City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, our work session to order, first order of business is to have a chat with George Whitlock, applicant to the Planning Commission. Hello, George. Welcome. Hi. Thank you for applying. You're welcome. Tell us a little bit why you want to do it. Introduce yourself. I don't think everybody knows you.

Well, I'm recently retired from the city. I've been here for... 55 years probably you know a lot of changes in Seaside some good some okay and some not so good but I believe that you know it's part of responsibility of people to give back to the community they live I love the town of Seaside I've lived here like I said most of my life I chose to live here I've had opportunities to leave and yeah so A little about my background is I worked for the city for over 30 years. Just about every department they have except for here. I've got a lot of experience in the water, wastewater and streets. Built a couple houses of my own here. I've had some construction experience. So that's about it. I'd like to serve or I offered to serve because like I said, I'm concerned about the future of Seaside as far as the balance of growth. There's a lot of conversation about affordable housing and things like that. There's a lot of players involved and a lot of things going on to contribute to that. That's about it really. Got any questions for me?

The Planning Commission is a big commitment. Do you have the time to attend the meetings and do all the research that goes into it?

I think so. Right now, I'm just doing what I do. I'm retired, so I have more time than... Not as much time as I thought I would have, but I do have time. And I'm interested in that kind of stuff. Infrastructure and... getting in the weeds of ordinances and regulations and things is kind of part of some of what I did before, so yeah, I think I can handle it.

The Planning Commission isn't a unique one in that there's code and rule and law and all that. How do you balance, like what are your thoughts about balancing that sometimes with the wishes and desires of residents, businesses, development, things like that?

Well, I think the first, let's put it this way. I think that if everybody, if the rules and regulations are enforced equally to all parties, yes, people are going to be disappointed if things don't go their way. I mean, I'll be honest with you. When I built my house, I had a couple of issues that I wasn't happy with. But I saw the need for that kind of stuff, and I still see the need for that, yeah. I think that the most important thing is to be fair to people. To be fair, you know, this is a town that has a lot of interest. You know, we have local residents, we have the tourist industry, we have the lodging and the restaurants and stuff. There's a lot of people involved and a lot of interest in what happens in Seaside. So I think the most important thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that you're fair to people. You give them a fair opportunity to state their case and yeah it's not it can't be fun when you go to Safeway and somebody you bump into there is not happy with the decision that was made you know or has an idea of how you could better do your job believe me I know what that's about

I was gonna ask you, but you already answered part of it, why the Planning Commission and not another commission or committee? And it seems like you have the background.

well i'm interested in the in the future development and growth of seaside that's one of the things but also i have other interests what goes on in seaside like i'm probably going to apply for the parks committee opening if there's an opening on that it's something that i helped build some of the parks i've been around here that long and i'm really proud of what the city's done with a lot of that effort that's been put into fixing our parks up, fixing up some of our public infrastructure around here that the year-round residents get to enjoy as well. So it's not just the Planning Commission, it's other committees and other things that I do in the community that aren't associated with the city as well. So that's about it.

You got any questions for us?

Well, not at this time. I might later.

We always have a little discussion when I go through the list of openings, so we'll see if we want to do something tonight or not. We appreciate you volunteering. Always appreciate volunteers.

Always.

Yeah. Happy to help if I can. Okay. Great.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Appreciate it. All right. That was pretty easy, wasn't it? See you guys. Have a good day. Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is to learn a little more about July 4th and the legal fight over communications that are going on. I believe we're starting with Joshua Heinemann, our tourism director.

Hello. Hi, Josh. Hi there. I'm going to talk a little bit about how we've been communicating Fourth of July this year.

So, to be on camera.

You're good. You're okay.

He's the guy that tells them.

Okay. So our primary goal of communications this year is ensuring that visitors and residents are getting consistent, accurate information about fireworks before, during, and after the holiday through multiple points of contact. So that's our primary goal. But then secondary to that, we're trying to support long-term behavior change. And necessarily, the communication has to come for the enforcement. First thing we have to do is just make sure that people are informed and hopefully the public will make informed decisions going forward. So our secondary goal is supporting long-term behavior change, increasing awareness of possible penalties and new civil penalties, and promoting the professional fireworks display. You know, we have a great fireworks show regardless. The illegal fireworks are impactful, but if you took them away, we'd still have a great show. We have official events, the parade downtown, all this kind of stuff. So secondary to our primary goal, again, is making sure people know what we do have. So we have two audiences here, two messages. To visitors, we said, do not bring illegal fireworks to seaside okay and you can see we have a screenshot there from a newscaster in portland saying you know leave the fireworks at home and i gotta say it's a pretty surreal experience typing something out a strategy document and then like a couple weeks later having a newscaster read it out online feels a little like

It's a little strange, but it happened.

And then to residents, we're saying, you know, the city has heard the concerns coming from some. The city council has taken action with the civil penalties, and those penalties will apply to everybody. So a big part of this is reaching visitors before they arrive. And to do that, we really had to lean on our own channels, especially on the visitor side. For our email subscribers, we have almost 49,000 subscribers there. So we use that. Social media, we have 76,000 Facebook followers and 15,000 Instagram followers. So we have a social media campaign running. Our tourism website gets about 49,000 monthly active users in the summer, typically. So we have information on our tourism site. But a big thing, and that was a really big question mark for me, is how much earned media we would pick up. But we ended up getting a whole ton of it, thanks to our great friends at Little Bird Media, which is our PR firm. We put out a press release, and they kind of helped us get that into action. kdw kptv k2 coins sister stations even a little bit of radios picked it up so we got a lot of success on this side of things and then we're also kind of leaning on our industry partners a little bit we prepared a communications toolkit for our lodging partners that included key messages that we want to communicate to them info for them to share with their guests prior to their arrivals that all the all the hotels and these businesses have their own email ecosystem or these communication ecosystem. We're not trying to prescribe what they do, but we wanted to make it easy for them to plug it into their systems they already have so that they can share that. We defined illegal fireworks for them, put some frequently asked questions together for staff, and then made these signs that they could easily print off and put up in lobbies. So that's what we did for them. And then when I talk about multiple points of contact, what I mean is at the planning stage, we're reaching people via emails or monthly emails that go out. We have the visitors and city websites, the great media coverage, and the social media campaigns. And then on arrival in town, there'll be signage along Highway 101. They'll have that hotel check-in experience, hopefully, when our lodging partners put their stuff into play. Around town, there will be these digital ads running on mobile devices within city limits. That'll be going on. There'll be A-frames in high traffic areas like this. And then we'll have beach signage at access points. So the timeline, it all began June 4th. That's when we launched our social media campaign. And then we also launched our email campaign that same month. The visitor, the fireworks story was the lead story in the June email campaign. And then for all the rest of the month, we had our media release, our earned media that has been going on, and then a social media campaign of which much is to come in the next couple weeks. So we've seen about half of it probably now. Our hospitality partners will be integrating the messaging into their stuff. And then June 24th is when that in-market banner ads will start running. Closer to the holiday, as people start arriving in town, we'll see that signage are discussed. There will be the hotel check-in experience. Social media campaign will be running, and then the in-market ads will continue running through July 8th. So that's when we saw the run for two weeks total. And now I just want to share a bunch of assets that we've designed for this. So fireworks sign, this is the A-frame sign. This is the entry to beach access. We did a really funny video with the fire department. Jim Beasley came up with this idea and thankfully the fire department was game to play ball with this and it was fun. How do I click on it? We'll just play it so you can see it if you haven't.

The only thing you should be lighting up this Fourth of July is your smile. Be safe and leave the fireworks to the professionals.

good stuff so that definitely made the rounds but it wasn't all just you know fun wasn't the main thing we're trying to do but it was a nice in touch so this is the tourism website we have know before you're good before you go fireworks information fine information a bunch of great tips about fire pits no pallets on the beach Rules around how far you need to be from doing grass for fires picking up your trash parking all sorts of stuff This is the city side of that same sort of post of this for any Residents and kind of wayward travelers that end up on the city site. This is kind of the same information repackage for that group These are just a couple screenshots from a lot of the TV Exposure we got now a lot of these were duplicative of each other so I didn't want to include a million screenshots But it was certainly happening KGW came out and did an in-person video. They interviewed the city manager. They interviewed Genesee and a couple of random people at the farmer's market. So that was a good exposure, I think, for our messaging. This was our email newsletter in June. So like I said, we led with the fireworks. And you can see right in the subhead the $4,000 fines. This linked to a page on our visitor site that had all the information about our expectations around behavior and all the fines and all that kind of stuff. This was a city social media post informing people on June 9. This was a tourism social media post. This was a KGW-earned social media post, so that TV news was also doing some social media stuff. This is just an example of the banners that will be running on devices within city limits. So they're in many more sizes than this, but we didn't try to get too fancy with these. The idea is just to be another layer of reinforcing the messaging. It's just supposed to catch your eye, communicate clearly what the rules and expectations are, and when you click it, it'll link you to a page with a lot more information. So we're trying to be useful. We have more infographics and stuff coming here in the next couple of weeks, including in Spanish. And lastly, I just wanted to include this screenshot. You probably can't read it that well, but to me, this was just an indication that we've done a decent job of laying the groundwork. Because when you Google Seaside, Oregon fireworks, the AI answer is one of the best AI answers I've ever seen. I don't think I could write a better one. The sources are the tourism page, the city page, some of the news stuff. This AI overview says... Seaside House, one of the largest official 4th of July fireworks displays on the West Coast, shooting off directly from the beach at dusk. This free community event draws massive crowds, making early arrival, careful parking, and strict observance of local rules essential. They have key event details, rules and regulations, all bullet pointed out, including beach fires and fines. And then traffic and logistics, including where to park on the far side of the river in order to make everything easier, and then it links to official sources. So to me, that's just a good indication that we've at least put the ball in a good place, and hopefully the public will make good choices. That's it. From a communications standpoint. Do you have any questions?

do you think those um news stations will pick that up again or will they run that again before the fourth it's a great question yeah it's hard to say it depends what other news is happening are there any yard signs yard signs uh you mean like in what context like signs like that that we can put in our yards There's a design yeah, okay. Yeah, so reach out to you.

I can do that I'd be careful about putting out I don't want I'll do my breath City signs, but we can probably have a template like for a neighborhood sign like we don't want Personal use of this official city enforcement that makes sense We can probably have something

Well, I think it's always been that anything on our tourism website is open to use by anybody, by businesses, by people who live here, and that kind of thing, because a lot of that does get duplicated.

I just wouldn't want people to start creating their own signs that have the city logo or things like that, and there's a confusion as to what's going on. So I think we want a little bit of a distinction, but anything we can do to encourage the message would be great.

I like that you, in some places, you're defining what illegal fireworks are, because some people will say, I don't know the difference. Do you think people will understand from this that it's not just setting them off, but even just having them in your possession, you are subject to fines.

That's a good point. I mean, I think some of the copy about complication kind of drives that home in an indirect way, but yeah.

There's a big sign out on Highway 26 that is often used for the car shows. Has anybody thought about maybe approaching whether we can have a sign there that says, leave your illegals at home or dump them off now before you get to Seaside or something?

I don't know. I mean, we certainly have highway signage at both ends of town, and there will be A-frames at high-traffic places throughout town.

Are we using the digital reader boards on both sides? I believe so, right?

Yeah, that's what the entrances are. Although we've done that every year, I don't know. There's not one magical thing, I think it's going to be the whole package.

Right, it's the whole package. I never include that too much in here because you don't have any room to do anything. I mean, you have very basic messaging on there. Yeah, that will definitely be in play.

The city of Gearhart just today sent out a notice. They have some type of sign about fireworks. And you can pick them up at City Hall. with a suggested donation of $5.

I've seen a sign that they've had up there that actually shows you what illegal fireworks are, the pictures. So, you know, and, you know, if it flies or it's uncontrolled, that kind of thing.

I will say for the people who purchased them, they know. Oh, sure they know. That may be helpful.

Because there's only a certain place you can purchase them.

Out of the way you have to go to get it, there's no missing.

There been any Negative feedback while any feedback at all from lodging industries with your asking them to include this information I

No, I didn't get any negative feedback. There was a lot of clicks on it from hotel properties in the Thursday turnaround. The only sort of concerns I heard were during your discussions about the fireworks find, and you were setting those. You know, different representatives at that time had some concerns about it, but they haven't been communicated to me directly anyway ever since we sent out information about it.

I really like the toolkit you put together and it was sent out by Aqua. Yeah, I got it and I reposted everything to Facebook.

I think it's smart to reach out to the hoteliers because it's just one more touch point to show that we're trying to crack down more than we have in the past because we've always had the signs coming into town and it hasn't deterred anyone so yeah that's smart not only to let you know to reach out to them to let them know but also just to you know this is also a busy time for them so try to make it easy for them

Gave them the perfect tool, I think. Anything else?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Josh.

We have Chief Hamkonek, the strong arm of enforcement. Keep that on, please. So we have the communications, now we have the strong arm of the law. Yeah.

How strong is that? in regards to some help, so I haven't had a chance to talk with Spencer, but we will be getting, I believe, eight, possibly ten troopers from the Mobile Response Team to be down here. Wonderful. Wonderful. So we look forward to having them in their capacity, and then I don't know how many, but what's called the HVE, which is the High Visibility Enforcement Team, will be bringing some other troopers to work the highways, primarily focusing on 26, 101, and 30. I don't know how many, a handful, but their main focus is traffic enforcement, DUIs, and reckless driving, and hopefully interdiction if they happen to see fireworks. Hopefully they'll be grabbing those before they get into town. So a little bit of help coming in that regard. But as far as the enforcement goes, the messaging around the department continues to be write citations. zero tolerance, so to speak, there's gonna be a little bit of wiggle room there in regards to those anomaly stories as to why, but at the same time, if we come across the illegal, it'll be enforced by confiscation. However, I am leaning towards the citation issuance and getting them in the mode for that. And so we have some, some officers are more active than others and some are looking forward to scratching a few sites out and others, but we'll be paired up. And the idea, I tried to implement it last year and just with, everything going on, but basically try and get them out there as early as possible after the parade and basically lining the prom and covering as much as you can of those access points to try and grab anything that's coming visibly that's illegal fireworks and put the confiscation on and issue citations for the possession. But as things get rolling and we get pulled here or pulled there, it's a lot of breaks in the line there to be able to do that. um that's kind of it in a nutshell in regards to our enforcement i'll have approximately about a dozen officers down there two or three uh still man the district still have calls in around the city obviously aside from just firework calls that are in the neighborhoods and whatnot so um but we will have as many out there as we can and that's kind of it in a nutshell anything more specific

I'm curious, did you catch any of the people who were firing them off this past weekend?

I was out all weekend and haven't really heard or seen anything on that. So I did hear we had quite a little traffic issue in the pedestrian Columbia Broadway. very busy lately and that cycling lights versus flashing light and I got an email today about kind of the road show or Mr. Carr's not there this year and having the intersection kind of shut down for that event that was it soccer in the sand I think this weekend. quite a crowd from that and a lot of people not necessarily saying it was just them but the indication was that with that amount of a crowd in for an event like that that intersection downtown was really nobody was paying much attention to the pedestrian versus vehicular signage and got a lot of frustration going on down there so

Our goal is to turn that light on when it's busy, correct?

Pretty much, yeah. You know, yeah. And over the last couple years, we've given a key to the downtown association representatives because if we're not going through there and seeing it because we're doing other things, they have the ability to go in there and flip the switch and get it to a cycle. You know, if anything else, it's great when... it's working but at the same time I don't mean mechanically I mean people are following it. One of the biggest things is again just pedestrians are on vacation and they are walking around down there and they are not paying attention very closely to the end of the pedestrian cycle or a few more people will want to tag on to that and next thing you know They're walking through the red and the car is sitting there waiting for them to go through and about the time they do that, another wave of people will come through and it gets the drivers frustrated sitting through a cycle green for them and they never really get to move much. There's some complaints sometimes in regards to the cycle. pedestrian car one direction car another direction another pedestrian in there and another car and I don't even know if we have any control over adjusting that if that would even help I don't know that it really would people sometimes on vacation such as myself when I'm somewhere you know we're walking around with their heads up the rear sometimes and it just is not paying much attention to the light so anyway that's what we're dealing with down there so So you're saying it doesn't really work better when the light's going or when it's just flashing? You know, I mean, it's opinions. I mean, you go down there and watch it, and you might think it's working fine, and I could sit down there and say this is really not very good at all. So it just really is dependent on... Well, if I recall, we always had the light running year-round, right?

