the state. And I would like uh if it's something that the council uh would have uh general support for is to advocate as Cottage Grove uh for what we want to see happen uh here. Uh we are talking about changes at any level whether it be uh tax structuring whether it be land use uh whether it be um regulation a number of different things. Everything's on the table. Uh and the word is coming back from what we're doing isn't working. We're 37th in the country in terms of

you know business friendliness. we're losing. Um, and the stated goals were to at least change that business friendliness metric um to top 10 in the country. And I asked, "What's your stated timeline?" They said, "We don't have one, which, you know, goals need timelines." Uh, but they said, "Generally speaking, in the next 10 years, um, that's going to take a huge lift. That's going to mean things might change." And I would really love if we as a community could say and we can move this up through um either directly to that contact or say here's what success here's what prosperity uh looks like for Cottage Grove and in this area. Um so if we can assemble something like that that's something we can work on uh to to send up the sooner the better. Um, I would avail myself to be to help facilitate that or work in whatever capacity if there's support for that.

Councelor Merid. Thank you, Mayor. Um, manager Sourine, um, I mentioned at agenda session about a constituent concern about glass being removed from the recycling program and ask you to check the franchise agreement. Do you have some information on that? Um, I haven't had a chance to talk with the city attorney about the franchise agreement. As you and I talked about earlier, she's going to be out of town, but uh, city recorder has arranged for a representative from the garbage haulers to be here um, to talk with the council.

All right. And then a second uh concern. Um in the consent agenda were a number of worthy um proclamations. Um one was National Library Week proclamation and um I know many people are here because they believe in the library program and it has a very long historical presence in Cottage Grove. It was always a drive of citizens to provide this service. And so I just wanted to read the opening stanza of the proclamation, National Library Week Proclamation. Whereas libraries spark creativity, fuel imagination, inspire lifelong learning, and offering a space where individuals of all ages can explore new ideas and be drawn to new possibilities. and it continues to list a number of valuable things they offer our community and our libraries. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Councelor Lamman, Madame Mayor, Council, uh Mr. Sour one. Back when uh the city looked at adjusting the library's operating hours, um you you guys had done a study on how much the library was being utilized. Correct.

What we what the library looked at was what are their busiest days, what are their days where they check out the most books, have the most citizens come in. So, you know, if we were to reduce hours, and this was, you know, means to an end at a specific time that we're looking at, you know, to be able to reduce hours and when it had would have the least impact on the community based on the history of usage with with that, did you determine that it was being the library in a whole being underutilized, utilized to its potential or needed more than we could actually provide for.

That's really a judgment call and I'm not really sure how to assign the values to that. Uh again, we can provide you with statistical information, but you know, I would ask the council draw their own conclusions from it.

Okay. And then with the community promotions uh allocation of revenue in your slides, you showed that we have approximately the the budget committee has approximately $50,000 to be allocated to entities requesting funds. Based off your handout, there's a total $224,000 being requested by entities. Um, not including the Downtown Cottage Grove, which I'm on their board as a liaison. They're also going to be requesting money. I know the amount they're requesting. So, it's going to end up taking it up to $264,000. I'd really like people to I don't know if we can make this public on

Yeah. with the budget or anything, but yeah, the the the this is part of the budget packet uh which is on the website.

Okay. Um, but with that at just the the $50,000 that we have approximately to allocate, the aquatic center in itself is asking for $130,000 this year. I would love for for the public um to tell us how we're supposed to fund all these projects when one entity in itself is requesting almost three times as much as we have to allocate to the all these programs together. Um because I've been reading a lot of complaints online. Uh, a lot of people are are understandably upset that there's some programs that aren't going to be funded, but when we don't have the money, where are we supposed to get the money? We we can't just simply say, "Okay, well, here everyone has money." Um, so I' I'd love for people to actually read what we have to work with and understand why some things aren't going to be funded. Uh, instead of just getting irritated and saying that we make too much money even though we're here for free. Thank you.

