City Council - Regular Meeting

Monday, March 16, 2026
Transcript
Video
Agenda

About this meeting

Government Body
City Council
Meeting Type
City Council
Location
North Plains, OR
Meeting Date
March 16, 2026

Transcript

494 sections (from 568 segments)

0:180

Council meeting order at 07:07, 03/16/2026. You would please write for the pledge allegiance.

0:491

Mayor Dunbrough?

0:520

Present.

0:532

Councilor DeForge?

0:540

Present.

0:552

Councilor Hagedorn? Here. Councilor Papen? Present. Councilor Redding? Here. Present. Councilor Weber?

1:023

Present. Thank you.

1:06 – 1:490

At this time, I will entertain a motion on the consent agenda and the minutes from March 2. Or I won't. So moved. Councilor Weber. Councilor Weber moves for approval of the minutes and the consent agenda. Do I have a second? Second. I'll move forward. Counselor, board seconds. Counselor Roper moves. Counselor DePorte seconds. All in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed? Alright. Looking carries. Next, we have public comments. And, Laurie, just this one? Yes. I did.

1:49 – 2:200

So I'm sure. Alright. So as a reminder on public comments, please step to the podium. State your name and your if you're speaking on behalf of an organization, and you have three minutes to handle your resident, pro resident, or not in the city or non resident. Sorry. And as a reminder, council will not respond during public comment period but may bring it up during council reports. And with that, Emily Waldron for strong doubts.

2:234

Just before I start, I

2:24 – 3:095

think councilor Weber then ready to microphone is off because it wasn't as well. Hi. My name is Emily Waldron. I'm here on behalf of Strong Towns North Plains. We have members in all of 97133. I, myself, am in 97133 as well. At the last work session, BEH referenced resolution one two five zero. It cannot be found online, so a member of Strong Towns made a public records request for it. Resolution one two five zero was approved in 2005. In it, we found that the council approved a spending limit of $25,000 for certain contracts.

3:09 – 3:565

Above this amount, the city manager must seek approval from the council. In April 2025, during the biennial budget approval process, an appendix was added to the budget raising the limit to 50,000. We find no evidence from the budget meetings that any of you were told when you voted that you were also voting to increase the spending limit. We contend that even if you were aware, you were not told that by doing so, you were amending Resolution twelve fifty. There is no evidence that we could find that Resolution twelve fifty has ever been amended to raise the limit or that has been amended allowing the city manager to raise the limit by simply inserting an increased limit into the appendix of the budget.

3:57 – 4:255

We urge the council to follow proper procedure. If you wish to increase the limit so that you can only improve contracts above $50,000 amend resolution twelve fifty. If you are more comfortable with the $25,000 limit, then invoke resolution one two five zero and remove the limit the city manager inserted into the budget appendix. This is no way to run an airline and certainly no way to run a city. Thank you for allowing me to bring this to your attention.

4:271

Thank you.

4:28 – 4:570

Alright. Anything? That concludes public comment for this evening. Next up is Matt on the line. Saw it. Yeah. It's not a race team. Can get their first one. I got money on cheap, but, you know. Oh, there it is. Yes. Okay. Now we're gonna turn over to Matt with Marina and Co for his presentation.

5:001

Awesome.

5:016

Alright. Can you guys hear me?

5:06 – 5:246

Alright. So just to introduce myself, I'm Matt Apkin. I'm with Marine and Company. A little background on me. I started out as an auditor with Marine and Company, and was an auditor for about six years before I went to the city of Lebanon.

5:24 – 5:586

And I was the finance director for the city of Lebanon for about four and a half years, through the lovely time of COVID. And then in 2022, I actually returned to Marine and Company to kind of push forward their, consulting practice. And so I've been there, since June 2020 kind of doing this work. So that's a little bit about me. A little bit about our firm.

5:58 – 6:446

We've been in municipal, finance and accounting for over thirty years. We used to be a a large player in the audit field, and then we realized that we didn't have enough opportunity through doing audits to actually help some of our clients. It was more of a checklist of things that were required by the state. And so we decided that it was a good idea to move into the more consulting world and be able to help our clients, actually complete their work that they needed and help them to kind of get current on on some of the things that, they were behind on. So we frequently help, municipalities that are behind on audits get caught up.

6:46 – 7:046

A lot of that is working with their auditors, sifting through sometimes outdated information to kind of get the information needed to proceed with an audit. You guys have any questions on kinda my background, or

7:041

should I move forward?

7:080

Any questions so far? No? Continue, please.

7:13 – 7:506

Alright. So, the city hired us to come in and help them get caught up on their audits. And since we began, there's been a number of staff turnovers at the city. We first started working with Jen Cooper and Bill, and then Jen left. And then Bill, shortly after that time, also became involved in helping out Rob Drake when the former city manager, Andy Varner, left, and a lot of time that was spent with that.

7:53 – 8:546

Kristen Gearhart was hired, and then shortly, I think, what, like, six months later left as well. So there's been a lot of, things that have complicated our work together and and made it kinda take a lot longer than I would otherwise hope. And so, we've been helping with the audit prep for the fiscal year twenty twenty two audit, and we've started prep for '23 and '24. We've been doing, like, capital assets, work papers, which is taking the the expenses that the city has, identifying which of those expenses are related to capital projects, and making, lists of them and compiling reports that the auditors then review and go through and audit specific things in. And we've also been following up on the debt, reports and, again, taking that information, providing it in a work paper to the auditors so that they can review it and get the information needed.

8:54 – 9:296

We've helped with the pension and other post employment benefit reporting that's required in the audits. We've also helped review budget to actuals. We've asked various questions as we've tried to put the financial statements together to identify areas that seem to be a bit off. We've asked Bill for clarification, or we've recommended some various changes to some of those things based on where things were budgeted and where expenditures were put in the system. We've also done the same thing with grants.

9:30 – 10:126

As you guys can imagine, there's a lot of ARPA money flowing around, so we've had questions about that and how to, excuse me, how to report that correctly. We've also done various reviews in the balance sheet and reconciliations. And I believe if I remember when we started, we were working on some of the twenty twenty two bank reconciliations. And so we've been helping with the bank reconciliations, and we've got those, I believe, pretty close to caught up through 2026 and into February. So we continue to help the city with that.

10:14 – 11:116

At some point after, I believe, Kristen left, we also started helping, process your guys' payroll on a bimonthly basis. Additionally, we help do the ACH commitment into your guys' accounting system, Springbrook, which helps us complete the bank reconciliations. We've helped with utility billing, and drafting your financial statements. So that's pretty wide variety of the the different things that we've done. And so just kinda looking to you guys and wondering if you have any questions for us, if you have concerns that I can help answer, anything that will help you guys.

11:12 – 11:401

Forge. Enjoy your break on song. Sir, first, thanks for your help. I really appreciate you working with us to clear audit backlogs. I'm really excited about this. First question is if we simplify our 2022 audit into prep field work and review, Where are we, and, when will the council be able to review in 2022?

11:41 – 12:136

That is a great question. I can tell you we have my understanding one, we're not the auditors, so we we don't do the audit work specifically. But my understanding is the auditors have come out. We've provided them a draft of the financial statements. They have reviewed the draft, come back with a few questions that we've been either looking for information for, or been preparing a response to them.

12:13 – 12:456

I was emailing with them earlier today of kinda some of the questions that they had around certain grants or capital asset accounts that you guys have. And so waiting to hear some comments back from them, and then we are working to provide a couple updates to the financial statements. So that way, the financial statements can be finished or or they can review those changes and hopefully be able to issue their opinion quickly.

12:481

So, maybe this is outside your comfort zone, but does that feel like couple weeks or months?

13:01 – 13:356

Trying to think the best way to answer your question. Unfortunately, I don't have control of when they issue the financial statements, and so I wish I could say it's gonna be at a certain date or time. What I can tell you is we're gonna do our best to make sure that we have everything to them by the end of this week so that way they can kinda finish their process. And is there the chance that they come back and ask additional questions? Absolutely. If they don't have any additional questions, I would hope that goes quickly from that point.

13:370

Alright. Thank you. My next question, if it's okay if I go ahead,

13:401

your number. Has Marina ever prepared an audit status reports for small cities with audit backlogs?

13:50 – 14:136

Have we ever prepared an status report? I don't know that we've ever provided, like, an official status report. If you're looking for one, I I'm happy to provide that to you. If you guys have a specific if there's specific information that you'd like to be updated on, I can definitely prepare that.

14:140

Thank you, sir. Mhmm. I can. Hold on. Does anybody else have a question, or should we let councilor Porch continue? Councilor Weber? No. We'll back in

14:23 – 14:383

for Councilor Weber, we it is great to have you on board. I was just looking through the old city records. It looks like you were officially hired. It said Marina. The city said hired in July 2023.

14:39 – 15:163

So it's been, like, thirty months, and the city each month get would give updates of where this and it was always hopefully, with Marina and Umpqua's help, we will soon produce these audits. And and, obviously, that hasn't worked as well. It's been almost thirty months. We haven't received any audits yet, which were, of course, very supportive of that. Are do you feel like now I mean I mean, what has changed over that time period to allow us to be more successful now?

15:16 – 15:383

Is it a matter of the number of hours we're able to give your company? You know, on a practical level, I guess, how many hours is there an average number of hours that you're allocating each week, and are you being given enough time and resources, or do we have to dedicate more to get us where we need to get?

15:38 – 16:096

That's a great question. So I would say part of what caused the long timing was honestly the the change of employees that we were working with. We'd get some progress and then somebody would be gone. We wait, try and get things figured out. I mean, Bill would sometimes be our contact, and then he'd be busy with city manager things, or we'd get stuck on an area and we'd wait for some information back.

16:10 – 16:346

I feel like Bill and I have talked recently and said, look, we need to move these forward with much, with a lot more, push to it. And so I I've kind of asked Bill, hey. Can we just kinda push through and, you know, make some of these decisions and move forward with it? And Bill said that that would be okay to do. And so we've we've kind of taken that approach.

16:35 – 17:156

One of the the pieces that we've recently taken that approach with is the urban renewal audits. As of 2019, there are no urban renewal audits that are completed. And so we've reached out to the prior auditors to find out if they can do that work. And so we've been going back and forth to determine if they're willing to take on that that additional work or not. Before that time, the city kinda fell below this threshold that only required a report to be filed with the state, not to have an actual audit.

17:15 – 17:526

In 2019, you guys increased above that threshold. You didn't necessarily exceed the threshold of having to have an audit, but you were under this you're in this area where it's called a review. And because you had auditors that actually audit the city, which includes the urban renewal, they've done a lot of the work that is required in an audit. And so that auditor was Poly Rogers. I've reached out to them, asked them if that would be something that they could do, and, there there's been some discussion about if they can and and what time frame that would be.

17:52 – 18:316

So And we're we're following up on that as as we speak. Additionally, we've done a lot of work for things that can be done in both in fiscal years '23 and '24, but we don't kind of push those forward until we finalize the things for '22. So capital assets and pensions and debt and other post employment benefits, those work papers are prepared for '23 and, I believe, '24 as well. And so we've worked on a lot of those things. It's just been timing to make sure that we have all the journal entries completed.

18:31 – 19:126

And at this point, we've we've prepared a lot of journal entries, and we've left it up to the city staff to kind of push those through and, approve them in the accounting system. And so that's a near the area that we've talked with, Bill about kind of maybe making a change to that to where, I've got staff members on my team that can that can prepare journal entries, and then they can be reviewed by a manager or a partner. And then after we do that, we could move forward with posting those entries into the system and and not having to wait on staff to to kinda complete those things. Did that answer your question?

