City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you so much. Okay, we'll call our work session to order. Topic of discussion tonight is the 911 dispatch consolidation kind of in preparation for our uh county electeds meeting this Thursday at the fairgrounds. None of respects. Sir, thank you, mayor. Um, so as the mayor mentioned, uh, Thursday evening, I was just looking up what time it is.

5 o'clock at the county fairgrounds. You're all invited to meeting with the county commissioners. They've invited all of the elected officials from all the different cities and some other individuals. The two topics that they would like to discuss with everyone is first uh 911 consolidation and then two uh economic development some changes that they want to make. I haven't they haven't clued me in on what that is and so I'll be interested to see what that looks like at that discussion. Um, but we wanted to at least brief you on what they'll be talking about. Uh, so you have a little more context going into it. I think it'll it'll make for a more meaningful discussion with the county and with the other with the other cities. And so what I'm hoping to do is divide up this work session into two parts. one, I'm going to give you an overview of the discussion and what I expect I expect what I'm covering with you is exactly what they're going to cover um on Thursday. And then I want to turn some time over to Mitch Brown, our from our communications manager for the police department who oversees dispatch to have him give you a brief overview of dispatch. I think if this continues and we and we start getting more involved in looking at at consolidation efforts, I want to make sure that all of you have a good understanding of our dispatch, how it works and things like that. Uh just so that you are more informed and can make more informed uh decisions as we as we move along. Um but we're very early in the process. So, um, so purpose of tonight's, uh, meeting is to, um, give you some background before you meet with county officials. Um, talk about why we're looking at it. Uh,

the big question they want to discuss is different governance options and then clarify what our position is and and what it will look like moving forward. So, why are we talking about this? the county uh has expressed uh concern about the long-term funding for 911 system and that the current structure was developed over time rather than through um kind of a sit down and and saying, "Hey, what's the best uh way to dispatch countywide?" So, we have uh two dispatching centers. We'll talk a little bit more about that. Um we have had I don't know, Chief Ham, how many times have they talked about consolidation?

Three or four. many times.

Um so the approach they're taking now is starting with the very high level um decisions that need to get made and then working our way down to an operational level. And we think that some of the issues that we often run into at an operational level can be best answered if we have the higher um higher order questions answered. And uh depending on how the go how that goes and what what comes out of those discussions and what comes out of the data analysis uh it may lead us one direction or the other. So uh current overview um there are two dispatch centers obviously we have one and a story has the other and these are the um are the agencies that they each dispatch to. um a lot more rural districts in the north system and for us it's mostly us Canon Beach and and uh Gearheart. Okay. So why does the county want to study this? They believe that consolidation may be able to help address um fragmented infrastructure. So running two systems um limited citywide systemwide planning staffing and recruitment challenges uh long-term funding stability and operational efficiency and what they have said are areas for improvement are better communication across uh police, fire and EMS uh coordinating during major incidents, call handling efficiency, technology investment and training career pathways for dispatch staff. I do want to say this isn't this isn't about that our current dispatch center is not, you know, up up to par or anything. I think

it's looking at possibilities that uh some things that could that they believe may be able to best happen through consolidation with one with one dispatch center. So the real question at the heart of this is should the county operate with two dispatch centers or one countywide emergency communication system? And so um if if we wanted to consider it um the first act the first decision that would need to be made is what kind of a governance structure basically what is the organization that would run dispatch and so they've identified three different options. First one is an intergovernmental agreement. This would be all of the cities, all of the rural fire agencies coming together with an agreement and saying we formed this new organization. This is how it's going to run and um and we move from there. Um and that has I'll get to the next slide which talks a little bit about uh a little more about about the pros and cons, but that's really the uh it's an agreement between all the agencies to act this way. Second is a county service district. And so this is a service district. Um trying to think if there's other service districts. We have some here and there. Um but this would be operated um under the jurisdiction of the county. And the second is also a district, but it's independent from the county and it would have its own elected officials to the board of the district. So uh the county has put together an extensive list of all the differences. I think the key one these are the the key factors I would be looking at. So if you look at an intergovernmental

agreement so the governance is it's all the different participating agencies the funding authority there would be no uh no tax rate. So basically it would be funded through user fees. So each agency paying into that. So right now we operate our dispatch. We have fees that we charge to Gearhart and Canon Beach and that's their user fees. Story does the same with all of their agencies. And so under an intergovernmental agreement, it would be something similar except for they're not paying us. We're we're paying into it. And who would who would run it? It would be an executive board. So we'd likely have one person depending how they set it up. One person from each agency. um put on the board. Um now that could look at many different ways of voting whether it's one per agency or proportional to their contribution or something like that. There's lots of different options on that but that's the the high-end look at that. Second is the county service district. So the governance it was be under the jurisdiction of the county commissioners. they can do a permanent tax rate and then who runs it be under uh the county administration under the county manager. Um and then last independent service district. So this would be an elected board uh also connected to a permanent tax rate and then obviously that board is the one that runs it. So they would under both any of these scenarios they would be hiring a dispatch manager or director or something like that whatever they want to call it. And um it would basically be who that individual would be reporting to. Um okay. So why does that matter? It's really about who makes the decisions, how the systems funded, who is accountable for performance, and how infrastructure investments are made.

So um um this has kind of been my approach um all along and I think I've had some discussions with with indiv with some of you here. So um I think we should be open to look at anything and consider anything especially if it has the opportunity to increase a safety level within within seaside. Um, but we're only interested in that if it maintains the current service level or is improves upon it that there isn't an increase in cost for the same level of service. So, we wouldn't want to give up our dispatch center to have the exact same level of service, but we now have no more control over it. Um, let's see. uh we want to look at it needs to improve the long-term system sustainability. If it can accomplish that, then I think we're probably better off um sticking with as as we are and then ensuring regional cooperation, which I think there are definitely that would make that easier, but there are still some opportunities to do that within the existing system and probably some areas for improvement that we could do within how it's approached today. Okay. So uh this is voluntary. Um the all the major agencies must agree but most importantly if Atoria doesn't agree to do it if CESAT doesn't agree to do it it it doesn't happen. So obviously no one can force us to give up our our dispatch. Same thing goes with the with Atoria. So as much as all the other agencies want unless they're interested in starting their own dispatch which would be very expensive. Um we're kind of in the driver's seat here. So, um fully participate, uh um fully voluntary. Uh no decisions have been made other than I've indicated. Yeah, we

should um look at it and see um what those results are. And so right now it's more in the what I would say exploratory stage. That's all I have. So, um, I can turn some time over to Mitch, but I wanted to we talk about the meeting on Thursday about governance structures, about um about consolidation itself. Any questions that you have?

Uh, when I watched that meeting, I heard a lot about the history or they talked a lot about it. It seemed like Oregon laws maybe have changed back and forth or varied well there's there is no law that is requiring this to happen on the books currently right not that I'm aware of especially where we have something that's working right and then um now let me ask you this if we are starting something up new there was I guess I'm I'm now kind of remembering what you're talking about I remember when the county presented this to the commission there was some talk about at some point there was um look at consolidating or maybe that was in other counties or something like that. I don't know if

I'm not aware of anything that would say that they could or couldn't. I know that when I talked with the state back many years ago or several years ago about whether they would force consolidations because of that being obviously a push. They told us that they would not force anity to be consolidated. Um, and the only other thing I would add to that is there are times when we weren't sure if our uh, neighboring dispatch center would be able to continue to operate because we've stepped in a number of times to help out. And so we have looked at contingency plans on what we would do if if um, if they were unable to operate and wouldn't be so much of a consolidation, but it would be if the state came back and said you have to dispatch. So luckily that hasn't happened and so you know we don't want that to happen but um but that was something we were worried about for a little while.

I think another consideration is not just the city governments but our taxpayers in the county. The last option that is mentioned is actually the creation of a special district and a special district uh say independent service district that's actually a special district and that has to be approved by voters in order for that to occur. So

yeah, so uh both both of these options would have to go to to the voters. And um I think one of the things that you'll hear from the county, especially when we talk about the long-term sustainability of dispatch, is the need for more investment in the infrastructure, the cost of that, and um that uh it it'll likely not be able to be done under the current financing mechanisms. And so what they're likely looking at is if they were to create it, they would create it if it went along with a dedicated property tax rate for consolidated dispatch. That would have to go to all the all the voters. Um, and so for our residents, um, what I would anticipate that would look like is obviously they would be paying more there. However, it I'm assuming it would need to cost us less to be interested in doing it. and then the city gets to decide what to do with that savings if it's invested elsewhere or something else. But that's theoretical and so we'd want to see what that comes in at.

Along those same lines of um this has gone on for years. I I see the challenges side and the benefits side or the the slides that you showed there, but is there a like what is the problem statement? Is was there something that created an impetus to look at this again. Is there somewhere that's not getting service? Is there somewhere where the costs are incredibly high? Is there like what's the problem?

So, I'm not going to be the best one to answer that. Um I'm sure some of our public safety officials here could could better answer that. I think they'll be talking about that on Thursday. The one thing I will say is what the county says is they've been looking at the infrastructure upgrades that need to happen to get us to what what they believe it should be and that we're about $4 million short countywide to do that. And so um there is a need for additional revenue in order to do that. So right now dispatch is funded through your 911 fees that you pay on your cell phone bill and then the rest is paid uh by user rates. So for us, we just pay it directly out of the general fund. For Canon Beach, for Gearart, they they pay it to the city and the um the goal would be to have three sources of revenue. So it would be um 911 fees, a property tax rate, and user rates. And the goal would be that user rates could go down over time. But like I said, I don't want to get into that because that's all speculative right now.

But like, okay, so in Denver, we had like this big mandate. he had to move to P95s or some some new length wave radio uh frequency for the radio. Is there something like that that is yes, we need $4 million for that and that's driving that this I haven't seen anything specific to that. Um I think that would be a good thing to get from the county what they are what they're talking about and that's part of the things that we'll want to look into.

Okay. Several years back, the council discussed this and we chose not to do this. Could we get access to those meds? I believe it was pre YouTube, but that was a long discussion. Did we do you recall if we voted on that or if it was just a discussion? I know we had a discussion and we chose not to move forward. I'd like to see those minutes if possible. those. And my other question is is really it sounds like North County is driving this because they're having issues with their dispatch, not necessarily South County. I'm just not sure how this improves our service to our I think that's what we need to determine.

Yeah, it seems like we have a great dispatch center. I've never heard any issues. We just made a big investment in it. I don't understand how this improves our service. I think that that that's what we want to see. question and the what Spencer said just make sure when we go into the meeting that you know keep an open mind and you know don't say that forget you we're just going to stick with ourselves that's a discussion for a future date just go in and ask questions

my concern I guess would be our dispatchers have a lot of local knowledge because they live in the community and if you move it to north county which it probably would move I don't hear any talk of it coming to seaside so would that local would we still have our same dispatchers up there to have that local knowledge or we because South and North County are very different. They're almost like

that's the I think that's the kind of thing that has tripped it up in the past is getting so deep into the operational issues. Um there's no plans for a location or or how to consolidate or things like that. It's really just do do the numbers work out that it improves the service level at this point and then start getting down. At some point they'll have to decide do they operate out of the two existing locations. Do they consolidate to one location? There'll be some operational things but there's no there's no real discussion about any of that at this point yet. I just think we'd have to have that discussion to even make a decision or consider it.

Yeah. This is this is just a discussion of is this worth invest worth worth investigating. That's the only that's the only place we're at right now. We're not anywhere near um close to making a any kind of commitment. I get that. We want to see how it all how all the how it all comes out. I get that. But I'm hoping they they are going to present some better problem statements and a and a stronger why. It's one thing to say infrastructure improvements are necessary. It's another thing to explain why it's another it's it's easy to say we want to improve service levels. Why why do they do they need to be improved?

I think those are good questions. As I reviewed the county's presentation that they made, you know, they had more talking points on kind of the why and as they're the ones who have initiated this, I want them to make that argument. So, I didn't want to come in and do a sales pitch, if you will, because I didn't think that's my role. My role is is more

Yeah, I think this is worth looking into, and let's see what comes out of those investigations and if it makes sense for our community. One of the things I would be interested in um also as part of the research is finding um another special district in the state that is a 911 dispatch kind of special district and seeing how do they operate, especially if it's a large county, how do they operate and how much is it costing their taxpayers and how effective is it? Um I'd want to see that kind of research as well. So I think that that it's very common. In fact, the county manager who has kind of initiated this, he led the change in Washington County where they changed from individual dispatch centers with with each city into a consolidated one. They ended up choosing the um intergovernmental agreement, which wasn't his recommendation, and they they struggled a little bit with the funding because of that. Um but um he led them through that change. Um and I have no idea if those agencies would say they're glad they did it or not. Uh those are all things that that we can look into. Anyways, I want to reserve some time for for Mitch to come up and just talk a little bit about bringing up to speed on what our disch center looks like. And then I think if the council's interested, we can set up a time for maybe the council to meet down there. Again, sometimes just seeing it for yourself is much better than thinking about it in theory, if that makes sense. Just adding more context to the discussion I think will will help you as you um review information as it comes in and you can kind of put it in different context. So

um so I'll turn time over to it.

I'll hang tight. Thanks. We'll be having questions about anything. What do you think about this consolidation idea?

There's that like for me it comes down to an operational thing because I'm in charge of operations. So a lot of it depends on how it operate and that's where my interest is because there's a lot of things you can't do. There's a lot of questions I can't answer unless I know what kind of money is going to be involved. uh how much money there is to back it and staffing. Otherwise, I I really there's not a lot I can answer unless I have those. And just like the city manager said, that's for you guys to decide if it's worth looking into. So,

could you describe the current level of cooperation between the

um So, Jeremy Hypes left about six months ago. He was their manager. Uh we were very involved. We talk almost every day about operational things that happen at the between the two dispatch centers. Um we were coordinating radio upgrades consistently. The new uh manager they have in there is she's only been there six months. She's still getting her feet wet. She jumped right into the middle of the CAD RMS upgrade and I mean it was like dunking her head under water. She really had a lot to try and gather to figure it out. Um and I was there to help her and we talked regularly. Not every day, but we talk weekly, multiple times a week um about CAD RMS because that is our biggest tool that we use outside the radios.

Are there occasions when calls have to be like bounced from one center to the other? Um Oh, yeah. Yes.

So, so in case you didn't know, uh Seaside and Atoria are the primary 911 points in Clatip County. So, we get all the initial 911 calls, right? So medics is a secondary and medics isn't certified telecommunicator. So in the state of Oregon, you have to be a certified telecommunicator to get an initial 911 call. So they're a secondary PAP. So they answer secondary calls that we decide we send to them. So we get the initial 911 call, whether it's a medical call, fire call, or a police call. We get that call, we figure out what the person needs, and then we send that call wherever it may need to go. So, if it is a medical call, we'll get the initial information from the person, what the medical issue may be, um the phone number from the person, where they're at, and then if it's medical, we'll ship it to medics. Say it's a police call in the city of Seaside, we would just automatically dis dispatch it to our police officers. If it is a police call in the county uh out 26, then we can ask some initial questions, but generally we like to give it to North County Dispatch, a story dispatch because they're the ones who dispatch the county deputies who would be out there. If it's a serious enough situation, we'll get our officers going out there too to go assist them and they might be the first people on scene. But um it doesn't happen a lot. I would guesstimate for us to transfer a call to the sheriff's office would be one in 250 calls. Like I said, that's just a guesstimate. It's probably way more than that. We probably don't do that many.

