City Council - Regular Meeting

To the flag of the United States to the standice.

There we go. Um, thank you everybody. Um, all council is in attendance with the exception of council or who's been excused for tonight. Um, are there any additions to the agenda? No. Are there any declarations of exarty contact, conflict of interest, bias, etc.? I don't hear any. Is there any opportunity for public comment? Do we have anybody wishing to offer public comment? No. Uh, that leads us to the consent agenda from December 15th, the city council work session minutes and the December 15th city council regular session minutes. What would council like to do? Mr. Mayor,

councelor Sims, I'll make a motion to uh accept the consent agenda as presented. Mr. Mayor, this councelor Patty seconded. Okay. Motion a second to um adopt the consent agenda as submitted. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. leads us to a presentation from chariots. Julia.

Yes. Um if you recall several meetings ago um actually several months ago, council wanted to get an update on um chariots and their service. And we have um several representatives from chariots here. Uh I believe doing the uh doing the initial um intro is the chariots's board president U Maria Yinos Pressy and then we have um Jolan Frankie hope I said your name right um is a transit planner who will be doing the presentation and then we also have um Alan Pollock the general manager of chariots and Chopi Alazum the chief planning and development officer. So um with that I think Maria you are going to start kick kick us off. Good evening, mayor and counselors. Um, I am very jealous of this system that you have right here. Um, I'm Maria No Pressie. I'm the board president for the Salem Area Mass Transit District, also known as Chariots. And, um, again, thank you so much for letting us come and present a little bit about, uh, what we like to nerd out about. So, our Chariots Regional Service serving out here is designed specifically to help folks from the smaller areas in Marion and Pulk counties to be able to get into Salem and access services that they may need. Um, this helps people get to jobs, hospitals, grocery stores, etc. Um, and we are hoping to provide some additional information and also encourage folks and anybody out there that is viewing to uh also participate with Chariots. There's a couple of different ways that folks can uh help inform the way that we make some of our decisions. We have um the statewide transportation improvement fund advisory committee which advises the board on projects that's funded by

the statewide employee payroll tax. members must live within Marian and Pulk counties and the community advisory committee which advises the board on transit related matters that impact the community. Those members must live and or work within the Salem Kaiser urban growth boundary. So if folks are coming into Salem to to work, they are able to participate. Um so very briefly, I wonder if I kept to my time limit. Um I will hand it over to our uh transit planner, Jolen Frankie. Hi. Um, yeah, my name is Jolyn and I'm a transit planner. Um, I've been with Chariots for, um, coming up on 11 years actually. So, um, thank you so much for inviting us out tonight. Um, happy to be here. Happy to share about our regional services. I have just four slides to share and then we'll have some time at the end for questions. Okay, we'll just dive right in. Uh so up on the screen here we have our regional system map and I'll kind of walk through that with you. Uh so our regional service is comprised of eight routes that serve 19 different towns and cities within Mary and Pole counties and also connect with uh 10 other neighboring service providers in the um pane there on the right side of the screen. Um so six of our eight routes are what we call regional express routes. So they're providing bus service um between towns and cities with limited stops in each one that they serve. Uh then we have one uh commuter express route that connects the metropol metropolitan areas of Wilsonville and Salem with no stops in between. And then we have a deviated fixed route which operates in Dallas, Monmouth and

Independence. And all of these uh services are funded by a combination of federal and state pass through and grant dollars. Uh next slide. Um so for for Statton we have route 30X uh Sanam Salem Express. This is a regional express route. Uh it makes four round trips per day on weekdays. Uh two of those four trips continue all the way up to Gates and then there's two additional trips on Saturdays. Um, in fiscal year 2025, uh, Route 30X provided, uh, 12,248 rides and 25% of those originated here in Sten. So, um, so what happens if we need to make a change? Well, there's two different kinds of service changes. Um, there's minor service changes. Those happen regularly, three times a year, every January, May, and September. uh they're really focused on um improving on-time performance and e efficiency of our existing services. Um or they can be used to address something like a long-term detour if there's a major construction project going on. Um and of course anything safety related we want to get um in front of as soon as possible. Um then there's major service changes. Those are very different. They're heavily dependent on funding availability. So, they really only happen every two or more, mostly more years. Um, they are governed by policy 707, uh, which was adopted by our board of directors back in 2017. Um, it's a policy that defines a major service change as either an increase or a decrease of um, either service miles, which is how far the bus goes. um span which is when the buses start running to when the buses stop running or um

