City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Newberg August 17th, 2026 city council meeting. I call this meeting to order. Could we have roll call please?

Yes. Counselor McBride.

Here.

Counselor Wheatley. Here. Councillor Yarnell-Holloman? Here. Councillor Kilburg? Here. Mayor Rosacker?

Here.

Councillor Tergesen? Here. And Councillor Carman is absent.

Would everybody please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. So the first item on our agenda today is a presentation from the Newberg Animal Shelter. Welcome, hi Rick, again.

Thank you very much. Which one? The bottom arrow.

The bottom arrow, okay, great. And if I wanted to go back.

Let's give you the mic too.

Well, thank you for having me. My name is Rick Lipinski. I'm president of the board of directors for Newberg Animal Shelter Friends. Behind me is sitting Mitch Harrison. He's our assistant manager. And with him is Peter. So you guys hear me okay? Thanks for having me. What prompted my visit tonight was the idea that maybe I should visit with the city and update you on Newburgh Animal Shelter. Just to briefly talk about our history, Newburgh Animal Shelter Friends started out about 26 years ago as a nonprofit with the intent to raise money to build a new animal shelter for the city of Newburgh. That's the old shelter. That's what we started with. The city thought it was a good idea and we formed a relationship to accomplish that. We spent a lot of hours in this room. As a matter of fact, we held our board meetings in this room for several years and we appeared before the council. I don't know how many times to talk about the new shelter. There was also an animal shelter subcommittee of your council that we were involved with. And, uh, we went on and on and i want to just take half a second here and thank jeff cosmicky because part of our meetings all those years ago included jeff once a month he was here he was helpful he was a lot of support so jeff thank you very much After 15 years of fundraising with hundreds of people spending thousands of hours to help raise money, we finally got the building built by combining the money we raised with financial help from the city. That's the new building. We finally opened in 2014. It was definitely bare bones without a lot of finishing touches because we didn't have the money to complete everything. We furnished volunteers to work in the new animal shelter and we continued to fundraise for needed items. Then due to budget constraints, Newberg's animal control officer's position was eliminated in 2014 and the city requested that Newberg Animal Shelter Friends take over operation of the shelter. We did so, signing a lease with the city for a dollar a year and the city agreed to pay for utilities. A couple of years went by and then again, due to budget constraints, the city wanted to recoup its investment. So we began a buy the building campaign and raised enough money to fully purchase the shelter building and property from the city. That was in 2017. Since that time, Newberg Animal Shelter has adopted out almost 9,000 animals. But that's not all we do. I wanted to update you on what we do for our community. Since we took over the shelter, we have contributed thousands of pounds of pet food to Y-Cap and Fish to help people undergoing hard times feed their pets. We have also operated a vaccine and chip clinic where we offer rabies vaccines and identification chips to community members' pets free of charge, thanks to a generous grant from the Austin Foundation. In the past year, we've done three of these clinics and we'll have more in the future. We also have an agreement with Newburgh Dundee police department. We furnish a kennel to take in, provide care and hopefully rehome city strays. We also have an overflow kennel, which is used frequently. That leads me to another reason that I wanted to have this opportunity to talk with you. As you may have heard, dog control in Yamhill County is undergoing some changes, some of which involve the expiration of our agreement with Yamhill County to house their strays, because we simply didn't have the capacity to assist both the county and the cities of Newburgh and Dundee. We're a small shelter with limited space and staff, and we have to recognize that it's the people of this community that stood by us for years, donating and helping us get a shelter built. We are, after all, Newburgh Animal Shelter. I've already blown this. There's our food delivery and there's the vaccine clinic. There's our staff. I can't let this evening go by without mentioning our staff. They honor the commitment to care for animals every day. If anyone in this room is interested in volunteering, we are always looking for a wide range of people for different tasks. I've had many people come to me and say they want to help, but they just can't bring themselves to go into an animal shelter because they worry to be so sad. And I admit I was one of those people, but in reality, the opposite is true. Newberg Animal Shelter is a happy place. Eventually, no matter how long it takes, our goal is to get every animal into a forever home. Perfect example of this is Romeo. Romeo came to us on a rescue transport over 500 days ago. He was a young, scrawny, large dog. He became a staff favorite. He was not real needy, very agreeable and friendly. His only crime was he was a large, energetic dog. We tried everything with Romeo. We featured him on Facebook. He had some action pictures. He was a guest at our Wine and Whiskers fundraiser. He even got a trip to the beach. Nothing seemed to work, but we didn't give up on Romeo. He finally went home with a foster who decided to adopt him. This is Romeo now. You know, a kid needs a dog. and a dog needs a home. We don't always hit a home run, and it's not all sweetness and light, but somebody has to do this work. We've been in Newburgh in one form or another for 26 years, and we will continue to honor our mission of connecting homeless pets with their forever homes. You know, my appearance here in front of the city council wouldn't be complete without a plea for money. As I mentioned, we have a contract with the city for one kennel available 24 hours a day with an overflow seven days a week for the Newburgh Police Department to be able to bring strays into the shelter. You all know the cost for everything have gone up. Just keeping the doors open is expensive. I think we've proven over time that we are good stewards of our finances. We don't waste money. We use it as efficiently as possible and we will continue to do so. We are currently working on a proposal that we will be presenting to the city next week that will request a small daily increase for the kennel usage. I also think that maybe the city might want to consider having two reserve kennels instead of one due to the frequent usage of the overage kennel and the expanded population of Newberg and Dundee. 26 years is a long time. You can measure our commitment by counting those years. We're your friends and neighbors, and we will continue to be here for the citizens of Newburgh and Dundee. Thank you for your time and please remember to donate to the shelter. Can I answer any questions? Robin, go ahead.

Yeah, I would love to know how many animals you currently have.

Currently, I couldn't give you an exact number off the top of my head, but we are at just about max capacity with cats and kidneys, which is somewhere around 80, 90. And dogs, we are probably near our maximum of 26 kennels. We probably have close to 20 at the moment.

Thank you for your investment over the years. It's incredible. I would love to know, too, one of my questions was going to be what your recommendations really was, was the increasing to two.

I'm sorry.

Sorry, my voice is low. Can you talk about how many times, how is it, I mean, obviously it's great working with New Burgundy Police, but How often are you not able to place a dog or a cat that is notified from Newburgh Dundee police? Um, and speaking to the overage, do we know a percentage of time that the overage crate is utilized?

So as far as the overage goes, I think the number that was quoted to me by our shelter manager was approximately 60% of the time that's available, it's used. Usually the city will, sometimes it comes in twos. Sometimes we'll get a dog and then the next dog comes in the next day. So we've been fortunate in that we have the available kennels. um sometimes it gets pretty tight and this is one reason why we let our contract expire with yamhill county it was just overwhelming so we recognize that our responsibility is for our community that's it thank you again rick thanks for what you do that's a good looking puppy there

You might ask around, somebody might give you big dollars to take that puppy home today. Solve both your problems.

Thanks, Rick.

Thank you. So we have no general public comments today. Everybody wants to speak to the same issue. So I close public comments. Rachel, we didn't have a city manager report. What do we do?

No, as you can see, I am not Will Worthy. And as I was talking with him about it and was very happy to give his report, I thought, you know, he's really funny when he gives his report. And how do you compete with that? Well, what do you do? You bring in animals. So that's why I said, hey, let's bring the animals in first thing. So I wanted to share that Will took your last feedback on his last performance review very seriously and actually went on a vacation. We have not heard from him at all since he left. which is amazing. And I have had the chance to fill in for him for the last week and another week and a half to go. So I'm here for you here for whatever you need in the next week and a half. Thanks.

Thank you. Next, we have a proclamation. We are getting ready to go to a trip to Poidsdorf, Austria. um next month so this approximation whereas the cities of poisedorf austria newberg oregon have been sister cities since since september 8 2006 and whereas throughout the 20-year partnership the two cities have fostered a strong relationship collaborating collaborating on social and economic programs that have benefited each respective city, and whereas the City of Newburgh continues to find value and influence from this sister city program and looks forward to more collaboration in the future, and whereas a delegation from Newburgh will be visiting Poinsettia in September of this year, now therefore I, Bill Rossacher, Mayor of the City of Newburgh, Oregon, do hereby commend congratulate and thank all who have helped develop and strengthen the City of Newburgh sister city relationship with Poidsdorf Austria. Sorry. Oh.

Sorry Ellen, I forgot.

so next item on our agenda is the joint report of tlt receiving entities newberg downtown coalition the chamber of commerce and taste newberg come on up please

All right. Can you hear us both if it's in the middle? Yeah. Does that work? OK. Well, hello. I'm Nicole Drew. I am currently serving as board president for the Newburgh Downtown Coalition, a new adventure for me. And I'm here with our operations director, Libby Boyce, to provide an annual update for our first year of receiving support from the city in this manner. Our board consists of 14 dedicated volunteer board members who represent the interests of downtown businesses and patrons. And this is our mission. Backwards, sorry. There we go. So our role is to support a thriving, connected, and active downtown where businesses, residents, and visitors feel welcome. We do this through physical improvements, community events and promotions, and business support and collaboration. Here's how we define the downtown area. So all of our member businesses would be inside these boundaries for downtown Newburgh. We have introduced a friends of downtown Newburgh membership tier as well. So those that are not in the boundaries can still be members and support downtown businesses through the friends tier as well. So we wanted to get into a little bit more detail about how we work to make downtown Newburgh beautiful, eventful, and thriving. A beautiful downtown is one people are proud of, clean, welcoming, and continually improving. This is where some projects that you're going to hear a little bit more from Libby about, like downtown cleanups, beautification efforts, public art, and building improvements come in. An eventful downtown is one that brings people together through events like Wednesday Market, First Friday Art Walk, Trick or Treat Street, Holiday Tree Lighting, and many more that we collaborate on. We're creating reasons for visitors and residents alike to spend time in downtown Newburgh. And ultimately that supports a thriving downtown where businesses succeed, visitors want to return, and our historic downtown continues to be a vibrant economic and community center. Everything you're going to see in the presentation ties back to one of these three pillars today. And we just think it's important that you know what Newburgh downtown is involved in. I didn't know until I got involved with the board that Newburgh downtown coalition was involved in all of those things that I just mentioned. So Libby is going to give you a little bit more detail on each one of those things. Wrong direction.