19:133

Weber, just a quick follow-up. So on the URA, Urban Renewal Agency audits, were you saying have we ever done any audits, and how many are we behind for the Urban Renewal Agency?

19:24 – 19:566

So the Urban Renewal Agency had they're called in lieu reports that were filed from 2018 and before. In 2019, the urban renewal kind of came into this new area that required a review, and that review has not been completed at this time. And it might be easier to do an audit than a review based on kind of the accounting procedures that have to be followed. And so 2019 through current needs to be completed for the urban renewal agency.

19:573

So, councilor, clarification. So you're saying audits we still need audits for DURA for 1921 institute March. All those?

20:066

Correct.

20:080

K. Council report is less than oh, councilor. Okay. Counselor, go ahead.

20:14 – 21:034

This is counselor. Matt, I just wanna say thank you again just for your partnership. I am gonna pivot just a little bit and, you know, just share and ask some best practices. But, you know, it sounds like there's been a lot of coordination, and I know it's hard when there's consistent turn and different faces and trying to get all the documents required. My question for you, because it sounds like you've been doing this a while, is in your experience, municipalities that have consistent finance managers, is this usually a scenario that pops up, or do you think that some of these scenarios that we're navigating now are are just due to not having a finance manager consistently?

21:08 – 22:106

I I will say turnover in general within a finance department causes a lot of issues in in cities or in municipalities that are your size. A lot of the reason behind that is there's not a lot of extra, staff to kind of pick up a load if someone's gone. And so when you have somebody missing in a finance department of a small municipality, oftentimes, there's things that you determine, okay, which things are the most important and need to get done versus, yes, it'd be great to have all of it done, but I either can't get people to work overtime or there's no budget for the overtime or people just don't wanna work that amount. And so it it's not unusual. And, I I can say that because if you go to the state's website, you can look at a list of all the municipalities that are behind on their audits with the state, and the list is over seven pages long.

22:11 – 22:566

And so it it's not infrequent. It's not great. But I think what we've tried to do with Bill is is kind of prepare a way that we can move these things forward. We've got some other clients that we're we're doing this for, and we've been able to help them get caught up. A a lot of it also depends on auditors and how quickly they can kind of help you move through those audits. Some are willing to do, you know, an extra one or two a year. Some of them don't have the capacity to kind of pick up and and get those audits done as quickly. I I think Umpqua Valley is willing to kind of move quickly on these once we get all that information provided and prepared.

22:57 – 23:414

Okay. Thank you. And then just a couple of follow-up things. You know, I know that we, as a city, have had a job posting for a finance manager open for an indefinite amount of time. Do you feel that, you know, given the background and and kinda current state where we're at now, that it would be wise of us to try to help accelerate and think outside the box how to fill that finance manager role to be proactive for future reporting, or are are we, like, in the thick of it as far as the worst and we can just maintain status quo? I'm just trying to think the root cause, and then how do we how do we solve this going forward, and how much energy do we put into a finance manager?

23:43 – 24:346

That is a great question. What I can tell you is you will often find that if you bring someone in at a point like this where you are well behind on on kind of your audits and stuff like that, it is a big task, and it often does not get the right people to apply for your job. Bill and I have kinda talked about that, and I'm like, I mean, you're you can continue to look for them, but when you when you're a city this size, you often wear multiple hats in any position that you're in. And so to have multiple hats and then to be like, oh, by the way, also, you have five audits that you need to get done here in the next two years. That's likely more than someone wants to take on.

24:34 – 25:006

And so Bill and I have talked about that, and Bill said, hey. What if you guys kind of help out more? And so that's an area that we've discussed maybe increasing the scope of work that we do. So that way, we can help fulfill kind of that role for you as having kind of a finance manager, but then also have the ability to get in and and get these audits cleaned up. So that way, you can kind of move forward with that.

25:01 – 25:254

Okay. And then just my final question. I'm so sorry. You know, if we increase the scope of work for for Marina, is that comparable to, you know, cost savings or not maybe having a full time finance manager. I'm just, again, wanting to make sure we're getting the best things for our buck, but also checking boxes for for regulatory things.

25:266

Let me clarify the question. You said is that a cost savings from having a finance manager?

25:32 – 26:054

Well, you know, again, as you had mentioned, everyone wears a lot of hats within the city for staff. So if we were to expand this, we would work for for your company. You know, I don't know what that price looks like, and I don't I don't expect you to have a number, but I'm just curious if that could be a, you know, a a plan c that we pivot to as a city that might be a cost savings for us as a city instead of fulfilling a full FTE role and also getting us back in line and and, you know, kind of getting the train back on the tracks.

26:067

Absolutely.

26:10 – 26:526

I I don't know that I could tell you it would be a cost savings or not. I don't I I honestly don't know the amount that you specifically have paid for a finance manager in the past. And will tell you that the skill set that we bring to the table with me and my team is probably a more comprehensive skill set than than you could find in a finance manager at this point. Like I said, I I was a finance director for four and a half years. I've got team members that have worked for municipalities as well.

26:54 – 27:446

They are also former auditors. We do a number of other, like, consulting engagements for our clients, whether it's process improvement or best practices, policies, and procedures, like a number of different things that we do that I think we could help the city with as well as we kinda go through something like this. But I also know that we are we are not a what what is the right way to put this? We we we have decent rates for what we do, and so we we are not a super cheap option to people. But we like to think that the the value that we provide is worth what, we charge.

27:454

Thank you so much. Yep.

27:470

Sounds good to go. And then let's, some council we'll share with council rep if she has.

27:534

My question is is we're working really hard to get caught up. Are there any immediate risks off the line that the council should be aware of given the current status of our audit?

28:04 – 28:236

Any immediate risks. That that is another great question. What we've identified haven't been significant risks. I know, I think I watched the presentation from the auditors. There there are likely going to be various types of findings that they have.

28:26 – 29:206

Normally, if you have a finding as an auditor that is a significant risk that it would lead that that it would be fraud or misappropriation of assets or something like that, they would bring that to you quickly, and they would identify and and share with you what exactly that is. The things that I think of are really segregation of duties. It it's hard to one, as a small entity, it's hard to have segregated duties anyways. And then two, when you're down people in a small organization, it it's even harder to do that. But there's nothing that we have found in specifically looking at things that make us think that there's any type of misappropriation That I I'm gonna tell you that doesn't mean it's not happening, but it's nothing that we've seen or nothing that has come to our attention that we're worried about at this point.

29:206

And if there was, we would bring that to you as well.

29:240

Sounds good.

29:268

I'm Loretta here. Thank you again, Matt.

29:306

Absolutely.

29:308

Have any recommendations been made to improve financial control?

29:37 – 30:176

I don't know that the auditors have specifically done anything. Have we, provided some of those? Absolutely. We kind of provide them more on a, like, hey. We're working on this thing with them, and we're identifying that, hey. This information isn't correct. In the future, you need to make some adjustments, and you need to follow this procedure. Again, there there hasn't been anything significant that has been a worry of, like, information being, like, super incorrect in any way. But it's like, hey. This allocation needs to change and and be more like this.

30:18 – 30:396

We're doing bank reconciliations and, hey. We're identifying that there are some ACH payments that aren't showing up in the system. And we found out that, hey. They were in there. They just weren't committed, and so they weren't showing up in the bank reconciliations. And so we communicated about that and how we should move forward and making sure that those are recorded in there correctly.

30:415

Thank you.

30:430

That's for the board.

30:46 – 31:281

Thank you, sir. To dive into the URA audit a little bit more, just to make sure I've got my vocabulary correct here, I think when I think of URA audits, they could be centered on funds, on transfers, and they don't get into in-depth detail. I've heard some counselors ask questions about the transfers between URA and the city. So just to make sure that the scope is aligned, is that if we wanted to get a level of detail like the economics behind it, is that a performance review or is that covered in the currently scoped URA?

31:29 – 32:056

So an urban renewal audit and really any financial statement audit, what they do is they are auditing the financial statements to tell you that the information presented is presented fairly and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. And so it doesn't tell you specifically, hey. These things were spent on certain areas or this is the amount it should be. I would say a lot of that comes through the budget process is like, hey. What is this budgeted for, and what are we doing with it?

32:06 – 32:346

That that's where I've seen that identified a lot is is through the budget process. If, hey. There's a transfer from the urban renewal to the general fund. What transfer is that? Why is it made? That that's where a lot of those come in. When it comes to the actual accounting for that, a lot of that is, hey. What type of transfer is this? Oh, it's a recurring transfer. Okay. Let's let's set up this transfer to be recurring. So that way each month, we make that transfer and and do that.

32:35 – 32:461

Thank you, sir. Yeah. I understand the budget process, but if we wanted an independent person to review the transfers from the city for reasonableness, would that be something that we could ask Marina to do?

32:50 – 33:136

I I guess it depends on the type of report that you're wanting. If you're wanting, what's considered, like, an agreed upon procedures report, which is, hey. We're looking at this for a specific thing. We could probably not issue one of those because we're helping do some of your accounting work. And so that would need to be someone that's an independent CPA at that point to provide you support like that.

33:14 – 33:261

But they're I'm about to do it where there are options available to the council if we wanted an independent person to assess the transactions between our URA and Citi.

33:27 – 33:536

Correct. And that like like I said, that would be if you're looking for, like, a specifically issued report on it. If you wanted to have, like, an engagement to just review the process that's used and and share that with you, that would be something that we could do. But if you're looking for kind of in the accounting world, they call it some type of assurance service, then that would be need to be done by an independent, accountant or independent CPA at that time.

33:561

Mayor Dunbar, whenever the council is ready, I'd like to make some motions.

34:06 – 34:290

Motions on? On. You'll be bringing up you'll be bringing up for agenda item by your. Well, it's it's on the agenda. Motions would be acceptable during this time. This is a presentation from the auditors. If you want something on the agenda, you need have it after the agenda.

34:31 – 34:460

So you can bring that up for accounts reports, and we can add it to a future agenda. Any other questions for Marina Associates? Oh, Anna. I'm sorry. Sorry, councilor. I'm sorry.

34:469

I just my time tomorrow.

34:481

Oh, thank you. I'll go for home.

34:50 – 35:050

Okay. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. Thank you, Bill, for having him on. Sure. So with that, Matt, we'll see you good evening, and we'll move on to staff reports. Thank you. So first up, it is open.

35:168

This mic because it was ringing earlier. Yes. Good evening, everyone. Welcome, counselor Warrington. Forgive me

35:264

for missing or swearing in. It was my birthday,

35:28 – 36:068

and I was used for anything with my family. Just one thing to report from the library. This morning, it was brought to our attention that our the flag in front of the library annex was something was wrong with it. And it looked like to me something broke at the top of the attachment, and the flag had flopped down. So Cody removed it right away until it didn't it just looked like it something had broken maybe during the weather.

36:06 – 36:418

I'm not sure. So it was removed and treated properly until we can replace it. The only other thing I have to add is that Saturday, we had a grief workshop in the library. And because it was March 14, we decided to serve you pie because we thought Emily West thought that the two would go well together, the the topic and then the pie. So we did serve pie on pie day at the library on Saturday.

36:420

What was the topic of? Grief. Oh, okay.

36:457

It was

36:45 – 36:588

a grief workshop. So, anyway K. And then the pie was the soothing part. I'm just playing around. But I does anyone have any questions about my report?

36:591

Counselor Weber.

37:003

Counselor Weber. Wonderful. Make sure you're I don't know if

37:0410

your mic is on, counsel,

37:068

but I can hear you fine. Okay. Yeah.

