City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the what day is it? December 15, Newburgh City Council meeting. I'll call this meeting to order. Rachel, could we have a roll call, please?

Certainly. Councilor McBride?

Here.

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

Here.

Councilor Turgian Turgisson appears to be absent. Councilor Carmen.

Here.

Thank you.

Welcome. Would everybody please stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance? Will, this brings up your monthly report. Are we gonna do the Tennessee accent this year this time?

Do you do you really wish me to inflict the Tennessee accent on the honorable members present? I I could do it for the whole presentation. I know I can,

but Christmas, please.

HR says no, so we'll skip that. So this is honorable mayor, councilors, and those present. This is the city manager's report of monthly statistics to the October, and it also reintroduces the upcoming stormwater master plan project because we haven't talked about the stormwater master plan project for a while. So here we go. Before we cover the statistics, I'm reintroducing this master planning effort which will be coming back to council soon.

It was last covered with our council in the budget process. It was covered in the capital improvement project review, and it's part of the current approved budget, so the money I'm going be showing you that we're spending is in the budget already. And there's a lovely scene of rain falling and going down a nice safe pipe and oh look there's no water treatment plant in this diagram, that means they're putting, oh that's not right folks, there should be a water treatment plant in the middle of that pipe, we've got one. The stormwater master plan will appear at the next council session with a request for funding authorization for $237,000, notably this is $80,000 less than our initial estimate for this project because Dannette Hinton, who is in this room this evening somewhere, wave your hand in the air Dannette, got control of a bunch of flow monitors that she didn't have a manual for, figured out how they worked, figured out how to install them, got the data, figured out how to decrypt the data, and so we didn't have to use a consultant to pay for that collection, and her storm water meters are in the ground right now sending data to her desk remotely.

Let's hear a round of applause. Let's cover in the next few slides what this process will bring to us. Here's an important thing. This stormwater master plan update will have a legislative element. We are going to ask council's permission to change it so we only have to do this every ten years rather than every five years, and that will save some money too.

It will, among other things, review municipal code sections. It will give us a recommendation to change to five years rather than ten, the engineering folks say that that's appropriate and it will save a little money, we will conduct topographic studies of the entire city, we will model the hydrology of the entire city based upon our geology, soil, water runoff, and the rest. We will utilize all of our inputs from NOAA and the city. We will design storm capacity with a range of possible flood levels and think about them. It will produce these deliverables, estimates of future staffing for maintenance, cost estimates that will feed into the capital improvement cycle, so in other words if they think something needs to be enlarged or made better, that will feed into our CIP process.

It will provide a final report for council and the community, it will develop alternatives for CIP tasks, it will develop fact sheets for future CIP projects, and include descriptions of those things and what they will do, including a budget breakdown. When the work is complete the data will be presented via a capital improvement table, estimates for SDC eligibility, fact sheets for each project, which we can put on our website and a draft master plan document section and it'll be in both normal formats. You will see that the Keller expert on this topic, which is Ryan Redslaf PE will be present and there will be presentations provided to the Planning Commission and also to the City Council, one of which may be reserved for the municipal code shift. And now after that brief look at our planning we'll move on with our exciting statistics. Planning, combined planning decisions of all sorts, 10 significant decisions were made fairly average for this time of year as you will see, and we had five permits pulled for new housing units and we're continuing to see a steady flow of units because of the cleaner development, and other building permit type 74 we also had three zero nine building inspections going on, all for a variety of things, and remember that we only have one and a bit inspectors, so that's not even two people doing all those inspections.

That's pretty astonishing. We also had 26 questions that were answered immediately through the website and anyone that reaches out to the city of Newburgh gets an answer back within twenty four hours, so those are very quick response times as well, and 22,073 engagements through social media, and that has just been going up and up and up, So we're getting more news out about more subjects and more engagement and more click throughs and more visits. And I think part of the driver here, some of you may know we bought a new website fairly recently, which was not only more effective, but $5,000 a year less than the old budget, the old website package that we had. It has better indexing and search capability, it's fully ADA compliant, is an excellent piece of kit. There were 13 public record requests, that is a lot.

Now the downside about having a more transparent website is we're finding it's generating a lot more public information requests and particularly from information aggregators, so we've seen those things trending up together. $2,300,000 of payments to accounts payable and 1.08 millions of payroll, and as we continue to work through some of our larger capital projects you're going to see that the accounts payable payments are going to be fairly large for a while, particularly as we continue to put a roof on the basins that are happening at the water plant. HR, there was one advertised, one higher, zero separations and six claims of all sorts, and as you may know Newburgh, unlike its competitors, has basically remained fully staffed throughout the last four years and that's kind of remarkable, which indicates the good job that my department heads do in creating a good culture here. IT resolved two fifty service tickets for the city, that's come down a little bit from the way it's been lately, some major things have been done in IT, especially the upgrades to the mobile desktops that happened, and we're almost ready to roll over to our new virtual desktop system, and that's going to be a little cheaper than the old one and have a lot quicker response times.

There were three after hours events that the folks had to respond to, fairly normal, and the library activity, there was a whopping 9,100 on the door count with 34,109 circulation events, meaning that we are still the library that is the bestest in the three county area per capita. And there was 2,219 calls for service, every call for service significant to the person that places it, and six and twenty naughty people got stopped and reminded that it's important to not speed through our town when there's so many families around. And 425 of those naughty people got a citation or a warning as a result of that, and there were eight DUIIs. Now our general level of DUIIs has not been as bad this year as it was last year, so that's a good thing. Much of the public messaging that the department is putting out is clearly having a positive effect, and we will be watching the holiday numbers to see if we see a good holiday season or a not so good.

