Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

So it's 07:00, so I would like to call the meeting to order. Faye, could you do or is there anybody else on do we have a quorum?

We do. It looks Jose is on Vine, yeah, was on Zoom, and then Matt and Jason's here. So Okay. That's a quorum for us.

Okay. Could you do a roll call then, please, Faye?

Jason Dale? Here. Linda Newton Curtis?

Here.

Matthew Mansfield?

Here.

Jose Valabondo?

Here.

And Randy Rickert is absent. Kayla Maverick is absent, and Chris Wright is absent.

K. Are there any public comments this evening?

None that we have.

Okay. Any questions about the consent calendar from 11/13/2025? Hearing none, could we have a motion?

Madam chair, I move that we approve the planning commission meeting minutes from the 11/13/2025 meeting.

I'll second. Do we have a second?

Oh, sorry. Yes. I'll second.

Okay. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

The motion passes. So moving on to number five on the agenda this evening, new business. A presentation by the city recorder, Rachel Thomas, of the newly adopted city council board commission and committee guidelines and the outline for the implications for the planning commission. So staff, would you like to take that away?

Madam Chair, this is Director Siegel. I just wanted to introduce Rachel. As you've noted, she's here to present the newly adopted City Council Board and Commission guidelines. And staff have also prepared a summary of what the existing planning commission guidelines say with respect to the new citywide guidelines. And there are a few areas where there's some crossover.

There's a number of areas that we believe are outdated and in some ways in conflict with existing guidelines. So our objective tonight is to solicit your feedback and direction on whether we can retire the existing guidelines for the Planning Commission if the new citywide guidelines would suffice or if there are particular elements of the Planning Commission guidelines that you'd like to see carried forward, and then we would incorporate those into the citywide guidelines for purposes of the Planning Commission. And I will note that, and Faye can go over this in more detail, that the hearing scripts that the planning commission uses for land use hearings, quasi judicial hearings, legislative hearings are somewhat unique to the Planning Commission. So we are expecting that those will continue to carry forward and be updated to reflect current state laws. So with that, I'll hand it over to Rachel Thomas, and take it away.

Hello.

Good evening. Thank you for having me here tonight. So I wanted to go over a little bit of the new council and committee rules that City Council passed last month. These rules were something that were already in existence. There were council rules, there were committee rules, they were largely the same, but they were two separate documents.

In this update, council approved merging them into one so that we don't have to maintain two separate works, with the same information. So, I wanted to go I'm going go over the rules, I'm going go over some of the major things in there, and then I'll be happy to take any questions that you have. So first of all, I wanted to give you an idea of why they chose update this and why we want to have these uniform practices. City Council put it in their council goals for this year that they wanted to update these rules because they were having trouble with some of the scripts and other details in them, and they found the rules to be a little bit convoluted and difficult to follow at times. So they instructed me to rework them and to check with them and to incorporate the new practices they had put into place for City Council, and at the same time said, go ahead and let's work on the committee rules as well.

So they were combined. We want to have uniform practices across all of the boards, committees, commissions of the city in order to protect us from complaints. People saying, well, you know, this commission did it this way and this commission did it this way. We want it to be as clear as possible. We want clarity for the public so they know how to engage with city commissions. And then we want to be able to make sure that we are legally compliant. So that's the key one, we want to make sure that we're following all the legal requirements and council requirements. And let's see. There we go. Just a moment, we'll get the slides progress.

Right. So the first thing I wanna go over is the hierarchy of rules. Obviously, as you know how law works, it's federal law, state law, state rules and regulations, and then we go in the city level. It's our charter code, then these council rules, and then any committee set by laws or rules, and then anything that's not covered by committee rules is covered by Robert's rules for small boards. That was one of the changes that was brought in with this committee rules as we moved to Robert's rules of order for small boards versus the larger version because it is simpler and it works for our size.

Our boards, the largest one we have is nine people, so we don't need to be looking at a set of rules that's set for groups of 50. So Robert's Rules, I'll go over Robert's Rules for small boards in a moment, but it's just a simplified version of the larger Robert's Rules. Largely, it's what you're following already, but we want to formally adopt it. So what this means is that these rules that were passed by City Council do supersede the bylaws and rules that the Planning Commission has, established already. So if there are conflicts, the city council approved rules here will, whitten out.

So they they take precedence. You can generally make rules at the lower level that are more restrictive than at the higher levels, you can't open it up and say never mind we're going to make, you know, public comment three times longer or something like that. You have to stick to stick within what was already there and then you can get more restrictive. However, we also want to make sure that any specific rules made by our boards, committees, and commissions still coincides well with what council has established. We want to make sure that things are cohesive.