37:093

I'll Wonderful that you're able to go to Washington DC. Anything you wanna say about your trip? What was the best part? Did you get to tour around the city?

37:18 – 37:408

I thought it was really cool that senator Wyden's reception area in his his senate office was all Portland Airport carpet. I thought that was cool, and he had a lot of vintage posters and, like, an old saw, like, a

37:402

lumber saw.

37:42 – 38:178

We had a delegation of four from Oregon. So in some states, only had one person, so that was me. And the director of all the Multnomah County libraries, Annie Lewis, and I, were the two public library representatives. So it's like a kind of country mouse and city mouse. And then we had a high school librarian and a Oregon State University librarian. And so the four of us visited the senators, and then we split up to visit representatives. It was really educational and interesting. I'll talk I'm gonna do a presentation on it in Library Board, which is also on Zoom. Oh.

38:190

Anybody else? The STEM is awesome, mostly for my kids. So I'm

38:259

so excited.

38:262

Yes. It's

38:278

gonna be an epic summer.

38:290

More STEM is better for everyone. Mhmm. Well, thank you. That is great. Alright. Thanks,

38:5511

Everyone's out of time.

38:587

Your name Sort of.

38:592

It it'll be here in.

39:017

That's alright.

39:04 – 39:3812

I'll give you the counsel. So I I don't have a lot to to add to say that I'm still as the interim chief, I'm still responsible for all of my current sergeant responsibilities that I brought over. So I'm still responsible for supervising the k nine team, and I'm still an assistant team leader on the SWAT team. And I'm still sort of supervising patrol as well as learning how to be the chief here. So I've got a lot on my table, and and I'm I'm really having a good time.

39:38 – 40:2012

This is something that's this has never been something that I've been really involved with. So I'm learning a lot about city politics and and city community a lot. And I'm I'm really enjoying myself. But, basically, what I'm really trying to do what I've been trying to do is learning how our officers here at North Plains PD interact with the community and familiarizing myself with their current performance and the levels of police work that they've been involved with over over time. So I'm looking at the numbers and how they relate to past, past practice is really what I've been trying to familiarize myself with.

40:20 – 40:3512

So that's my current, my current role is trying to just become familiar so that I understand what the baseline is so that I can understand what the expectations are and and get those get my new expectations to the officer. So anybody have any questions for me?

40:37 – 41:101

Yes, sir. Mayor Dunbaro. I was at a community event this weekend, and a citizen was complaining about speed on his residential street. I think he's been before the council before, and as a result of that, we have, like, a radar sign installed on that street. I think the thing that he was thinking about was installing a stop sign. But how do we talk with citizens about putting in stop signs on streets or addressing the concerns about speeding in the roads?

41:11 – 41:4912

Adding stop signs specifically, I'm not sure about. I would have to talk to city planning about how to go about actually adding stop signs. And I'm not sure if you're talking about one of the permanent posted speed signs or if it's one of the digital permanent signs or if it's one of the ones that we can move around. Because there's all sorts of ways that we can we can address this topic. And one of them those one of the problems with those permanent stop signs is that after people get used to seeing them and they realize that they're not taking anyone's pictures, and they're just flashing a number up there, they start to get ignored.

41:49 – 42:3412

The one that we have the ability to move around does some good, but it's generally only doing good while it's in place. And then, again, it starts to lose some of its potency after it's been around for a while. My the the the best thing that I can do with it for law enforcement is we can, we can post officers in place to do traffic enforcement. With a city like North Plains, we can cover quite a bit of the city with with traffic enforcement of asking the officers to target specific neighborhoods or specific streets and get the word out that we are. We it doesn't matter to us, and it is important to us because it's important to the community.

42:34 – 43:0812

That's one of one of the most effective ways that we can do it. And we also when we do make those stops and when we talk with the drivers, what I tell people is traffic enforcement is for it's not designed to be punitive. It's designed to change behavior. And we start that by just presence. Sometimes just an officer being on a street or in a neighborhood is enough to remind people to follow traffic laws.

43:08 – 44:0012

If that's not enough, then the next step is to contact them, which is with generally a traffic stop. And quite often that just the conversation that we have with people, letting them know how important it is for us and how important it is for their neighbors or their community to have to be safe and to have their driving behaviors lead towards that safety is is often quite enough. And then, obviously, sometimes that's not gonna be enough, and then we can write a citation, and, hopefully, that will change behavior. So the whole goal with traffic control is is to change behavior stats. That's where we start getting to things like stop signs, speed bumps, alternate alternate methods, and they've got all sorts of different ways to psychologically slow people down.

44:00 – 44:1112

That's all okay. To the city into the city planning and not not out of my hands. I would have some some say and some input in that, but that's that's city planning side.

44:120

One follow-up if I could. So for our citizen, what would you suggest next steps be? Should we contact them?

44:211

Contact you, the city manager? Yeah. I I I would love to have a

44:25 – 44:3612

conversation with them. They could absolutely contact me. Okay. So either just the nonemergency dispatch line to get ahold of one of my officers during the hours that we're here or an email that could reach me. So yeah. Absolutely.

44:370

And, Mark, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's chief chief at North Plains for the police.

44:422

No. It's chief. Chief. Police chief. Police chief.

44:441

Thank you. Plains.

44:450

Okay. Yes. So policechief@NorthPlains.gov. Everybody should write this down. Anything else? Oh, yes, please.

44:54 – 45:364

Councilor Peevan, just a couple of quick follow ups. One, if possible, I was actually looking on the city website for the the police chief email address. I didn't see it. So maybe if if possible, we can add that to the website. And then two, I was just curious, and you might not know this, but the radar signs that are posted, you know, for example, in Brent Hill that have that are are permanent positions, do those have capability to capture data that the and then the department can see, hey. You know, we're seeing an increased speed above blah blah blah. Let's focus our efforts here, or do those provide any data that you can

45:36 – 45:5412

believe they do. I would have to ask, chief Jones. He did during my tour of North Plains, he he talked about those, and he may have told me. And it either just went in and out of of one ear and out the other, or or he didn't tell me. I believe do have the ability to pull data from those, though.

45:554

Okay. Thank you. And I think that was just my my question. And, again, I know you're you're still getting your bearings.

46:007

Yeah. But that data I'm sorry.

46:019

Oh, no.

46:027

Go ahead.

46:021

But that data is the

46:0312

kind of information that we would be able to use to determine whether or not a stop sign would be appropriate or a speed bump or a narrower street or, you know, the any of those types of things.

46:13 – 46:394

Yeah. And then just a couple other quick things. You know, since since you are wearing so many hats within the agency, you know, if you can pass along the feedback to Washington County, it would be really helpful if North Lane's resident in this contract city could utilize that feature on Washington County Sheriff's Office website to be able to report something. Okay. So I know in in most jurisdictions, that's a possibility.

46:39 – 47:064

But because we're a contract city, we don't have that functionality, and I think that also could kind of alleviate what councilor de Forge had mentioned and how would someone contact you, right, to notify you of their problem. And I've mentioned this before, but I know there's, you know, there's a lot of things going on. So, again, just that ability for North Plains residents in a contract city to be able to use that reported problem on Washington County's website would be really helpful.

47:0712

I will look into that.

47:08 – 47:284

Thank you. And then I just wanna say, finally, my kiddos had shared with me that deputy radar came to their school lockdown. So I really appreciate just the visibility. Again, they don't know your name yet, but they know you're associated with radar. And so I just wanna say thank you for for getting visibility now

47:28 – 47:3912

in the as well. Absolutely. I I visited North Point today, and and I'm just gonna continue to move around and and introduce myself and let everybody know that I'm that I'm here, and I'm gonna be on the floor.

47:410

Counselor Warrington, you're

47:42 – 47:579

Yes. Thank you. A couple of sessions ago, there was a presentation from the police department that had this one pager of who to call for what. I don't know if you know about that, but I'm wondering if you could drag it up and see when we'll get a copy of that.

47:5712

Were you supposed ask about, like, the code enforcement?

48:009

Yeah. Slide it. Three pillars. Call this number this.

48:041

Call this number this. Yeah.

48:067

We we're we're we're still working on the code enforcement.

48:0912

I know that that's it is available. I believe that

48:132

that slide is available. It's in the March newsletter for sure.

48:16 – 48:4612

Okay. So So it's in it's in the newsletter, and we're still working on right now, establishing a a more thorough code or ability to enforce code. And so that's going to be, eventually. It it's not in place right now. But, eventually, that will be the graphic that we owe people look to when determining who to get ahold of, with their code enforcement issues. Thank you.

48:47 – 49:050

Okay. Thanks, Hugh. And next up is Dustin, and it seems like he's got some preanswered question or preasked questions. I'll get some answers. Yeah. We'll let you lead with that. Goody. Oh, it's on. There

49:071

we go.

49:07 – 49:2011

Goody. We canceled. Westwood United public works director. I do have some answers to some of the questions that were asked earlier, and I can get those into a moment. Also, I don't think Ryan Vee with three j is on.

49:20 – 50:0611

So if you do have any engineering questions, you can also ask me that as well. To go with the stop zone the stop signs, North Plains is unique in that council can direct staff to put up a stop sign, but it's under the Oregon municipal traffic device code. And so, basically, it requires an engine I wouldn't say it requires an engineer study, but it strongly suggests an engineer study, but it could be at the direction of council. And that's from chapter 70.05, and our municipal code. What's interesting is that most municipalities do not require the council to do those kind of direct directives.

50:06 – 50:4711

Usually, that's upon the city engineer or city traffic engineer. But as far as I know, you know, kind of North Plains and Banks are about the only, you know, places locally that that do it that way. As far as radar signs, the data some of those signs do collect data, not all of them, and they do not, they're not easy to pull the data from. And so, yes, they do collect data, but they're not very relevant, and they require pulling information out of the SIM card and everything. And so when time changes and if battery dies, the solar dies, the times are all wrong.

50:47 – 51:0811

And so it doesn't quite give you the information that you need, but you can get it. But that's something that we could work on in the future if we if we really need to. I know there's a lot of devices that I've used in the past in the last, you know, five, ten years that it can, you know, go directly to, you know, an operator's phone, with a

51:081

little bit more ease, but

51:0911

we do not have those particular devices, unfortunately. Other than that, I am open for questions.

51:18 – 51:413

Counsel? Absolutely. Counselor Weber, a question. We talked about the right of ways, I think, a work session. Is that something we're gonna need to decide very soon to clarify since the grass is growing and watering and all that? Does some action need to happen from our end, or does how does that happen? Do you have

51:4111

a specific question on the management of the right way with that, counsel Levin?

51:45 – 52:203

Yeah. Two of the areas we're talking about. One is that my understanding is, historically, on main between north and commercial, when that was originally put in, the neighbors told me the city said we'll be taking care of the grass and the watering. That's what the residents say historically happened. And then the other question I would have would be on north on the south side of the road. As it stands now, who's gonna water and mow that in the next month or two when that needs to be done, those two areas?

52:22 – 53:1411

Right now, there is no specific agreement between the city and the individual property owners to manage and maintain that right of way. There's no written documentation even though there may have been a formal like, for example, on Main Street for the past twenty years where the city has maintained. There's there's no formal utility or not utility maintenance agreement. Typically, a city will have a maintenance agreement that is actually spelled out, and sometimes it will go along with the the parcel or the plot for the, you know, impertivity of the property, or it will set, like, a kind of a deadline when it when it expires. We do not have any formal agreements for right of way management except for at the four corners of US Highway 26 and Glen Cove.