Dispatch, 820 critical 911 calls and 3140 non emergency calls. Public works water production was 57,270,000 gallons of delicious fresh potable water, so good to drink, and 72,730,000 gallons of the other stuff was dealt with. And nine ninety seven work orders were completed by the department, a little less than the average, but that is because they are working on several large sidewalk sections right now and there's ADA ramps going in as well, so that's keeping them busy while not generating quite so many work orders. So that is the end of our smashing statistics for October 2025, You may wonder why is he giving the October statistics in December, it takes a month to get the numbers to settle out fully so the stats are always a little in arrears. We also gave a brief overview of the storm water master plan effort.

Without data we cannot make smart decisions. Any questions folks?

Will can you just go over it again? You said the reason there's so many public records requests was because of our new website. Can you explain how you see that correlation?

So although many public information requests are just normal useful requests from the public, some are by commercial companies that are wanting to do data mining, and because of our higher visibility I think that's helping financial companies and other aggregators, and they're finding us more readily, and so they're sending us requests. And I could defer to Rachel. Rachel, could you tell me about the last one you got, which was obviously just a big data mining exercise?

Yeah, so data mining is where we will get something like please send us all of your purchase orders for the past few years or few months, and they want to see what we've been spending our money on, what companies we're using, what vendors we're using, And they use that to kind of sell that information to different groups. They aggregate it, put it together, and they'll say, okay, cities are buying this product, and they're using these vendors. So that's one type of public records request we get. A lot of them though, I think it's actually really beautiful significant statistic because a lot of our community members are just finding ways to get the information easier too. So it's though it means there's a quite an increase.

We've we are on track to double the number of records requests this year over last year. It's a really positive statistic because it means information is getting out.

Thank you, Rachel, and of course the staff in our admin team has not doubled. Chortle, chortle. Any other questions folks?

Apparently not, thank you. So a little explanation. The reason that I'm wearing this hat today is because it's Christmas, so Merry Christmas, everybody. This is our last city council meeting of the year, so this is our only opportunity to present the gift that your city council and staff has procured for you this year, Will. So if you would come and take your place up here, staff and council maybe over on this end so that the audience can see the gift and the and the response.

So, Will, those were done by local resident. And when I saw them, I thought that they they belonged in your, possession. So Merry Christmas.

In the name conference room.

Alright. So next, we have, public comment. I would like to say beforehand, we it is against our council rules to have applause, but we kinda chatted about it. And please be respectful. Please don't raise the level of being a, an inconvenience. And, that being said, Sondra Martin, you get to be first. Of course, the one in the back of the room in the corner. Welcome, Sanda. Good to see you.

Good evening, mayor, councilors. My name is Sondra Martin. I live in Newburgh. It was hilarious, if not painfully ridiculous, how the mayor deliberately chose to have Dave Brown praise the city council and police department as the last comment given at the last city council meeting. Are you all so fragile that people asking you to do something and say something in support of our immigrant community requires you to hear people saying good things about you so that you can go home and sleep well in your comfortable and protected lives?

Excuse me. Sanda, you're making personal attacks against the city council. I would ask you to please phrase it in such a manner that, it would be pleasant be acceptable in pleasant company. Thank you.

I'm not sure because my pleasant company can take criticism. So, I'm not saying the city council hasn't done some good things in the city, isn't doing some good things, and the police haven't done some good things. But I'm wondering what exactly do we all just need the praise for. You've had two weeks since the last city council meeting to, at the very least, make a statement that the city supports the immigrant community and recognizes the fear that it is experiencing. Not only have you not done that, but you haven't reached out to the folks who spoke at that last meeting to acknowledge our concerns.

You all sit there, and you refuse to acknowledge and address the real fear and concern that a significant portion of our residents have right now. You spend your free hours getting signatures against no more taxes. But are you out there meeting with the residents of Newburgh and engaging with with what their concerns are, not just the white Christian well-to-do residents that are probably friends or business colleagues. Why is every decision in this town made solely on the basis of can we get sued for this, or how can we maximize economic benefit while ignoring the fact that there are no active plans to make Newburgh a resilient and livable town in a world where climate change is going to cause true economic hardship in our near future. No active plans to protect and defend our neighborhoods and residents from an increasing authoritarian government that is sabotaging our economy and trampling the constitution.

I sit here, and when I look at you all, all I can think of is how small towns and cities in Nazi Germany and Vichy France must have had similar city governments. Where the government officials either actively supported the regime or they turned away and pretended it wasn't going to be that bad, self preservation or eager participation, either one, resulted in the same atrocities. What the Nazis did was legal under the laws that Hitler's regime enacted. Jim Crow laws were legal at the time they were enacted. Slavery was legal at one time in The US, and, technically, it still is in the for profit prison systems.

Beatings one's wife has been legal for much of this country's history, and child marriage has been legal and still is in some states. Those are all legal things at the time, but not necessarily morally correct. Maybe I should be more polite and restrained and politically correct. After all, isn't that what white Christian nationalism teaches about the conduct of women in particular? Don't speak up. Don't question. Don't talk about the real things. Swallow the disrespect and the dismissal. Know your place. Isn't that what your counterparts in national politics espouse as they debate how to control my body and take away my vote?

We are in the midst of the Christmas season where Christians tell the story of Joseph and Mary and their flight from Herod and their extreme poverty and the circumstances of their child's birth. And yet we live in a country where many of these same Christians seem to turn be turning their back backs on other immigrants who have fled horrible conditions and come to our country for a new start and for safety. Little did they know how unsafe our country would become for them. We are experiencing Nazism in the twenty first century, if not fully at the local level yet. This regime is not even hiding it anymore.

It's in the policies, the blatant propaganda on the federal websites, the cruelty, the criminal criminality, and the corruption. When it all hits the fan and fascism brings its horrors to our doorstep here in Newburgh in a way that can't be ignored, and make no mistake, it's coming, We are gonna remember the leadership that failed this committee or this community by failing to prepare for its descent defense and the Christians who ditched their sacred scriptures for profit and personal gain at the expense of the most vulnerable. I hope the rest of your comments are all crazy. Thank

Alright. Next is Jessica Yu. Hi, Jessica. Welcome.

