City Council - Regular Meeting

So there were like three different groups. I don't mean all of them.

Okay, we're going to get started. Welcome everybody to the July 13th, 2026 city council meeting. We're really glad you're here. We have an overflowing crowd, which we're used to, but not in celebration as much as we are tonight. So we really appreciate you all being here. I would ask the city, let's see, what do we, Clerk.

City Clerk, call the roll, please. Okay. Councillor McLaughlin.

Present.

Councillor Randall.

Present.

Councillor Ring.

Present.

Councillor Runyon.

Present.

Councillor Richardson.

Present.

Mayor Mayes.

I'm here. Councillor Ring is on Zoom, just so everybody knows. And now I'd ask City Councillor Tim McLaughlin to please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me. Stand up and remove your hats, please.

Item four is approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved.

Second it.

It's been moved by Council Richardson and seconded by Council Randall to approve the agenda. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. Now we're getting to item 5A, which is why most all of you are here. It's my distinct pleasure to recognize the Dalles Junior Baseball Association Junior Hawks Championship teams. And I say teams because that's plural, because there's three of you. It's been part of my goal as mayor to recognize youth who have achieved a statewide recognition or achievement. And this certainly has happened here with families. Three teams at the 10 and under level, 12 and under level, and 14 and under level, all taking statewide championships and tournaments. And you guys deserve a lot of credit and recognition for that. So that's why we're here tonight. So you guys have been preparing, as I understand, since before Christmas, spending a lot of hours practicing indoors before the season even began. And I think we all acknowledge that success does not happen overnight. It takes a lot of dedication, discipline, and hard work from every one of you guys. And we're very proud of you for representing the Dals the way you did. Throughout the season, you guys competed against travel teams from across Oregon, representing the Dalles with pride and sportsmanship and determination, winning championships at all three levels, 10, 12, and 14 and under. And we certainly like to thank the coaches for their leadership and the many hours that they invest in developing these young athletes. I played a lot of baseball in my day. And I've always appreciated what coaches did for me personally. And I know the type of work that they put in here. And we're going to be recognizing them tonight as well. We'd also like to thank you parents and families and volunteers whose commitment to your kids and commitments to the team makes all this possible. So with that, I'd like to call on Patrick Urein, who's the head of the association, the Junior Baseball Association, to come forward and maybe say a few words. Thanks, Patrick.

So The Dallas Junior Baseball Association began three years ago with one team, 10 and under. Two years ago, expanded to offer to 12 and under and 14 and under. Depending upon the number of kids that try out, the number of kids that we can form a team, we'll do an eight and under team, a nine and under team. It just really depends upon how many kids churn out. You can see this year we had a lot of kids churn out, enough to fill out three full teams. There's a couple of organizations I want to represent or aren't represented here today. The school district allows us facilities. that we get to go in and participate because this is the feeder program to the high school baseball program. We coordinate with the baseball program as much as we can in the development of these players to make sure that we are preparing them for the next step when they do ascend hopefully to the high school program. So I want to just represent the school district. and the business community. You know, the mayor covered the substantial components, the parents, the players, the commitments of the coaches. Those are all standard to making the season run. But not standing here today is 25, 30 different businesses across the community that help support this organization and help support these teams as they go out throughout their season. So I definitely want to make sure that we recognize the business community and that this doesn't happen without their donations. Um, I think the last thing I would say is I have to take my hat off to all the parents because coaches, we commit ourselves cause we love coaching. We love what we do. Uh, it's a little bit of a grind, but because we love it, we stick with it. And, um, yeah, It's just something that we do. But for parents, the really key to the parents is the commitment that they make is different, right? They've got more than one child in a lot of cases. They've got competing pressures and so forth, but they get their kid to practice on time. They come and pick their kid up on time. When there's equipment and there's things needed, when a neighbor needs a ride to practice, it's really a family that develops team by team to make a successful season. And that happens because of the commitment of the parents. The coaches don't want to overlook them, don't want to overlook all the rest of the volunteers, but it's really the parents in the room that make it happen year to year to year. So I'd like everybody to give a hand to the parents if they would really quickly. Unless you have any questions, that's all I have for you.

Okay. Does anybody have any questions for Patrick? Okay. Thanks very much. Okay, what I'm going to do now is we're going to start, I'm going to read the names of the kids. And when I call your name, please stand up and be recognized. All you 10 and unders are here, right? I know there's some kids out in the hall. So is there kids out in the hall? Oh, there's not? Okay, well, good. We can do all three.

I want to stay standing until I've got all the names.