There we go. Yeah. So we'll start with beautiful. So 1 of the ways that Newberg downtown coalition invest in beautification is through the public art council, which is 1 of our committees and this committee works to identify opportunities for public art. and make downtown more vibrant, welcoming, memorable. And it helps create a unique sense of place. So it encourages people to explore downtown, spend more time here. And it's not just about an event, right? Like it's lasts continually. So people come downtown to explore and appreciate the art all year. So, yeah. It also creates lasting improvements for buildings or enhances downtown every day. And it's 1 more way that we're making downtown Newberg more beautiful. So these are 3 of more recent projects from the public art council. Obviously, the Butler flowers that I'm sure everyone's seen across from city hall, which is a really neat installation. the mouse murals that were added to the Masonic Lodge this summer, and then the Camellia Trail project that just within the last couple weeks has been installed and it's really neat. You can go scan the QR code and learn all about each art piece. So awesome ways that the Public Art Council is beautifying downtown Newburgh. Another way we're impacting the beautification is through the Newberg light project. So we want to have small improvements that make a big impact in downtown Newberg. So the light project installed lights running along the 1st street side of buildings from Maine to Meridian, and it helps create an inviting place downtown during the day and at night. um we're currently in the process of identifying additional areas where we can add lights um you know maybe going towards the library or um down college a little bit so hoping to extend that project but love what it's done for downtown newburgh at night thus far Another thing we do monthly is our downtown cleanups. So we host these on the last Thursday of the month to coincide with First Friday. And they're one of the simplest yet most visible ways that we invest in downtown. Volunteers, business owners, community members, community partners, they all show up and help for an hour or two every last Thursday. to pick up litter, remove weeds, refresh the planters, and just care for our downtown. So they're not just about maintenance, but also create a downtown that is clean, that people are proud to visit and shop and dine and spend time in. Um, so we coordinate those downtown cleanups along with some of our other community partners. Um, in the past year, we've had volunteers have spent over a 1000 hours doing downtown cleanups. Um, that's at our last Thursday cleanups along with some of our bigger community partner days, like George Fox serve day. That's coming up in a month. Um, just at that day alone, it was 650 hours of volunteers helping clean up downtown. So.

really awesome effort of just everybody coming together to make downtown beautiful.

Lastly, on the beautification pillar are the wine barrels. They've become kind of a signature feature downtown, which is really fun. It's a partnership with the city and CPRD, and it helps not only beautify the streets, but also reinforces our identity of being in wine country. Um, at survey last fall, George Fox, along with city volunteers actually helped paint and replace some of those planters. And it's just an ongoing project that we're always working to try and keep up and make beautiful. Next up is eventful. We did also provide our events program for the rest of the year with more detail, but this just has our list of events for the remainder of 2026. We try to create reasons for people to visit, explore, shop, dine, and experience downtown through our events. We have signature events, weekly experiences, seasonal celebrations and community partnerships. So some of our events that bring the most visitors downtown would be our first Friday art walk that happens the first Friday of the month, excluding January and July. And then holiday tree lighting, which is coming up in a couple of months where we partner with the city and CPRD and the cultural center each year, trying to make it an even bigger community celebration. So we're excited for what we have planned this year. In addition, we have, Wednesday Market. There's three more weeks of that. So come out and enjoy Wednesday Market. Just lots of different events that we create to try and bring people downtown. And then lastly, thriving and each one you can. So when businesses succeed, downtown succeeds. And when downtown succeeds, the entire Newburgh community and our visitors really benefit. So it's a lot more than just busy streets to us. It's creating an environment where the businesses can grow and collaborate and succeed along with people being able to enjoy downtown Newburgh. So some of the ways we've done that in the past year are growing our membership. So our membership is up 58% since July of 2025. We also work to increase visibility through social media. We just in the past 3 months have 113,000 views on our social media, which helps increase awareness of what's happening in downtown Newburgh. Nearly 60% of the accounts that we reached in those were located outside of Newburgh. So we're reaching people that are not just Newburgh residents and reaching visitors and people planning their visits to Newburgh as well. We also work to connect businesses. Our board really works to bring businesses together, whether that's through our annual business meeting, monthly merchant tours, and events like Sidewalk Sale where our businesses are partnering together and they're building those relationships as well. We're also able to build other partnerships with other organizations like TASTE and CPRD and the city and chamber where we all meet and talk at stable table or through other events or partnerships. And then lastly, investing in downtown, we've created something that we call spark grants in the last couple of months and those we. Are really excited to launch and. It helps us directly invest in downtown Newberg businesses. So we launched them this summer. They focus on business improvements, beautification events and activities and then initiatives that. make a stronger downtown. So we offer this benefit to our members. They can apply once per calendar year and we offer a funding grant that helps support a project that they're working on. So we have a few that were just completing our kind of first round and a couple others in the works. But Little Bird Boutique, we partnered with them and help purchase permanent flower planters that will stay up year round. Sprinkles of Joy, we just help them purchase outdoor tables and chairs. to add additional seating and kind of improve even more so their storefront. Echo's Antiques were in the process of purchasing a new awning, which will be super exciting to replace the old and damaged one. Lemon and Olive is adding a mural on the back of their entrance to help people find their business better, so we're partnering with them on that. And then we also helped coordinate and organize the music in Francis Square for First Friday to try and really bring more people downtown to First Friday. So we're excited about the opportunity to continue to offer those to our downtown businesses and just be able to support them in small ways to do projects that really enhance downtown Newburgh, but that might be a little bit difficult on their day-to-day basis. So with all those pillars in mind, we've had a really targeted marketing focus, kind of in four different areas that we wanted to share about. We've worked this year to really focus on different partners and different ways that we can reach people before they get to Newburgh and people that live in Newburgh as well. So we do that through a hotel postcard that we partnered with Taste on. This postcard links directly to hotel guests and helps them plan their time when they're in Newburgh to come spend time downtown. It gives them resources like hours, what businesses are there, and kind of just helps them plan out their stay. We also kind of tweaked that card a little bit and have one that we will provide to George Fox visitors through Welcome Weekend, Parents Weekend, football games. So we're excited to be able to reach a large number of parents and share how they can spend time spend time downtown while they're here. And we're working to get this into more visitors by partnering with local businesses, lodging, events, all of that. And then our ongoing social media increases and increased focus on just reaching more people that are planning to spend time in Newburgh.

So in conclusion, one of the biggest impacts that the city's support of Newburgh Downtown Coalition does is it allows us to provide organizational stability for the Downtown Coalition to grow, to be focused on strategy rather than survival and it really is going to allow us to amplify what we've been doing. We've been doing a lot with a little and this support from the city is allowing us to solidify the organization, the stability, the processes and the people, the strategic focus and therefore amplify our impact on downtown businesses and visitors to come enjoy our downtown so we're really appreciative of the support we're appreciative of the partnerships and we're just glad to be here contributing to this place so thank you that's what we have hang on for a minute and see if any council have questions or comments go ahead

I just want to say it's awesome progress and I feel like it's so exciting. So I love the Public Art Council and I also have noticed a difference downtown and keep it up. Appreciate it.

I want to say thank you. When I started four years ago, almost, this was one of the things that I wanted to see done was some improvement in the appearance of our city downtown. You guys have done a wonderful job. As I've expressed many times, the lighting is amazing. Glad to see the art finally going up and thank you for what you do. I know it's a big lift for all your volunteers. We appreciate them.

Back at the city, I mean, Rachel knows. We are always talking with Rachel and Will about ideas and how we can partner and where we can help, you can help. And so the city has been a huge part of what we've been able to accomplish too. So thank you.

I guess I will start with echoing. It has been amazing to watch the changes downtown and just how wonderful it's looking. I love the Spark grants that you're doing and that small, intentional, outside the normal budget, but really making a huge impact. I guess I was just curious, what is the average grant amount that you all are awarding?

It'll be like 500, 750, something like that. Pretty minimal, but- It's amazing. Our businesses are so grateful. The awning is a little more than that, but the awning needs attention. So we're going to make it happen. But they're so grateful to be able to do a little something. And then what we feel like is- those tables and chairs that sit out in front of sprinkles and joy like they're always going to know that that was in you know partnership and collaboration with with us and so it's it's it's a helpful support it's also a visible reminder of the partnership and the fact that we all want to see them succeed downtown so that's amazing thank you yes of course thank you

Welcome, Scott and Katie. Good to see you guys.

We didn't bring a dog, but she adopted that dog's brother.

I did. Technically, my dad did.

And on the way here, I rescued a cat from a tree, and he's fine. so what we're saying is we also have the animal box checked all right um well thanks for letting us uh come up here and talk about all things chamber of commerce so i do want to start out with um you know we think we remember a little over a year ago we came here and our our table wasn't very stable and um here we are a year later and i think it's very stable And it's amazing how things can change in just a year. And so I just want to call some highlights to the Stable Table. It's expanded. Our Stable Table isn't just the organizations that were here last year, but in our meetings now we invite CPRD and the Cultural Center. and someone from the wine industry and someone from the library. And so we all collectively get together and talk about what's going on in the community. So I think that's a pretty awesome thing. And then just another little example, last year, I guess this year, for our Chamber Awards Gala, we added two new awards. We added one that the Downtown Coalition picks. It was called the Downtown Community Impact Award. And they let us know who the winner of that is. And then we did a tourism award that is selected by Tace Newberg. So we honor not just chamber-picked people, but our collective stable tables involved in that. So we have a three-year contract, and in that contract there are some KPIs that you have requested from us. So every month we submit to Will a report of people that come to the visitor center, why they come to the visitor center, phone calls, social media, all that kind of stuff. So we've sort of compiled that into one year's worth of a report here. But one of the things that I like most about running the Visitor Center is the stories that we get to tell from people that come in and visit us. Because we're not just a place where people come and get maps or a place where people come to get magazines that they're going to the coast or they find out about what there is to do in wine country. We're so much more than that. And so I just sort of highlighted a few from this past year. One time, a Girl Scout leader came in and wanted maps. because her Girl Scout troop was doing a camping trip and they weren't gonna have cell phones and they wanted the girls to learn how to read maps. So I sat there with a half hour and gave her every map of the state that I could find. And that's something you don't necessarily think about when you run a visitor center. But what an impact we had on that Girl Scout troop. The other thing that we do every year, I think we know for decades, the Austin family has brought the Oregon Symphony to town. Well, the chamber gives out hundreds of tickets and they come to the visitor center to pick those up. And this year I had a chamber ambassador with me who worked at the Fairfield. And as people were coming in, we had posters and we were giving them brochures. And so people that maybe wouldn't come to the visitor center otherwise were getting materials about our community. We have workshops. We have someone that comes in and does a sourdough workshop and a salad in a jar workshop. So again, community building in this space that is funded in part by TLT money. And this one I love. Yamhill Enrichment Society, which was just an amazing fundraiser last night, students last month came in and were rehearsing. So we literally had chamber music going on. Come on, right? Okay. And then of course, Airbnbs come in to stock their Airbnbs with materials. And groups like George Fox University and Yamhill Enrichment Society and Newburgh Animal Shelter and Newburgh Old Fashioned Festival come in and use our conference room for meetings. So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's a very vibrant space that gets a lot of use. And one of the neat things is we have a conference room with a state-of-the-art video conferencing. It was donated 100% by Next Tech Consultants. So... First Friday Art Walk. One more thing, and then I'm going to turn it over to Kate, and she's going to talk about some of our numbers. But as you heard from the Downtown Coalition First Friday Art Walk, we are a wonderful stop on that. And this past year alone, we had 135 different artists show their art at the Visitor Center. We have the Art Harvest Studio Tour, which this year has 11 Newberg artists. And then one thing I'm really proud of is the George Fox – student school of cinema and art for two years in a row have shown their art at the visitor center and they're going to do it again this year so again a vibrant vibrant place so kate turn over to kate hi good evening um it's it's fun sitting here and obviously i'm sitting here here now with a different organization a little bit more than a year and a half later um