Hello. Okay. Thank you. I actually have some words to share not from myself today, but from other people have shared with me, and they didn't get the chance to a couple weeks ago. So everything I'm reading is not my words. I'm just sharing off of what other people have told me and they wanted to share with the city council and the mayor. Dearest city council members, it is unnecessary to recount every cruel, lawless, or illicit action attributed to ICE over the past eleven months under the banner of making America great again. These incidents are regrettably frequent and well documented. Regardless of one's stance on immigration, the prevailing chaos and lack of compassion compel us to reflect on what our country has become. At its core, our request is simple.

We urge the city council to uphold civility and the rule of law during this period of confusion and uncertainty. Please act with integrity and do everything within your power to ensure that the less privileged members of our community receive the justice and due process they deserve. And I have a second comment. I'm against everything about the goals and the behavior of ICE. I'm terrified about all the new detention centers being built and add about the enormous increase in the ICE budget in 2026.

The administration seems to do everything possible to crash the economy, and many of the newly unemployed people will be tempted to join ICE by the high salary and the bonuses. One other thing about the Newburgh police, they see us protest every single week, but I've never seen even one cop acknowledge us in any way. I think a quick wave or a hands up would be most appropriate and gracious. Just a simple I see you gesture. Staring straight ahead, driving fast, get past the protesters as quickly as possible, it scares me to imagine how many cops are MAGA.

This makes it hard for me to trust them. I am a 60 year old white female. And lastly, I am fearful of people needing protection. I have nephews who are Native American and such an irony that they are likely targets. We know citizens have been held at gunpoint.

How are we protected? And I just wanna, from my own words now, also highlight Will, our city manager, when you're a high I really appreciate that at, like, every recap when you're highlighting how many 911 calls in, you say, like, each call is important to the specific person who called it in. And I think a lot of our community members want to be able to rely on the police to be able to protect them when there are people who are masked and not identified approaching surrounding their vehicles and demanding to search their vehicle and demanding to see their papers. And I'm not just saying this is happening to our Hispanic community. I've heard a testimony from people who are white middle aged ladies who have been pulled over on the side surrounded by four vehicles and then searched, and then they're just like, okay.

That's all. No explanation. You're let go. So I really want everyone here to think today what how ICE doesn't just impact the immigrant community, but how it might impact you as well. Because right now, we know the citizens have been detained. We know people who are not even Hispanic appearing, which we know are the likely targets of ICE, are being pulled over. How are you going to make sure that that doesn't happen in Newburgh? Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Shelly Cobb. Cobb.

Good evening, everyone. Wow. Those are some interesting comments. Okay. I want to greet and thank you on the city council, and I wanna say thanks to most of the members on the city council for focusing on local and city issues within your jurisdiction rather than involving yourselves in federal matters like immigration enforcement, which are outside your authority.

As many of you know, under our laws, local police and officials cannot interfere with ICE activities. Therefore, unless there is a verified incident of interference, this is beyond your scope, and I am confused that some are encouraging you to get involved. You may have great points. I don't know, but that's that's not what this council does. So, additionally, Newberg faces enough challenges that we elected you to address, which I believe as a whole you're doing really great, including affordable housing, public safety, and business growth.

So thank you to those of you who recognize and prioritize Newberg's concerns. And in conclusion, I want to acknowledge the council's dedication and achievements in 2025, and I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Thank you. Next is Judy Brown. Hi, Judy. Welcome.

I'm Judy Brown, and I live in Newburgh. And I'm on a couple of committees here, and I am so thankful for each one of you. I'm I'm a little dismayed by some of the comments because I know how hard you work. I know how much time it takes. I know how much you think about our treatment center and, how much it costs and how much our taxes have gone up only a little bit.

And we still have a full force of people working every single day to make Newburgh amazing. I can walk down the streets with my dog and not have to worry about anything. Maybe somebody speeding, but they're gonna get caught because we already heard that from the statistics. But, again, I am so thankful to live in this community. I grew up in a very small town of Tualatin when there were only 500 people there.

The Newburgh Road excuse me. Yeah. The Nyberg Road there was my family friends. We got milk from their from their farm and just amazing connection. And I think that's what Newburgh still is, is a small town with lots of connections, and we take care of each other.

And I think that's what we need to do. We can't stop doing that. When we stop taking care of each other is the time that our our town is going to crumble. And I think you're gonna hear some good things and some bad things tonight, but I just want you to know that I personally appreciate what you do, and I know many of the families that live around me appreciate what you do because I know the sacrifice that it takes away from your families. So from, me, Judy Brown, not necessarily my health I don't know what he's gonna say. But, I just wanna tell you thank you so much for your work, and I look forward to helping and being on any of the other committees to make Newberg great.

Thank you, Judy. Next is Elaine Costello.

Hello. Hi. I'm Elaine Kotzkela. I live on Chehalem Drive, not too far from here. Last week, I talked about dehumanization, and I wanted to follow-up on that. Not last week. I'm sorry. Two weeks ago. I wanted to follow-up on that a little bit. I think I made some people uncomfortable by quoting our president, and, I'm glad because the words weren't good words.

And, I think I'm just gonna get through some, the best explanation I have ever heard of dehumanization. And I want to say that the reason I'm talking about this is because here locally, I do very much want to take care of each other. That's what we should be doing. My faith calls me to see that of God in everyone. And I think when we start dehumanizing each other, when words start being dehumanizing, we get away from that, and we are not taking care of each other.

And I think it harms ourselves too. So I said last time that dehumanization is a process. It's a it's a process of demonizing the enemy and making them seem less than human and, hence, not worthy of human treatment. As we take sides, lose trust, and get angrier and angrier, we not only solidify an idea of our enemy, but also start to lose our ability to listen, communicate, and practice even a modicum of empathy. Once we see people on the other side of a conflict as morally inferior and even dangerous, the conflict starts to be framed as good versus evil.

