City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Newburgh City Council, February 17 edition 2026. I call this meeting order. Could we have a roll call, please?

Certainly. Alright. Councilor Wheatley? Here. Councilor Yarnell Hallman? Here. Mayor Roserker?

Here.

Councilor Churgisen? Here. Councilor Carmen? Here. And councilor Kilburg and councilor McBride are absent.

Thank you. Would you please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance?

Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good evening. Will's having clicker issues tonight,

but let's give it a go, shall we? Now, mister, those were only potential clicker issues. We don't really know till we mash the button. Oh, here we go. Mister Mayor, you've jinxed me.

Is it on?

I'll turn it off and on again. There we go. And these are the statistics through the December. Another fun filled year in our ledger. The combined planning decisions was at twelve and building permits for housing units was at seven.

Building permits for other types was at 32. Building inspections was 174, community engagement had 15 submissions through the website which were all answered within twenty four hours, usually within a few hours. Social media engagement 16,805 and that has continued to go up very steadily. Public records request, maybe this is like the new normal, like nine, but we don't seem to have very small numbers anymore. And 2,490,000.00 of payments for accounts payable and 1,140,000.00 for payroll, and quite a few large capital projects were happening in this batch, some of the payments for the water basin covers came through and the payments cleared for the Franklin storm line as well.

Recruitments, we had advertising for hire zero separations too and three workers compensation claims or other sorts of claims, which are often not a bad thing, they're often good quality of life things for people. IT resolved 137 service tickets for the city, now I have been noticing to some degree a drop in the service tickets since we've started, since we've fixed the networking switches and some of those issues, so I'm feeling like our network is being a little bit more resilient than it used to be, and that's also caused there to be less evening time events happening bringing technicians in at night, so maybe all of that work is pointing in that positive direction. I should also mention at this point we still have a group of people who are testing the Azure virtual desktop environment, that's a different desktop from the Citrix one and when we feel we've got all the kinks out then we're going to move as a city to the Azure environment, which is a Microsoft product, however one thing that's still not working exactly right is there's some printer lag right now, so when you push a print job there's like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 and then the print job runs and it should be a little quicker than that, so we'll see how that goes.

Library activity door count seven thousand six hundred seventy eight and thirty two thousand two hundred and twenty six circulation events. Public safety +1 893 calls for service and 653 on the traffic stops and five twenty two citations and warnings were issued as a result and I think with seven DUIIs for December that was a good calm, law abiding December and things went pretty well. That was good, better than in some previous years. We had eight hundred nine eleven calls and 2,848 non emergency calls during that same month. Water production, as usual for a winter month 48,680,000 gallons, fairly typical for winter and a really large treatment number because with a really heavy rain happening, 205,500,000 gallons treated, pointing to the fact of course that we still have a lot of I and I work to do in the city.

Six sixty three work orders were completed and that's a pretty low number for a December, I would have expected to see a bigger number in a December. So I know that some of that was connected to the all hands on deck when the sewer line overflowed, which we talked about before, that probably took guys away from other things and I'm assuming Russ would you say that's probably what happened? So that is the totals to the December, now what I'm going to do next time that I do statistics is going to be kind of pretty interesting. I'm intending to do a multi year trend analysis of all of our data from 2021 through till now, having all of that data in the can and I'm going to see if I can see any patterns emerging, there's some things that are obvious like you know social media increases or we've had a steady rise in PRRs. I suspect that if we match the PRR increase with the launch of our new website I think there's probably a correlation, but there may be other correlations that will jump out at me and I'll see what I can figure out and bring some analysis.

Any questions folks? Thank you.

Thank you, Will. So next item on our agenda is public comments due to am I am I missing something? During our last meeting, it was, requested that we have a minimum time for public comments. So the minimum is three minutes. But since there's only two today, if you wanna go five, that's quite alright with me. So the first is Chris Irwin. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm looking at Chris. That's not who's on this. Jim Talt.

