City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everybody. Then we got your name on it.

I've never Just so next

to you. I'll try it again.

No. I think so.

Good evening.

Cancel. You can see that.

Welcome. This is March 2, Newburgh City Council. I call this meeting to order. Rachel, can we have roll call, please?

Certainly. Councilor McBride?

Here.

Councilor Wheatley? Here. Councilor Yarnell Holloman? Here. Councilor Kilburg? Here. Mayor Rosacker?

Here.

And councilor Turgeson and councilor Carmen are currently absent. Oh, there's counselor Cherguson.

There we go. Ferguson. Stay here.

Got you here. Alright.

Would everybody please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance? Welcome, everybody. This is, one of our favorite parts of the meeting is the city manager's report of the month.

Thank you, honorable mayor and honorable councilors. But before we actually begin this presentation, there's another duty which lies before me at the moment. So I'm going to, with realization that it's Robin's birthday, ask for everyone to join me in this popular refrain which you know the words to. Happy birthday to Robin. Happy birthday to Robin.

Happy birthday, dear Robin. Happy birthday to you and many more. What? And for the month of February, finance did the following things. Rate review committee continued to discuss water, storm water, tough, and that's coming before you again this evening to council.

Town hall hearings occurred to your public testimony about proposed increases, met with One Digital and principal reps to discuss the NEIRP's pension plans and future forecasting, and attended the League of Oregon City's training on Oregon budget law updates. Cashunk. Library events, 249 library card sign ups, the average of about 150 cards a month, that's a lot. Graphic novels for the children's library expanded and we've got pictures about that on the next page. The restroom remodel is underway and going very, very well and there's also pictures about that.

Cozy reading occurs in the library in the wintertime, eleven fifty children registered, seven twenty six mascot entries and one one one six reading logs submitted. Teens over 200 registered, three zero five reading logs returned, and look at those other statistics, a 100 live requests completed. Crikey. And there is pictures, the graphic novels update, and then also on the left, that is all the plastic sealing in the toilets while their stuff is curing to try to make it less stinky. And February was jam packed with activities for community engagement, organized a ride to school for young community member who named the sweeper Sir Sweeps a Lot Trallala, that was a sort of a shabbat rig noise, put together a video farewell for Russ for his retirement party, worked on planning several upcoming outreach opportunities, worked on first Friday March sixth.

If you'd like to come to City Hall you can come March 6, five to eight, tour the building and meet the new public works director who is meeting with the public. The town hall for River Street updates and design Q and A is also coming up soon, and assisted city recorder for mayor for a day experience for Joel, who went to many of our departments and had a grand time. City recorder created council update sign up options, spoke to a GFU class on government service, prepared an application to the certified local government grants program to update our historic resources inventory, and conducted a lunch and learn on ethics for all staff, continued work on eliminating paper, and boy oh boy are we getting close, we've got very, very little paper left, and continued on encouraging staff to lean in during records week, and her loyal city manager personally scanned four bankers boxes of documents and earned a bag of potato chips as a reward. River Street Engineering Keller completed development of alternative sections and corridor plans. Concept alternatives were presented to city staff in mid December along with a review of a high level review.

Preliminary design alternatives have been presented to city counsellors on one on one work sessions to get some input. Next a set of discussions was formed which led to a third alternative emerging, so now there are three possible alternatives. A town hall is planned for March 9 to show the community the three possible designs, and that will be in this very room. And if memory serves it's 08:00, is that right? Or is it seven?

It is 07:00 in this very room and we will have gigantic strip maps, three of them of the whole of River Street that you can literally walk around, they're like 15 foot long printouts, there'll be a PowerPoint display, and we'll be listening to what people think. The city admin team will also wait, that should be in the past tense. I and the city admin team already leafleted every door and every car on River Street to invite all those residents to come to this meeting. Woo hoo. And here is a report from HR.

There was a collaboration with that lunch and learn on being an ethical government employee with the completion of digitization of all employee personnel files, HR was able to have all of the paper files shredded. If you walk into the HR Building today you will see that it is devoid of paper. The offices and archives have received a delicious fresh coat of paint and there's not many things that smell better than a fresh coat of acrylic paint, I think we'll all agree. IT projects, phone migration, we started the process for migrating our legacy system to Webex, this transition will modernize our communications platform and we are moving everybody now having done the preliminary work onto our new virtual desktops. The virtual desktop system will save the city money because virtual desktops will not be activated if there are no users.

Therefore instead of buying very expensive servers on premises we can dial back on the number

of

licenses as people log on. What does that mean? In the middle of the day lots of people logging on were spending more money, and as people log off, log off, log off, log off we're saving money. Mr. Brooks thinks it could save 30 or $40,000 a year.

So that's kind of cool. Kushunk. Central Square Cloud following the successful go live they're addressing post implementation items and that's part of the police dispatch assembly. Current efforts include deployment of mobile systems and integration of AI capabilities with our workflows. This rollout was so successful that our IT manager was invited to speak at the National Central Square Conference on this rollout.

Splunk is a piece of software that measures endpoint to endpoint communications inside our computer system. It can also be used for data analytics tasks. It is being revamped ready to provide departments with specific dashboards, so that in the future instead of having to manually collate some of the data you'll be able to get Splunk to do it. These dashboards will provide IT staff with more visibility into networking storage and server operations. Water, 33 coliform samples were collected, all negative for e coli and other bacteria.

Annual reports completed for air quality and polymer usage. Reservoir cleaning and video inspection has occurred, which happens every three to four years, and on the next picture there's a picture of a brave, bold, intrepid frogman about to dive into the depths of one of our reservoirs. Luckily we discovered that there was no creature from the Black Lagoon living in any of our water sources. Wow look at that. So what happens is, and thank you Russ if you're listening at home tonight for the education you've given me on this over all these years, the bloke goes in the thing with an equivalent of a vacuum and sucks up the algae all around inside the reservoir and then comes back out.

Cool. The concrete crew are working on ADA tough projects in southern districts to get ready for this year's road resurfacing program and as usual you know they try to get this done before the Grind and Inlay companies arrive. This year we have over 50 corners to do and some sidewalk sections as well, so this is a lot this year, so we're really leaning into this. In fact there's a connecting section of about a 100 yards where there's no sidewalk at all, and I saw that we're out doing that today as I went for a run, so that's cool. Has to all be done before the June to be ready for the Grind and Enley company.