Yes, please remain standing after I call your name. And then we're going to call you up and have your picture taken with the mayor. Wow, what an honor. And then and then we'll call the 12 and unders up first. Okay, up a second. Okay, so Brody Whitemeyer. There he is. Dan and Kate's. Sally. Dawson. Mason reducer. Did I pronounce that right, Brayden, or Mason? Did I pronounce your nice name? Good, okay. Will McCabe? Zeke Zestal? Hunter Hall? Corbin Wood? Hunter Libretton? Jax Callaway? Walton Lawrence. Marcus Gonzalez. And there's three coaches we'd like to recognize today and we'd like them to come up to and be recognized and get your picture taken. Ryan Labretton. LaDucer. Derek Wood.

I'll come up here.

Come on up front guys.

Yeah. Looks so much cooler if your hair is still long.

No. Okay.

Baseball. He's got some. Don't.

I'd like to read what the certificate says that we're giving each head coach. City of the Dalles Certificate of Recognition presented to the Dalles Junior Baseball Association Junior Hawks. In recognition of your outstanding achievement during the 2026 junior baseball season, your dedication, teamwork, sportsmanship, and commitment to excellence have brought pride to our community. Congratulations on winning the, and in this case, the tournaments were held in Gladstone.

There we go.

for 10 and under, Reedsville for the 12 and unders, and West Albany for the 14 and unders. Your hard work and determination have made the Dallas proud and serve as an inspiration to the young athletes throughout our community. Presented by the City Council, July 13th, 2026. So with that, we'll go to the 12 and unders. Please stand when your name is called, Adrian Lugo. Alton Matz, Brady Weber, Talon Glasgow, Tyler Selby, Mason Guzman, Nolan Elledge, Nolan Murners, Olin Johnson. Phoenix Rodriguez. Vinnie Lugo. And Wyatt Branham. I have two coaches here we'd like to honor, Brian Elledge and Jason Glasgow. Thank you. Please come forward.

You can form two rows, one down low if you want. That's the actual photographer.

Look at that guy.

I was just reminded that our council meetings are recorded so you can see what's going on at your convenience.

Okay, 14 and unders.

Please stand when I call your name. Caleb Tan. Colleen Arman. Holt Miller. Damian Chavez. Davian Castro. Isaac Bikini. Jason Ritchie. Nicholas Damon. Parker Lineberger. Porter Elledge. Sam Perez. Thomas Bartels. Zeke Cervantes. And Jacob Reuter. Okay, the two coaches we'd like to recognize are Rocky Leinberger and David Chavez. There's Rocky. I knew you'd show up, Rocky. Rocky coached my grandson. He did a really good job. All right, why don't you guys come forward and get your picture taken.

you can do vaccinations it doesn't work We were done a while ago. So it was up there on the thing.

I found the agenda on the floor.

I trust that most of you probably aren't going to want to stick around for a discussion of the city's audit, or our hearings officer procedures, or dealing with legal sufficiencies in the Dalles Municipal Code, all three exciting subjects. So for those of you that would like to leave, we're going to take a five-minute break. And for those of you that would like to leave, you can. And for those of you who want to stay for the rest of the excitement, you're welcome to stick around. This is a public meeting. And once again, how about another hand for you guys? Thank you.

Thank you. They'll see if you can take the executive chair. Give her a shout out.

Thank you, Abby. Good job, Abby. Don't be shy. You made it happen.

Thank you, Abby.

Come on, Vinnie Potato. Let's go. It was one of my players. Huh. The auditor is online. Andrew Sherwood.

Andrew Sherwood.

Action item is later in the agenda. Why it's so good. Those are nice. You guys ready to go?

Okay, we're gonna reconvene.

Item 5B is a presentation by our auditor, Soren CPA. Mr. Andrew Sherwood is here online or on Zoom to fill us in on a fiscal year 2024-25 audit, city's audit. Mr. Sherwood.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Thank you for allowing me to come to speak with you tonight. I believe you all have received the audited financial statements, and I kind of want to start at a summary page that has a summary of the audit results for our audits. It's in the city's audited financials on marked page 107.

Can you bring the volume up? 160.

For sure. We'd appreciate it if you could speak as loud as you can. We're having a little bit of a problem hearing you. Thank you.

Can you hear me okay? Yeah, that's better. Okay. And would it be helpful if I shared my screen also?

Yes.

Okay. Let me see.

Okay, you were saying something about page 107?

Yeah, I was going to share my screen, but I'm not familiar with the software. I'm trying to find it. I'm sorry.

I'm not familiar with Zoom and sharing screen, but I can talk through it if you guys are there.