We don't want to create confusion. So, you did have a bylaws and operating rules for the Planning Commission before. There are some changes and conflicts that Faye is gonna go over after I'm done sharing what these rules are about. However, there was also committee rules before, and from what we've discovered, I believe some of those conflicts already existed. So this was a a needed change and a needed update for a while.

Alright. So next is Robert's Rules for Smallboards. So the main tenants of Robert's Rules for Smallboards are don't invoke the finer points of Robert's Rules of Order. So we're not going down to find little details and be using that to get on other people's cases. We wanna keep it as simple as possible. A quorum must be present to conduct a meeting. All members are equal by the meeting body. You have to get, recognition from the presiding officer before you speak, and then side discussions and personal remarks or attacks are not allowed. So we're not gonna say, you know, well, you would say that because x y z. That wouldn't be appropriate.

Of course, except just now, isn't No. Giving an example. So this would cover anything that's not clarified by one of the other rules, the charter, the code, one of our city things. So if there's something we're not sure how to do, with parliamentary procedure, this is where we're going to go to look. And this is in the main Robert's Rules for Order of Order book. I have a cheat sheet that I can send to you all as well if you'd like, but basically this is saying these things right here. Get recognition. Everyone has a vote. You're all equal, and keep it simple. So some clarity on quorums.

One question we've had in the past is whether or not vacancies count towards a quorum. And this has come up especially with our student commissioners, and I will let you know we are working on some, alternatives for student commissioners, and the mayor has appointed one for you guys for next year. We'll have Abby Seitz back actually, if council approves on the fifteenth. So vacancies on your board do not count towards a quorum. If no one is appointed towards in a seat, then that doesn't count.

Quorums are mandatory to conduct business or make any decisions. And if you don't have a quorum present at the beginning of a meeting, any member of the committee may instruct staff to do a call of the house, which basically means we're going to do everything we can to get a quorum here. We're going call people, we're going to I mean theoretically we could go get them, but that's probably not going to happen. But we'll call people, we'll email people, we'll try and figure out where they are and if they can get online or come join us. But if within a few minutes, a little while, you can't get a quorum, you'll have to just end the meeting.

Now quorum is also important for serial meetings, and you guys have heard a little bit about serial meetings in the past. The serial meetings are the idea that in serial communication, so any communication that happens one at a time or a little bit at a time, you could get a quorum of members discussing a topic that's relevant to your board or commission. And it's a strange idea, but the idea is we don't want anything that is a public decision being discussed outside of a public meeting. This is Oregon law. And so if you're having a casual conversation, let's say one, you know, counselor A is talking to counselor B or commissioner B in the grocery store about something that's about to come before you.

And then later commissioner B is out on a walk and runs into commissioner C and they have a conversation. Well now you've got three members of that board involved in a conversation about something, and then one more person gets involved and suddenly you have a public meeting violation because a quorum of members were discussing and debating a concept that's coming before them outside of a public meeting. Now this also applies to a shared Google Doc for, working on a project. This would apply to email chains, which is why we always BCC you. Now thank goodness scheduling things and things like that do not count.

You can schedule meetings. You can all respond to something, to schedule. That's fine. But you can't even all respond to an email chain or you might have a violation. And it also applies to social media and where this can get really tricky.

If someone could post on their own social media page, hey, I think x y z about something happening in the community, and another member of the board likes it, and someone else comments, and someone else way down the comment chain comments, and they didn't even know there were four of them on there, and all of a sudden you've technically got a violation. And you could go that could be brought to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. So I wanna help you guys avoid those, so that's why I'm going over it in a little bit of detail again here. So for the planning commission, when you have a full commission, your quorum is seven. Even when you have eight with a student commissioner, was or sorry.

Your quorum is four. Your full board is seven and is eight with a student commissioner. So your quorum is four no matter what, unless you have vacant positions. So if you went down to six, then your quorum well, your quorum would still be four because it's 50% plus one. But if you go down to five, your quorum would only be three. So

alright.

I just interrupt you. Yep.

Mhmm. Is it possible to, share the slides on the video? Sharing on Zoom. I did not. Oh.

Yeah. Let's let me help Faye with that for just a second unless she's got it. Can you

see Thank you. Alright. Yeah. That's perfect. Thanks so much.

I'm sorry you couldn't see those.

But I was listening intently.

Well, good. I, you know, I try and keep it to bullet points on the slides. So the next thing is public comments and testimony, and this is one of the areas that gets kind of tricky. Consistency in how we handle public comments across all of our boards, committees, and commissions is really really important because it's an element in our defense against First Amendment or public meeting law violation complaints. Now one key detail that you should know is that Oregon is a has a presence law but not a participation law.