Back up just a step. Okay. Just to make sure following what his slide showed, how is know you called 911. Does it depend on where you are registering from or does Atoria and Seaside both get them? I mean that doesn't make sense. We could. So is it based on local of that 911 call? Yeah. So super in-depth cell phone towers have things that are called sectors and based off their sectors they can route your phone call wherever they need to go. So it's the area coverage of Spencer listed all those ones on the north because there's a lot more little towns out east of story.

Yeah. Technically, you could get a call way south, Falcon Cove, and it just so happens it hits a tower, routes it to Atoria. Um, we get calls, Seaside gets calls from Washington, uh, Pacific County. Atoria gets them, too. But we've had calls pretty regularly from Pacific County from Wiki Beach, and then we transfer them up to Pacific County. That does happen. That's because Atoria or you are closest. there's nothing in it just depends on where your cell signal hits. So, um the ocean's a great conductor of a radio signal and that's what you're using. So, it may come all the way down here. It depends.

How often do your dispatchers communicate with seaside police officers? Not on the radio, but actually being within the same facility on operational issues. Oh, all the time. Every day. I could say almost every call. Yeah, we have a very good relationship. We talk to our cops a lot. And I would imagine that increases the service.

Oh yeah. Having a relationship with somebody. It absolutely does. Um, yeah. I mean, I worked Graveyard for 10 years and I worked with the same three guys for 10 years and I could tell you exactly what they wanted, when they wanted it, and what they were going to ask for next. It's just having a relationship with somebody, you learn a lot about them. When you spend a lot of time together, especially when you do a job like we do. So, so for for medical calls, try and keep going. Pick up where I left off. So for medical calls, we do get the initial call um and then we transfer the call to medics. Medics then triages the medical call, which means they figure out exactly what kind of medical problems the person's having and then they send their ambulance. We send our fire department, whether it's Casside Gear Heart or Canon Beach to go assist.

We recently made a major upgrade in equipment. Can you just kind of break that down and explain what we purchased and how that So, yeah, we we uh last year we spent just over $500,000 installing new uh radio equipment at the police department, not on the mountain tops. Um our old stuff was end of life and we couldn't find parts anymore for it anymore. And so we had to spend the money to upgrade uh the radios that are in the police department. Um, it was a big project. They should last us 20 years at least. And historian all the exact same stuff. Yeah.

So that we purchased it all together. So we're already cooperating that way to get we did a group a group buy essentially. So we got three positions of four. We got four new desks. Um, we have three phones there to answer. So we can have three dispatchers there at any given time to answer phones from anybody in the county. Didn't we spend money on VersaMerm CAD upgrade? Uh we did spend money on a new CAD and that was this last year too, wasn't it? That was last year. Yeah. Yeah. Was this equivalent to the case of a consolidation? I can't answer that question.

Well, oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Finish. I I I don't know what would happen to it. I it all works together. It's all functional together. It's all made by the s same people. So, um the only thing it's not is our desks is we bought different actual physical desks that we sit at 247. That's really two years ago. I think it was two years ago we got desks desks. What would you say are the um major challenges with the system as it is now as it's operating now with the two systems etc. What's What are the challenges?

Big one, staffing. Uh, keeping enough people around. Um, I just spoke to Rotary last week about staffing. Uh, it 82% of dispatch centers in the United States say they're understaffed and it's a truth. Atori's been going through it for as long as I've been around. Uh, even when I managed up there, we were short staffed. Um, it's hard. It's hard to find good people that want to do this job, man. It is a difficult job. Just sitting and answering phones all day long and making decisions is is hard. It's mentally taxing. Um, if anybody wants to come sit and enjoy the enjoy some time in there, I'd love to have you in there so you could see what we do.

We love a tour. I got to say that uh the presentation you gave at the Rotary along with Officer Knight was great. It was really informative and uh if if anybody wants to have that presentation, I'm sure you'd be able to offer it again. Oh yeah. I don't want to speak for you, but I I I really enjoyed it. It was it was eye opening. Yeah, absolutely. So, um staffing is probably your number one issue. Um

is it true that it takes five people to fill a 24-hour shift? It depends on right now uh it takes three for us but it depends on what your model is and what shifts you're working like our 810s we well we don't work twelves anymore but um we did work twelves for a while they said that in the presentation that that Zoom call that I watched that's I watched that presentation too that is the staffing model that they would like they would like to have five people on 247 seven is what they'd like

currently right now throughout the whole county you have between two and I'm going to call it trainee a half um uh you have about three and a half to four dispatchers through the county right now during the day there are certain portions of our day where we have three for about four hours um and the rest of it graveyard is one that's hard because it during the winter time it is so slow so we do some staffing adjustments there. Um, and during the day, if you counted me, we have two on all day long. How many total dispatchers then are on your staff that cover 247? Uh, well, there's seven of us and if you include me, eight,

with days off and stuff like that, makes it hard. Vacations, but we cover with overtime. So, vacation, sick time, sick call outs, things like that, we cover it with overtime. Uh we do also do um support services for the police department also. So your evidence our dispatcher are alo also evidence trained and they take care of evidence that we get inside the police department. Um currently I'm doing the records. So we help with records and then anybody that comes in the lobby who needs help Monday through Friday to 5. Um, technically we could help you after hours. Uh, also we can let people in the front door. The front door is locked and sometimes people can't come in till after five. So if they fill records requests and they want a a printed copy of it, they're there. They take the payment and they can hand it out there. Also, if you come in for forms, DMV accident form, things like that, we can get them handed out to you there. Dog licenses, um, anything else you might need to pay for at the police department.

Do they answer the non-emergency numbers? We do. We do. take about 27,000 non-emergency calls a year. We take about seven just under 7,000 uh 911 calls a year, about 6,700. So, has there been any discussion that you've heard of about non-emergency as part of this consolidation? Uh, no. It's another operational thing. Yeah, we haven't had that conversation.

Yeah. uh Fourth of July, big events, things like that, we usually will call in extra staffing to help support because the police also bring in extra staffing. Chief Daniels brings in extra staffing, so we have extra bodies in there to answer the radios and help them as needed. Um we take during the summertime, we take about 120 non-emergency calls a day, uh which keeps pace with Atoria. So during the summertime, we stay just as busy as Atoria does. And um percentage-wise just roughly how many come from Seaside versus King Beach versus Deerard versus anywhere else.

Yeah. Yeah. So we Seaside answers about 25% of the 91 non-emergency calls in Clatsup County. Atoria answers about 75%. And what's I think her question, what's the breakdown between Canab Suicide and Gard that comes into our Oh, splits. Yeah. We're going to hold you to the exact uh be here for the annual report and I'll tell you exactly. Uh

Seaside definitely is the busiest by a long shot. And then um Canon Beach's numbers have been coming up the past three or four years pretty considerably. They're going to be right on pace with uh Gearhart this year for sure. But Seaside's definitely the busiest of all. Seaside and Atoria are the busiest fire departments in Clatsip County by a long shot. I think last year you guys took like had like 1,600 calls I think. 1900. Yeah. So, and Atoria does very close to the same 1600. Yeah. And how does it all work with We talked about um the sheriff's department. What about the state patrol?

Uh state patrol has their own dispatch center in Salem. They actually have I think they have three. They have one over east, one in Salem, and then one down south in Medford. So, sometimes you transfer things. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If we get a a call on the highway for a traffic complaint or intoxicated driver route 26, we transfer them off to Oregon State Police. Also, if it's in the city limits of Gearhart, Seaside Canyon Beach, we'll dispatch it to our local officers. But if it's on the highway, generally it'll get dispatched to sent to OSB, we'll let our officers know about it so they can be on the lookout for it, too.

Why don't you dispatch it to the sheriff office if it's out in the county? Uh because it's on the highway technically or state police is in charge of all the highways. There aren't very many out at any one time. We have um I think the I was at a meeting Friday and lieutenant was there. I think we have seven total officers for the county now. Yeah. Plotted 10, but they they can't hire OSP. Yep. So that means what? One or two are out on the road. Yep. There's a long time we didn't have anybody after about 3:00 in the morning for OSP.

They woefully understand. They are.

You want to hear from u the chiefs? Do you have any opinions you want to share? I do not. I don't believe that. So I I will say that

here over the last couple years, I just took over in 2019, but over the last couple years, we have definitely uh made an aggressive movement towards getting dispatch upgrades, radio sites, um CAD, the radios at the police department, desks, all that stuff. We've made huge improvements in dispatch over the last five or six years, and it's been it's been great. It's been a lot of work, but it's been great to be able to do that. So, it's been a lot of fun. Enjoyed my time. Do you feel like you're at a more stable position now with maybe the exception of staffing, but Yeah, absolutely. What are your staffing now for dispatch positions?

Uh, we're fully staffed. Fully staffed. What's the kind of tenure do you have with your staffing? Uh, average average right now between everybody's 14 years. Um, Andy has 21 years, I have 19, Heidi has 17, Justin has 14, Joelle has 14, Judy has seven, and then I have two uh people that came to us from Atoria who have eight months. Well, one has more though if you go technically, yes, he has almost 12 years in. It's like 11 and a half. Um, but he uh spent a year up there and has only been with us for eight months. So that's priceless. That that kind of experience you can't replace.

And and your average dispatcher only lasts two years. That's amazing. So it's stressful. Yeah. I like to keep people around. Anybody else have any questions?

I add Can I add two more things I took some notes on from this conversation? So, first I think you guys just touched on it. Um, a big kudos to Mitch and to Chief Ham for um kind of bucking the national trend of longevity of dispatchers. I think that's where we've had some hesitancy in the past. Can I say that that was a big reason for that um is that we have a good thing going here and good staff and um we don't want to jeopardize that. Um but uh when we do have turnover, that's the that's the thing that that's hardest for us is is someone leaves, we do a recruitment and it's what nine once we get them hired, it's nine months of training. So if someone if someone finished gave their notice today between recruitment time and training time, how far out are we?

Just about a year. So that's that's the that's the tough thing. And then Mitch fills in and others fill in and I think that's rough on on all of them. Um I think the other thing I was just I was thinking about when I was sitting here that um I suspect I'm just kind of predicting that when we meet with other elected officials, you are going to find all kinds of different opinions on to why we should be looking at consolidation. And I'm gonna throw out that many of them are going to be that they have a particular issue with something specific right now. And I'm sure there are people that have things specific about ours and there's going to be a lot that have something specific about a story is. And I don't think we would want to how I would say solve a management issue through consolidation. So consolidation may fix an operational issue by going that direction, but it shouldn't be the driver if if it's avoiding fixing it where it is. So we know that there are um infrastructure improvements that that we need in areas where our signals are weak and there are other things that we can likely address and there are other things that a story can likely address in those communities. Um, and so there there may be many different reasons people are coming together to talk about this, but where those can be addressed elsewhere and we're avoiding that by looking at consolidation, that shouldn't be the driver. So keep that in mind as you hear 30 different reasons why other agencies think we should consolidate. They may or may not be a good reason, but let's kind of bring it back to things that only consolidation can have can can can accomplish and not things that are maybe a a workaround for other issues. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. Anything else anyone would add? Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Mitch, I'm sorry. One thing. That's all right. If you had um have you ever thought of having an overflow position or or ha hiring above your eight and having that person I would love to do that. All the money. And and do you know how much you spend on overtime

a year? Off the top of my head. I'm not sure. When we're fully staffed, it's significantly less and yeah, all things we'll we'll want to pull together. Okay. Yeah. Last chance. Okay. All right. We're journ

Call the city council meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance unit. One nation under God, indivisible Kim, please call the role.

Thank you, Mayor. Councelor Bakerker here. Council President Morsy here. Mayor Wright here. Councelor McVey here. Councelor Monttero present. Councelor Ansbro here. Councelor Hoffman here. Thank you. Thank you, Kim. May I have a motion for approval of our agenda? So moved. Second. Council President Morsy, Councelor McVey. All those in favor say I.

I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Proclamation tonight's for child abuse prevention month. We have a representative from CASA here tonight.

Can you guys hear me? Okay, good. Good evening, Mayor Wright, counselors, and community. Um, on behalf of the Clatsup Kasa program, thank you for proclaiming April as child abuse prevention month here in Seaside. The words in this proclamation are powerful because they acknowledge a truth that we cannot afford to ignore. Child abuse and neglect affect every segment of our community and prevention requires all of us in Clatsup County and here in Seaside. I know we're all working tirelessly to address homelessness, mental health crisis, substance abuse disorders, and criminal behavior. These are complex and deeply human challenges. But we must remember that these issues are not victimless. When adults struggle, children often bear the deepest and the longest lasting impact. systems are often designed to stabilize adults. CASA exists for one reason, to ensure that children are not overlooked in the process. CASA is the only program in our community that's solely focused on advocating for the safety and the best interests of children. Many of them in foster care, some who are not. Our trained volunteers stand beside one child at a time, getting to know them, speaking up for them in court, helping ensure that they have the opportunity for safety, stability, and ultimately a secure and loving forever home. Prevention truly is our best defense, but prevention also requires vigilance. It requires that we do not become desensitized to what we see around us. It requires that we remember behind every case number that there's a child who deserves dignity, hope, respect. We're grateful for your partnership and your leadership in recognizing April is child abuse prevention month and together we can ensure that every child in Clatsup County in the city of Seaside is seen, heard, and protected. Thank you.

Thank you for all that uh your agency does for our county. I've asked Council President Moresy to read the proclamation. Thank you. Whereas child abuse and neglect is a serious problem affecting every segment of our community and finding solutions requires input and action from everyone. And whereas every child is precious and deserves to grow up in a healthy, safe, and nurturing environment free from the dangers and harmful effects of child abuse and neglect. And whereas our children are our most valuable resource and will shape the future of Klatsup County, Oregon. And whereas child abuse can have long-term psychological, emotional, and physical effects that have lasting consequences for victims of abuse. And whereas child abuse prevention succeeds through partnerships among parents, child welfare agencies, mental and physical health care providers, schools, law enforcement agencies, faith-based organizations, businesses, and community members by fostering loving, supportive, and violence-free homes. And whereas we acknowledge that we must work together as a community to increase awareness about child abuse and contribute to promote the social emotional social and emotional well-being of children and families in a safe, stable, and nurturing environment. And whereas prevention remains the best defense for our children and families. Now therefore, Mayor Steve Wright of the city of Seaside to hereby proclaim the month of April 2026 as child abuse prevention month in the city of Seaside and urge all citizens to recognize this month and help to improve the quality of life for all children and families. He witnessed thereof has set his hand and caused the seal of the city of Seaside to be affixed on this ninth day of March 2026.