So basically, as a summary of the audit results, the schedule of findings and question costs is presented when there's a federal single audit. In the first section, we have the financial statement findings. And the first part of it is whether the financial statement opinion is modified or unmodified. And it is unmodified, which basically means you have a clean financial statement audit. That's the best result and what you would want. Below that are internal control findings. The first is whether there are any material weaknesses, and the second is on significant deficiencies. For the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025, we have both, but we do not have any noncompliance in relation to the financial audit. And then in the next section, we have federal awards. We do not have any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in relation to the federal awards audit, which is basically a perfect result over your federal program And there is an unmodified opinion on your internal control over compliance with the federal program. Your major federal program for the year was coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds. It's basically the last of the COVID-19 money. And you guys spent through almost all of it. The findings that I mentioned a moment ago were in relation to the financial statements, and they were regarding the schedule of expenditure of federal awards. I've moved on now to page 108. Basically with the finding, it's just that the schedule of expenditure of federal awards was not correct when presented. All of these findings center around turnover in the accounting department, and this is something kind of to be expected when this occurs. During the year-end cutoff process, there wasn't anyone in the role to basically perform the year-end close procedures. And when Brita started, it was mid-October, and all of this was basically complete. So there was a lot for her to handle to get up to speed and to get year-end correct. So I don't see this as being recurring, but we're required to record them based on our audit standards. The second item to report was a significant deficiency on audit adjustments. We did have significant adjustments to basically get the accrual and cutoff items correct. And the last was on the accounting for capital assets. Accounting for capital assets is kind of tricky because there's two bases of accounting that come into play. The governmental funds have expenditures. When you purchase a truck, for instance, But on the full accrual basis of accounting that the statement of that position is presenting on has that as a capital asset and not an expenditure. So there is some technical aspect to this accounting that makes it a little bit harder to do. I want to go next to the opinion on the financial statements. This is in the same document. And it's going to be on marked page A1. near the top. And essentially, we conducted our audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. This is the standard that all audits are conducted in accordance with, but also with government auditing standards. And this comes into play because you have the federal single audit requirement. Within the opinion, we have an emphasis of matter. And this just relates to a change in accounting principles that's gap to gap. So this does not result from an error. The GASB basically issued a new accounting pronouncement that requires you to account for something differently. So we have that noted in the opinion. And the reference is going to note 19 that basically discloses what the change in that position was from the prior to current accounting standard. And this was just in relation to the accounting for compensated absences. I'm not gonna explain it because it doesn't really matter a ton, but you basically have to accrue some of your sick leave payable, even though it's not payable on termination. From a responsibility standpoint, management of the city is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements and for internal controls to ensure that they're free from material misstatement, whether it is a fraud or error. Us as auditors are responsible to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are materially correct and to exercise professional judgment, maintain professional skepticism, and be independent of you all. I believe for this meeting, we will just go over the city's financials, unless the URA's financials are desired as well.

Did you just ask if we had any questions? Did I hear that? or comments on?

Yeah, if there's any questions or comments on anything I've discussed so far, I think we'll go over the city's financials. I'm not sure if you want to discuss the URA's financials also. Urban renewal?

I don't think we need to do urban renewal at this meeting. We'll do that at the regular urban renewal meeting itself.

OK. Yeah, any questions for Mr. Sherwood for anything that has been discussed thus far?

Not at this time.

No. Okay.

So one thing I mentioned before is just looking at the schedule of findings and question costs. That is a summary of the audit results. After that, I would recommend to review the management's discussion and analysis. That's basically the layman's terms for what the financial highlights are for the city. That is... One of the first parts of the financial statements that's after the audit to come in. So that has financial highlights and it has information at more of a summary level that's more digestible. So whenever you're looking at the audit of these financials, and this is in all of the financial statements for the city, the URA, and the airport, the MD&A is a great place to kind of get a snapshot. It's digestible of what the financial activity is. And so basically what I've discussed is what we're required to communicate. We have a separate letter that's gonna be issued shortly that basically has the information I've discussed with you along with some other technicalities. Within the financial instruments, we have a couple of key estimates. One of them is on community depreciation, and this just relates to the useful lives of capital assets. This is a significant estimate because if you chose a five-year useful life versus a 10-year useful life for an asset, it would double or split the depreciation expense by period. Another significant estimate is in relation to the OPEB liability line. So there's discount rates, different factors that the actuaries use to estimate your liability there. These are significant to the city and the financial statements as a whole. Related to the finding, we did have adjustments, and they will be notated there. They're in relation to accounts receivable and utility billing revenue, un-earned revenue and federal grants revenue, supplies expense and inventory, capital assets and retainage, and capital outlay and accounts payable. Through the audit, we didn't have any disagreements with management. We had great participation from the accounting department. And I believe that covers everything that we're required to discuss. I'm available for any questions. Be happy to discuss any highlights if you have any.