Once the parties have framed the conflict in this way, their positions become more rigid. In some cases, zero sum thinking develops as parties come to believe that they must either secure their own victory or face defeat. New goals to punish or destroy the opponent arise. Dehumanization has fueled innumerable acts of violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and every genocide that has ever happened. It makes slavery, torture, and human trafficking possible.

Dehumanizing others is the process by which we become accepting of violations against human nature, the human spirit, and for many of us, violations against the central tenets of our faith. So most of us believe that basic human rights should not be violated. I think we all agree that crimes like murder, rape, torture are wrong. However, successful dehumanizing creates moral exclusion. Groups targeted based on identity, gender, ideology, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age are depicted as less than or criminal or evil, the targeted group eventually falls out of the scope of who is naturally protected by our moral code.

This is moral exclusion, and dehumanization is at its core. It always starts with language, often followed by images. We see this throughout history. During the Holocaust, Nazis described Jews as subhuman. I can't say the German word.

Sorry. They called Jews rats and depicted them as disease carrying rodents and everything from military pam pamphlets to children's books. In Africa, Hutus involved in the Rwandan genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Indigenous people are often referred to as savages, Serbs called Bosnians, aliens, slave owners throughout history considered slaves, subhuman animals. I know it is hard to believe that we ourselves could ever get to a place where we would exclude people from equal moral treatment from our basic moral values, but we can.

We're hardwired to believe what we see and to attach meaning to the words we hear. We can't pretend that every citizen who participated in or was a bystander to human atrocities was a violent sociopath. We know that's not true. It's not even possible, and it misses the point. The point is that we are all vulnerable to the slow and insidious practice of dehumanizing.

Therefore, we are all responsible for recognizing it and stopping it. Looks like I'm out of time, so I just wanna say this. I think all of us in Newburgh want to take care of our neighbors and each other. What is happening with ICE is not legal. It is not following the constitution.

Thank you.

You've had your five minutes. Thank you very much.

Okay.

Mike Gunn? Welcome. Thank you, mayor.

Oh,

it's on now. Okay. I'm here as a non attorney tonight, and, obviously, I listen to these people, and they're entitled to their opinion just like anything else. I drive down here on Saturdays, and I see there's no case protests, etcetera. Every Saturday down on the the flagpole, they're entitled to that. I I don't know what these people want you as a city council to do. K? They obviously don't like the fact Trump was elected by a majority vote of the people and by a huge electoral vote. Hey. You know, I didn't particularly like Biden getting elected, but, you know, that's that's our democratic process.

They they come in here, and I don't know if they want you to try to eliminate ICE from coming to the city as your as mister Walker will tell you. You have no jurisdiction to do that. This is a matter of federal immigration law. And, you know, I hear comparison to fascists and Nazis and everything. That was a horrific deal, the Holocaust. People were discriminated against because they were Jews, because of their sexuality, because of their political beliefs. That was terrible. People don't have a right to be in this country if they're illegal. Okay? That's that's something that certain people have a real hard time accepting.

And the fact they're here illegally means they're subject to immediate deportation. Okay? That is the law. And if you don't like the law, get your congress to change the law. Okay? The constitution has unilateral authority for immigration to the federal government, not the states. Oregon, thanks to our illustrious legislatures, has deemed Oregon a sanctuary state. These police ought to be applauded. They can't do anything. They can't inquire about a person's immigration status.

They can't cooperate with ICE. They can't impede ICE, though, and that's I think that's what these people want the city to do or the police to do. They want they want to impede. They want to get in the way of ICE, arresting people, etcetera, and, you know, going through the deportation process. And, I would submit you as a city council have no business getting involved in any kind of politics as that.

Mister Walker will tell you how many don't have any authority. I I see the news where Cornelius, Hillsborough, Woodburn, a couple other cities have declared emergency legislation based upon the fact they they don't want ICE in the cities, etcetera. I mean, I'm here to tell you he can correct me if he's if I'm wrong. You don't have any say about that. ICE has the authority.

Their federal agents sworn to uphold the constitution just like the the police authority here in Newburgh is sworn to uphold the constitution. They can come in, they can arrest people that are here illegally. That's the bottom line. And the sooner the opposition is willing to accept that and, you know, obviously, everybody's a human being, but I wanna just emphasize, people don't have a right to be in this country. They don't have a right to free health care, free education, free this, free that, etcetera, rather than American citizens. So I think you're doing an outstanding job. I just wanna tell you this politics has gotten completely out of hand.

Thank you. Is that a comment form? Or are you signed up to make comments? Nope. Okay. Thank you. Dave Brown.

Thank you, mister mayor and the city council. Thank you guys for speaking. I I came last, two weeks ago because couple months ago, I started watching the meetings, and I just noticed how much negative comments were being made. And there wasn't really a balance to it. There always has to be a balance. We're not always gonna agree on everything that pops up. But Newberg has been this way for a few years, and it's unfortunate. So, I tried to be positive last time. I'm a try to be positive this time. I, not trying to be funny.

I love the water here, by the way.

I think it's really good. It's almost as good as Ben's. I I think it's an outstanding water. So, Will, can you pick that one up a little bit there? But I did look back through some of your bylaws and things like that, and I I noticed that our city manager, who, by the way, is super easy to track in these meetings. I really appreciate that because that's not always the case. And but you give our city manager a $100,000 discretionary on on dollars he can spend. I believe I have this right. And I really appreciate that because you're not trying to micromanage him. You're trying to let him be the city manager, and I think that's why he's so effective. I'm sure we would disagree on a few things. Like, he just told me before the meeting, he doesn't really like golf. And so I I don't agree, Will, but, that's okay.