Thank you, Seth. U Kim, do we have anybody signed up for public comment? Well, I'll announce it anyway. Members of the public may use this time to provide general comments on matters not scheduled elsewhere on the agenda for a public hearing or public comment. Individuals wishing to speak should complete a public comment registration card over there and submit it to the city recorder over there before being called. The time is intended for the council to listen to public comments. rather than engage in discussion. The council may consider whether issues raised during this time should be scheduled for discussion or action in a future meeting. Each speaker is allotted three minutes. Um I think some of you are here for um an item that is on the agenda and we'll uh call you forward at that time. Any councelor wish to declare a potential conflict of interest with anything on the agenda hearing? None. May I have a motion for approval of the consent agenda?

So moved. Second. Council President Morsey, Councelor Baker. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Presentation tonight we have the Seaside Education Foundation um headed up by uh Robin Monttero and she brought several of her friends with her. I did. We only have two mics, so make sure uh anybody that speaks speaks into the mic so we can record your voices for posterity sake. Great. Thank you.

And in case anybody misses the meeting.

Well, thank you council and staff for the invitation to present the Seaside Education Foundation. And I would like to introduce to you, although we all know her, Susan Penrod, superintendent of the Seaside School District, to tell you how this all came about. All right, good evening everyone. Nice to see you. I uh I'll start us out by giving you a little bit of history about um our future performing arts center. Many of you have been um in this community a long time and probably know this history, but some of you might not. So um I will give you that history. When Doug Doerty was our superintendent and began his work on our general obligation bond to bring um all of our schools out of the tsunami zone. Um part of that process in um talking to the community was the importance of arts in our community and having a performing arts center um at our high school. Um during that process, the first time the bond went out, um it did not pass. And the feedback that the school board and the community got received was that the bond amount was too high and then it that it needed to be under um $100 million. So the school board went out again for $99.7 million and it did pass, thank goodness. Um but unfortunately that meant reducing um the footprint which included the performing arts center.

Uh so thank goodness uh we built um our new campus which of course included the new school and the remodel of uh the elementary school for everybody to be on one campus. But unfortunately, as I said, that did not include a performing arts center. Well, when I started with the district and continued to talk to folks about the importance of arts, not only in our schools but in our community, um the board and I started talking about how can we still make this happen without going out for another bond because we all know that um uh people people are strapped financially and we wanted to be able to respect that. So that was the beginning of the birth of Seaside Education Foundation to be able to have this foundation to raise money specifically for a performing arts center. So what does performing arts look like in Seaside School District right now? Well, we have a cafeteria at the high school that is limited at best. And we have very talented musicians and actors who are performing in a very limited space that they do an exceptional job with in um subpar conditions. So, I will turn it over to a very talented group of board members to talk about their vision for our future performing arts center.

Good evening everyone. I am Anthony Kachanzl. I'm the vice chair of the Seaside Education Foundation. Um, we have Robin Montto who is our president. We also have Debbie Dupri who's in the audience as our secretary. Allison Jensen who's our treasurer. Uh Mark who's also in the uh the audience who's a director. We have Jenny and Veronica also as directors. As adviserss we have an Susie uh Josiah Glazer who's here with us. Brian Taylor Sandra Gomez and of course Susan as well. Um, our purpose is investing in essential resources, promoting equitable access to educational tools, inspiring lifelong learning, support student success, and strengthen our community.

And um, who are we? Well, uh well, we're a group of parents, citizens, business owners, um and just anyone that has a passion for the arts and also to ensure that our students um at the Seaside School District have um access to the same resources as other kiddos. Um and our goal is our first project is a 500 seats state-of-the-art performing arts center with balcony seating. Um and it'll be for the Seaside School District as well as our community. Hello everyone. My name is Josiah Glazer. I'm the 6th through 12 band director um here at Seaside School District. Um thank you very much for uh listening to us today. Um my role here is to um provide the kind of hands-on um perspective from it. Right now um our performing spaces uh if you see at the very top of the picture um that is the cafeteria in which we perform. Um although they they do have a sound system and lighting system, our our um theater department needs to have um a a stage uh put in and taken out each day um for the cafeteria to be used for the um for the students uh during lunchtime. Um and then they perform uh in the evening on top of that uh that portable uh platform. Um the acoustics of course are not meant uh for the performing arts both the uh the the choir um and the band program. Um it's extremely um challenging. is a it's an extremely challenging environment to perform in and it certainly doesn't set the students up for success uh when going to different uh competitive festivals throughout the school year um as they pursue the the opportunity to perform at the state festivals for each of their uh performing arts uh performances uh their

groups. Um the uh in addition to the performing space uh the um the uh rehearsal spaces are also limited in nature. Um primarily the the initial size but also a large part the storage facilities causing us to need to store things in spaces that were meant to be used um in different capacities. We have limited um practice room spaces uh for the students that are unable to practice in uh outside of school in their own homes. And we'd like the opportunity to um have more of those uh spaces used at the school um for students that might live in apartments or with multi uh multiple different uh children who have earlier bedtimes or just in general sound. Um for those students practicing uh giving them that space will will be vital. Um, uh, the band room and the choir room both are limited in space and therefore our our size of our ensembles are limited as well. Um, and so there's there's those uh those technical challenges as a result of the space that we are currently in.

You want to address some of these?

Yeah. Uh, many of these students that you see on stage are not just in the theater department. This is from the fall play. Um, they are also in the band program. I see uh at least four of them in the band program as well and at least um at least six yeah at least six of the students in there are also in the choir program. They are they are definitely multi-talented individuals uh pursuing multiple different interests. Um many of those individuals on that on that screen are also in the robotics program and uh part of many other activities within the school. Um those students they they work extremely hard. They're extremely um uh extremely dedicated to their their their pursuit in education, not just academically, but also in these in these arts and performing spaces as well. And they deserve a home in the same capacity that that um every other um athletics department um has um every every uh other school has across the across the state as well. Um and so those those are just um several of those students. Um the that's the fall play picture. Yeah. Lastly, the the tech support um our tech crew um these these tech um these technicians um learn to use the the visual um aspects, the lighting aspects as well as the sound aspects. and they are limited in experience as a result of our limited um technical um setup. And so it would be amazing to have the the opportunity to to host not just um our own performances but a community performances and have on the job training for those students um as many of their schools have across the state. um those that on hands-on experience really does make a difference when they go out into the real world and maybe uh want to pursue these these interests in

a different capacity or in a professional capacity. So I want you to keep this picture in mind. Okay. What you're looking at is the stage. Behind the stage are the west windows. Uh that is the bleacher seating that now have pads on them. Mhm.

Uh in addition to where our tech crew is, what you don't see is all the safety lighting of the stairs behind you. So you always have about a 25% ambient light background. This is what we could have. This is our future. This is a state-of-the-art 500 seat professional theater. professional sound system, professional lighting system. It has flies, which is part of the the stage rigging. I mean, would you rather be there or there? You tell me. But uh so this is what our first project is. A professional sound baffling system. This uh Oh, I'll just keep going forward because I could just get so excited about this one picture alone. This is a Thank you. a side view. So you're uh you can see the wings on this stage. So to the left behind at behind the seating is uh the um the tech tech room and it's about 500 uh 500 ft 200 f feet and then you've got balcony seating. Now this isn't necessarily exactly what we're going for but this is what we're going for. Uh this is what professional theater is. In addition, you see the orchestra pit on premise. We will also have a real band room, a real drama rehearsal space, a choir room, an ensemble practice room. I should have asked and I didn't in the beginning. How many of you, and you for that matter, have seen performances up at the school? So, you know, the effort that goes into

them.

I mean, the effort whether you're in a professional choir room or in a closet is is the same and it shows. But, you know, why can't we just help them shine? Because these kids and this staff work so hard and are so committed. They deserve this. So, does so is our community. So, choir room, ensemble, practice room, the stage rigging like I was talking about. There's the orchestra pit. You can see the maestro. Oops. What happened, John? One moment, please. Thank you. And there's the control room. And I actually do have So you've got your lighting, your sound, and I think the control room is it's a couple of hundred square feet. Oh, 55 square f feet. Excuse me. Couple hundred, but it's 55 square feet. It's It's better than um a 4x8 table. Then we have an actual scene shop. There is a scene shop at the school now, but it's not a scene shop. This scene shop is attached to the building itself. So, uh, you know, a lot less loading in loading out issues. If you've ever been backstage of a theater, you know the glamour behind it. Uh, actual dressing rooms, a green room where the actors, performers, the band can, uh, you know, mentally zen themselves and get ready for with their performances. this uh hacker and associates are our architects. They had walked the uh the site and had come up with three location proposals of which I'll be showing you. This particular uh layout is is the

building itself and this this particular floor plan is pertains to option A. However, uh the all the components are the same for all three locations. So, I just wanted to make sure that you were able to see this. It's uh three stories uh with the uh uh storage and some of the other uh rooms being underneath and um that that performance all is pretty awesome. Let me uh just show you these the uh the site layout. So this is option A and as you can see it's to the north across uh from the end of the school. Uh that yellow breezeway if you will connects the uh north end of the building to the uh performing proposed performing arts center. It would have its own access road coming up and uh which serves for two reasons. It's, you know, great to get to the additional parking as well as load in load out for anybody, uh, you know, who's um, touring or, you know, at a for a festival, other other folks who are using it as well as ourselves. This is option C. Uh this option you don't see an additional road but the front of the uh or the um performing arts center is actually attached through uh short breeze shorter breezeways I almost said breezer ways uh to the east side of the school and uh it connects and underneath uh it becomes somewhat of a courtyard in the existing space. This will require relocating parking spaces and you know we're gonna we're and you

can see what the building looks like of a somewhat um presentation in that top right corner to kind of give you an idea look like on site. Oops, we're missing option B. I'm not sure what happened to option B. Oh, there's option B. Uh it is located to the southwest portion of the school. Um it I don't know it has its drawbacks but that's not for me to decide. So let's go back to option C. And now I'm going to turn it over to Anthony.

So how will all this happen? Um well it definitely is not it's going to rely on a lot of community support. Um we'd love to explore what feels meaningful to you. So we need feedback um from everyone that is joining uh virtual or here with us today um because it will strengthen our econ economic impact planning in foreign funding and partnership strategy along with a communitybacked project success and um becoming partners with us in this building. a space where students are supported and build a legacy that will impact generations.

And to just kind of summarize this, uh, I'm going to be quoting something that a good friend of mine wrote. Echoing that all has been shared. The Seaside Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening opportunities for local students while supporting the long-term vitality of our community. Our hope is that the foundation work alongside educators, families, local businesses, and visitors who care deeply about Seaside's future. As a coastal town known for welcoming millions of visitors each year, Seaside thrives when experiences bring people together, not only on our beaches, but through arts, culture, and community events that extend the visitor experience. The vision for a performing arts center represents an opportunity to create a year-round cultural destination that could host regional performances, festivals, youth showcases, and touring productions, drawing visitors while also giving local students a stage to grow and contribute to the cultural life that makes Seaside such a special place to visit and to return to. You are all here at a moment when Seaside has been presented through this project with an opportunity to take a meaningful step forward. One that strengthens both our visitor economy and the opportunities we offer our young people. Together we have the chance to shape something lasting. A place where creativity, community, culture come together to serve residents and visitors alike and build a legacy that reflects the very best of Seaside. Moments like this remind us of how fortunate we are to live in a community that believes in its young people and in the future of our town. So with that,

I would like to say thank you very much. And if you have any questions, bring them on. How much is that big, beautiful performing arts center going to cost? Around 50 million. Okay, I'm going to put it out there. I'm not going to hold it back. You may have asked for the cat may as well ask for the Cadillac otherwise you get an interim space as we all know that that that's not working. That's not it's not working for anybody. How will you determine which location you guys go with? I'm assuming you already took into consideration the topography of the site and everything. How how will you go through that process?

You can address that season. Well, when we started looking for an architect um uh the board and I talked to um our business um our project manager from um uh that we used for the building project. Um we talked to um four architects who really specialize in performing arts center. We were really impressed with Hacker and Associates. They had come out and really spent a couple days looking at our land and um and the three locations um that they presented to us um which are very uh you know very different locations for different reasons um were the locations that they recommended based on the topography of um of that and then so far and so then they have just done some initial um initial designs based on those locations. And then so far we have um uh gotten feedback from several um community organizations in town. We've talked with our staff, we've talked with uh students, and we're just continuing to to widen the circle of getting feedback from from folks on the three different locations. Ultimately, it will be the board's decision on on which location, but we uh we just continue to gather feedback from different groups.

Where are you in the fundraising process towards meeting your goal? Are we just at the very beginning or are we where you at? We're just shy of 50 million. No, we are right now. We are uh gathering, like Susan said, gathering our information and getting input from all factions of our community. Uh the fundraising, hey, there's a donate button on that website. Let me go back here. You know, there's the three uh one, donate. Please fill out our survey. It's a comprehensive survey, and we we want to hear from everybody. So, I mean, fundraising started the day we had our first meeting on August 11th, 2025.

Good. That's when it started. You mentioned a few times that it would not just be for the school, but for the enhance the community. What sort of community type events uh as opposed to school events specifically do y'all envision kind of being up there?

You both can, please. for starters uh bringing outside schools in and hosting those festivals that we have been going to bringing the the schools uh programs in. Um but uh one of the one of the biggest things that I think is a missed opportunity uh in the c city of seaside is bringing in professional groups from um from the cities from from Portland. um potentially having Oregon Symphony come out and do a community performance, potentially having um uh performances in a similar capacity to what Liberty Theater offers up in Atoria, but in Seaside. Uh thus bringing students to those opportunities, seeing those getting insider um you know, conversations, community um outreach with that with those professional organizations that are performing or performing organizations. Um, and then that that also includes the theater performances as well. Um, the more we can build this space to be functional for all of those professional groups, the more we can have those groups perform in that space and then have our community members be able to attend in those locations.

Um, and I just wanted to add too, um, we want it to to be similar to the Keller where there's just performances happening regularly in the space. That's not just through the school but through community um and also again providing a space for other uh local clatsup um organizations to utilize us as well the different uh dance troops and stuff. Um, we were also talking about different uh groups coming in that can do kind of like comedy acts and just bring more again as we mentioned in earlier about having uh more opportunity for culture and um experiences that can be available to to tourists but primarily the residents.

It really is a a build it and they will come type of uh deal going on here. I mean seriously and that's not um trademarked. I looked it up. I did before I said it. Uh, no, seriously. You don't how you don't know how much you didn't have something until you had it. And once you have it, it's like, where has this been all our lives? We need this. And And seriously, when you I want to ask you a question, and I didn't before. When you go out to festivals, um, do you spend the night? We usually do not. Okay. Well, we're going to have them spend the night. Yeah,

they're going to be staying right here. And I can see that also in partnering with the convention center. You know, the convention center is is busy 385 days a year. It seems like uh and this could be a a perfect um partnership. Thank you. That's the word I'm looking for. Perfect partnership for our civic uh and convention center. I mean really it is a build and they will come. It um I've seen this model be very successful up in Seattle and it it's professionally managed and what it brings to it is also uh the CTE uh training or um classes through the school uh as well as the uh class of community college. You know, we have students now who are juniors and seniors who are not going to be they're they're going to be on into college uh by the time this is built, but who are so excited about this for the city's future or them coming back to be a part of it. It's really exciting. It's really exciting and I'm excited. Can you tell I'm excited? So, any other questions? any other um you said Seattle, but any other districts in Oregon that are taking on something as bold as this and have a facility like that? I mean, I it it's gorgeous. I can't imagine there are a lot of others like this.