with life, there comes transitions and resiliency. And I think we've gone through that a lot at the chamber. We've obviously had me step into the role of director of operations, taking over for Merrill, and it's been so much fun. I have also gone through my fair share of twists and turns personally and have been out on medical leave now twice since sitting in this chair. So I think it really shows the constant and resilient nature of the Chamber of Commerce to where we can have something kind of tumultuous happen inner and still be able to go and be successful so I will now go into some numbers with you guys we'll be quick because it's not the most fun Part of my annual, our monthly reports and our annual report, we pull all of our visitor origins. And so these are just the in-person percentages pulled from my last year of monthly reports. So as you can see, we get a lot of visitors from kind of far out there. One of my most memorable ones this last year is we had a couple from Boston come. And they were on vacation during the Boston Marathon. And they were like, this is the time of year we go on vacation because we live within the marathon area. And so it's like, we can't do anything anyway. We might as well get out. So we get to talk to so many people and hear the fun things that bring them here. And so, yeah, that's just a little snapshot of our in-person visitor.

And we pulled out Newberg from that. Yeah. Yeah. Big chunk of the pie would be Newberg, but we pulled that out.

And then another thing I report on is our digital outreach. So that includes our website, our social media interactions on Facebook and Instagram and our phone calls, which as a young woman of not the phone call generation has been really fun for me because I answer the phone and I get to talk to people and we get the silliest and most interesting phone calls. So as you can see, we've got quite a few and our website origins are up there as well, as you'll see on the left side. And, um, yeah, it's, it's been, we've had some steady growth in the, in the last year since I've taken over and, um, we've seen that in our social media, uh, we've had about a 60% increase since last July and visibility on our social media. Um, one of our other. um the calendar yeah okay yeah um this is another thing that we had on our on our uh contract with the city was to put together a community calendar um hopefully we'll be able to open that up it's on our website um and it's a collaboration open to the entire community so we get people that submit their events um and then we also input our own events

And it's melded with Newsbergs and Brandon and I, it, it took a while to, to, it wasn't just a plug and play. There was a lot of testing that had to happen with it. And, um, and we're trying to spread the calendar to other organizations as well. Um, if it works great, if not, it's, it's okay. It's an amazing calendar. It's super user-friendly. It's visibly, uh, really nice. It's, it's a testament to what Brandon is doing with Newsbergs calendar. And, um, There we go. Hey, look, Newburgh City Council.

So yeah, that is just a little look that's live on our website. And you can see up there in the top right, you can submit your event. You can choose how far out you'd like to look at events. And yeah, it's been really great to have that addition. And lastly, I guess, on our report was the buy local partnerships. So we were asked to make sure that we were doing all that we could to work locally with whatever we were spending our money on. So for tech support, we work with Next Tech Consultants. Bookkeeping, Moody Business Solutions, insurance, Hagen Hamilton and Hott, printing, we use Zanzari and Sign on Signs. Our accounting is WANT CPA and our art exhibition curation is through James Nelson. He is also the director of the Art Harvest Tours. And we work really closely with all of these people. So it's been, I mean, it was an easy ask and something that we were really already doing.

I think that's it.

Yeah. We'd love to answer any questions if you have any.

Well, Scott, I remember last year, The numbers in the conversation was completely different. And so I just want to congratulate you. Thank you. It is a good turnaround, a really good turnaround. So thanks. Thanks for the hard work.

In September 1, I'll be starting my sixth year at the chamber, if you can believe how fast time has flown. Robin, go ahead.

Yeah, thank you. This is pretty impressive. The calendar, I really like it. I mean, I will kind of echo what Mike said. Last year, we were not sure, and the council voted to give you guys money and the downtown coalition, and it was kind of contentious, but I do, I've said it, I think that was the best decision. You guys have come together. I've seen great improvements. I participate in the cleanup and the art walk, and it's a lot of fun.

and the downtown looks amazing so um good job really impressed i also and i love your stats i love your presentation super easy to read i also love your social media and i saw your 60 increase since 2025 so keep killing it harder question okay so What about industry? So I feel like chamber of commerce is very small business focused, which I love near and dear to my heart. Super important. You're killing it. So now maybe next step for the next coming year, we lost a thousand manufacturing job and jobs in the last quarter in Newberg. And like, let that sink in a thousand manufacturing jobs. And I see the Chamber of Commerce playing an integral role in attracting business back to Newburgh. I think that, I mean, my personal opinion, and I speak for myself, but I would like urban renewal to be redirected towards the mill property for pre-development. costs so that it's shovel ready for a living wage job business to operate there. Um, so what, do you have any off the cuff thoughts? Is that something that the chamber would have some skin in the game for? I'm only asking because, um, yeah, It is very much in the wheelhouse in other regional chambers to be at the table for some of those negotiation conversations of recruiting a lamb research or whatever industry would be down there.

Yeah, good question. I'm not going to lie. I hadn't prepared myself for that type of questioning because I was more focused on the KPIs in our contract. But I do sit on regional economic development councils with CEDCOR and the mayors of... Dundee and McMinnville and Dayton and the tribe, you know, so we do talk economic development pretty, pretty regularly. Cara Biggerstaff from the Innovation Accelerator has stepped down, sort of stepped down, so I'm sort of taking over leadership on that role. And we, again, it's, it's a collective who knows who in what areas. The chamber certainly is involved in that, but absolutely, if that's the direction you'd like to see us focus more on, I think absolutely. I mean, our president of our board is sitting right there and he's with ADEC and we meet every single month and we talk about things just like that. So absolutely.

Scott, I mean, we've had at least one conversation about exactly that. I do look forward to you being a partner and trying to find people to reoccupy the buildings that are going to be left vacant. That being said, I took advantage of the sourdough course. Please tell Jan that I make very good sourdough. I make about a loaf every week, almost every week. So thank you. Very nice.

Glad to hear it. I didn't know you did that.

Anybody else? Thank you very much.

All right. Thanks. I'm going to sit in the back row for a moment.

Are you going to help on myself?

There might be a reason.

Thank you, Scott. I knew you were that kind of gentleman.

But you're going to make me come hang out with me.

Thank you. Mayor city council. I'm Phil Amaya. I am the current president of the board of directors for taste Newberg. And I just wanted to keep your best of some upcoming leadership transitions that are happening here at newberg. Lee Jensen, who has been our Executive Director for the past four years, has let us know that she'll be stepping down from her position as Executive Director of Chase Newburgh, and her last day will be August 31st of 2026. We obviously want to express just a sincere appreciation to Lee for her leadership and grateful for the relationships she's developed here and what she's done for Newburgh's tourism, hospitality, wine, food programs, and business community as well. As we move through this transition, we're pleased to announce that Katie McFaul, has been promoted to interim executive director. She's been our deputy executive director. And Katie will provide continuity and leadership for us, oversee the organization's ongoing operations, and continue working closely with our tourism partners, our community partners, businesses, and stakeholders. The board's confident that Katie has the knowledge of Tace Newberg and the commitment to continue to provide strong leadership for us as we go through this interim period. So at the same time, Taste Newburgh is posting a position for executive director, and we're beginning to search for a permanent leader at this time. We're looking for an individual who is passionate about Newburgh, of course, understands the importance of tourism as a driver of economic growth, and can build strong relationships with our tourism partners and throughout our community. So we appreciate City Council's support of Taste Newburgh, and we look forward to continuing to strengthen Newburgh as a world-class destination for visitors, residents, and businesses here. So with that, I will turn it over to Lee and Katie. Thank you.

We'll talk about that later. Because I don't want to cry, but I do want to say thank you. But I probably will cry if I say thank you. So let's do the report so that Lee doesn't cry. So down arrow. Thank you for being there. Okay. So as you guys, you're going to drive.

Thank God.