And then we just switched it to seasonally?

I mean, we didn't want it if we ran it. I kind of remember it being more of a stopping flashing most of the time. It's like there was a time where we always had the light going. And they were very well abandoned. I just recall it just seems like it's always been more of a flashing and cycling during the busy times. No easy answer. It's a tough intersection right there with that many people walking. It's sort of just stopping vehicular traffic from going through that intersection, and I don't see that happening.

We're posting a police officer in the center like the British do.

We've done that before as well.

You don't need a full title. And we're not saying you need to dedicate one officer to that corner all the time. Thank you. No. But that would probably be the only solution. It's a tough one, though. Yeah. I see people not paying attention that there's a street there. They just keep walking. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Questions do you have for the fire department? Is that easy to start with? So first I want to introduce Mr. Will Landry. He's our new operations coordinator and he's our administrative assistant. So we kind of picked that last July. He came and joined us in May. So he's been sort of, but he's been real instrumental. He came up with a lot of our plans. You'll see some of the stuff he did with our end of the year report. Probably have it in your computers, I hope, by now, John. So he helped come up with the plan, so he's more than welcome to answer some of the questions. He reached out to all of our departments, tried to come up with our incident action plan we're trying to do every year for most of our events. It's tied up a lot of times because everybody gets busy, so he's made it easy. It's fillable form. All we have to do is really fill in the blanks, and then he puts it together for us. But the background comes from the United States Coast Guard. It looks like it. Yeah. It was real fun with the first week. I can give him a hard time real quick. The first week, every time we walked it, we'd walk past him, he'd stand up, and then sit back down. We took turns getting him coming out of our offices. But he was a good guy. He was a good support partner. Yeah, he's really instrumental in helping us out, and he'll be a great asset to that. But as far as our plans, it hasn't changed much. For us, we'll have each crew down there. We will have, with our 24-hour staffing, it helps out with us not all coming at 7 in the morning, because that staff will still be here and help out in the morning. And then we have an additional 24 coming to help them. And then the rest 12 or 18 hours. Last three years for us, we've had structure fires. At the end, some fireworks related, but more of a residential. Didn't put them out. Ignited in my shop type deal versus anything that we've actually seen light of. But we've shut down the highway right before the fireworks show. John got to sit with me and try to figure out how to get the county and everybody notified that we were gonna dump the beach here shortly and we had the whole 101 closed. But we got it open fairly quickly. We reached out to our mutual aid partners. Cannabis doesn't have as much of a problem as necessarily we do. They do in the Arch Cape area. That's been an issue for them. So Gearheart, you know, we know that could get pushed. A lot of our stuff could get pushed north, so we could get pushed away. But the county luckily has a pretty good plan of moving resources around. But last year we ran into issues that it's hard to come into town sometimes. So you can have all the best resources, but we really depend on our own agency doing most of it. So... We'll have a crew out of here, and we run the command post out of the fire station anyway for all resources, including public works. So everybody kind of meets here if you guys are familiar with that plan. And we will meet for the parade. We'll reach out to you shortly. Do you want to meet here and go on the MAC, or do you guys want to meet us down on Mechanicum?

I'll meet you on the can again. Some people like to ride in it, so.

Is it the same route as we've done the last couple years, the short route?

It's the short route. That short route, we have, you know, it doesn't matter what time the parade is. We've had a lot of complaints the longer the kazoos can't get anywhere. We lock up town either way. So the short route, I think, has been beneficial for resources for both of us. Um, I know that there's always conversation of why do we move the parade? That's the best move, at least for public safety. We have the city's done and it's just because we have to split resources. So you have resources come in so early and I know that needs to be a challenge and I'm sure you guys get to hear about all the time. Why are we doing it later? Because we've heard it all too. For the benefit of the Seaside residents, it does benefit us for our resources, both police, fire, and probably public works, to shift at night because of the events and stuff that we have.

What time is it?

it used to be 11. it's on our tourism page and stuff but it's a you know it's a chamber of minutes do you need anything smile uh no one of the things is i just want to encourage everybody in the north in the town we have ran into over by the old high school parking lot our parking lot i don't know Parking lot, estuary parking lot, all the way around the front. You can't pull off logs there. There's signage everywhere. We have to enforce it too, so we'll make sure that, but we have citizens that help us there. That's all meant for beach erosion. So on the main beach, you can burn driftwood. State parks allow you to do it. You used to be able to do it. Now you can do it, but on that area, you can't do it because it's erosion control. So we will come down there and put it out. You can be excited for it. Thank you, sir. You're welcome.

Anything else from you, Spencer? Oh, come get an update on it.

So we are dealing with 4th of July. So a lot of what we do is more logistical. You've heard all the exciting stuff from police and fire. What we do primarily is we put the barricades up for the parade. We take them down. We unzip the parade and we pull garbage. We do garbage almost all day because it just comes and comes and comes. Fortunately, we've got two trucks now that are operational. So we have a north truck and a south truck. What that means is they'll be going back to Public Works less, because just getting back to Public Works to drop off through the traffic makes it terrible. Plus, our new truck has about two and a half times the capacity of the old one, so it's going to be a lot better for them this year. Eventually, I'd like to have a dumpster set up at the wastewater treatment plant so that we can have a north and a south one so we can get to. The other thing we do all day is bathrooms. So bathrooms will be getting restocked, cleaned all day long. So we are looking for city employees to kind of step up for that. Tonight's having some of the female employees help us out so they can get into the bathrooms easier. Usually it's mostly like last year. I think Anna helped us out with that. That was really helpful. We also dig the pit for the fireworks early in the morning. It's helped support some of the the work that I think Chamber does to cordon off that whole area because they have to have about a 600 foot radial distance away from the fireworks. So we help with that and then at the nighttime we pull that out so there isn't just one big hole in the middle of the all night long. People will walk into it because as soon as the fireworks are off, people are going to start trying to move into that area and they try to keep them out. We also will be doing garbage probably past midnight just because as people come off, they just blow them up. prom and back up and down Main Street to steal barricades and things like that. So that's the bulk of what we do to support. It's not very glamorous, but if we weren't there, it piles up pretty fast. So that's our 4th of July itinerary right now.

Do you set out the port-a-potties too?

No, we subcontract the port-a-potties. If you look at the Hanukkah lot, there's a bunch of them there. That's where, that's our event. staging area right now. So you'll see Hooded Coast stuff there. You'll see the volleyball stuff there. You'll see 4th of July stuff. So they stage there because it's convenient. They don't have to go too far. Unfortunately, no matter where we put them, people seem to get into them and steal the Purell stuff. Even though it's fenced off. Well, technically, when we have them out of the wastewater treatment plant, they'll break in and get them. The lot in the Canicum technically isn't fully fenced off. The west side isn't fully fenced off. We've been looking at getting that fenced off and doing a couple alterations to the fencing there so it's easier to get in and out for staging and things like that. And so that's what you'll see. And there'll probably be a few other things there, but that's the bulk of what we do.

Do we use the alcohol-free cure-up?

I don't know. That's a good question. That's why people want it. Okay. But they also take the toilet paper. So I think a lot of times they haven't been putting it in beforehand just because they know it's going to get taken away. And then they restock them as soon as they put them out. But again, it's almost going to be pretty quick. Wow. But no, we have a service that does that. I'm trying to remember the name of it. The guy we hired was the local guy that ran that. So one of our newest wastewater employees was the guy who ran all that. So I don't know if he's doing it now, but he always did a great job. He's doing a better job for us now. Now that we have full staff. Good deal. So we'll be pulling, having the holiday before, but still having to do these kinds of things. a holiday weekend where Friday is a lot of people are getting that day off. The town's probably going to be just as busy on Friday as it is going to be on Saturday. So we're going to probably be doubling up on some of these things and having some holiday overtime just to keep the bathrooms and garbage at bay so that when we start on Saturday, it's not already just overwhelming. So that's our plan.

Do we know if there's going to be a beach cleanup on the 5th? I don't know that. Maybe that's a question for Josh. I saw it advertised last year. Do we know if there's one?

Yeah, I'm sure there will be. They're pretty good. It's the first Saturday. The first Saturday is the 4th. That's typically what a beach cleanup is. There was some question as to if there was going to be one on the 4th and on the 5th, but I think it'll just be the one on the 5th. But I don't know for a fact.

Unless you'd help a little bit.

Everybody helps. because a lot of it gets entrained in the sand and I cringe when I see the volleyball guys out there playing beach volleyball because it'd be nice to screen it. I don't know if they pay for that service, but I know Chamber talked about purchasing the equipment. We have the equipment that will tow that and collect it, but it'd be nice to see, get that eventually have a beach screener that you can tow behind a tractor on a beach.

There's a robot actually that you can buy that goes out and does it. You know what I mean?

by cleaning garbage, but when that day comes, when judgment day comes.

Your state partners.

Yes, exactly. Well, I don't think they're going to stand in the path of someone who's going to clean their beach for them. I think it accumulates quite a bit. A lot of it gets pushed down. One other thing that we kind of had on our radar that we want to resolve fairly soon are the beach slings. They're starting to get into poor condition. We've already done some preliminary costing for replacement. We have some of the replacement parts already. And I've talked to a few folks about siting them in a different location because the one on the south side of the prom is kind of in the way. So moving that one and the one that's way out there, yeah, it's kind of neat having it out there, but it's kind of in the way of beach volleyball. So there's that grass dune just north of the turnaround, just north of that small one. And we were thinking about putting it right in front of that so that it wouldn't be in the way of anything. It would be kind of a neat picture to see the beach swings and the turnaround and stuff in the background of it. have a nice shot too, but having a large, maybe having a couple more swings on one.

Well, Hood to Coast always gives us money, and it has gone in the past for playground equipment. Swings are playground equipment.

But yeah, they're still operable, but they're getting close to needing replacement. You don't want danger. Yeah, so some of the parts are rusted out. I mean, it's in an extremely hostile environment for metallic swings. I'm surprised they last as long as they do. But that's kind of where we're at. Good. Thank you.

Okay, well, according to Phil, we're adjourned and we'll... We call the meeting to order. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance.

OK. Well, that means I have to change the order of the agenda anyway, so wait until we call for it. It's alright.

Sorry Kim, please call the roll.

Thank you. Council President Morrissey here. Mayor right there. Councilor Montero. Councilor Ansborough here. Councilor vinegar here. Thank you.

All present. May I have a motion for changing the agenda before we?

Yes, I would like to move under new business that we swap item 12A and 12C.

Second.

It's Council President Morrissey and Councilor Binnicker. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Something unique tonight. I'm going to read my mayoral proclamation, both of them. First up is Park and Recreation Month, and here to tell us and introduce the proclamation is the executive director of Sunset Empire Park and Rec District. You want to come up and just say a couple words?

Good evening. Skyler Archibald from Sunset Empire Park and Rec. I have my board chair Kyle Gorman and longtime board of directors Michael Hinton with us. We're really thankful for the opportunity to serve our community through amazing park and recreation services. As you all know, Seaside is unique because the city does the vast majority of park services with the amazing park space that the city offers. We try to provide the programming and the indoor recreation options at the Sunset Pool and at the Community Center and at the Sunset Recreation Center and in some other spaces. But really glad to serve our community in this way and want to recognize the awesome work of our team in providing amazing park and recreation programs for our community to partake in. Thank you. You're welcome.

Here's a copy of the proclamation if you want to do something with it. Thank you Proclamation whereas parks and recreation is an important integral part of communities throughout this country state and region including the city of Seaside and whereas parks and recreation promote health and wellness and improving the physical and mental health of people who live near parks, and whereas parks and recreation promote time spent in nature, which positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and well-being and alleviating illnesses such as depression, tension deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's. And whereas parks and recreation encourage physical activity by providing space for popular sports, hiking trails, swimming pools, and many other activities designed to promote active lifestyles. And whereas parks and recreation is a leading provider of healthy meals, nutrition services, and education, And whereas park and recreation programming and education activities, such as out-of-school time programming, youth sports, and environmental education, are critical to childhood development. And whereas parks and recreation increase a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses and crime reduction, whereas parks and recreation is fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community, and whereas parks and recreation is essential and adaptable infrastructure that makes our communities resilient in the face of natural disasters and climate change, and whereas our parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors whereas the city of seaside recognizes the benefits derived from parks and recreation resources as well as the beneficial partnership the city has with the sunset empire park and recreation district now therefore i steve reidmayer the city of seaside do hereby proclaim July 2026 as park and recreation month and encourages citizens to enjoy the tremendous park and recreation opportunities available here in Seaside and the surrounding area. Then I signed it and gave it to you. So thank you again for the great partnership. We have like Skyler said it's kind of unique we have quite a breadth of parks here and park recreation opportunities through sunset Empire This is a new proclamation because it only comes up once every 250 years and I wrote this proclamation in honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America. Whereas July 4, 2026 marks the 250th anniversary, the semi-quincentennial of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States of America, Whereas on July 4, 1776, our nation's founding fathers declared that all people are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, establishing principles that continue to guide our nation today. whereas these enduring ideals of liberty self-government individual rights and civic responsibility have inspired generations of americans to work toward a more perfect union and have served as a beacon of freedom throughout the world Whereas for 250 years, Americans have demonstrated courage, perseverance, innovation, and service, preserving and strengthening the democratic institutions and freedoms that define our nation. And whereas the story of the United States is reflected not only in its founding, but also in the growth and development of communities across the continent, including Oregon and the Pacific coast, whose residents have contributed to the nation's prosperity, culture, and character. And whereas the city of Seaside, situated along the route of the historic Lewis and Clark Expedition, and shaped by generations of citizens dedicated to public service, commerce, stewardship, and community, represents the enduring spirit of opportunity and civic engagement that has characterized America throughout its history. And whereas the semi-quincentennial provides an opportunity for all citizens to reflect upon our shared history, honor those who have sacrificed to preserve our freedoms, celebrate the achievements of our communities, and renew our commitment to the ideals of liberty, equality, and democratic participation. And whereas communities throughout the nation, state, and region will commemorate this historic milestone through educational programs, public celebrations, historical observances, and acts of civic and charitable service. now therefore i steve wright mayor of the city of seaside oregon do hereby proclaim july fourth twenty twenty six as america to fifty day in the city of seaside and encourage all residents commemorate this historic anniversary by reflecting on our nation's history and founding principles participating in local commemorative events, learning about the people and events that shaped our community and the country, and engaging in civic volunteer charitable service that strengthens Seaside and honors the enduring promise of America. And I signed that one too. Moving on to public comments. 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 and submit it to the city recorder, Kim, before being called. This time is intended for the council to listen to public comments rather than engage in discussion. Council may consider whether issues raised during this time should be scheduled for discussion or action at a future meeting Each speaker is allotted to three minutes It looks like I only have one It's regarding the sewer system Jackie Sturman living here in Seaside Jackie Yeah, tilt it down.

Hi, Jackie Sturman. I am concerned and wondering, with all the new building that's happening, how is the city going to resolve and work with the sewer system to make it still workable for everyone? And clean water supply. There's a lot of new building going on, and it just seems to me like it may already be a little overtaxed, and I'm wondering how that's going to work.

Okay, our city manager has written out a pretty thorough explanation. We have no concerns right now with capacity. Our plants need to have work done on them, but there's no issue at this moment. That is part of our plan going forward in the future. I will give your card to him and make sure he gets that explanation to you. Okay. Declaration of potential conflict of interest from any councillors. Councillor Montero.

Yes. I am, this is for item 12, what is now 12C. and also for item twelve D. I am recusing myself on the advice of the Oregon Ethics Commission which has informed me that I face an actual conflict of interest with regards to the Broadway 101 discussion and decision based on the fact that my brother and sister-in-law own a commercial building in that area and they could face a financial impact from the council's action. As for 12D, again, on the advice of the Oregon Ethics Commission, I am recusing myself from the consideration of my sister-in-law as a member of this governing body on which I sit.

Any other counselor have a potential conflict of interest?

Yes, Mayor, on item 10C, George Whitlock is my uncle-in-law. I will still be voting on that, but I want to disclose that.

Okay, thank you. We have a motion for approval of the consent agenda. So moved.

Second.

Council President Morrissey, Councilor Binnicker, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Reports and presentations. I'm very thankful tonight. Todd?

Yes.