53:14 – 53:4511

That's the only one that I am aware of. If we do have a man like, any type of landscape management agreement on file, it it could be one of those old files in the conics kind of hidden with some old other paper files. But right now, I have not found any other agreements that indicate that, and that is supported by our city code as well. That is the adjacent property owner's responsibility to maintain the right weight.

53:47 – 54:163

So, councilor Weber, following up, I guess what I'm looking for is a clarity would be given to their residents. Again, the ones I've talked to said the city told them when that was put in that the city would take care of it. The city has taken care of it for whatever the last ten or twelve years. I guess my logical question would be why wouldn't the city keep doing it? It's obviously in the budget because it's something they've been doing.

54:16 – 54:383

And then the other question is if that whole thing on North where all that grass is there, it seems like the zoning issue was kind of on us because we didn't approach the citizens ahead of time. So I guess what I'm wondering is should we maintain that as the city in the short run, but then move to address it in the long run?

54:39 – 55:2511

It's a that is a really tricky situation, and that would probably come from a council directive ultimately. But as far as what usually happens on a construction project is that under the maintenance bond with where the contractors, you know, putting in the the side and whatnot, there's usually about a two year maintenance bond with that. And in this case, Lennar on North Avenue had chosen to maintain that area on the South Side. Even all the the water meters and the backflow devices, they're all on the North Side. And so there's gonna be a lot of work that the city has to do to identify and kind of redo how all those meters and backflows work to continue to maintain the South Side.

55:25 – 56:0011

But we also did not budget to maintain the South Side either. Also, one thing that we need to do periodically as a city is to audit whether or not we're doing the right thing. And so just because we have done something for a very long time does not necessarily mean that that is the way that it needs to go. And so if we want to be able to maintain, you know, city code, we have to do our best to try to apply it to everybody. Even if we find out after the fact five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, it was like, oh, yeah.

56:00 – 56:1411

We found this in the audit. Let's go stick with this. But if we need to change that and we need to change the code or I need to get specific council directive in order to do that, that makes sense. K. Anything else? K. I'll be transferred.

56:168

I have three quick questions under the three j if you're able to. Could you explain the Main Street improvement plan?

56:2411

Let me take a look at how it's written. Is that in Brian Feeney's report?

56:308

Yeah. It's wrapping up gas line relocations, PGE, three days working with the city to finalize bidding dates and a date for a public open house meeting.

56:4011

Okay. So you're just more you're asking more on details of what the future plan is for that.

56:461

Yeah. What is the plan?

56:48 – 57:2311

Okay. Right now, we are waiting for Northwest Natural Gas to finish their relocations in anticipation of the of the project. We have not bid out the project, and we're we're really, really close to bidding out the project. But before we do that, we're gonna have a a community meeting to basically say this is what's what's going on there. And once we have the the bid, it should be finished this this year, hopefully. Any other questions besides that?

57:244

What what are these plans? What what is the plan for this Main Street?

57:3011

Main Street, you can also look on our city project website. You it's one of

57:357

our our

57:35 – 58:0311

budgeted projects from the transportation bond fund that was approved in, what, 2019. So we've got a couple of projects coming up. That's Main Street. We've got the Jesse May's perimeter project, and it also includes 311309. And then we have Pacific is one of the other major streets, but it's one of the planned one of the planned capital improvement projects that we've had since, I think, 2019 or so.

58:038

So Pacific Street is is basically sidewalks, the big improvement there? When when it says, like,

58:10 – 58:5011

a sidewalk improvement, there's a lot more than just sidewalk improvements because you have to do curb and gutter, and there's a lot of clean water services and storm water management. That's part of it. So it's not just adding sidewalks. It's adding a lot of infrastructure. And, of course, we get to use some of our STC funds to be able to pay for that expanded infrastructure. So it's not just sidewalks. And and in some cases on Main Street, we're also adding an enlarged waterline, and we're doing that in some places on the Jesse Me's perimeter project as well. So it's not just sidewalks. It's kind of a a bigger picture of, I think, a lot of different things going on at the same time.

58:504

I'm just looking at it from a citizen standpoint as well, kinda.

58:53 – 59:3711

And that's something that we can we can present when we have the the the city meeting or the community meeting. Say, hey. This is what's going on. This is what to expect. This is the contractor that's gonna be there. This this is how, you know, the communication that's involved of that project and giving a timeline and things like that. And that's not something that was done as far as I know in the past few projects that we've done or the projects in the past. And so I'm trying to get more community involvement and awareness. And one of the things that we'll do, we'll probably add screen signs that will say, hey. This is funded by such and such, you know, transportation bond, you know, GBT or or the tough, you know, the the things like that.

59:3711

And so I'm I'm trying to give more communication to to the community.

59:428

Excellent. And then one last one was the engineering design manual and standard details. Is that also under city project?

59:50 – 1:00:3211

That one that one is not under the city under city projects, but that is something kind of like think of it like the municipal code. We have a design standard manual that has not been updated since 2016, and there's a lot of information from, like, 2005. It's very outdated. And so if we have new developments coming in that are adding public infrastructure or if, you know, there is new capital improvement projects and everything like that. Have to have the most updated standards and make sure that it, you know, is is still updated because we have some really old outdated designs. Good. And what?

1:00:33 – 1:00:448

I'm just wondering who is it just three j is working on that, or is there going to be a community committee something, citizen committee working with them on that?

1:00:444

I I don't know anything about it.

1:00:46 – 1:01:2311

No. It's it's it's basically all engineering engineering designs, and we get with kind of the rest of the community and see what are they doing because they'll look at what, you know, the different water utilities are doing in the area, and we will basically get the best out of the best, and we update it. This should be a every one or two year process, like, typically. And and most of the cities that I've worked in, it's you do it every year or every two years, and you just kind of it's it's a it's a working, working, moving, breathing document pretty much counting the constitution. Okay. And it's always trying to stay ahead of the game pretty much.

1:01:234

Alright. Thank you so much. K.

1:01:260

Alright. Thank you. Alright. And what what? Probably, what you wanna cover planning?

1:01:422

How you doing? Okay.

1:01:450

We may orgo this if you're losing your voice. I don't want you

1:01:487

to Thanks, Rowan. Yeah. We'll move forward. Appreciate you trying, though.

1:01:52 – 1:02:060

If anybody has questions, send them to Bill, and Bill can get them answered. I I'd rather Rowan gets them right after she's fine. Or you're gonna kill them all. But Yeah. So I mean, yeah, we'll go from that. It'll be better. So let's move on to finance.

1:02:077

Finance for the. Yeah. So I will stand

1:02:141

to questions.

1:02:15 – 1:03:017

Anything in here, there wasn't anything emergent or odd that came up in any of the review of and of how the different funds have been performing and how spending has been going according to you know, versus budget over the last month. We've done a number of different journal entries just to kind of correct misattribution, of, you know, about the software misattributing personnel expense to the long funder department. So we've done a bunch of corrections on that. So the previous month and this month report reflect those changes. But beyond that, you know, most of the funds and departments really are are spending below where they could or should be at this point in time, at the biennium.

1:03:03 – 1:03:297

For the streets fund and the water fund, as it as it's mentioned, spending is very much below budget, and that's just because seasonally projects, you know, happen in the summertime. So you're gonna see a lot more certain times of the year versus others. But there are just some projects, repair replacement projects, some from the waterfront and street fund that we just haven't kicked off. So when those do, the spending versus budget will catch up. But right now, it looks like we start hardly anything in a couple of funds.

1:03:30 – 1:04:067

Beyond that, there's kind of an update to the property tax revenue through January. You've heard in the in detail about, audit progress and working on you know, we work on a 2324 for audit process for those two years as well. And from that on a variety of topics. I guess the only other thing I would say just to kind of address some pre some public comment, I'll bring it up later during the city manager report. But, it's the recommendation of BEH that the city update its purchasing rules.

1:04:07 – 1:04:467

They haven't been updated, in a number of years. You heard some previous dates and all resolutions referred to, and that was particularly for how much the city manager can authorize for professional services agreements. We we we buy a lot. We have a lot of different types of agreements and and projects, well beyond that one type, and it hasn't been updated in a very long time. And so BEH is recommending a a work session to talk about what we currently do and then how much it's changed and to kind of keep you all thinking about what an update should look like.

1:04:46 – 1:05:257

Because in some regards, we're falling behind on purchasing procedures that, if we have the ability, we could use state purchasing program better, you know, that sort of thing. So that'll be a work session to come, and we just need to kinda work on a date for that. But very specifically responding to comment, just to clarify a comment and make public comment made. Every budget since I have worked here and before, there is an appendix to the budget when it was adopted, called the city's financial policies. And it's actually it's a major appendix.

1:05:25 – 1:05:597

It's usually appendix a of the adopted budget. And I don't believe that document has changed since 2008, but it's in every budget that's adopted, and it's kind of been consistent spending rules and procedures in that appendix for many, many budgets. So I I don't want you, counsel, left with the impression that I snuck in or added something in this new budget. These these are just these are just procedures and and and policies that have been around a long time. So that's why PDH wants, and that's what wants to recommend too.

1:06:000

Work session sounds great. Questions?

1:06:04 – 1:06:311

I don't have a finance question, but can I clarify before we do staff reports? So I don't wanna interrupt anyone's finance questions. Go for it. I wanted to ask Rowan a planning question, and what's the best way to handle this? Should we should we just handle I was gonna ask about the food bank. Should we is that a future agenda item, or how should we pin this up?

1:06:310

That'll be a future agenda.

1:06:321

Future agenda. Thanks.

1:06:35 – 1:07:040

K. So next up is going to be resolutions. But before that, we just take a about the three minute recess. If you they'll be back at 08:18, then we will then Thank you. Miss Park. Sorry. We're back in session. Alright. So just to confirm, I believe we have one after for you to the frame.

1:07:054

Correct.

1:07:050

Okay. So, Yohan Karna, would you please come to the table for the study? Oh, yeah.

1:07:151

So if you just wanna give

1:07:180

us a few minutes on your background and qualification for EDC, which are well known, and then, also, if any councilor want to ask any questions, we'll speak.

1:07:27 – 1:07:4310

Good evening, mayor, council members, and city staff. Thank you for your time and for allowing me to be here. My name is Joanna Barra. I am a resident of North Plains. I've been here since September '23, living in the Bird Hill community.

1:07:44 – 1:08:3010

I have applied for the economic development to be in the economic development for reasons that I'm getting to know the city more. I live here. And just seeing in the job that I do on a daily basis, the importance and the impact of economic development and business development, particularly with small business, how the impact of supporting and bringing resources and support to small businesses, how that is a domino effect into the economy and the city in itself. I see that on on the daily with what the job that I do across the board within Washington County. And being that I live here, I wanna be able to be part of that in the city where I live and where my family lives.

1:08:31 – 1:08:4810

I've been on the parks board the past two two years, two and a half years. And because I was a I love events, and I love programming. And I just wanna be more involved and get to know more of of the city brands and how everything works and be able to support how

1:08:500

Thank you. Anybody have any questions, comments? I'll entertain a motion.

1:08:58 – 1:09:123

Councilor Weber, thank you for applying, and I would make a motion for approval of resolution twenty three thirty seven, appointing you on a part to the economic commission through 12/31/2027.

1:09:120

I have a first by councilor Weber to approve resolution twenty three thirty seven. Do I have a second?

1:09:1610

I will second.

1:09:170

Councilor Peyton seconds. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

1:09:259

Thank you.

1:09:260

We're excited to have you on.