frequency which is how often the bus comes during that span. So increase or decrease of any one of those things of 15% or more is considered a major service change and is guided by policy 707. Um it involves a uh title six analysis. We want to make sure that our uh low-income minority populations, they're not going to be uh disparently impacted or disproportionately burdened by a major service change. Um we require approval from our board of directors. We have a uh public comment uh public hearing process and then of course stakeholder involvement from folks such as yourself. Um and next slide please. Uh besides uh bus service, we also have a really great vanpool program. So um this is just a snapshot of the current van pools that are serveing the Sanm Canyon. Uh van poolool is a shared commute option where um anywhere from five up to 15 people will travel together in a van. They share fuel costs um insurance and maintenance. Um, so these are typically co-workers or even just neighbors who are making the same trip every day. Um, and it just makes sense for them to pull their resources. Um, when Chariots comes in, we have our commuter options program. And that program both organizes and subsidizes those van pools. The subsidies are um funded by the uh federal surface uh transportation block grant. And for a vanpool to uh qualify for a subsidy, the work site just needs to be within the program's service area. For us, that's Marian Pulk and Yamh Hill County. Um so we currently support 39 active van pools

in our service area, including the nine that uh serve work sites in Lions City that you see on your screen. And next slide. Any questions? Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, thank you for this information and details and as you were talking, I was kind of just uh surprised honestly by the amount of rides that are coming from state and so thank you for sharing that detail with us. One point of clarification I was just curious about is are those rides um also derived from the van poolool figure that you were talking about earlier? That's just Route 30X. Wow. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, Councelor Sims,

thanks for the thanks for the brief. I really appreciate that. I did have a question on Cascade Highway near Highway 22. They're closing the the uh uh ODOT parking lot there. There's a bus stop there. There is no longer a bus stop there. So, it's gone now. Correct. Is there an additional bus stop that was put in or you just removed one bus stop or

so? Yeah, because of the short timeline that we had to act on that we we simply removed it. Um we are um in the middle of a comprehensive operational analysis and we're doing a deep dive into all of our rout including route 30x and we're going to see um what we can do with um with the route. Um, we're looking at several different options that we can bring out to the public and see what's going to work best for them, where their needs are and how we can meet those needs. So, those opportunities will be coming up for us um this spring. Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, mayor again. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Council Kerry, go ahead. Sorry, I interrupt. Go ahead. Just for clarification, you mentioned the van pool and how many passengers up to 15 you said and they're responsible for the maintenance and how does that work? What's that look like? The individual writers the individual writers are responsible for that maintenance of the van or is that coming from in house repairs? That's the writers. Okay. What's that look? How's that work? Am I not understanding this correctly? Thank you for that. My name is Chief at U. Is it good?

Yeah.

Yeah. Cherious offers subsidy for that program. So we offer up to 50% of the total operating cost and the rest is covered by either the people who are using it or their employers. So it cost can be carried totally by the employer remaining 50% or remaining cost after our subsidy or it can be split between the employer and the employee. We have cases where employee are paying all the cost after our subsidy and there are cases they're paying portion of it and there are also cases employee they're picking up all the expenses and when it comes to all the maintenance and fuel we also have a partnership with commute with enterprise so enterprise takes they take care of everything maintenance fueling and all of those things the only thing that employee they take care we have to have a designated driver. So make sure that one person is responsible for that van if anything happened. It's like a he's the captain or she uh so that person will notify uh commute with enterprise. Basically enterprise hey we have this issue. So enterprise will take care of everything. So we just offer subsidy and make sure that they're getting this.

Thank you very much. Thanks Caddyy. All right. One more followup. Sorry I sorry I it's going to be for you. Please come back. What's the minimum amount of riders or employees to set something like this up for a pool? Minimum I believe it's five, right?

We Yeah, we have vans uh capacity of seven and nine and 12 and also 15 and majority of those vans are seven passenger seats. Uh but if there's interest like 10 or 15 people grouped together, we can accommodate that. So the size depending on the interest but majority of those people are using seven passenger vans but we have enterprise can make sure that they have all size. Thank you. I have a question. Um, council or not here, but one of her um questions in the last time we talked about this was how can we best serve the folks that are using the hospital

um in town and so if you're all considering a different location for that one that's being eliminated, maybe we can incorporate that. She was really passionate about that. She heard from a lot of her people um that actually go to the hospital via public transit and that was one of the questions. So, if you guys could look at that, that'd be fantastic. And my second comment or question is how do the folks in Lynn County are they contributing at all? Lynn County. Yeah. So like the folks from Mil City that come across the bridge and use your services or even here in town that live in Lynn County, are they contributing at all to the transit authority? Yeah, just Well, they pay their fair,

but as as a government agency, they don't contribute any money. Lynn County doesn't. Gotcha. Anybody else? I just wanted to say that when you are doing your um outreach in the spring, we'd be happy to host an open house here and help you with education. So, make sure you reach out to us so we can help you. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, that leads us to uh there is no public hearing, right, Julia? So, that leads us to general business. What's happening? Are you okay? That leads us to general business and a charter amendment discussion with Mr. Williamson and Julia.