Todd's here. We thought we might have a couple other guests. Go ahead and have a seat down here since you've got a little presentation for us. Please introduce yourself and why you're here tonight.

Sadly, there should be four of us, but someone's trapped on the highway. Not because of the bump, but I'll do my best. So I think one slide back. Is that right? Thank you. Oh, there we go. So the main part of the themes tonight are introductions and thank yous. So I'm Todd Lawson from the Clatsop-Nahalem tribe. I've been here before, so that's one of the things I'm going to thank you for in a minute. But we formed within the tribe a traditional lands committee so that we could reach out and be specific on issues for interactions with the traditional lands, such as archaeological digging, projects, signage. We've been working with the museum and the mayor to get an island named after a past legendary figure of the tribe, things like that. So we're very excited. Hugh Morrison heads up the committee and he's sadly, he might walk in any minute, but we don't know. But I was given eight and a half minutes, so I'm two minutes into it. Again, the committee's formed for connections and we're going to make sure that everyone has our number. I've met a lot of people recently through some permitting processes and some homeless issues that we're going to talk about here in a second. So the introductions was the first. Now the thank you theme is the rest of the thing. And then the end, we'll talk about some future stuff that we're working on that we're very excited about. So first of all, years ago I was here and you gave us a bunch of money for the mural. So thank you for that. We haven't thanked you in person. That's really great. And it's all up down there on the ACE hardware. And hopefully, you know, we get compliments all the time and we couldn't have done that without your help. Second thing is we've just got a really great support from the police and the homeless issues and trespassing on our property. And we've had some great interactions. We love the connection. We're trying to do all we can. We're setting up some more local people so that we can trespass without... gone through all the problems. So we're very excited about that. So thank you, Officer Nock. I've spoken to personally a couple times. And Corporal Barnes. But the whole crew, we thank them. And then I've been bugging the people down the permitting process. We've got a couple building permits that we'll talk about here in a second. They're kind of interesting because they're on the edge of an estuary and on the freeway. And Mayor Wright helped us get together with the ODOT people and figure out how to do it without three months of red tape. So that turned out really great. So we have our permits. And so moving on, we're breaking ground on when, tomorrow actually, on the welcome poll and the sign that's going to be right there on the... So I think the last time I was here, I was on Zoom asking for permission on the sign and just letting you know that we're going to do the welcome poll. So that's going to be really exciting. It's going to be right there on the freeway, and I think it's going to turn a few heads for a few months for the locals. And then... We were really excited that we could streamline the permitting process because when you put something on a federal highway, it becomes a whole other can of worms. And then our welcome man, which is our version of a totem pole, will be placed right on the water there on the estuary. And we're going to have a private ceremony in the fall, but then we're going to have a public ceremony. unveiling as well. And so look for invitations to both for the sign unveiling will be July 10th-ish probably. And then in the fall, we'll unveil the welcome end. We're very excited about that. We've got some volunteers from the city again, which is great to help us dig some holes tomorrow. So this is also what we're doing tomorrow. We're having a cleanup party to kind of get rid of accumulation of flotsam and jetsam, we'll say, from some of our neighbors. And we posted these signs to sort of give the... 78 hour notice just to let people know. I don't think there's any goods worth keeping there but just to be courteous and legal about it because it is a little confusing about what's private and what's public out there and that was really good on how the officers handled the interactions with that. So then future projects, we would want to come back and sit down with the city manager and everyone and discuss. We got a lot of stuff in the works. We've been awarded a few grants. And so one of the things that we're a little concerned about is we're going to have our sign on and then your parking lot and One of the ideas would be we would put a new sign idea is we would put an entryway sign to the park and our property because you sort of walk through your property, our property. I'm not sure if people are familiar. There's like four and a half acres of city property and 16 acres of of. tribal property and estuary and all. So I think it would be a really great opportunity to work with all the people involved, the Lewis and Clark folks, the ecological folks, your city folks, as far as this is really the gateway, right? It's the first thing when you're coming south. So this is the first thing people are going to see. So we can work together on that. We've been looking at doing a QR code setup so we can QR, you know, here if you want to go to the beaches, QR here, more tribal information. The History Museum's here, so we'll give them some play as well. And we're very excited about that. I'm an architect, so I get really into my signs and graphics, so we'll take care of that. And then we're going to hopefully talk with you about shoreline access rules and camping, and that's a sensitive area. But The continued work is going to be updating the stewardship plan we're doing, and we'd want you to be part of that as well. Site cleanup is going to be a never-ending battle, but I don't know if you've seen over the last four years how much progress we've made with getting rid of the invasive species. Years ago, you'd see a sea of yellow scotch broom, and now you don't see any. Split rail fence along the estuary. We've got to work on that. Shoreline protection signage, tree planting, all of the above. So we're excited. We just want to come out and introduce ourselves. So there should be a couple other people here. So imagine Richard Bash is here, and everyone else is Richard Bash. But then Hugh Morrison is going to be kind of leading the charge, and I kind of build stuff along the way. Any questions?

In case you're not for sure aware where we're talking about, we've got a small parking lot where the garbage can is that actually has the dragonfly on it.

That was another thank you. Sorry, I forgot that was another thank you.

Well, that was a thank you to the Chamber of Commerce. They did that. Yeah. So we have the parking lot there, and then our welcome sign is north of that, and then their neocoxy sign will be north of that. Yeah. We're maybe talking about adjusting some of that to work together with you, but that's city manager and public works and all that will handle that part.

Great, great. The one thing I always like to point out people don't realize is that the mural is a depiction of this property 900 years ago, plus or minus, right? So they're archaeological digs that go back like 1,000 years of villages. So it's one of the most important village sites along the coast. And it's also sort of a twin sister or cousin to the Naku site down in Cannon Beach. They have twin signs with the, we have a NACU sign down there. So it's sort of, we're going to put them down the coastline. So, all right.

I think I went a little over, but I didn't do too bad. All right. Thank you very much for the update. And we'll look forward to hearing more plans in the future.

Great. We're going to blast that little contact sheet and then look for the invites. We'd love to have everyone down. Great.

Thanks, Josh.

Yeah, thanks.

Next up, Chief Daniels and whoever he's bringing up with him for the Fire and Rescue Annual Report.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Uh-oh. More chairs. Prepared? Bringing them all up here. They wanted to talk tonight, so they told me I couldn't. Hopefully they'll make their way up here. Come on, Dave. Rick, come on up.

They're kind of slow.

Oh, we got Will, too. I know.

What's going on?

Well, they just came in for this, so they're off today. Super excited.

They wanted to be on YouTube, huh?

Thanks, Mayor and Council. I gave in your iPad, you have the full report, the 18-page report. We're going to give the abbreviated version, as Jeff back there told me to give you.

I think we're going to get it later.

Oh. So we want to start out in 2025. We ran 1,945 calls last year for service, which is – Obviously, it keeps going up. The only thing that's probably kept that down a little is Cannon Beach having some staff on and covering a lot of the calls. They've taken some off of us off of 26 and left us in the city to help out more because we're a bit so busy. But in 2025, we also deployed a task force for 18 days to California at the Palisades fire. So a lot of suppression efforts. There was some stuff. We'll talk about more conflagration response stuff for a while that we did a little later. But we did have some milestones. We did, thankfully for the council and our citizens, we went to 24-hour staffing in August. That's helped out a lot, especially when you guys have seen some of these numbers where 45% of our calls are in the evening after hours. But we have some recognitions we did. Deputy Chief Gordon Houston and Captain Jeremy Houston both have 25 years of service. We did our banquet. Justin Parker, he had 20 years of service. Nathan Weiler and Rick Plummer had 10 years of service. And Jason Verberg, Britton Killian, and Angels Vargas all had five years. Uh, milestones like that, just volunteering in general, get struggled, but having staff that we have a lot of staff on board to have several years of service, especially for the city of Seaside. So we're going to keep going. You guys can see that our yearly instant count slowly is climbing. Um, not that that's always a good thing, but as we get busier and we obviously have more people come visit, a lot of it's weather dependent. You'll see some spikes, um, Even the COVID years, a lot of people had less calls in some areas, and ours kind of just kept going up because we also had a lot of people come and get out of the valley. Next slide. Skip one. So call volume by hour, if you guys see that, our hourly call volume. Obviously, during the day, we have a big spike in response. But what caught us off guard a little was after 6, it's still high. And it used to be really between about 7 in the morning, 6 in the evening were all of our calls off. And that's where we prioritized all of our staffing before. But after going through this, now you see days we have about 56 between 8 and 6 and 45% between 6 and 8 in the morning. So it doesn't really slow down at night. And that really helped us with having that 24-hour staffing because the daytime staffing just used to come in for nighttime staffing.

Hmm.

So right here, you'll see a lot of EMS and rescue. A lot of that is tied in to everything we do. So if it's water rescue, cliff rescue, a lot of everything's rescue. So EMS calls, obviously, that's all over medical. We can go to car wrecks, get stuck in there too. So a lot of those are all combined. There's just a lot there. Pulse alarms, that's something we get for all the motels. We get them for VRBOs. They're all over the place. Houses, residential. We'll get them for car wrecks. You know, your iPhones will go off if you drop it too hard and tell us that you're in a wreck. So there's a lot of good stuff. Good intent will go into people will call us to help with smoke detectors, sometimes lift assist. Sometimes they can't get in their house from a surgery. They'll call us out to come help them out. You skipped. You're a skipper. So I'm going to switch this off to our prevention chief, which is Genesee Dennis, for some of our fire marshal stuff.

Let's see. Well, my slide's not quite here yet, but let's go for it. So basically, we report to INFERS every year, and they just changed that. So the reporting style is changed federally. So we had a big software upgrade this past year. But it basically is information that we have to report to the state and the feds to basically give trends on where we're seeing losses. And so we'll go into a fire investigation or any type of incident and identify whether they had working smoke alarms or what caused the fire. And then we report that to the state, which goes to the feds. And then they come up with education plans or the topic of fire prevention month for the following year. So that's kind of where that data goes. Operations and training. Thanks.

I'm not sure what to cover since we just covered all the statistics for operations. But we were busy last year with operations. And then moving forward, we've tried to stay on track with some training. There's been some challenges this past year or so. Hit the next slide. I guess I'd briefly touch on, if we go back real quick, I don't know where it's going to be in the slide, Will, but... We did get new extrication tools this year, and there's one of them pictured there, the red one that says Storm Surge. We were able to get two cutters, two spreaders, and three new rams replacing our extrication tools for vehicle extrication from the mid-'90s. So we were well due for new tools coming out of that. and we've been lucky this last year to get a lot of vehicles too for training for extrication training so we've been doing a lot of work on that and the guy with the saw on there we were able to secure from the state DPSST their vent prop for almost two months so we did a lot of cutting unfortunately it was during December and January so it blew off a couple times but our guys got extra practice putting nails back on so next one

All right, for those that don't know me, my name is Rick Plummer, the EMS Chief. So this last year, we continued ambulance operations. It's our second full year of it, but we did see a reduction this year in transports just doing our ambulance out of service for maintenance issues. As it gets older, we're having a little hard time finding parts for it, so we're working on a way to source a new ambulance. And so we've reached out for a couple grants on that. But last year, we still did have 52 transports. So that's 52 people that made it to the hospital a little bit faster than waiting for a while. I know I reported last year, we are still working with the GEMT Fund, the Ground Emergency Medical Transport. It's through Medicaid, Medicaid, through local CCOs, and they give us federal funding back into the program for transport so that we transport Medicaid patients.

Now this is my slide. OK, so community risk reduction and youth outreach, we saw probably more this past year than ever before. And I'm not sure why, but we just reached out to the different agencies and youth programs. We probably made about 1,000 contacts getting out into the schools, station tours, the Sunset Recreation Center lunch program. CHURCHES, THE LIBRARY READING PROGRAM, TOGETHER WITH CANNON BEACH AND GEARHEART FIRE, WE DO A JOINT PREVENTION ASSEMBLY, K THROUGH FIVE. SO WE GO UP TO THE HIGH SCHOOL OR THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND TALK TO THE KIDS ABOUT THE SMOKE DETECTORS. AND WE HAVE SPARKY, THE FIRE DOG, UP THERE. AND SO THEY'RE SUPER EXCITED. WE ALSO GET OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY AND DO FIRE EXTINGUISHER TRAINING FOR THE BUSINESSES. and smoke alarm assistance. Folks will call us all the time to, hey, my smoke alarm is beeping, so the crews will go out and check it out. Whether they need a new battery, they'll replace that. They'll get up on the ladder for folks who don't feel comfortable climbing ladders. We also saw a growth in development for building. So we saw a lot more permitting and plan reviews come through the desk. As you know, a lot more apartment complexes going up, which is great for the community. A lot more housing will be coming available shortly. So we've seen a lot of that. And then we continue our inspections for over 300 businesses and about 100 apartment complexes, varying in sizes. And we're trying to identify hazards ranging from expired extinguishers to serious electrical concerns, which might really put people at harm and burn places down. So a couple years ago, we changed safety compliance software, where all the vendors who work on fire and life safety systems have to report to this system, which then sends a message to me. I review it, and then also sends it to the business to say, hey, it actually comes from me in the fire prevention department and says, we're aware of your issues. Basically, let us know. what you're going to address and if they're late. So if they don't get their annual service, it'll automatically generate a notice to them. So that's been real great. And the lifeguard program. So we oversee the lifeguard program. And I'm the supervisor for that. So lifeguards did a great job. And it seems like our visitors visiting the beach increases every year. And we had almost a million folks touch the beach between Memorial Day and Labor Day. YOU KNOW, AND IT'S A DIFFICULT TASK WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT THAT AND TWO AND A HALF MILES OF BEACH FOR TWO TO FOUR PEOPLE TO COVER FROM ANY GIVEN DAY. SO THEY DID A GREAT JOB LAST YEAR. WE WENT DOWN FROM, five, yeah, to five rescues from 29 the previous year. So that shows a great effort in the prevention side of getting out there and going in the water, just talking to folks and identifying them before they get in trouble. So they did a great job and we're glad to see those numbers decrease and hopefully we can continue that this year.

So I'm going to take it for Will. Will Landry is our new emergency operations coordinator, but he's only been with us since May, so I'll cover this. In last July, Ann McBride, as we all know, she did a lot of emergency management, worked out of the community development, and we took it over after she retired. She's helped us throughout the last six, eight months, still helping us on some reports we're finishing for our new emergency operations plan with the county. There was a grant, so a lot of cities joined. So we'd like to thank her on her retirement and her helping us. But up at our emergency management area, we put in a new generator, and it's run off of gas. So it's our propane, so it's all ready to go. If we do have anything major, it's all self-sufficient up there. But I would like to thank Public Works. They help us because we have a holding tank for septic up there, and they help us pump that. And the water department usually keeps track of making sure the alarm doesn't go off. So there's a lot of help. between each agency working on it, but that's where we go up and we do a lot of training throughout the year on all the department heads doing emergency management, getting ready for any type of emergency, but bigger emergencies for sure. On that, do you have any questions? I do have one comment real quick. I was told that the full report is on your OneDrive.

Comments counselors. What's the current status of the ambulance? Is it offline right now?

It's not no currently it it is in service Fully staffed ready to go at a moment's notice. We've been all over the county over the last couple weeks So it is up and running but you're saying long term we need to find it Yeah, probably probably sooner than later. We probably need to find a new one. This one's coming up pretty 21 years old, almost 300,000 miles. So it's getting up there. It still works, but if we're going to continue this, we need to look for something new.

And we knew that, right, when we got it. We knew it was really inexpensive. We put a significant amount of money into it, right, when we got it. But it's still not a long-term solution. So we kind of try out the system. Let's see if we really want to do this going forward.

We currently have two grants in for that. We just finished them. Rick did a lot of work on it. One's for the rural grant, rural Oregon for rural Oregon. Medical systems or something, but it's for hospitals and rural transports, and we put in for that. I think the state was awarded $120-something million, and so we reached out and put in for that and AFG grants. So one of them we're hoping to hear next month, July. They're supposed to give out those. So it's not that we're not trying for the grants for them, but we just have to prepare for a different solution if that doesn't work.

but what you're saying is that you think this is a good idea, this is a good program that needs to continue and not go back to just depending on a single provider.