Thank you. Jim Taltz speaking. At the last council meeting, you'll recall that I came with a request to see if perhaps the city could make arrangements with the city's preferred concrete supplier to perhaps offer the preferred pricing, contract negotiated pricing that they offer the city and offer that to residents. And well, I've since heard a rumor that perhaps they said yes, but I decided to come tonight to see if there was an official response. And if it's true, then I would like to say thank you for the speedy response.

I think that would be a good thing for the residents. And, anyway, I'm here to see if that rumor is true. Because after all, I did hear it in a bar.

So I asked Concrete Solutions Chris and I actually had emailed him previously and didn't get an answer back, but when I called him I did get an answer. He said he would extend the pricing to any resident for the multi year schedule and also since then we've put all of the, that are known to us, all of the concrete vendors including that firm, all on one page. So that although people can make use of that pricing, it's clear that we're not favoring one company over another. So we've done both things.

Well, thank you for that speedy response. I really appreciate that. I hope it helps some people. Thank you.

Thank you, Jim. And, Elaine, you're up. Elaine Koscallo, welcome.

Hi. Good evening. My name is Elaine. I want to I'm here tonight to thank you for allowing general comments to continue, and I am grateful for the many wise words that were spoken at the last meeting, including from the city councils and the recorder and many of you. I felt especially heard myself personally from Jerry Turgeson saying that, yes, it's your job as city councilors to hear your constituents even if you believe it's out of your jurisdiction and also for acknowledging that it's your job to know the things that affect the people in Newburgh, whether or not you can do something about them, whether or not you agree with it.

That being said, there was some discouragement for me last week, both in the meeting and then just things I heard. Things like that's not in our jurisdiction. That doesn't have anything to do with Newberg or signaling or relaying somehow that, no. I'm not gonna listen to you because apparently of personal beliefs or grievances. I've sat here and listened to a lot of people talk.

And I know that people in Newberg, not everyone, but that there are many who are worried and scared right now. And that many of the people that have spoken have given very particular examples of how in Newberg things are affecting them. And I just like to reiterate, we want you to take that seriously. We want you to listen to people. Yeah.

I'm gonna give you just a couple more examples, and these are ones that have happened in the last month or I've heard of in the last month. So this is examples of how national, mostly immigration policy, is affecting people here personally. A business owner on the main strip here in Newburgh had someone come in and say, where are your papers? I want to see your papers. I want to know that you're legal.

Are you legal? I know several families who are researching ways to leave the country because they don't feel welcome here. They there happen to be residents of Newburgh. I have a coworker, resident of Forest Grove, who is moving in April to Japan. Those are ways that we're being affected.

That will affect everyone. Another one that I see a lot in my job, I work at a school in Forest Grove currently, is bullying. Bullying is on the rise. I've been saying that for a long time, and, of course, it is. We do have a president who is the most prominent and powerful person in the country, and so therefore a role model, who uses bullying.

What was new for me is last month, for the first time I had a student's day, you can't get me in trouble for that, which happened to be he was calling a couple of girls fat. I said, you can't get me in trouble for that. That's what the president does. He calls it like it is, and people don't like it either. I'm just telling the truth. That is an absolutely true story. For me, the saddest part of that story was the conversation between the students after he was pulled from the room. Who does he think he is? He's not the president. Think about that for a minute.

So I'm here again tonight asking you to please seek out, to please listen to your constituents, especially minority constituents, immigrants constituents, black and brown constituents. Know what they're going through. And then together, let's see if we can come up with some creative solutions or oversight or ideas that might help the lived experiences of people here in Newburgh. Thank you.

Thank you, Elaine. Our first presentation is gonna be about the safety manual.

Good evening again Mr. Mayor and council. This is about our brand new safety manual. Why update the safety manual? Our existing safety manual was completed in 2018 and it was not reformed during what we've come to call the reform era '21 through '25 because it was adequate but not excellent.