Anybody have any questions for Mr. Sherwood?

I'm just finding the whole thing. There's something with the audio and it's, it's not really clear. And this is our new audit infirm first year. No, no. We've had somebody here in the past come to our meeting, right?

Yeah, we've had different auditors. What is it, our second year, third year?

Yeah, I don't remember. I don't believe. I think they were virtual last year.

I don't know. I just prefer having somebody in the room so we can be a little more clear on what we're talking about.

I'm sorry for any issues. And I can come down next year. This is our third year, and we've presented virtually. But I'm sorry for the audio issue.

Did you give page numbers, et cetera? I know you gave one at the very beginning, but I didn't hear any more after that on the items you're talking about. Yes.

So for the serious financial matter.

You don't have to go back. If you've got more things you're going to pull out of the audit to talk about, please give the page numbers so we can find it.

Oh.

Well, he mentioned page 107, and I believe- I heard that one. That was the last one I heard. 108 was another one, right? Page 108?

Yes. Yeah. 107 is the schedule of the audit findings. 108 is where the audit findings are discussed. Then A1 is the financial statement opinion. and B1 was the beginning of the management's discussion and analysis.

Mr. Mayor, I have a question, if I may. Councillor Richardson. Thank you. This question, I suppose, is for Mr. Sherwood and also for staff. On page 99 of the report, page 151 of the council packet, We see some, I guess you'd call sort of, I don't know if it's formality language, but something along the lines of, let's see, we do not express an opinion on the effectiveness of the city's internal controls. Having... looked at several audits there's always these kind of statements you know where we have auditors come in and say well we've looked at x but not y and as a layperson i'm wondering is there a schedule or is there a triggering event at which the city ought to get I guess a more extensive audit that does provide an opinion on the effectiveness of cities' internal controls, or is that never to be had?

I have not ever seen that in a government audit. And basically that's required for publicly traded companies, but not for municipalities or not for profits or any entities like yourself. Okay. It's not an all at all.

Councilor, if I may, there may be a few different resources to look to through the League of Oregon Cities or other agencies such as that that kind of have best practices in looking at internal controls. We have similar types of dynamics and challenges and needs. And so I've seen and been part of some of the conversations amongst different city managers about how they approach X or Y situation and what they found effective or as a best practice. And so that may be a resource that the finance director and I can kind of reach out to and see if there's some information or some work that's already been done that we could leverage and apply here.

I don't have a strong opinion about it myself. I would really ask for information is. At what point, if ever, do we do more? An audit or best practice review that looks at cities internal controls. I want to say I do appreciate that The deficiencies were discussed. They have a staff report. It's on page 260 of the city council packet. I'm convinced by what I've seen and heard that we had some hiccups with the the loss of our previous finances director and then getting new staff on board eventually. So hopefully that's what that was and we don't have those same hiccups again. Go ahead.

Let me also note real quick, for all of our audits, we're required to gain an understanding of the internal control framework. So anything like making purchases, receiving cash, issuing debt. We review internal controls related to all of those transaction cycles. And also with the single audit, we perform tests of controls in that. So we look at transaction level detail for each item that we test to look at the associated internal controls. So we do look at them. We just do not express an opinion on them.

Councilor Ring has his hand up.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My question was sort of along the lines of Councilor Richardson's as well. I was looking through starts on page 162 of the packet, page 108 with the significant deficiency And I guess we're going to talk about that during the 11A, I think, in the agenda. I guess I'm trying to reconcile there. They sound alarming because they're labeled as significant deficiencies and material weakness, but they're not. But it sounds like from the presentation that they're not as significant as maybe the wording in the report sounds. That accurate takeaway?

The significance is based on the financial statement impact.

Okay, so it's not a compliance flag. It's just, it's like a warning, so to speak. In other words, like, you know, the significant deficiency for financial reporting on page 108 would be sort of a red, it's a yellow caution flag sort of thing. but it's not a non-compliance issue, but it could become that if we address it. Is that an appropriate way to look at this?

From a compliance standpoint, the only consideration is whether the financial statements are in accordance with GAAP or not. So we have a significant amount of adjustments to correct the accounting accounts to make them in accordance with GAAP.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sherwood. We are going to be taking this up under an action item later on in the meeting. So thanks for bearing with us. Thank you. Okay, item six is audience participation. During this portion of the meeting, anyone may speak on any subject which does not later appear on the agenda. Interested citizens are required to sign up in advance and be recognized. Up to three minutes per person will be allowed. Citizens are encouraged to ask questions with the understanding that the city can either answer that question tonight or refer the question to the appropriate staff member who will get back to you within a reasonable amount of time. If a response by the city is requested and that response is not immediately provided, the speaker will be referred to the city manager for further action. Tonight we have three people. First we have Corliss Marsh. Would you like to be third? Please state your name and address for the record.