Russ Williamson is going to come up. Sorry, I was just talking to Alyssa going, "Is Ross online?" And apparently he was hiding behind um everyone was looking up and I was [laughter] wondering what we're looking up at. So, hi Ross. [clears throat] Stay in your your blind spot. That's good evening everyone. And uh councelor Hayes, we have not met so

Oh, okay. [laughter] All right. So, when we last met, it was uh this last summer, and we went through kind of the culmination of our kind of by by monthly meetings where we ticked off um different charter provisions that we wanted to look at. And then this last summer, we went through and and I presented some policy questions for you all, and you answered those policy questions. And now I'm back with uh the work product of those policy questions. And so my plan is is to uh walk through the actual wording of of the charter updates that we I've come up with based upon those policy answers that you provided me. Um and then we can see if they look good. Um I I think this will probably go fairly quickly. Um but as as and I'll do a little recap of what we looked at. Um the the major issue that we talked about was creating the mayor as a voting member of the council. Uh so and and that in itself created quite a few other changes just in terms of terminology and definitions. So there are um the document that you have in front of me in front of you uh is is a section bysection look um and it's it's thicker than it really uh looks. I mean, it's 21 pages, but a lot of the changes are are very minor. Um, so it's it's actually not quite this this dense. Um, along with the mayor getting the vote, um, we decided that the mayor should no longer have the veto authority that the mayor currently has under the charter. Uh, and then adding the mayor as a a voting member means you would currently have six. And we decided, well, let's add a counselor. Uh so we we'll have a seven member council by adding uh a a

sixth counselor. Uh and we create a process of how how we how we add that sixth member. Um we made a a a change to the city manager provision um that moves the the duties of the city manager from the the code into the charter. Uh so these would be charter level duties that the city manager would have. Uh we updated the council vacancy process. Um we updated the the annexation provision and that was just to account for some uh litigation that took place several years ago out of Corvalis. Um uh we added a provision to the the judge uh provision uh that allows that specifically allows the judge to issue an administrative warrant. Um and and that that accommodates uh things like nuisance enforcement and and code inspections and things like that. Uh and then a whole host of terminology updates. Um so that's that's the the big picture and and if you're amendable uh we can just start walking through the document um if you want. So the the first and this is in in section order for the major changes and then we get into the the back of the document where we talk about um just kind of terminology updates. Um and if you have questions along the way, please let me know. Um and so the first section is is section four and that's related to annexations. And as explained, I I think this is um essentially nons substantive. It's just accounting for that litigation in Corvalis and the statute uh OS 222127 um that allows someone to annex into the city without a vote by state by matter of state law. Uh and so what we're doing

with this update is just recognizing that uh we're still keeping the the three acre if if someone is coming in at over three acres, we're going to put that to the vote unless state law tells us otherwise. Uh section nine is kind of the meat of the matter and and this is where we uh update the mayor provision and we say that the mayor is a voting member of the council and the mayor no longer has the veto authority. Uh so those are the the big changes on that one. I'll just keep cruising until you stop me. [laughter] Uh section 17 is ordinance enactment and and this is a followup um that follows right from the mayor provision. Um this says this we we strike out the process for vetos. Uh and or the charter calls it council reconsiderations of ordinances. And so we're taking that authority away from the mayor since the mayor is just going to be a voting member of the council. The mayor will just have one vote like the rest of you. um updated a couple terms. Um made three days instead of three day. Uh you know, little little updates uh just to clean things up. Um but again, that's just following um the mayor's authority here. Um giving the mayor the vote rather than the veto. Section 33 was the next section we were dealing with and that is updating the vacancy process where you the current charter has um gives the mayor the authority to make an appointment uh with the consent of the council. And so we're instead we're changing that to a whole body process. So now it's the council is going to make the decision um instead of just saying yes or no to whatever the mayor

proposes. Um, and then we added in some additional wording. Uh, what happens if we if uh the pandemic comes back and we lose a bunch of counselors and we no longer have a quorum, you know, uh what do we do? And so we're just we're just accounting for that um slim possibility. And even even if we get down to one counselor, that one counselor can appoint one and then those two can appoint the third and so on. And so we're just the doomsday type scenario, putting that into the charter. The next provision is uh section 34 and that's the city manager provision. And again, this is where we we uh take the duties of the city manager and put those into the charter. And these are these are right from the model code or the model charter uh from the League of Oregon Cities. Um and so now these are charter level uh duties of your of your city manager. Uh and so this is these are the the people of state and are telling your city manager that uh your city manager needs to do these things. Um and we're making these charter level uh provisions. We added in a a provision about uh pointing a manager prom. Um you currently don't have that in your charter and that that's a recommendation of the the model charter. And so that's taken right out of the League of Oregon City's model charter. um how do we how do we appoint a a prom uh if we lose our city manager for either permanently or or for a short term. Uh and this is also where um councelor or requested that we define the word coerc um when we talk about um how you all interact with your city manager. Uh, and we wanted to make it clear that when we're in a public meeting, um, we can coersse the city manager however we want [laughter] because it's in a public meeting. Uh,

but if we're outside a public meeting, um, then you all individually should not be exerting pressure on your city manager to make decisions about either employment or contracts. Um, uh, so if if you really want your your city manager to hire your best friend, uh, we're not going to do that behind closed doors. We're only going to do that in open session. Um or if you want a certain contract to go a certain way, um we're only going to do that in public session. Uh we're not going to do that behind closed doors. And so we're defining what coerc means. Coarse means to apply undue pressure to your senior manager to make a decision that they uh otherwise don't have to make. And this this flows a little bit from some litigation uh in Corvalis um where the where the court had some problems looking at their charter uh and councelor Ort's request to define what what course means.