As you guys all know, tourism is an economic driver. We are your taste is your destination marketing organization. this is the study that was done by travel oregon for they do a yearly study and they look at the entire state to see because tourism is a huge driver in the entire state of oregon so a 1.3 increase in travel spend we got an additional 1700 jobs in oregon through the travel industry travel earnings are up And then we had an increase in state and local revenue, which is pretty much TLT because we don't have sales tax here. So next. As you guys know, our mission is to stimulate the year-round visitor economy in Newburgh. We... our job is to is to make it knowledgeable that we are the most extraordinary and distinctive destination in oregon um and the best in world-class resource we have a little typos there so sorry i guess we were all like trying to get this down too fast there you go in tourism resources in yamaha county the way we do that is by growing i'm going to put my glasses on so i can read my notes now um is growing lodging tax revenue. That would be the TLT. So we market to make sure that that grows. And that has gone up in the last year, as you guys all know. We implement effective marketing plans. And so you're going to see those as we're going to walk through this report. We provide industry support. We work with NDC, the Chamber, Cultural Center, CPRD, where we are happy to sit at any table anybody asks us to, to give support and to be supportive in any way we can. We represent Newburgh with industry organizations. Examples of those this year, which you'll see later on in the report, also are the Yamhill Tourism Group. I was a board member of the Willamette Valley Visitor Association. I sit as an ex-officiate on Travel Dundee's committee. I'm also a board member for the Lamech Workforce Partnership. Happy to pass that on to Scott, just in case anybody wants to say that. That goes to what you were talking about. And they're focusing on hospitality finally in Yamhill, which is why I sit on that seat. And then, and we also collaborate with That's okay. You're moving your slides. We collaborate with different partners this year, and Katie's going to tell you about all these different programs as we go down in our report. We did a Yamhill County FAM, which we brought all the DMOs for the entire county together to work together. Katie's been doing recreation ready phase two for county parks, works with county parks and CPRD on two feasibility studies for Rogers Landing and the 219 campsite that they have. And then we're leaning in for the next year for some wine trails, hopefully, go like that. And then other county PR programs. So those are just kind of this year we had a strategic plan that we had put together several years ago and we pretty much accomplished most of our goals already. So in May we got a lot of you together and we went through what we have done and come up. So this report will show you a little bit about all the things that we have accomplished. from that plan and then we'll talk about our new plan um so this is our um marketing report um we pulled some things out to talk to you about uh but i just want to just put out there after the paper over that if somebody is really nerdy and wants to see the whole report i'm happy to send it to you um but we just kind of threw out some stuff So our goal in marketing is to enhance the, ooh, I cannot talk tonight, visibility and awareness of Newburgh as a primary, as a premier wine destination while driving economic value to businesses, lodging partners through paid advertisement. Over this last year, we have gotten 8.9 million impressions. We have had generated users of 165,782. That's probably low, but we've at least had that. Our economic impact has been over $8 million and 6 million of that is destination and about 2 million is lodging. And I'm just going to stop for a second so that you'll know what that, how we come, somebody's going to ask me this. And so I'll put it on record. We use what we call as a blended rate because we have the Allison, which is a 600 hotel resort, which is amazing. And then we have some other limited service hotels, vacation rentals that don't charge that same. So several years ago, we came up with a blended rate that we use. So to be honest, that's a very conservative number. We probably do better than that. But as much as I would love to do all of our numbers at the $600 a night rate, that seemed wrong too. So this is a blended rate. Just to kind of give you an idea. And then ROAS. So that's Return On Ad Spend. So what we're saying is that for every dollar that we spend advertising our community out there, you guys get $198 back. And part of that is, as you can see, destination impact. That's the people that, why we love NDC making our downtown beautiful, because now we have more people dining and shopping and doing all those things. So all those things go together. All right, next. You know what? That's two. Go to the next one. And I'll explain. That one is all of our matrix for our marketing. But let's talk because let's look at pretty stuff instead. This is an example of our marketing creative. So this is meta ads. For our meta ads alone in the last year, we've gotten 3,094,216 impressions, 89,644 clicks. Our cost per rate and all of our things are really low. This year we finished and we'll talk about it when we get to our website a little bit, but we finished our rebranding. We had started it last year. If you guys remember a little bit, we had started part of our website. We had started. So now we are completely branded. So. sort of like when you see Nike and you know, exactly, that's the goal. That's the goal that I've been working on for the last several years is that whatever you see us do, you know, that taste did that, that, and people know, Oh, that's Newberg. Oh, that's that. So our ads look the same. Our website looks the same. When we do any kind of collateral for anybody in the, it all looks the same because the, Brand awareness is huge. And that's a big part of our job is to just make Newberg's brand aware. So this is an example. In our in our report, we have lots of matrix. If you guys want to go through again, you want to be nerdy, go for it and let me know. We also have Google campaigns that we do in search. We dipped our finger this year in some YouTube. Potentially we'll do that again. I don't know, I won't be around, but I'll be here to support from the sidelines. But because YouTube is where all those young people that are my children out there actually watch television and see everything. So that is one of the channels that we are slowly leaning into in terms of videos and photos and so forth. So that's something that we're definitely leaning into. But Google is still king. Let's be honest. We still Google everything or we chat to BT it, right? Oh, go back. The next thing, these are our programmatic. So you also know that a lot of our marketing is targeted marketing. So these are what we use through our programmatic, which is Datify. And that is where we either have somebody who has been in our area before and we retarget them to come back. It is a lookalike visitor, so maybe they have gone to Sonoma and they are being tracked there because sorry, guys, again, I say this every time you're all being tracked. We then reach out to them and we target them to come back. so we've had great awareness we've had over four million impressions from those um lots of clicks a lot of um that's a better low hanging fruit because that's really talking to somebody who's already been there all right next um and the side that oh there it's coming on um i don't know if it'll work i don't know if it'll work but so so the next the last thing we did i we talked previously where um and we are just calling it a word winning no we haven't won an award somebody asked me that last time i said but i'm going to be honest i feel like we should i just want to say that um but We finished phase two of our website, so we did the rest of our pages. We also added we've redone all of our blogs. One of the blogs that we have is the downtown for NDC. It's a blog about all the stuff to do in NDC and it supports them. And that's the postcards that go into all the the hotels. The Allison puts it and it goes to George Fox. The Chamber has them. so that because we want our visitors to know that when they're here we want them to know what they can do and where they can go so we have the multiple pages um the other thing that we we just launched I don't even know how many months ago, our industry page.

Oh, like two months ago.

Like two months ago. So two months ago, we launched an industry page. And we're still filling that out, but it's the place to go. If you want to know, the annual report will be up there soon. All the travel organs research is up there. Who's on our board? If you want to know how to fill out, how to get a listing on our, it's there. If you want to know how to get an event on our website, there's a form there. So it's one place to go and it's a place where we're going to constantly push. That way, it's sort of easy. Okay, I can just go to the industry page and find what I'm looking for, right? I think you're next, right? Yeah, winner.

So I'm gonna talk about public relations. So this is part of kind of marketing, but in a different way. So this is where travel writers, travel influencers come out and they experience the destination and they write about it. And this is really important because they're trusted, verifiable sources. It's not just marketing campaigns. It's people that have been here and that are writing great stories about coming. So this year, we did a mix of traditional media, which is people that are writing in print publications or magazines, and then also influencer media, which is social media. And so in this AI space, traditional media is still really important. Even though it can take longer to see the results of it, it can take six months to a year to see an article come out after someone's come and visited because AI is scraping sites for authenticative and authoritative sites. And so this is where it really becomes important in this new AI landscape. So these are kind of two great pieces that we got in the last year. One is for a piece in Dallas, Texas, which is a key wine market and they have direct flights to Portland, which is really important. And then the other piece is from Orange County. And again, that is a high value visitor that comes, there's direct flights. and they consume and buy a lot of wine and also come to our destination. So these are kind of two just top PR wins that we had this year. in the traditional media landscape. The influencer media is very different and it's ever evolving, but it's really important. And our partners seem to like it because it's really quick. Someone will come and then within two days they'll see a whole write up, a whole piece being tagged, sharing, collaborating on Instagram and Facebook. And so it's been really valuable. And the way that we used it this year was around events. specifically. And so we would host media that would come out before the event. And they would experience the destination, say, this is what we're going to do, you know, their full itinerary. And then they'd be like, and come at this date, and you can come to this event and experience all of this. And so that's kind of how we used it this year. And typically, the influences that we hosted were more local from the Portland market, to kind of get that quick fix of people coming down. So this year we switched our social media manager kind of halfway through the fiscal year and because we really wanted to grow our engagement and now the fact that our website branding everything was all together like Lee mentioned, we really wanted to have that consistent brand and voice on social media as well and grow our following. And so that's been really great to have some new fresh energy and to see the new engagement. And we've been seeing an increase on social media. The other thing that we did is we created a TikTok. We're on TikTok. I know. And so, yeah, we're on TikTok. And yeah. You know, I'm not on TikTok. Me neither. But our social media, I have it now to like check our social media. So yeah, our social media manager has said that it's been growing really rapidly compared to other clients and that it's been performing well. So we'll continue to grow that and continue to post on TikTok. So destination development. So a couple of projects that I've been working on over the last year or so is we did phase one of Recreation Ready, which was a travel organ grant last year. And so now we've entered phase two, which is where we received $100,000 from Travel Oregon. And that money was used for two sites, Rogers Landing to look at non-motorized access and then the not developed CPRD 219 site. And so we will be receiving a feasibility analysis in the next couple weeks to determine what that looks like, if development could happen, and what the next steps will be. From there, we'll be up to CPRD and Yamhill County Parks as the land managers to implement or figure out if they are going to implement and move forward with the recommendations from the study. So that project will be wrapping up our involvement, and it will be wrapping up at the end of the year. The other thing is in the fall of 2024, we piloted a dark sky experience on the Willamette River. And it was something that Travel Oregon has really invested in dark sky tourism. And, you know, we want to kind of play in their circle because they have a much bigger audience and megaphone than we do to distribute information out. And so we kind of created this program and it's You know, like all things, it's slow to take off, but there's been a lot of interest from Travel Oregon and the Willamette Valley Visitors Association and hosting media and having people come out and write about the experience and do photo shoots and video shoots on the river with Northwest Jet Boat Charter. And so that's still kind of that buzz is still growing and there's still engagement there, which is great to see. So hopefully that continues to grow and grow. they continue to promote New Bergen, our experiences. So last year, as part of the Yamhill County Tourism Group, We created a Yamhill County recreation map, and that was kind of a first ever. And when you do a first map, it's a lot of work. And we thought that that print would last two years, but it didn't. And so we went through all of the maps already. And so we had to do a reprint, which is great. We love that. We want people to be using it and getting it through Travel Oregon Welcome Centers and around the state they're picking it up. And so we just did a reprint. I think they just got delivered. And so we got funding for that through Travel Oregon and the Lambeth Valley Visitors Association to kind of do that reprint to make that happen so that it keeps being circulated. We also have a contract with Certified Folder to do that. So Certified Folder is how any map brochure magazine ends up in a welcome center, a hotel, any of those kind of big REC things that you see that is through certified folders. So it's being distributed through that network around the state and in key markets up and down I-5. This year, we did a lot of partnerships, which is really great to see. Like I mentioned, the REC map. We also partnered on an Oregon Chardonnay celebration press trip. So last year in 2025, we did kind of some PR and engagement around the Oregon Chardonnay celebration to bring media out, to experience the event, to experience a destination. And the reason for that is because the event takes place in February and February is a shoulder season event and it's a really large need area for our community and for our lodging partners. So we really want to lean into that. So the Yamho County Tourism Group decided, like, we want to buy in and we want to make it a countywide effort. And so it was actually grew into a really large project, which was great to see come together. It was a lot of work. And so we partnered with our PR representative and Visit McMinnville's PR representative. They brought 12 media in for the event, and it was a large they both said that it was the largest press trip they've ever been a part of. And so the media stayed at lodging properties within the county and around within each community hosted media. Some experiences were done as a whole group, some were like smaller groups, two, three people. And it was a lot of work. They came in on Thursday and left on a Sunday. It was about a $40,000 project that we pretty much had entirely funded through, we wrote a grant for Travel Oregon, the Willamette Valley Visitors Association and the Oregon Wine Board. So we had most of everything funded through partnership and collaboration when we pitched the idea to them. so this was a really big initiative and it was really great to see and the media said that it was one of the best press ships that they've ever been on as far as execution planning um the weather could not have been better it wasn't like horrible and snowy and you know they they really lucked out so it was great to see that come together um So the Chehala Mountain AVA reached out to us about needing support around Magic in the Mountains, which is an event at the end of May. And it takes place at the Allison. And so they had the idea of hosting Portland-based influencers before the event. So they gave us the list of influencers that they wanted to host, that they felt like aligned with their goals. organization. And so we partnered with them to help bring out those media. And so they came out before. Again, like I mentioned, they experienced the destination and then they came to the event and captured content as well. So the good news from that, though, is that the Magic in the Mountain staff told us that, or not staff, but I guess the volunteers that run the event, that ticket sales were up over 10% year over year. which is pretty great because we're hearing that events in the tourism landscape are struggling to sell tickets. So it was nice to hear that feedback that maybe generating that buzz within the Portland market was successful.