Anyone else? Councelor Wilson,

I'd like to acknowledge that we were handed a flyer from Kaiser Grove Genealological Society inviting everyone to a military open house on April 22nd from 1 to 6 to walk the Honor Gallery and discover some of the um people from our community that served in uh World War II who gave their all. So please uh if you can on Wednesday the 22nd from 1 to 6 um like to see people in attendance there.

Right. Well, I just want to say that I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Circle of Friends School and that was a beautiful experience. Uh if you are unfamiliar with them, they are a school that helps children with special needs and I met so many little angels and all the teachers that work so hard to take care of them and it was an amazing experience and so I want to thank them for inviting me. And then I just wanted to touch just a little bit on the wild dogs and uh our 50th anniversary celebration of Animal House and say that it is a greater vision than just that week-long festival. What we are looking to do is honor our hundred years of making movies in Cottage Grove and dating back to when we were fortunate enough to have the general film here. And uh that kicked us off and the Wall Dogs will be coming and painting our rich history in every mural that they do. And it's 15 murals, four days. And these artists are truly legendary that are coming. I just received six of the bios of the artists that are coming. And it is unheard of for a town our size to get such amazing leading artists in their field to a town our size. It's just something that, you know, that advocacy for public art is incredible and what it'll do for our

community as far as tourism goes and economic vitality for all the coming years. And so the way that we're thinking of it is honoring the last hundred years of our history, but looking forward for 50 years in the future and what it'll do for our economy here. Bringing jobs and just the pride in our community that this is going to do is going to be tremendous. And we all should be very grateful that we are getting this opportunity. And I hope that every single one of you will be involved. I've started meeting with the I met with the historical society and we're getting together some of the best local historians to tell those stories so that it's not just the timber industry or the gold mining history. It will be the people that built this town. And so that's really special. and so painting that and we're going to have a a filming crew be here and do a whole documentary on it that we can use to rebrand this city and with a mural trail for Oregon. And we're going to encourage other rural towns to do the same. And it doesn't just have to be the Wall Dogs. It can be painting their history through local artists. And that is something also that we want to do in the future is it'll be uh bringing in local artists to do one new mural a year. And so it is our goal to set up a fund moving forward past when the wild dogs are gone and all the togas go home for that week. that we will continue to promote local art and

uh public art and be advocates for our local artists. So, and when I talked to the lead of the Wall Dogs the other day, he said, "You are so lucky being in the Pacific Northwest because you have some amazing artists there." And so, we really look forward to promoting them as well. All right. If there's nothing else, then we will go ahead and move on. Appearance of interested citizens. This is a time for citizen comment. The council will first take comments addressing items not listed on the agenda for a maximum of 30 minutes. The council will then take comments addressing action items on the agenda for a maximum of 30 minutes. Individual speakers must be recognized by the presiding officer, provide their name, identify whether they are city resident, and if so, their ward. Please limit comments to three minutes or less with council approval. Comments regarding any matter scheduled for a public hearing may be provided only during that hearing. The council will not make any decisions based on public comment. However, staff and council may choose to ask questions or comment following the conclusion of citizens comments. And before we get started on that, I would just like to thank all of you for coming tonight and for caring about your community to show up.

Fred Kan. Good evening, mayor, counselors, managers, sourine, chief chase. Um, my name is Fred Colan. I live on Highway 99 on the north edge of town and I'm a member of the Cottage Grove Friends of Democracy, but I'm speaking for myself tonight. I'm speaking to request a more transparent and inclusive process as you begin deliberations on our town's draft budget. I'm particularly concerned about the proposed radical cuts to library funding through the firing of the majority of the library staff. I I want to preface what I'm saying now. I I have some criticisms. Mike, I know you and I like you. They don't they're not personal. They're process. My wife and I come from a failed town in in California called Paradise where the government failed and the town no longer exists as it used to. Manager Sarowine, you presented a plan that you call a new business model for the library, but you have neglected thus far to include the community in the evolution of that model. I I challenge your premise that the library is a business. It is not. It's a community treasure that exists because of 127 years of passionate citizen engagement. Tens of thousands of volunteer hours, millions of dollars in philanthropic support, and the enthusiastic outpouring of the love of knowledge have built this and maintained this pillar of local democracy for over a century. Your plan is effectively a death blow to our beloved library. You've told folks that you acted to support dedicated library staff by