Neither

of us are probably any good, but that's alright. I just wanna also say to all the city councilors and the mayor, I appreciate the integrity. I think there is a lot here. Even though we don't always agree on the issues, we can be on both sides of the issues, and and that's okay. I just had somebody on a podcast who's very far left, and I'm probably pretty far right. And as soon as we're done, we always give each other a big hug, and we go get lunch. And I think that has to happen more. And it can happen here, and it can happen everywhere else. And I think my wife alluded to it too. The better we can all get along and and start, leaving that stuff aside, the easier it'll be for you to run our city.

And so I I also wanted to say it takes a lot of integrity to run our city and for today and for years to come because what you go what are doing here right now will be here in five or ten or fifteen years. And so it's really important that you guys have a lot of integrity in what you're doing, whether you agree with each other or not. And so when I watch you guys on TV or here, I feel like you're really respectful and listen to each other even though you might not agree. So that I really appreciate. I think a lot of that's from our city manager and our mayor.

So I appreciate that from you guys. I also just wanted to say, lastly, that, the city is far more important than you or me or any individual. I've lived here since 1963, and I've seen a lot of changes in this town. And, I really feel like, you know, your political ambitions or what you think politically doesn't really matter. What really matters is that you leave this city, and I leave this city better than when we got here. So thanks for what you do.

Thank you, Dave. Alright. The next item on the agenda is the consent calendar. Anybody care to make a motion?

Motion to approve the consent calendar.

Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion passes unanimously. Departmental customer service standards. Is it true that you said that playing golf is just a big waste of time?

Now now you've gone and put

it on the actual minutes. Let's just say I had a very harsh golf teacher when I was in high school, and then maybe it soured me on the gig. Okay. This item that comes before you this evening, honorable mayor and council, is actually the fruition of a good year's worth of work among many departments. As you know, one of our goals that we set was to have customer service standards which were also departmentally specific as well as the overarching ones that everybody follows in all departments, and so this first of all is a quick presentation about that, and the individual department standards were all in your packet, but they also had an index page added just to make it easier to navigate because each section had its own pagination or structure because they were written organically by each department, which I think is pretty cool.

So this is an overview, the first edition which we published a while back, that was like two years ago now, had citywide standards, for example on the turnaround time for telephony. This edition has standards that are specific to public facing teams that are directly applicable to those teams and focuses on the work done by those teams, and sought to capture the ethos of each team. So these are standards for the departments that have public desks and have public interaction very commonly. The PDF is a compilation of separate living documents that each belong to the nine work groups who are tasked with developing a standard. The commonality is that they all deal with the public on a daily basis, and the departments or work groups include community development, city recorder, community engagement, finance, who had to develop three slightly different standards because they run different types of desks, human resources, library, Newburgh Dundee police department, and Public Works.

The intent of the files is they demonstrate to each team what good customer service looks like, and you may recall that the first edition of public service standards set a general framework. I have many times in my career been asked that we should live public standards by having good customer service, but never been told by the manager what that means. Never been had it explained what is good customer service, and so this addresses another part of that. I continue to believe people have to know what the standard is for them to live it. These were organically created by each work group so that they would have a sense of ownership, and in the next few slides I've just pulled out a couple of bits from the guide illustrating some of those standards.

Community development, did you know that there is a planner of the day at all times? If you come in and come to that counter, a staff member is always ready to ask to answer any planning question or building question that may come to the desk then and there. Here is an example from the section about what the planner of the day has to do to answer any questions, whether it's input process or to develop those customer service outcomes. By answering people successfully on the desk, time is saved when plans have to be submitted and turned around and good customer service can be affected. Court days, one of many things in the court section, court staff are in charge of preparing for many items for a court day, and we're very, very busy on court days.

This is to arrange to have rooms set up, having the docket prepared for the judge, defending her files pulled for defending attorneys, anything that is needed to be discussed is prepped for the prosecutor and judge and payments are taken during court. During court, court staff are available to help defendants pay citations, to explain all of their diversion program options and assist with the general flow of court. Utility billing, call handling. Now I will be honest, recently we had a customer service failure in this department because one of the phones wasn't plugged in properly. That phone is now plugged in properly.

However, in normal times if someone is unavailable to take phone calls for the longer duration, such as they're helping another customer, because a customer in person is always first, they are to inform other members of the team so that they know that there's backup in the back room to take incoming calls, and our phone hours are always to be clearly posted in that manner. Human resources, benefit handling. HR oversees two one month enrollment periods per year, one for the police under Northwest Firefighters Relief Association and one for other city staff through CIS, which is the community insurance used by cities and counties. These occur without fail in June and October respectively. This includes a full distribution of annual notices and making sure all employees have the opportunity to understand and make choices to their benefits package, and Alison does a fantastic job of this.

Library service. The reason why people flock to our library, the reason why we have the best statistics in the county and in three counties, is because we have standards. Available items placed on hold will be pulled by staff volunteers for the hold shelf within one day. Expired holds will be pulled off the hold shelf before the doors open every day, and that's to make sure the hold shelf doesn't clutter with things that are expired. Returned items will be checked in within one business day unless there is extenuating circumstances, and that very rarely happens.

Phone calls will be answered within three rings unless staff is helping a patron in person. Messages left will be returned within one business day, and reference questions will be answered within one business day. And if they cannot be answered because the reference question is particularly complicated, the person will be told that it will take longer and how long it will take. Police response time. Now I suspect that the statistics on this slide are not accurate because I think police response time is actually faster than the average which is shown here, having had to make that call one time.

The average response time to 09:11 calls across the nation is ten minutes. Benchmarks across The United States indicate response time of five minutes to nine one one emergencies being considered excellent. In the year of 2025, Newburgh Dundee Police Department's average response time to nine one one calls was four minutes and twenty nine seconds. We ensure officers make every effort to respond to calls for service as soon as possible. If there's a delay to response time, it will be because an officer has had to prioritize the call based on something of a higher emergency status.