So this is all very interesting. We have a long meeting to go through.

Okay, I will go faster.

Well, how about we bring you back for another round at a different time?

Okay.

You want to do this? Do you want to do this survey?

I'm sorry?

The last part, well, you can go through ours. You guys can read it all. Email us if you have questions. The last thing that we sent to Rachel and Scott and Libby, we're going to come up if we don't need it. If you guys don't have any questions is part of each one of our contracts. that the city put in all of our contracts was that we all needed to do an industry survey. We all had three specific questions that were in that. As a show of our collaboration of the three organizations, we got together the organizations and we did the survey completely together. We sent it to 71 people. We got 30 people that came back. The results are in there. If you want more information or if you want to talk about it, you're welcome to reach out to any of us. It's a blind survey, so no, we can't tell you who answered any of the questions. And if you're good with that, then we can peace out.

Comfort have questions. You did a very thorough job to this point. Thank you.

Thank you.

I will miss you all.

But I will tell them sooner. They're not totally letting me go yet.

All right, it's 7-11. Let's take a five-minute break and come back and get with it. Thank you. All right, if you'll take your seats again, please. So the next item on our agenda is the reason a lot of you are here. This came about because, uh, counselor Wheatley called me and, uh, one, well, I should start one of one of our citizens, um, sent a letter to all the council members and, uh, we have to be careful what we answer to. But, uh, counselor Wheatley gave me a call on Friday, I think it was and said, I think we need to put this on the agenda. After we talked about it for a while, we decided that it has, she was right. So we made an appointment with Rachel. I guess that was on Friday. We must talk Thursday night. And we decided that we needed to get this done. So just a couple of things. Most of the council has not even heard about any discussions about this. I've talked to nobody but Robin about it. We know for sure that The current memorial that is going on is going to be there for the remainder for the next 30 days or for the entire 30 days. I personally would like to ask our citizens. I don't think I need to ask, but maybe. We need to respect the memorial. matter whose it is no matter what our position is and just out of good stewardship and good citizenship we should allow that to stay as long as the city manager has allowed that to happen so that being said rachel you ready to go

Certainly, so we brought this discussion item to you today. I'm going to go over a little bit of the history of what's happened at the flagpole and what the current policy is. And then we have 3 main questions for council to discuss. And when we get to that point, I'm passing it back to the mayor to lead your discussion. But the goal here is just let's think about this and think about what needs to be done. Part of this is coming from a safety perspective. I've talked with our public works director and police chief, and there's a lot of concerns with that location because of traffic coming different directions and diverging and merging in that location. And there are some major safety concerns when things come off of the memorials, float into the road. So that's also been a concern of ours as a staff perspective. So the first communication that the city posted about memorials happened last fall. So there was a memorial placed in September and we posted a notice there and on social media informing folks that it would be allowed for 30 days, which is in accordance with a lot of other agencies. ODOT follows a 30 day policy. Many agencies follow 30 day policy for memorials placed in public lands or public right of way. So that's why we chose 30 days at that time. The hosting did say that memorials would remain in place for 30 days and then the city staff would be taking them down. Now, after that point, more and more memorials began to crop up at that location. So we formalized the policy a bit more and we put out some notices on the city website about what memorials might look like. So those policies that went out said that memorials may remain in place for 30 days after initial construction. Additional items added to an existing memorial do not extend the timeline. Signs will be posted at the site by city employees notifying the public of the timeline. Permits are not issued by the city for memorials. Cities do not choose to put these up or decide who has the right to that. Those are just put up. We ask that memorials should be considerate of the access needs of all and not block walkways or fall into roads and the items in the walkway or road will be removed or anything causing a safety issue. Since September, there have been many memorials constructed at the flagpole. And our practice has remained exactly the same with every single memorial. City staff will go. Once we are aware there's a memorial there, we post a notice that they will have 30 days. And at the end of the 30 days, if anything is remaining, we have our staff go out and clean up the location. This has led to a lot of staff time cleaning up the location a few times, and some other times things have been cleaned up before we get there. um we've had to scrape adhesives off the flagpole several times and that has been a challenge now we also during this have gotten many many communications from members of the public and we've had people very supportive of memorials we've had people very upset about memorials we've had people who would just prefer things not be adhered to the flagpole we've heard a lot of different things from different people and um we wanted to make sure that people know they're being heard that people have expressed safety concerns as things have fallen into the highway some people find memorials unsightly and then others have expressed ada concerns and then we have other people saying it's really important that we be allowed to have these memorials and have a chance to gather as a community so we're hearing a little bit of everything from the city perspective but we are getting quite a bit of communication on this So that's a basic summary of the history of what we've done here. It's not a very long history of managing memorials this way, and it's not super formalized at this point. So we'd like it to be a council discussion.

You said there were three issues that we wanted to discuss.

Yeah. The three main topics for discussion tonight would be, should temporary memorials be allowed at the flagpole or other locations on city property or in the city right away? Would it be appropriate to designate a specific location for temporary memorials? And should the 30 day timeline be altered to something else? So those are things to discuss tonight. There may be other things that come up in your discussion as well.

Thank you, Rachel. Who would like to kick it off? Mike, go ahead. Yeah, good point. It is time for public comments. Mike, hold your water. So we have first Brittany Rowles. Welcome. I'm sorry. Oh, he's trying to read the bottom line to settle for anything less. Thank you.

Well, make sure you can hear me. Hello, my name is Brittany. I want to start by saying that being here to speak is not easy. It puts me at further risk, as I've already been a target of threats, including threats of deportation, even though I am a US citizen. That is a risk that many people take when they come here to speak, along with the risk of being ignored, laughed at, insulted, or dismissed by you. Some have been laughed at. Others had their genuine words, worries and concerns called garbage and a waste of his valuable time. Others have been completely ignored and deflected. Just like the memorial you attended, a lot of time, work, effort and grief went into those recent memorials. We have lost artwork and notes dedicated to victims, which was intended to be mailed to their family members. When Kirk died, I kept hearing and reading he has a family, he has children. I agreed. I also kept hearing that nobody deserves to die like that. The violence needs to stop. I agree. But now those same people who you showed support and solidarity with by attending Kirk's memorial have been consistently disrespecting the memorials of other folks who have died by violence. You are a city leader. You are the mayor. You are supposed to lead by example. Instead, you have publicly shown who you support and whose actions and words you are willing to stand beside by showing up for a particular group and remaining silent for others. You have made the city hold a moment of silence for Kirk, but nobody else. Instead, I have personally seen you laugh at community members during city meetings. Instead of showing up to genuinely listen and discuss these issues that you promised a week prior to the event at the ICE discussion event, you showed up in the audience and laughed like it was a comedy show. Not one thing people discussed was funny. Parents were scared for their children. Children were scared for their parents. More recently, you laughed at Blair when you were the one who reached out to have a discussion. You laughed while city leaders who actually took the time, I mixed up, I apologize, to be there for their community did the work of listening. You have repeatedly laughed at people's pain, just like those who attended that memorial with you. You could not even condemn the vandalism until now. after repeated destruction of the memorials in the past. Here is a list of comments and threats that have been shared over the past year through these memorials, outside of the memorials. We have received verbal threats, death wishes, slurs, and insults. And here's the list of other comments we have received. I and my friends will roll coal on these protesters and don't forget the skunk water. If you are a member of Antifa, you are not anti-fascist, you are a communist subversive, at least a terrorist at worst who needs to be rooted out and stomped out of existence. I've got some paintballs freezing. I got two more paintball guns. I say we back up ice with ice paint. Can't wait to see them ship to alligator Alcatraz. Too bad TDS isn't terminal to end their misery. The communist only understands two things, fear and pain. At one vigil, an individual came through rambling and ranting, calling people terrorists and communists and threatening that our bodies will be found in a freezer. While I was writing, love thy neighbor, I was called a communist, most likely by someone who does not even know the word.

You exceeded your time and that word was going too far. So thank you.

That's what's being told to us. I agree it's too far.

Thank you. Next will be Saunda Martin. Hi, Saunda. We haven't seen you in a long time. I thought you were in Europe.

Touring Auschwitz in preparation. My name is Saunda Martin, and I live in Newburgh. I have some questions and concerns for the council to consider in their deliberations, and if you want, so that you remember it when you get to your I have copies. I'm curious how staff can have spent any time cleaning up the ICE victim memorials because they've either been torn down by vandals multiple times, or in the case of the memorial put up after Renee Good and Alex Pretty were murdered by federal agents, respectively cleaned up and removed by us the day before the deadline set by the city. my knowledge the only memorial the city has had to clean up after in the past year has been the charlie kirk memorial way back in september though maybe you're counting public works staff reportedly accidentally removing accidentally removing the last ice victim memorial several days early under cover of darkness because it was supposedly unsightly and some other specific reasons three days after we had just refreshed the flowers and straightened everything up Oh, yes, that's right. When faced with outrage and a demand for the items back, that story with all the very oddly specific reasons why the memorial was removed was changed. By the way, do we have metadata on the picture that was conveniently and reportedly taken by Public Works at 4 p.m. on August 4th, showing that the memorial was vandalized prior to Public Works getting there because a member of the community says the memorial was there when she got off work? that evening or the evening before and not there the next morning when she went to work kind of calls into question the reported sequence of events. What specific ADA concerns were there about these memorials and were these concerns actually substantiated or were they just from folks unhappy with the subject matter and looking for a justifiable complaint to hide behind? because there is plenty of sidewalks surrounding the flagpole itself and any memorial stuff we placed did not generally stick out more than about six inches from the base of the flagpole in general we have pictures what specific damage from these memorials has required city property to be repaired i understand scraping off some adhesive but repair because that's one of the things that was in the um notice in your notes. Do we have documentation of this? How are the memorials unsightly when we have refreshed the flowers and removed garbage multiple times when the memorial was up? Is it actually unsightly or just not what some folks consider an appropriate expression of grief or the appropriate people to grieve? It concerns me that suddenly the policy needs to change, not after memorials for motorcycle crashes or Charlie Kirk, but after memorials for people that have died at the hands of our government. The reasons cited for the policy change are seemingly neutral and innocuous, and the staff should be commended for their ability to CYA for the city and the mayor. They have some mad skills. But the timing of and motivation for this change is suspect as the mayor and counselors driving it have proven time and time again that unity is not the goal, conformity is. That and silencing or denouncing as divisive those people you'd rather not have speaking up. Thank you.

Next is Tracy Moon. Welcome.

Are we on?