Absolutely. So when we signed our contract November of 2017, The agreement was 10 to 12 transports a year if we needed you. And I'm sorry, I didn't look at the numbers up to date, but I think we're just a little over 260 or 270 transports in two and a half years. So it's been very beneficial to our citizens and our visitors to the town, along with... I think the only city we haven't been to or fire district is Napa. Otherwise, I think we've been called to every other city in Clatsop County. So it's beneficial for us and our surrounding agencies.

And it's beneficial to you, if I remember right, that it gets you back into service, gets your people back into service.

Absolutely. We are seeing times on scene, times upwards. We had a crew sitting on scene for maybe upwards of an hour. It's just if they need to get to medical attention, it's just not good for them. It's not good for us where we have compounding calls two, three, four at a time. So it gets us back into service onto the next call and those people up to the hospital a little bit quicker.

Good. I hope it turns out well.

Thank you.

Okay. Sorry, I was waiting for somebody else. I consistently hear how lucky we are to have the fire department that we have here in Seaside. It's crazy. I hear it all the time, and it's so true. And I happen to be the benefactor of a couple of those good intent calls in 2025. I did not realize that's what they were called and how they were categorized, but I like that. And so I just wanted to say, I experience it firsthand, the delight that you guys turn a critical, you know, uncomfortable situation into, you know, an experience that is much, much better than what it could be and make it, you know, somewhat delightful. I'm just amazed at the people on your crew, and I just want to say thank you. It's great.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thanks, guys.

Boards, commissions, and committees, we have vacancies on the airport one. We have three vacancies on community center, but we do have a application from TJ Norris, who is often here. I don't see her tonight, but would anybody like to nominate TJ?

I would like to nominate TJ Norris for the community center commission.

I'll second. Councillor Montero and Councillor President Morrissey. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Please schedule an interview, Kim. We have one vacancy on the Planning Commission. We interviewed George Whitlock tonight as the only applicant at least so far. Any action the Council wants to take tonight?

I would move to nominate George.

No, he's already been nominated.

He's been nominated. So what's my verb? Appoint. Appoint George to the Planning Commission. Thank you.

I second that.

That's Councilor Binniker, Councilor Ansbrough. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations, George. Did he hang around? Doesn't look like it. Ken will take care of letting him know. And we have one vacancy on transportation advisory. And as of January 1st, we will have two on the city tree board. Unfinished business. Resolution 4088. Zach, finance director.

Well, I appreciate everyone putting me behind the firefighters. Everyone wants to listen to the firefighters. Okay. So the first item on the agenda today, tonight we'll round out the... The budget for the fiscal year 26, which we're currently in, and then finish the appropriation process for fiscal year 27, which is right around the corner. It's hard to believe. So the first item on the list is Resolution 4088. So I'm going to personally apologize that I'm bringing this one back. I was flipping back and forth between last year's budget and this year's budget and on the last budget. I PUT LAST YEAR'S NUMBERS. I TRIPLE CHECKED THESE. I TRIPLE CHECKED THESE. THIS IS THE CORRECT THIS IS THE CORRECT APPROPRIATION VALUE FOR THE APPROPRIATION VALUE FOR THE ROAD DISTRICT FOR NEXT YEAR. ROAD DISTRICT FOR NEXT YEAR. AS YOU CAN SEE, MATERIALS AND AS YOU CAN SEE, MATERIALS AND SERVICES DIDN'T REALLY CHANGE. SERVICES DIDN'T REALLY CHANGE. THERE'S A LARGE INTERFUND THERE'S A LARGE INTERFUND TRANSFER INTO THE STREET TRANSFER INTO THE STREET CONSTRUCTION FUND TO FUND, AS YOU CONSTRUCTION FUND TO FUND, AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, ROAD CONSTRUCTION MIGHT IMAGINE, ROAD CONSTRUCTION PRO and that would leave the ending fund balance if if all holds true as planned at about a little over ten thousand dollars at the end of the year any questions about this one i'll open it up to the public anybody wants to make any comments on the road district budget

We'll close public comments.

There was one. I think you got one.

Oh, where? Oh, okay. Come up. Please state your name and city.

Jackie Sturman from Seattle. Seaside. I'm concerned about all the holes in the roads in this city. What's happening with that?

We have this is a big number there. The million eight is transferring into a fund that is going to help with that problem along with what five million more dollars that are there.

There's a multi-year project that we're getting started on to reclave some of the roads in town here.

Mayor, I think it'd also be a good time to clarify the difference between 101 and a gate control.

Highway 101, we cannot control what ODOT does on it. And that is by far some of the worst road. Now, I won't make any... promises, but I've been assured that at least some of it is on their list in the near future. The near future to ODOT means sometime in the next three or four years. So write a letter to Region 2. I can get you the information if you want and complain. That's the best way to get it done. Anyway, Seaside is going to take care of its roads. Significant amount of money this year. Okay. Close public comments. Counselors, anything else? I have a motion to read 4088 by title only.

I move to read resolution 4088 by title only.

I'll second.

That's President Morrissey, Councilor Binnicker. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Spencer?

Resolution 4088, a resolution adopting and appropriating in 2026, 2027, Seaside Road District budget.

I have a motion to adopt.

I move to adopt resolution number 4088. Second.

Councillor Ansborough, Councillor Binniker. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously.

Okay.

Four zero eight five.

Yes. So the next three have to do with property tax rates here in Oregon. So I brought this one up as a little bit of background for how property taxes work in the state. So back in in 1990, there was something called you'll hear measure five and measure 50 thrown around a lot in the state of Oregon. And that's because those are the two items that constrain local government budgets. The first, Measure 5, sets limits on how much tax proportionally to the real market value of your home can be levied. And you can see there it's $5 per thousand for schools and $10 per thousand for local government. About seven years later, they passed Measure 50, which basically froze in place whatever property tax rates were in place at that time and at that point they they introduced assessed value prior to that they just used real market value and and that was that was how they they worked that system so when you get your tax rate not not so much probably recently but your tax rate coming from or your your amount that you're taxed on coming from the county is based on the lower of those two values, either real market value or assessed value. Your assessed value is capped at 3% growth rate. with a couple exceptions if you subdivide your lot that you're on if you build an additional structure on your lot if you rezone it there's a handful of exceptions that can change that but generally speaking if none of those apply it it grows at three percent per year uh and then so so taking that all of that into consideration um with frozen property tax rates the the only real way for a local government to increase the amount of property taxes they bring in is through a vote of the people. So either through local options, we've got one in the form of the fire levy, or through debt obligations, we've got one in the water fund. So So with that, Resolution 4086 is the City of Seaside ad valorem tax rate. So you can see on the screen there that our permanent rate is 3.1696 per thousand. And then we have two levies that increase that amount. Now, it's slightly confusing because they're in different units, but the 3.16 is a... A RATE THAT GROWS WITH THE ASSESSED VALUE OF THE TAX BASE AND THEN THE 460 AND THE 355 RESPECTIVELY ARE SPECIFIC AMOUNTS THAT ARE LEVIED ON THE TAXABLE BASE OF THE CITY. SO IT'S A LITTLE ODD THAT THEY DO IT THAT WAY. YOU CAN DO IT EITHER WAY AND BOTH ARE PERFECTLY FINE.

We're working on 4085.

Oh, did I skip too far? I skipped one. Sorry. So let me back up then one. So resolution 4085 is for the Seaside Road District. These are two separate budgets that need to be passed separately. So this resolution authorizes the city to impose a property tax for the road district and then certify the county to collect that tax. The rate for this is 0.3036 per thousand for an estimated revenue of about 450,000. Okay.

Open public comment. Anybody? We're talking about a rate now. No public, yeah, who's that? Okay, come up, state your name, city of residence.

Hi, so my name is Sue Coddington, 2152 Cedar Street, Seaside, Oregon, 30 years. I'm only asking because remember the report that came out two years ago that we had a 61% rate of the quality of our roads, do you remember that? Where are we fixing that 61% and where does that fit in the budget and what we're talking about tonight?

That's what we just talked about just a few minutes ago. We have, what do you say, over $6 million in the budget fixed roads this year.

But we can go toward improving our 61% score?

We certainly hope so.

I hope so too. Thank you.

Can I add that there's, if you watch the video from our budget committees, there's very good presentation about what needs to be done and how we came to the decision of how much money to put in the budget for it.

Okay, any other council comments? I have a motion to read resolution 4085 by title only.

I move to read Resolution 4085 by title only. Second.

Council Binniker, Council Montero. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. I have a motion to adopt.

Oh, he has to read it.

Oh, he has to read it.

Resolution 4085, a resolution of the City of Seaside, Oregon, Seaside Road District, levying and categorizing out-of-lore taxes for the tax year 2026-2027. Now we can adopt.

I move to adopt resolution 4085.

Second.

Councilor Montero, Council President Morrissey, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Resolution 4085 passes.

Now the next one. So I've already given a little bit of a primer on this one. So this does the same thing but for the city of Seaside budget now as opposed to the road district budget.

A whole lot more dollars in total. Let's see here. So this is the same thing that we just talked about. Anybody from the public have a comment, a question? A closed public comment? Counselors? May I have a motion to read resolution 4086 by title only?

I move to read resolution 4086 by title only. I'll second.

Councillor Binnicker, Councillor Montero. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Spencer?

Ordinance 2026, to show forward an ordinance of the City of Seaside.

Nope.

Oh, I scrolled too far. Resolution 4086. Thank you. Resolution of the City of Seaside, Oregon, levying categories and ad valorem taxes for the tax year 2026-2027. Motion to adopt.

Move to adopt Resolution 4086. Second.

I second.

Council President Morrissey, Councilor Montero, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Resolution 4086 passes unanimously. Now, Ordinance 20-2604.

Okay, this is Marin Council. This is the

Pretty much the same presentation I made two weeks ago.

And we still have not received any public comments that I'm aware of on this ordinance since then. So we've been working on this since end of April. Last meeting, June 8th, was the second reading of this ordinance. Not received any public comments, not made any changes. So tonight we're considering a third reading and adoption. What the ordinance does, it creates a property tax. Public property exclusion, which basically is if someone violates state law, city ordinance, or other adopted facility rules, they can be, and it happens at the same location more than once, they can be excluded from that property for a period of time. Isn't it? enforcement tool beyond just a citation that the police are able to do. So a warning or a citation usually does address the violation, but it doesn't always prevent the same repeated contact at the same location. So this is an intermediate tool at this point, and if the person returns, they may be able to be subject to trespass enforcement. And again, the goal is safe and orderly use of the city's public properties. And like anything with this one where there are constitutional rights and whatnot, we've implemented as many limits and safeguards as possible to make sure it's used appropriately. Generally only applies to the specific property where the violation occurred. If it's broader than that, there are strict rules as to how that would apply and what would need to happen. They are necessarily temporary in nature. First offense is for 30 days, second for 60, and third for 90. And 90 is the maximum number of days. And generally speaking, there's almost always a warning or an opportunity to comply. I think the exception would be if there was something really egregious or something like that. And the person would have appeal rights through the court, and we have some exceptions for some essential services that people need to get. So we have another public hearing tonight, but if the council is ready or ready for a third motion, we've provided it here along with a motion to adopt.

The only public comment, if I remember right, has been that we want to make sure to include this in our police annual report going forward. But I will open for public comment. Anybody have anything else? Close public comment. Councillors, anything else? Then I will take a motion to read ordinance 20-26-04, third reading by title only.

I move for a third reading of ordinance number 2026-04 by title only.

Second.

Councilor Binnicker and Councilor Ansborough. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Spencer.

Ordinance 2026-04, an ordinance of the city of Seaside establishing a public property exclusion process for violations of law and city property, providing procedures, safeguards, and appeal rights, and amending the Seaside Municipal Code.

Thank you. I have a motion to adopt.

Move to adopt ordinance number 2026-04. Second.

Councilor Benneker, Council President Morrissey. This will be a roll call vote.

Council President Morrissey?

Yes.

Mayor Wright?

Yes.

Councilor Montero? Yes. Councilor Ansborough? Yes. Councilor Benninger? Yes. Thank you.

Ordinance 202604 passes unanimously. New business. uh with our change here we are up to authorize city facilities landscape maintenance contract

Mayor and Council, tonight we have a request for your authorization to move forward with a contract. Yeah, so we are asking, I'm asking the council to authorize the city manager to execute a contract with Nature's Helper in an amount not to exceed the number right there and then provide some additional consideration for the community center. And it says once pricing is available, I received it a few minutes ago and didn't quite have enough time to get it into the presentation.

So I do have that number though.

Okay, so we recently went through a similar process for the downtown maintenance district. This is a separate contract, although it's traditionally been held by the same landscaper. So these are the different facilities where they provide all the landscaping. So we do have a parks component within the Public Works Department. They're mostly doing the mowing, line trimming, and stuff like that at our parks. whereas this focused more on beautification while there is some mowing it's also a lot of planters and planting and things of that nature more consistent with that kind of a landscaping contract So we went out and did a request for proposals in accordance with both state rules and our own procurement policy. It was not a low bid. It was evaluating any proposals based on the following criteria. Experience and qualifications is worth 25%. Their technical approach and maintenance plan, 20%. References, 10%. Project management staffing, 10%. And their price proposal, 35%. So we received two proposals. One is from Nature's Helper. The other was from Northwest Reforestation. Again, it wasn't a low bid solicitation. So the award is based on the proposal most advantageous to the city under that criteria. So we are recommending that we award the contract to Nature's Helper. The key reasons for that is their long-term experience maintaining city facilities, whether it was here or elsewhere, obviously we know they can do the work. So direct experience with public facing landscape, strong references, demonstrated coastal landscape experience, and they were responsive and responsible proposer. northwest reforestation review they submitted a lower price however in reviewing the proposals made a determination that they did not meet the required minimum experience we required a minimum of three years of experience in municipal commercial or some other equivalent type of landscaping And their experience in the proposal was not very clear, so we followed up with them to get more specifics. And all of their current work is residential, so either installing residential landscaping or maintaining personal landscaping places. and they are for reference operating out of salem so they would be coming from salem to do that work and so um we disqualified them for not having the three years of equivalent experience not something that we want to just trust someone to necessarily cut their teeth on if that makes sense Total budget is just over 396,000, and this is how it breaks down between each year. You'll see that 2026 is prorated. The reason for that is we want this contract, rather than be for five years, we want it to end at the end of the calendar year so that in four and a half years from now, we would bid out the downtown maintenance district and the city facility contracting at the same time. So one bid we would still enter into separate agreements or possibly even enter into two separate contracts depending how those come in. But it made sense and we think we'd get more eyeballs on it by having a larger proposal going out. And doing it once instead of twice just made a lot of sense. We'll have this terminate at the end of the calendar year 2030. Yeah, right there. Ends December 31, 2030. It aligns with downtime maintenance contract. Yep. Okay. Let me, if you give me one sec, I can pull up. So we did get, so the RFP did have as an optional, since it hasn't been provided in the past, but it was requested to at least look at the option of adding the community center to this.

And I'm wondering if there's an easier way to do this.

Hold on. I'm almost there. OK, let's see how quickly this updates.

Hey, there it is.

Oh, I think it was there. Go to the second to last slide.

Oh, I guess I forgot the thing, but you might be able to do it faster.

we do go back one there we go this is what we received from nature's helper so if we want to consider the uh adding the community center it would be an additional 2300 dollars this year and have the same i think four percent in uh inflationary adjustment each year after that So you can see ranging between just over $4,000 to $4.6,000 in the year 2030 for a total increase of just under $20,000 over the four and a half year term. So if that's something that the city council wants to consider, I think right now, I think Sunset Empire, I think does it now at the community center? Yeah, not to the same extent, which I think is why it was questioned as maybe we can add this to it.

And if I can just remind the council, this was a recommendation by the Community Center Commission members.

So... Here is the recommended motion. You have some language in there. And with the numbers now, you can add that. I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things, we can find a way to fit it in. I think this is just a matter of where that priority is for the council. The one thing I would add is the contract allows, well, it says that if property is removed or added, we negotiate with the contractor to change the pricing. In fact, as part of the contract, they provided the itemized pricing for each thing. So if something's removed, we know exactly what that effect is. And so two things to consider to kind of absorb that cost that I thought of is one, well, both having to do with the ODOT project. The ODOT project is going to remove a significant amount of the landscaping in front of the visitors bureau. So we would do an appropriate adjustment to that at that time and that may offset it. Then if the council chooses to remove the pedestrian crossing on Broadway, the mid-block crossing, that is also, or is that part of the Downtown Maintenance District? NEVERMIND NEVERMIND THAT'S DOWNTIME MAINTENANCE DISTRICT SO IT WOULD BE IT WOULD BE THIS I THOUGHT THERE WAS ANOTHER PLACE BUT I THINK IT'S JUST THAT SO I THINK SO SO ONE ONE CONSIDERATION COULD BE ADDING THE COMMUNITY CENTER AT THE TIME THAT THAT PROJECT HAPPENS EQUAL OUT OR YOU COULD ADD AT THIS TIME OR NOT ADDED IF YOU DIDN'T WANT THAT

So if you were to add the $20,000, the amount not to exceed would be $416,373. I'll take your word for it.