Street crew started some skin patching on Springbrook near Station 21 as well, and over to planning events. Planning Commission denied an appeal and upheld the director's approval of a nine unit metal housing development on Orchid Drive. However, I have heard that the people who lodged the appeal at first have actually realized some of the reasons why this land use function was legal and why the developer had the right to do what he proposed to do, so I don't think that there's, I think we've reached an understanding with the people. Planning Commission reviewed updates to council commission rules, on-site visits at Rainey Field with CPRD occurred to identify needed street improvements for that play field that's going to occur. Obviously when they redevelop that area there's going to be frontage improvements for sidewalk parking and other things will happen.

The one time UGB expansion program passed the Oregon house as of 2018. I do not know all the details except to say that it should simplify the process for a one time UGB expansion and that is obviously all of our hopes. So that is it for February events, as you can see residents tax dollars hard at work as usual and I wonder if there are any questions.

I have one, I can't resist. How much coffee did you have this afternoon?

Now you know, it's usually the second council meeting is one where I present statistics, but I am prepared to disclose this data point. The city manager has consumed four cups of coffee today.

Thank

you, Will. We appreciate your entertainment. Next is public comments. We have two today, so the time limit will be five minutes. Ned, you can be first. Ned Knight.

I was supposed to be after the rate review.

Oh, I'm just you're right. Thank you, Ned. So we have Shelly Cobb. I'm sorry. Shelly Cole. I had some friends who spell her name the same way and made a big deal about it. It was Cobb. So that's why I have such trouble with your name.

I'm here tonight to give kudos to our police, our mayor, and our city council for helping Newburgh rank number five in SafeWise's twenty twenty six Oregon safe safest cities, and we're usually in the top 10 of almost any survey. Some of the reasons we have, first of all, full staffing. Most police departments in The United States have 15% vacancies, and they're trying to fill them. We have no vacancies. And before, chief Jeff took over, there was several vacancies.

So good job, you guys. Also, rapid response. 911 calls are answered within ten seconds compared to a national average of fifteen to twenty seconds. Patrol efficiency. Average response time is four point five minutes. Now the average United States is about ten minutes, and my my poor sister who lives in Portland has to, deal with nineteen minute response time on average. And she had to call one time, and it was a lot longer than that. So we shouldn't take that for granted. That's wonderful. Another thing our department does is it embraces technology.

Lot of forces don't do that. For example, they use a drone to help with surveillance. Only 20% of police departments in The United States use drones. So that's fantastic. Commitment to transparency and communication. Since 2022, we've had, body cams for our police, but we are one of the very few police departments now who have invested in it's a cutting edge translation feature. And so what does that do? That that helps open up the community. That's more transparency, and that's just forward thinking. And, again, most most of these systems are in the beta, but but we did it.

You guys did it. Your community community outreach is fantastic. You have the Citizens Academy back. You support the Olympics, breast cancer awareness, mental health programs, and distributing senior Valentine's Day meals. At this Rotary, we're supposed to do it, and and we we couldn't find enough people. Well, the the police came and oh my god. What? 450 baskets or just it was it was fantastic. Accreditation. NDPD is one of only 24 accredited Oregon departments meeting the high standards.

It it's, there's there's about a 100 standards, and hardly any police department makes them. We're one out only, only one out of 20, 24. We have specialized teams, including mental health crisis, domestic violence response team, and we have declining crime, year over year decreases in violent and property crime. So I just want to say how much we appreciate our police and and council and the mayor and their dedication to community safety. I have friends who are on the the force, and they say, my gosh. We just feel so supported, and it wasn't always like that. So thank you, and thank you for your efforts to make Newburgh a better place for everybody.

So I I I just I would first of all, thank you for for those remarks and recognizing that we have an elite, special police force and special culture here. And one of the things that you mentioned, I don't want to resonate on this for a minute, fifth safest. That includes small villages where there are only a few 100 residents. That is mind boggling for a city of this size. So we have an amazing police chief and as led by example.

I I would like to point out that, in defense of the past police chief, it's not the police chief that gets to determine whether or not all of his positions are full. That is the city manager's prerogative. So thank you, Will. So on with continued business. We have some There? Yeah.

I submitted online a report of information.

Are you do you are you willing to speak? That's why I raised

my hand.

Come on up. Jim, talk.

I'll just need another form of data.

Yeah. I'm I'm sorry. It it gave me this on screen thing. It said your submission has been accepted, and I went, oh, I don't need to take a screen capture of that.

I'm done with me. Feel that's hot. I will do that.

Okay. Yes. It is on. Jim Taltz speaking. I only had two cups of coffee today. My mother answered the door one day last month and found a uniformed police officer standing at her door. Her first thought was, what's he want? I gave up my driver's license five years ago. Her second thought was, what has Jim done now? Which would have been a fair question sixty five years ago.

It turns out it was neither. It was Valentine's Day, and he had a gift bag full of goodies provided by local Newburgh residents, a merchant. She and the officer had a nice chat, and then he went on to deliver further gift bags. I know you folks can't be aware of all the great things that go on, like, for example, that one of our police officers carries around decorative blankets and stuffed animals in his patrol car for when he encounters children in stressful situations as he did two years ago when my neighbor's house caught fire in the middle of the night. I brought you this Valentine gift story just in case you haven't heard of the program, which is sponsored by Newburgh Businesses and the Newburgh Police.

It was a very nice surprise for many seniors who got that visit that day. I too was pleased because, well, mom was happy, and I got some cookies out of it. So I'm just passing on that good news, good cheer story, just in case you hadn't heard it. Thanks.

Since they donated over 500 bags of food, I should I'd like to mention that it was party time catering is the business in Newburgh that provided all those delivered by mainly by the police department, and, Rotarians, helped with that as well. So, I even got the opportunity to break into some somebody's car because she had put her locked her keys inside. So it was a fun day. Alright. Now we're looking at the safety manual approval.