giving them an opportunity to quit before you fired them. Th this is really unacceptable. Your your job as our manager is to protect and nurture our public employees, particularly the young staffers, not to issue pink slips in this perilous job market. My first request of you is a disclosure of the meetings you've had thus far to develop this radical policy direction. um none of the local stakeholders such as friends of the library have even been given courtesy calls much less asked for consultation. So whom have you met with and what was discussed in these meetings the public really has a right to know and public trust is compromised with opaque proceedings. If you could please give us a public memo detailing what's occurred thus far, I will be submitting a formal public records request for that. And secondly, the public would really be helped with a simplified explanation of the errors that have led to this budget catastrophe. Um, if if you could come up with a executive summary in in simple English of the the problems that that occurred and the fixes that have that have uh that have been put in place. Um it's a baffling it's a baffling process to us civilians and it would be really helpful to get something in clear English to uh to summarize that and councilors and budget committee members uh the the task before you is daunting uh looking for solutions to the current sea of red ink as slashing the library budget and firing four dedicated library workers is not problem solving. that the community is going to be insisting on a

genuine search for alternative solutions and funding mechanisms. We want you to work hard and think outside the box. Maybe it's time for the city to sell off all the real estate that caused this mess and pay for the damages now rather than continuing to speculate on future potential. Uh many of us in Cottage Grove feel passionately about our library. I know the friends of democracy and a lot of other community organizations are willing to help mobilize public support and to participate in a public process to address this predicament. I beg you decision makers not to simply implement the radical plan uh proposed but rather consult with and engage the larger community in a search for solutions. I thank you.

Thank you. Um, the timer is working, but it doesn't give us an alarm when it's up. So, I don't know if you want to look at me and I'll wave when it's uh Yes. extinguished to 3 minutes, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Stewart. I was not aware.

Forgive me if I get this name wrong. Le Kogan.

Good try. It's Lisa, but it's spelled the way you said it. So, just to confuse everyone. Thank you. Uh, mayor, council members, city staff. Uh, my name is Lisa Kan. Um, I'm with that guy who just talked. Uh, we live, uh, just at the northern edge of town. So, the draft budget that the city manager has just gone with you, gone over with you tonight is painful to everyone and unfortunately I have some more pain to deliver because the process that you are following following in cutting the library's funding by more than 50% and staffing by something like 80% without appropriate public notice or public hearings on those cuts does not appear to comply with Oregon law. So, let me explain. In 1975, a very important package of laws affecting public libraries was passed. And among them is one particular statute uh 357.621. It's entitled public hearings required prior to abolishing or withdrawing support from public library. Uh and I'll just read it very quickly into the record. No governing body which has established a public library under the laws of this state shall abolish or withdraw support for such library without first holding at least two public hearings on the matter at least 90 days apart. The governing body shall give public notice of the public hearing in a newspaper general circulation in the area for two successive weeks at least 30 days prior to the first hearing. So when I admit when I submitted my written comments, I thought first of all that perhaps this town was this library was exempt because you were founded before 1975 and that there would have had to have been some affirmative action to adopt this legislation. However, a colleague of mine who's here

tonight actually called the the uh director of public service of library services for the Oregon State Library uh Mr. Buzzy Nielsen. And according to what he told this person, um, this statute applies to all libraries, public libraries in the state of Oregon. And so there are distinct public notice and public hearing requirements that are required whenever you either abolish or withdraw support. And I would argue that cutting a budget by 50% and reducing a staff from five to one is withdrawing support. And if that is the case, then I believe you cannot pass the budget through your normal budget process that you're following now because there are additional notice and hearing requirements. So, and I'm not waving this and saying we're going to sue because it's stupid. Um, what I'm saying is please, as the prior speaker said, open up the process to brainstorming with stakeholders in the community who may well have revenue ideas because it's way late in the process, but better late than never. Thank you.