Does anybody have any questions for Ross at this point? Guess not. Yeah, I just wanted to clear Go ahead, Councelor Patty. Thank you. Sorry about that, Mayor. Uh yeah, Ross, thank you so much for all of this. I just was curious um and this is just my clarification of vocabulary in here. Council member, uh are we referring to the mayor as part of the council members in this document now?

Yeah, that's perfect. Great question. Yes. Yeah. And that's why we had to do some of the terminology changes later on is because now now we refer to a counselor and the mayor. But if the mayor is going to be a voting member, I wanted to say everyone is a council member. So the mayor is now a member of the council and our council is made up of counselors and the mayor but everyone is a member. Yeah. So good pick up on that. Thank you. Uh sorry one more. Go ahead.

Thank you. So Ross, uh towards the end we were talking about coercion and such and then you said something about it if it's during an open meeting. What what did you mean by that? What do you

um Well, what I what I actually mean is it's okay to have a discussion in an open meeting with your your employee. And so when we're out we're all out here, uh even though you're speaking individually, when you you know get the raise your hand and say, you know, I I really think we should pursue this contract. I really think we should uh hire this employee. we're doing it out in the open and presumably there's very little coercion that takes place there. Um and so we're not worried about that type of conduct. Uh we're also worried uh and and some of this comes from that Corvalis case um because the the discussions that the counselor in in the Corvales case had were in a a subcommittee meeting rather than a council meeting. uh and the judge took offense to the fact that um a counselor can't speak their mind at a public meeting. They're doing their job. They're having a discussion. They're deliberating. That's the job of a city councelor is to deliberate in a public meeting. And if you're trying to uh confine me about uh whether the the the my opinions are are coercive or not. uh the judge took offense to that. And so what we're doing here is we're saying those discussions are are okay. Uh you can have those um sometimes tense conversations that we have in deliberations uh on on policy issues um spending budget money on on big ticket items. Um you can speak your mind in in those in those sessions. What we're really concerned about here is when you knock on the the city manager's

door after hours uh and and apply that coercive pressure behind the scenes

and this will never come up here. I mean so this never so yeah. All right. Section 36 is the municipal court judge provision. And and again, this is one very small little change. We're just adding we're adding the provision uh that specifically allows your municipal judge to issue an administrative warrant. Uh so they can issue uh criminal warrants and administrative warrants. They're they're two types of warrants that can be issued by a court. We just want to be crystal clear uh that your judge has that authority. I'm not positive it was a question, but we might since we're making changes, let's let's just be crystal clear about it. And that was the that was the the last of the the substantive changes. The rest of these are just cleaning everything up to account for those changes. So now we go back to section eight and we say well the council is now six members instead of um or consists of the mayor and six counselors. So we have seven council members. Section 10 clarifies that the council president um like the mayor would not have the veto authority when the council president is acting as mayor uh if the mayor is absent for a meeting. So we we take that authority away from the council president just like we took it away from the mayor. Section 13 is your quorum provision. And here we are. We're just we're just recognizing that we're adding the seventh member. So a quorum is four instead of three. Section 18 is uh just deleting reference to the the veto authority of the mayor.

Section 20. And uh this is where we just change one term from counselor to council member because we're we're counting now seven council members instead of just five counselors. Section 23 is order approval and that very same change. So we're talking about council members instead of counselors. And then section 25 is uh defining what your counselors are. And this is where we uh create the process for appointing your sixth member. And so uh what my proposal here is that um this if this we would put this on the May ballot uh for the voters if it's approved by the voters in May it would become effective in July and then after that that first meeting in July you all would use the vacancy process to fill that sixth seat

and that sixth seat would then um serve uh until we have an equal number you So the next general election we'd vote for three and then vote for three and then vote for three. So it just adds that six person into that process. Um but it initially you would you all would use the vacancy process to presumably interview folks and and select who you think the best candidate should be. Good question. Okay.

And that's it. And so the the proposal would be if if these all look good. Um and of course you can take this home and and sleep on it. Um we can come back and uh I've got a a resolution drafted. I can work with staff on buttoning that up and we can come back sometime before the end of February um to put that on your agenda to look at. Yeah, that was going to be a question and and you certainly don't have to make a d, you know, provide direction this evening, but um the question is whether or not you want us to really push and um bring a resolution to you for that May 2026 election um or if you wanted to do later. But that's the goal is we wanted to make sure you were positioned to have this for the May 2026 election. Council have any questions for Ross or for Julia's? Thanks, Ross. Appreciate it. Uh, with that, there's an opportunity for a public comment on what Ross just laid out. Don't see any. All right. Well, council discussion,

Mr. Mayor, councelor Patty, um, you know, I first off, I just want to echo what he already said about your work on this. I really appreciate you and everything you've done to kind of take your time and explain this to us so that we understand it too. I really appreciate that. Um, I'm wondering though as far as the May ballot, if there's too much going on there, just given some of the conversations we've had about the levy, if we should think about looking at that in November versus May. And I'm not really advocating one way or another. I'm just I'm wondering and I want to pose the question to council so we can have this conversation in open forum.