So everyone has the right to view and see our meetings, but they do not have the right necessarily to speak at our meetings. So public participation and public comment is reserved for things like hearings. However, our council has elected to allow people to give public comment in addition to what is legally mandated by law. Now they have reduced this in these new rules, so the Planning Commission only receives public comment relevant to your work. So it has to be something on your agenda or relevant to the planning commission. If someone shows up here with an irrelevant comment, they are referred to city council for that comment.

Rachel, I'm sorry. May I just ask a clarifying question? So the city council has a general citizen or public comment period at the beginning of their meeting and so does the planning commission, and the planning commission is also following statewide land use planning requirements that say the planning commission, in addition to serving as a planning commission, is the body that is our citizen advisory committee for for land use matters. So we wouldn't wanna take away that opportunity to comment, Although someone may come to you with an item that's not on the agenda and it may be a gray area as to whether it's actually within your purview, I'm I'm assuming that you would wanna on the side of we're gonna listen. We're gonna hear you.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, 100% on the side of listening, on the side of that. For the most part, we're going to want to handle this in the registration process. So if someone comes up during registration and faces that it is completely irrelevant, it's about his, well, let's see, something completely irrelevant. It's a traffic safety issue or they just want to tell you the history of their grandparents' life in Newburgh, that's not relevant to your board, so that needs to go to city council. So at the time of registration, she would say, you know, this isn't relevant to this board, so you'll need to bring this to city council.

Per city council rules, we only accept comment directly relevant to the content of this commission. And now this has been approved by our legal team, but I will tell you also if someone starts speaking and it's not relevant, just let them use their time. So it's that's kind of where we're at. We're going to ask people to respect this, but it is very hard to tell someone to stop speaking. So this is something we will try to get people to comply with for the most part.

The big things with this too, so that's that's the biggest change there is that you no longer have to accept those. And if there's an ad hoc committee meeting, ad hoc committees do not have to accept public comment at all unless that's the specific purview of that committee. So if they were formed specifically to listen to the public, then they do accept it, and if they were just formed to work on something then they don't have to accept public comment. And this just makes our meetings flow more smoothly and it directs comments where they belong. The next thing is registration, so every person is required to register before giving public comment.

Now during a public hearing if someone says I want to speak and they haven't finished signing the dotted line, have them fill it out as soon as they're done speaking, but we do want to make sure everyone does register. For general comments that are not in a public hearing, the deadline for registering is at the start of the meeting. So once the meeting is called to order, they can no longer submit a registration. So they need to show up early and register. For public hearings, they can register up until that hearing is called to a close.

Does that make sense? And then written comment has to be submitted ahead of time in order to be included in the packet for the meeting. So to be included in the agenda packet, it has to be submitted two days in advance. These are all things that staff generally handle for you, but we wanna make sure you're aware of them. If someone does not do that, they always have the option of bringing written copies to the council and handing them out or to to your meeting and handing them out.

That is also an option for written comment if they can't meet that deadline ahead of time. That handout is preserved in the meeting record as well. But the other big change that council made is they no longer have want written comment read aloud during the meeting. So before, we would say if someone requests it, we'll use a robotic voice to read it aloud. Now we're not unless there's an ADA accommodation needed. So if someone comes in, they need an ADA accommodation for speech, we'll do that for them. We'll make that happen. But otherwise, we don't read written comments aloud during meetings.

As in staff or the commissioners wouldn't be reading someone else's comments from the written material. They can read it.

Yeah. They can read it themselves. They can have a friend read it for them that, you know, whatever they'd like to do. Someone can bring in a written, you know, comment and read it, but we are not going to be reading it for them. Part of this is none of you want necessarily your voice recorded out there saying something you don't agree with.

Right? In this day and age, we don't necessarily want that flooding around the Internet. And part of it is just for keeping our meetings in order, so this was something that council requested. For online and phone participation, we do require that people preregister, and the reason for this is to avoid Zoom bombing incidents. This is something that has happened to Newburgh, actually, and it's happened at many other cities where people will get on and suddenly raise their hands for public comment and then say horrific things.

And while this doesn't completely prohibit that from happening, it puts a low barrier in there to keep people from doing things that are really inappropriate during meetings or taking over a meeting with public comment. So what will happen is on a chat site somewhere, someone will share a link and say, okay, everyone go to this meeting, and we've had it happen here. It's not fun, and we don't wanna face that again. So this is a low barrier that keeps us able to say, no. We're not going to allow you to do that to us. So it's just noon the day of the meeting. People need to preregister. It's on the website. They can do it at any point. And if they don't, we're out of luck. So we hold to that pretty strongly. Do you have a question about that? No. Yeah. Yeah.