Good evening again, honorable mayor and councillors. The item before us is the request for approval of the twenty twenty six update to the safety manual, which was covered at our last session. There are numerous state and federal statutes and rules that reinforce having a safe workplace, for example OAR chapter four thirty seven and ORVS chapter six fifty four. To cover the executive summary, between November 21 and early twenty five our staff policies and procedures were mostly non existent or lacked any substance. During the process of looking at all of our policies then, the existing safety manual was found to be acceptable, but not excellent.

Having completed other more critical or timely policies, like the emergency operations plan, the purchasing manual, and having more time to upgrade this plan to match the other standards of the staff guidebook, this is the reason why this comes before you again this evening. During 2025 staff guided by human resources and emergency management staff worked on a new policy with assistance from our insurance carrier City County Insurance. After the first draft was completed it was distributed to the department heads for review and edits, as has been my standard practice for over four years. The fruits of these labors are in the packet this evening. The fiscal impact is hard to assess, but is meaningful.

We have had an impressive turnaround from the time of tumult, when we were in danger of being struck off of the insurance list from CIS, and our loss rate factor is now running well below the state average. This has garnered the city savings of approximately $50,000 per year on our CIS insurance costs, and the objective with the new manual is to keep OSHA regulations good and keep safe working practices front and center in the minds of all of our staff, and this falls in line with council goal five, to implement a careful and prudent fiscal policy and to ensure Newburgh infrastructure, roads, water, and city employees are in good repair and supply. And in this case, it is the employees who we want to remain in a good condition and not be hurt at work. And so staff recommends the approval of resolution twenty twenty six four zero one two. Are there any questions, folks?

Well, we, we're all very aware of the work and the hard work you put into this, and we appreciate that you're so diligent on these matters. So would anybody like to make a motion? Peggy?

I move that this, city approve resolution 2026Dash4012.

Second. Alright. It has been, we have a motion and a second to approve resolution number 2026Dash4012. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, nay? Motion passes unanimously.

Now we are looking at the council goals update.

Thank you, Rachel. And good evening again, Honourable Mayor and Council, and I'll be presenting a small update to council goals to recognise our successes that we've gained over the last year. At the last session I covered which of the goals are still to be achieved and which ones have been completed so far, and I would just like to briefly summarize part of what I did last time for the sake of counsellors who may not have been here at the last session. So basically with goal one moving to an ongoing goal with the publication of our customer service standard, it would cause the list to reformat with that becoming ongoing and goal one becoming goal two, etc, which is why the numbers change down the list. All staff will therefore continue to strive to follow the department customer service standards and the main customer service guide, and I will continue to bang on that drum as long as I am here and assign customer service trainings annually.

Goal three zero one has been met with the new SRO contract, long may it continue. I propose that goal three objective two would therefore become objective one as we continue to work on our permitted cameras and other traffic calming devices. So that's not complete, but it would move up the list. Goal four O2 has been completed, which was our work on council rules, and so this is now, has been promulgated and has been executed, and therefore that can be removed from the list. And goal seven, objective one has been completed, which was the STR rules, and therefore objective two on goal seven would shift up to become number one.

So that's basically how the reshuffling happens. At the last council session as stated, the Centimeters reviewed all of the successes and completion levels of council goals to date, and also covered those which have not yet been accomplished, and covered what work we've done to try to move those forward. I highlighted the fact that a major goal setting exercise would probably occur later if we stay in this two year cycle. I did also relate that cleanup would be good both to recognize our successes, but also for staff morale. It's good to let the staff know that we recognize the work they've done to achieve the goals that you guys have set.

And so for those reasons staff recommends adopting this update to the council goals by approving resolution twenty twenty six four thousand and seventeen and the text without yet being graphic designed of course was attached here as well. Are there any questions?

No? If nobody has a question, would anybody like to make a motion?

Mister mayor, I'll move that we pass resolution twenty twenty six dash four zero one seven, council goals update.

Second.

Did you get that? The birthday girl seconded it? It has been we have a motion and a second that we approve resolution number 20264017. Is there any further discuss discussion? Sorry.

No. It's fine. It's fine.

Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay. The motion passes.

Thank you most kindly. And some of the next things for this year are going to be the long range financial plan and also moving to polish off those camera installations.

So the next item on our agenda is the technology responsibility agreement.

Hello. As you remember, hopefully, I'm your city recorder, Rachel Thomas, here to talk to you about the technology responsibility agreement, and then I'll take the next item after that too. But the first item we have here is the technology device responsibility agreement, which I brought before council last month, last meeting. This is an agreement that we hope to start issuing when council and committee members are issued devices, city devices, to do their work. So when you're offered a phone or an iPad or a laptop to do your work for the city, we'd have you sign an agreement taking responsibility for it.

This agreement also gives people the option to opt out and take the liability of managing their city records on their personal device, which is also a liability. So it's kind of a liability either way, but we want people to be aware of what they're getting into on either side. The concept behind this is we have had several devices that have been lost or not returned at the end of people's terms or severely damaged, and we'd like the city to be able to recoup their costs if this occurs. So that's what that is. Staff believe this agreement would be a benefit to the city, and we'd ask you to consider approving it.

Are there any questions for Rachel? Go ahead, Robin.

Just to confirm, so you said moving forward. Any so not so let's say us. We don't have to sign an agreement?

Not at this moment. So if you have a new device issued in the future, we would go forward from here at this point, but I'm not gonna go backward and go after everyone who

already has one. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. I move we approve resolute resolution twenty twenty six dash forty fourteen directing staff to adopt the council and committee technology agreement.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to approve resolution number twenty twenty six four zero one four. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Rachel, you're on a roll.

I am.

Council rules update.

Alright. So these are the council rules we discussed about a month and a half ago where we discussed public comment, and we discussed decorum and the ways that we should maintain decorum and effective meetings here. So at that meeting, we decided to bring these back, let counselors give a little bit more input, and then, and have legal look at it again and bring it back to you for another decision. The main change that came from counsel input was removing the word rude. Oh, my.

I have a loud voice. Removing the word rude from the, things that are not allowed, rude behavior, because that's such a subjective term. So that's the main big change that came out of that. There were a couple minor tweaks. The other thing that was asked was to make a three minute minimum to the amount of time we'd allow people to speak.