Yep. Happy to entertain that question. Councelor Patty. I think um I think it depends on what other taxing agencies might be doing in in spring as well. Um yeah, I don't know that for sure yet. Have we confirmed? Uh, no, we haven't had confirmation. I did I did hear that one is likely. Um, I would say I mean if we do bring a resolution to you, um, it would be no later than the February 17th meeting, I believe. Um, we could bring a resolution and you not adopt it that evening. That's certainly um, within your purview or to table it or to do it for, you know, you can set the date. Um, so you don't, you know, you don't have to provide direction on whether or not to move forward. um you can think on it and maybe we still prepare that and then have that conversation. Um I mean there's you know maybe pros or cons just even with you know having the conversation and then not voting on it that could potentially be seen as something. So we you know you'd have to be careful on how you

don't vote for it. Um, you know, I guess one one thing I would like to know is if you do want us to bring forward the resolution just that the head nod that yes, this seems to be what you want. There wasn't anything else. Mr. Mayor, councelor, I I'm I'm actually for trying to get it on the May ballot. Just get it done. I'm about I don't want to kick it down the road. We've been talking about this for a long time. It seems like for years. I [laughter] don't know. But I I I would like to get it on the ballot and just get it done myself. Mr. Mayor, Councelor Hayes, do it.

Okay. Council Carrie. Okay. Councelor Ross [laughter] from my perspective as a policy maker

with my mic on. Um, I can't see the red light as you probably all know. Um, from my perspective as a non-policy maker, the only thing that I would uh implore you all is is the on the vote v voter education piece. And so, um, from my vantage point, these are these are pretty vanilla. um overall. Um but when you talk about um changing the what your council looks like um adding a new member uh that could come across um as a sea change and and so I I think it would be important for you all to get out in the public and educate your voters about what we're trying to do here. And what we're I think what we're trying to do here is bring the mayor on onto um the policy choices um and bringing bringing the mayor into the discussions fully um and I which when you explain it like that it's it's oh that kind of makes sense but you you actually have to get out there and and say that and so if you can do that before May perfect uh but if you feel like you need more time um then let's take the more time.

Sure. Thanks, Ross. I guess my one question is if we put this in spring, it gets passed by the voters, that seventh position is created, is that seventh position not then I understand what you're saying as far as appointment goes, but could that not also be part of the next cycle in November? I was trying to do the math and may and I would have to chat with Alyssa about how we do that. I I wanted I wanted the new counselor to slot in uh to where you currently have two, right? So, you're right. So, it would not be until the following election cycle. Yep. Gotcha.

Okay. Anybody else? Ross, thank you very much. Appreciate you all work on this. Okay, that leads us to the next item. And I anticipate this being a spirited discussion. And that is the appointment of council president. And with that, I'll turn it over to Alyssa to enlighten us. Big big decision coming your way tonight, everybody. Um, good evening, mayor and council. Before you is appointment of a council president for this calendar year. Previous year, it's been councelor Sims. I think the previous two years. Um, so before he was to make that decision. And on the memo is a sample motion for you. That's that's what I got for you.

Thank you, Melissa. An opportunity for public comment before we have this debate. Doesn't like we have any. What would council like to do, Mr. Mayor? Council Patty. Yeah, as funny as it would be to appoint Jordan to this role while she's not here. I really I want to say thank you to Steve for continuing on with this and doing this. I realize the extra time commitment it takes and I'm so grateful for you, man. And so I just want to with that I want a motion to appoint councelor Sims again as council president for 2026. Mr. Mayor, I second that. My only regret is Shelley can't be here to tell us what she really thinks. [laughter]

Any questions? All right. There's a motion and a second to retain and reappoint Councelor Sims to be council president. Is there any further discussion with that? Alyssa, can you pull the council? Oh, I'm sorry. Melanie, can you pull the council, please? I'll do it. It's fine. Councelor Hayes, yes. Councelor Patty, yes. Councelor Carrie, yes. Councelor Sims, yes. [laughter] Motion passes four to zero. Thank you. And that moves us on to the next one which is resolution number 26-001 and our loving appointments of council leazison on positions. Julia.