Thank you, Bill Christensen. Yes, I'm Bill Christensen, 1337 Elm Avenue, Cottage Grove, Oregon. I live within the city limits of Cottage Grove. I just wanted to mention a few things that came to mind for me. First of all, having to cut a budget is healthy. It may be restrictive, but it's necessary and healthy. And I applaud the city council for having the courage to approve the budget and send it back to the budget committee. I I applaud you for having the courage to do that. Number two is this budget situation is temporary. It's not lasting. According to our according to Mike Sour Wine, it's two to three years and then we get back on our feet and we charge ahead and go forward. Two to three years goes by quick when you're busy with life. It it really is a short period of time. I did some research on some communities that were close to the size of Cottage Grove and made some phone calls and uh to try to understand their library situation. Silverton um Southerntherland and some others. And I want to highlight Southerntherland, our community to the south, because their library system is a volunteer system, and they uh look for donations from um Southerntherland and surrounding

communities to keep their library doors open and they've been quite successful at it. I just want to read their statement on the city of Southerntherland website. Our public library in Southerntherland operates with minimum public funds and maximum dedicated volunteers. We rely heavily on volunteers and donations from our communities. So, Southerntherland is example of it can be done. It can be done. And I applaud you for I I know it hurts some people who have special um emphasis on certain parts of the budget, but I applaud you, city council, for having the courage to cut budgets. I I've been in business 35 years of my life, and there are times where I just have to watch um my budget. our budget and I've done really well over the years mostly because I'm really tight with my finances and so it's it's easy for me to budget but um I feel as though the majority of the city of Cottage Grove is behind you in cutting this budget and and taking the painful steps instead of kicking the can down the road and I applaud you for that. Thank you.

Thank you, Christina Shu.

Good evening. My name is Christina Shu and I live in the west side um urban growth boundary part of Cottage Grove. I've already written to each of you urging you to find a way in the 2026 27 budget to maintain the library funding at roughly the 2526 level at least around 500,000. I was very disappointed to see the proposed library budget reduced to 244,000. That's a cut of about 306,000 or 56% from last year. This is not a minor adjustment. It is a severe cut to a core public service. At the same time, the proposed budget increases public safety by about 596,000 over last year and by about 860,000 over the 2024 25 budget. That makes it clear that the city is increasing funding significantly in some areas while cutting the library funding by more than half. The library is one of the most accessible, heavily used, and community- centered services that we provide. It serves children, families, seniors, students, job seekers, and residents who depend on it for learning resources, connection, and access to essential services. A cut of this magnitude would have an immediate and lasting impact on our community. What makes this even more hard for me to understand is that the proposed budget appears to include options that could help avoid such a drastic reduction, including the $200,000 in contingency and a new $13,100 transfer to the general reserve fund. Before making a cut this deep to library services, I urge you to reconsider those choices. Please restore library funding to at least the $500,000 or even that amount would still be below the 2025 2026 levels, but it would prevent devastating harm to an essential community service.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Kathy Bella. Kathy Bella. Rob Dickinson. Yeah. Hi, I'm um Mayor Sullivy and council members. I'm Rob Dickinson from the west side of town on Goutyville Road. I'm here to urge you to protect the funding for Cottage Grove's public library. Our library is one of the city's most valuable and widely used public assets. It provides much more than books, including internet and computer access, educational materials, programming, and practical support for people across the community. I also want to note the contradiction before you tonight. In the same meeting when the city will proclaim National Library Week and recognize libraries as centers of learning, access, creativity, and civic life, you're also considering a major reduction in funding for our own library. If we truly believe what the proclamation says, then our budget decisions should reflect those values. I urge you to look at other ways to address budget pressures and preserve this essential community resource. Thank you. Thank you. So, that was our last speaker. Is there any comments from council?