This policy represents the last standard city policy whose edition predates 2021. In 2025 staff set out to reform the safety manual and took advice both from our HR department internally, but also from our CIS insurance provider on good modern approaches. What has changed during these years? During this time many regulations that govern Oregon OSHA and the federal government have evolved or changed. This has particularly been true in work safety areas like respirators and breathing apparatus, dealing with pathogens, confined space operations and some relevant OERs including chapters four thirty seven and six fifty four have changed and those are cited in the new edition.

Other things have happened, as well as regulatory changes the city and its culture has changed markedly since 2018. We now have a well trained and effective safety committee, we have an established emergency and safety coordinator position and we changes as an organization as shown by our insurance loss record, which is now extremely admirable, as well as taking those sorts of matters safely through Strive, admin, finance reorganizations and going paper free. So what is in the new '26 manual? First of all it contains a list of updated authorities and a commitment to adhere to all legally required workplace safety standards. It emphasizes this through the lens of our Strive values.

A concrete definition is laid out for who is responsible for what action. The rules about composition and the meeting schedule and the duties of the safety committee are spelled out clearly for the first time. It also has rules about our worksite inspection program, which has been going on anyway but we've moved what we've been doing into the manual. What else is in there? There are guidelines on the distribution of safety alerts and materials, citations on how to get regulation updates, complete details on workers compensation claims and how to do them, an accident immediate action list, details on how to handle accident reporting, how to handle the resultant data, and even how to store the end product of that in the Oregon records management system, which as you know we didn't have back in twenty fifteen-twenty sixteen.

What else is in there? There are details on accidents involving injuries and details on how to handle vehicle related accidents, and here is a list of some of the specific rules that are called out to deal with specific classes of risk, and this is perhaps the most important thing, as you know we have had a tendency to take what the South Koreans call the cupboard manual, the large thick manual that nobody ever opens and try to make our documents into something that can be referred to more easily and be more handy. In that spirit this edition has a series of safety checklists, these are designed to be used in the field or just to jog people's memory to ensure that their workplace will be safe and helpful, healthful should I say. In each case these cover protections needed against a certain specific risk, for example eye damage, head protection and so on. The checklist will be maintained in a separate appendix so they can be used either via a printed sheet or they can be accessed as a pdf and filled out that way.

The next few slides show you some of the checklists that are in the new manual. So this is the foot protection safety checklist and you can see this is something where a team of folks can get together at the beginning of the job and just go through the checklist and make sure that everyone has what they need. Similarly, protective clothing safety checklist, reminding people about if they're using an angle grinder to think about sparks and fragments, extreme temperatures, thinking about chemicals, what the high or low or medium risk level is, and PPE as a reminder. All of this is designed to jog people's memories. Personal protective equipment hazard assessment form, that's something you can use when you're thinking about the site, do you need that form of PPE to engage with that type of task.

There's another example, our blood borne pathogen incident form, which leads into medical reporting, and lastly the 2026 edition has chapters that cover our respirator program, citywide training exercises, and then there are individual department safety training standards where they commit to things like AED, CPR, blood borne pathogen and so on. We also have added an agreement sheet that we can get contractors on-site to sign off on, to acknowledge our manual and that they will abide by the same standards. Now often these sort of updates are the result of some sort of failure or some inadequacy. That's not where we are. We're in a really good insurance position right now and we don't have a lot of loss, but we want to keep the drumbeat going and make sure our workplace remains safe.

80 pages like the emergency management plan that you saw a couple of years ago, short and concise and to the point. This completes a brief overview of our new safety manual, at the next session I'll bring the policy forward for council adoption and are there any questions at this time? Thank you. That's really cool especially because there are some experts on these matters in this room right now. Okay.

And then the honorable mayor and council, the Will Worthy Show continues. This is the Newburgh council priorities update for 2026. Over the last four years there has been a major set of council objectives that have basically reset everything every two years. This is not therefore the actual time for a major goal setting exercise, however to stay on cadence we realize that this should be '27. With that said, I would like to update the goals list a bit right now to show our community our successes to date, and to recognize those successes, and because it is good for staff morale, to get the recognition that we have done some of our council goals.