Zoom bombing. It's an interesting thing that's happened, and it's it's not not good. There's been other cities where it's literally shut down meetings. They'll have hours and hours of it, so you don't want to face that. And it's usually, you know, it contains hate speech and really hurtful comments and horrible stuff that you don't want to hear.

So, people do have first amendment rights when they're speaking. We can't censor them. So you may not like what they're saying and you can't stop, but you can't stop them for what they're saying. You can stop them for how they do it. So if they are attacking or threatening someone, if they're screaming, yelling, anything violent, then that is when we can call them to order and tell them that that's over and you're not going to participating.

I have a script that I can share with you guys on how to let people know, but generally what we say is, excuse me, that condemn conduct, thank you, violates our conduct rules for these meetings. If x y z continues, you will be asked to leave. And then you give them another chance. If they continue, you ask them to leave. If they will not leave willingly, you can call the police into here in here to trespass them.

I was just gonna say cops are right there.

Yep, and they will come. And if honestly, if we're expecting a really contentious meeting and we think something might happen and you let us know ahead of time, can work to have someone here. It's just going to be here. Like I said, we have public attendance laws, but not participation laws. So if someone says, well, it's my right to speak. No. It's actually something we give you. So that's something to know. But please do, every single person should have the same restriction. So if it's a if you have to change time limits from five minutes to three minutes because you have so many, everybody gets three minutes.

So we wanna keep treat everyone the exact same way in public comment. Alright. Next thing to go over is dip and all the details of public comment are in the rules. If you wanna know more detail about it, generally, handles that. So you don't need to worry too much, but you should be aware. So debate. Every member shall address the presiding officer and get recognized before they speak and focus in on the question at hand when you're having a debate. I understand that boards like this. Sometimes you have a little bit of casual conversation in there, a little bit discussion. That's not formal debate, so don't worry as much about that.

But once you get into formal debate situations, you need to be recognized, stick to the topic, and do not interrupt them until it is unless you're calling someone to order. So if someone is off topic or out of order or behaving in another way, can always say point of order say what's happening that should not be happening and then the chair will decide whether or not that person was out of order. If the chair does not decide or chooses, you know, you don't agree with the decision that the board can always call another point of order and vote on it as a board. So just be aware of that. Go over these quickly.

So for voting emotions, there are two different types of voting you can do. So you can do a roll call vote, which is, you know, call each name, get the vote, or voice vote like you did earlier. Say aye. Say nay. Both of those are fine. But in Oregon law, private ballots are prohibited. So in no situation can you write your votes down privately and submit them, and we have to record all votes in the minutes. So we can't even say it was unanimous. We have to actually spell out the names and say yes every time even if it was unanimous. Motions always need to be seconded except in special circumstances, which we'll get into in a moment.

Amendments to any motions have to be resolved before the main motion. So if someone says, hey. I wanna amend that motion, then you have to vote on whether or not that amendment is going to happen and then go back to the motion. The person who proposes a motion can withdraw it at any point. Any tie votes fail. Motions are always restated before a vote, so a chair can always ask a staff member to restate that, but you'll see the mayor does that to me frequently during council meetings. He'll say, Rachel, can you repeat that motion for me? Because I'm scribbling it down as it said usually. So that's okay to do, but we do, after debate, restate the motion before the vote is taken. Unless it's just, you know, motion second go, that's fine.

But if there's debate, restate it. Motions can only be made once, and an item is closed once the meeting ends. So once something has been decided, it can be reconsidered during that same meeting. But once a meeting ends, you can't go back to that topic. And we generally say rule of thumb is three months before that similar or similar topic should come back to a board.

So once something's decided, that stands. If you think you're gonna need to reconsider it, you need to reconsider it at that meeting. Part of this is because we end up, you know, going one direction and working with the public in that way. And if the board then reconsiders it, you know, a month later, then we have a big problem. We've already done all this work or we've approved something, So we need to our our yes to be our yes, and our no to be our no. Does that make sense? Okay. Alright. This is a basic motion script. You guys know how to do this.

So make the motion, second the motion, discussion, say the motion again, and then do the vote. And then the presiding officers or the chair of the meeting should announce the results. These are some just useful motions you might wanna know. Laying the matter on the table is to put something on an indefinite hold. Just you know, we're not gonna talk about this anymore.

Call for the previous question is to end debate and immediately vote. So if you feel the debate is just circling and going on and on and you're done and the discussion does not need to continue, any person can call for the previous question. So if you call call for the question, all debate ends, and you go to a vote. To post and you do need a second for that, but it does not have to be voted on. So once someone has called the question and it's been second, you go to the vote. To postpone is to delay to a specific time, so you postpone to a certain time. To refer is to send it somewhere else. To amend, of course, change your motion. Point of order is to call someone out for violating the rules, or decorum, and to adjourn, of course. So just be aware.