Yes. This might be a little bit more spirited but um so as you recall we recently updated the or you recently updated the council rules where you um specified the council liaison assignments. Uh the list within your packet is who was currently designated. I realized that we actually didn't do a resolution last time. I was going to come back and I'm not quite sure what happened, but per the meeting notes, uh we had um Steve Sims as the liazison to the planning commission and the parks board, Jordan Ort as the liaison to the library board, um Brian Quigley to the sewer committee, Ken Kerry to the public arts commission, uh co- liaison David Patty and Brian Quigley to the school board. uh David Patty to the chamber board, Brian Quigley to the Sanam Hospital board, and at the time Luke Bower to write revitalize downtown Stton. Um as currently proposed, it essentially has those same appointments with uh Councelor Hayes taking on the the the role that Luke um had and that would be that. But I know that the mayor is interested in hearing from um members of the council on whether or not they want to make changes. If you do, essentially you would just move to amend the resolution um and specify the amendment and then you could then after that is approved then you could vote on the actual resolution.

Okay. Thank you Julia. And that's another opportunity for public comment for this resolution. Don't hear any with that. I will just let council know that I did ask council or what her intention what her preference was and she asked to remain on the library board. So, I will let council discuss the rest of it. I would u encourage councelor Hayes to share the load with somebody if he would so desire and try to balance this out a little bit more. So, we'll go with that. Mr. Mayor, Council Kerry, as most of us know, we've had a news about the teen center recently.

Yeah, I'm going to address that at the end. I'd like to see if we could possibly add that as a position for a counselor leazison. Yeah, that's a interesting recommendation. Uh Julia, do we have any thoughts on that? I think that's really up to you. Um within the charter, I think you can also have as other other assign um councelor Patty is liaison to the chamber and is not on the board. So, it's really just saying reach out, you know, be be that conduit for that. um entity. Yeah, great. Great suggestion, council car. I I'm gonna look at that when we get through these. Let's get through these first and then we'll address it. Go ahead, councelor Patty.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And sorry to tag on to that, but if as long as we're discussing adding things, I think, and I know that councelor Sims already kind of does this, but I think we should formalize our role with SIT, the Sanm integration team, and make sure that we have a voice at that that place. And like I said, I already know you're doing that and so maybe that's a natural fit. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that's a good suggestion, I think, too. I I mean, I can continue to go to those meetings. I typically go to them myself. Jordan actually goes to them quite often, or councelor goes to them occasionally, too. But I would be happy to do it if uh you want to do that.

Okay. Another good recommendation, y'all. That's great. Let's uh let's see if we can get work through this. Let's work through the planning commission to start with. Councelor Sims, you good or would you like someone else to take that lead? I I'm good with where I'm at. Okay. So, that's for councelor Sams. It's so right now it's the planning commission and what? Parks board. Okay. I'm on planning and parks right now.

Okay. And so, we we'll retain that the way it is. Parks and recreation board is just uh is councelor Sams. Nobody else. Library board is Jordan. So we will leave council or there her based on her preference. Sewer committee by contract is myself and is there one other person or I believe there is one other person. Yeah, I think there is. Yes. Who would like to join me on the sewer committee? I know it's a dingy job, but someone has to do it. And I don't hear councelor Hayes raising his hand pretty quick over there. No. All right. Making me laugh, though. All right. Well, just uh keep the mayor there. If anyone wants to step forward on that, councelor Patty, it looks like you're I'll do it. All right. So, we'll put councelor Patty there.

Uh, that leads us to the public arts commission. That's councelor Curry. Retain that, correct? Yes. Okay. School board is myself and councelor Patty. Uh, you want to retain that? Okay. Uh, the hospital board, I don't mind doing that. Um, I actually enjoy doing that. So, um, you you skipped chamber board. Just Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting there. Chamber board. Councelor Patty. Yeah, I'll do it again. It was good. Um, I think I want to add myself to that if I can if we have co-sponsored that one. So, I would like Thank you. Um, hospital board myself. Does anyone else has any interest in the hospital board? I think it doesn't really it's infrequent so I can contain that by myself. Uh, revitalize downtown. Council Hayes, you have any interest in that?

I don't believe there was much choice. I was my name was put right next to it. I'm I'm giving you a choice, sir. Uh, no. I'll I'll do it and see what happens with that there. Uh FYI, if I had to look at anything else on here that anybody would want any help with, um I've had many experiences working in hospitals, so that's just there. And and well, the park and wreck board is starting to look more and more uh up my alley. But at the same note, I really know it's upsting the back of my head for the sewer committee. You can let me know.

Okay, [laughter] I'll do that. So, is there anyone? Steve, are you I'm not going to put you on the spot. You're you're good with what you have here, too. I mean, if I could do RDS if uh councelor Hayes wanted to do parks and wreck. I mean that that if you feel comfortable doing that we could switch that up Mr. Mayor it's just more if he wants help. I think he needs to stay on it. I just didn't know if there needed [laughter] second for that. You know I plan on I'm planning on u attending.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you councelor Hayes. We will let councelor Hayes uh do revitalize downtown state and then as well as he can serve with me on a basis with a as as needed basis with the hospital. So I'm sorry. So am I staying on the parks? You are. Okay. Okay. I just realized it was on a Wednesday for RDS. That's not a good day for me. Okay. There you go. And I just so everyone knows aware, I go to those RDS meetings regularly. So I will you typically be there. All right. So let's go to what we So we have the chamber covered. Correct. Yourself and me. Okay. Let's go to what the recommendation was for the teen center.