To do this I intend to go over the goals one by one, and show where we are and highlight some of the successes, after that I will cover my suggestions for edits to the goals document and it's kind of like a mid cycle calibration, and then this will be, this is key because council priorities are always a living document and we try to always achieve them. First of all, in goal area one, continue to create and maintain a high level of customer service and objective one was to create department customer service standards for each department by July 2026. Objective two was to continue to streamline the process for issuing building permits and that in real terms meant not only massive staff retraining, customer service focus and implementing an entirely new software package. We have achieved all of these objectives, after many hundreds of hours of staff time they have been met and have attached the standards as well as a CDD turnaround time report in the package that you got to see, and you see how quick our turnaround times are. Now this is anecdotal and I don't like to give this council anecdotes, but let me say this, we have also no longer receiving the sort of drumbeat of complaints that we used to get about turnaround time, or in fact in other departments customer service issues.

Goal two, identify industrial land and attract employers, encouraging family wage jobs, make application to bring land into the urban growth boundary to zone for light manufacturing. On this priority the city is taking a strategic approach, as new light industrial buildings develop in the city data increasingly supports moving the growth boundary in some manner. Additionally we are currently working on the one time growth boundary expansion for housing, this may inform future decisions about industrial land. So I just want to highlight that although this is not a completed goal, we're still working on it separately but in parallel. I and others have had some discussions with PCC on the subject of their land within their campus.

Would they consider spending some of that off to become industrial land? Those conversations will continue. Goal three, enhance community safety. Objective one, work with the school district to provide the additional school resource officer. This was an on again off again thing, but I'm very glad to see that it is now very solidly on again.

So we have met this goal, install red light and speed cameras and other speed restriction measures within two years, we have put speed slowing objects around some of our roundabouts in the forms of plastic poles, we have had thermoplastic redone marking some of our streets, and our first camera is up and operational, and we are now working on a second camera location. So we feel that this is going along very well and objective one has been met and I would class objective two as 50% met. Goal four was to create and maintain a high level of transparency with our residents to build trust. Objective one was to expand communications outreach in regard to regular city events and additional involvement with city business by the 2026. Objective two was to develop a new and streamlined council rules to institutionalize enhancements that came from the previous cycle, such as our seven day publication schedule, executive summaries including in the RCAs and a more streamlined parliamentary procedure.

Goal four objective one has been enhanced but is not complete. Significant strides have been made in creating a public information officer possession, hosting first Friday art walk events, we're doing them, we will be doing them frequently and inviting the community to learn more about day to day work from our staff. We've also been attending meetings regularly with the downtown coalition and with the chamber of commerce. I wouldn't say we're there, but we've done some good work. We're also attending a number of events including old fashioned festival, Shalem Valley Chamber of Commerce Friday greeters, which we attend almost every time now, thanks to Emily going there, and the work continues.

And goal four objective two is complete in all of its administrative glory. Goal five was to implement a careful and prudent fiscal policy. Objective one, to begin reducing and eventually eliminate the city's debt in a prudent way without compromising our ability to provide essential services and functions, and objective two was to reduce elements of the municipal billing statement wherever possible. Objective one, one date has been retired early and the second date will be retired two years early, that will occur by June 2026. On objective two, the communication line item comes off the bill this summer, To reduce any further, we need to find other revenue streams, and one of my staff will be approaching you soon with a suggestion to look at a local gasoline tax.

So that data is coming to a council chamber soon. So we are continuing to work on this and we always will be. Goal three, ensure that the city has a long term financial plan that supports its goals and objectives. We still have to do this, but some of the precursors that were needed for this have already occurred. The purchasing manual was a necessary precursor, going to the taylor n code 10 system and the digital court system and biennium budgeting were all precursors of this.