If you think meeting's going too long and you want it to be done, you can make a motion to adjourn, but you won't do that while I'm speaking. Right? Okay. Gotta get you laughing here now. I know Robert's rules. It was not my husband who wrote them. For those of you who know that my husband's name is Robert. So ethics, stuck a room, and outside statements. When you speak, you need to consider whether you are speaking for the commission or speaking for yourself. So once a decision is made, when you speak about it publicly, you need to only state the official decision of the body.

So you're not going to say, well, I don't agree. This is what the body said. Unless you say specifically speaking in my opinion, this is what should happen. But the official opinion of the committee, if you are officially speaking for the city or this committee at any point, is what was decided in the meeting. And this can be hard sometimes.

Things are decided you may not agree with, but if you're speaking on behalf of the committee, you speak the official voice of the committee. If you are speaking about a city manner and you are using your own opinion, please make a point to state that. And I would recommend doing this in social media, any statements to the press, and even be careful in casual conversations because we live in a very small town and people overhear you in public. So be conscious of what you're saying. Decorum wise, don't cause undue delays to the meetings, follow the rules, and the presiding officer is responsible for keeping Decorum.

So if there is something that is causing a distraction in the meeting, something like that, they may call you out for it. And again, you can all do that through point of order as well. Okay, absences. And I know you guys have dealt with this a little bit. There's a difference between excused and unexcused absences. Excused absences are anytime you have let them know ahead of time and the chair finds that it's valuable. If there's a debate whether it should be excused or unexcused, then the the board would vote on it. We generally want to on the side of letting people be excused if they've let you know ahead of time. Right? Let's give people grace that we have lives outside of these meetings.

You must not have more than 25% of your meetings as unexcused absences or you will be removed from the position. Now what this would look like is if a member had too many absences like you've seen, you attempt to contact them figure it out. It's always great to bring them back in and get things rolling again. May have been they just lost access to their city email account and missed a meeting and we want to see if we can figure that out. But if it's become a real problem, the committee will confirm that they are now disqualified because they've missed too many meetings, and then your staff will inform me and I will mark their position as vacant, notify them, and then it will be open for the mayor to appoint someone new.

So if you're gonna be absent, please contact your chair and whoever your staff liaison or liaisons are. So in your in this situation, you'd be contacting Scott and Faye and letting them know that you would not be here and and Linda so that they can excuse that absence. Makes sense? Easy stuff. Alright.

Schedule changes. Meetings may always be canceled for a lack of quorum or lack of business. So if the chair is looking at the agenda coming up and says there's really nothing on this, please cancel the meeting if you'd like to. You know, staff is always working with chairs to set meeting agendas. Any meeting outside your normal regular schedule, which is your once a month schedule, is called a special meeting.

So if you need to have an extra meeting for any reason, or you're rescheduling, that's a special meeting. And they have they can be held and you can schedule them, but they have to be scheduled in cooperation with my office to avoid conflicts. So please do discuss dates and times at this meeting, but do not consider it formal until staff gets back to you and says, yes, there are no conflicts. We have to make sure that rooms are available, staff is available, that different people are on multiple boards are not gonna have a conflict. And then chairs have the authority to call a special meeting.

It can also be scheduled at the request of three members. So if you think a meeting needs to be held and the chair is saying no, you can go around them and and get three members to say, we all agree we want to have this. Now be careful about causing a quorum, but that is a scheduling thing, so you're pretty good there. Like I said, discuss those dates and times. Don't confirm the meeting until they've checked for scheduling contacts with my, with my office.

This is another thing that's handled by your staff generally, agenda creation, but I wanted to let you know what the deadlines are. The legal deadline to get an agenda out is forty eight hours prior to a meeting, but the council deadline that they have put is seven days ahead of a meeting. And they have requested that committees try and do this, and it's highly recommended, but it's not mandatory for committees. You can always put out supplementary items after your original agenda goes out. So if more needs to be added, go for it.

For council, we have some pretty pretty strict deadlines about that just for clarity and actually having the time to get it out, but your committee can choose to add supplementary items to your agenda. The agenda has to include topics of discussion, date, time, place, and ADA accommodations, how to receive those. And then some actions like land use hearings require further notice and need to be addressed on a case by case basis. So staff knows when something needs to be noticed further in advance and posting an agenda is considered an appropriate public notice. So there are some items that you definitely have to post a week in advance in order to be in compliance.