Storms and winter response, this activates every time we have a snow, ice or freeze event. We will respond promptly to snow, ice and freeze events, we'll communicate roadway conditions to supervisors, and I get the phone call often at three or four in the morning telling me that the conditions are changing and what we're going to have to do about it and when we're going to start our snowplow action. We will remove debris to restore drainage, coordinate with parks and public safety, and we will update all supervisors on hazardous conditions as they occur, so all the people in the team can be aware. In summary, with both our general customer service standard and these department benchmarks, the way we work every day, we're very, very proud of our standards and objectives and how we live them, and we will continue to remind the staff and at all levels of their customer service journey that we have to continue to do this. Are there any questions?

Thank you, Will.

The matter that you have before you is, of course, a resolution, and that concludes the staff report part of that resolution. So staff recommends that you adopt part two of the customer service standards, department standards, and a motion could be formed to that effect.

Mister mayor? Peggy? Yeah. When I joined the city council in July 2022, one of the things that I was hoping to impact was, an improvement in customer service. I've had very little to do with that personally, although we have it in our goals. So a big tip of the hat to you, to Scott, to all the departments, actually, every single one who have worked hard on this. I it's very impressive. It's great work, and I really appreciate it. And so I I would like to move that we accept part two of the customer service standards.

I'll second.

It has been moved and seconded to approve ordinance twenty twenty five four zero zero nine. Would you like to read that?

It's a resolution, on the council approval of department customer service standards, adopting customer service standards volume two departmental standards.

Is there any more discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay? Motion passes unanimously. So the next item is the Culp Newberg Cultural District Intergovernmental Agency. Welcome back, Corey.

Good evening, mister mayor and councilors. This is my yearly presentation to city council about the past year in the Cultural District as required by our current IGA.

Okay.

The Newburgh Cultural District was formed in 2013 and reaffirmed in 2019. You can see the, yellow you can't see it very well, but there is a yellow little square there, which is the cultural district boundaries. And in red, you can see the neighborhood surrounding the cultural district that the neighborhood representative is drawn from for the executive board of the Newburgh Cultural District. My clicker has a little bit of a delay, but does seem to be working. Alright.

In 2025, here are the large events with outdoor with an outdoor presence. You can see this summer is definitely the busiest month because, of course, that's when we have the best weather. So we've got tunes on Tuesday, which is draws enormous crowds. Our summer reading weekly programs for the library have big crowds outdoors as well. And then, of course, our lavender festival and the tree lighting that just happened a few weeks ago.

And all of our, oops. Sorry about that. All of our events are, on the website as well, so you can see those coming up. So coming up in 2026, the executive board is looking into a parking study to revisit the formula for the current Newburgh Cultural District Festival Street permit application, which is then submitted to the police department. And this form has not been updated in many years, so we're looking into updating that specific form as well.

The executive board will review the current IGA and look for ways to improve it by slimming it down while still functioning as a way for the neighborhood residents to have a voice in the cultural districts.

Alright.

And this is a list of our executive board members. As you can see, Robin Robin Wheatley is our city council representative on this board. So tonight, my, my purpose is to just, present you with this information. I'll let you know what we're going to be working on in 2026 so I don't have any, resolutions that are needed or anything. Are there any questions for me about the cultural district? Hi, Robin.

Can you go into a little more detail about this study that So we've gotta get, councilor McBride. Can you turn your microphone off really quick? K. Yes. We have dueling mics there.

Okay, Corey. Could you go over a little more about the parking study? Because I know being on the board for a short time, you know, there is a plan for, you know, the tunes on Tuesday mainly, but could you I'm a little unsure about what the parking study what the purpose of it is, and what will it show and that sort

of thing. So the the parking study we would be interested in is specifically related to the Newburgh Cultural District Festival Street permit. So the way it was set up, back in 2013, I just think that we can look at it and do a better job now that we have seen how the cultural district has worked since then. I think it will be interesting to see what it does show. So I you know, the first step will be getting that done and then, seeing if there's like, right now, there are specific places that we ask people to park if there's a big event for, like, tunes on Tuesday, other things like that.

So I think it will be interesting to see what that parking study shows, if those are if every all of those places are still needed or if there's something we can be doing differently. Right now, if you fill out the form, we have complaints about it from every single person who fills it out, or at least it feels that way anyway. It's pretty convoluted if you've ever seen it. So I just think we can do a better job with that. I don't think we need to make it so complicated, but I don't know for sure what the parking study will show.

And I also don't know for sure what the rest of the executive board, you know, will look at the IGA and, you know, what they think is needed or not needed for that too. Yeah. Does that answer your question? Sort of. Okay.

While we're on that subject, who's performing the study? Are we paying for it? Or and if so, who's paying for it?

So that is yet to be determined. It it probably will need to be in a different budget year because none of us have budgeted for that yet. None of us being the cultural center and CPRD and the library of the city. So, yeah, we haven't signed any contracts yet.

I thought of another question. If the parking study reveals that we don't have enough parking, what I mean, that there's events at the cultural center all the time. What what I mean, I don't know if you guys have thought about it. Where else would we put additional parking?

If it That does is highly unlikely.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

That is that is the the sense of the executive board. But, also, we'll see. And if, I mean, if that does turn out, to be the case, then part of what the the parking study would do was give ideas for where additional parking would be then as well.

I think it'll. Well Mhmm.

Just to mention, if you need a hand with taking some traffic counts, I and the admin team will we can go out one day and help count, you know, whatever you might need. Great. Thank you.

I guess I, for one, would I'd appreciate it if we did that parking study with our own staff rather than hiring a consultant. It seems like we write a lot of checks to consultants. So, anyway, that's just my opinion.

Or you can bring back Clay since he did the last parking study, like, two years ago for the downtown district.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. What is the I guess I'll ask a question. What is the connectivity to the previous parking study that was about two years ago that Clay Downing led? So

so from what I remember, the previous parking study was focused pretty much on the cultural the cultural center itself.

Is that

your understanding as well? So oh, so there's a couple different ones.