1:09:278

I'm excited to be there. Thank you.

1:09:400

Unfinished business, counselor to Ford. You know, we've had no you'd be back meeting me, so any updates?

1:09:461

Yes, sir. A couple of items. First, I believe there'll be a meeting later this month. Is that correct, Bill?

1:09:56 – 1:10:117

Councilor, I would need to check. Has let us know that the schedule is going to need to move, and Rowan has been Rowan's been working on new dates. So we'll have him to do once that's firmed up by this date. Okay.

1:10:11 – 1:10:531

Second is I would like to make a motion, and this would formalize what we had already discussed. And so the motion is I move that the council affirm that future growth and land use discussions should consider immediate impact, fiscal sustainability, and infrastructure affordability. Council also supports evaluating zoning code modernization as part of the growth planning process before major urban growth nominating decisions are considered. Council further requests that future GTM deliverables include multiple gross scenarios devalued against those criteria before being preferred alternative to identify.

1:10:540

So point of order, if you want to make a red if you want a resolution that needs to be put on an agenda item and it will be reviewed by

1:11:0212

the secretary.

1:11:031

This was a motion.

1:11:040

It's a motion to make a resolution. Literally, you try the resolution.

1:11:12 – 1:11:307

Correct? Sounded like a resolution. I mean, you're you're you're you're motioning for a vote on to take administrative action, so I would agree with the mayor's assessment on that. The other thing I would say is some of the items of

1:11:300

the I would take it up as

1:11:31 – 1:11:527

a future agenda item simply because there are there there's there are metrics and things that are being brought up in the motion that are not in the scope of the ODOT study. Therefore, anything that would have to be done along those lines, the city would have to pay for. And so you all should consider that as part of that discussion.

1:11:520

So if you wanna bring it up under council reports, we can add that as a agenda item for the future.

1:11:58 – 1:12:221

Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. The last thing I would like to do then is to the last time we were here discussing this is we were talking about options related to what you would like to see from the TTM project, and we had brought up a couple of different ones. We just had a very light discussion.

1:12:22 – 1:12:531

So this is this is, again, just a very light discussion. I'll move forward on here. We had talked about existing policy scenarios of fiscally conservative farmland retention options, an economic development scenario where they're focusing on employment, land use tax base. And I wanted to toss out another idea is a recreation focus. I think councilor Weber has a passion for recreation.

1:12:53 – 1:13:261

We're next to Pumpkin Ridge, and I remember taking my kids to Pumpkin Farm with the lake long time ago. So And I thought it might be interesting just to for you guys to consider offline, we can reconvene in a future meeting when you we're gonna ask the TGM project to propose solutions that fit these options as opposed to leaving it open. So there are any questions I can answer before we move on to agenda item?

1:13:280

Does that make sense to everyone?

1:13:314

So the call to action to think about what choice points we would wanna see.

1:13:36 – 1:14:131

That's exactly right. Okay. So so just to circle back, when when you do projects, sometimes projects can come up with you have three choices, and two of them are horrible and one of them is less horrible, so you have to choose that one. What I'm trying to do is get ahead of that and use your counsel power to to tell the project, hey. This is how I would like to think about things so that you have a you provide a framework as opposed to leaving it open. Does that make sense? Next.

1:14:150

Good. That's

1:14:164

I have one question for counselor DeFord, if that's okay, about the UGV. Sure.

1:14:22 – 1:14:468

It says they're kind of focusing on the the housing focus map. Can you clarify whether the advisory committee received direction about the city's long term fiscal strategy, specifically the idea that residential development alone often does not generate sufficient tax revenue to cover service costs and that expanding industrial or commercial land can help balance the tax base?

1:14:48 – 1:15:401

Thank you, councilor Reddy. I would say that in our first meeting, councilor Weber brought up the specifics, the economics, value add that a property can bring to the city. And I think, I would just say the big picture is the guidance we've been given with that residential expansion does not result in a net increase in tax revenue to the city because it also involves a lot of services. So I would say that is where we are at this point, and we are I think from my participation, pastor Weber's participation, just the overall structure of the project, I think we have identified we have identified that issue. So I feel pretty calm.

1:15:414

Great. Thank you so much.

1:15:430

K. Anything else? No, sir. K. Moving to new business. Monthly finance report discussion. Bill, is this you?

1:15:527

No. This is actually canceled at Forge. Yeah. Counseling forge.

1:15:55 – 1:16:251

I have to do everything. Be great. Of. So I have a cleaned up for you guy. I apologize to the public that this wasn't part of the agenda packet. But the basis for this where I'm here. Here you go. The basis for this was several meetings ago, the city manager brought up and said, hey. I provide a monthly financial report. Please provide me with feedback.

1:16:26 – 1:16:471

And as a CPA, I was like, that is a plum assignment. So I created a report, and I apologize for using the smallest font possible. Thank you. I listened to what you guys have asked for, and I tried to incorporate it. So the parameters of it was I tried to I think

1:16:470

you guys have questions about legal and professional services.

1:16:52 – 1:17:341

So this report would offer you greater detail into that spend. I wanted to understand accounts with actual spends different from the budget so that you guys can be prepared as we go through a rebudgeting process to understand what accounts have budget variances. There's been questions about the URA with city transfers, so I I provided a little bit of detail there. And I've also provided information about new contracts that are coming around so that the council can understand how they perform contracts. And then I also kind of taking a step back, it's easy to create a finance report or finance request.

1:17:35 – 1:17:531

It's not necessarily easy to execute on it from a from a staff perspective. So I tried to think about ways that we could deliver this while also thinking about not creating a burden for our city staff. And I'm also hoping the feedback from our staff. But first, can we start

1:17:530

with the council? Does this are you guys do you have guys do

1:17:591

you guys have any thoughts? Is this something we want to move forward on?

1:18:06 – 1:18:243

Councilor Weber, so you've got these, you know, three or four areas here. Are you saying we take that template and expand that to other areas of the city budget or just focus on these specific ones? My suggestion was to start small and learn.

1:18:24 – 1:18:391

Start a pilot program. Let's let's go through and learn more about city finances in a way that is easy and accessible to everyone and include it in the agenda packet so that the public has access to this information as well.

1:18:424

Councilor Higidore here. Who is who I need to be maintaining in this report and responsible for the outputs on our and what cadence is your proposal?

1:18:53 – 1:19:241

My suggestion would be monthly. So when we have the monthly finance reports, this would be included. And Marina caught my attention, and they might be a resource that could help provide this with possibly city staff. We would need to learn from Bill about how our staffing situation was. If if I were preparing this report, this doesn't feel like too large of a lift, but I'm open to beating it.

1:19:26 – 1:19:599

Counselor Warrington, just one little thing. Looking at this ridiculously small font, you can't really tell if unless you deep dive into it, how we're doing. Right? You have to really look at it. I might suggest using a color code for each item. Like, green is everything's great. There's no need to worry about any of this. Yellow is we're tracking a little bit off, and red is we are so over budget. It's ridiculous. Something. We could just take a go in and know.

1:20:011

That's good to be there. I like that one.

1:20:07 – 1:20:280

What other question? As usual, this is this is great to have. The challenge is gonna be before I would be willing to entertain this, what is the cost? Because there's always gonna be a cost to this, and what are we giving up to get this? Because this is nice, but also we are short staffed as it is.

1:20:28 – 1:21:110

So I I would be open to conversation, but I need to understand the cost and the timeline because it's right the third things are higher priorities, like getting our audits done and a number of projects that we need to check off. So I'm open to the conversation, but I would say that not not till I have have more numbers, and I would wanna push this out a little bit until we have we'll complete some critical tasks. Because I think this is a this would be comes something would come out most of time once we get caught back up. So I I think if we're asking for more stuff, we're gonna something's gonna have to get you can't you can't get everything at once. So you gotta prioritize a little bit is my input.

1:21:12 – 1:21:401

That's a that's a good point, mayor. I would argue the opposite a little bit. With without the city having completed the audits, the the public and the council have trouble understanding the finances of the city. And so in a backlog recovery situation, it might make sense to provide some supplemental finance reports to improve visibility.

1:21:447

Counsel, if I may. Thank you. Thank you, councilor DePortis.

1:21:48 – 1:22:277

as you're thinking about this, I guess what I would ask is what are the things you really wanna know that you don't see in this report? And and council of merchants, a variety of topics in there. And I I will say my feedback on that is some of that in you know, everything we do from a reporting standpoint for you or for interdepartmental either kind of understand where spending is on something or kind of reports that our accounting software do. Most of what I provide to you all is what's called a budget status report. There are other reports to protect your trial balances and so forth.

1:22:29 – 1:23:227

I I think I guess what I would like to hear from you is, you know, and, you know, I think I think councilor before just talked about it, you know, about kind of what things he doesn't see that would be good to be in there. You know, what's missing to you, and then how can we know, what would be good to adapt to kind of that information to? You know, the emphasis of reports every month now are kind of in line basically with really kind of how we budget and and track expenditures and what the state requires of us in case we overspend and what council might need to do if it's a supplemental budget need or not. And so the focus is what was budgeted, what's been so spent so far in that funder department, and, you know, how are we tracking so that we know we're not in in delivering services as budgeted. We know we're not running up against something.

1:23:237

There is a detail down to every little, account, the hundreds and hundreds of accounts that we have in each department and each fund. That that detail isn't in the

1:23:321

reports you see. But part of

1:23:34 – 1:23:557

the reason there is because by Oregon budget law, we don't have to worry about every single little account. We have to worry about how overall the fund is doing relative to the budget that was adopted. So that's why you see street funds, kind of the big categories of spending versus budget, that's been adopted. That isn't to say that how we have been doing it is the best way or only way.

1:23:56 – 1:24:117

would just say what's what's missing that's of that's of interest, And and maybe, you know, how do we get that to you in a better way? And I think that's probably what councilor before just said with some of what he what what he's saying about. Mhmm.

1:24:11 – 1:24:274

Councilor here. I would be interested in seeing spend like, historical spends based off a topic, in particular, legal expenses and professional services. So that's something Okay.

1:24:34 – 1:25:083

Counselor Weber, I would like the idea of trying to do something like this. I think it's not a huge it doesn't look like a huge amount of additional work to me, and it And when I'm used to it in my past, when I used to work, a little more detail in budget reports I like. So I like kind of experimenting doing some of this without trying to overwhelm things by trying to do every single line item. So this to me would be a good kinda test case to find out how hard it is to board off to to proceed with this.

1:25:121

Councilor Weber, you've mentioned URA to city transfers. Did you want to see monthly report showing the man behind them?

1:25:22 – 1:25:433

I I like the things you put on here. I would just leave it as is. Yes. From the URA person, I like seeing the, you know, where the money went, you know, the expense side, which you've included in there. The city transfers covers that. Professional services are kind of the two main expenses besides the contract. So I don't agree with it.

1:25:44 – 1:27:017

If I might, let me address something that seems to be another question. Every in every budget, for every city budget and URA budget, there is alignment and consistency between what the city budget shows as transfers in from the URA and then what the URA budget shows as transfers that it does to the city. And the transfers that happen between the URA and the city, received by the city, transferred out by the URA, a reimbursement for personnel expenses. So what I think I guess and and we can dig into that in the the the URA consultant that we're hired that we've hired is going to kind of document all that historically over the last few years and kinda get into that. But what I wanna I guess what I wanna say is any transfer out of the URA in the budget, there's also discussion about that in the the city budget because different funds, this particular general fund, is what's reimbursed for the time of URA activities being done by city employees.