My name is Tracy Moon and I live here in Newburgh. And today I am going to be reading a statement from my friend. Hello, council members and mayor. My name is Elaine Koskela and I live on Chehalem Drive. Someone else is reading this because I'm out of town. This past Friday I was at Friends View Bistro when my friends Blair and Gabriel came in. I gave hugs and then realized they were with the mayor who I greeted. My mom lives there and we frequently meet in the bistro. They sat outside and I wasn't paying much attention, but I did notice Mayor Bill didn't stay long. I called Blair and Gabe in to find out what that was about and learned it was about memorials. Blair has been using his considerable talent as a designer to create these for our community, also his own money. Really, they are beautiful. A couple of things struck me about what Blair and Gabe told me. Gabe noted his surprise about how politically biased Bill was, saying something along the lines of, quote, a mayor ought to be able to speak without showing his own political leanings, unquote. That did not happen. Bill had brought up Charlie Kirk, the person who was murdered by a young guy that we know next to nothing about. There is speculation that this young man was bisexual and had a problem with Kirk's stance on homosexuality. There is also speculation that MAGA was actually somehow behind the assassination, given that Kirk was a big supporter of releasing the Epstein files that Trump does not want released. Anyway, When Charlie Kirk was murdered, the city came up with a memorial policy. It's on your city page. Local MAGA adherents, including the mayor, created a memorial at the flagpole, had a prayer before a council meeting, and had a moment of silence in a council meeting, all for Charlie Kirk. Make no mistake, Charlie Kirk's murder was unnecessary and tragic. I'm a big pro-life across the board person, and I respected the mourning that happened and the very public outcry. Apparently Bill said something to Blair and Gabe about not knowing where, not knowing there were going to be so many memorials when the city made that policy. Me either. The extreme violence of ICE was just starting. Being that Bill nervously laughed about the deaths because of ICE activity, I wonder if Bill or others here even realize that most of the ICE deaths are totally unnecessary or that they are even happening. All lives matter, even brown ones that are undocumented. This is why I am taking part in the vigils and memorials. I mourn for our country that has become so violent. I mourn for the lives lost. I am afraid of where we are heading. Honestly, it seems to me the blame and violence to immigrants is a form of scapegoating, blaming these folks so all of us do not notice the billionaires taking away our services and taking all the power. Thank you.

i know these deaths aren't being reported on pardon your time's up your time's up okay you don't have to be rude stick at the rudeness next is shelley's home

Good evening. I'm speaking tonight regarding in this case whether we should allow memorials on public land and specifically the flagpole. After careful consideration, I believe extending these displays on public property is unwise for four key reasons. First of all, legal vulnerability. These displays, as we've seen, have become very politically motivated, it seems. Just the way it is. And so what we start having is equal access laws coming into play. You're going to have people saying, well, you allow this group 10 more days than my group, or this group is hogging it. So there's really no way that you can... really monitor that so that's one reason the legal vulnerability of not being able to provide equal access the other is security demands the city lacks the resources to continuously monitor these sites to prevent vandalism thus theft or desecration it's not the city it's not up to the city to have to watch over that and protect it And the police have, I'd rather have our police doing other activities. Safety hazards that's already been brought up, the unsecured items, broken glass, flying debris, et cetera. And also the public nuisance, rotting flowers, weathered photos, torn signs. A lot of people try to keep these memorials up, but we can't be monitoring that. It won't always happen. It won't always be that way that it's going to be kept up. So therefore, I urge the council to adopt a policy requiring all physical memorial materials to be removed immediately following the conclusion of a service or vigil. We should... actively encourage our residents to establish lasting physical memorials on private land, at places of worship, within private community centers, or on participating commercial properties in accordance with city guidelines. By respecting boundaries, we protect our shared spaces. Let's transform our sadness into action through local volunteer work and unity projects. Together, we can honor all our fallen heroes while keeping Newburgh safe, beautiful, and welcoming for all.

Robert, don't leave, you're next. Okay, thank you. Jane Condie. Welcome.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the City Council, I'm here tonight because I believe the people of Newburgh deserve consistency from their city government, especially when it comes to something as basic as the right to peacefully mourn. Recently, a memorial was placed at the flagpole to honor people who have died in incidents involving ICE. That memorial has been vandalized and destroyed repeatedly. People have torn it down, removed the items that were supposed to be sent to the family members, and forced members of our community to rebuild it again and again. What makes this especially difficult to understand is the same location previously held a memorial for Charlie Kirk. Many of us, myself included, strongly disagree with Charlie Kirk and what he represented. However, that memorial was left alone. We respected the right of the people who mourn him to have that space, even though we did not share their politics. That is what tolerance actually looks like. Recently, the mayor initiated a conversation with Blair Strobel about the current memorial and the controversy surrounding it. During that conversation, the mayor asked what could be done to lower the temperature in his community. Blair gave him a simple answer. The city can publicly condemn the repeated destruction of memorials, which he did this evening, but not until this evening. You don't have to endorse the memorial. You don't have to endorse our political beliefs. You don't even have to take a position on ICE. You simply have to say that destroying a peaceful memorial placed by members of this community is unacceptable. Whether a memorial is here for someone who was assassinated for political reasons, an immigrant family, a police officer, a protester being shot and killed, or anyone else, members of this community should be able to mourn without having their memorial deliberately vandalized and destroyed. A statement like that costs this city nothing. It takes no political side. It simply establishes a standard of basic decency that applies equally to everyone. Instead, when Blair offered that solution to the mayor, it was refused. Rather than strongly condemning the people who've repeatedly destroyed the memorial, the discussion turned towards shortening the amount of time the memorials may remain, moving them somewhere else, or eliminating them from the flagpole altogether. as backwards thinking and infringes on the First Amendment rights of this entire community, regardless of political affiliation. When peaceful expression is repeatedly targeted, the answer should not be to remove the expression because confronting the people destroying it is uncomfortable. I want to pause so I can be clear about something. I do not know your motivation, Mayor, and I'm not here to assign one to you, but I can tell you what it looks like from the outside. One Memorial was allowed to stand peacefully while another has been destroyed repeatedly. And when members of the community asked the mayor to simply condemn that destruction, he would not do it until this evening. This very clear disparity deserves an explanation of why it didn't happen in the first place. If the city decides that there need to be neutral rules governing memorials on public property, including where they may be placed, how long they may remain, and what may be attached to city property, then establish those rules transparently and apply them equally to everyone. But do not call removing memorials unity. Unity is not making difficult speech disappear. It's defending the same rights for people you disagree with, that you would defend for people who you support. We showed that respect when the Charlie Kirk Memorial stood at the flagpole. All we are asking for is the same respect now. My request to this council is simple. publicly condemn the deliberate vandalism and destruction of memorials in Newburgh, regardless of who the memorial honors or what the political viewpoint may be associated with it. You don't have to agree with us. You don't have to endorse anyone's message who has the memorial. You simply have to demonstrate that the same standard applies to everyone. This should be the easiest non-partisan position this council takes all year. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. With that, Mike, you have the floor.

Well, in my opinion, I don't condone destruction of anything, but I don't like having what they call memorials there. I think at Newburgh, that flag is the doorway to our historic downtown area. I wouldn't want that at my front door. So I don't think we ought to have, I think we're going to have to just make a situation here, a policy, that nobody has anything. I don't care whether it's left or right, whoever, you go there, you have your time, you can mourn, you can do whatever you want to do, you can have your rallies, but you leave it clean when you leave like it was when you found it no different than going camping you you have your camping spot when you leave it's cleaned up and so because this is the downtown doorway to our our our downtown area that we're quite proud of I think we just need to leave it clean we don't have any of these things going on I uh That's my opinion. And I'm glad we're talking about this because I've been wanting to do something about that for a long time. I think we ought to change the policy. Don't want to close anybody's conversation or right to have free speech. So you can go down there, you can have your rallies, but you leave it clean just as the way it was when you showed up.

I guess, like Bill said, I did reach out to him after the city gave us an email from Mr. Struble. I was concerned about what the flagpole has become. When somebody puts up a sign that it's being surveilled from a distance, that's a concern. Also, it's a policy. It's a new policy. And like anything new that we pass, we try it out for a little while, we see how it goes, and then we address it again. We do that with a lot of our policies. We pass it, see how it goes, and then we look at it. Is it the right policy? And I think that's what we're doing today. I know running for city council and doing other political things, and I think this has worked very well, is you use the flagpole area for your protest or your vigil. We put signs all over. We're there for a few hours, and then we take it all away. There's nothing left behind. It's clean. Then the next group gets to come in. One of my concerns is if somebody else wants to use that space, There is a large structure there. There's things on the flagpole. There's things written on the sidewalk. Is that going to deter another group from being able to use that? What happens if they bump that structure and it falls down and breaks? There's just the concerns and I'm not saying I'm voting a certain way. We're just having a discussion. Is this the right policy or not? And I definitely do have concerns about how it's going right now. So that's where I stand on that. And I am very passionate about this community. We've been through a lot the last few years and it feels like this flagpole, there's tension starting to be created there, and it's worrisome. I don't want to end anyone's First Amendment right. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just starting to see that a public space is kind of being politicized, and it's starting the me versus them thing again in this community, and that is concerning. I'm not comfortable with that in Newburgh. That's That's not why I'm here. We're here to represent everybody and bring everybody together. And when I start seeing that happen, that's my concern. So that's where I stand on it. Thank you.