Somebody double check it.

I got something different. You can make a motion not to exceed that amount plus the amount presented for the community center. I think in general we're looking for approval of entering to a contract for the amount discussed here today.

It was under $20,000. You could say $417,000. Yeah, you could round it out. $416,193.81.

Is the community center 19,000, 820, and 53?

Yeah, I rounded it up to 20,000. That's how I came it.

I'm glad we checked.

Depends on who does the motion. I'd suggest just saying 417,000.

I agree with you.

What is the project 2026-024?

Oh, that's just the project number when it was bid out.

I think you mentioned this, but if we remove or add another area in the city, like we put planter boxes in Batat Park, we could add those services without redoing this contract. Yeah.

It anticipates that. And so we would just look at the comparable. I mean, the pricing is pretty consistent for the square footage. And so we'd find if it was a planter, we'd find what the pricing is there for other planters and on a square foot basis to have the same pricing.

And to your knowledge, are there any other city facilities that are left off this list besides the community center?

We don't do anything at Public Works or the plant or the EOC, not that we would. I'm not aware of any other facilities like this. Most of this is like building landscaping around it. And so put me on the spot off top of that.

I'm not aware of any. OK. Thank you.

Can I make a motion? Yeah, go ahead.

I would move to authorize the city manager to award and execute a contract with Nature's Helper, Inc. for city facilities, landscape maintenance services, including the community center project 2026-024 in an amount not to exceed $417,000. I'll second.

Council President Morrissey, Councilor Montero. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, now Zach, Resolution 4091. A few minor adjustments to this year's budget.

Yeah, that's perfect.

COME ON. THERE IT GOES.

THERE IT GOES. OKAY. OKAY. RESOLUTION 4091, SO THIS IS THE RESOLUTION 4091, SO THIS IS THE PUTS THE BOW ON THIS YEAR'S PUTS THE BOW ON THIS YEAR'S BUDGET, SO TO SPEAK. BUDGET, SO TO SPEAK. SO THIS IS A REGULAR AND SO THIS IS A REGULAR AND HEALTHY OCCURRENCE FOR CITY HEALTHY OCCURRENCE FOR CITY BUDGETS. BUDGETS. FRANKLY, IF I DIDN'T SIT IN FRONT FRANKLY, IF I DIDN'T SIT IN FRONT OF YOU TO DO THIS, THAT WOULD OF YOU TO DO THIS, THAT WOULD PUT UP RED FLAGS IF I WAS IN PUT UP RED FLAGS IF I WAS IN YOUR SHOES. So the headlines here does not increase the total appropriation in any fund and just reallocates existing appropriation within the funds that are affected. So the first item on here, And I apologize if this is a bit small, but first item in here is moving. Okay, so let me take one more step back. So the approach that I took this year, in the past, I've been bitten a little bit by only moving the amount that my crystal ball at this point in time said I thought I would need, and it came in slightly more. And so the auditor slapped my hand about that. So this year I've increased that, the amount that I would like to move so that that lowers the likelihood that that would happen. Doesn't mean it won't, but it at least makes it less likely. In this case, for the general fund, I would like to move $40,000 out of contingency and into the mayor and council department to cover. We did some upgrades to this building here, and we held a special election that we weren't planning on. And so this budget would cover that. Any questions with that one? I'll pause for questions after each of these.

Can I also say, I think one of the increased budget expenses is we have great participation from our city council in trainings. And that's money well spent. And so I keep encouraging you to attend the conferences, because I think we're the better off for it.

So I wouldn't be hesitant about that at all.

Absolutely.

Okay, the next one is in our water fund. So this one is a little bit different. So if you'll recall our, back a couple months ago when we started the budget process, The tack that Spencer and I take with materials and services specifically is that we leave basically what was appropriated last year, assuming that if there was some savings last year, that those savings will move forward if there's some small price increase. The problem with the water fund specifically is we had a lot of price increases hit us all at once. And so insurance was more expensive, electricity was more expensive, fuel was more expensive, chemicals were way more expensive. And then to top it all off, we also had a midwinter storm that accounts for about half of this. It's probably 80 to 85,000, if I had to guess. Now, the note on that storm specifically, and I don't want to get anyone's hopes up here because it involves the federal government, but we may see some of that back. We, to my understanding, were not initially included in the FEMA declaration that went out, and that has since been revised to include us. And so if we see, if the state sees any reimbursement for that, we may well see some or all of that back. So that's the one note for the water fund. Any questions? Moving on to the Convention Center. This is a drum that I've beaten for some time now. I don't think this is going to surprise anyone. This moves contingency funding from contingency to materials and service. It's the entirety of it to cover food and beverage expenses because they were more expensive than we had budgeted for this year. Any questions there? It's all backed by revenue. I've said that before. I think you guys are aware. Visitors Bureau. So this covers an oversight of mine. I'll fess up to this, this and the next. When I was allocating personnel for this budget year, I overlooked a couple part-time positions that we had here. So this moves materials and services budget from materials and services into personnel. And then next, so I guess the next, that one and then the next two deal with personnel. So public safety reallocates 300,000 from contingency, puts 250 into fire and 50 into emergency communications. The fire portion covers the overages that are created by participating in wildfire mobilizations around the state. That's all reimbursed. But the state only cares about the expense side of things, not the revenue side of things. Emergency communications, that goes into, we had a bit higher overtime expense this year than I anticipated. And so this would go into cover some of the budget for that. Questions? Questions? And then this final one reallocates funding from building to planning. I budgeted a position in planning when it should have been budgeted in building. It's fixed this year. So my apologies for that. So this reappropriates the budget into planning to cover that and some small amount of materials and services. And I think that's it. Can I answer any questions on any of these?

Again, opening it to the public, any questions about those?

We've had such good budget participation today. Come on.

Hearing and seeing none, councillors, any comments? I have a motion.

I move to read Resolution 4091 by title only.

Second.

Councilor Binniker, Councilor Ansbrough, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Spencer?

Resolution 4091, a resolution of the City of Seaside, Oregon, adjusting the 2025-2026 City of Seaside budget. I have a motion to adopt.

move to adopt resolution four zero nine one second council binaker councillor montero all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed resolution four zero nine one passes unanimously all right thank you everyone thank you zach thanks thank you zach does that mean you're done for the year now right you got what one one yeah yeah Okay, next up is a discussion about Highway 101 and Broadway. Councillor Montero, as stated earlier, will be recusing herself and stepping aside.

All right, Mayor and Council. It feels like many public meetings that we've had in the last few months and trying to gather as much public input and feedback and reaching out to help you get to this decision point tonight. So tonight's decision is to select the city's preferred option that ODOT should advance into construction plans. And you're deciding on which option you think best balances safety, Broadway traffic flow, parking, downtown business impacts, and long-term transportation needs. So as a reminder, we first had this discussion, I think it was during a work session back on March 9th, and the council wanted a public process for this. On May 21st, we did present to the Transportation Commission On June 3rd, we held an open house here at City Hall and had representatives from ODOT here as well between their staff and our staff to kind of walk people through the different alternatives. On June 18th, Oh, sorry. Yeah. We also on June 3rd opened up the survey. So we took, we started taking in paper surveys of that open house and then have been collecting surveys up, survey responses up through today. And June 11th through 17th is not the open house. That got copied over. Those were presentations I made to the Downtown Development Association and to the Chamber of Commerce. And then last Thursday, the Transportation Commission met again. And then tonight is the decision night. So ODOT needs a decision tonight to keep the project moving. It is fully funded, and the funding is coming from a pot of money that they have for safety improvements. That's really what this is. Under the low build scenario that we'll talk about, they'll replace the traffic signal and that's all, but they are trying to address safety issues at the same time with this. A delay or selecting one of the non-billed option would cause ODOT to reallocate the funds to other projects. And we're not talking within Clatsop County, but elsewhere, anywhere within the state. So I think we're all familiar with the intersection here that we're talking about. It's right outside our doors. Pretty important for our local traffic, visitor traffic, for the downtown businesses, for pedestrians and for Highway 101 movement. through the city. So as I said, this is a safety project. This is the data that ODOT has collected on this intersection through the end of last calendar year. So over, you can see the number of reported incidents over the 11-year span, which puts our intersection in the top 15% of safety-concerned intersections throughout the state. So what is ODOT trying to solve? Safety. So separate left turning vehicles from through traffic. That's the number one reason for the accidents is through traffic versus turning traffic. that problem. Backups, reduce Broadway queues and delay, not just now but going into the future. And then I mentioned the signal replacement. So why signal timing alone is not enough. So ODOT reviewed the signal timing and phasing options and they've concluded the operations cannot be improved through signal timing changes. It has, they have maximized everything it can do with timing options. So protected left turn lanes, sorry, protected left turn arrows require dedicated left turn lanes. And so those two go hand in hand. Without the turn lanes, left turn vehicles continue to block through traffic. Or better yet, without those turn lanes, people are waiting to turn, preventing anyone from making right-hand turns and traveling through. And so both the safety and the congestion solution is adding turn lanes. So here's the trade-off. More traffic and safety improvement is a larger parking impact. More parking preserved is less room for turn lanes and driver transitions. So we have really two categories of options. There are what we've been calling build options and what we call low build, which is really no build. It's just a signal replacement, but ODOT wanted to call it a low build. So under all the build options, we added dedicated left-hand turn lanes on both approaches to the intersection on Broadway. We would add protected left turn phasing.

That's basically the...

when it's dedicated to turning only, so it would improve the safety and traffic operations, but requires parking trade-offs. The low build option replaces the signal only, avoids any permanent parking loss, doesn't add the protective turning lanes, and doesn't meet the safety enhancements. So they provide us with these four options that, for the sake of communicating, we've called the ODOT standard build, the balance build, the parking preservation build, and the low build. So this is what ODOT provided on what their standard build is. And because it's kind of difficult to see, I've kind of tried to highlight in the white there what the difference is. And what you'll see is that between the ODOT standard build, the balance build, and the parking preservation build, they're all essentially the same. It's just that they end and they move the transition to closer to the intersection. So I don't think this, I can't use this, can I? Just hit the button to the left and I go up. Yeah, right there. Oh, I thought it was gonna get us there, sorry.

Which one, top or bottom?

Not working. So as you'll see here, if you look, I think for purposes of easy to see, if you can see the three parking spots that are kind of in the neon green, that's where the current pedestrian crossing is. And so if that's removed, those parking spaces get added in. So that's easy to find. And you'll see that moving to the right of those green spaces is where kind of the taper ends. So basically... If you're coming south on Highway 101 turning west onto Broadway, you would pull in, as you do now, into one lane and continue through heading to the west. When you're coming from Holiday towards Highway 101, you can see just in front of Seaside Brewing there, it splits into a left-hand turning lane, and then the right lane is a dedicated through lane slash right-hand turn lane. So that means there are three lanes there when there are currently really only two. There's a bit of a right-hand turning lane, but it's not like an official one. It's not the length it would need to be. So in order to add the extra lane, the only option is to remove the parking. The businesses are built right up to the curb. There's not really ways to get extra space in there. As you can see, if you were heading westbound from the highway, you're driving where the parking currently exists, and then there's a transition point back into the center of the road where it is today. Each of these options just moves that transition point closer to the intersection. So in this situation, I'll go through the parking numbers, but you can see all the yellow spaces are parking spots that would be removed. And again, the green ones are ones that can be added if we remove the pedestrian parking. And I'll talk a little bit about it later. But under any of these options, if the council wants to consider preserving the pedestrian crossing, we can. We just have to add those parking spaces back into the total numbers. I think instead of presenting six different options to the public, we want six different build options. We want to just present three build options to keep it simpler. And so we assumed that the priority would be parking over the pedestrian crossing. However, if you don't feel that way, we can add it back in. So this is the balance build and it's kind of, you can see where it moves. So you can see the taper now, the end of the taper where the lanes converge back into two lanes has moved further to the east. It's further away from where the pedestrian crossing is. So we create four instead of three parking spaces by removing the pedestrian crossing. That's the four green spaces. And then it preserves two additional spaces, the blue ones to the east of those green ones. Those are existing today but would remain. And then here is the parking preservation build. And just kind of get an idea if you can see where that is. And again, we've just moved it closer to the intersection. And again, now it looks like the transition ends right about the western edge of Seaside Brewing. And the low build is really... This is what it is today. There's the parking, you can see. And then you have a... You kind of have two lanes approaching the intersection with a left and a straight and a right hand turn, but it's not more than maybe two and a half car lengths or something like that. And so under a low build option, that would be cleaned up and it would just be a one lane and it would be for both turning movements and through traffic. So on the east side of Broadway, this is what ODOT's provided. And again, here's kind of a, you can see what changes. I think this is where we see the actual more significant improvements. You can see how far back. the parking lanes start. So the transition begins about where the end of the library is and the church starts and kind of in the middle or to the eastern side of the Sunset Recreation Center. But by the time you hit the entrance to their parking lot, you're already dividing into three lanes westbound. So you'll see that there are There's a really long dedicated left-hand turn lane. There is a really long through lane. And then there is a right-hand turn lane that extends just about to the parking entrance there. The other significant change is what happens at the northeast corner of the intersection. Right now, because of that angle, you cannot get large vehicles, including school buses and our fire trucks, to navigate that corner. As designed, they would cut that corner out. That's where I was talking about losing some landscaping. And now those vehicles would all be able to make that turn. Whereas currently, both fire trucks and school buses, well, if they're coming down Broadway, they turn onto Lincoln and come around on Avenue A to get onto the highway. So this would streamline that and be better for them. and for any other large traffic. But it does remove pretty much all of the parking up through the edge of the library property and the entrance to the maintenance road between the Sunset Recreation Center and the pool and daycare playground area. So you received a letter from Sunset Empire Park and Recreation District. Their biggest concern is that the area on the north side of the road there, that parking that's removed, that is parking for much of the day, but during the hours dedicated to pickup and drop-offs. from their daycare and after school programs and things like that it's it's not not about parking it's only like an unloading and loading zone and so their concern is that this option uh is going to remove that and affect their drop-off pickup bus loading and unloading and recreation user access so the request from sunset empire was to have them included in the final design design discussions with odot to see if there is an option to shift their drop-off area to the north. So as Skylar and I have talked, basically the idea is they have some landscaping between the Sunset Recreation Center and the sidewalk there. And you can see how the... the sidewalk transitions as it goes past the visitors bureau it starts to transition closer to the road and and the idea would be to transition that maybe closer to the sunset recreation building and basically the width of a drop-off zone neither of us are engineers and so we would leave it up to them on how that it looks and how where it would be accessed and things like that but the idea is there there's room to do that there and so um we think that's a reasonable request to have included with this project the other thing the feedback i've heard from them is they are concerned and continue to be concerned about the cut through traffic so people on broadway who get stuck in traffic don't want to wait to turn right who cut through their parking lot which causes a interferes with the safety of their people using the parking lot. In addition to this request, I think their comments have been that they fully support any of the build options because of the improvement it does here. They like all the improvements and the extra turn lanes that add to the capacity should cut down significantly on their cut through traffic. And so that's a bonus. And then on top of that, if there's a way to preserve some loading and unloading area. And I've got that in the final motion. So we look at the west side parking impacts. The ODOT standard build removes 14, retains eight, adds three new parking spaces by the removal of the pedestrian crossing. So it's a total of 11 lost. The balanced build option has a total of six lost. Parking preservation has a total of two lost, and the low build obviously doesn't lose any. On the east side, it just loses all 14. Like I said, that goes back to the request to widen it additionally in front of the Sunset Recreation Center. So the other two things to look at when it comes to our traffic flow and congestion is the effect on the drivers. I would call this the how it feels as opposed to how it looks. So this would be the average weight on a weekday during a peak period. And so this is looking 20 years out, that their modeling shows the average weight would be 143 seconds if we don't do anything, and be 41 seconds under any of the build scenarios. So it's a reduction of about 100 seconds, which is not one minute, it's a minute 40 seconds, which doesn't sound long unless you're sitting in traffic, then it's an eternity. This is what it looks like. So same period. This is what the traffic backup would typically look like on a peak weekday. This is looking 20 years out on top as if we do nothing. The backup on the east side of the highway goes about to the skate park off the map there. And you can see how much shorter those lines get. And this is, again, looking 20 years out for any of the three build scenarios. This is what it looks like as opposed to how it feels. And so then meeting with Councillor Morrissey last week, we were looking at the parking preservation model and had a couple of other ideas that we got some feedback from ODOT on. So if you take the parking preservation model and let me zoom in on that. So as we looked at that, there were two parking areas that that we've sought an opportunity for. So let's do the south side first. So that blue parking spot furthest to the right. Currently under the parking preservation model that ODOT prepared, there's a concrete bump out there. When we reached out to them, the purpose of that was to mark the end of the parking on that side of the street and prevent encroachment into the turning lane. And so a bit of a protection there for the lane so there isn't some creep happening. On the north side, there isn't parking there currently because there's a fire hydrant. And so what we looked at was moving the fire hydrant. The concept is one parking spot to the east, or at least to the east far enough away that it meets the... the requirements on how far a parking spot needs to be from a fire hydrant. And so all that said, it is possible to do, but it comes with a couple of caveats. So again, the net loss on this, because the parking preservation, you remember, had a net loss of two. This gets it down to zero. The total net loss of 14 is all on the east side. So it shortens the deacceleration or taper lane from 105 feet to 95 feet. So it takes 20 feet off of that. It relocates the fire hydrant and removes the changes, the concrete curb extension. So yeah, I've already said it shortens that taper deacceleration area. A quick look at from Paul, he estimated the fire hydrant relocation to be between 10 and $35,000. Some of it just depends on what and how much utilities are in the ground and some other choices that would need to be made that we would need to get into. So that would be to free up the spot on the north side of the road. And then in talking with ODOT, they said the city engineer would need to make an independent decision to approve. So they did not recommend it. They said it can physically be built. But they said you'll need to find a different engineer to do it. There's a process in traffic engineering where you get a basically like an exception. Yeah, design exception is the term. And so that would need to happen. And then ODOT says the city would take on any liability. So if there were to be an accident there and someone dies, WANTED TO USE IT BECAUSE OF THAT AGGRESSIVE TAPER. THAT'S SOMETHING THE CITY WOULD OWN AS CURRENTLY THEY'RE DESIGNING IT BUT THIS WOULD BE OUR DESIGN EXCEPTION. So our review at this point staff does not recommend and the reasons is the additional cost for the one parking spot, the additional work and everything involved with the hydrant relocation. The engineering design exception, it's already taking the most aggressive changing of one lane into the middle and making it even more aggressive and then the city taking on the extra liability and risk and This is just our recommendation. The council is free to ignore it, but we're providing that that the I think the the trade-offs for this Probably don't exceed what the benefit may be for those to spark parking spots coming back. I And then today, we had a question about removing the mid-block crossing. And as I mentioned, under any of the scenarios, they can be brought back in. Under the ODOT standard build, you would add three more parking spaces to the total that are being lost. And for the balance build in the parking reservation, you would add four more if you wanted to keep it. THEN THE QUESTION WAS, CAN WE SHORTEN THE AMOUNT OF SPACE THAT THE PEDESTRIAN CROSSING USES? I SENT AN E-MAIL TO THE COUNCIL TODAY. THIS IS SOMETHING WE'VE BEEN LOOKING AT ON A SEPARATE ISSUE ON OUR DOWNTOWN PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGS AND WHAT IMPROVEMENTS THEY NEED. AND THE ISSUE COMES UP IS THAT, WELL, LET ME BACK UP. THE ISSUE COMES UP IS THAT, WELL, LET ME BACK UP. THE NEXT SLIDE TALKS ABOUT THAT. THE NEXT SLIDE TALKS ABOUT THAT. SO WHAT ARE THE LANDSCAPING, THE SO WHAT ARE THE LANDSCAPING, THE DECORATIVE LANDSCAPING AND THAT DECORATIVE LANDSCAPING AND THAT CURB BUMP OUT, WHAT DO THEY DO CURB BUMP OUT, WHAT DO THEY DO TODAY? TODAY? FIRST OF ALL, IT HELPS IMPROVE FIRST OF ALL, IT HELPS IMPROVE VISIBILITY FOR BOTH THE DRIVERS VISIBILITY FOR BOTH THE DRIVERS TO SEE PEDESTRIANS AND PEDESTRIANS TO SEE TO SEE PEDESTRIANS AND PEDESTRIANS TO SEE DRIVERS. DRIVERS. IT ACTUALLY SH traffic calming measures is congestion squeezing it in. So even if everything else is the same, just the narrow feeling causes people subconsciously to slow down. So it has a choking effect, it's called, and that naturally slows people down. So removing that would take some of that away. So ODOT's low build exhibit did not count. So when they did their CALCULATIONS OF THE LOW BUILD, THEY DID NOT INCLUDE FOUR OF THE PARKING SPACES THAT CURRENTLY EXIST TOWARDS THEIR TOTAL. THE REASON FOR THAT IS THE OREGON HAS A LAW THAT SAYS PARKING MUST BE 20 FEET BACK FROM ANY INTERSECTION CROSSWALK. Now, it's specific to intersections. It doesn't talk about mid-block crossings, but from the exhibit, from the feedback from ODOT, that's their standard that they use for all crosswalks. And so if they were designing this, if we wanted to keep the pedestrian crossing in, they would want