Um you want to talk about that a little bit? I really don't know what to talk about other than fact. I think there should be a counselor leazison. Agreed. As part of that. Okay. And I'd be more than happy to be part of that. Okay. As a leazison deciding what days they meet. Okay. Okay. And I'd like to possibly talk with Denise. I see her here tonight, but um talk to them over. All right. So noted. So I'm going to put counselor Kerry down as first in line for any kind of teen center representation. And that puts us the sit discussion. Um you want to keep that councelor Sims? Yeah, I can definitely do that. I'm I'm already going to all the meetings and I I communicate with Kate with Kim quite a bit and

All right. I'm yeah I'm real happy to so we'll have councelor Sims be the representative the leison on for the San Adam integration team Mr. Mayor, I just want to voice support to for councelor Sims. If you're ever um in a jam, you can't make that one, I'd be happy to jump in and substitute out or whatever. I mean, I know that you're retired and everything, but just in case. [laughter] Let me remind the board or the council that there is two retirees on the on the council. So, uh yes, I acknowledge that. Thank you. All right. So, are we good there? We got them all covered.

I think so. So, what I would recommend is um I guess you could do two things. One, you could make a motion to amend the resolution to include David Patty to the sewer committee, Brian Quigley to the chamber board, Leonard Hayes as a backup to the hospital board, adding the teen center liaison with Ken Kerry as the liaison, and adding the sit with Steve Sims as liaison. make a motion to the resolution to make those changes. Um, and then you could adopt or you could say all those things, adopt the resolution with the following amendments and say them and I could I could say them again and then you could potentially say so move would you like me to do that? So the motion would be um I move to approve resolution 2601 resolution formalizing council leaison a assignments with the following amendments. Adding David Patty to the sewer committee. Adding Brian Quigley to the chamber board. Adding Leonard Hayes to the Sanam Hospital board. Adding two new liaison assignments. the teen center liaison with Ken Kerry as the liaison and the sit um position with Steve Sims as liaison.

Got that? Thank you, Julia. So, someone from the council, please make that motion. And All right, Mr. Mayor, councelor Patty.

Yeah, let me see if I can do this. Um I motion to amend resolution number 26-001 as follows. Uh, [snorts] I would like to add myself to the sewer committee as a liaison and add uh, Mayor Brian Quigley to the chamber board as a liaison and then add uh, council member Leonard Hayes to the Sanm Hospital board and then also adding um the teen center with Kin Kerry specified as council leaison and then as well the Sanm integration team with Steve Sims as council liaison. on. Okay. Is there a second?

Mr. Mayor, Councelor Hayes, second. Okay. A motion is second and I'm not going to read it again to adopt resolution number 2601 as amended. Is there any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. I. My thing went off. Okay, thank you all for that. Uh, now it's opportunity for communication from city staff. Julia, Mr. Mayor. Oh, councelor H. I have a question for Go ahead. The staff here, where does Revitalize Downtown Staten meet?

They meet in the box, which is upstairs above the um ballet theater. I'll get you the information. the Buchamp building. I think I need it before next week. Yeah, we'll get you the information and we'll get you on the mailing list on their email list. Okay, go ahead, Julia. I actually don't have any announcements that I wrote down. I'm looking to my staff to see if there's anybody jumping up with an announcement I'm not aware of. So, um we don't have any announcements for you today. Okay. Thank you. Uh opportunity for communication from mayor and council. I'll let the council go first as usual. Mr. from Mayor. Councelor Sims,

I had a question for Barry on so we we had talked about pothole filling here in the city. Are are we uh so we talked about pot filling potholes on some of the streets. Did we come up with anything any type of way that uh you know city residents can communicate communicate to the staff on that and maybe uh get some of those holes filled with a cold patch? We haven't done that yet. We did um discuss it at the last meeting and with the holidays we haven't had a chance to have any additional conversation. Are we filling potholes now or doing any work on pothole repair at this time or Barry you need to come up? Sorry.

That's fine. Barry Buchanan interim public works director. Uh yes, we are doing pothole filling. Um I'll be very straight with you, it is not does not work well in this sort of weather. Um we've been filling on Kindle Way. We've been filling on other streets as well. Um water in the potholes actually just drives the material that we're putting out again as soon as people drive over top of it. So it is an ongoing exercise. Yes, work is being done, but it's not as successful as it could be. Okay. Thank you,

Barry. Don't move. Mr. Mayor, go ahead, counselor. Nothing to do with Silver Spring or Silven Springs at all. I'm talking about where Luca Stitch goes out in the big field, goes and interacts with Mil Creek. Anything down that way? More in regards to beaver. We already know about the beaver thing. You know what's going on near Silvin Springs and over by the pharmacy? I'm talking further down. Is there any research being done on that?