One decision point that you guys have before you, currently, it's written with a three minute minimum, but five minutes is still the standard. There was one suggestion to make three minutes the standard amount of time, and you could increase time limits, but we wouldn't decrease below three. So that's a decision point you can look at. It's written for a five minute standard and a three minute minimum, but a three to five minute public comment generally. And then the other yeah. So that's the only decision point on this besides approving as written. So if you'd like to change that to a three minute standard, then we can make that change. It would be an amendment to what's presented tonight. But if you'd like to proceed as written, then it would be just approving the resolution that's written.

So we, we still have a thirty minute time limit in, overall. Okay. Is there any further discussion? Peggy?

I don't have strong feelings about it, but I think one advantage of having the standard be three minutes is people don't prepare five. And then when they get here, they're told it's only three. And I think people can be more concise if they know that they have three minutes. Anyway, that's my 2¢ worth.

I agree with Peggy.

I think it helps make it really clear. So I think that makes sense. Oh, I think that helps with clarity too to just say it's three minutes. And then if people get lucky and there's time for five, that's great, but they can plan according.

Okay. I I just wanted to be say state that I think we should stay with five, but I just want everybody to know that this wasn't my idea to make it three minutes, but I'll go along with the group. So we didn't but I I'm sorry?

And then so.

No. I I it's it's not a hill I'm gonna die on. I as a commenter, I know sometimes it's hard to express yourself in a any particular amount of time, so it really doesn't matter what it is. So would, somebody like to make a motion?

And let me give a hint that with the change to the three minutes, so it would say, motion to adopt as amended, with a three minute, standard time for public comment.

My I lost my screen. What's the number on that?

4017. I

I move that we adopt, resolution twenty twenty six four zero one zero as amended.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to approve resolution 2026Dash4010, as amended. Is there any further discussion? Jerry?

Just a comment. I think my hope would be that we would do five minutes whenever possible, but then just having that base standard there from a clarity standpoint. So I think my hope would be that you, as the mayor, would always do five minutes unless we can't because we have 30 people signed up, which we wouldn't make to anyway.

That's different than what we just than the motion. Correct?

No. So the motion was that three minutes is the standard amount that we will generally give, but you always have the option of extending to five minutes. And so that's what she's saying and she'd encourage you to make that extension. Is that correct? Okay.

Alright. Since it's the marriage prerogative, I'm for it.

And we're not changing that prerogative. We're keeping that as Alright. The goal.

Any further discussion? Then, it has been moved and seconded that we approve resolution number twenty twenty six for the four zero one zero as amended. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion passes. Thank you. So the next item on our agenda is the waterline improvements and the alignment project. Oh, that is our our chief engineer.

Yes. Well, I I only just found out this evening that Meg Grimes cannot, in fact, be here to present this. So I'm fairly familiar with this project, and I will present it on his behalf. So we've introduced this item as new business, although I will say it's not it's not in the complete sense new business because it is part of the larger HB 2,001 project that we've given presentations to council on before, and this the purpose of this is to upsize some of our water lines and also to replace some parts that are currently cast iron with ductile iron, which is the new standard for water pipes. Now while many parts of the HB 2,001 plan may wait for the future, this particular part we want to advance to right now, and it is in the budget already as you know, because this part turns out to be underneath a section of road that's in this year's Grind and Enley plan.

So we'd rather get this particular piece of pipe done before we do Grind And Enley, which will happen sometime in early July, so we'd like to get it done before that. So the resolution will authorize the winning bidder, and you saw the pricing there among the beds, the winning bid was $407,000 and it is eight fifty four linear feet of 12 inch water main to be done in the modern ductile iron, and by the way channeling my inner engineer, ductile iron is that type which has a slight amount of flex in it, so if there's a small seismic event or some road damage the pipe might not break, whereas cast iron is subject to shattering. So this section would enable us to move forward, Pacific North Construction LLC was that bid winner, and it does highlight another interesting fact which is that we are currently getting bids lower than anticipated for simple pipe projects, so we're seeing some positive motion if it's just a straight replacement project for pipe. This one came in a little less than we expected, So the staff would love to, well actually this is technically the first reading of this, but council could choose to advance this forward and run this resolution as written to approve this construction project is certainly within this year's budget for HB 2,001.

And I'll try to answer any other questions that may pop up.

Have we used them before, Pacific North Construction?

Yes we have, I can only speak to one other occasion which was about three years ago I think, but yes they're not a company that is unknown to us, and of course under Oregon law we have to go with the lowest bidder unless it's an RVFP if it's a design service project, but this is a straightforward construction project.

I'd just like to say for those who may not have seen the packet, there were five bids. The lowest one that, Will chose was 407,000. They range through up to 565 and a half thousand dollars, so that's quite a spread in there. It is good to see prices coming down, and that's I think that's consistent with the construction industry.

You're the competition right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. There any other comments? The other thing I'd like to say is prior to meeting Will Worthy, I thought there was a rule that said anytime you fix the street, then somebody had to dig it back up and put a pipe under it. So thank you very much for proving that wrong. There's no further discussion with it. Anybody like to make a motion?

Okay. Oh, I will

go for it.

Robin, go ahead.

I move we adopt resolution twenty twenty six dash forty fourteen.

No. It's not No.

You that's yep.

I'll second that.

Procedure really. No. Right. Ordinance. Yeah.

I'll second that.

Alright. It has been moved and seconded to approve resolution 20264016. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Next on our list is

Thank you, mister mayor.

Thank you. Are you oh, are you not doing the rate remove? Do you need to take a break?

And one thing, rate review is a higher

Higher power? It's a higher

person than I am. Yeah.

I'll be chiming in from over here, but Deb will be doing most of presentation.

Informal meeting tonight, which started out with a happy birthday.

Is this an intro Oh. Yes.

This is the info only, and then the public hearing will be at the next council meeting. So no vote will be on this tonight.

So welcome. If if you don't, if you would introduce yourself. Thank you.

Deb Gallardi, Gallardi Rothstein Group, and I was the consultant that worked with staff in the rate review committee on the update. So the, rate review process occurs every two years. I was here a couple years ago talking to you about the recommendations of that, committee. This year, we met four times over a two month period, so it was a little shorter process focused on the review of capital improvements needed for the water, sewer, stormwater, and street preservation system and evaluated the sufficiency of the current rates to meet the system needs, which include the capital as well as operation and maintenance costs and existing debt service. Just for some historical context, the rates that just went into effect January 1 were based on the prior rate review process and included rate increases that range from three and a half percent for sewer to 6.5% for storm water.