I know it is. All right, Corliss Marsh, 1401 East 21st Street. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. I come tonight with a concern about the hospitality extended to our cruise visitors. Last Friday evening, I was down at the post office corner when an elderly couple from the ship asked for directions to Walgreens. I immediately said, hang tight, I will drive you there. I went to get my car to drive them to Walgreens. There was no way that couple would have made it to Walgreens by walking. On another occasion, I transported sisters from Colorado to urgent care at Water's Edge and then up to the hospital. And another time, an elderly couple who needed to go to Fred Meyer's When we, after Fred Meyers, we drove up to Sarosas Park and they told me they remembered being there 50 years ago when they were migrant workers here. I bring up these examples of cruise passengers needing rides. Sure, we can't be in the transportation business, but we need to have options for these people. Our Uber and taxi service are hit and miss. Our fixed route link bus service might work if the schedule works out. Cruise directors don't know what to do but give them a map. The ship's loop bus drivers are not allowed to make unassigned stops along their route. In our pre-COVID days, there was a local shore agent paid by Main Street that had direct contact with the ship's personnel and would take care of their needs. This agent helped facilitate some specific concerns. Cruise directors and our shore agent worked together to make the passengers feel welcome to the Dalles. At the end of the cruise season, due to the relationship form, the Dalles received surplus bedding and unused frozen food items for our community meals. I don't like to bring up a problem without offering some suggested solutions, so here are some. Ship personnel have a local contact for specific requests. Maybe just a phone number, like to the chamber. The chamber would have a list of willing drivers and would help arrange a ride. Another suggestion, taxis could be on site half an hour after ship docks, just being there

Yeah, 15 seconds.

Now that the floozies and friends have retired, we need some greeters. Nothing is better than a personal welcome. Passengers in the past have told the floozies that the Dalles was the only town that greeted them. Maybe the chamber would explore this option. This is tourism. Tourism is not getting the people here, but treating them right when they are here.

Thank you. Did the people that wanted to go to Walgreens, was that for medication?

Yeah.

Yes. And she was using a walker. And the ship center said, Walgreens is the place you need to go to. And that's it.

Thank you. Does anybody else have a question for Ms. March? Okay. Thank you, Carlos.

Well, it's not for Ms. Marsh, it's for Mr. Klebs. We have a new executive director at the chamber and new set of conversations or relationship to be exploring there. And I would encourage you to bring up the topic of a shore agent. It strikes me as something that we should have we, the community, whether it's the city has a direct role or just we try and get that funded through our tourism contract. It sure seems like a good idea to me.

Yeah, thank you, Councilor. I think there's quite a bit to unpack there, both from the history of what was done previously and how it was done to the contract that we have with the Chamber to other private options. So certainly on the radar. Thank you, Corliss, for making that comment and something to explore.

Okay. We'll move on to Tom Peterson.

Mr. Mayor.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand, Ben. Go ahead.

No worries. I'm not sure who to direct this question to, maybe our city manager, Mr. Cleaves, but it concerns me that an elderly couple uh coming off of one of the cruise ships was in need of i mean it wasn't obviously wasn't very urgent in the example presented this evening with them needing to go to walgreens but it's it seems to me that most cruise ships and maybe this is different because it's a riverboat cruise but um somebody that's in need of you know a trip to urgent care certainly the the emergency room at the hospital that i would assume that they would the the ship itself would call you know 9-1-1 or something if there was something truly you know tragic going on but it seems that In my mind, those are safety concerns, and I would have questions for the cruise ships themselves. Most ships that I've seeing an action overseas due to the nature of them being in a much larger body of water like the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea have to provide doctors and physicians and things like that. I wouldn't expect them to do that, but I would think that for the case of needing to go to urgent care or needing a pain medication or something, that they would have something. It concerns me that somebody an elderly couple was leaving the ship and trying to get someplace to get those services in our city. Seems like a public safety issue to myself. You know, with the tourists, it sounds like kind of being stranded at the dock, not being able to get around to get to the basic services that we need. So I would, I don't, again, I don't know who to direct that to, but I'd be interested in finding some resolution. Maybe somebody can contact the cruise ships and find out where their point of service ends related to those sorts of examples. That way we can all be better informed and maybe help our cruise ship passengers that tour our city. That's all.