We are ready to tackle this objective as these other steps are complete and work continues. Katie has assured me that this will be completed in 2026. Objective four as a secondary focus to the maintenance of our existing roads will explore the concept of converting small sections of gravel street to modern paving. Objective five, look for ways to fund road repairs to remove the tough fee from the utility bill. Now removing the tough fee from the utility bill will always be a very, very heavy lift, very heavy.

However we feel that objective four and five are interlinked. If we are going to do these things without halting road repairs we need new revenue streams and staff will be bringing you that gasoline tax proposal soon, which will not be a 100% solution, to be clear. Yes. No. If we had a gasoline tax at the 2¢ level, and I'm currently stealing somebody else's thunder but that's okay, we think it may raise 350,000 to $400,000 a year, so it would enable us to reduce the tough charge, it would not enable us to completely remove it, because currently tough is 1.4 to 1,500,000.0.

Goal six was to revitalize and beautify the appearance and utility of the downtown area. Objective one, in partnership with NDC seek funding sources to implement the main street program. Objective two, work with all stakeholders to explore the creation of historic designation for the downtown corridor. In the last seven months, $28,000 of repairs and upgrades have been done downtown specifically. Work on objective one and two continues, and as part of the ODOT ADA ramp work and required historical impact remediation ODOT is conducting research in the city to provide information needed to proceed with the exploration of the historic downtown designation, if it is the will of council that we do that.

In addition staff are currently in the process of applying for a certified local government grant, which will allow us to hire a specialist to update our historic resource inventory, further supporting this goal. Goal seven, preserve the balance between the needs of tourism industry and preserving the character of our town. Objective one, implement and codify a new STR rule, short term rental, within one year. Objective two, act as a resource to assess the community in obtaining grants. With the grant writer possession and grant writing will continue, we and with the new STR rules codified, we feel that both of these goals have been met and if community members need assistance in grant writing we will continue to offer that.

This concludes a review of the work done, on the next few slides I would like to cover staff suggestions for changes to this living document, which I'll be bringing back to council at a future date. These will document the changes and be very good for staff morale, it'd be great for everyone to see the hard work being documented of what we've done. With that said, with council approval I do propose to keep the customer service on the ongoing goals list and continue to do training regularly on customer service. Now that we have standards we will not allow them to gather dust, these will be reminded to folks frequently and keep top of mind, so we don't go backwards. With goal one moving to ongoing, I would reformat the objectives list and things would jockey around, that would become an ongoing focus, goal one would become goal two and so on.

Goal three objective one has been met, I propose that goal three objective two becomes one, in other words we'd shuffle the deck for the ones we've done. Goal four objective two is complete and can be removed, goal seven objective one has been complete and it can be removed, therefore objective two would become objective one. So as you see that's perhaps 40% ish of the whole list achieved, we're going to continue to work on the other items and going forward we will see what the future brings at the next major one which you guys will have in 2027 when we'll have work sessions again. Any questions?

Yeah. What is goal for objective two? You brought it up twice, but it was never mentioned what it was.

Thank you. And thank you. Other questions, folks? I'm very proud of my staff. They've really done so much to get these things done. We've got more to do, but we're gonna keep working on it.

Can I say

Did you say the goals are in the council rules? Can you tell me what page?

Council goals are just in their own section. Section. They're their own section.

So a quick introduction to the new notebooks saying in front of you, counselors. This is just a resource manual for you that we'll have in front of you at all council meetings. If you can leave it at the end of the night, we'll make sure it's here every meeting. But there's a tab that has the council goals and a tab with the council rules, and all of your scripts are in there, so it's easy to find things.

I never heard what the goal for objective two was. Did you did somebody find it?

Yes. That was the update to the council rules that we conducted. The the objective was to update the council rules. Yeah.

So this was the codification seven day publication schedule executive summaries, especially for large documents and adding whether or not something was state mandated or not as well as a general review. And thanks to my colleagues in Miller Nash for taking such good care of reviewing that document.

All right. Are there yeah. Go ahead.