Yeah, we're we are looking at all the way from 22 to the confluence of Lucas Ditch to Mil Creek. Um, we're discussing though the piece of property that's from Cascade Highway to Mil Mill Creek does in actual fact, as we understand it or can see at the moment, there's potentially two beaver dams in that stretch of stretch of the ditch. Uh, we're talking to um specifically the county about that as it stands right now, but do not have a specific resolution or a final resolution. Our intention is that we will have a public meeting on the 15th of January associated with the um the whole of Lucas Ditch incorporating as many of the uh land owners that the ditch crosses as it stands right now.

Thank you. Anybody else? Thanks Barry. Anybody else? I just want to highlight two things. One is just a reminder that the building blocks tour is coming up January 15th. Okay. That's going to be before our next meeting. So, okay. Thank you. And the other thing is just a shout out to uh Monty's Coin Shop. That sighting looks amazing. The job there has been very well done.

Yeah, looks good. I saw it this weekend. [sighs] All right. Um that means communication from the mayor. There is an item that I would like council to share with me or um consider um addressing with me. Um if you all saw the news most recently, I think last week about a certain um indictment of the former manager of the teen center, um that didn't sit well with me at all as far as that news when it broke. um and given the situation with the number of turnovers at the teen center being on city property um and having an obligation as a governing body to the to the kids of this community. I would like uh for the council to get involved in having a discussion or at least a uh meeting with the current uh managers of the teen center of which the city does not have a current signature on file of any of the folks that are currently there. So that's a little bit concerning to me. So, I would ask Julia maybe to see if we can reach out to them, schedule a meeting, and I'd like to have whoever councils are interested in joining me in that meeting be attending.

Uh, yeah, I'm happy to do that. I just want to caution um if we have a quorum, it's a public meeting and so maybe um I know all of you might be interested, but it might be best to keep it um to the mayor and just a couple at this point just so that there could be free free dialogue. I I agree. So maybe uh just you're saying only a couple council members that you said I couldn't. Yes. Just so you don't have a quorum.

Got right. Correct. Yeah. So I guess maybe I can uh council car since you express interest in being on the liaison itself. I'll take you and um councelor Sims if you have history there I'd like to have your opinion. So I would like to have councelor Sims and councelor Kerry join me in that um meeting at some point. So he could arrange that. That'd be fantastic. Um, so yeah. Um, the other piece I think uh since Michael's here, I just want to acknowledge the new hire that we have. I saw you all saw the note from from Mel. Yeah, sorry Melinda. What did I call it? What did I just say?

Melanie, why am I losing my train of thought there? Sorry, Melanie. I don't know why I said Melinda. Yes, but uh just recognizing the new sergeant that came on board and joined us on Friday. So, thank you uh for sending that note out. Sergeant Eekes, any history or anything you want to share about Sergeant Tilman, uh just the uh the bio that you probably already have that that talked about him. Nothing really in addition to that. He's experienced. He'll bring a lot to the to the city and and we're excited to have him.

Okay, great. and we will be um having him at one of your future I maybe the next meeting. Um we got to work with his schedule to have him come and actually be introduced to you so you have a face with the name and and the experience. I think the exciting piece for I think you guys got the bio, but for anybody watching at home um is that he's actually coming back to us. Um he's I think believe I believe he started his career here um in the 90s and is now coming back. So that's kind of exciting. Thanks, Lieutenant. Um, with that, um, one more, um, reminder, Julia, can you help me? Have we identified a second date yet for the discussion for the library? I'm sorry, the pool and parks library.

Um, we haven't we haven't yet. We're actually meeting tomorrow to discuss and we'll set a date then. It will likely be the last weekend in J or the last the last week in January or right before that. So, okay. I just want to I just want to offer an opportunity for people that are out there that are maybe contemplating why we're in the position we're in or seeing how they could help us to maybe uh step forward and attend that meeting and or maybe help us read the tea leaves, I guess. And so, I'll leave it at that. And Mr. Mayor, my understanding, sorry, I just sort of heard um we do have somebody that was in the audience that wanted to do public comments, but they arrived just about a half a second after

um and it's regarding the teen center. I don't know if you want to entertain going out of order and taking public comments.

Yeah, I don't in this particular case, I don't mind. It's um I didn't, you know, it wasn't on the agenda, something I brought up at the end of the meeting. So, by all means, we offer public comment for everything else. So, yep, I'm good for entertaining that. So, come on up, Denise. [clears throat] Hello, Denise Bush, community member. Um, I just wanted mainly just to show the support for um what you guys are now talking about doing moving forward with the teen center. As a past board member, very active with the teen center since before it even opened. um a concerned board member, a concerned community member at this point. I just feel it is the time with what just happened this past year and um and so I just wanted to show that support and I know there's other people in the community that are definitely ready to see some changes over there and are concerned about the kids and with the effort of you know you guys and the facility and the property and the community basically that's why that place is open and so I think it's time to look at the big picture and are we doing what's best for those kids at this point. So, I just wanted to thank you for that.

Yeah, thank you. All right, folks. Um, anything for the good of the order? Anything else? All right. Well, our first meeting at 6:30 and we went an hour. So, congratulations