I'd like to have Mr. Cleave's comment. And then after that, if you'd like to make another comment, Carlos, please come.

So these are not emergency situations. I mean, obviously the cruise ship would take care of it was emergency. I have seen them call 911. These are people that she needed to go to Walgreens for first aid, her personal first aid equipment. And then the... The other couple or the gal that wanted to go to urgent care, she had a bad cough and she just, she thought she'd feel better if she went to see a medical, it wasn't an emergency. She thought she'd feel better and they did some lab work and they said, you need to go up to the hospital.

Okay.

So it wasn't any fault with the ship.

Thanks for clearing that up. Matthew.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And this is, I'll just keep this really brief. This is some of that, that unpacking of a dynamic such as this, where, you know, if you sign up for a cruise ship, I voyage, I imagine, you know, the cruise ship company has your, your information, your contact information, maybe you've signed a waiver and you've addressed some of those outstanding dynamics of taking an excursion on the river. And that, that would exactly be one of the questions council are about, you know, What party is responsible for what? How do they go about doing it? I certainly don't want some random person going down and picking up cruise ship passengers and driving them to a certain location. We don't know what their license status is, what happens if they get into an accident on the way to Walgreens, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a couple different pieces to work through there.

Councilor Runyon? Just a question here, talking about, I don't know anything about our local taxis or Uber or whatever, but do they have to have a license with a city to be a transportation company?

They'd have to have a franchise agreement. That's something that Hood River, city of Hood River is going through right now with Uber. It's fascinating.

If I was in business and had one of those companies, I would like to know the schedule for things like cruise ships, because that's how I'd make my money, picking people up. Maybe one thing we can do is to contact those companies, send them a schedule and tell them after this, it's up on you to contact us. But we want to make sure you are aware that... people who may need a ride or arriving at our facility so they may not even be aware of the schedule at all which would be poor business on their part then maybe we could help okay thank you anybody else okay mr peterson

check check tom peterson 1626 east 19th street the dallas mayor counselors thank you so much uh for your time this evening um i'm here on behalf of both the dallas main street and the fort dallas fourth committees um to thank you for your investment in this year's america 250 celebration and to give you a brief report on what we accomplished together. I've handed over some paperwork in regards to that. This was our first year producing the evening celebration. We were building the wheel while putting this event together in just 90 days. And I'm happy to say we created new partnerships and a new community event that we can build on. Your $10,000 investment made a huge impact. It gave us the credibility to attract an additional $12,870 in private cash and in-kind support from local businesses. Cash sponsorships came from Pine Ridge Dental, Hood River Sand and Gravel, Matches World Northwest, and Explore the Dalles, along with generous in-kind contributions from Great Scott Productions, Gorge Country Media, and Bishop Sanitation. Together, those partnerships helped us leverage an investment after a celebration that featured three bands. But the real measure of success wasn't the budget or the attendance. It was watching children run across the grass. It was seeing families and others. spread out blankets, friends gathering to listen to live music, neighbors reconnecting, and hundreds of people sharing the same space for our nation's 250th birthday. For a few hours, people simply enjoyed being together. It was really nice. It was a great event. It was a blast to help to bring our community together to create something a little bigger than any one of us. And we estimate 500 people attended the evening celebration. The event featured food and other vendors, the beer garden from Freebridge, and of course, one of the best firework shows we've ever seen over the Columbia River. It really was a great show this year. So thank you, mayor and counselors. Thank you, city manager Matthew Cleaves, economic development officer Jacob Anderson, your city staff who's helped us out all the way, our sponsors, vendors, and the volunteers who gave their time. This event was successful because so many people chose to work together. This wasn't just a 4th of July celebration. It was an investment in the community, Pride, our downtown, and our waterfront. We learned much in our first year, and because of your support, we're already in a better position to make next year's celebration stronger should you choose to support it again. So on behalf of everyone who helped make this celebration possible, thank you for believing in this event, and thank you for believing in our community.

Thank you very much for all your help and your participation with this to make it all possible. That's appreciated.

I did some, but Steve Light and Julie Wadsworth, there were some major players that put in a lot of hours and a few sleepless nights, I'm sure. Thank you all.

Anybody got any questions for Tom? Are you on the Main Street Board?

Yes, I'm on the Main Street Board.

Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Okay, Richard Wolff.

I'm Richard Wolff, the Dallas, Oregon resident. I don't know. Did Amy, did you guys get the copy of this by any chance?

Yeah, she just passed it out.

I'm not going to go over this whole thing. Thank you.

What's that?

I'm not going to go over this whole thing.

There's one here that... Amy, why don't you start the clock again? There we go. Okay.

Okay.