I mostly just want to say that I've been here a minute now, and this is by far the most welcoming, competent, and professional staff that I've interacted with. And obviously, that's from your leadership and also department head leadership. And even just being able to have a second SRO, Jay, I mean, is just adored by the kids at Edwards. I can speak only for Edwards. But Lincoln's so excited every time he's parked outside.

And as a parent, it does make me feel so much more safe sending my kids to school. And as for customer service, I just wanna validate that I also hear regularly how improved customer service is from every department. And it I think so much of it truly just starts from morale like you talked about. And even just stating that you wanna share an update to express gratitude to your team is so important and makes me really proud to be on this council working with you. And I also wanna give a shout out to that amazing human.

I feel like Rachel has just been so incredible to have in this role and, like, unsung hero status. And I just hope I know we don't express gratitude enough to you, but for everything that you do. But even just, like, Melissa and Rachel having the foresight to put together these books. Like, why haven't we had those before? I don't know.

That's amazing. Thank you for thinking of those things. And and also Emily with social media, I think has been really awesome to have much more information pushed pushed out that's not political and is, you know, information sharing and engagement and getting people to really trust the city. So more than kudos, I'm really proud to be on this team. And if I were to leave council today, I would know that Ed is in good hands with council and staff and leaders. Thank you.

Thank you most kindly. And I would also add to that that there has been a revolution in planning and building division which Scott has led. The turnaround is it's incredible, our turnaround times. The documents that Rachel has scanned and that we had we had hundreds of boxes. Now they're all digitized In just a couple of years, we're almost out of paper, so they're fantastic.

Alright. Thank you. Well, next item is the council committee's tech technology responsibility agreement. The CCTRA.

Well, good evening. Hopefully, this is a a quick item too. We just want to go over the idea. We're not asking for you to make a decision tonight. It is planning to come back next week unless you just decide that you'd like to. You are always able to move forward. What we have for you here is addressing a little problem we've been having. Our planning commission and all of you are provided with some devices to use, in order to do the work you need to do. So, you know, all of you have been provided with cell phones and tablets. Our planning commission all get tablets as well.

And one issue we've run into is occasionally those items are not being returned at the end of terms or they're being damaged. Currently, we have nothing in place to enforce that return and to get them back. So what we'd like to have in place is a responsibility agreement. What we're proposing here is an agreement that goes over what it means to take responsibility for city owned equipment, technology, and the expectations for returning it and not destroying it, and also a way to waive that and say, I'm going to use my own devices, and I do not want to take on city devices and this liability. This is not something we've had before at the city, but it does address the issue that we can run into 12 or $13,000 a year in cost if we have to replace all the equipment.

Now we usually don't, but every time one of these, you know, someone joins a commission and then they're terminated or they resigns and sometimes they don't come back, that's a cost or a delay, and it can be a major challenge for staff. So we'd like to be able to recoup the city's costs when we need to. Dave, do you have anything to add on this?

Well, I could tell you a bunch of horror stories, but Mhmm. You know, there's some language in here about only using it for city business. We've had them used for clearly personal business before. We've had them damaged by being left in a car. We've had them get get wet and be turned in.

The other side of that is when someone has a personally owned device that they're choosing to use, they're they're coming into IT and they're making us work on their computer, and that puts us in a very bad spot. So this also has some language in there too that basically says we're we're not supporting that that device. So

Basically, it says our our technology department is not going to support personal devices, but we will support city devices, and you'll need to make that decision. Are you going to accept the liability of taking on a city device and that if it gets destroyed or severely damaged, not not normal wear and tear, severely damaged in your possession, that you're liable for it? Or are you going to take on the responsibility of knowing you have city records on a personal device of your own and will need to turn those in in the case of a public records request or legal action or anything of that sort? So we want people to make an informed decision on this, which is one of the reasons we've prepared this agreement for you to review, and we need to we wanna protect the city's interests. We believe it's fiscally responsible to have something like this in place, and it's generally good practice.

But it's your decision because it affects all of you. So

Any question?