The most recent one in the state of Oregon is at West Al Greater Alb School District. Um they went out for um a bond I believe uh about 5 years ago at this point. um and they built um I believe it's roughly a 500 to 600 person auditorium um and they uh have the same intentions of being able to to host organ Oregon Symphony level uh performances and I mean I mean organ symphony because it's a large performing ensemble um that requires a certain level of uh performance space in order for them to attend um and they they have um extended their CTE perfor uh their CTE programs at the school to include technical um training um and on the job training just like I had mentioned before. Um they they host uh festivals in in their community and they host all of the um the performances for all of the local middle schools and high schools and they do regularly perform or have um outside performances going into that space as well.

Wow. So it's the only one on the coast, huh? Yes. Yes. Yes. I assume you're you're marketing widespread, right? Like this the donations can come from far and wide for a project like this, right? Please. I think I need to put this on my Facebook page, this whole presentation. Yes, please, please, please.

I've had the opportunity. uh is by the schools more affected than they anticipated when the schools were first being built and um from what you are sharing with us, this would bring a lot more traffic and noise and congestion to that area. Can you describe to us how you're dealing uh and interacting with those neighborhoods to um to work this through? Um go ahead.

So we are um as you know TA we are in the gathering information phase. So we're coming presenting to you all and we do have a plan meeting um before the end of the school year to open up for community members to come and speak with us at the school to relay those concerns. And of course, we'd love to have a partnership um with uh community members, the city, um ODOT, anyone that would need if we need to address the um road there. I drive my kids to school and I I go over several potholes, so I totally understand. Yeah. Well, it's not just the potholes, it's also the congestion. No, thank you. Anything else, Patty? I think

Mr. Ensro, excuse me. I I I think that the school needs something like this. I think the community needs something like this. Rhonda and I have been to many plays up there and uh I think she would agree that we're thankful for the cushions now on the benches. Um and we know what it takes to strike that set every time you have a theater production there. That's a humongous effort.

Uh something like this would be great. and Josiah, you've got bands that you travel to places to do competitions. It would be wonderful to have those bands come here and have competitions here as well. I think it uh the more we can support the arts, the better. Thank you. You know, right now the the logistics just within the building, it's it's like whack-a-ole. You know, the band is having to move over here. So the drama department can be over here and then there's the cheerleaders and then there's the robotics and where is the choir,

you know? I mean it's it's just it's just a really tight situation. Everybody's growing out of their shoes at once and we need this and I speaking of shoes I could see a stage full of um Irish cloggers on 60 feet of runway because it's a 60 foot stage. So similar to what the convention center has a convention center though just doesn't have the audio. So anyway, this is uh bringing Seaside's history back um 1920 seaside was a destination for the big bands

and a lot of history involved in that, you know, right in downtown Seaside. I applaud u your gumption to get this off the ground. You've got a big bite there and it won't come from just one set of people. It's going to take a whole layering which kind of everything does nowadays. You have to have money from all kinds of different uh places. But uh congratulations and good luck on gathering the information uh find you know fully support uh people letting you know what they think about this. So good luck. Well, thank you. And please do go to the website and like it says, you know, there's

the donation, the survey, but you can also sign up to figure out where we're at and how we're doing. We'll keep you informed. So, please visit the website and take a walk. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

We still have vacancies on our boards, commissions, and committees. Airport One, Community Center 3. We do have a application from Karen Miller. Would somebody like to nominate her so we can get the process started? I nominate uh Karen Miller for consideration for the community center commission. I'll second that. Thank you. All those in favor say I. I. Okay. Uh Kim, you set up an interview, please.

We have two openings on the planning commission now. uh one on transportation advisory and we have three term expirations on parks advisory but I don't think we've heard yet if they plan to reapply. So, okay. Uh, no unfinished business. New business. We have uh Matthew from ODOT on Zoom and we have a presentation that we'll be able to see up here. Um, our agenda says open public comment, close public comment, but I'm going to hold that until we see uh what ODOT presents and then we'll um let folks come up and and ask questions or make comments. Matthew, are you are they there?

I'm here. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. Um, introduce yourself, please. And which department OD do you work for?

Uh, yes. Good evening. My name is Matthew Ashford. I am a roadway engineer with the Oregon Department of Transportation. Um, we're here uh we're doing a project on US 101 at Broadway Street and we'd like uh your guys' opinions on kind of the design option to go with um in terms of uh uh on the city street of Broadway. Um originally this project um is intended to replace the signal at the intersection of US 101 and Broadway Street. Um as well as uh add additional lanes on Broadway to help with the capacity at the intersection and make it flow better during high traffic uh high traffic times. Um, we're also put installing a bus pull out on 101 south of Broadway Street um to get buses off the highway. Um, originally this project uh scoped uh our standard left turn lane using the ODOT design standard which has fairly long tapers and uh larger deceleration area for cars to slow down and get out of the way without impeding the through lane on Broadway. Um that this option we're looking at now, option one, is kind of the standard design. um has the most impacts to on street parking. So you lose a lot of on street parking on west of 101. Um I think 16 of 22 parking spaces. Um this option uh has a slightly decreased storage length for the left turn lane. It's not quite what our traffic analysis recommended. Um, and that was to help alleviate some of the loss of on street parking and keep the

midblock crossing um, in kind of the same location. Um, on the east side of 101, the design would be adding a left turn lane and a channelized right turn lane. Um, this option would also result in loss of on street parking on the east side of 101. Um so in front of the um recreation center or recreation district and then along the southern end uh east of Lincoln Street. Um so that's kind of our standard design. Um loss of quite a few parking spaces. I think 30 in total. Um if we can go to the next slide.

Matthew, can I ask you one question before we get too far? I think one thing that might be able to help put this into context is um what is what is driving the for those of you for those of people that are here that are brand new what is driving this project and the needs for the for the upgrades. I know we have a temporary light system. it was it was it was um came down in in a storm and we have a temporary system up but obviously there there's more going into the intersection. So I think um helping us to understand what ODOT hopes to achieve with these different designs will help us understand maybe the option choices a little bit better. You maybe step back for just a sec and maybe address the the the issue that's driving this.

Yeah, I'm sorry for that. Um, so our kind of the thing that kind of kicked this project off was two different things. One of them was the signal. I can't hear. Oh, sorry. Can you guys hear me now? We're going to try to turn it up on our end. Thank you. Okay. Sorry. I'll try to talk louder. That's bad. That's good.

Okay. Uh, so there are kind of two things that kicked off this project. One of them was the signal that's failing. Uh, two of the mast arms have like completely fallen down and rusted through. Um, they're currently on temporary wood poles. So, sooner or later we need to address the signal here. Um the other thing that kind of also kicked this off was uh we had a certain type of funding ODOT had at the time called enhanced um that allowed us to make uh changes to like adding lanes at intersections and this intersection is in your guys's transportation system plan as being identified as high congestion and adding the turn lanes was identified as a potential al potential option to alleviate congestion. Um, so that's the two kind of things that kicked this off was make the intersection uh more efficient and less uh less backed up during high traffic times and then also get a new signal out there because the current one's failing.

And Matthew, is that congestion on US 101? Is it on Broadway or is it on both? Uh, I think the primary I'm not the traffic analysis. sure person. So, uh I don't have the perfect answer for that, but I think the main uh problem is Broadway Street congestion on Broadway. This project was trying to alleviate that. And then I think with the signal timing with the new signal and some of the improvements we're doing, it would also help traffic on 101, but not that's not I don't think the primary re reason. Thanks. I think that will help help uh us kind of see the options a little bit in better perspective.

Okay. Um so this second option here that's on the screen uh this uses a shorter deceleration uh distance as well as uh shorter tapers for the left turn lane on the west side of 101. Uh the storage length for the turn lane would be the same. So you'd still be able to get approximately the same amount of cars in there. The only caveat would be the some of the deceleration distance that we have for the left turn lane. You're also able to get cars into if it's really congested. So there' be a little bit uh less cars being able to use the left turn lane, but not not substantially. Um this would meet our minimum ASHTTO requirements which are the federal design standards that we have to adhere to. Um and then this option would uh keep kind of the same improvements on the east side of 101. Um so no change east of 101. Uh and then we'd have a loss of 12 parking spots west of 101 and then a loss of 14 on the east east side. Um, and then I guess with both of the option one and option two, our work extends uh fairly far down Broadway Street on both sides. And uh in talking with the city staff, uh you guys had purchased a uh or have a property at the former church next to the library and we were planning on putting in uh access for that uh future parking lot expansion if that were to happen. Um so that would be done with either option one or option two. Um and then if we go to option three. Um this idea kind of came about after discussions uh with the city. Um and realizing that Broadway Street west of

Holiday is one way going towards the beach. Um and Broadway is only two-way between Holiday and um east of Holiday. Um, and so we thought, what would it look like if we made Broadway one way uh going towards the beach instead of two-way? This option would save uh all of your on street parking on the west side of 101 as well as the east east side of 101. Um, we'd get rid of the uh dedicated left turn lane on the east east side of 101. It would no longer be needed due to the uh no left turn no left turn lane on Broadway from the other direction. Um, and then you'd still get a channelized right turn lane. um for that our work would stop at Lincoln Street and so we wouldn't really be doing any improvements east of Lincoln including the driveway for the uh library future parking lot.

Um why is that? Why on option three do you not have to do the work east of Lincoln? It's not parking funding. I think I think you started to cover that, but maybe let's go through that once again. So, it's not I think it's not intuitive for us that one way west of Highway 101 changes anything east of 101. But I think you said because there's no longer a left-hand turn going north on on the

west side that you don't that reduces the number of lanes on the east side. Maybe you can go over that one more time and because it's it wouldn't be intuitive to to us, I think. Yeah. So the again I'm not the traffic signal designer or the u analysis person but my understanding is the left turn lane uh exclusive left turn lane uh going south was needed due to the left turn lane going north. Um due to the signal timing they had to go at the same time. And uh if you get rid of the left turn lane going to the north,

um that leaves you no conflicts for the left turning vehicles and you no longer have to have a dedicated left turn phase on the signal. Um that makes sense. And so you don't have nearly the um you don't have to have that dedicated lane. Um and then in regards to why we're not going down further on Broadway is um this is an ODOT project and um you don't

our impacts wouldn't extend we wouldn't have to extend further down Broadway. we would stop it at Lincoln. Um cuz that's as far as we would need to go to tie in our improvements on 101 and we're not out here to rebuild the the city street unfortunately. And and the reason in the other examples it goes further to the east is because that's what's required to fit the number of lanes including turn lanes that would be needed for that scenario.

Correct. Yeah. So, I have a question on on this option. If you turn Broadway into oneway westbound, there's a lot of traffic that currently goes eastbound on that section of Broadway and needs to make lefthand turns. They need to go north. Where is that traffic supposed to get recirculated? Or where would I go if I'm on holiday and I want to make I I need to get on on Highway 101 going north. Where would I go and how would I be making a north turn? A north turn without any lights.

Yeah. So we did do an analysis. Um, we anticipated about half the cars are going to divert to unsalized intersections north and south of the project potentially um to make the left turn. You do have a continuous two-way left turn lane that goes north of the project and south which makes left turns easier during high traffic periods. but it's still not ideal. Uh cuz there could be a lot of southbound traffic that you're trying to bite to get north. Um the other 50% that we anticipate will go up to 12 at the next signalized intersection. And we analyzed um both um what the impacts would be if we diverted 50% of the traffic up to uh 12th Street. And doesn't have a left turn lane either,

correct? Yes, there's no dedicated left turn lane for the northbound traffic. Um, there is for southbound, but that doesn't really come into play. So, this option or image here is the traffic analysis and queuing for cars in 2020 or 2048, which is our design year for the intersection. Um, so there's two images. The one on the left is a no build, which means what it would look like if we didn't do any if we didn't make Broadway one way. Um, it essentially be the they'd still be able to make a northbound left at Broadway. Um, 20 the 20 image on the right, the 2048 build alternative five, uh, depicts what would happen if we made Broadway one way. And the yellow lines represent the 95 or 95th percentile queuing, which is uh I have the explanation here. Uh it's the line of cars that forms during the busiest hour of a typical summer day. It shows how long the line of cars get on 95% of the days, meaning it doesn't include unusual days with extra heavy traffic. Um, and it's also not the it's not the average line of cars. It's kind of the the longest the line would be for the uh 95% of cases. Um, so the no build your uh queuing would extend a little east of Lincoln Street and then if we did the made Broadway one way, we expect the queueing to get worse and go slightly past Lincoln Street. Um, so that's uh kind of what we looked at. And

then if you go back a slide, this is Oh, back one more. Yeah, there we go. Um, so this one here is kind of shows the queuing for if we didn't do anything at Broadway Street if we left kind of the lane configuration the way it is today, um, and didn't make any of those improvements. And then the bottom image is if we made Broadway one way and did the improvements um on the east side of Broadway that I was showing earlier in option three. So the queueing for the no build is pretty bad um for both the northbound and uh or eastbound and westbound direction. And then we substantially reduced the queueing with alternative five. So

what's alternative five? Sorry, that's option three. That was the fifth alternative we analyzed. So that's the one way, right? Alternative. Yeah. Well, and you know, you talk about 12th Avenue. 12th Avenue is already a narrow street, one way in each direction. It's I use that street frequently and it is frequently backed up from 101 all the way to Holiday. Um it is uh and and there's parking along there too. So it makes it uh what are you going to do? Propose to get rid of the parking as well.

We would not propose any of that unless the city wanted to remove parking. But the idea the idea with this option was really to show that we could save the on street parking because we knew that was going to be an issue for the community is the loss of parking. And this saved all of the parking spots. And so we wanted to present this to you guys so you had a chance to weigh in on what you wanted.

So I think maybe to to add some clarity or maybe put this into context, I think this is a good slide here because I had not seen this before, but this image here is what we could expect the traffic to look like on Broadway with no change. Um with the changes uh any of these options we would expect that yellow line the the the lineup to be shortened considerably. However, so every option has significant tradeoffs. Uh so a do nothing approach saves parking and saves a lefthand turn but causes um backup traffic on Broadway as shown. uh an option that preserves a lefthand turn and shortens the congestion, loses parking, especially for the businesses on uh Broadway. And then the option to go one way saves the parking, saves the congestion, but then adds the difficulty of of the lefthand turn. So, I don't think we're we're I don't think what's being proposed is uh here's the obvious answer. It's kind of uh and this is why we wanted to bring it to the council and start to get community feedback is every option even including the option to do nothing comes with trade-offs. So, let's have that discussion and where are the priorities for the community?