There's one on here on this reference of an authority. It's regarding the flag. I'm speaking of, I never knew this. I don't know anything about this, really. I noticed the flag situation on the west end of town. It looked like it had been cut in half. That threw me a little bit, so I started noticing flags a lot. And so I've gone to quite a few places and, and looked at it and there's some things that need to be done. It's mostly too small of flags, you know, like this, this literature will show us the guidelines for protocol. And, uh, I don't, you know, we all have everyone that I ran into had a good heart on this whole thing, but there's some, some, uh, things that need to be addressed. I don't know how to do it. I would. Like some help with that or just just to give you awareness that I would like to my personal thing would be, I would like to see a new flagpole at the port. The airport. and the Chamber of Commerce. I would like to see the flags lit at night in the right size and lit appropriately. The lighting has not been addressed for some time. The pole is being lit. And it's suggested on here for a solar light to be on top and shine down on the flag. There's other suggestions, but there's been some changes to the flag on this building and it's beautiful. And it, I don't know if it meets the protocol for the, this is the paper that I give you was just the state's opinion. My toner ran out and I wasn't able to get the other things that I needed printed out for you. But there are other protocols from other guidelines given out by the government. Illumination is a big one at night here and the size of the flag. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Well, our staff has copies of this, and if you get your toner situation resolved, please see the city clerk, okay?

Yes. You know, I want one thing I would like, Mr. Mayor. I lost my medallion in a fire, Rowena fire, and I'd like you all, next time I'll come back or something, to consider, I would like it. to go about getting another one of those.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Mayor. Sorry. Council Runyon.

Just in the last week and a half, I sent to Matthew and I believe to Dale the same chart that's right here, not knowing about this. because I've taken complaints about the size of flags on some of our polls and condition. And I was trying to get the flags updated for the 250th anniversary, but they didn't get done. And yeah, there's a size requirement depending on the size of the poll. For example, the poll that... The Memorial Committee bought and put up at what was the transportation center and the VSO and now is gone. I understand there may be a larger pool there, but there are certain size flags that need to fly on these flags, as Mr. Wolf pointed out as well. So I'm glad it's being brought to us.

Thank you. Okay, item seven, city manager's report, Mr. Cleaves.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Several items for you this evening. First and foremost, I wanted to make sure and announce that applications are open for a fourth year of our residential tree grant program through the Beautification and Tree Committee. Applications will be accepted through August 1st. They're available online or on our website as well as paper applications in my office. You can visit the dals.gov forward slash tree application to access it there. We do have a number of trees still available, so I'd really encourage anybody interested to submit an application. Another opportunity to submit an application is our Local Government Academy. Those applications will become available later this Friday, and our Local Government Academy sessions will run in September into October. If you're unaware, this is a program that we've been running for a few years now to invite our local constituents to come in and learn about their local government, what our city does and does not do. And one of the objectives here is to really create a pipeline for volunteers and people who may be interested and engaged with our city and are interested in serving on our various commissions, committees, or maybe even run for city council. So that'll become available later this week. The Federal Street Plaza naming contest is live and will close on July 21st. We've established a process with the Federal Street Ad Hoc Committee to solicit input on potential names for the Federal Street Plaza. The Federal Street Plaza current name kind of came about simply because it's on Federal Street. So we kind of wanted to do a gut check and see if there was some creative ideas or another opportunity to maybe come up with something a little bit more meaningful for our new plaza, our new living room for the downtown core. So I wanted to make sure you were aware of that. Last week I attended the Oregon City County or County Managers Association Summer Conference. This is one of my favorite conferences of the year. I've been going for several years and I truly enjoy it. We also had the OCCMA board meeting, which I am a member of. Some of the highlights from that session include, you know, obviously a session that I actually facilitated about city capital infrastructure projects. I had organized a panel of three. Mark Morgan, the Assistant City Manager from Hermiston, Sharon Lynn Lombos, the City Manager from Tualatin, and Scott Fleury, who is the Public Works Director from Ashland, to kind of serve on a panel and have some Q&A that we had developed. Mr. Fleury from Ashland in particular was interesting because they recently finalized some YFEA loan financing in support of their water treatment plant replacement. So they secured about 76 million in a loan through the Water Innovation Oh, gosh, water innovation, find it. Water Investment Finance and Innovation Act. or maybe flip the I's back and forth, I can't quite remember. But that was an excellent session and it's something that the city's gonna be exploring in the coming months and years as we seek our own replacement of our water treatment plant. We also had an excellent session around city manager contract do and don'ts, engaging with city councilor candidates and onboarding new elected councilors, and an excellent keynote speaker that talked about his book called The Love of Cities. And this really kind of brought home some of the efforts that we've been undertaking over the months and years with our plaza project, our beautification efforts, our streetscaping projects and more. And the blunt example that he kind of gave is that there is certainly an importance to fixing potholes and doing those maintenance items that a lot of different cities are known for. But that's not the only reason that we live and are here as part of this community. He related it to kind of like having clean silverware at a restaurant. You don't go to a restaurant for clean silverware, but if you are given dirty silverware at a restaurant, you certainly notice it and you're not going to be coming back. But that's not the experience that brings you back to that restaurant. And so he talks about and applies that to cities in terms of what are the things that we can fall in love with and what are the things that really make this a place that we want to be and really instill that sense of community. And those can be smaller things from, you know, new trees and a tree grant program that we have, to improvements at the Kelly Triangle, some of the beautification efforts there, to the plaza. And as we've said numerous times, you know, the Dalles does deserve nice things, and we need to prioritize our public infrastructure and our public safety, as well as invest in the things that people can fall in love with our city over. And so that keynote, there was a lot of passion in that keynote speech, and I really appreciated the opportunity to listen to that speaker. I also wanted to note that our Assistant City Manager, Brenda Fahey, her last day is this Friday. She had a chance to say goodbye to City Council before the meeting tonight, but I just wanted to make sure that we took a moment to thank her for her leadership, her direction and service to our city and community while she's here. I'm a little upset with Madras, but I'll get over it. And I wish Brenda best of luck. So that being said, we do have the position posted. We've scheduled an informational session for tomorrow night on the Assistant City Manager and HR role. Included on the dais is our newsletter that our executive assistant, Abby, put together. And one of the highlights right on the cover there is you'll see some of the beautification and tree committee's work and a contractor they worked with to add some beautification elements to that triangle. And if you've driven by there before, it was a little barren. I think it looks really great. And this is right in line with the work that they did down on 6th Street. So that was great to see that move forward. And I think with that, that is my list of items for you this evening. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Any questions for Mr. Cleaves?