I think the one that you're probably alluding to is the one that looked at parking spots in the downtown lots and downtown couplet. Okay. And that one didn't address stuff beyond north of the Water Wise Garden. So the yeah. Yep. And

there was another parking study done in 2022, I think, that was specifically for the cultural center. Yeah.

In my opinion, we've had some wonderful events down there this year, very well attended events. And although parking at time gets difficult, I think you guys have handled it really well. I think that the, you know, that the citizens should be, fairly pleased with what goes on down there. So there's no more questions. The next item on our agenda is the, the bathroom remodel.

Thank you. And Danette will be joining me for this one. Oh, hello. Here, you can bring your chair up, I

think.

I'll introduce myself, and then you can introduce yourself. Alright. Well, I'm still Corey Burkle from the Newburgh Public Library.

I'm Janette Hilton. I'm part of the engineering team as project manager.

Alright. So tonight, this is an information this is for informational purposes only. We'll be back on 01/05/2026 for council action on this item. Since 1985, the library has not had a significant remodel of its public restrooms. With an average of 8,000 visitors per month, the restrooms are well used.

While the estimated cost of the library's lavatory remodel is at 96,000, overage may occur during construction. There's specific parts that will be unseen until some physical work physical work is done on the remodel. Request we're requesting a spending limit for this project in the amount of 120,000, and staff estimate the construction costs will not exceed this amount. So if you've been to our restrooms, you know they're very much in need of our model. If you haven't been to them, I invite you to come on down.

We are very excited about the possibility of the the remodel because, we've been waiting a long time. Are there any questions for us?

This is for the city manager. This is a budgeted item. Right? Why do we have to wait until January 5 to revisit this? Why don't we just do it now?

It actually was in line with council rules. We always want to bring something once to think about it, and then we bring it back again with the actual resolution.

Like, I

appreciate the council rules. I get it, and now we've heard it. Can we just approve it? Well, in that case, I'd, like to move that we approve ordinance twenty twenty five, four zero zero five, for the library lavatory remodel.

Second.

It has been, moved and seconded that we approve, ordinance or I'm sorry, resolution twenty twenty five dash four zero zero five, the remodel of the bathroom. Is there any more discussion? Seeing none, all all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Enjoy your new year. Next, we have the, board appointments. Rachel, you there's not a lot to say here. We would like to had, interviews and such, but we pretty much had just the right number of applicants to fill the positions. There was one or two extra. So we took the liberty of putting them on the the page. We can, if anybody objects to that, we can set up interviews as you like. But Mister

mayor, they are here this evening. Most most of them are here this evening.

Oh. Alright.

Would you like me to

I have a a process in mind. Would you

like me to go You're

Please, Rachel. Bring them on up.

Yeah. So what we'll do is we're gonna bring up one board at a time. And if you have any questions, go for it. You can either motion to approve them one board at a time or one person at a time or just do it as a batch, which is what I recommend. But unless you just do, you know, no, don't like my work. No. Never mind. The first one we're bringing up is the budget committee and be Joe Torella. Some will be online, and there are a few people who couldn't make it tonight. So if there's no one, I'll let you know. Alright. Is Joe here? There you are.

Hi. My name is Joe Charola. I live in Newburgh in the Greens. I'll take whatever questions you have.

Why don't you just start by, telling us what you do, which committee you're, you're looking at, and, why you want to be on that committee?

I work for Intel. I'm a retired Portland police officer. Lived in Newburgh since 02/2009. I was on the NARA committee, and I got a notice in my email asking me about the budget committee. And I put my name in the hat because I'm interested in the city budget, And that's it.

Alright. I guess there's no questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Are we going right down the list?

Yep. I'll go right down.

Do you wanna read them off or want me to?

No. Go ahead.

Alright. Next is historic preservation commission with Bob Woodruff and Phoenix Lemouche, and I believe Bob is online. About you. And yeah. I'm not sure if Phoenix was able to make it tonight, but Bob is online for you, and he is on Zoom now.

So, Bob, if you can unmute yourself and introduce yourself, we are here.

Alright. Can you hear me now?

We can.

Yes. We can.

Fantastic. Well, hello. My name is Bob Woodruff. I've been nominated to be appointed on the historic preservation commission. I've served for the last three years and really enjoyed the work. You know, I love the history of Newburgh and doing whatever we can to help preserve that history and just really excited to be a part of this commission.

Does anybody have questions for Bob? Well, for those of you that don't know, Bob is the you're the chairman of the, Old Fashioned Festival. Is that right, Bob?

President, but, yeah, same same, effect. Yes.

Alright. Well, he's been doing a wonderful job at that. No reason to believe he won't do a wonderful job at this. Thanks, Bob.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next on our list is the planning commissions. We have Randy Rickert, Jordan Sandoval, and Abigail Seitz. Library. Oh, sorry. Did I miss oh, library. Sorry. Library advisory board is Sherry Atkins and Leslie Schmestad. Let's see. Do either here. Let me see if they're online. Oh, Leslie is online. Let's promote. And Sherry is online as well. Alright. Sherry and Leslie are both joining us on Zoom. Go ahead and accept that promotion to panelists and introduce yourselves. Let's start with Leslie so there's no confusion.

Hi. My name is Leslie Smestad. I've lived here in Newburgh for going on six years now. In my personal life, I'm a human resources consultant. I work for multiple different companies doing consultant work, and I'm interested in being on the library board because I I love the community that comes with the library. I love literature. I love reading, and I'm excited to be a bigger part of the community.

Let's see.

Makes any better. Alright. And Sherry?

Hello. I'm Sherry Atkins. Sherry. Great to be here. Excited to be with the library advisory board for another three years. I've been really fortunate to serve on the advisory board and get to work with our incredible library director, Corey, and the staff at the library. We have the best library. It's amazing, and I just would be thrilled to be able to continue to support them in the advisory board role.