I'm excited to hear that, um, counselor Wheatley and I share, um, the core of probably some of our policy perspective, um, specifically around us versus them. I did write some notes. I'm going to send them to Rachel. You can have them for the record. Um, I am concerned why this was put on the agenda so fast, first of all. Typically a walk on agenda item feels like something reserved for an emergency, especially when our, you're doing an amazing job by the way, especially when our city manager is out of town. The concerns brought forward around safety, public safety is extremely important to me. You know, the chief can dish at me anytime he wants. But that's not, in my opinion, a legitimate reason. We've been protesting at that flagpole both sides of the aisle all the time. sometimes protesting people up here um and my greater concern and i am going to kind of just look at my notes and i am happy to send these um for the record but i'm concerned um that when we passed or when we had the discussion about the 30-day policy um we weren't prepared to support every resident's right to utilize the space equally And that really is the core of what my concern with this conversation is. It very much feels targeted towards a specific group of people that certain people on this council disagree with their political views. I will say that when Charlie Kirk was murdered, I immediately made a statement. I immediately condemned that action. In no way do I share any political views or beliefs with Charlie Kirk. I got plenty of heat from people for making that statement. And I stand by it and every day, and Mayor Rossiker brought to my attention earlier today that that memorial was also desecrated. And for the record, right now, not acceptable. I don't care who was murdered. Just because I disagree with their political views does not make their life less important than the people's lives that are lost that I believe in their political views. But I'm concerned why we as an elected body have a hard time supporting someone who opposes us. And I'm going to take a moment to address you, Mayor Rossiker. I have witnessed laughing. You've laughed at me. You've laughed at Derek. You've laughed at Jerry. You laughed at the ICE listening session, of which there has been zero follow-up from you to me from that. This community is made up of approximately 22% of people of color. That's a fifth of our community. And when we don't provide space where someone feels comfortable to come and sit and express their views, even if those views are in opposition to us, and trust me, there, there are people in this room. I see all the time what you write on Facebook about me and keep going, you know, it's your right. And I do not chime back on those comments. But my biggest concern really lies, Councilor Wheatley brought up us versus them and it is like, I think that this is for me where the common ground comes and I fully support every councilor and the mayor on this council. We have had a very strong working council and I feel like I've been pleasantly surprised by each person and relationship that I have up on this council But we continue to come to this place. This is not the first time where I feel like I'm grandstanding, frankly, and shouldn't have to. And I want to talk, I want to have a broader conversation around conduct. I have left this meeting in the last six months so angry. on a number of occasions of how I've been treated, of how certain counselors have been treated, about how community members have been dismissed. And I continue to hear the word they. They're complaining. They're whining. They're making a big deal of it. And I really would love to know who is they. Because they is our neighbors. They is our residents. They are the people that elected us to be up here. And I'm so sick of both sides trying to claim the flag. It's not my flag. It's not Rachel's flag. It's not your flag. It's every person in this room's flag. And I'll just leave us with, you know, Freedom of speech is a lot easier to defend when we agree with the speaker, but it only means something when you're willing to defend it for the person that you disagree with. So I call to answer the question, if I would have been asked in a thoughtful way about this topic originally, And I felt like I couldn't share my actual opinion because this started with the Charlie Kirk Memorial, which by the way, you supported. I would have never supported memorials. Shocking. I don't think that it's necessary to leave the memorial there at the flagpole, but we are here. And now equality is required. And it's not gonna be on the back of someone that you oppose, not with my vote. Everyone can vote how they're gonna vote, but I will not vote to remove it. And as for duration, If we're going to have memorials, I think that it makes sense to stay in line with the state. I think that that is fair. I think the ODOT rule applies. But I really would just ask us to actually seek common ground and use this as an opportunity to try to facilitate a joint decision that we can all get behind and stand by together, because this impacts every single person in this community. Because if it's not this memorial, there will be a memorial. for someone that I disagree with. And they deserve every every moment to have that memorial that Blair and team for ice victims deserve. So but I would really love to ask that you stop laughing. Because it's it's extremely offensive.

I just have a few thoughts. And I read Blair's email a couple different times. I was kind of puzzled how... city councilors could prevent vandalism down there at the flagpole, which I assume happens late at night or in the morning, you know, when we're not there. I definitely do not condone it. I condemn it, regardless of whose stuff is there. I've thought, just as I'm kind of a pragmatic person, I've thought maybe 30 days is too long where things start deteriorating. And especially in Oregon, when we get so much rain six or eight months out of the year, how they can remain effective. Maybe if somebody's down there replacing the posters and flowers, that could happen. And then another thing about the 30 days and you know, nobody, none of us wants to think of this, but if there was a 30 day Memorial there, And then what if something horrible happens two weeks later? Maybe we lost a military person or a public figure here in Newburgh and we wanted to do a memorial. We certainly don't want to pile on top of another one. So that's just a pragmatic thing. And I'm totally fine not... Suggesting we change that timeframe now because I do not want it to look like we're trying to take down this ICE death memorial sooner than later. But maybe going forward in a year or six months, the council could look at that timeframe. Or maybe it's prescribed by the state. Is that what you said, Rachel? Or it was just a more common practice?

It's a common practice in other agencies.

I think that's all I have to say. I feel bad that it's become divisive. I mean, I go by memorials that I agree or disagree with or support or don't support, but I certainly don't come after the people who are behind those. Anyway, I guess I'm feeling a little sad about it.

I had a lot of thoughts when I saw that this landed on the agenda. And I did not write down thoughts leading up today, so I will not be as articulate as some of the others. But I think I actually have concerns on several levels. And I know that I have said this before, but one of the things in this role, in this position that I hold as a really salient value is that we are to be nonpartisan representatives of the entire community. And it is essential that regardless of what a person's values are beliefs are backgrounds are that they feel safe and welcome in this community. And that they feel safe and welcome and know that we as their mayor, and as their council people are going to appropriately hear them and represent their voices. And so I am really concerned on how we got here, that we received a letter of concern from a community member, and suddenly we now have an agenda item talking about limiting freedom of speech. Because if we wanted to be really practical, Public vigils are protected under the First Amendment. And this is the second time since I have been on council that we have talked about limiting public engagement or public communication. It started with eliminating public comment because we were uncomfortable with the information that was being shared. That is our job, is to hear hard things. And now we are talking about similarly making a change in how individuals communicate and mourn and share their experiences because it is making someone uncomfortable. Everyone has the right to protest and to have a vigil and to communicate and to share their beliefs. And the memorial for Charlie Kirk should never have been desecrated. That was absolutely the space and place for individuals to communicate how they were feeling in that space and time. Individuals who are protesting the murders of individuals by ICE similarly need that same equitable space and place and time to communicate. It is our job to be nonpartisan. It is our job to be nonreactive. This is also, if I go to a third layer, this is the third time, and I think as many meetings, that we have had a strongly worded email that has resulted in a panicked addition of an item to our city council agenda. It is our job to be non-reactive and to not inadvertently create fires. We need to do thoughtful due diligence in how we work through things, think about things, and process things. And you are the person who sets the agenda for these meetings. And so we need to make sure that we are

affirming every voice in our community and that this is a safe space for everyone just so you know i do not set the agenda for these meetings the city manager sets the agenda for these meetings and i have the right to approve them if i don't put on an item that this council you included made a vote that said that any two counselors can put an item on the agenda and i have no authority over that so anyway this is uh yeah robin let me be clear about my point

the reason that i went to bill is because it is not about what the content was that is not that's part of the problem that goes on in this community is everything is misconstrued and politicized And that's happening at this discussion right now. It's not about the content. I don't care what the content is. It's the fighting and the misconstruing that goes on that is so damaging. I am not trying to squelch anyone's rights to free speech. I do not want that. I want there to be peace. And I feel like I am purposely my words bill we are made to be we are being made to look like the bad guy and that is exactly not what this is about this is about seeing an issue cropping up when you see something starting i didn't even really know that those memorials had been damaged i really got no emails about that i really did not know so that is why nothing has been said And of course, I don't support that at all, okay? It's not about removing them because I don't like what's being said. That is not it. I sit up here and listen to everybody. I email everybody. That's not what it's about. It's about saying things that are true, being watching out for the community and i'm simply seeing a pattern starting to develop people fighting and that's why i went to bill it is concerning i didn't really know about the memorials being harmed before so when i saw this email i said we need to do something now is the time and it's not about the content that it that is not what i feel So I am offended that I have sat here. I grew up here, raised my family here, and people are saying that about me. Everything that I do is true and preserving First Amendment rights. I have no agenda. I love everybody here. So I'm just going to squash that right now because I feel like things are being said about me or about Bill that are not true. And it's offensive, honestly, that I spent all my time up here researching doing the best thing for Newberg and words are being put in my mouth to make us look bad when that is not it. That is not it. So thank you.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. Yes.

Yes. I, I appreciate you.

Yeah. I'm serious.

Okay.

I've been there.

Okay.

Many times. And what specifically, what my question was in regards to your interaction with bill is, um, You've referenced a couple of times that people are fighting, that there's tension. If you're not getting any information via email, are you referring to Facebook and that we're putting agenda items on for Facebook? Because the reality is, if that's the case, I got a list.

I'm saying the policy that we passed about the Charlie Kirk, that was done through email. We never talked about it in an open session. So I said, oh my goodness, we're talking about somebody putting up surveillance, somebody manning it 24-7 because their memorial was desecrated. We never got a chance to comment about that was never brought to me. We never had a chance to address it. So when it came up now, I said, we need to address it. Is this the right policy? And it's simply noticing something starting in this community and addressing it. It's not trying. I feel like people are trying to say that I'm squelching their free speech. I don't want to listen to hard things. That is not what this is. So please don't misconstrue that.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

I'm really passionate about that. And that's helpful. And I want that feedback. And I don't think that I said that personally.

Did I say it? I feel like people in this room think that and are trying to say that.

I think they do.

And it's offensive.

But one thing I want to clarify that this is where my tension is, honestly with you and Bill. Yes.

Yes.

Not with Mike and Peggy, to be honest. I feel like how you feel tonight, lots of people in this room have felt for a long time when it comes to ice. And as far as Derek, and I'll say it in the record, Derek called me we had a conversation about honestly how sad it was that we were not we never responded we've never responded to a public comment about fear and concern from 22 of our community sure and we held a listening session which by the way had like 150 people there if anyone wants to know And there's been zero question of me, zero inquiry from the mayor, other than sitting in the audience laughing, which multiple people noted. Multiple people came up to me And so here's the, but now you're laughing. So I'm just saying though, that we have to like this. I, I take the feedback. I'm hearing you. I agree with you. I don't think that you want to squash first amendment rights. I think that you genuinely, genuinely care about every person in this room and you have a very fast path to getting something put on the agenda item in a 72-hour notice. And I have been asking alongside...

I need to address this.

Well, I would love to know why you have it.

Turn your mic off and let the people hear. See, this group of people who... This all started because of Blair Stribble. He sent us a letter, and now let me... this issue right here today in newberg every issue started you're gonna if you keep this up you're gonna have to leave okay all right i have no problem with that memorial that's out there i never did I have no problem with the last memorials that were out there. In fact, I was not for limiting free speech that came from staff. We put that on the agenda so that the council could inform staff on how we felt about free speech. We all agreed. Um, the problem that we, we messed up, we, we made a mistake when we allowed the very first memorial to go out there to fly.

Okay.

Did I what?

Participated.

No, I want to hear the word.

You said you attended that memorial.

I absolutely did not. I have never been to a Charlie Kirk memorial anywhere on the face of this earth. I have never, we never had a moment of silence, as several of you have mentioned in this council. No, we did not.

All right.