You can always, as a member of the board, request that an item be added to an agenda. You can do this ahead of time by contacting your chair and your staff liaison and requesting it, or you can do it at the beginning of the meeting. So at the very beginning of the meeting, you can say, I'd like to request an item be added to this agenda. Here's the item I'd like to add. And if you get a second and it's approved, then it will be added to the agenda.

The other thing is you can discuss things during your meeting that are not on your agenda. You can even make decisions that weren't on your agenda, but you need to be very careful about this. So, some some things like hearings you cannot hold without prep or notice, but you can have discussions, can do things that were not on the agenda in the beginning. So if something happens during the week and you bring it to that meeting, you're okay. Is committees have flexibility in the order of your agenda, so please set them up the way that that works for you.

Scripts have been provided in the council rules, but those are for council and they need to be adapted for other bodies. So Scott mentioned this earlier, the scripts that we have don't necessarily work for the planning commission, but they are creating separate ones for you guys to use, and they're just a tool to help you go through the parliamentary procedure. It's it's convoluted. And agendas are all published by staff in accordance with legal deadlines, you don't need to worry about it. But if you are aware that an agenda has not been published and the meeting has not been noticed and you hold a meeting, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission will find you individually, not the staff.

So please be aware of that. Alright. Minutes also are created by the staff, and then they are signed by the chair or presiding officer. One thing that a lot of boards don't know is you do not have to approve them in session unless you desire to or you have committee rules or bylaws that require it. The council and committee rules and charter and code do not require this, and Oregon law does not require it either.

Part of this is because there's a recording of all of these now too, so we have a actual recording of it and then we have minutes. So if you do not want to be approving minutes in your sessions anymore, that can be dropped, just so you're aware. They do have to include that detailed record of votes I mentioned earlier, and they have to include any conflict declarations. So if you declare conflict of interest, that will be in the minutes officially. So appointments to boards are done either by the mayor or the NURA chair, depending on if they're a Newburgh Urban Renewal Agency board or city board.

They are ratified by the council or NURA, and every single time your term is up, you have to apply. So with our new system that we're using for boards, committees, and, commissions, it's a really simple process. You'll get an email saying, please reapply. You click it. It will pull up your last application, and then you say, please file this again, and you're done.

You can change anything that you'd like to. We already talked about removals for missing more than 25% of the meetings. And please be aware that you're going to get emails from onboard gov with different reminders for your certifications, for renewals, things like that. That's the system we're using to manage all of our, city boards, committees, commissions. And you should be checking your city emails in order to get this information.

I know we try and sometimes send them to your private too just to get you information, but we really don't wanna make private, and public email accounts. So another thing is, staff interactions are detailed in these rules. So, you should keep your staff interactions to day to day business. So you are not going to come in with a complex issue and assign staff work. That is the city manager's job.

If the board votes that they think something should occur, then that city manager gets that idea and will tell staff. So generally how that happens is staff will say, okay, the board has approved this. How would you like this to be assigned? And city manager decides what staff is doing what work. So we just say, you know that you don't get to tell staff what to do. So you're not our bosses, except you are kind of, but not. You shouldn't be undermining staff either. So if staff gives a decision and someone comes to you and says, don't think that's fair, and you go, well, I think they're wrong. I'm gonna go talk to them about that. Please don't do that.

You can listen to someone. You can show compassion, but talk to staff before you say anything like that. The rules also clarify the staff have weekends off. So unless there's emergency, don't call us after six p. M. On Fridays before six a. M. On Monday morning. Sound good? Alright. But if there is an emergency, please do reach out. And most of us don't mind an email. We just won't answer it until Monday. Keep in mind that a simple issue, something that's gonna take less than two hours to answer, a little bit of research is totally okay. Something that's part of our day to day jobs, please do reach out.

But if there's something more complex you need assistance with, that's probably going to need to be voted on as your entire commission before that happens. Alright. If you have questions about these rules, I'm available and my and my deputy is available at any point. Melissa and I are happy to help you. You can email us at city recorder newburg oregon dot gov anytime.

We respond very quickly, and we're happy to help clarify things. If you find a problem, if you wanna discuss something that's going on or get more information, we're always here to help with that. But, of course, your first point of contact is generally gonna be your staff liaisons. So what questions do you have for me? Nothing mind blowing in there, hopefully. Yeah.

So for the relevancy of public comment, you said that we defer anyone who has a comment that isn't relevant to the planning commission or the in to the planning commission in general or to the agenda on the planning commission's

meeting?

Yeah. It's planning commission in general. So if it is relevant to the planning commission in general, it's about land use, it's about something to do with development in your in the city, that's fine. If it's on the agenda, that's even better. But anything that's relevant to this commission is fine. If it's irrelevant to your work in any way, then it should be referred to the appropriate body, which might be, you know, affordable housing, it might be the historic preservation commission, Or if it's not really something that's covered by one of our committees, then it should be referred to city council for general comment.