So that is a fairly exclusive group. Corey, is it true that there had about you had about 50 applicants for these two positions?

I think I had about 34.

I think we got to thirty six Thirty six. Before we shut it off.

Yes. There were a lot of applicants. We were very fortunate. People were very engaged with the library.

So what we did with that is the ones that were not going to be able to get appointed, we encouraged them to apply for other boards and got several applicants for other boards.

So just to remind council, library board select their own, and we we have the opportunity to confirm them. Go ahead, Rachel.

Fantastic. Were there any questions for this group before we okay. So the next is planning commission, which is Randy, Ricker, Abigail Seitz, and Jordan Sandoval. I'm so sorry. Your name got dropped from the PowerPoint, but you were on there too. Let me promote people. Oh, alright. Let's see. Anyone okay. There we go. Hi.

Hi. I'm Jordan Sandoval. I am a George Fox alumni, and I moved up here for school about six years ago total. And I applied for the planning commission. I actually applied for the library board first, so strongly encouraged. I have not really an experience, but I just really wanna be a part of my community more. And as someone who moved around a lot when I was younger, I really wanna kinda just find my roots here in Newburgh, and I thought this would be a great place to start.

Alright. And I see Abigail and Randy Rickert in the audience. So feel free to come on up and join, and we can pull up some extra chairs if need be. Thank you, guys.

Hi. I'm Abby Seitz. I'm the student planning commissioner. I've been on the planning commission before, and I loved it. I love being a part of my community, and I'm a senior in high school.

Hi. I'm Randy Rickert. I currently serve on the planning commission and and wanted to continue serving. I was appointed about a year and a half ago on the commission. Lived in Newburgh most of my life. I'm a fourth generation Newburgh citizen, so I just love giving back to my community.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Alright. Next is rate review committee. This is Alicia Adams and Einenberkel. Yes.

Hello. My name is Anan Burkle. I'm a student in Newburgh High School, and, I applied for the rate review commission to get more involved with my community.

My name is Alicia Adams. I grew up up on Shalim Mountain, moved abroad for fifteen years. I've been living in East Africa, and I've just moved back this year. Live in the city of Newburgh proper now, and wanted to get involved with city government. I'm a billing data analyst for Yamhill County HHS. I really nerd out on numbers, and I've really enjoyed being on the Newburgh Dundee School District Foundries Committee as well and chewing on the numbers over there as well. So this seemed like a good opportunity for me.

You guys all feel like we should be asking them questions, don't you? Well, I have a question for Einen. That is a fill familiar last name. Are you related to anybody that we know?

Yes. I am related to Corey Burkle.

Well, thank you very much.

Alright. Next is the traffic safety commission. We have James Curie, Andrew Miller, Wiley O'Neil, and Toby Tobin Lindhardt. Sorry, Toby. I've known you too long, Toby.

Just one more.

My name

is Andrew Miller. I've been my little. Good evening. My name is Andrew Miller. I am a commercial driver. I've spent the last fifteen years on the asphalt. I that's why I applied for this commission as I feel like my background may be beneficial to it, and I'm happy to be here.

James Carey. I've been a resident of Newburgh since 2006. I work in the medical field from home, so I spend a lot of time walking the streets of Newburgh in the afternoons, just getting my walks in and get to see sort of the craziness of the traffic sometimes, especially downtown, and, wanted to give back to my community.

Hello. I'm, Toby Linhardt, a freshman at George Fox University. I'm studying civil engineering right now, and so I wanna gain more experience with the traffic safety commission eventually to become an urban planner. And I've served on the traffic safety commission before. It was a few years back, though.

Thank you very much.

Alright. That is our slate of panelists. I do wanna put in a quick ad that we still have student openings. So any college and high school students are encouraged to apply. There's even an opening on the library board for a student. So if you are a college or a high school student interested in serving on the city boards, please get in touch and check out our applications online. But that is

it. Alright.

So we need a motion to approve these or not?

I approve. We I I mean, I move that we approve this whole slate of candidates. It's impressive. Second.

Alright. It's been moved and seconded to to approve the entire slate of candidates for this year. Is there any more discussion? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay. Thank you, folks. Enjoy your 2026, miss City of Newbury.

Thank you. Thank you.

And for those of you who are students, remind your, fellow students that this is the kind of thing that looks good on your, college resumes. So, it's a very good opportunity. Well, that went fairly well. Alright. Seeing no comments, the, meeting is adjourned.

Yes. We're all

Alright, everyone. Welcome to the, 12/15/2025, NEURA meeting. I call this meeting to order. Can I have a roll call, please?

Yes. And I'm just going to say all count commissioners present and accounted for because you're all here.

Copy that. I'm good with that. So on the committee business, it's the appointment of members to the NEURA budget committee.

Right. The budget committee appointments about the same the NEURA budget committee appointments are Christopher Winger and Jim Talt. Jim Talt is unable to be here this evening since his apologies, but he's very willing and eager to serve. And, Chris, if you can come on up and join us at this microphone.

Hello. I'm Chris. Never served on a government committee before. I really wanted to give back to the community. Nur, it sounded really interesting with how to spend tax dollars on bettering Newberg and our surroundings. I was reading up on past minutes and stuff. Kinda went a little bit over my head, but I'm excited to hear about some of the projects that are on board. And, yeah, that's about it. So

Chris, thank you for stepping up and volunteering. I appreciate it. Does anyone have any questions for Chris? Any questions about Jim Talt who's not here? We all read his resume. He's

so much

I think he's qualified. Alright. Any other conversation? Thank you, Chris.

Mister chairman, I move that we approve the, appointees as listed.

Second.

K. It's been moved and seconded, to appoint the the

what did you say?

You said what?

The candidates. Didn't I'll

leave it to you, Rachel. Yeah.

The motion was to appoint members as presented.

Any further discussion? Alright. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Alright. Motion passes unanimously. Meeting's adjourned.