1:27:02 – 1:27:467

So there's always parity there. And then the other thing is the transfer from the URA to the to the general fund, that's always a year end closeout journal entry. We don't do that on a monthly basis. It's just kind of a year end. And the reason that is part of that is in keeping with URAs have to spend borrowed money. And so the URA is paying back the general fund at the end of the the the budget period for the personnel services of the suit. So, monthly reporting launch unfortunately, it won't show anything as a year end transaction. So, anyway, it gets really a little rabbit hole and weeds on that. But but that's that's how we've been accounted for it.

1:27:49 – 1:28:001

Thank you, sir. So I've heard councilor Hagedorn, councilor Weber speak up for areas that interest them. Is there anything else we should do?

1:28:02 – 1:28:254

Councilor Kaffin, any thoughts? Thank you. Councilor Kaffin, I have I just a couple clarifying questions. You know, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding correctly. The intent of this document is Bill provides a report monthly, then you are translating that that data into this format. Is that correct?

1:28:26 – 1:28:431

I would state it as Bill was very nice in a previous meeting to offer the opportunity for us to provide feedback on information and working. So based on what I've heard from you guys, I tried to

1:28:4312

capture it in the report.

1:28:45 – 1:28:564

Okay. And so this report, though, would be submitted as is, or are you having to do additional work as a counselor to put it into this format?

1:28:58 – 1:29:141

My request here was that we would align on what we would like our city manager to provide us and the public, and the staff or marina would prepare this. I wouldn't be any I wouldn't be involved in it.

1:29:15 – 1:29:464

Okay. Thank you. And then my my other question was, you know, if if staff could provide how much time would this take to provide this report. Again, I think what's been weighing in the back of my mind is, you know, not not getting distracted and and really trying to keep our eye on the prize of completing audits and, you know, maintaining a cadence. I I appreciate the visibility, but I I am curious how much time this is going to take away from staff from Marina and associates.

1:29:49 – 1:30:217

Thank you, councilor Pavan. So right now, the report that you see in front of me takes about three hours to do, and it is largely off of the type of report that we that our accounting software allows us to do. When I do the report, it's called a budget status report and run it from each department and each, you you know, each fund. And I look through it every single one of the accounts, whether there's hundreds or whatever there is for each of the funds or departments. And I look at each one to see how are we doing on budget.

1:30:21 – 1:30:487

And then but then I sum it up The the report you have is the sum of major categories by fund and department. But I go through each account, to kinda see where we are. And then when I call out, you know, we we paid that insurance bill. It's been attributed to to to finance and and administration department. But in a journal entry in the future, we're gonna distribute that cost because that department doesn't bear all that cost.

1:30:49 – 1:31:157

We distribute that based on, you know, who's what's really requiring that expense. So that's why so that's why you see that those bits of details. If something looks odd or weird, that's because I've looked at all the accounts. But it takes it's a three hour process based on the the accounting software that we use. I'm more than happy to take all of these suggestions or ask up with Matt and figure out what that what types of reports, or is there even a custom report that can be done.

1:31:17 – 1:32:007

Know, they're they're they're the Springbrook experts. I have have twice explored looking at other software programs that do a far better job. And, unfortunately, the software program that we have chosen and have, it's easily a $100,000 plus expense to get off this system. Maybe in the future, that's something you all wanna do. Like I said, I've looked into it and talked to other finance directors at other cities. But at the end of the day, it this is a there are fantastic options out there, but it's not cheap to get off. It's just so either way, this report you already see is a three hour report.

1:32:00 – 1:32:190

So I think what I would suggest then is because we don't really have consensus and we still need more information. It might be good to suggest that they'll have a conversation with Matt and and brings back a cost and time estimate. Does that sound reasonable? Maybe. Move that finish business when he has that.

1:32:191

Yeah. I think we could do that next.

1:32:210

Yes. Bill, is that working? Yeah. No.

1:32:247

I'd love to. I mean I mean, you know, yeah, that'd great.

1:32:270

Okay. Thank you. So next, we're going to turn it over to Emily for performance review discussion.

1:32:3713

Hello. Can you guys hear me okay?

1:32:410

Got you. Yes.

1:32:42 – 1:33:2813

Great. So believe it or not, we're here to talk again about the process to conduct for council to conduct the city manager's performance evaluation. The last one, which was in summer, fall last year, was the six month, and it is already time for the one year evaluation per the contract. So I'm here to go over the general process for what the evaluation looks like, and just discuss sort of next steps. So in your packet was the form for the performance evaluation.

1:33:30 – 1:34:4213

And this is the form that has been approved in the past by council, and it has been used, I think, since 2022. And it sort of tracks with, as I understand it, the, job duties and, in the contract and in the code and charter for the city manager. So the process is that the city recorder will distribute this form to all the counselors as well as the department heads and also to Bill who will do a self evaluation in narrative form, but, like, kind of relying on the information in the this form, then we can discuss how long, you have to complete the form once you're done. You send it to me. My office compiles it, all of the council responses, all of the department head responses, and then summarize the results for discussion.

1:34:44 – 1:35:4113

Then the council meets and goes over the composite evaluation results as well as the city manager's self evaluation. And that meeting is done without Bill present and in an executive session unless Bill requests an open hearing, in which case it's done in an open meeting. And then after that conversation, my office, again, will kind of synthesize everything, and then council will have another meeting with Bill present. Again, if he requests an open hearing, then it's in a public meeting. Otherwise, it's in an executive session where, the council and Bill discuss the evaluation and results.

1:35:41 – 1:36:2213

And the Bill and I discussed the sort of timelines that we proposed for what this looks like, but I can't access my notes. I'm having some technical difficulties working from home. So, Bill, I don't know if you have that written down somewhere. My memory was that we were trying to not overload you with an executive session or additional meeting item on the nights that you have the urban renewal agency meetings, but I don't have the dates in front of me, Bill. Do you have them?

1:36:22 – 1:37:017

I, I do. Yeah. I mean, basically, what I have, Emily, is Laurie would distribute the forms over the next couple weeks or whenever. But, ultimately, May 4 would be, excuse me. April 20 would be the executive session where or or the meeting where you all discuss scoring. And then, the following meeting as early as the following meeting on May 4, you could be in the meeting with me going over results.

1:37:03 – 1:37:4313

So that gives you some time to fill out, complete the results. I think probably over the next two weeks is what I would prefer, and then my office would have time to sort of synthesize the results and make a composite. So that is sort of the proposed plan. Obviously, it's up to counsel and the as long as it's consistent with the contracts and code and charter. So do you have any questions, or did you wanna do you have any questions for me, I guess?

1:37:47 – 1:38:052

I just want to clarify that there's so there's a URA meeting, the first council meeting of every month for April, May, and June. So May 4, when Bill suggested that that there could be an executive session, there can be, but there's also a work session, the regular meeting, and the URA meeting on May 4.

1:38:060

Friday through the '20 or eighteenth. Sorry. I the I bet.

1:38:117

What I mean, whenever whenever you like.

1:38:132

I mean, I I just want you guys to be aware because I

1:38:16 – 1:38:270

Yeah. No. I'm not cancel the work session. What? Cancel the work session? There's nothing booked for it. Right? We already have work sessions scheduled out. So how far out could we go?

1:38:287

Right now, Mayor, we have we have work sessions scheduled out to May 18. Yeah. We'll talk about that.

1:38:350

We have some so. At this point, we we we've already set those.

1:38:42 – 1:39:147

If I might just from a scheduling perspective, this one year evaluation, it's it was done staggered after the six month evaluation, but but, you know, it's running late on it. So not like it's gotta be done by x date. But I when I am visiting with Emily, I I encouraged thinking about a process where we were done by June is the bottom line.

1:39:21 – 1:40:033

Counselor Weber, that's the main thing I would say is missing now is matching up all these things that have to happen with the proposed dates, seeing if they match up as as, Laurie said with other things that are already planned, the finalizing dates that we're proposing. I would find it real helpful to receive all of that lined up with the tasks, and then that would give a little time for us to reflect on the potential dates that you're proposing and then also match those up with different conflicts because the tasks that need to happen make sense to me, but the dates are unclear. They would be helpful to clarify.

1:40:06 – 1:40:199

Counsel Warrington here. So plan four is booked. Right? There's a lot going on. So, can we just suggest 05:14 meeting? Is that open? Fifteen. Sorry. Eighteen.

1:40:19 – 1:40:307

The second meeting of May has no URA meeting according to the schedule that you already board, decided last time. So, yes. Right.

1:40:300

The 2038 would be two. Should you be planning time with your evaluation too?

1:40:354

So clarify that caller evaluations are due the eighteenth, and the discussion is when

1:40:410

The evaluations will be due April 20.

1:40:4310

Okay. Well

1:40:442

Although, they'll be they'll be due before that because they need to get TBEH for them to compile everything.

1:40:510

So Should be to the fourth?

1:40:53 – 1:41:222

Well, it depends on when I how soon I get them out. I'll talk to Emily tomorrow, and, obviously, we wanna get them out as soon as possible because we wanna get them back as soon as possible. And we'll give hard dates for the same dates for everybody, city staff and you guys, so that I can get them back to BEH so that they have plenty of time to come file all the data before the '20. Perfect.

1:41:23 – 1:41:4813

So I'll well, Laurie and I will connect and get them out to you, like, in the next couple days. So they'll be ideally, they'll be due back to me by early April. That gives tomorrow, is the seventeenth, so two weeks would be the thirty first. So sometime in that first March, April. But we'll let you know when we distribute them.

1:41:511

Your last question, Emily, you have three new upcoming weeks here. Is the scope of our review from our appointment date or from the last three?

1:42:03 – 1:42:4913

That's a really good question. So the review is on Bill's performance, and it should be based on your firsthand knowledge of Bill's performance. So if you have observed Bill performing his role as city manager before you join the council, such as by observing public meetings and watching how Bill did his job in the public meetings, then that can be included. If otherwise, it should be your firsthand knowledge since you've been a counselor. And then it should be also since his last evaluation, and I can give you the dates of that as well.

1:42:5713

Did that answer your question?

1:43:001

Yeah. Thank you.

1:43:010

Any other questions? Alright. Thanks, Emily. We look forward to the paperwork.

1:43:108

Thank you.

1:43:13 – 1:43:320

Alright. Our city manager report. So I did ask Bill to send out the report that he turned out for you all based on a email so that we can have clarification and everybody has information. So I will turn over to them,

1:43:347

Alright. I'm on. Yep. I had the battle of the break.

1:43:391

I'm sorry? The recording. I don't know you can do that recording.

1:43:457

Okay. So okay. Thank you, Mayor. Correct. Thank you for the introduction and the team.

1:43:54 – 1:44:437

So mayor asked me to pull together kind of a bit more of a report to you all regarding the North Plains Event Association and North Plains Event Association City Events. We had some controversy here recently because there was a North Plains Event Association community wide bingo night, I believe, on the '20 Saturday, the twenty eighth. And and the the city promoted that event as a city event. And then two weeks later, the North Plains Food Bank had a bingo night just this past Saturday night. They had they had a bingo night fundraiser.

1:44:44 – 1:45:417

The NPA bingo night, the community bingo night, was a bet that, the pro proceeds raised, went were were for the benefit of the North Plains Senior Center. And then the North Plains Food Bank had their bingo night, two weeks later on this past Saturday night with the express purpose of proceeds going to the the North Plains fundraising for the North Plains Food Bank. And so the question came up with the city. Why is the city promoting one when it won't actively promote the other, like, on social media and and that sort of thing? And so this report is meant to answer that question, and it has to do with the fact that the community white bingo night managed by North Plains Event Association was in lieu of the annual crab dinner, crab feed, crab fest, whatever it's been called over the years.