Everything comes with a price. I totally agree with that. Um I I feel like we've been dropped into the middle of something that has been semi uh decided already. This is a decision that is going to affect all of the traffic in all of our town. This is not something that's just going to affect 12th or just going to affect Broadway. Typically in the past when these kinds of decisions and proposals are being made that's when we have a an open house a town meeting something where we invite people to come and look at these big pictures which are still way better. I mean this is still difficult for me to understand and have their input. I'm not feeling like we're having the opportunity to have enough input. I don't know where ODOT is in their planning with this. Also, given that this affects the whole town, where is the planning commission involvement in this? Where is the transportation commission involvement in this? I really am not feeling that this is something that should be coming here for a decision. Certainly not tonight. Um, but there are just lots of other things that I don't think any of us have all of the questions. I think our town's people have the questions. And so I would like to put this on a bigger agenda with a bigger audience with more input. And yes, that might slow it down, but it's got a huge effect for this town. So I'd say that's why it's not on the agenda for a decision tonight. It's only a

discussion item. So we wanted to first have the subject just just broached here in the meeting and then get direction on what kind of a process the council would like to have for this in order to come to just the decision you're talking about. What we didn't want to have happen is some of this to get out without added context because then people will start um well there will be many different conversations happening that may be missing context and um perspective. And so we wanted to initiate bring this staff just received these options a couple of weeks ago and so we scheduled it for this meeting to put the um conversation out there uh in the right way and then uh get some feedback from the city council on how you would like to um have the community weigh in just just all those things you talked about. But um it's not on the agenda tonight for any decision. This is a discussion only.

I agree with TA that it's a much bigger community conversation on this. Um but I do have a question. What about an option four? Is there any other options that we can consider or we these are the three there were five total, right?

Uh see yeah there's uh five alternatives. A couple of them were whether or not we channelized the right turn lane on Broadway going northbound onto 101. So that's why there's five. Um there was the no build condition. There was um the um I can't remember all of them off the top of my head, but that's kind of why there was more than um just the three that I showed in the slides. So, you show you showed us three plus there's an option to do nothing. And then you said there was I guess there's one more.

Uh yeah, there's uh the oneway the oneway design without a channelized right turn lane and then there's also a two-way design with a channelized right turn lane or without the channelized right turn lane. So, there was two more. Um so, that's why there were five. Um, but yes, if you guys have suggestions for design, um, we're open to suggestions and we'll definitely look at it and, um, take it into consideration if there's any.

So, just for the sake of full transparency, do we have the option to improve the intersection and put permanent lighting in there, but not do any of the three options, removing parking or turning Broadway one way? So you just replacing the signal and uh putting lighting in at the intersection kind of keeping the curb lines and everything the way that they currently are. Yeah. Is that an option? It's an option we can look at. I believe so. Let me even let me ask just clarification on that same thing. Dedicated left turn signals at that intersection. Is that an option?

Uh I don't believe so. just be by the way the lanes are laid out. Um, and I could check with our signal designer if there's a way if we kept the lane configuration the way it is today if there's a way to time the signal and add those dedicated air left turn phases. Um, but again, I'm not the signal designer. She's unfortunately not able to be here tonight. So, Chris Chris, was that your question? Was dedicated turning if nothing changes or dedicated lights with these changes? No. If nothing changes, can there be okay dedicated left turn? Yeah, if that's something ODOT can kind of look into and and tell us what that would or wouldn't

that accomplish. Yeah. What would that look like? So, I think part of the problem if we kept the lanes the way that they are is currently you've got a left and a through shared lane

and then a right turn lane for both directions. And if you had left turning vehicles, you would get queuing if you had a dedicated bay with uh just lefts, you would have conflicts between uh left turns and the through movement, they'd be in the same lane. And so if people were waiting to turn left outside of the dedicated left phase, you would stack up with people trying to go through the intersection. is you're describing what we have right now. Is combining the through lane with the right turn lane not an option because that would seem to alleviate

that's not a bad option. Uh I mean right now we're given an option between uh taking away a vital access to 101 and in the process creating what looks like a lot of confusion here. Or we can take away the parking to businesses but and by doing so potentially end those businesses through lack of access. That's my concern. And either way, the changes that you're proposing here will so confound our traffic patterns that we're almost causing more problems that we're solving. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. I can't believe that the business I can't see a starter for either of these myself. Again, this is simply for discussion. It takes um apologies Matthew, but basically it takes ODOT a lot long time to come up with these drawings because we're just in the queue with a lot of other projects. So the whole thing here is to discuss what we see about this and then hold you know this is just the first time we've talked about it. Right. Absolutely. And it's it says right on the agenda discussion. There is no option for anything else which the discussion was what I was trying

but I I'm not necessarily saying we need to try to decide what the final thing is tonight. This is going to be a bigger discussion and at this point actually I'd like to get I know we have a couple of uh or some uh people in the audience that are directly affected by this. I'd like to hear from them. Hey, mayor. Can I can I actually get an answer from them for the questions that I asked first or are we just going to skip the questions from me while getting answers for everybody else? Well, they may have the same questions. Um, so yes, you're just going to cut off answers for me. Cool. Got it.

Let's let's get let them uh have their questions. So, come on up. State your name and where you live. Hi, Robin Monttero, Seaside, Oregon. Matthew, I have a question for you. Eastbound, westbound, what is the uh the cycle time? 30 seconds, 45 seconds for the light from the time it turns green to back to yellow again.

I don't have that information, but I could get that um to you guys. And is that the existing cycle time or the what we're thinking proposed for each of the alternatives?

Well, the current what it is now and does it differ uh when the lock when the uh walk light has been triggered. You know, it might extend that lighting time. So, that's why I'm wondering. Um, I have a property on Broadway and with the fact that we don't have public parking in that area, it directly impacts uh my property. You know, we all live here. We know the problem. But what I've my thought was whether you're um going east or you're going west if it's just dedicated cycle time to head west head head um north to head south or coming the other way exactly the same the same procedure. So rather than east and west competing against each other, one side just all travels for the 45 seconds that they get and then the other side travels for 45 seconds for what they get. And that would clear out the uh congested queuing that backs up no matter how you reconfigurate these lanes unless you have four dedicated lanes. So, it's simple. No construction necessary, just a a signal change out with an additional 45 seconds because that 45 seconds will clear out everybody in queuing and it you're not going to get that additional 45 seconds that are sitting back there tapping their toes wondering when it's they're finally going to get through. So, thank you.

That's it's something we can look at. And again, I'm not a signal designer. I don't It's not my fault. What what I I hope you're doing, Matthew, and this will be for a future meeting, is to take these questions to the signal designer, somebody that and you know, if there's more people, too, that we need the the experts from the different sections of ODOT that can answer these questions. and whether you know you're able to attend virtually like you are now or we have actual meeting with you here uh we'll figure that out in the future. Yes sir. Yes. Uh so I will I will be bringing these questions to the rest of our

keep hopefully um you can always go back uh we got a great thing called YouTube where you can make sure you know what the questions are and or just pass it on to the signal person too. Hi Matthew, I'm Anthony Kachana's. I live right on South Lincoln Street, so I'm pretty familiar with this intersection myself. Um, both uh in an automobile and as a pedestrian. So, I'm asking on a pedestrian side, um, what will the signage look like for the crosswalks? Is there going to be the push buttons? Is there going to be more visible signage so that way if I'm, you know, out on a jog or my kids are going to Broadway Park, that way it can be um, more visible. Thank you.

Mhm. Um I don't think we have any special signing. Um like we do there's a midblock crossing at Avenue A. Um there wouldn't be anything like that. Um but there would be the signal. There'd be push buttons I would imagine. Um our standard just intersection marked crosswalks um on 101. And then the design with the channelized right turn also reduces the crossing distances for some of the lakes and makes the makes the time that you're in the intersection a little um a little shorter um to help improve pedestrian safety. And I think with the signal timing that we're able to do with the um with the added lanes is uh doing exclusive phases for peds so that they're not in conflict with cars. Um but again I'm not the signal designer but I I recall having that conversation.

It's definitely an issue. Okay. Anybody else? Carrie, Jimmy, thank you. Um, I just want to Oh, my name is Carrie. Um, I live at Fourth and Holiday and I am with the Seaside Downtown Development Association. Um, I'm very confident that you will take this very seriously as you already have, but I just want to make sure that we go on record of saying that we would definitely um, appreciate a town hall or some type of public comment and really get the word out about this. Thanks.

Yep. You You can take it out of the stand if you like, Jimmy. Thanks, John. I can be loud, too. It's not that necessary. All right. Whoa. He goes perfect. Uh, Jimmy Griffin. And I, as you know, live across the street at the brewery. So, um, my idea, just hear me out, is a bypass. Too soon.

Yeah. But here we are. So, um, parking. I've had a front row seat to the parking issues right here for 15 years. And uh what I can tell you is that those parking spaces along Broadway in the summertime are not parking spaces. It's a parking lot. So they park there. They stay there all day. Mhm.

All day. So we should probably kind of think about that summertime style. Um also my two lots, uh I spend an extreme amount of time running people out of my parking lots that are not coming to my business. An extreme amount of time. So, I have some concerns about how this is going to impact an already overwhelmed situation and I want to make sure that there's a lot more discussion, a lot more interfacing with the businesses. Um, the last time the do came out and did a their their thing, uh, you know, every once in a while I'd look out my windows and there would be a pile of rocks 15 ft high and dump trucks all over my parking lot and I'd go out and be like, "Oh, hey, what's who are you?" And there would be some dump truck guy who would just look at me and be like, "I'm Bob." You know, that would be the interaction that I would have with with ODOT. they just would just show up and just take, right?

Um, so maybe some dump truck ladies that would, you know, be more in tune with my feelings about it would be nice instead of Bob because I'm not a big fan of Bob. So yeah, we're going to we're defin you know, and if this happens during summer

during the summer months, which I understand are like prime ODOT months, but my business in particular is going to really take a hit. So I have some feelings about that. Um, that said, you know, it feels like we're really just sort of I mean, I just found about the out about this three days ago kind of a thing. So, I don't have my uh I don't have my ducks in a row, but I have a million questions and uh yeah, I would like to talk to Bob about this. So, more Bob. More Bob.

Yeah, let's just uh I just don't want to ODOT. I I'm not anti-ODDOT, but I am anti-ODOT showing up, taking over my parking lots, doing this in the middle of summer, and putting a bunch more pressure on my parking lots. So, I'm going to add the the first first thing. Um, anybody else I I I have a specific question then for that. I had uh councelor McVey had a question for Matthew. Don't necessarily expect an answer, but pose the question. Just get it considered.

I'm still curious as to whether combining the right turn lane with the through lane was just never considered.

Um, so part of uh what's out there is you've got you've striped it as two lanes. So there's a left and a through lane and a right turn right turn lane. Um you don't really have the width for two lanes. Um that's really really tight. And then the other other issue we have is the lane alignment if we do start changing uh movements uh for the lanes and if they line up on the other side of the intersection and we can't have them too far offset. um without causing uh issues. So that would something I can look at and see if that's something we could even look even consider. But um

a dozen intersections throughout the county that are currently offset by more than this would offset this on. Also, it wouldn't change the number of lanes. It would change where you have your arrows painted on them. Okay, I'll I'll look at it. I'm not going to promise that it will work, but we will we'll explore it as long as long as it's explored and considered. I think that's that's the the what we want. Now, what I know about ODOT is that ODOT

has a track and a timeline for everything. What is your timeline for this? Well, uh, currently we're in the what we call the design acceptance phase, which is where we're kind of refining the design from when we scoped it. Uh, figuring out how much rightway we need to build it. Um, and that sort of thing. Um, our first kind of deliverable for footprint is in a couple months, but we recognize that this is a big conversation and that there's a lot of input that needs to happen from the community and our schedule will need to be adjusted to reflect that. So, um, I think it's kind of in flux with how much time the city needs to get comfortable with the decision on what what they want. And you just said for the city to get comfortable with the decision. That implies to me that no matter what, ODOT's going to make the final decision.

Um, I don't think that's the case. I mean, I would hope not.

We want your input on what we do with the intersection. And if all of these are non-starters and we don't want to go with any of the left turn or adding lanes, um that's something that we will take seriously. Um but we do need to make improvements to the signal um regardless of what we do on Broadway. So, you said that the footprint, you've got a deadline for the footprint in a couple of months. Do you have a deadline for the start of the project to be actually um shovels in the ground? Currently, we're scheduled to go to bid in the end of 2027, which would mean we would be starting construction in 2028 um at the earliest, but again, that's kind of dependent on when we're able to make a decision and that sort of thing. So, it could change.

Okay. So, um I would ask that you look at your timelines and you put in more time for the consideration of uh our town and for us to do the appropriate um education, outreach, input, etc. for our citizens to be involved in this um in this decision. Yes, we'll we'll make sure to do that.

And that's what ODO does already if you follow any of their uh construction projects that are on their books, which you can. They're all public knowledge and I get an email once a uh week, I believe, with updates. They are pushing things forward often. uh simple things maybe not but bigger projects like this uh quite often it'll sometimes move it into the next fiscal year. This idea was has been around for a while particularly after the signal fell down and uh we noticed how bad the um the current one out there is. Um so this project started uh the idea of the project started um years ago. So um we will um again any anybody else um if not we will u get together and figure out I think a town hall is a good project a um you know we'll find out from ODOT when they can have some of these answers and figure out you know what other options we have if any again we are dealing with streets that were designed in uh the early 1900s. So, uh we have few options and we have seen some of them here tonight. Um you know, we we did a big project on holiday ourselves um and made some significant changes there, but we're you know, we're certainly happy with what turned out.

And I have one other question. Um I do uh see um on the corners you've made big curves on those corners. Do any of your options involved uh anybody losing property?

Um there's small uh takes for right of way. Um not major. We own quite a lot of uh rideway through the corridor. Um there'd be small takes just to get the curb ramps in at the corners and the corners are designed for uh different vehicles depending on what corner it is. So in talking with the city, we designed everything west of 101 as a pretty much a large delivery truck has three axles. um about 40 feet long. Um and then the intersection or the Broadway east of 101 was designed for a semitr because that's where uh Safeway and uh those businesses get their deliveries is off of Lincoln. So they need the larger uh corner radi for um trucks, semi-truckss. So

Safeway is not even near this intersection. Um, I'm I'm specifically concerned about the um southwest corner of the intersection which looks like it could be part of um the Seaside Brewery property. There is a bit in their property that we would need to take to get the corner in. And that's communicate that with the property owner. Yeah. Yes. You did because he he just said a moment ago that he only found out about this project three days ago. When did you communicate with him?

I'm sorry. I thought you said, "Can you communicate with him?" And the answer is yes. Once we get through our design acceptance phase, we would reach out to the property owner and have those conversations about right away takes. We haven't gotten we're still talking about options. um there is not necessarily anything that's going to happen like that. We have to wait and see. Except that I think it's also important for those of us who are looking at this and considering this to have that as part of our consideration is knowing what is happening to our property owners.

The uh bulk of what is out there is already ODOT's property. It's the uh remainder of the old rail line and uh we even made sure of that when we got the uh property from the Sunset Empire and uh part of the reason why we re redesigned the lines of that. That's the opposite corner. That's not the corner I'm talking about. But it's still a big corner and a a big take. Except it's not a take because it already belongs to him. But for Seaside Brewery, it is a take.