The typical residential bill increased overall about 4.3% or $7 to 7.5¢ per month. Key factors in those rate increases were the higher inflation that we were seeing during that period of time. The fact that the city is facing a significant investment for a water treatment plant replacement at, further out in the planning period and just the need to there was a there was a little bit of catch up that's been occurring with the storm water and the transportation utility fee. That's tough in the table for those are the newest of the fees and building the capacity within the rates to pay for ongoing capital improvement needs. Oh, I should mention that the the utility services statement also includes the public safety and communication officer charges there at the bottom.

That's not something the rate review committee, you know, considers it because that's set by a separate process. For this time around, as Will said, we see somewhat moderating inflation, which is a a positive thing. Though customer growth is was also a little bit slower than anticipated in the in the last process, which impacts the revenue that's projected just under the current rates. The there are significant, capital improvement needs, which include HB 2,001, the state mandated, investment for the water system for fire flow upgrades, a very significant wastewater treatment plant project, as well as ongoing infiltration and inflow reduction projects. And then we still have that water plant replacement that is looming, though it's further out in the the ten year plan.

We, as part of the process, look at a two year period for the rate recommendations, but we do do a plan for ten years so that we can keep an eye on what's needed and, to the extent possible, smooth the rate increases and plan for those larger investments further out. The city has been looking at every opportunity to reduce debt service costs. There is minimal debt reduction that occurs within the two year period, but the longer term period, there definitely is existing debt that drops off. And the plan is to minimize to the extent possible additional borrowing because, obviously, that adds to the long term cost of the improvements because of the interest costs. So we'll just take each system quickly here.

For sewer, The rate increase is slightly higher than what the three and a half that was just, implemented, and that is because you have a $32,000,000 treatment plant improvement, the oxidation ditch project, as well as half 1,000,000 to $1,000,000 a year in infiltration and inflow reduction projects. The good news is city has and the rate review as part of the rate review process, the committee has endorsed the city building reserves both from rates as well as systems development charges to pay for these large projects. Some of the capacity in this new system will serve the needs of future growth. So systems development charge will will be utilized to the extent possible to mitigate rate increases. To top off what's needed to fund that project, though, will require some borrowing, but we can do that within the the city funds because the water plant is further out in the plan.

There are reserves available to fund the short term needs of sewer, which then will pay back the water system in it before that plant is needed. So the borrowing stays within the city. It's a lower cost. Please.

So the part of the reason for this internal loan is deliberate so that we can then move money back to the water fund so that it can accumulate more revenue to be able to pay for more of the water plant. So it's actually a really clever move so that instead of just drawing down strictly wastewater funds, if we take a piece from water, which we're legally allowed to, as long as we pay it back quickly enough, then we can transfer the money back to the other fund for when we are when we need it. So this is actually a this isn't an this isn't a it's a strategy, not a necessity. Just wanted to make that clear.

Can I say one thing too? I just wanted to say again how fortunate we are to have $32,000,000 that we're able to cash fund a project of this size without having to take on additional debt. And that's just been good financial planning with, like Deb mentioned, the system development charges and then previous rate review recommendations that we've done. But to be able to cash fund a project this size is is very is very lucky. So I just wanted to emphasize that that was very good.

It

could have been a it could have been a more expensive project. Maybe I should have said we were lucky in one clarifier.

Okay. For the water system, the recommendation is continuing the 5% rate increase, which is that which is projected to both meet the short term HB 2,001 projects, including the project that Will was just talking about. Those projects total 6,600,000.0 over the next few years and then building the capacity to pay for the $45,000,000 improvement that's estimated for the the treatment plan. However, a 5% rate increase is not gonna be sufficient to fully fund that. And, again, the city can utilize systems development charges to the extent that those have been collected over the next ten years or when the plant is required.

There is anticipated to be some other agency funding and but there will need to be some sort of external borrowing. The SEWR fund will be utilizing its reserves to pay for the the improvements that are needed in that system. So the recommendation at this point is to assume that the water plant debt would be through a general obligation bond supported by property taxes rather than the rate revenue. So that that 5% does not include the debt service to pay the $32,000,000 in debt for the the plant that is assumed to be paid for through that other bucket.

Alright. Deb, before we go any further, we have, one of our rate review committee members wants to comment. So why don't you sit right there?

Okay. At the end of

of Deb's presentation. She wants to do it at the end.

K.

Yeah. We're we're at the end.

Oh, no. Oh, we're not.

Sorry. Storm and sorry. Okay. Stormwater. The good news here is lower rate increase than what was projected previously down from six and a half percent to four and a half percent.

Again, part of that is we're seeing lower inflation. The city has done a lot of work to refine the capital improvement plan and look at only, you know, the most essential projects over the planning period, which totaled 2 and a half million. The current rates generate about $0.77100000 dollars a year for capital improvements. So to fund 2 and a half million in the next few years is gonna require some rate increase as well as utilizing some of the reserves that are in that system as well. There was definitely a commitment to reducing, since sewer went up a little bit, to making sure that another one of the systems, we had a lower rate increase.

Last but not least, street maintenance or the transportation utility fee, which goes specifically to fund street preservation, about 3,000,000 over $3,000,000 needed to do various projects across the city and various technologies, crack sealing, slurry seal. I'd let the city engineer talk about that if you have any specific questions. And to utilize new data and technology to improve the planning process and the implementation of those projects. To summarize, so these are the going forward, the the rate increase recommendations, the 5% for water, 4.1% sewer, four and a half storm, and 4% for tough. And further good news is that the communication officer component of the bill will be dropping off next year.

That debt will be paid off. And so the the overall impact to the rate when when that is that reduction occurs is a 2.8% increase in the bill, which is about $5 a month for a typical residential customer.

Place and rate and fleet? Yep.

The following year, there isn't a corresponding decrease, so it's about a 4.4% increase, which overall is about what the the rates went up in January 2026. There is the city does have a utility bill assistance program. It's important to point that out every time we talk about rates for qualifying customers, and I believe there's information on the city's website and interested parties can contact. There's always interest in looking at how the city compares with other communities. Couple of things to highlight on this.