20 feet on either side of the width of that parking crossing to be preserved.

That's pretty much what the landscape is due to, although technically, from what they said, it's not quite enough, technically speaking. I can't explain why the law says 20 feet at intersections but not mid-block crossings. Mid-block crossings are the most unsafe of any pedestrian crossing or crosswalks. Drivers expect a crossing to be at intersections, whether it's a traffic signal or a stop sign or something else, where it happens for no other reason than just a pedestrian crossing. That's the highest case for an unsafe condition or for... a negative interaction between a pedestrian and a vehicle. And so I would think where the law doesn't require it, I think the best practice, no doubt practice would be to have at least 20 feet on either side. And so that seems to be what the landscaping is doing now. So keeping the pedestrian crossing, I think would still, or keeping that in would reduce the overall parking spaces by three to four, by four spaces if you're looking at the preservation or the balance build. So if you do want to talk about the mid-crossing tonight, you have three different options. You can, no, you have two options. You can leave it removed, which is what all the options are. Or if you feel strongly about keeping the parking preservation, we can instruct ODOT to put that back in and then reduce the parking by the equivalent number. Okay, so let's talk about public feedback. We received 23 online survey responses, five paper survey responses from the open house for a total of 28. And the goal that we tried to make clear in the survey was this wasn't a vote of the residents. We want to understand their priorities. Again, the hope was to help give you the information to make what you think is the best decision. So we can see who responded here. We had residents, business owners, managers, workers, property owners, and even at least one person that's just a visitor to the city respond. Probably someone visiting from Gearhart. That'd be my guess, but... So this is the ranking of the first place votes. So the ODOT standard build received the most. Balance build second, low build third, and parking preservation was the least. Now, if we do an overall score, if we assign four points to your first place, three to your second, two to your third, and one point for your fourth place, and then do an average score, this is what they look like. In this case, the balance build and the ODOT standard build are kind of neck and neck, close to each other. The parking preservation build is a third choice, with the low build being the lowest choice. So this is the part that we get good feedback on. Why residents, what was the reason for their top choice? And as you can see, the number one reason for our residents or for, I shouldn't say our residents, for the survey participants is best traffic flow followed by most practical long-term, strongest safety improvement, and the best balance between traffic and parking. And then right there in the middle of the pack, you see preserves the most parking. It looks like pedestrian safety, the impact on businesses avoids making traffic worse and other were minor considerations. So we asked people, they could select, I think, up to three on issues that mattered most to them. Number one, improving safety. Two, improving traffic flow. Three, reducing backups tied with avoiding future congestion. And that starts to drop off from there. Preserving parking, reduce business impacts, improving pedestrian safety. So pretty consistent with why the reasons for their first choice. And again, they weren't just choosing which one do you prefer. It was rank them in order. So we also asked people to choose between two statements, and I guess there was another option that two people chose. It was either they do not support the low build because of the traffic and safety tradeoffs are too significant, or they could support the low build because avoiding parking loss is more important. And you can see the breakdown there. Of the 25 responses on this question, 20 responded with they don't support low build and five did support the low build. So the survey does not support avoiding all parking loss at the expense of the project purpose, which I said at the beginning is the safety improvements. So the business feedback was important, but not uniform. So when I separated out for those who identified as business owners, not necessarily business owners on Broadway or at this location, but just by business owners, they were definitely more parking sensitive as you would expect. But they were not unified around the low build or the parking preservation. There was kind of a split of about half in favor of low build and half in favor of one of the build options. So the overall feedback still supports a build option. So we had three members of the Transportation Commission attend their meeting last week. They voted unanimously, all three, for the parking preservation alternative. This is the one that staff does not recommend. And they did recognize that the low build was not a good option, but their priority was maximizing the parking impacts.

Minimizing. Minimizing. Thank you.

So here are your different options and staffs, what we'd recommend, choosing the ODOT standard build if the council prioritizes the strongest engineering design, the balance build if it prioritizes the best overall compromise. I would say this, in defense of the balance build, it sounds like a compromise. In talking with ODOT, what they said is their engineers would build the standard ODOT build. I mean, their ODOT. They said if it was any city, Looking at their own standards, the balanced build is probably what would be constructed based on local traffic engineering standards. And so I would take that for what it is. It may be a more reasonable option for the city than the ODOT standard build. The parking preservation build, if you want to prioritize the most parking preservation but also keep the project funded. And then for the reasons stated, staff doesn't recommend the low build or the 95-foot alternative build. However, that is something that you can consider. The last thing I would say is that Odata said all three of the options on the left, they're all viable. They're all safe. They're all viable. It's just a matter of choosing between the troughs. Every one of these options has trade-offs, and the trade-offs are important, and so it's a matter of balancing those things. But I wouldn't say of the three on the left, there's not one necessarily that you're going to say is better or worse. It's just that balance. So staff recommendation would be either the balance build or the parking preservation build, depending on, again, what you prioritize and your own analysis and feelings on the subject. And here is the requested action when you're ready. So if you're ready, the motion would be to move to select BLANK BUILD SO YOU CAN SAY ODOT, STANDARD, BALANCE, PARKING PRESERVATION OR ANY OF THE OTHER OPTIONS AS THE CITY'S PREFERRED OPTION FOR THE BROADWAY HIGHWAY 101 INTERSECTION PROJECT AND DIRECT STAFF TO NOTIFY ODOT OF THE CITY COUNCIL DECISION And then I further request ODOT staff work with Sunset Empire Park and Recreation District to evaluate whether replacement, loading, unloading area can be relocated or otherwise accommodated as part of the final project design. And then optional, if you want to give other direction on the pedestrian crossing, you are free to make that motion as well. And with that, Mayor, I will turn back. Oh, let me add one other thing. So as is obvious, our Council of Seven is down to four. And so whatever you decide, we need three people to agree to it. That's our the factor here. A no decision is really the no build or low build decision. If we can't make a decision, it has the same effect. The money will move elsewhere. I think one of the things maybe I failed to say is that I think in talking with all of you, I think it is an important point to make. With any of those three build options, the actual construction work is the same. The real difference, as we've talked about, is just where the merge happens, how close to the highway intersection. That's all striping. And so if you wanted to go with the most conservative when it comes to removing parking, have the least effect on parking, and you wanted to go with the parking preservation build, You still have that option in future years if congestion continues to get worse or there are other problems. If there's more accidents there from people running into parked cars or something, you have the option of extending that to the balanced build or the ODOT preferred build in the future. That is just a striping issue and it's a local road. That's something that we could do. Now, so that keeps all options open, and maybe you won't be on the council, but whenever there's trade-offs, it's a difficult decision to make, and it's painful because there are trade-offs. So another way to look at it also is you have a difficult decision tonight, and... You could make a decision tonight and we're done. You could make a decision that we're going to do to make a decision and then 10 years we can do the decision all over again and see if we want to extend it depending on the conditions at the time. So those are all things that you can consider and I will happily turn it back over to you, Mayor, and you guys can have that discussion. And then we do have time for public comments specific on this topic.

Before we do that, I'm not going to recess or whatever. I'm going to say if you'd like to join me in standing up until 30 seconds past 8 o'clock, you're welcome to because I've been sitting too long. Well, any time. It's two hours.

Lisa, just stand up because I want you in.

Well, if you absolutely have to, I won't stop you.

I'm going to after we get done with this call an actual recess you can hold till then okay

I am open to public comments now. We hopefully will not set the three-minute timer going. We normally don't for this kind of thing, so don't everybody rush up at once. Just raise your hand, and I'll call on you. Okay, there's Sadie.

Thank you, Sadie Mercer. I'm a Seaside resident. Mayor, councilors, and city staff, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I am wearing multiple hats. I'm a citizen of Seaside. I'm a long-term business owner, and I'm the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. Through all of those roles, my goal is the same, to support a thriving, welcoming, and economically strong downtown. Regarding the proposed changes to the highway at Broadway and 101, I would like to respectfully urge the city to request and support the signal-only improvements, the low build. While I understand the desire to improve traffic flow and address congestion, I believe the other proposed options would have a significant and lasting negative impact on the small businesses located on Broadway between 101 and Holiday. These businesses already face a different reality than those located closer to the public parking lots and parking garage. They rely heavily on convenient, accessible parking directly in front of their storefronts. Unlike some destinations where customers plan ahead and walk longer distances, many downtown purchases happen because someone sees a business, finds a place to stop, and walks inside. In a coastal community that receives so much rain each year, removing convenient access is not just a minor inconvenience, it changes customer behavior. If visitors and residents cannot easily access these businesses, especially during the long rainy season, we risk seeing a significant decline in foot traffic and sales. My concern is that the unintended consequences will not simply change the traffic patterns. It could be a loss of locally owned businesses, vacant storefronts, and a less vibrant entrance into our downtown. That's not the future any of us want to see for Seaside's commerce base or for the gateway that welcomes people into the heart of our community. The traffic timing challenges at this intersection are real, but they are also concentrated during limited numbers of peak days each year. I ask that we carefully consider whether saving a minute or two of travel time during those peak periods is worth risking the livelihood of year-round businesses that serve our community every day. Progress and preservation can happen together. In this case, the signal-only low build option provides an opportunity to improve the intersection while protecting the small business that makes downtown unique. I respectfully urge you to advocate for the low build option. Thank you.

Thank you. Did I see another hand from somewhere? Yes.

Jackie Sturman, Seaside, Oregon. I live and move around here. I am not a business owner. I'm retired, so I don't have the same feelings about... street parking. However, I feel like the standard option is the best for, makes more sense for having a deeper area for people to move into the term lanes. Also, I'm wondering if areas that are off, like say, Avenue A and other places can be opened for public parking in some way. I don't know who owns the properties, but I know that there's places that are just vacant most of the time. And maybe that would be a good option for people who want to shop downtown because it's not that far away. It's like a block. So that's my thoughts.

Thank you. Is that it? Okay, councilors, let's start with Patrick.