So my only thought about all of this is that I don't have a problem with staff paid staff being responsible for financially responsible for their document. But when we ask somebody to volunteer on the planning commission, they have a laptop or or a iPad

Yes.

As well as a phone. And I don't know. It doesn't it doesn't set right with me that we are making volunteers responsible to pay for a device that they may have lost. So that's my only reservation.

Apparently, I'm alone in that. So thank you very much.

Alright. We'll bring it back next week for approval or next meeting.

Ross, this is most likely going to be your last presentation. Right?

It's gonna be best for us.

Mister mayor, council members, thanks for letting me go last last. This this is my last council meeting and last item on the agenda. What I have in front of you is a request for approval to authorize the city manager to make the necessary documents and sign agreements for the replacement of two valves on our water system, an 18 inch valve and a 12 inch valve on Edward Street. And to give you a little background information on this, we don't know the exact cost. We've asked for estimates, and the estimates run anywhere from 60,000 to 120,000 on this simply because of the complexity of this.

About eighty years ago, the city had a what we call a backbone waterline, which is the 12 inch that ran up Edward Street from the south end of town. In the early eighties, we added 18 inch mainline that came up Center Street and tied into the Edwards Street line, and that provided backbone of the water system to feed the rest of rest of the city. What we have discovered in working with ODOT and the ADA ramp improvements, we discovered that the 18 inch valve has a leak in it. And we've been working on this for about a year, and we finally completely excavated the 18 inch valve and found out that the leak is a nonrepairable leak. It's actually in the body of the valve.

And as everybody knows, water is the universal solvent. It's continuing to etch it, and it's in a non repairable condition with this, and it will only continue to get worse. Now the 12 inch valve is on the South End Of 1st Street, and that would normally be a valve that we'd use to isolate a section of the main to be able to replace the 18 inch valve. And the 12 inch valve is over 80 years old. We've operated it numerous times, and there's got to be a a problem inside of it because we cannot close the valve entirely, which means we can't close lines down to replace the 18 inch valve.

So this becomes a very complex issue with that to give you a scope of the impact to shut the line down to make the replacement of both valves, which would have to happen simultaneously, we will have to, at best, shut off the water on 1st Street from Center Street to School Street downtown, and it will also expand on Edward Street from Vermillion to 5th Street. So it's a very large area. It would impact all the businesses downtown. It would impact a large number of residents, and therefore, the work's gonna have to be done at night, which then compacts and compiles the the cost of this. We have with Keller and Associates are working out a plan on this.

We're gonna walk they're gonna walk through it several times for the replacement. We will get the final bids for contractors on this. We don't anticipate it exceeding a 100,000, but it might. And once we cut into these lines to remove these valves, we have to get it done to restore water service to the downtown core area in that section section of town. It's kind of unusual that we run into this.

Normally, our crews would be able to replace a valve, but in in this instance with having to replace two at the same time, do it at night, isolate a lot of the water meters and water services throughout the downtown core area, it's gonna take most of the public works crew as well as a contractor to perform this work, with that. So that's why we we brought this to you. If we have a failure of the 18 inch valve, we cannot again, we'd have to shut off that major area and, without the the 12 inch. If we had the 12 inch in place, the only place affected would be 1st Street. And that's simply because the cost of an 18 inch valve, and if you can depicture it, they're 40 inches tall, and they're quite expensive to replace.

So what I have for you is a request to, approve resolution, twenty twenty six forty thirteen authorizing the city manager to approve and sign the necessary documents or contracts for the replacement of the leaking 18 inch valve and the failed 12 inch water main valves at North Edwards and East 1st Street, the intersection there. Any questions on those?

We

are planning to have this done. ODOT has told us that the work on the this valve actually impacts one of the ADA ramps as well. And so they will begin work on that, around the July 1 is what we've been told. So the idea is to have this work done well before that probably in either May or June. Currently, we do have Keller and Associates working out ODOT permits, right of way permits. We'll have to reduce lanes, be night work, and have contractual bids for the replacement of these valves in place.

It's gonna take several days?