So this is all of the systems combined. It does include other fees, like, McMinnville charges and a city operations fee. So, you know, other kinds of fees that show up on the bill, including, in this case, the communications officer and public safety components. You'll see that a large number of the cities that are to the left lower than Newburgh have an asterisk by them. Those are cities where water and or the sewer and storm are part of large regional systems, and they benefit from the economies of scale of a large system.

Costs are spread over a larger customer base, and the generally, what that means is the the the cost per customer is slightly lower, and you see that play out here. This is looking at today's rates. As I just mentioned, the overall rate increases are just a little bit above inflation. City of Sandy, for example, is about to embark on a mandated project that for the wastewater system that's gonna raise their rates 10 to 15% per year for ten years. So there are a lot of cities on here that have major improvements at the and rate increases that they are facing, double digit sort of rate increases, that Newburgh has not seen in in a very long time, luckily.

So it's important to also consider the other part of affordability in terms of what customers, residents, and and businesses are paying, and that's through the property taxes. So here, you see Newburgh is on the lower end of the spectrum. And I know Katie or Will can talk about why that's the case. But so, you know, again, when we think about how to fund the water plant and the total cost that residents are have to bear for services, it's important to consider both components.

Are you Okay. So one important thing to remember is that perhaps contrary to how some people feel, our overall property tax position in Newburgh is actually pretty good for this area, but although we can never be part of a large regional system, the geography makes that impossible. We're never going to be in one of those regional systems. I believe that if the council is willing to continue to commit to debt reduction and we focus next on our current wastewater debt, and with any revenue that comes in, any extra revenue over the next five and six years, we do a repeat of what we did in the last two years for the communication tower, and we have the objective ultimately of retiring that historic oxidation, that historic wastewater day early, you're going to see us progressively move closer to the middle of that chart. Now we're never going to beat these guys in these systems, and let me explain why we can't.

If they have 12 FTEs of operator costs, those operators are serving multiple cities in large distributed water systems, whereas if we have 10 or 11 FTEs of operators they're only people that are working here in Newburgh, and that's a reality that just can't change. So our position is not bad I think, we've successfully got rid of two bits of debt early, and if we keep working on debt reduction then we can have a good effect on our wastewater debt and try to get the next couple of projects done without debt. How we do the water plant, that part we don't have a solution to that at this time, it's too expensive. We're going to keep trying to work with our friends in Dundee if they're listening to hope that they come in with us on that system to share the cost, But perhaps that sheds a bit more light on our position.

I'll just leave you with, you know, that these recommendations are intended to balance the financial risk of the systems. Things that can, you know, further work in your favor would be continued customer growth because that means more SDCs and other revenue. Again, that debt reduction, some of it is naturally going to be reduced in 2029. Other efforts to to retire, debt early certainly helps. The, again, the use of existing reserves, leveraging the internal loan is very helpful.

The negatives are the uncertainty around the plant timing and the funding. We know it's gonna be a big project. We just don't know how big, you know, that far out. Inflation will continue is still uncertain, and any slowdown in customer growth or economic activity could, you know, further put pressure on the rates. And, you know, something to keep in mind as you go forward, and it's really great the city does this every two years because you can make tweaks along the way.

We are utilizing a lot of the existing reserves to mitigate the rate increases in the short term. That's great for the short term. It means less flexibility in the long term. So just, you know, keep that in mind for future increases. But I think on balance, this does a good job of of balancing the financial risk. Thank you.

I'd love to add a little, you know, once again, doesn't play an engineer on TV, I'd like to add a little bit more about the oxidation ditch project just for some clarity around that. Coming before council again, and this will be in April, we will be giving presentations on a breakdown of the oxidation ditch plant and also River Street, once we've had a chance for the River Street feedback from the public. So we're going be bringing those things to you. One important thing to know about the oxidation ditch project is that it is far more expensive than the next one will be in the 2040s, because the one in the 2040s will only require us to build a fourth oxidation ditch without adding extra clarifiers. So this one is a more expensive one, but it will see us through till the end of the 2030s, maybe 2040, depending upon population growth.

So I think that's pretty good news, and it's also very remarkable. None of our peers have saved the cash in hand to actually get the job done without pursuing debt, and that's obviously what we're trying to do.

Deb, I just have a quick question to make sure I heard you correctly. Looking at that total residential utility bill comparison, those are current rates, not any that have been increased yet, including ours?

That's correct. Most utilities, most cities will increase their their rates every year at least for inflation, and that will probably you've already done that. Most other ones will come in the spring or at the beginning of the fiscal year. So that even alone may you know, before January 2027 when your next rates go into effect, you may move in position.

Mhmm.

Did you mention that our population growth was slower than they anticipated here in Newburgh? And then how do you know that?

So every as part of our financial projections, we project customer growth, which, obviously, part of that is population growth. But it's it's we look at the number of accounts and trends. And so as of two years ago, we were trending that it was gonna grow at a faster rate than what actually occurred. So it basically just brings the the slope down a little bit in terms of that revenue projections. So it's just based on, you know, kind of the short term history, but also what the city knows is coming down the pike in terms of new developments.

And part of that is the slowdown in housing production that we've seen because of some of the mortgage factors. They've been releasing a little slower than we anticipated. And you may recall back in 2022, were going gangbusters.

So I I always wrestle with trying to understand this. When when we look at at these I understand why we're looking at at taking an increase because we don't wanna get behind the ball. But but when you look at all of the housing that's going on and all of the apartments and and the North side of town, I think it's I I think very soon, probably by the end of this year, you're gonna see some major drops in in interest rates, which is going to really spur that project going. Well, when you look at in the last five years, so much growth that's happened. How can that not be feeding money into the system here to where maybe we only take two and a half percent increase on on each category?

The the extra money that has fed into the system has not kept up with the costs of our existing infrastructure and with the costs of labor. The costs of labor have offset the amount we've gained from the relatively small number of housing units that have come in. We're talking about for example you've seen the statistics every month, we're not seeing a tremendous amount of housing production coming in. The cost of employees has risen by 9% per year through the last four years. The cost of capital improvements has also risen, so this particular rate request adds no extra staff.