I understand the business aspect and the low build. I also am looking at the safety. Right now it's 15% is where ODOT puts us in the danger zone with regards to accidents and pedestrian problems there. And I think that... preserving as many spaces as possible is is great but we have to do something or we lose this opportunity the standard build is a good build that's what ODOT says however I would like to preserve as many spaces as possible parking spaces I know it's going to impact business community so I would lean heavily toward the balanced or the parking preservation thank you Chris it's sort of a deduction exercise for me in my mind so

I think about what we got back from the survey and what we value in Seaside, and I think clearly we heard safety and traffic flow are top of mind for a lot of people. We also hear and heard parking spaces are top of mind for businesses, and it's not like never the twain shall meet with those two. There is overlap. So when we think about values, it's safety, traffic flow, and the businesses. That makes me, leads me to remove the no-build option from my mind. So I do think safety is paramount at that intersection, and I think we would be irresponsible to not do anything about that when given the opportunity from ODOT. So then when I think about the build options, I asked very specifically at the open house that we had here from one of the ODOT representatives about the deceleration lane and what the differences were between the length of that lane. And the feedback that I got was that the difference is very, very minimal, almost that we would not even notice it. The flow priority or the flow value would be not impacted very much by the length of the decelerization zone, which says to me then, why wouldn't we preserve as much parking as we possibly could? Start with the most conservative approach, the least impact to the businesses, two parking spots, the loss of two parking spots, but the gain of a safe and free-flowing intersection. As Spencer described, if we were to find out, well, that really doesn't work, we redo striping at some point but start with it'd be very difficult in my mind to go the other way so that's a long way to say my recommendation is the parking preservation build at this point

All right, so a few of my priorities. Public safety obviously is the big one. That's why ODOT is coming to us. One of the biggest issues we have is our city is growing and the road system is going to have to be adapted as much as we don't like it. I mean, I don't like to see change, especially in those sensitive areas, but it is inevitable. Traffic flow, definitely a big issue coming both directions. Definitely need to take action there. And this is, you know, ODOT came to us with money and this is an opportunity to deal with that. As far as parking, I've been a big stickler about the parking issue, as Spencer mentioned, and I tried to push it to the absolute limits to see if we can eliminate no parking on the west side. And I think that comes with a lot of other problems that are probably not worth going down as far as the engineering and moving fire hydrants and things like that. Want to try to see if we could get the build we need for the intersection But also keep our parking and I think I probably pushed a little too far there as far as Being put on a timeline I never like these situations where we're forced to act in a certain period of time without being able to go through the process at a slow pace, but Unfortunately, that's kind of where we're at now A couple of other issues that I would need assurance on is Seaside Brewing. We know that they're going to lose a little bit of property. And Spencer did assure me that they will be fairly compensated for that. And I think we did confirm that their sign would not be disrupted. It would just be a small bit of landscaping, correct?

I don't know if I can say confirmed, but I don't think it's impacted. But if it is ODOT relocates it and and make sure it's just as good as it was before. But looking at the plans, I think it most of the impact is right at the actual corner and their sign is set off from that a little bit so.

So the plans that you've submitted, it definitely does not disturb the signs. So I'm going with that. I would say I submitted, ODOT submitted. Correct. Off-season construction, it's very important for me that this project happens during the off-season, and I've been assured that that would be the case. Um, there's also the mid block crosswalk that's been discussed, and this is something that we can actually decide at a later date if we choose to, but I would like to have a conversation with that neighborhood to see what's more important. Saving that crosswalk and losing some parking or getting, saving as many parking spots as possible. So those are things I'd like to see. And then Sunset Empire mentioned that they want the dedicated drop-off area, and we've been assured that that will work with them to try to make that happen. And then the other thing that wasn't mentioned was the old church by the library. This council voted to demolish that building, and there's really no plans to build there, so that could be an extra parking lot that we could use. in the future to kind of make up for some of the lost parking on the east side of the highway that could serve the library, Sunset Empire, the pool, all those things. So with all that being said, no solution here is perfect, but I am in favor of the parking preservation build.

Thank you. I probably go back longer than I think anybody left here. Our public works director from years ago is the one that actually started talking to ODOT about this project. He's since retired and was left in my court because I am part of the Northwest Act for Region 2 of ODOT. And that's how we managed to get this project awarded to us as opposed to, I think we were going against one in Astoria and one in St. Helens. So we moved to the top of the list because we have the worst safety record. Bottom line, I agree with you guys. I think... Parking preservation is where I came in tonight after thinking about all of this. Based on the survey results, I would even maybe bump that up to balanced, but I've always thought, as Spencer has mentioned before, and Others have that, you know, do we rip the bandage off now and just do it, or can we wait and see how it goes? And hopefully it's long enough that at least I won't be here, and some of you younger folks can take care of it. But I think overall the parking preservation is the one to go for. I do pretty strongly feel like that crosswalk in the mid block is unsafe. I have used it probably plenty. I pretty much now try to cross at one of the corners rather than there because vehicles are just not expecting, particularly during the busy time of year, expecting somebody to walk in front of them there. And just this came up this morning. If you have a chance, get a copy of the New York Times or see if you can go online and find it. Today there was a really good article about the size of vehicles compared to even like 10 years ago. Used to be most vehicles' hoods were 30 inches or lower. Nowadays, they're mostly 40 to maybe even more. And part of the safety things that went into making vehicle safety safer was creating that, I think it's called an A-bar. which basically what they did is they widened it and it blocks a whole area here and then the big bigger mirrors that you need with bigger vehicles blocks another area and again i've seen that i've seen it happen right out here i've been crossing the crosswalk before and people i don't pay attention what size the vehicle it is i'm just getting out of the way But people are in just a hurry to go places, and it doesn't matter what you're driving, people are just unsafe. And I haven't been here when I've actually seen a crash or a fatality of crossing that, but I don't want to be here either when that happens. So the other thing I noticed, all builds basically, according to ODA, have the same improved wait times. So I don't think we lose anything by doing that. If we can hold off or you want to see if the businesses are okay with removing the crosswalk, I suppose we can, but I'll just go on record saying I think it's not a good idea to have a crosswalk there. Most of our crosswalks are on corners. And we discovered recently that a lot of them aren't striped properly as they are. So we need to and are going to be working on that.

American and yeah just for clarification on that so I think we have options in the future but as though that starts to design this the current design is to remove it I think it's that's not a decision to come back to later however the option of putting it back in so i guess i guess i would say if you're picking the parking preservation you could leave it the way it is but that's then but you lose you lose the parking spots and so um that could be a discussion later but if we want them to be removed as part of this project odot needs to design that into their construction especially if they're going to pay for that cost

then I would highly recommend we go ahead, in order to get the best parking we can, remove it. Any follow-up, further conversations? It sounds like we're OK with doing a motion using the parking preservation, along with including to make sure that ODOT works with SCPRD to help them. Let somebody read the motion.

I move to select the parking preservation build as the city's preferred option for the Broadway Highway 101 intersection project and direct staff to notify ODOT of the city council's decision. I further request that ODOT staff work with SCPRD to evaluate whether a replacement loading slash unloading area can be relocated or otherwise accommodated as part of the final project design.

I second it.

Councillor Binnicker and Councillor Ansbrough. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Spencer, will you notify ODOT of our decision? I will do. Thank you. I've been asked to now actually have an actual break because we need to. So let's return at 8.24. We're all back. You have to sit down now. Okay, we're on item 12D, interview and appointment consideration. Robin Montero, City Council Ward 1 and 2, at-large vacancy. The process here. Spencer, anything you wanted to say?

I've said enough tonight.

Okay, the process here is we're gonna allow public comment if anybody wants to tell us how they feel. And then the council will be asking probably four questions unless we decide to ask more. Robin, you can come up and have a seat while we're, I'm not expecting you to respond to any public comments. So does anybody want to come forward and say anything? Seeing, hearing none, we'll move straight into the council asking their questions. Patrick?

Hi, and thanks for stepping up. I appreciate that. The question I have for you is, what is something about Seaside that you hope never changes, and what is something you believe absolutely must change?

What I hope never changes is my outlook of the wonder of the geography and the participation in our community. We're all here because we love it here. We're not stuck. This is a choice we've made. And that's big in my world. That's really big, the participation in the community. One thing that I hope that changes Those are opportunities. Gee whiz, that's a tough one to ask. What do I hope to change is that we have more participation for public service. Hear that, Ward 3? Seriously, it's rewarding. It's taking ownership of the responsibility and participating in what needs to be done. It's our own backyard, for Pete's sakes. Step up, like you said. Thank you.

Any follow-up? Chris? Chris?

Microphone. How would you balance the needs of residents with the needs of visitors and the tourism economy?

Oh, isn't that just like spinning plates, right, Spencer? Spinning plates. You have to listen. And you have to listen to your residents. You have to listen to the tourists. I mean, they are our economy. We all know that. That's our economy. And it's a fine, fine balance. As a resident, I know that I can appreciate our emergency services. I know anywhere I can be anywhere in this city and with two minutes if I need help. I've got it. They are there that is such a high priority for safety for both our tourists and our residents and

What would the residents like to have?

Tell us. And I don't want to go to the court of public opinion on a social media site. Tell us. What do you need? I know what I wanted to see. more of and that's public art and I think the effort through the chamber and working with the city has has made huge strides in putting public art and how it changes the perception of not only tourism, but it's for the residents and It's 95 degrees and sunny in Portland right now. It's 62 and foggy here. And this is what it's like most of the time. And we know what public art does and color does emotionally and spiritually and for the good of your old well-being. So bringing more public art, more public understanding, tell us what you want. And, you know, let's have that conversation.

Thank you.

I up?

Yep.

All right. What are the three biggest challenges you see facing Seaside in the next five years?

Those aren't challenges, Seth. Those are opportunities.

All right. Three biggest opportunities.

Okay. The three biggest opportunities. Being prepared for the 10,000 threshold. My background, and I've got my little list here, but my background is project management for 25 years. And you have to be prepared. In the position I was in, I had to plan out for at least 18 months. 18 months in advance of whatever I was doing. And that's planning out your infrastructure, as we know that things are happening. Thank goodness for the roads and the sewer. All the infrastructure, the safety services, being on top of the emergency management plan, our transportation plan. I mean, it's all those basics. And just paying attention, it's so much more productive to be proactive than it is reactive. And when a crisis happens, then you are prepared. So that's my biggest thing is being proactive and proactive. let's plan for the worst and hope for the best. But it's clearly planning and project management in any situation that could arise with our growth because we're going to get there. We're going to be crossing that 10,000 mark sooner or later, hopefully in my lifetime. But then that changes everything. So, you know, the rules change to the city from 9,999 to 10,000. So...

Okay. Thank you.

This one is, well, it'll be obvious why I ask it. I actually got it from Patrick, but he and I were thinking the same thing. What do you believe residents misunderstand most about city government, and how would you help bridge that gap?

I think they might misunderstand just about everything because they don't ask or not ask in the right places. The news alerts that come from the city, what a great communication. I get them weekly, or if it's an emergency notice, I get that. The communication has improved incredibly over the past two years, and I'm grateful for that. Attend meetings participate if you're not able to participate All the meetings are on YouTube ask questions ask questions of any other counselors anybody in city government ask your neighbors and If you want to know what's going on, let's find a way to help you figure that out and get you in full communication with and advise us what's happening.

Did you have a thing prepared for us? You want to make a statement?

Did you throw off my mojo there?

Well, kind of on purpose, yes.

I know, and you did good. You know me. Well, I am Robin Monteiro. Hello. The function of a city council is to represent and protect the community's interest as a whole, manage public resources responsibly, anticipate the future needs of a growing beach community while preserving the balance of tourism and the residential quality of life. My pledge is to preserve our natural resources without compromise, Honor our history and celebrate the diversity of our community. Address challenges with integrity resulting in equitable and common sense solutions. Be dedicated to meet and exceed city goals in a timely manner while ensuring the voices of neighbors and stewardship responsibilities are at the forefront of every decision. We all scrapped out our livelihood when we were kids. Patty, I didn't have a paper route, but I did cut my neighbors' flowers and sell the bouquets back to them. But, you know, you've got to be enterprising. You know, I did sewing and I did costumes and all that to get my Reese's Peanut Butter Cup money. As I mentioned, I have 25 years of project management and being proactive while avoiding the pitfall out of getting into the weeds is part of my experience. My personal history related to Seaside is we purchased a home 25 years ago and became a business community a year after that. In business, I was a partner in Montero Sisters Fabrics and creative inspiration with my sister-in-law. And in 2013, my husband and I became partners in hotels and a catering company. We are owners of commercial and residential properties here in town. My community services, civic duty as I call it, planning commission since February of 2019, steering committee for the Seaside 2050 comprehensive plan, Chamber of Commerce board, the community enrichment chair, curator of the Butterfield Cottage at the Seaside Museum, board president of the Seaside Education Foundation, a supporter of CCA, I'm project-oriented. If anybody knows me, they know this. And locally, I think my first project was a collaborative effort with my neighbors. We presented to city council in 2010 and finally got it installed in 2016. And that is the Sailor's Grave Information Board with help with the neighbors, the city, and Public Works. Public art, the trash receptacle art campaign, two phases, October of 2025 and April of 2026. Public art, upcoming mural at downtown public parking. I host semi-annual fundraiser events at the Butterfield Cottage since 2022, and I'm an all-around seaside cheerleader. Here's my philosophy in case anybody had any questions. Love who you love. Stay curious. Explore the unlimited possibilities at our library. Leave the court of social media opinion outside the door. Smile. Use your brain. Be kind. And do good things. Thank you. That is it.

Any further comments or questions, council? If none, may I have a motion?

I move to appoint Robin Montero to vacant Ward 1 and 2 at-large city council position.

Second.

Second. Third. Aye.

That's Council President Morrissey, and I think Councilor Binnicker got in there.

Doesn't matter. Oh, well. That's all right. All right.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Appointed to the vacant position, Ward 1 and 2 at large, Robin Montero.

Thank you.

Please stand up there. Councillor Monteiro, you can come back. And Kim is gonna administer the oath. I took my card back.

It's the diva duet. John. OK.

Hold up your right hand. I state your name.

I, Robin Monteiro.

Do solemnly swear and affirm.

Do solemnly swear and affirm.

That I will support the Constitution of the laws.

That I will support the constitution of the laws.

Of the United States and the state of Oregon.

Of the United States and the state of Oregon.

And the charter ordinances and the rules of.

And the charter ordinances and the rules of. Procedures for the city of Seaside. Procedures of the city of Seaside.

And that I will faithfully and honorably.

And that I will faithfully and honorably. Perform the duties of the office. Perform the duties of the office. For which I'm about to assume. For which I'm about to assume.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Have a seat next to councillor Binnicker councillor Montero Now I've got to be more specific I can't say that anymore I can't sprawl out down here Okay, city staff. Everybody said enough? Nope. Paul has more to say. You got more pictures?

Save the best for last. Oh, goody.

I promise to go through slides faster than Spencer.

Okay.