All right. I would like to see the minutes that show that. So anyway, this issue is not about memorials. The question is, is that the right location for a memorial? Do we want to have memorials that we want to, as a city, condone memorials? We have not. We simply allowed that to happen at that place. The part of the problem with having a Memorial at that place is it belongs to everybody. It doesn't belong to one group or another. When one group has their equipment there, then another group comes in and they're either accused of, of of violating it or they feel uncomfortable because you feel like you're in somebody else's house so i personally don't think that that's the right location for a memorial i am not opposed to having memorials i don't care you know 30 days for stuff in in oregon in the rain is longer than it should have been i was not asked to be part of that decision nor did i give my opinion um so you know the issue here is not Did the mayor laugh at something? I mean, it's hilarious to me that that's an issue, that I laughed, I smiled. OK, you made it an issue a minute ago. Okay, well, it's a flaw. I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect here. But the issue is, do we want to allow this? Do we want to allow it at the flagpole? Can we discuss that and stop making personal attacks? Stop acting like there are two sides of this city? There are not. There's a diversity of opinions across the whole city. Not everybody agrees with any position. We're here to represent everybody. I do represent you people. I try my best to represent the people who disagree with me. I reached out to Blair Struble to have a meeting because he was obviously a leader in this. The email that he sent had several veiled threats as to the action he was going to take if any other citizens went and tore this down. That to me was a bunch of conflict that I felt like we needed to prevent. you know so that's the reason this is on the agenda today so you do you guys did a good job you took me to the woodshed i you know well done now can we talk about the issue how we feel about whether or not we move forward because the city manager needs to know what this council wants to do

i just want to clarify one thing so several of you have mentioned that you didn't get a chance to weigh on and weigh in on this and that is true this was originally treated as a staff decision and will made a decision on the memorials based on typical length of time by other agencies like i said so it was not a council decision in the past and that's why you haven't had a chance to weigh on this in the past he did inform you what his plan was so that's where this is coming from

Well, I, I, I don't mind. We could have a moral. Doesn't make any difference where I just don't think it ought to be at the flagpole. I don't think that it's always kept up. It's my opinion. You can take it or leave it. I don't care. It's my opinion. But this is the doorway to our town, and I want it to look really good. So I think we ought to have it. If we're going to have one, have a memorial, have it someplace else, but not at the flagpole. And I don't care if you want to have your rallies. It doesn't make any difference. You can have your rallies there. Just keep it clean. You know, just leave and keep it clean so it's a nice look when you're coming downtown.

I don't mind. I don't mind where it is. I am very open to how long it is. I can understand your perspective on it being the entrance to downtown. I get that. I think that it's a very fair point. I'm very much open to this conversation. I'm going to say though, Bill, I brought forward the other commentary because I'm sick of hearing about it. I'm sick of hearing from people coming forward to me and asking why I'm not addressing it. You know, so that's why, and it's, you know, a number of people on this council have also said it. So, but as for to answer Rachel's question, you know, I think I don't want to see action taken after this. I think that is inappropriate. I think that it's inequitable. I think that it needs to be at a certain date and time. This is when this goes into effect. It changes. I think seven days, 14 days feels much more reasonable than 30 days. I think 30 days is a long time. I do have concern. Uh, counselor Kilberg shared that there may be another memorial and it may become political at that point too. If there is opposing memorial groups, I don't want to see any of that. Um, so, and I do want an easier pathway for, to you and the agenda and i know two other counselors as well that feel the same way to get on the calendar for an agenda topic so that is i would like to right now request that we discuss hold on there i have never refused to consider putting something that you wanted on the agenda name one you've never come to me i mean

Anything that you will talk about?

Yeah, go to ice listening session.

I've been very clear in the meeting at the topic of hand and stop picking on on the mayor. Peggy

My understanding was this was a discussion. Are you looking for a vote of some, a decision tonight? Okay, good.

No, this is purely decision. And as is in the guiding document for tonight, it absolutely will not affect the memorial in place right now.

I do have one comment. It might be good to make something, if you're going to change the policy, make it effective January 1st. So it's six months or whatever that is now, four months from now. So... doesn't impact anything that's going on right now.

I agree. I think if we are going to create a formal policy and I think that is maybe one of the things that increases some of the at least concerns is what does equitable enforcement look like and how do we ensure that we have a policy in place that is clear and transparent and how we got to the space is similarly clear and transparent. I think I would I would love more information. I did a very quick Google search, but how do communities of our size handle this throughout Yamhill County? My very quick Google search. Some have no policy, some have a permit, some have a policy for how they navigate, multiple vigils occurring at the same time. What is the average length of time for a vigil? What would it look like to pick an alternative location? And how do we identify an appropriate location for vigils? If we're going to say that the flagpole isn't it, what would be an appropriate alternative location? And then is that location subsequent, like going to have similar concerns about risk for vandalism? picking things up, things not getting impacted by the rain. What does that look like? And so I think this is all of the information that I think we need to have to be able to have a meaningful discussion and conversation, which is where I do think, and I'll say it again, slowing down would be helpful to say, yes, this is a concern. Let's gather the information that we need so that we can have a meaningful discussion and conversation about it.

In my opinion, the simplest way to handle this is to allow the protest or vigil, bring your stuff, have your vigil, take it all out. We are going to go over and over and over around circles over time. What's there? Who put what? Staff is spending time monitoring this, cleaning up, dealing with fights, fielding emails. This is the simplest way to handle it. I know I've talked to citizens who want us to focus on infrastructure, paving the roads, public safety, these sort of things. If we're going to have it for a week, this is going to be an ongoing issue. We are preserving people's First Amendment by letting them protest, having their visual, and then they take it away. That is the only way this is going to work. It takes away all the fighting. It takes away staff spending time on it. That's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say the current memorial stands, I would never want to take that down. And then after that, we look at going back to whatever we had before. You have your thing and then you take it all away so it's clean. The next thing can come in and there's no... divisiveness we don't spend any more time on this we deal with the taxpayers paving their roads making sure they have clean water those sort of things i fully agree which is also why i was confused why it's on the agenda because i actually would not like to spend any time discussing this um

But I also would love to know what the difference, like when we start to define this, I think we need to define also, if we're gonna talk about litter and we're gonna talk about what Ms. Cole brought up around nuisance, I forget the exact word, But, you know, it's about to be election season, and there are yard signs littered all over the right-of-way all the time. And we have one code enforcement officer that's responsible to respond to all of that.

Would you like to put that item on the agenda for a future meeting? I'm saying... Let's move on. We're not talking about campaign signs today.

I'm saying that it's applicable. I'm saying that I... This is... No, I mean... I feel like it's comparable to be in wrong places in compliance. A lot of this conversation has been around how do you enforce? I mean, right now you're laughing at me.

I'm not laughing. I'm getting really irritated because you're bringing up stuff. You're making accusations against people that aren't even here.

What are you talking about?

What accusation? I mean, who's putting the signs out? It's not your people. I know that. It's everybody else.

I didn't even say that.

Okay. All right.

let's let's move on come on let's let's let's move on the next item on our agenda is agenda here this is ridiculous

All right, the next item on the agenda is the janitorial service contract.

I want to go back to following the puppy. I was really worried about coming out and following the puppy. So I want to go back to the puppy. This is a difficult discussion to follow. So I'm here today to highlight that our janitorial services, I presently do have a ITB bid open as we have not centralized all of our janitorials under one contract. We haven't had a bid in place in more than a few years. I've spent several months digesting a lot of data. Thank you for placing that up. My bid will close on the 24th. My plan is then to come to you on September 21st and present for an RCA for approval so that we can put a contract in place. My plan is for the contract to be a five-year contract so that aligns with our city's bienniums and will give us a nice centralized unified. Go ahead and flip one more. Yeah, there you go. didn't put a very big formal presentation together basically we're only looking at nine of our buildings out of all the city buildings only nine are we putting the contract in place with we average between 51 and 61 51,000 and 60,000 square feet of occupied space. The variance is the fact that the janitorial services does not service office doors when they're closed. So some of our folks do leave their office door at certain times to get serviced, and a lot of times they'll leave it closed otherwise. So we do have a range from weekly between the 51,000 and 60,000 square feet. These are our offices, our public spaces, our hallways, our lavatories. We do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and twice a year services spread across depending on building needs, occupants, as well as the item. So I just threw a lot at you right at the height of where would you like to take the discussion this evening?

Danny, I have a question. Did you say that this contract would not cover all of the city's buildings or did I miss here?

Correct. We're only covering the nine main buildings that are occupied. We have several buildings that are not as highly occupied, or our Public Works folks will address themselves. So for example, at Public Works Maintenance Yard, Building C has basically four bays and a conference room. there's no reason for us to have those serviced by the janitors. So we have taken it down to the buildings like City Hall, the library, Annex, this public safety building, two of our many buildings at the maintenance yard, one of the facilities at the wastewater treatments plant, and one small area at the water treatment plant.

Thank you. But it's definitely the majority, the big majority of the space. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, of the, I think we calculated that we have about 98,000 square feet of buildings, we're really only addressing 60,000 square feet of that, just because from that.

Given that there's not a contract in place and no bidding history that you can find, do you anticipate that our average cost will increase or decrease as a result of a formal RFP process?

I actually would love to bring those numbers with you when I come and present on September 21st. I do have theories that go back and forth that change by the hour every time I run the analytics. We are a closed bid, so there is no way for me to know any of that information until we actually lock at 2 p.m. on August 24th. And so I really, really request to reserve that conversation on costs. historical as where we're at. And of course, yeah, we are a few years since the last one. So those are really data points. I love to bring those actual data and that's my passion point.

No, that's totally fair. I was just curious, kind of looking at our range and if you had a guesstimate, but I appreciate waiting for real numbers.

Given that the ITB is still open, there's also a sense of respect for that too, of not discussing at this point until the ITB closes. Thank you.

So the last item on our agenda is the exemption to competitive bidding for wastewater treatment plant.

Good evening, council. It's a pleasure to give you a presentation on our oxidation ditch. I know this was a project that's near and dear to Will, and he's spent a lot of time. I think initially the plan was that we're going to award for this contract, but it's going to be delayed. So you probably see this again. I'll be more than happy to go through a slide presentation to just be informative of what the project is about and how we kind of manage it. Or if I can just wait until we'll comes back when we actually doing the award for the contract, just sort of, because I know it's late in the evening.

The council.

Yes, James.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just for Council's information, of course, you're welcome to have the presentation from Ahmaud tonight as an information item. This is going to come, this project will come before Council at a few different milestones during its course. One is that what's being proposed is what we call an alternative project delivery method. So it's a project that will provide potentially if council approves use the CMGC contracting, construction contracting delivery method as opposed to the traditional design bid build method. So we'll need to come before council possibly at the next meeting AT THE SEPTEMBER 21ST MEETING WITH FINDINGS ABOUT USING THAT ALTERNATIVE METHOD. ALSO COUNCIL WILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO LOOK AT POTENTIAL AWARD OF THE DESIGN CONTRACT AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY AFTER WE GO THROUGH THE SOLICITATION PROCUREMENT AWARD OF THE WHAT WE CALL CMGC CONTRACT FOR THE CONTRACTOR. SO THERE ARE TOUCH POINTS ALONG THE WAY. THERE'S GOING TO BE AT LEAST two maybe more well three maybe more um but we want to make sure that Council is aware kind of each step of the way so hence the information item before you uh this evening does anybody have any more questions want any more information tonight all right if not this meeting's adjourned