Now let's think about that for a minute Mike, we're not adding any more staff and the city has grown by a thousand odd people over the last four years. So we can't, really can't do better than that if we're going to also still have some money to replace pipes and stuff. If we took a smaller rate increase, what you're asking me to do is cancel projects, defer things, not deal with the sewage surcharge that's happening on Springbrook, and probably lay off staff. And I really can't lay off staff. We've not added any staff for four years.

Ted, are you ready to come out and talk? Deb, you can either stay there, or I'm sure there'll be more questions when he's done. Come on up, Ted.

Basically, just a brief summary comment. I'm Ned Knight, chair of the rate review committee, and this is the fourth cycle that I've been on this committee as a member, as the chair. In the session that just concluded last week, as you've heard, we've had rising costs in materials, equipment, and labor. And so the number of capital improvement projects has been really dialed down to the bare minimum number of essential projects needing attention. Putting all that together, rising costs and fewer projects, we've been able to keep these recommended rates that you just saw in line with the same very same set that you approved of two years ago.

Okay? There's been no appreciable increase at all. And, actually, do you recall the detail of the, recommended increase in stormwater rates in this new cycle is significantly lower than what it has been the last two years. So the rate review committee has analyzed all of this in great detail over the last four meetings and approved them unanimously, and we're hoping that you will also approve them at your next meeting. K?

And, basically, just the bottom line is we need to continue providing excellent and transparent municipal services to all the residents that we serve. That's it. Thank you very much for your time and attention. Thanks,

Ned. Although I think you were supposed to use three minutes. I don't I'm not clear on that rule just yet. It's not been approved yet. So, Deb, was there anything else? Does anybody have questions for Deb?

I'll just say this was very easy to understand, and I think the way that you broke it down is is good for the public to be able to have access to. So thank you for that.

So I think it's a $181 a month for our current average bill. Like, that's not lost on me. That's a huge amount of money. And to think about that going up is hard given our economy. I guess I'm just curious. Well, like, I heard you say we'd have to like, what happens if we don't have a new oxidation ditch? Or what happens if we say thank you, but no thank you to whatever house bill 2002, I lost my spot on the slide, larger pipes? Like, what happens if we just don't fund it? Like, I am sure there's a natural and logical consequence in there somewhere, but I guess I would like to know what happens if. Yes.

I'll take that. You you know, I've I've never any shortage of moral courage, so I'll do this on the record. Unlike some other city managers, I'm not planning to go anywhere, I don't care what they think about me. So the key thing here is that, and I'll take the Oxidation Ditch as the most egregious example, Like what you heard about Sandy a minute ago, not only do we actually need, I've now got the science to prove that we need a new oxidation ditch complex because we're actually running out of solids handling capacity. But if we chose to not do that and the state, next time we had to build a lift station, said you should have done that, they have the power to create a construction moratorium on the city.

In other words, we would not be allowed to build that lift station or do other large projects that would add further to the system. We could be put under a decree where they would force us to do it anyway, I've thought about this, in the meantime could we potentially have legal exposure if developers want to develop projects and we're telling them well we can't do that because who would they sue? Would they sue the state or would they sue Newburgh? I'm not certain. So I think that's one for you, James.

So there's maybe both. So there's one thing. Second thing is staffing costs. I'm not adding more staff, but I have to keep the staff I have because we've only gotten just enough staff to do the work. Now we're always going be looking for more efficiencies, and I'm going to continue to look at ways of doing more automation, more digital stuff to see if it can help, but the other consequence of that is things will not get maintained, more things will break, that's the consequence of that.

With regard to the I and I part of it, we already have a sewer line that is surcharging every fall. If we keep letting that keep overflowing we're going to get fined by the state and we have to keep doing clean up. Every time that sewer surcharges I have to pull off the whole public works crew to go deal with the sewage spill. So that's one of the things I'm going to be tackling over the next couple of years within this rate request.

Can I make one comment actually on that too? Just to point out further the differences between the you know, our rates, if you do we have

the slides? Can you go back

to the property tax one? Yes. So while we may be very high on the water bill side, we are very low on the property tax side. And I think the two main mechanisms to fund things within cities that we have an option is to either put it as a fee on the water bill or to go out for a bond on your property taxes. And I think that, you know, in the past, our choices have always been to do some sort of revenue bonds that have affected the water bill.

Like, most of our debt that we have is on the wastewater or the water, and so we've always funded it through rates. And as you can see, a lot of the other cities have probably funded through GO bonds through the property tax statements. You know? So it it's kind of one or the other. So it's just kind of choose your choose your battles, I guess, in that respect. But I I totally understand where you're coming from with the bill being so high. But it's yeah. But but on the flip side, we do have lower property taxes than many of the those comparable cities.

Can you remind me because it slipped my brain? What does the public safety fee cover? What else does that?

So the item there's two fees there. One covers a portion for extra officers, usually patrol officers, and usually they're the entry level ones. And then the other fee is the communications one and that pays for communicators. Now we've managed to figure out through our savings plan that you guys all know about, a way to pay off the communication tower early, and by paying off the communication tower early make a delta in the general fund that can suck up that reduction in the bill to help the residents. That's been a plan we've been working on for a couple of years, the first debt reduction plan, one of many I hope.

So that one is the communication line item, that's not the one that would help pay for patrol officers.

So that $5 a month helps to contribute to our incredible safety data that you so graciously highlighted during your public health

Three officers.

Three is huge. That is huge.

Can I ask a I have a question for Will? Have you ever done this is more just like a the cost of doing business in Oregon question and kind of like I feel like all roads lead back there. And I do wonder I would be very curious, not that we want to get in a legal battle with the state, but some sort of, you know, conversation at the state level, doing a comparative analysis on the costs to to build a new oxidation ditch in a neighboring state that has a like sized community and just, like, trying to drive home the pot the cost of infrastructure in Oregon and how we haven't updated infrastructure in fifty years across Oregon, and that's why everything is falling apart at once. And we will never be able to get out of this structural deficit on the backs of staff. Like, that is nonnegotiable.

We are not laying off staff. So you can do all the efficiencies in the world, and we're never going to be able to have the level of capital to be able to catch up or get ahead if we can't lower the cost of doing business in Oregon, period. And affordability needs to go way, way, way down, up.