That makes sense. And then is there ever comment on that same line that isn't applicable to city council and they can direct public to a different, space, or is is that not a thing?

Yeah. I, is not they've elected to just allow any general comment at city council. They so that's the way their rules work right now, is that if it's not relevant, they're still going to hear it during their public comment period.

Rachel, thing and Chair, one thing that

I would

add regarding land use decisions or land use applications, the general public may not know when and how to participate in certain hearings. So you might have people appear during a work session on an item and feel that they're making a comment that is then going to be recorded as testimony and considered in the decision. But if it's only a work session, that may not be the case. So we will encourage and we'll ask the commission to encourage people to appear and participate during the hearings process so that their testimony becomes part of the record and is considered. It's just a of a nuance.

People will show up and say, I already showed up and I said my piece, and they didn't consider it. Well, if it wasn't during the hearings process, that might explain why. Anyway, just a tip, and I know that you're aware of that, but just a reminder.

Yes, thank you for that. Any other questions? Okay. So thank you for the presentation, Rachel. Could we move on to the next item on the agenda by staff?

Yeah, thank you, chair. If it would be okay with the commission, we were wanting to sort of facilitate a discussion or at least get some direction from you all on whether it's appropriate to retire the former or the current Planning Commission guidelines, that they're conflicting with the new city council guidelines, although there may be some provisions that you'd want to carry forward. So I did and we were prepared, Faye is prepared, to discuss or go over just some of the key points that the commission could choose to carry forward or that you may want to consider, but you're not necessarily required to do that. So we're prepared to discuss that if if if you would like that. So, Chair, is that acceptable acceptable then?

Linda, can you hear us?

Yes. I can hear you.

Oh, okay. I'm just checking.

Oh, sorry. Was I pressing the mute button when I should have been pressing the unmute?

Alright. So everybody got the memo that just kind of highlighted between the current the rules for that the planning commission passed in 2022 and versus the city the newer rules that just got passed by the city council in 2025. And just some of the items that we really kinda wanted to highlight that and have it for discussion. If you choose to keep the planning commission rules, then the items that are pertain to the planning commission would still be in play. But a lot of the, ones for the newer ones from that were just passed does a lot more clearing up and cleaning up of, expanding of the planning commission rules.

And there's just a few items that, would really need to be discussed, which is the, one regarding oh, let's see. It's on the piece the one where we the p c p c sheesh. 7.14 where, in the planning commission rules, it states that if someone is any any ex parte or any vote needs to be not vote abstaining from voting, they need to retire to the lobby that's not in the current rules. So that's something that I mean, we could have rules that are stricter than the current rules, but is that something that we need to just that needs to be discussed if we can continue to keep the planning commission rules from 2022 on if we still want people to leave the room if they're abstaining from voting due to any ex parte contact or conflicts of interest. And the other item that we would like to need to discuss is, Rachel brought it up, the voting on minutes if the city count city planning commission still wants to vote on the minutes that we do or just have them signed and just assume that everybody is okay with them.

And there is

I'll speak on that one real quick since we're just kinda going over It's rare, but there has been instances in the past where there's been mistakes or corrections or that sort of thing, noticed by commissioners in the minutes. And so it's probably a good idea to retain that, I would think. It's just as a potential safeguard.

I would agree with that. Other comments?

Have we experienced an issue with the, a commissioner needing to abstain from voting and sitting out in the lobby?

Yes.

Yes. It's again, it's rare. I've had to do it once years ago, except I didn't I I guess they didn't tell me about the procedures. I just sat in the back and was quiet, so I don't know.

I've also had to do it a couple of times.

Yeah, if I can speak on the the legal rule with that is if you have a conflict of interest, you are you remove yourself from the dais, so the seats up here, but you can stay in the room legally. If it is a concern about ex parte context, such as how you have Councillor Tergeson step out of the room so she'll be able to participate in council meetings, that's wise. It's not necessarily legally required either, but it's a wise decision.

I don't see an issue with retaining that rule. Anybody else?

Six zero one to me. Whatever.

Yeah. Were there any other things that we should discuss today?

Well, did anyone have any did was everybody able to review the, memo with the comparisons, and did anyone have any questions or concerns about the ones that superseded the planning commission rules or any or if any thoughts on if we should just go with the new city council board and committee and commission guideline or and not keep the planning commission rules, or do we want both?

I was not able to get through all of the the memo. Sorry. So still kinda reviewing it. Curious about the testimony. So if I understand this correctly, we're, for the most part, reducing time to match what counsel is doing, or are we adding time?