1:45:42 – 1:46:257

That's an annual event. It's, that has annually explicitly been, promoted as a fundraiser for the senior center, North Plains senior center. But it is it's part of the slate of events that NPEA manages for community benefit. And so it's part of the events that every year, the North Plains Event Association was an annually renewable contract with the city to run a bunch of events for the community, and city sponsorship or partnership is part of that. And we budget for all of these events.

1:46:25 – 1:46:417

The only event not in this contract before you is the garlic festival. That's a completely different contract, and it's a four year term. So that one's up for for renewal consideration FY '28. But this number just kind of lays out. These are all the different events.

1:46:42 – 1:47:187

And the crab dinner has annually been held as a crab dinner, but this year, because of the price of crab, NPEA let us know in January we won't be able to do the craft fest. We're considering doing a community wide bingo event. They would still be raising funds and funds for the senior center like that. The event always has been. And so that's why it looked like the citywide or the community wide bingo event benefiting the senior center looked exactly the same, or resembled, like, you know, looked looked very similar to the food bank event.

1:47:19 – 1:47:577

The difference is just that the crab the the bingo event in lieu of the crab feeder crab dinner was part of the annual city events. And so we don't we don't push non city events with with social media. And so that's the difference. In the packet here you have, in the in the stat panel, you have the contract listing all the different events and what the city does on their end, regarding signage and setup and that sort of thing. And the cost of the contract the cost of the events all year long is is in the contract.

1:47:59 – 1:48:127

And so that's that's the main thing. It's just there are events that are identified as city community events and some, separate entities have their events, but they're not city sponsored events. I

1:48:134

guess we couldn't answer it. I was gonna say, what is the

1:48:152

difference between the there's two bodies of events

1:48:204

Yeah. Designated city events of the events and the community of What is the distinguishing factor?

1:48:311

I'm sorry.

1:48:34 – 1:49:007

Well, I mean, honestly, I I don't know why the NPA contract I don't know why NPA has has contracted with events this way because there's really there's really no difference. Honestly, the only event that's substantively different from the other ones is the craft dinner. That's the only event on here that raises money for an entity, the senior center. The rest of these are just

1:49:017

Events, and they aren't fundraisers. But the crab dinner has historically annually been they've fundraised it for the senior center.

1:49:09 – 1:49:227

And why those four? I mean, I could see the crab dinner kind of being different categorized differently, but but the other ones are just events. I I I honestly don't know why they

1:49:22 – 1:49:563

Oh. Call things differently. Counselor Weber, one suggestion this is actually part of for me, I've had some experience with an issue like this, where it becomes a really important discussion is if something bad happens and then you get into liability. So what I was always taught is if you have this outside five zero one c three that you're paying to do something for you, you should be very clear that's not you. Because if something bad happens, they're gonna wanna sue the deeper pockets, the city.

1:49:56 – 1:50:333

I would wanna clarify that the five zero one c three that ran the event has the liability. So we don't have to decide it now, but I think we probably would wanna involve the attorney in the discussion because my experience is that we might wanna be clear that this is not run by the city. This is a group we contract with to run these wonderful events, but they're not us because the big the big issue is liability. And I question here? The question or the recommendation for me is that I think we need to follow-up on this with the city of Ontario Okay.

1:50:331

Thank you. To clarify the

1:50:350

Any any other questions? Pastor Forge?

1:50:39 – 1:50:591

My take on this is I would like for people who know things to feel that they're treated equally. And so I would support any direction with where the food bank and all the food center and Patty, everything that Patty does for the city, which is wonderful. They can both feel that they're being treated.

1:51:02 – 1:51:219

I'm sorry, Warrington. I know that the calendar is for city events, and these are all city events. Is there a way to add these in a different color or a different font or something to have one calendar for all the events where people can go in. Just just an idea. Oh, it's on the website.

1:51:217

And Yeah. On the on the website? Yeah. Yeah. Happy to happy to look into it. Thank you. Oh, sure.

1:51:30 – 1:52:034

Sounds okay, but I just had a quick question. You know, anything to piggyback on on thinking about other organizations that might want city visibility or city endorsement on such events. Is there a clear parameter that says, hey. You know, at the city, we will only stand by NPEA. Right? There's been this long standing tradition. But if another organization wanted to come forward and have the city sponsor an event, do we have anything in writing, or do we have a procedure for that?

1:52:03 – 1:52:437

Great question, council Piedmont. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, it we we don't I I guess from the city's perspective, I've never seen any policy or anything, and I certainly have never been handed over a procedure that that says we will only partner with one entity to do events. We just happen to have a very active one here in town doing a bunch of them. I think the I I think one thing that's worth mentioning in all of this and the memo the the the city manager report gets into it a bit, and that is that MPA is entirely volunteer driven.

1:52:43 – 1:53:107

Like, we're not paying a professional event manager for all these different events, including the garlic fest because that would quadruple the cost. And so if somebody stepped forward and said, I would love to do this, and how do we partner with the city on it, we talk about it. I just wanna give the idea that, you know, there's one place for one entity. That's not the case. We just give nobody approaches us.

1:53:11 – 1:53:537

Look. You know, we're not out there casting a net because of everything else going on, but it's true that if somebody came well, it's, the the chiropractic company. They just kinda yeah. Peak Chiropractic, they they just kinda run their events, and we're glad they're doing it. And, you know, we mentioned it, but we don't make it a they never approached us to say say, could this be a city? They're just doing their own thing as a private company. So if we had a group come forward and we're working on a downtown association happening, that would be a great one. Different entity from NPEA, downtown focused things, absolutely, would we, you know, try to work on something?

1:53:53 – 1:54:194

Thank you. And I think that's just something for this board to consider, just as we as we evolve and grow as a city. You know, I wanna be fair and equitable to all stakeholders in our city, But I also think about, you know, if an organization comes before us and maybe that organization's mission and values don't align with what we wanna portray in the city. Right? How do we say no, and how do we be fair and consistent to all organizations?

1:54:20 – 1:54:554

And I don't have an answer for this board right now. I just wanna kind of put that in your in your psyche to to think about, to problem solve, because it should be, you know, equitable to everyone. But I also think about, you know, what if the boy scouts troop approached the city and wanted us to sponsor something? And then, you know, a a really controversial organization approached us and wanted us to sponsor something. How do we distinguish, or how do we determine that? And there's not a clear process right now, but I want everyone to feel welcome to approach the city if that is the direction we choose to go. Council, can I make a suggestion?

1:54:57 – 1:55:127

You all just approved a former event partner management person at the city of Hillsborough to your economic development commission. And so my suggestion would be ask the EDC to look into this for you.

1:55:140

Feels a great idea. Let's make that happen. Love

1:55:222

you. You're taking notes? Your workload just doubled.

1:55:270

K. So I think the staff instructions, please send this for review because I think that is probably the appropriate K. Anything else?

1:55:35 – 1:56:007

Just to confirm, there's gonna be a well, I guess, North Plains Food Bank issue. What do you like about that on the sixth or the twentieth? Well, just a date question. You answered councilor DePorge earlier that it was a future agenda item. I just wanted to see what date you wanted it. The twentieth of the I would sixth of the twentieth.

1:56:00 – 1:56:120

So so the council, my suggestion is probably the twenty fifth of your board meeting. That's likely to get a longer. But what do you want? What else you wanna do? Six to the twentieth on the

1:56:144

It sounds like there's a staff update. I mean, is do you have enough time to give us the update in the

1:56:248

aftercare if we stay at six? Do you have a preference?

1:56:274

So we're redlining on this to come back to us.

1:56:291

Okay. So I

1:56:330

mean, I would like to I would like to get

1:56:367

this on the agenda ASAP for Oh, alright. This is my The

1:56:400

third one.

1:56:42 – 1:57:177

Really, what we would really, what the item is is that we would have an agenda item, different staff members involved in the process, and and some of the well, involved in the process would it would just be a discussion, kind of giving you an idea. The other thing I will say is that, unfortunately, Ron has gotten more ill, not less ill, over the weekend. I feel terrible. But late last week, we were working on a rather large communication to you all to set up that discussion. So I would prefer to put it on the sixth, though, and just That would too. We'll just have

1:57:170

to be judicious for time.

1:57:19 – 1:57:477

Yeah. And then the final thing, mayor, if you wouldn't mind, work sessions. We in talking with mayor last week, we have a sheriff's office with a contract renewal that needs to happen before June 30 by you all by adoption. And so a work session to talk about kind of get back to what service level do you want. Does that mean the contract needs to change?

1:57:47 – 1:58:127

Like, that whole conversation. I am suggesting to you that's kind of urgent. Not urgent, but the sooner you talk about it and then any work that needs to be done, we can come back, you know, in June at the latest. I'm proposing that beyond the the May 4 work session, and that would bump what we now call the downtown plan and transportation system plan discussion work session to May 18.

1:58:160

Objection.

1:58:171

I'm gonna continue to whine about scheduling work sessions on your end. I don't I don't think we

1:58:23 – 1:58:350

need Well done. It's it's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna we're gonna make sure you can pick that up on and your session are critical or just to get the portion. The wife, we're gonna have a meeting that runs both and

1:58:351

31 fuck. That's not typical per chart. So

1:58:410

you're gonna have to work with them. Times will be added.

1:58:451

Well, I appreciate that. At the end of day, the calendar is up with the council. Right?

1:58:510

You're free to override the decision, but that's the decision that council's already made. We're gonna have the work session. That work that

1:59:011

If we were yeah. I understand. I appreciate everyone's feedback here. I wanna I wanna make everyone happy as possible, but if we were a little bit flexible in switching.

1:59:120

I also wanna remind you that we are about eighteen minutes away from the journey, and

1:59:18 – 1:59:301

we still have council reports. So Yep. I guess my my suggestion to everyone is let's keep work sessions out of URA to be sensitive to everyone's time, but I'm happy to align with the group.

1:59:322

You guys already agreed to it.

1:59:330

We yeah. We've we've already agreed to this.

1:59:352

URA meetings on the three.

1:59:37 – 1:59:502

that would take a change at the next URA meeting to change those dates because you all Okay. Yeah. Work sessions. Yeah. There was consensus to keep the work sessions and have the URAs on the first meeting.

1:59:501

I understand. We got new information. We're learning, and we can adapt, of course, if the next time that you are able to go to

1:59:570

the session, we can Adjust what? We're we're we're gonna unless somebody else wants to bring this up, we're gonna table this and move on to the next agenda. Alright.

2:00:067

Mayor, might I just mention one thing?

2:00:090

Oh, yes, please. And that is

2:00:11 – 2:00:507

that, moving forward, two of the work sessions are are URA issues. And so, with the express purpose of talking about it then so that the URA meeting is not long. Yes. So, new grant programs, that's April 6. And then that, in particular, the downtown plan and transportation system plan, the downtown plan is really kind of the adopted plan and and kind of script for a lot of major projects of the URA on Commercial Street in particular. So I don't want anybody to feel like we're not talking about those things because, we're we're working through work sessions.

2:00:50 – 2:01:030

Yes. Okay. Anything else, Bill? Okay. So for council reports, I'm gonna ask you to keep it to two minutes or less, please. Councilor Redding. Alright. Councilor Weber.

2:01:05 – 2:01:293

Just, an encouragement that we'd finalize the marina contract that that would be brought to us. A suggestion for an agenda item that the right of way discussion on for Main Street and North would be brought before the council so we could have clarity, to help Dustin's staff and the residents who's gonna take care of that in the coming year.