So I think first of all, there's League of Oregon City. Scott is actually on the League of Oregon City planning committee, and he and I have been working on some bullet points of things we want to highlight. An email I sent to him today ahead of our next weekly meeting was which things should we really beat the drum about, and bullet point one on that email I sent today was I would like to see us reinforced to the fact that policy decisions shouldn't be made on the back of unfunded mandates. If they're going to make us do things, even if they're for the common good, they have to give us money to do those things. So that's the problem that we have.

So we are going to communicate that. He will communicate it for me in that committee and we will communicate it to League of Oregon cities. That's one of the reasons why I go to OCCMA conference is because the LOC people are there and they well, we get to talk at them. It doesn't always shift the needle, but that's what we want to do. With regard to a price comparison with other states, I'm not sure if they have done that.

They certainly should. Perhaps our friends with Keller Engineering who work in other states would know that, so I can certainly look into that. I know that you just did a lot of studies on the oxidation ditch. And my understanding was that those tests went very well, and we were hoping not to do some of this work or be required to do it. How what's the status on that?

So the price tag for the full factory rebuild that includes new oxidation bays, conveyancing pipes, a third 400 foot long oxidation ditch and new drying equipment and everything else that goes into it, and one secondary clarifier comes to a total of about $31,000,000 including the engineering work, which we have cash to cover this, right, because we've been saving up for it. The doomsday scenario was if the testing didn't go well, and we supercharged the equipment to see how much flow rate we could do, If we'd had to build two secondary clarifiers and not one, that would be another $7,000,000 and we can't cash fund that. At that point I would be asking for council to have a special work session to discuss what we do next, because that would have to be a decision about do we not do this and maybe run into a crisis and or do we provoke potential legal situations because we don't have the money. Now everybody worked really hard on this and we know now that we do have the cash in hand to do this, which was unclear even four or five months ago. And before the April meeting everybody is going to receive a briefing on that memo, that plan, in all of its 300 page glory, and also a summary explaining what it means to us.

But I'm very glad that we've taken the steps over the last several years to save up the money, to have the money in the bank to do this because we have just enough money to do it. But our plan is to do it very intelligently and transfer the money back to the water plant so it can be there ready for the next move, which will happen, you know, in June.

So if I you're talking about basically rebuilding the whole plant, the oxidation ditches that we already have?

What you do is you'll be adding a third oxidation ditch to the two existing ones, changing all the pipe and connections and pumps to balance the load across three oxidation ditches to gain capacity, adding a second clarifier unit, which is the thing that clears the water out and it removes the other stuff and makes it into solids, and changing how we do drying to build out capacity, adding more aerated static piles, which will double our solids handling capacity. So yes, it really touches almost every part of the plant except for offices and stuff like that. There would be no changes to the spaces that people work in, toilets, break rooms, none of that. It's all factory components.

Would anybody like to make a moan motion?

It's just messing it up.

Oh, okay. The, I was confused because this says we wanna do this today. No? Okay. Awesome.

So now we have the interviews for student, and it looks like we have you must be Elisa. And come on up. Is Riley didn't show up. Is that

Riley's here in Massachusetts.

Oh, hi. Alright. You wanna bring them both up? Come on

up, Riley.

Can both come up to the table, and I'll do my piece from over here so that you don't have to crowd. Oh, just a moment. I just unplugged all of your microphones. There we go.

These are candidates

for the student Candidates for the student position. We're looking at Elisa for the library committee and Riley for the historic preservation committee. So why don't you, why don't you start out by Elisa? Tell us, who you are and why you wanna be on the library committee.

I'm Elisa Summons, and I just moved to Newburgh from Alaska in August. I'm a college student at George Fox, and I'm majoring in elementary education. And I was interested in the library because I wanted I was interested in doing some some sort of volunteering for the city because I wanted to, like, get to know my new community my community. And it became important to me to become, like, an active resident. So that's why.

Alright. And, Riley, you are looking at the historic preservation committee.

Yes. My name is Riley Wood. I have been a resident of Newburgh. I've lived here for three years now. I'm also a student at George Fox University. I, am a student, and I work in the history and politics department. I really want to give back to the city of Newburgh because I feel like it's done a lot for me. I am a member of OHP. I used the food pantry here. I've lived here for three years now. After working in the museum at George Fox and working with historic preservation locally through the museum side of things, I would love to also come and help any way I can with the, city side of things.

What are you both gonna do when you graduate? Mhmm.

Okay. I'm interested in teaching any grade.

I am hoping to get my master's in public history and then go on to work for the National Park Service in their museum and public history programs.

Well, we made them come to a meeting, so we we're supposed to ask them some questions. Thank you, Will.

Looking at the broad sweep of modern American history, which which period would you say from your studies represents the time of greatest change in terms of either legislation or fiscal policy as you look at, say, starting from the starting from the eighteen eighties, perhaps? Let's choose a more modern period. Yeah.

That's a good question. I think definitely in the nineteen thirties and forties with a lot of media programs, that was a big fiscal change, as well as, if we're going only nineteen eighties to the present or eighteen eighties to the present. Sorry. The nineteen eighties with a lot of trickle down economics that also changed some things fiscally. I would say those are two probably big periods of change in the last hundred and forty years of time span. That being said, I specialize more in, like, local lumber history, so I don't know a lot about national US level.

I guess that's unfair. I should ask you an education question, shouldn't I? What grades do you think you're most attracted to teaching? I know that when I worked in a high school as a media center librarian, I I liked working with high school kids. And then later, I like I like working with pre k as a children's librarian. So which age of kids do you think would be the most fun for you?

I I think high schoolers would be the easiest or the most enjoyable to teach for me because they're more rational, and you can reason with them, and they'll listen to you seriously. And I don't like having to, like, raise my voice. So, yeah, I like, I think, high schoolers.

Thank you very kindly for answering these questions.

Well, thank you very much. You both seem very nice, and I'm sure that both of you would like would make good candidates for those committees. So I think we have two more to look at next time, and we'll Rachel, we'll be getting back to you soon. Thank you very much for your time.

I'll be in touch. Thanks

for sitting through the meeting. Well, believe it or not, that brings us to the end of our meeting. So this meeting is adjourned.