Yeah. It's we are reducing it because to match the new rules with commission because we had a longer time period.

So, Faye, if I'm I may not be reading this correctly, but I'm looking at let's see, it's under CBCC four dash Roman numeral two D four presentation of the case and Planning Commission guideline 7.7. So it looks like the city council and citywide guidelines are twenty minutes for the applicant or the proponent, and the current Planning Commission guideline is fifteen minutes. Is that right?

That is correct.

Okay.

Yeah. Was going to say actually we're adding time.

Yeah. So you could choose to continue to be more restrained or more restrictive, or you could default to twenty minutes on that. And then for others who are testifying, it looks like the city council is affording five minutes to all parties and ten minutes for rebuttal. And planning commission presently is five minutes, so that's that's comparable.

I'm definitely a proponent right now of increasing, you know, the time that they're given. So far, it hasn't been an issue, but, I think there's definitely been times where it'd be good to make sure we hear the whole story.

Usually, that's, you can discretion of the chair to go longer, or you can make a motion and say, okay. We want this particular applicant has more, needs more time, and so you could do it that way, like, on a more case basis instead of having to change the actual rule.

I'm

sorry. I haven't had time to read through these either. I'm wondering if we should table this until the next meeting so that we do have time to read through this thoroughly.

Is there a deadline on deciding this?

I think the the default, if I may, would be that we would we would follow the citywide city council rules and guidelines unless or until the planning commission adopted guidelines that were specific to the commission, and in which case they could be more restrictive as we've heard.

I'd be fine with

that. Good. Staff can be prepared to bring this back, to put it back on your agenda at a future date per the chair's direction on that?

I would prefer that if that also works for the other commissioners. Let's go with that then, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Rachel.

Okay. So I'm just looking for the next item from staff.

Yeah. Thank you, chair. This is Scott Siegel. And we have two new planning commissioners who are potentially two new planning commissioners. The city council will consider approving the mayor's nominations for for the two open seats. Commissioner Maverick did not choose to reapply. So and so your commission, we we hope, will will be full when you meet in January. Other updates? Nothing tentatively scheduled at this point that I'm aware of for January unless planner, Chromy, or Faye, whatever. Nope.

Okay. I did want to make the Planning Commission aware of one item that we expect will be coming before City Council that is somewhat of a land use item, and it's unique in that when we have development applications in the unincorporated part of the county that are within the urban reserves, our urban growth management agreement with Yanhill County provides for a referral to the city, and comment can be made by the city council on the application, which is unusual. I haven't seen that procedure in other jurisdictions where I've worked. But we do anticipate there's a partition application off Zimri Road in that portion of our urban reserve that they filed with Yamhill County. The county referred it to the planning division here, and we're working with the applicant to bring that to the city council for their comments.

And why would we want to do that? Why does our urban growth management agreement provide for that? It's really about coordination and helping guide, to the extent that we can, development that occurs within the county so that as those areas are brought into the urban growth boundary and eventually annexed, the development in that area can accommodate or absorb the additional development that would be allowed under city zoning. So it's really just more of an advisory role that we're in and that the council's asked to provide feedback on that. I just wanted you to be aware of that because you may see that come before the city council, and it's a planning item that does not go to the planning commission.

And other than that, I do not have any other updates. I'll look to my colleagues. Jeremiah, do you have any updates, anything?

Sure. I'm not sure it actually come before this commission, but we had an interdepartment meeting with, engineering and public works folks. There might be some changes coming to the process for right away closures. I don't believe that code section applies to land use, but just to make you guys aware, you may see that coming for council before too long, probably sometime early next year. One other thing I was gonna mention, the Tawanton Valley Fire and Rescue stations, all the temporaries have been approved and through the appeal period. The main station has also been approved, but it's still in the appeal period. So you could likely see that work starting up, start of next year too, you know, downtown here. So

Thank you. Faye, do you have anything?

Well, I just wanted to bring up the response to the time email that I sent out, and we were the responses I got back, it seems like as a compromise, 06:30 would be a good time for everybody to, for the new meeting time. Does anyone have any thoughts on that or anything? Do we have to do a

Okay. It has to

be published by the city recorder's office, so that's why we're working toward getting an answer on that.

So does anyone is everybody seem okay with the 06:30 time instead of seven?

Thanks, Chase.

Yeah. It all works. Not a problem. Would that be happening January? Yes.

January would be the start time. So if you have any objections, straight them now.

No objections from me.

Thank you. And that concludes the staff updates.

Thank you so much. Any updates from commissioners? Okay. Hearing none. Meeting adjourned. Thank you so much, everybody.