This should be able to be done overnight. It would it would require two crews working simultaneously in two different locations, one replacing one valve, one replacing the other. It's usually straightforward, but in this area, because of the complexity of this and the large area impacted, it's it's gonna be a little little more difficult.

And you said the status door at night, so is that urgent? Nothing.

We when we cut into the lines, it's gonna dewater the main lines. And in order to protect the individual businesses and residences, what they're gonna have to do is go shut off all the water meters prior to it being dewatered to retain the water inside the businesses rather than dewater everything. They're also gonna have to do notifications. They're gonna aid with with any of the work. So that reduces some of the hard costs that we'd have with a contractor doing all of this work and notifications, but it would still is gonna require staff to be on-site, during this period of time.

Mister Mayer?

The other thing to know is that this is budgeted for. We added a pipe replacement fund for unexpected below grade discoveries to stormwater, water, and wastewater. We haven't spent any of that money yet, so this is where the money will come from. I move

that we approve resolution twenty twenty six forty thirteen.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded that we approve resolution number twenty twenty six forty thirteen. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of approving resolution twenty twenty six forty thirteen signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed, nay? Motion passes unanimously. Thanks, Russ.

Thank you, mayor. And if I might, take another moment of your time, I would like to thank the council, Will, all the department heads, for a fantastic career with the city of Newburgh. This is my last council meeting, retiring in a couple of weeks. It's been good for me. It's been good for my family. And, I'm gonna miss coming to work every day, but I'm not gonna miss community because I'm staying here. So I just wanna say thank you very much, and, look forward to, the great things to come in the future.

Please?

Okay, Russ. It has to said, and I know.

See you, Peter.

I know you hate attention, but Russ is also my neighbor, like, a couple doors down. And you are truly one of the good the good ones. Like, and I mean that of in every walk of life as a human. And one thing that I adore about you and your wife, and this is political, is I don't know your political affiliation. And that's not normal anymore.

And I you are a person that treats every person no matter who they are, what walk of life exactly the same. And I've always seen that about you and your staff since you have been in this position. Your public works team is always the most professional, happy. It's a reflection of you. And I'm so thankful you're my neighbor, and I always know you're down the street, and you are an incredible human. So enjoy retirement. Thank you. Don't let your wife shop too much at Nicki Janes, but I'll see her there.

Russ, I just wanna say, simply thank you for your, your service to the city. I'm super grateful for what I've seen and what I've learned of you and your staff. So, yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. That's premier.

I just wanted to echo thank you as well having being one of the newer council members. I have been so gracious for all of your background and history and knowledge. You took Derek and I on an incredible tour. And just getting to hear all of the stuff that you know and have maintained, even, I think, this presentation, the the background of these pipes and how they got there. And I have just been so grateful for your wealth of knowledge and everything that you have done. So thank you.

Thank you. And for the record, at the end of 2021, when all I could see was everything had to be fixed. And you and I went to coffee, and we sat, and you talked me off the ledge, and we talked about how we would tackle the things one at a time. And I really, really appreciate that, Russ. I really appreciate it. And it's not just because you and I had the same psychological profile on the desk analysis. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hold on just a minute. Robin, will you I mean, you don't have to.

Russ, I'm gonna miss you. Anytime I call, you always know the answer. You know how to respond. You're always so happy to answer anything. You just are a wealth of knowledge. The city is I'm so grateful. So thank you.

Thank you.

Russ, I too have appreciated everything you've done for this city. But more than that, you're a wonderful member of the community. Your entire family, your in laws, I know very well, and they are a wonderful Newberg family who's been here at least as long as I have. I think probably a good deal longer. Thank you.

And, this isn't goodbye because I know we're gonna continue to see you around at at all these different events. So it's gonna be fun watching you in the audience instead of in the in behind the scenes from time to time. Once again, thank you for your long tenure of service, and enjoy your retirement, my friend. Well, I should probably get this done before the clock changes because we haven't spent an hour here yet. So the meeting is adjourned.