There would be a small take. Yes. And I don't know the exact size at the moment. Um I don't have an exhibit with the rightway lines shown, but that's something we could put together for an open house or community meeting. Yep.

Anything else, Spencer? Yeah, I think just just to summarize um couple of things for for everyone's part of the discussion, you know, the the immediate need is the the signalized intersection needs to be uh changed and I think to ODOT's credit, they are um working on this because this was something the city identified in our transportation systems plan. So, um, I appreciate that they're, uh, coming to us with with options. Um, one thing, Matthew, and I can follow up with you guys, uh, tomorrow. I think what I'm hearing is, um, clearly laying out the different options, which I think we have some of that here. Um, there are some others, uh, that we we can add to that. Uh, and then clearly showing the the traffic impacts to each each one of those. again um uh any one of these is going to have an impact including doing nothing. And so if we are going to choose to do nothing, we should be making that with the understanding of what what that effect is. And so um and so having having uh the ability to compare apples to apples, what does the backing up of traffic look like in each of these scenarios? What is the timing at the lights in each of these scenarios? What is the parking like on each of these scenarios? I think will be helpful. And then if there are I mean there's probably an infinite number of configurations and signal timings we could come up with. And I'm sure that there are um I mean tonight we're all traffic engineers, but uh I'm sure when it push comes to shove, they're going to be the real traffic engineers and that there will be legitimate reasons why the ideas that we come up with with signal it this way, stripe it that way, will or will will not work. And so if there are

any of those ideas that have come up tonight that ODOT says no, those don't work. Uh I think providing the explanation for like a lay person to understand I think would be helpful. Um, so we do narrow it down to those ones that from a traffic engineering standpoint are the ones that um would uh would hold up. And then um again once we get that and I think it's a little bit easier to compare the tradeoffs of each and compare apples to apples then I think we can start scheduling and working with ODOT to schedule um the the uh kind of earnest approach to get community feedback. At the end of the day, there's not a right or wrong answer here. There are different priorities and different values. And depending on the approach you're taking, you're going to value some of these things differently. So, there's going to be difference of opinions on the council. There's going to be a ton of different opinions in the community. And no one uh point of view is going to be correct. They're all going to have different priorities. And so at the end of the day, that's the tough thing with uh these kinds of situations is the end of the day, the council's going to need to weigh each of those considerations and each of those values and depending on what things you prioritize that will kind of lead where where you think the best uh uh best uh fit will be or the best outcome will be. And so hopefully we can have a good thorough and rigorous process with that where everyone gets uh input and um the council feels that you're in the a good position to be able to to make a well-informed um decision or recommendation back to ODOT. That would be my goal for this process.

So I have I have two more questions. one is um I am assuming from some of the things that you've said in terms of backup of traffic that you've done some traffic studies. I would like to see the results of the traffic studies that have been done uh at our intersections. And then the other thing is more internal I think for our city and that is we created the transportation system the the transportation commission uh because we had to and it was for making sure that we were following our transportation systems plan. So I'm wanting to know when are they going to be involved in this? The last part is that's what we're asking the council to have the discussion on on what you think the community involvement would be. And that includes the transportation commission. If you want to have them involved before or after more community input, that's um really again each of our committees are here to support the council. So how how would their actions most benefit the council? I would think having them involved after getting some community input so that they're able to take that and filter it into something coherent to present to us.

Could they host the community forum? Could they

organize do whatever you want? I think I think one of the things we want to um we I think we also want to specify is you know our while we want to help facilitate it. Do we want you know ODOT to lead those discussions? Do we want the city to lead those discuss city staff leads? We want our our transportation commission. And I think those are all things that are that are possibilities, but um they they um will all come with a different perspective and um I think the the process might look a little different depending on on on what we choose.

Agreed. I guess I'm not asking for analysis paralysis. Just let's pick somebody to organize the forum and host it. When's the next meeting for that group,

Thursday next week? Can we put together some kind of u blueprint to follow and talk to them at that meeting? Yeah, I think it's what are you asking them to do? I think next week is too soon to have the community involvement. So, Oh, yeah. If you're if you're looking for their The way I would see it is we have the public outreach,

take that information, submit that to the transportation commission to review it, and they make their recommendation to the city council. So, you will get a recommendation from the commission, you'll get a recommendation from staff, you may get a recommendation from ODOT if they want to weigh in, plus you'll have all of the feedback from the um from the public. Um, and so, uh, all those things in which to make a decision, but I think that's up to the council and what what process you want to have. Um I if there's an a meeting next week, I think it's the respectful thing to do since we have a commission that we have appointed that we want to advise us. The respectful thing is for us to let them know and and have have this kind of information so that they can be having a discussion too. If I was on that commission and um I was not engaged in this by my city or my council until after it had become uh something for a for a town hall, etc., and then I'm pulled into it, I'd be starting to wonder why the hell am I on a transportation commission? So my feeling is my that we we bring them into this now, not that they have to do something, but that so they are informed, they know what's going on, and they we we're underscoring the purpose of why we have this commission.

I I don't think I'm recommending anything other than asking the council what you'd like to do. So give us the direction and that's what it's your committee. How would you like to use them? I would be in favor of public feedback first. I think we need more information from the public before we start scrutinizing any of these plans and start refining them down.

I agree. What I'm wondering is how do we gather that public feedback and is the transportation commission a way to to help us decide how to do that? Is it we're going to put a survey out on the website? Is it we're going to host a forum and have people come and we're going to have people there that'll potentially answer questions? Is it they watched the video from the meeting tonight and you know do public comments um using our normal form like how do we want that? My suggestion would be that we put it out to the public over the Facebook or some kind of survey where they can provide us information and then once we get more concrete plans then we have a forum where they can actually tell us their opinion on the plans as opposed to getting them involved too early with the town hall where we don't actually have anything concrete yet would be my thoughts.

But what we know from tonight already is that we've thrown a bunch of different options that we would like ODOT to look at. we've thrown those out. So, we know that ODOT has more work to bring to us. Um, I don't think this meeting with for transportation commission is a decision meeting. It's anformational meeting. It's providing them the ability to see this is coming down the pike. This is what ODOT wants to do. This is what they've proposed to us thus far. and we had a vigorous discussion at the council meeting etc. But keeping them informed and again for me it's a matter of respecting the people who are on that commission.

So TA how do we do that? Is that you go to the meeting next week? Is that Sheamus communicates this plan to them at the meeting next week? We have staff. We have a city manager. Okay.

Yeah. One of the um first things we need to do is is try to create a timeline of how we're going to do this. And uh I think staff is best to put together uh something like that. The uh one biggest thing is this going to draw a lot of people in um doing it like you said, you know, via Facebook or surveys or whatever. um you know even watching uh what is transpiring tonight you know maybe making this its own video um is a good good overview of what's going on and what some of the problems are.

I agree. So, um, you know, maybe you can't require people to do it, but, um, strongly encouraging that they go back and watch this portion of our meeting. Uh, going to the transportation commission next week with our liaison and pointing out, um, you know, the same thing. Um, staff will be there. Um, Mr. Stall from public works. Um, I'm assuming you're kind of up to date on this a little bit. So, uh, and maybe Spencer, um, you know, just saying here's where we're at, and we haven't necessarily decided how this is all going to work, but we want your input on it. That makes sense.

The, um, as has been mentioned a few times is that this intersection is in the TSP now as something that's a problem and it needs to be worked on sometime in the future. Uh, Spencer and I were talking about this. The TSP is pretty out of date still and it's one of the projects that we need to get working on. Um the last one was dated uh 20 2010 I think it was and you know it was a problem you know 16 years ago. So um this is a an expensive thing and it's uh ODOT's property uh ODOT's uh highway. So, you know, anything that happens has to happen with ODOT

and them being involved and taking the lead on it. So, um I think that's where we go from right now. Um I would like um probably need to have something like uh a town hall at the convention center in one of the larger rooms cuz this is something that'll probably bring people out. I'm not sure we could handle it at the Chisum. Maybe we could.

Yeah, I think that that makes sense. Um I like that better than a survey because sometimes you don't know um who's answering what. Uh I think we would look to schedule that as soon as we think we have all of the information to share. I think we need to have a a clear communications package of here's the options and here's the pros and cons of each of the options. and then uh and then invite the public out. Um without the added context, it will lead to a lot more confusion um and uh won't be helpful for for the debate. And so getting kind of getting a package together we think addresses those things. So it really comes down to um not all these other what if scenarios, but here are the legitimate options. Here's how it helps. here's how it may hurt and and what are what are your priorities and we start gathering that information um at that time. I think that's straightforward. I think it's natural. I think it would probably have been on the transportation commission's agenda for at least to get um a heads up on this this project. To me, it makes sense to have them review that feedback and give you um their recommendation because they are going to come from a different point of view than staff than the council itself and you'll have one more recommendation to review. Um but that's kind of how I see this process um unfolding. Um I think um we don't need to sit too long on this. I think as soon as we get the um needed uh information together and we think we have a good package to communicate then I think we start scheduling that and advertising it.

How long do you do you think it'll take for ODOT to give us a reply on some of our suggestions, our questions and further possibilities? Uh uh I'm not 100% certain how long that's going to take. I would imagine a couple weeks at the at the least. Um I could get more information uh tomorrow when everybody's back at the office and kind of get a game plan on how long it would take us to go through all of your comments and come up with a plan um and get that answer to the city staff.

Yeah. And I'll I I'll try to kind of um shape that or jeopard.

Yeah. Kind of make sure uh we're clear on what we're asking for and I think that will help to inform the work that ODOT needs to do and then once you have a timeline um an estimate, you can provide that back to us which I can share with the council. And um for sure, you know, we'll we'll need some heads up time to schedule things and and to get the word out. Although, I have a feeling word will spread quickly. Um which is why we want to have this discussion tonight, which is um before word starts spreading, let's at least have a discussion um with some context rather than just um maps starting to circulate.

Okay. Thank you, Matthew, for uh bearing with us. Thank you. Uh one thing to keep in mind is this is not Matthew's only project he's working on. I'm sure u you know, ODOT isn't concentrating on Seaside, so as much as we would like them to. Okay.

Uh next up is a discussion of the fireworks committee's recommendations. Those are all in your packet. uh it's uh was written by me but it was a discussion that we held uh over uh several meetings and uh if you wanted to you're more than welcome to go back and watch all of those. Uh I got some feedback from a few of the people saying yes this is okay. Some of the comments are in there. uh we had a minority report as well from um one of the members and uh saying that you know we need to make sure that we don't drive tourism away because of this. So um what we have in effectively brought is saying that we would like to uh create a campaign educational campaign to um make people aware more aware that uh we are concerned about the amount of legal fireworks that are here in the city of Seaside during 4th of July and uh uh obviously that means both sides of the 4th of July. The part of the problem is that just limiting it to one day anymore doesn't count because they're going off all the time. We had uh input from the police and fire department. They were on the committee. Um had a couple of uh residents on the committee, a couple of business representatives, a couple of counselors, and um the Oregon State Parks rep was on it as well as Spencer. So, we got a pretty well-rounded view of this. Uh one of the things, um you know, we are making some recommendations, but the council's the one that has to decide which way we're

going. um and they need to provide some kind of direction to the city staff to say here's what we would like you to do. I um there were a couple of um proforma um ordinances in there or maybe levels of of uh fine uh depending on various steps. We didn't go into a lot of detail because that's not our forte to write ordinances. Uh we would like some kind of stepped ordinance saying, you know, first offense something kind of minor at a lower level and then gradually going higher the more egregious the um um action is. Uh our police department pointed out that um you know things that are actual um you know whether it's felonies or misdemeanors things that harm people or put people in uh direct uh conflict with safety of somebody those are already something we can control. So, this is more about um actually having uh fireworks in your possession. You know, if they're illegal, it's illegal for you to have them. So, questions or comments? Um councelor McVey, you want to add anything? You were there for all those meetings, too. Mostly I I I want to on the fact that I largely kept my mouth closed throughout most of those meetings. Uh and my reasoning for doing so is that my position is pretty well known on illegal fireworks. And

I would much rather have the kinds of minds that we had there working together to create um that end product without my passion pushing one way or another. Um I think that what the committee came up with was very good. I liked uh specifically in dealing with the tiered approach to fines. Um it was pointed out that on the spot valuation of fireworks may be difficult. Um and so going with uh another approach other than a dollar amount value of of what those fireworks might be worth would probably be wise. Whether that's quantity or type, whatever, I that's that's not my position to say, I think, but uh I I like what what the committee produced. So,

okay, Chris,

I like um what you guys did. Thank you so much for investing the time that you did in it. I think um I love the balance between preserving and enforcing. It seems like those are kind of the two major areas that we um that the committee kind of, you know, they made those things priorities. A couple of things that I just noticed. Um, I like the tiered structure and I do agree that whatever we can do to make our first responders, law enforcement personnel's lives easier when they are so busy uh and um you know not stopping to assign a dollar amount or count the number of things. Fireworks are illegal. This is your first offense. Fireworks are illegal. this is your second offense and you already had a warning, right? I like the tiered structure, but I think it's just I don't think we should try to boil the ocean the first year we do this, but um make it something realistic and um enforceable for um the police department. Um the other thing I thought about was we kind of mixed apples and oranges a little bit with the enforcement uh groups. So in one area the it is it applies to people, structures, pets or emergency responders. In another area it applies to structures, vegetation or people. Uh I myself like structures, vegetation and people because emergency responders are people and I'm not sure pets really while we want to protect them, I'm not sure that they are applicable for that part of the uh ordinance. So That was something um that I noticed. And then I

did catch OSP. Glad they were involved. I think in his response he left a caveat about whether or not they have the resources in order to help with enforcement um on the beach. So just something that I noticed that that was a comment made that definitely a comment. Yes. Yeah. It will be critical to the success. clarify there is they have no no enforcement ability. Yeah. So it's not really a question. OSP doesn't. So are we talking state parks? Oregon State Parks is what she's referring to. Oregon State Parks does not um you know that was one thing that was that was brought up by some is let's turn the enforcement on the beach over to them. And the answer is

they may have jurisdiction but there is no staff to do it. Didn't we recently review a uh an agreement that we have that our uh public safety officers enforce the uh the rules on the beach? So, yeah, we we had that pre-existing and we just renewed it. So, our officers can enforce

um state rules on the beach um even even if it's technically outside the city's jurisdiction. Um, but again, where we're talking illegal fireworks, um, those are illegal no matter what jurisdiction you're in. So, I'm not sure that changes it. Um, but again, the reason we have that is because one of the reasons is state parks is not going to have people on our beach to do any kind of enforcement. But in fact, we're not adding anything by saying we enforce because we already have that responsibility.