Councelor.

Thank you, mayor. I also want to just reiterate the appreciation um or everyone showing up tonight. Um we've been up here long enough to have been serving in the time when nobody shows up for months and months. Um and so um that's encouraging to me and it's really important for us to hear your voices. So thank you for that. Um, one of the items I wanted to mention in concerns of council, um, was this connection with we have an amazing foundation, uh, that produces increasing amounts of, um, blessing on the community through grants of nonprofits as well as scholarships uh, for students. Um, and it's the Cottage Grove Community Foundation. And I've been talking with them for well maybe over a year of when when we kind of got a whiff that something was arai that we kind of saw what the impulse would be of of where cuts might might come. Um, if anybody's been around long enough, one of the interview questions to become a council member for I don't know how many years was a hypothetical. If the budget, you know, necessitated it, what would you cut? Public service or the library? And that's how it was pitted. So, this has been, you know, there's a lot of history that goes into this. My appeal in the spirit of we got to come together as a community and there is probably going to be some volunteer efforts. They come in multiple different ways. Consider establishing an endowment. Consider pulling resources to establish an endowment. If we want something that has is longlasting that is very very stable, um that's a vehicle

that we could do this with. It's it's not a I'm doubting there's enough money. I think it's like $100,000 seeds $4,000 a year roughly in in distribution. So you can see the scale. However, it would be something it would be another thing that we could do for the future uh to to establish. So I'm certainly someone that you can connect with uh to reach out to uh the board other board members uh we all you know share this realization. The same goes for other essential I think of the pool. That was another one of the ones that we discussed. These are things that if we want to see into the future without that can weather all sorts of financial storms um city or or otherwise, it's a vehicle. So, I would offer that and I once again appreciate you being here and sharing

legacy endowments especially. And uh actually going back to that question, it really was what would you cut if you had to cut the library or a police officer? That was the question. And and if I remember correctly, actually that's why you were not appointed the first time is because councelor Irvin said, "I don't like that question and I'm not going to I'm not going to even answer it." And the group that was on the council at that time decided not to appoint him because of that. And uh and then he got it the second

that was a bad question. You shouldn't ask bad questions. There's not enough information. And then there the second time he was asked that he said I didn't like that the first time and I don't like it again and refused to answer it again. And so he is being very truthful when he says he did not like that question. So um anyone else councelor Lamman?

Madame Mayor Council. Um so I I heard it was mentioned by this gentle I can't remember your names. I'm horrible with names. uh by this gentleman and his wife um about the city of Paradise, California. Um basically, from my understanding of the proposed budget, this is us trying to prevent the city from failing. We're not the only city having to look at doing cuts to our library. The city of Springfield is looking at cutting 500,000 from their library fund. Um there's a lot of cities dealing with issues like this. Uh the city of Southerntherland was mentioned. They're looking at repealing their public safety fee that we're looking at instituting here shortly, more than likely. Um, so we have to get extremely creative on how we're going to solve these issues and by trying to limit the amount of expense that the library is consuming. In my view, that's kind of like putting it on life support and keeping from having to actually close it. So, I I really hope that the community comes together and really helps by volunteering to kind of back the library up when it needs it. Um cuz I' I'd hate to see a service like that end up having to close because we just can't fund it anymore. And if we can help by just having more people volunteer to where the librarian's not so over uh stressed with the amount of hours that they're having to put in. I think that would be extremely beneficial. But just know we don't want to cut these

funds as much as you guys don't want them to be cut. But we have to keep the ship afloat somehow. We have to keep the city from going under. So, with that, I'm done. Anyone else? All right. Oh, councelor Mayday, just for the record, the bad question is no longer asked. All right. Well, we have no city attorney tonight. And so, with that, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for coming.