2:01:330

K. Hold on. So Don proposed agenda item. What

2:01:394

was the can you repeat that?

2:01:428

I'm sorry.

2:01:42 – 2:01:543

The suggestion was that we would have an agenda item to clarify because it sounds like we don't have clarity of who's gonna take care of Main Street and and the North.

2:01:540

And what was the outcome of the work session by moving?

2:01:571

Not that that would return with proposals. Correct.

2:02:037

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Dustin's working on taking a look at different parts of town having have needing to have different considerations, but that is one

2:02:130

of So I I think the answer to your question is yes, but not yet because we still need best recommendations. We can't do anything until we have the staff report on that.

2:02:213

Right. But I'm asking for specifically two areas of the broader

2:02:250

We we don't focus on two areas. We focus on the city. So we need staff recommendation, and then we will train it for two resolution.

2:02:333

K. And do we have clarity when that would be?

2:02:407

No. We just we have been we can I mean, we we can do it late May or June based on the existing schedule?

2:02:473

Mean, the reason I bring that up, the grass dies. The grass needs to be mowed. There's a practical considerations.

2:02:540

So at the work session list, it sounds like. Anything else? No. Okay. Councilor Warren?

2:03:01 – 2:03:199

Yes. I know we have talked about the food bank, but I would like to add to the agenda item that's coming up on the sixth to discuss that, legal dispute between city of North Plains and the food bank. Maybe we include the city attorney on this. It might be a good idea.

2:03:190

All of that will happen.

2:03:217

That that's that will be part of that. Yes.

2:03:23 – 2:03:409

Awesome. Also, I'd like to, to include a report, regarding if there's any formal objections that have been raised, and what the consequences are, the plans to rectify that formal objection. If there is one, could we include that in the agenda?

2:03:41 – 2:03:567

About the about the food bank loading zone? Mhmm. Yeah. But we'll we'll we'll unpack all of it for you. Well, first off, you're getting a major email with all of this with the timeline, and then we can go into detail including that information. Thank you, though. Absolutely.

2:03:57 – 2:04:091

Thanks for the. Yes, sir. First, I'd like to follow-up with Bill. I have on my notes that I should talk to you about the USDA grant status. So a quick refresher. Yeah.

2:04:09 – 2:04:377

Thank you, councilor. So the architects that did the prior the prior space needs study for us that would be the starting point of updating Don't have time to be with me until end of the first week of April, so I have that on the books. There is another architectural firm I wanna contact that helped us with the Kindle building see if they can meet with us early. We're gonna need

2:04:370

to kind of I don't we're gonna need to get a couple

2:04:40 – 2:04:597

of different bids anyway, but, I I'm not gonna have clear answers on what's going to be involved in updating our updating plan until early April. Would it be a good time for me to check-in? April or You you can counsel, you can prod me as much as you like.

2:04:591

Thank you,

2:05:007

sir. But the reality is is, yeah, FFA, for whatever reason, can't be with me on this until April. I understand.

2:05:09 – 2:05:301

Thank you, sir. And, could I request, an agenda item to make motions relating to the audit? So just a big picture here. I'm just trying to provide formality and structure to things I think we've discussed and achieved consensus on.

2:05:310

So this what does council wish to do? Do you wanna have a an agenda item on the Yes, sir.

2:05:377

I would like to No.

2:05:380

I'm I'm asking council. We we need the council. Sorry. Oh, that's what I was asking.

2:05:414

What? Agreed. Can you clarify council, you clarify what the intent of adding this to the agenda? What's the outcome they're looking for?

2:05:501

To create formal structure.

2:05:57 – 2:06:314

Can you clarify this on the cadence? And I and I the reason why I'm asking is Sure. I appreciate, you the intent of wanting to create a formal structure, but I also want to allow the autonomy to city and to staff that are working on the audits to be able to complete the audits without adding one more complexity into the mix. But I I hesitate to add it in even monthly if if they're still in the thick of it. So I don't know if maybe quarterly or if you would like monthly. I'm just curious your cadence.

2:06:311

Just to be clear here, councilor Hagiborne, can I let me just answer this one? This is not related to

2:06:377

the monthly report. This is.

2:06:409

And it's a and the sorry, councilor board. It's a discussion. Right? A motion and a discussion around them. Correct?

2:06:461

I would like to ask a new motion with your guidance.

2:06:548

Councilor, if you get over here, I would like to

2:06:564

see a proposal or a package of what the ask is because right now, it's kinda big.

2:07:02 – 2:07:360

I think, like, what I think what's what councilor and councilor are saying is perhaps if you could provide something for the next council report in writing, like, just to kind of a brief summary of what you want, it would be easier to say yes or no. Because without knowing, I don't think anybody is really inclined to add something to the agenda without more clarification because of the time that we're in, like, this the shortage of time, I think it would be something that we need to come to cancel under under council reports, I think.

2:07:374

Like a Like

2:07:380

a proposal.

2:07:407

Yeah. You can do it that way.

2:07:410

Okay. I think that's the best way. So that way, if they have a chance to read it and Understand. Understand what we're

2:07:491

Absolutely. 100% wanna help you guys out. And I think I think we're

2:07:537

all in alignment, and I'm just

2:07:541

trying to quickly navigate through. Yeah. Yeah. So so just to be clear, and I'm going to prior to the meeting, I'm going to prepare my motions, submit it to you guys

2:08:03 – 2:08:462

so you have an option. Be submitted to me Yes. For the packet. Thank you. And then that they all get it at the same time. They all the public sees it. They all I mean, if you bring in a motion in front of people, in front of council, everybody needs to know ahead of time what it is, especially council so they can consider and review it. Just like any any documents that you're gonna present, unless they're finalized at the last minute, they should be to me by the Wednesday before to go in the packet. Your your sample thing probably should have been in packet. I actually had a couple of residents text me and say, what are they looking at?

2:08:46 – 2:08:572

I don't see it up on the screen. I didn't see it in the packet. So those are the kind of things that need to be, for transparency, need to be provided at a time.

2:08:57 – 2:09:081

Mayor Dunbar, just to be clear, so I'm going to follow that direction, and then it'll be in the council reports. Would we be able to submit a motion that session? Or

2:09:08 – 2:09:350

It would go to you would submit a motion to the next session because without knowing what it is Okay. Actually don't think there's consensus. So I'm I'm trying to give you some grace to be able to bring it to the next one. If you just bring it written and give it to Laurie, then we don't have a chance to review and reflect. And then that way when it comes to council reports, can say, yes. We agree or no. Does that make sense? Or I'm just trying to give a little grace, but also keep us on track. That's all. Cool. Council Peyton?

2:09:37 – 2:10:004

Okay. Council Peyton. I will try to keep mine very brief for the sake of time. I attended the economic development committee as ex officio a couple weeks ago. During that meeting, it was pretty brief, but we discussed or the the committee discussed introducing a passport program within the city to help drive traffic to some of our local businesses.

2:10:00 – 2:10:414

This is something that they're looking to potentially implement at the ice cream social later in June with the possibility for an app as well. And then, there's also just brief discussion about having a guest speaker from Explorers' Fulton Valley presenting to the EDC, and then, of course, the nomination for Johannesburg to fill that vacancy. And I would share just the last thing I would add in. I had an opportunity to continue attending the Washington County Sheriff's Office Community Academy. It's a weekly program for many weeks, and I was able to attend this last session at the Public Safety Training Center.

2:10:42 – 2:11:154

I'm sure chief chief O'Reilly is very familiar with and just really seeing the professionalism and the precision of the sheriff's office. And I'll keep my my thoughts brief, but it just really makes me proud to have Washington County representing us within our city. So with that, I will pass it over to councilor McGuero. My assignment on the ninth was canceled with parks and rec. Very disappointed. However, I'm looking forward to my library board meeting on Wednesday. And on Thursday, there's a budget committee with WACA.

2:11:19 – 2:11:300

So I owe Cherokee and apology. I messed up my calendar and missed planning commission on the eleventh. That was totally my fault. So I'm horrible. I always made

2:11:302

him feel bad.

2:11:300

So Yeah. She did make me feel terrible.

2:11:322

Don't need to worry about it.

2:11:34 – 2:11:570

Totally messed up. I apologize. I'm new job, and I have no excuse. I just messed up my calendar again. I will do better. Let's see. I need a alternate for the Washington County Transportation. WCTC. Yes. It's Washington County Transportation Committee or something like that. I'll find out exactly.

2:11:572

It's a new one on me too, so I I can't even help him out that we've never

2:12:01 – 2:12:160

Caught me off guard. I didn't know about it, but, apparently, we have a seat. So it's just a regular board seat. We'll be in there, I I have no idea what's about. I haven't even got to read it. So is anybody open to doing that? I will find out the details. What is this? Washington County grant application.

2:12:1710

I I think think commission or

2:12:184

something. I

2:12:200

think so. I will find out too. In fact, you know what? Let me let me just get back. I'll send it to Laurie. Laurie will Yeah.

2:12:279

And I'll I'll look into

2:12:282

what I can find out about their meetings and when and where.

2:12:310

I'll get everything I have. I apologize. It it it caught me off guard, and I was like, I have no idea. So the other one is So just Oh, sorry.

2:12:402

They're just looking for a representative and a backup?

2:12:430

So I'm the I'm the representative's mayor. We need a backup. Okay. It's another one of those ones where they got me because

2:12:488

because you're the

2:12:49 – 2:13:080

I'm an idiot. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I mean, the mayor. Yes. The other thing we have, Washington County Transportation Washington County Coordinating Committee, we did a lot of legislative updates. We won some. We lost most in this in the legislature. So hold on to your wallets.

2:13:09 – 2:13:400

There's gonna be a lot more coming out of that. I I haven't had time to read through all of it, and I need to meet with representative Edwards on a couple of things because there's a couple that I need to for legislative aid to help us understand what our impact is gonna be. But more to come on that. And then, otherwise, I think that was my only ones this month, and then I'm also attending the fire thing that that's paid. We talked about a lot, so I'm excited about that.

2:13:40 – 2:14:200

You have an opportunity to get these community events or community community partners like TDFNR and Washington County Sheriffs. I strongly encourage you because you'll learn a lot about part of your community, really good programs. So again, Kurt's not enough. And then Chiropractic has an event coming up. I would be out of town, but if can attend, please do. And there was one other. Came from. Oh, it was a food bank, and I missed that one. It goes out of town, but thank you. I think council report you were there. So thank you. I'm trying to get all these, but somehow my schedule is not lining up. With that, any alibis? Is everybody able to make their talent commitments? Ex officios?

2:14:229

Yeah. I don't have an ex officio with the councilor Warren, but the next council meeting, I'll be in Vegas. I'm going to be calling again on Zoom. K.

2:14:330

Anything else?

2:14:349

I I have a question.

2:14:350

Oh, yes, please.

2:14:367

I've because

2:14:362

I've had people ask me, do we have a date for the state city? Bill

2:14:420

and I are working on that. Okay. I'm sorry. That's on that's on the evening.

2:14:451

That's fine. Actually,

2:14:472

a couple people asked me when I was at the bank. So I've yeah.

2:14:500

So We will get it done.

2:14:520

I I promise. I'm sorry that that one was on me. Okay. With that, we are adjourned. Thank you for helping us get out on time, and we are adjourned at twenty seven.

This transcript was automatically generated from the official public meeting video and is presented unedited. It reflects remarks made on the public record by elected officials, staff, and public commenters. Transcript accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.