Seth I think the committee did a great job. Chris made a lot of the points that I was going to make. The one thing I'd reiterate is that how valuable Seaside PD's time is on that day and and they don't have the time to really look at the fireworks and estimate value and all those things. So, making it as quick and easy for them uh is going to be key to making this actually work out in the real world. Um, aside from that, do we know if we're going to get any help from Oregon State Police this year? Have those conversations happened? Do you know, Chief? The request is

Yeah. So, for for the record, uh the request has been made like it was last year. Last year they provided, I believe, 10 officers. Um and so we've made that request again and we'll hopefully get that, but we don't know yet. Yeah, there's just such a history with folks bringing illegal fireworks to seaside. I I don't think we should have too high of expectations maybe that first year, but we should definitely try and see what we can do and hopefully it goes well. Remember that we said that at the beginning. This is not going to happen overnight, right?

Um and this committee is not ending either. We will continue to have meetings as we make different steps as we go along. Counselor,

um I'm just thinking that uh yes, there are resource constraint in trying to track down illegal use. Uh I I like everything that's presented here. There's a lot of work involved in it. I think uh sometimes we have to look outside the box and one of the things is lead by example because we are firing uh I love fireworks. Uh we're firing fireworks. People come here for it. I think there are opportunities to um to help other people understand that uh fireworks, illegal fireworks are not uh allowed for, you know, after 4th of July or ever, but it continues to go for a week. For example, um there are silent fireworks that uh we can have for our fireworks shows. Uh or diminished audio fireworks that are great for the shows. Uh there are also drone fireworks or hybrid of both of those that would be a great uh tourist draw for those shows. um some of those drone works can also be sponsored by you know to uh offset some of the costs. So those are things to keep in mind. Um veterans and pets you know me veterans are uh pretty high up there for me uh suffering from PTSD. There are other people uh first responders suffer from PTSD too. So some of these uh loud effects can be problematic. Pets absolutely uh people come here with their pets and I think they should be taken into account as well. Overall uh I think what we're you know those are ideas moving forward. You're absolutely right. This is not anything that's going to happen overnight.

However, I do think that we should try to think into the future and lead by example and maybe by reducing the sounds and the fireworks that we're using, other people might get that example as well. Um, however, moving forward, this is a really good plan. Uh, how we exercise that plan, I guess it time will tell. I I'll go back to the comments that I've made every time fireworks come up. You have to start dropping paper on people. You have to start finding people. And when you start finding people, the world the word will get out. But also, I'll bring up my other suggestion, which was to get the businesses downtown involved in um spreading the word that the illegal fireworks are not going to be tolerated. That met with a lot of resistance from the Chamber of Commerce, which makes no sense to me. Um, otherwise this year you could use this year as an educational opportunity and have flyers and signs and other forms of communication letting people know that we are moving away from the way it's always been. And so whether you choose that it's going to be in 27 or 28 whenever that there's going to be a complete ban on illegal fireworks and they can't you know maybe better to use this year to get the word out so there's no well we didn't know. I think that's the education component

that is key to this proposal of getting the word out whether it's flyers in businesses, signs at the entrances on either side of town, um signs out on access to the beach on the prom. Being able to get that word out there to actually educate the population that hey, this is a change that may be happening. bring the awareness so that nobody can say I didn't know but expecting that change to happen overnight is always going to be an unreasonable expectation there has to be you know if we're going to have something be illegal we have to actually treat it as illegal

otherwise we're saying well it's only illegal in theory but in reality and in practice it's hey have fun, go do what you're going to do, you know, and that doesn't work. It It's counter to the very idea of having something be illegal. But without that education component, none of it works. So, we have that that's an integral piece.

That's what we did in Lakewood. Um, when Lakewood broke away from the Pierce County Sheriff's and we uh were patrolling for 60,000 plus people, the first year was the warning. Enjoy yourself this year because this is all going to be illegal next year. And then we gave a an a list of what the legal ones were and the illegal ones were. And we told them what the fines were going to be. and got the word out to 60,000 people. And yeah, every year we saw a decrease in the number of criminal citations that were written. But but after you give that first educational piece, you have to stop start dropping paper on people to to prove that you're serious. Dina.

Well, we've been doing the educational piece for years. SDDDA posted signs on every entrance to the beach for years and years. There are signs in existence that go up every year that say it's a $700 fine. And these are the illegal fireworks. We have been doing it. This is nothing new. It's just that it hasn't been getting enforced in as good a fashion as it needs to. Some of that has to do with it's dark. Some of that has to do with we don't have people, etc. But do not think we haven't been doing education. Do not think this is a new concept for our residents or for our visitors. We've had signs out on the highway that say no illegal fireworks. So, it's not new. So, let's not take a step backwards and suddenly say, "Oh, well, let's not enforce too much now because this is new. Let's keep going forward." This committee has been doing some good work. I am very glad that they've been co doing good work. Have we been doing education to the point that we could? No. Um, and that's one of the things that in the write up I didn't find enough of is the uh emphasis on education and I think that's that's what might be the next committee kind of uh idea etc. We need to have a a consensus. We need to have uh higher levels of education and get out there

and and make sure that's what I would like to see uh in a plan is more education. Um I also think that we need to not just say it's about the 4th of July. It's about all the time. It doesn't matter when there's an illegal firework. It's an illegal firework. We have more of them during the Fourth of July. That's right. But we also have them during uh New Year's. We also have them all during the summer. So, we need to have that education, not just like a big education push for the Fourth of July. We need to have it there all the time. We need to have more in our visitor um brochure.

Yes.

You know the the the guide the guidelines to having fun in seaside. Don't bring illegal fireworks. That's a guideline to having fun in seaside. Um I like the uh the um increase in the fine the the tiered effect. It's kind of like if you're speeding, if you're, you know, 20 miles over the speed limit, it's this. If you're 40 miles over the speed limits, it's this. I like that that that kind of thing, um, is is in the consideration. I did have a question. Uh, I don't understand how this gets involved in the city's civil penalty system. You don't need to answer that question tonight, but I wondered how that would work. I also had a question about whether or not our judge would have the ability to reduce fines and whether we want them to. I don't know whether that's something that has to be in the ordinance as well. all over this place. As I read this, I kept using the putting the word in education, education, because even though on page four there's a bullet with public education campaign, I'm not again, it says explaining the rules and penalties prior to the 4th of July. This needs to become the culture of this city. We do not allow illegal fireworks and it's part of our culture because we value we value our residents, we value our vets, we value our pets, we value our property, we value people who come to visit. Um, and I definitely don't think that higher penalties will reduce the number of people coming here. We have nothing to

prove that we got fewer people when we weren't doing a fireworks show. Why would we get fewer people? Because we're enforcing what's legal in the state of Oregon. Um there's the word education again.

We're getting fewer people for enforcing the law than maybe the people who aren't coming because the law is being enforced aren't necessarily people we want here in the first place. Well, that might be it. The other thing that I saw a lot here was the phrase city sponsored professional fireworks display. And what we need to realize that's not city sponsored. That's that is chamber sponsored and the city gives a grant. So that is not the city sponsored fireworks show. it's the chamber and we need to give um recognition that that's the chamber's sponsor. Um and we also need to remember that illegal fireworks is enforced on visitors and on residents as well as visitors. It doesn't matter who you are because I know that there's a lot of residents here who take advantage of it. Um, let's see. Where else did I

While you're looking for that, I'd like to address you you brought up the education aspect and that there wasn't more development to it. And we spent, and mayor, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, the better portion of, if not an entire meeting just on that one piece. Um what came out of it was some rough guidelines of of ideas but because none of us were uh advertising professionals um that was something that figured would that aspect of it would would be I wasn't looking for details here I didn't find enough emphasis on it

and that's I know that the main focus of of that conversation was this wouldn't necessarily be um businessled, it would be more by our tourism department because they're the one that has a whole lot bigger reach than any of us do.

One of the things that um one one thing somebody told me once is people will treat you the way you let them treat you. By the way you let them treat you, you teach them how you want them to treat you. And that's where our tourism department here has the ability to let people know how we want people to treat our city. How we want to treat our city. I did have a concern and I don't know enough about our recordkeeping. How is an officer going to know when they approach somebody, get their name, whatever, that this is, oh, they've already had a warning or this is their second offense or that kind of thing. Again, what we've all said is that when all of this is happening, there's a lot of stuff going on. And how do people know? So, how are we able to do that? I also saw on one it said second offense within 12 months and another said second offense within 24 months. I like the 24 months. Again, those are all just generic um

recommend not recommendations, ideas. Uh we need to leave this up to our lawyers to to write a good ordinance.

Right? So, those are all of the thoughts I had as I was reading this and thinking about how it could um be converted into ordinance and also into an education plan. And that's where uh we're at now. I would um u I don't necessarily have to have a motion, but at least a a consensus because these are things that are come back to us in particular the ordinance. But for us to uh direct the city staff to u work on developing these plans, the two focuses being education uh particularly through the tourism department and creating uh beginning to craft an ordinance that would uh meet what we're talking about. I would like to see that we have some substantive education that in place in time for this this year's Fourth of July.

That's part of the reason I brought it now. Um we weren't able to have a meeting in February, so I just went ahead and uh sent this around to the committee to get it moving. Um I would actually if possible like to have the education say there's going to be an ordinance in place. Uh we are not going and we we discussed this. We're not going to give a year's uh leeway to say it's just a warning now.

Yeah. if we catch anybody and it's you know the the police are going to be on top of that that you know the the ordinance is in effect when it's in effect not a year from now and uh it'll be up to the police again and we allow them to have discretion on how they enforce our ordinances. This will be part of our city code. Right now it says uh fireworks um um violation is the same as any other violation. It's 700 bucks and things working out what we change that to how the judge handles it those kind of things still need to be worked out. So do I have a consensus? Those two main points are what we're looking at.

I support the direction of the committee. Okay. and appreciate the efforts. All right, Spencer, I think I have direction and just you were part of the committee, too. So,

I think just to share my thoughts, um I think um I think we've identified the two things that need to work together. One is the public education outreach and two is the um the penalties. Um, in my experience, we can do all the education we want. If people aren't paying for it, if it doesn't hit them in the in the pocketbook, then it doesn't uh it it's just theoretical. And so, um, you know, as as I thought about this, the only question I have, and staff will discuss this some more, is if the first fine is $1,000 and it's currently $700, and the $700 doesn't seem to be getting much traction, that that may be something we want to consider. I think what this plan counts on is um what you've already identified that we're going to make progress each year. And um part of what this relies on is the word getting out that if you come to seaside with illegal fireworks, it's going to be expensive. And so um I think that's where we'll talk amongst staff as to whether what what the appropriate fine amounts are. So, we'll come back with some some formal recommendations and and talk to our legal counsel about how that can be enforced. But I think I think letting people know I think it's good that under this plan right now we can say you can face up to a $5,000 fine. And that's true even if it's not likely for a first offense. So, I think that's helpful. I think when the important thing will be that people start getting hit with expensive fines and start getting that word around, I think that's when we'll start to see some traction of actual uh behavioral differences. And so, um I think you've all identified the right things and so we'll come back,

we'll put both the communication plan together and um work on a revised enforcement ordinance. Okay. Thank you. Thank you to the committee and we'll still be seeing you again. Okay. We had um a request for something to add to the agenda by councelor McVey. So, up until recently, we've had a section of the agenda marked for recognitions um with no real definition to it as to why it's there. It's no longer on the agenda. This is a pretty recent change. um used it's because we were

it's been forever that we've had recognitions and it's still a possibility. It was more if we have a recognition, we'll put it on the agenda. If we don't have one, not as

as I've seen this, I've been wondering who's eligible, what are the re what are the eligibility guidelines as far as what we're recognizing someone for? Um, I went and looked at cities around the country from Fort Lauderdale, Florida uh to uh I think it's Spearfish, South Dakota. I mean, there couple in Ohio and Missouri just so I can get a feel for different size cities approaches in all kinds of different areas, both tourist and and very local types. And one of the things that that I found is that there are some consistencies. Um things like it should never be partisan uh or used for recognition of any kind of a politically related uh activity. Um that it's not generally open to city staff or current electeds within that jurisdiction. um that it should be residents who have been there for at least a year. And then what kind of uh specific activities could be anything from, you know, somebody jumping in to help somebody who's drowning out on the beach uh to somebody who's put on an event that has been particularly helpful or uh impactful on the city. Um the kinds of rewards or what that recognition look like I guess rather than reward um is most often in the form of um a proclamation or letter signed by the mayor and council um addition to uh the city's website and often notification in their local paper. Um, but from what I could tell, I couldn't find anything for Seaside.

There's no

about any of that. And so that's what got me onto this because I've seen over the last year at least a couple of different instances where people who were not first responders jumped in and and have saved lives where events have been put on that have been impactful for the community, but they all go unrecognized. And in a time when our civic life is particularly polarized and combative, having something that's going to promote a positive civic experience in town, I think would be fantastic. And having a set of guidelines that we can do that with makes that a hell of a lot easier. That's why I've requested this tonight. Okay. council. U the only thing that I'm aware of we used it for is particularly has been when a counselor is done with their service and we honor them. Um we did re uh honor a first responder but actually that was an honor from an outside agency. It wasn't ours. Um my only concern would be trying to set that up in a way that it works for everybody and that that becomes more difficult.

So some cities had separate committees that were sort of ad hoc as needed. Yeah. that were kind of a if somebody gets nominated, they they fill out a submission online or or on paper at city hall, then that committee would come together to evaluate.

So, we discussed this a little bit at our agenda meeting. Uh but I know the bears concern was if it was a vote, then that would be problematic because if someone potentially didn't win the vote, then it would actually have the opposite effect. So, I like the idea. If we were going to do recognitions, it's either brought by a specific counselor and let's say every counselor gets one or something like that or it's done similar to proclamations where it's the mayor's prerogative and you would basically petition the mayor. Um, something like that. It could be it could even be a committee. That makes sense. But then you got to put together that committee. So, as long as it's not something that kind of leaves a bad taste in people's mouth if someone doesn't get the recognition, I would be for it. It sounds to me like it might be something that could be added to our council rules. And I kind of like what I heard Seth say, you know, um, uh, each counselor can do it on their own. And maybe in the rules we have some guidelines as to how it's done or, you know, how often it's done or whatever whatever kind of guidelines we want. Um, but I agree, not putting it to a vote, not um because um it's it's not something that one person needs to convince another person, hey, this is deserving of recognition, but this is something I know about and um uh I I'd like to recognize this person publicly at a council meeting because that's that's kind of what I'm sensing you're talking out

one of the only cities I could find that had uh a committee dealing with nominations um didn't have so much of a pass fail as you know as in should this person get it. It's more of do they meet our defined criteria. From there it goes to the council. I kind of like it better that we decide what the criteria is and it's in the rules and each one of us can bring forth somebody if we if we want to.

And I think from from my perspective the goal is getting a set of guidelines of of what what do we actually want if we want anything? I mean that that recognition part was a part of the agenda for so long and and wasn't getting used there. There's maybe a handful of times over the last couple of decades that I know of uh where somebody who wasn't a departing council member um was getting it recognized. I think the last one I can think of was possibly during uh under Mayor Barber uh maybe even before that. So having a set of guidelines that we can work with, however that that looks, is is all I'm looking for.

I see.