We have been busy. And as I like to brag about the guys, and I was telling them today that the council doesn't even know half of the things you guys do. So this is the other half. So I'm going to run through North Tank Update, the airport beaver dams, FEMA funding, operations and maintenance updated, wastewater treatment plants, Seltzer Park, women's shower, the city farm, the water intertie, Public Works new truck fleet, so you can see what you guys paid for, and end up with the prom weeds removal. North tank, we just finished up the interior of the tank. And one of the things that was holding out was when they started working on the roof, they started getting flexes between the plates on the ceiling and they opened up and we were getting some significant rust. So we had those sealed up. They finished that up last week and the water department has filled the tank They have submitted a test, and hopefully by Wednesday it'll be in full operation. So North Tank will be back into the system well ahead of the 4th of July weekend. Big thanks to Kevin Nagel and his crew for getting this pushed forward and done before the heavy season here. You missed one of your proclamations. We want to declare this VB day. Victory over the beavers. So I asked AI to make a picture, and this is what it came up with. This is evil AI of our victory. The stream shall flow. So just to recall, this is what we started out with, several dams. It was actually about eight or nine along that whole eastern side of the airport. Now, there's a disclaimer. No beavers were harmed in the process of this remedy, and all remedy was discussed with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife prior to being conducted. So we declare VB day after clearing and scorched earth and there was actually electroshock that the state performed out there when they did a survey. So we gave them the whole 10 yards here. So the far left picture is the before picture and the one next to it is the after picture. So they hadn't cleared this area in a long time and there was some significant encroachment. The bottom picture kind of shows you that we did a controlled burn out there. And the reason we did a controlled burn because they generated so much brush and slash that it would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars. So I tip my hat reluctantly. to City of Seaside, City of Gearhart, Lewis and Clark, Oregon Military Department, Fire Departments for their controlled burn and saving us, the city, considerable funds. So if you see them, thank them for that. They had a great time out there. I don't think they should have been paid for it because it was fun. As you can see, they burned quite a bit and they did us a great favor. Also, a big thanks to Matt Long, Chris Polson, Tanner Rich, They did the bulk of this and they did an incredible amount of work in a very short period of time. And it was a very successful project. FEMA funding. I know Zach touched on this. So this is a little bit of an itinerary. Great news. FEMA has included clouds of county in their list of counties to get emergency response reimbursements for measures taken during the December, mid-December storm events. So what happened initially in January and February, we submitted costs, the county did, to Oregon Emergency Management. And we didn't make the list. We came up short, which seemed kind of funny that we didn't hit a threshold. And back in April, Oregon Emergency Management came back to me and they asked if we had any further follow-on permanent solution costs. And we actually did, because I had been talking with... SOME OF THE AGENCIES ABOUT THE FOLLOW-ON WORK THAT NEEDED TO BE DONE. SO WE REORDERED THE COST ESTIMATE WHICH WAS SUBSTANTIALLY MORE AND SUBMITTED IT AND WE MADE THE LIST. AND WE HAVE ALREADY STARTED HAVING SOME MEETINGS, WILL AND ANNE AND MYSELF MET WITH FEMA THE OTHER DAY TO START THAT PROCESS. Again, a very special thanks to Lily Leasley at Oregon Emergency Management and her hard work for coming back and asking us to do this. Also, Ann McBride and Will Landry at City of Seaside for supporting the ongoing FEMA submittal work. They've been doing great work here. So if you see any of those folks, you give them a big thank you because we're talking substantial money into the six figures. So... Wastewater treatment plant operations maintenance and updates. So I know that there had been some complaints about the odor issue. The far left picture shows what I call the both aeration basins are back in operations and the proper happy Willy Wonka chocolate brown color, that's the happy color that we want them to be. Low odor, highly effective at doing their job. I always think of the movie and who's a Gustav went into the river. So this is not one of those rivers you want to fall into though. The second picture, exterior piping painting work is nearly complete. Chris, our summer help, has done a fantastic job removing the rust and painting these. This go-around is funny. Our wastewater department supervisor, he started in the department seven years ago as summer help, and he was doing this, but the paint wasn't really the appropriate type. He did the research. I'm talking about Walter Mills. He did the research and got the proper paint from Sherwin-Williams, and you can see you go all over the plant. It's all solid gray right now. It should hold up in this environment far better. Our thickener station, and this is something that most people don't think about. We had a problem in there with turbulent flow, and it was messing up the float system in there. So they had turned it in long ago, had turned it on to hand mode, which basically means it just runs all the time. And eventually you burn up pumps that way. So I stepped in and talked with Walter and his crew and devised a way around that. It was pretty cost-effective. We put in a stilling well inside the station, which protects the float systems. So another kudos to Walter, JP, Cole, Ian, Howard for their great work. It is now running in automatic, and the pump is protecting. We shouldn't have those issues again. this is a long-term fix that cost us very little. Also, kudos to our two new employees out there. Now that we have a full staff of Ian and Howard, they are working out fantastically. Seltzer Park Women's Shower. I figured that there might be some cheers for this because this has been long in the planning. You can see the pre-construction and that picture I took today. The blue is where the shower tower will be and the yellow posts are going to be some towel racks and that table that you see in the pre-construction will actually be set just to the left of the shower tower. So That'll be a new pad right there. We started construction about a week, week and a half ago. We've made significant process. They've formed it up actually this afternoon and we'll be setting concrete this week and hopefully. IT WILL BE OPERATIONAL BY THE END OF NEXT WEEK. WE DEFINITELY EXPECT TO BE OPERATIONAL BEFORE THE FOURTH. AGAIN, SPECIAL THANKS TO KEVIN NAGLE, CESAR ANCALA, DALTON KNIGHT, THE WATER DEPARTMENT GUYS. WE TOOK A LOOK AT THE EXISTENT PIPING IN THERE. IT WAS NOT ADEQUATE FOR THIS TOWER SO WE REPIPED IT AND ARE RUNNING A NEW SLEEVE OUT TO IT SO IT WILL BE EASY TO FIX. MATT LONG AND CHRIS POLSON HAVE ALSO BEEN WORKING ON THIS PROJECT AND ARE DOING A FANTASTIC JOB. Just task these guys and they just crank away. We had a couple issues. We had to move one of the light posts and we moved that over and got it rewired up. They've done a great job. So don't go in there, but you can see it from the sidewalk. It's kind of a fun thing to watch and it's been moving fast. The city farm, did you guys all know we had a farm out? And you can see where it is on the map. It's closer to Astoria than us, way out on the Lewis and Clark. And you can see it kind of sketched out approximately where the property boundary is. We take our spoils from the street sweeper out there. And we used to take our sludge from the wastewater plant out there. and land farmers. So this is an incredibly fertile area. We lease it out for haying. The guy maintains the property and he gets hay for it. But we've been dropping our spoils right on the edge of this cliff. And don't ask me why. I finally went out there and took a look at it with the guys because they were complaining that they were running out of room. And I said, this is not geotechnically sound. And you can see kind of the drop off in the 3D image there. That does not show how steep it actually is. It's actually worse than that. So we talked through it in some of our and took a look around in the areas. What would be the least impact to the agribull land there while giving us a good solid location that we could deal with spoils for the next 20 years? So we moved it to that new location. You can see kind of the orange bar. And I will say that Matt and Chris came up with a great idea to expend our waste stockpile of pavement rubble that we have, because sometimes we have pavement rubble from projects, and we stockpile it near public works. We used it for road-based construction, because this doesn't have to be a high-end road. It's a gravel road, but it was... Applied out here which saved us considerable money both in not having to buy it But also having to dispose of it so big cost savings there Again, thank this the streets crew Matt and Chris for that. They did a fantastic job out there and you can see the new road going Out towards it in the left picture and then at the new drops location in the right picture so The water system air tie, it is completed. Did you guys know about this? Because I think I talked about it before. This provides the east tank to supplement the lower pressure zone, which is the majority of the town. If we had an emergency where we lost the south tank and the north tank was getting drawn down and we had a major fire, we could tap into the east tank here. What we did is we took the old sunset booster station and we reversed the flow. So it used to pump up to the sunset zone before we had the east tank. So now it actually goes in the other direction. And you see that light blue fixture right there, that is called a pressure reducing control valve. So 110 PSI water pressure hits that at about 1200 GPM. and comes out of it at about 65-70 psi. So it doesn't blow out the lower zone and we can turn that on or off at will. That bright red thin valve is an actuated valve which can be controlled automatically. Now we haven't finished the control system for that but we can manually operate this. So this allows us to tap into a resource we didn't have and This project cost us very little because we repurposed this station. Big thanks to Kevin Nagel, Dalton, Cesar Duke, Sheasley, and Cesar, and Corey from AEC for putting this together over the last couple months. So what did you guys buy for our public works vehicles? So the water department got two rigs. They got an F-150 and a 250 with a utility box. The sewer department got an F-150. And they got it with a rack. And I'll talk about that in a minute. Then we got an F-550 to replace our blue truck, which was our old boom truck, which literally stopped working the day we put this one in service. And then the streets got F-150 and 350. And all these trucks only have two different type engines. So we tried to standardize the fleet in this process. In this process, we took a look at getting some extras for it. We got a tommy lift for the sewer truck. But all of the racks for all the trucks were made by Matt Long and saved us about six grand. If we had had to purchase these individually, it would have been quite more expensive because I think it only cost him about $1,500 in materials. And it would have been about $7,500 to buy all this stuff. And I think the pipe rack that you see in the right picture is more stout than most of the industrial-grade ones. So a phenomenal job, and you can see he built all that. Steven Keever, our fleet mechanic, put in all the lights, which again saved us about $5,000 versus having Ford install them. Line-X, the local Line-X provider here, they did all the undercoatings and bedlining for us. So I'm going to finish up with prom beautification. We got a note the other day from the powers in front of me that they were concerned about weeds. So Walter Mills and Chris went out there and knocked it out in a few hours and it looks 10 times better. So if you see those guys, give them a big thank you. So that's it. Thank you.

You bet. Thank you.

Seeing nobody else jumping up here. Anything done?

We are fully staffed at City Hall again. Lexi Monreal joined us as our court and office support specialist. She started today. So it was a busy day, but we're happy to have her on board. And I had one other, oh, yeah, somebody next to me celebrating a special day. So she's probably not happy that I'm going to call her out, but she spent her entire birthday with us today. So happy birthday to Kim.

Happy birthday.

That was enough. Okay. Spencer?

You've heard enough from me. Okay.

Patrick?

Well, I'd just like to say again, please consider applying for one of the open positions on the committees or commissions. This is a great way to understand how the city operates and provide input for its future. You have to be of voting age to apply and bring whatever experience you have. And you can also learn along the way while you are on the committee or commission. We're looking for people who would like to make a difference in this community. I had a great coffee with the counselor on the 13th. The next one is going to be July 28th at the same location, and that's the Wine and Beer House in the Outlet Mall. I want to thank Rob Edens for hosting. I also want to promote, this is not a government Facebook page, but this is a Facebook page where the community can get together and discuss things. And it's a place where we can share our thoughts about the direction of Seaside, upcoming events. It's a moderated page and discussion is encouraged. Opposing viewpoints are honored. And this is a page for information, positivity, and polite conversation only. We play nice here. So it's called Anchor Seaside. And this is the QR code. Hold it up for a second if anybody wants to get out their camera and look at it. Or they can look at it later. Fourth of July is coming up. and it's our country's 250th anniversary. I was at the celebration for its bicentennial in New York, which was a real blast. I want to say that be responsible for your celebration on the 4th of July. Remember, no illegal fireworks, please. Honor our neighbors, our veterans, and our pets by minimizing the noise impact of extended fireworks celebrations when we respect each other we respect our community thank you

Well first I want to start off by saying I really love hearing from Paul I love hearing what's going on and how people are so creative our staffs are so creative in helping the city save money and Doing things they obviously like to do this and so keep it up. Thank you to all of them and thank you for telling us about it because the more we know about the, I'm going to say the less visible things that happen in our community, the better it is for all of us. Commendations to our fire department. As usual, I'm very impressed with everything we're doing and that you're doing. And I have to say, I always feel very safe in Seaside. I know that our safety officers, both fire and police, are hard on the job for us. I'm also impressed with the communicating and implementing our actions for what we're going to do about Fourth of July for illegal fireworks. And just want to remind everybody, it's not just about the 4th of July. It's about the whole year. It's about all of the things that happen. We had fireworks going off last weekend. We know we'll have fireworks going off at Christmas, at New Year's. And so this is a good test run and a good proving ground, I think. And I'm hoping we will be very successful. Last week I spent a week in San Francisco. And it's been about 30 years since I've been to San Francisco and really found that I went there and saw things with a different mindset than 30 years ago, and it's not just the age. My mindset wasn't a tourist. My mindset was looking at how do they do their infrastructure? How do they do this? How do they do that? I was so impressed by their urban parks and by the... The adult play areas that they had all over the place with very little supervision for games that were out, for exercise areas, for urban gardens and vegetable gardens right in the middle of town. It was very impressive. A couple of things that really... I thought about every single corner of every single intersection has audible crossing signals. There's audible that tells you when to walk, and there's audible that tells you when not to walk. Every place I went, I could close my eyes and I would know when it was safe to cross the street. That was very impressive to me. Their bus system was very impressive. As I was standing when I was first there, I saw this weird car going down the street. And I went, what's that? What does Waymo mean? It is the autonomous Uber. Nobody's driving. And I had to take it. So I, and I have video of getting in and watching the steering wheel move by itself. And I felt very safe. But it definitely gave me a sense of the wave of the future. The people on their electric bicycles, electric scooters, electric unicycle things, zipping down the hills and the streets of San Francisco. And that was scary to watch. And many of them without even helmets. And all I could think of is, when is this all going to hit seaside? So anyway, it was a good vacation and I was very glad to get back. Thank you.

Welcome to our team, Councillor Robin Montero. I'll get you a little bit of time to get acclimated before I start assigning you liaisons. Other councillors, if you have an idea you want to give up one or change one, let me know. No, all of a sudden now we have another opening on the Planning Commission Please please Submit your resignation So at this time you kind of know what we do and I do you're welcome to make a few comments Oh, it's my turn The fourth of July fine structure

I'm just going to say, use your brain. Don't trade your beer money for bail money. Leave it at home. And thank you. I had to get that out first. Thank you for the appointment. I appreciate it. I'm tickled pink to be up here. and if anybody would like to have a conversation with a counselor about first thursday of the month at 10 o'clock at seaside coffee house and we'll go from there and i'm sure i'll have much more to say next time thank you chris

I had a convention center meeting last week. Great meeting, great attendance. There is a lot happening this summer. Busy, busy time. So they are booked and the team is working really hard and they're replacing an oven and lots going on there. So thank you to that whole team and committee. I also met with the chair of our budget committee, Kathleen McDonald, so thank you to her. And we have a proposal for a new grant or newer improved grant application process. So I'll be talking to Spencer about how to get that scheduled for review for... For everyone, committee and council and all that, we are way ahead of the game. So it's in preparation for next year, but we wanted to get it done while it was fresh. So that will be coming. My coffee with the counselor will be July 4th, Saturday. So I am going to, is that Saturday?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. So I will be canceling coffee this month in lieu of the 4th of July. But if anybody wants to talk, I am easy to get a hold of. Happy to do that at any point. And just another shout out about July 4th. There has been a lot of work by the chamber and by city staff to get us prepared for what will be happening on that day. And I just want to say thank you to everybody who's put us in such a good position and then to everybody have fun. Be safe and enjoy.

Welcome Robin to the Council. Great to have you. As always, I'm looking forward to walking in the parade and handing out flags with all you. Hopefully everyone will be there. Yeah, I was just going to ask birthday.

Is it business? Is it business as usual?

Alright. And then finally, Coffee with the Council President at Seaside Coffeehouse, Tuesday, July 7th at 9.15 a.m.

It's not just the flags. You get to ride the fire truck. Yes. At least a little bit. My kids' favorite part. Yeah, that's right. I'm very proud of all of you and the fact that I don't think I've ever seen a city where you could sit down and have coffee with a counselor, every counselor. So that puts the pressure on whoever we end up getting for Ward 3, but excellent job. I've got another thing to brag about the mayor's conference for seaside July 7th is the next Planning Commission meeting and as far as I know that's when they're gonna talk about the comprehensive plan again and and possibly move it forward. So get the word out, please. Make sure it gets on our website. Get people to know that's there. It's very important for a base for us to move forward. Just encourage, and if you haven't read it yet, make sure you do. I know Robin has. Summer is here, obviously, although the weather today really took a turn. Soccer in the sand. Miss Oregon is in town. Corgi Day is coming up. Obviously, July 4th is coming up. So this is the time of year when you put on your happy face and grin and bear it and just remember that we live in Seaside, and this is what makes Seaside Seaside. Todd earlier mentioned about the naming of the island. This is something that I initiated a few months ago, and it's supported by the Seaside Museum as well as the Clatsop-Nahalem tribe. The Oregon Geographic Names Board meets this Friday at 1.30 p.m. If you'd like a nice little drive to Dufer, Oregon, you could attend it in person at but if you want to watch it you can just look up Oregon Geographic Names Board you can find the agenda but that naming is on there I will pretty much assume that it will get approved and if it does it goes to the national board who has the final say and they meet monthly as opposed to the Oregon board only meets twice a year So hopefully we should be able to plan some kind of community celebration late this summer and early fall to name this island. Again, I'm doing it, you know, I am the mayor, but I'm mainly doing it because I can look out my office window and the island's right there. And I would really like it to be named something other than Wolfman Island, which was the original request. Oh, a reminder on Wednesday, July 8th at 3 p.m., we're going to hold various readings of the Declaration of Independence. It should take about 10 to 15 minutes. So far, City Hall, I'm going to hold one here, and the Seaside Museum, Hillcrest Inn, and I think American Legion. And if anybody else wants to do it, let me know. I will get you copies of it. Like I said, it only takes, you know, 10 minutes or so to read it out loud. And this is in honor of the first time it was read on July 8, 1776 in, I believe it was read in Philadelphia. So Eastern time zone, although they didn't have such a thing back then.

Does it have to happen at 3 p.m.?

That is the reason we're doing it at 3 is because it was read at 6 Eastern time. So this was actually something started by the America 250 organization in Hawaii because Hawaii was kind of unknown in 1776, and they thought this would be a really cool thing, and so they initiated it. And so my quote tonight is, as we approach the 250th birthday of the nation, I'll leave you with the words of famous silent Cal, President Calvin Coolidge, that he said at the 150th anniversary celebration 100 years ago in 1926. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments drive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. So let's pledge to honor these enduring principles as we serve our community. Happy Independence Day, a little bit early. We're adjourned.