I like it. I I I think guidelines are very very helpful. Um, and I like the idea of um, I mean the Chamber of Commerce, they have their awards ceremony and I think it's uh, good for us to be able to have somebody from our community that we can recognize and uh, I I I I like the idea. I think um, you know, I'm happy to work with you on uh, creating guidelines for that. I think when it comes to any civilian that has assisted uh the police or fire department that I would let the fire chiefs but police chief and fire chief make those recommendations.

Those are just examples. Yeah. Yeah. No, but but yeah, that again I hate to go back and say at Lakewood, but yes, at Lakewood, uh a police offic anybody in the police department could go to the brass and say, "This citizen did this good thing." And then the the chief of police or somebody he appointed would bring it up at the council meeting and present them with a certificate and have their picture taken. And it it was nice. It was nice. Um, but yeah, not not just for people that help pull people out of burning cars, but there's there's people who do fantastic things in this city all the time. All the time.

And there's nothing wrong with giving them, you know, their 30 minutes of of uh recognition at a council meeting. I think if we recognize more of the good works that happen in a in a more public way, more of the good works will show up. It it really is one of those situations of if you build it, they will come. We use the term for a lot of different things, but this is one where in my experience it actually happens and it's a little good news, you know, and we need good news. Yeah. As long as we remember that our paid staff are doing it every day.

Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. And they don't always get the recognition they deserve for that. In most of the cities where I was able to find one, city staff, whether it's police, fire, back in city hall, unfortunately not eligible. Whether or not because it's a part of the job. all are already our heroes. Well, I think typically we have ways that we can recognize our staff, even if it's a council meeting. I think we're just talking about a different recognition program,

right? Good. All right. So, I heard um councilors McVey and Ensro will work to try to come up with some guidelines for future discussion. All right. Thank you. Uh Spencer, um Memorial Day meeting, I guess we don't really need Yeah. Do you want to have one? It's normally we normally do not have meetings on city staff holidays. So Memorial Day is a holiday and it falls on the fourth. It's on Well, it's always on the fourth

fourth Monday and so we traditionally cancel it. Um, as our city recorder, Kim Jordan works to uh do some noticing for things like the downtown maintenance district that need to happen. She's trying to coordinate um what meetings we will have necessary hearings and whatnot. And so, um, that will depend on whether we hold a Memorial Day city council meeting. Our recommendation and the tradition has been not to, but we wanted to um make that formal so that we can proceed with uh the noticing that we need to do for some of the different items council needs to hold. Um but if the council would like to hold it, this is your opportunity to choose that. Or if you would like to hold it on a different day or something like that, this is that opportunity. That's not to say that uh you can't it's totally possible that you now plan on not holding one, but as we get closer and the need arises, we can choose to hold one uh possibly on a different night like a Tuesday night the following day or or something else. That's always um an option u depending on the need.

Another thing that Spencer brought up and I don't know why we didn't think of it before is we really need to do this at the beginning of the year. so that these are settled. Again, like Spencer said, you know, if something does come up, it's very simple to schedule a meeting, you know, like the next day or sometime that's convenient for all of us. So, I've got on my calendar, he's got on his calendar beginning of next year. We'll set the calendar for the council uh for the whole year now. We can set the calendar for the rest of the year. Well, we haven't discussed that yet. No, we typically only have um one meeting in August so that if people do want to plan a vacation

around something when they know there won't be a council meeting. Um that second meeting in August is usually canceled and usually the same goes with December is usually that meeting will land somewhere right around Christmas. So um we can probably come up with something if the council wants to look at the year approach sooner than later. We can do that too. We can do it for Yeah. later. But for right now, um, can I have a motion to cancel the Memorial Day May 25th meeting? I would move to cancel the meeting on May 25th, 2026. I second it. Council President Morsy and Councelor Baker. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed?

Always surprised when there's nobody opposed to counseling a meeting. Motion passes. Yeah. Okay. Um, city staff comments. Nobody. Gary, not staff, but very important person. Yeah. Put it back down for Jimmy.

From Jimmy. Um, just want to invite everyone to uh Dundy's Bar and Grill on Wednesday for its blooming benefit. It's to benefit the flower basket program. They will arrive um May 20th this year and be up through September 20th, which ends up being a little bit longer than normal of a timeline. So, we need to even raise more money uh to keep them watered every day. But, uh Dundy's is donating 50% of the proceeds. We'll have the opportunity drawings available, but again, 4 to 9. Um you can do to go food, too, if it doesn't work to dine in. Thank you. Day again, sorry, Wednesday. Wednesday. And what time? 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

And when do the baskets arrive? Uh, Wednesday, May 20th at 6:00 a.m. If you want to be there again, uh, Councelor Baker has helped us pass them out two, three years in a row. I'll be there. All right. Thanks. Just a reminder that that is something that the SDA does every year for the city. Okay, John. I saw Zach come out of his of his room. No. Okay.

Out of hibernation. Um he did send out all of the nonprofit requests. So make sure you download those and review them. Uh that meeting is a week from Wednesday that we'll talk about that. Sorry, John. Oh, okay. Kim, anything? Okay, Spencer, I think you've heard enough from me tonight, but um you'll still hear from me more tonight and then uh looking forward to our meeting with the county on Thursday. Okay, Patrick.

Yes. Um, last month I shared a twofur for Black History Month and highlighted one of the heroes, uh, Shirley Chisum. Uh, for Women's History Month, I thought about sharing the story of a famous historical figure. But then instead, I'm going to tell you about the history of the most impressive woman I've ever known, and that's my mom, uh, Miriam Johnson. My mom grew up in a small Ohio town during a time when women were expected to stay home and raise children. But my mom had other plans. She graduated high school at 16 and college at 20 with a double major in speech education and English literature. She later joined the Women's Army Corps as a second lieutenant writing forensic fingerprint manuals used by the FBI. She was also a model, an actress, and as an actress, she met my father while performing Arsenic and Old Lace. That led to an early television career where she hosted a children's show as Miss Miriam on Romper Room, sharing her love of learning with kids. Then she became pregnant with a future city counselor. That would be me. Uh she was fired because she was pregnant and women weren't allowed on television at the time if they were pregnant. Apparently nobody thought about those kids on Roer Room or where they came from. My mom went on to raise eight children, four boys, four girls. She liked balance in her life, I guess. Later at 43, she decided to become a registered nurse. Someone at the certification office told her, "You might be a little too old." Whoa.

That was a big mistake. See, my mom was 5'2", 110 lbs, redheaded, and Viking blood. You don't tell her that. So, when she got quiet, you got out of her way. While raising eight kids, she studied to be uh a nurse. She passed the RN exam and scored the highest score the state of Florida had seen in 15 years. Later, she became lead ER nurse at a hospital in Orlando. My mother kept doing extraordinary things until the day she passed away. Women are essential. We would not be here without them. They deserve our honor. They deserve our respect. and they deserve equal footing in society if we want to evolve as a community and as a nation. That's something we must continue to uphold. So, in honoring Women's History Month, I honor my mother and the countless women whose strength, courage, and determination helped build the world we currently stand in today. Well, thank you on behalf of all of us. Um, going back to the um recognition, does the fire chief and police chief, do you have citations within your department that you give to officers for outstanding? So, you're already doing recognition.

Yeah. Okay. That's all I That's all I wanted to know. You data.

Okay. Well, um, last week on Wednesday, the community center commission met and worked on the the start of the committee description. They're going to do more of that at the April meeting. The fascination tournament for um uh Chisum netted $1,947 and had um almost a full house of teams. Um and some of the statistics uh for the Chisum Center last month, a total of uh attendance at different events and um different uh meetings at the Chisum was 1816 people. Although we're 67% through the fiscal year, the revenue at the CHISM is only 52% of the budget. So, it's low on the revenue, but also the expenses are only at 56% of the budget. Paul Stall came and discussed the parking lot lakes that we have at the Chisum Center and um what was in the plans to repair. Um and the committee members appreciated that um the generator for the building is in um the thoughts for our budget for fiscal year 2627. We're consistently looking for commission members. Um, one of those, uh, the nominee we had tonight came out of that discussion and, um, the members of the commission want to hold one of the positions open, um, for a future appointment of a non-resident user. So, we're looking forward on that. Um, I have coffee with a counselor um

Wednesday of this week um at 10:00 a.m. at the Ocean Cafe at the Best Western on 4th and Prom. Yeah, Shann,

uh I want to start off by apologizing for missing last week's meeting or not last week, the last council meeting. Unfortunately, a family member had to go to the hospital, which meant I had to be distracted and go deal with that. Um, glad to be back. They're okay. Uh, I have coffee with the counselor tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. at Controversial Coffee and I look forward to seeing people. And for those in W three, uh, you have ballots. Use them. vote. It's a good thing to do. No matter how which way you go, just engage.

I um here's my broken record again. This meeting I had the opportunity to watch the Seaside girls basketball team uh win a game on Saturday and they're going on to state. Super fun. Congratulations. We have a lot of great sports teams in Seaside and I love the presentation tonight for the performing arts. Like all we're doing to help these kids um become fabulous adults I think is really exciting. It reminded me of the as I looked around at the crowd and was at the game I thought this is a family community. It is vibrant and growing and thriving and these the the residents of this city deserve our very best all the time. And then I had after that or right before that I also had my coffee with a counselor and I had a couple people ask me like if you what is the number one priority for this city? And when I put those two things together yet again in my head, the number one priority for this city is the safety and security of our residents and our visitors and our businesses. And that is around our infrastructure. And if we are not prioritizing the capital projects that we need to work on as a city, and by prioritizing I mean supporting city staff in what they need to do to find funding resources, get these prioritized. If we don't have the safety and security and infrastructure we need in this town, we have nothing. We have none of the other things. So um it really occurred to me that is the priority and it is our sewer, it is our water, it is tsunami evacuation, it is what are we doing to support our law enforcement, it is the the pavement

management plan. It is all those things that are core to the livability and um the viability of this town and that should be our priority and we should be talking about those things on agendas at meetings at workshops as much as we can. That is all.

So I've been getting a lot of uh constituent comments about the state of the road going up spruce to the schools. I did take a tour over there and really look at it and obviously there's a lot of potholes and everything, but I guess my question for you Spencer would be, is the upgrade on that going to come from the pavement pavement preservation plan or when we do the the south seaside does its work or when is that going to happen? Do we have some kind of timeline because it's in

We don't have a timeline yet. I think Paul and I are working on those projects. We had that discussion last week um as to what the best um use how how to make our funds go the furthest um because one of the um big choices will be is do we spend most of our funds to keep our fair streets or put our fair streets in good condition to prevent them from getting in poor condition or spend it on poor streets um at that expense. And so, um, we'll be coming back with those recommendations. I think likely what you'll see is a recommendation to use the, uh, the South urban renewal funds to do that project and then using the city's other road funding to do more of the pavement preservation, but um, we were just discussing that and we hopefully will have something ready soon to come back to the council.

So, this street in particular has a lot of issues with the sidewalk as well. Have we had any engineers draw anything up yet or have we not started that process? I don't I don't think uh any work's been done on any actual design on there that I'm aware of. Okay. And then finally, I have coffee with the counselor. April 7th, 9:15 a.m. Seaside Coffee House. We've had great turnout lately, so let's keep it going.

It must be thanks to you. They started staying around for me afterwards. It was great. um involved in several things including the fascination tournament. Um Spencer and I and our wives were a team and uh I u especially Spencer's wife. She really got into it and my wife did too. So um it might be something that becomes a family thing here now. It was a lot of fun and uh thanks to the uh group that put that together. uh legislature ended. This was this year because of one particular bill obviously, but I watched a lot of the session and was very impressed by how well even though they talked about things that weren't necessarily in agreement, they were respectful of each other and you don't really see that at the federal level. Uh very impressed by the state leg uh both Senate and House. Uh big news is the local act, the TLT bill passed and is waiting for the governor's signature. I haven't actually checked to see if she's done it yet. Uh 50/50 split now so that the uh city will receive half of of um taxes going forward as well as um some portion. We haven't really decided for sure yet of what we have built up and that goes into effect at the beginning of next year. and I have continually specified that I would really like to see that go into the pavement preservation plan. Uh substantial pot of money and uh unfortunately I think uh offsetting at least part of that for the u lodging industry the state passed a one and a quarter% additional state lodging tax to uh increase for wildlife

programs. uh seem to be according to the eastern part of the state is mostly for controlling the wolves. Uh there were several uh bills regarding our favorite people, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission and uh all of those bills passed. Um there will be u the rules um what we called the hot dog rule. Um, we can actually be served food now without it being extra. Uh, although we changed our rules anyway. And serial meetings, uh, the main thing that came out of it, you still can't do serial meetings, but when a meeting is not specified because of a slip of staff or something, we don't get dinged for it. That was the biggest thing I I thought came out of that. Um, and you know, we have staff that make sure everything is specified properly. So, but still just that being out there. Another bill that not many of you probably heard about was HP4178. There is a rule about penny rounding now because you can't get pennies anymore. Another one that will affect us if we apply for certain grants. Uh there's lower matching rates for cities uh under 20,000. And uh a big news was the capital construction awarded Warrington $4 million for their sewer. Kasa Mariposa up in Atoria got a $1.75 million for their new building or new to them. And I believe the community college got about 8 million. I'm not positive about that. For their maritime uh building, uh I attended the parks u meeting uh parks committee meeting. They are

working on um some kind of program for reopening Mills Ponds Park. Uh we specified that be closed through the end of March. uh we passed pass passed that here last year and uh they are continuing working on their uh purpose task u goals all that also um am a member of the public safety coordinating council our meeting uh this last week noted that our county deflection program continues to be highly regarded in the state and as well as CBH uh class of behavioral health has a new facility in Atoria that they're uh working into and I've invited both of them to visit us in the future to give us updates. Um, one thing that our uh Jeff is working on that he didn't mention is that we throughout the county have a grant to study specific sites to get some ideas of what it really takes to create housing on those sites. And each city has brought forward a individual place uh within the city. Ours is up north on 101, just a very small lot, but we get free money to figure out how can we use this for housing. They may say you can't, but at least we uh can do it without spending our money. And uh future, you've already remember we have the county elected meeting on at 5:00 pm on Thursday. Review your nonprofit submissions. I've been asked um a few times each week since the beginning of this year whether or not I plan to run for a second term as mayor. And I'm been very pleased with the progress we made over the past four years. Particular two things. um our new

affordable housing up at the north end of town and then last week finally getting the lodging tax flexibility. Um I've been involved in that uh almost as long as I've been a counselor. So those two big items were several years in process and um I said okay well is that enough? Have I done enough? And I think I haven't. I look at our strategic planning uh guidelines and there's a whole lot on there that we still need to work on. So to answer the questions, I will be filing my candidacy to be reelected as mayor of Seaside. My quote tonight um kind of has to do with that. It's often misattributed to Winston Churchill and sometimes even Abraham Lincoln. Uh as far as we can tell, nobody ever said this. Um, but it it sure seems like something he might have said. It speaks to the determination I think's important for us to always carry on working for our city. Success isn't final, but failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts. Okay, we are going to recess into executive session. um in accordance with OS192.660 2F in consideration of information or records exempt from public inspection including written advice from the attorney. And we will be back. You do not have to stick around.

We returned from uh executive session and the meeting is now adjourned.