I have one. How are we distributing this newsletter? How does the city, does it go into a billing packet? Go ahead.

There are several different ways it's distributed. It's posted on our website, social media. People can sign up for email subscription list to get it sent to their email. And then we also have printed copies here at City Hall that people can pick up.

Any other questions?

Are there copies at the library? That'd be a good source.

Good suggestion. Okay. Item eight is councilor reports, city council reports. We'll start with councilor Ring.

hot committee meeting um uh that uh our city manager reported on um and I had a meeting with local constituents and residents of the City of the Dells to follow up on items and that's it.

Sorry, what? Could you just repeat the first, the very first item you brought up? You were cutting out.

Oh, I'm sorry. I had met with a constituent about some concerns that had and have already followed up with the staff to take care of it.

Okay. Thank you. Council Runyon.

On the 25th of June, With another organization I belong to that salutes veterans and whatnot, but also representing the city, we had the Alaska Airlines Fallen Soldiers Cart here in the community brought down from Seattle. The Oregon Veterans Home hosted them for lunch. Our city police helped greatly with the escort. to the veterans' home from the Dalles Bridge. And I really appreciate that. And I know the county sheriff, Wasco County, was there as well. Lane McGill was there and others. So we appreciate that extra help. It's the second time in the last two years that that fallen soldier's cart has had the opportunity to come through the Dalles. So it went well. That's all I have.

Thank you. Council Richardson?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Briefly, I attended the Federal Street, I'm sorry, Federal Street Plaza subcommittee, ad hoc subcommittee, ad hoc committee. There we go. Federal Street Plaza ad hoc committee last week. The work, as you see, is ongoing in construction. There are some challenges that staff and subcommittee are working through. We have a special sort of call-in work session on one of those regarding shade structures tomorrow afternoon. And I think that's all I have to report at the moment. Okay.

Council Randall. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This morning's League of Oregon City's Water and Wastewater Advisory Committee was canceled. The meeting was canceled. So the only thing I have left to report is the participation in the Dallas 4th of July Parade with Councilor Tim McLaughlin.

Councilor McLaughlin.

On the 4th of July, I did participate with Councilor Randall in the parade. I noticed the 250-year celebration setting up in the park, and I understand it was a tremendous success. I enjoyed the fireworks display immensely. And what I particularly noticed was the flags that are put out around our city by the scouts. That is a tremendous... thing that happens in our town. I don't see it around other cities, but we are very proud. And I know that Anthony Pereira was one of the founders that started that. And we sure appreciate it makes our town look great.

And if I can piggyback on that counselor, I am remiss in expressing appreciation to the public works department and the street crew for working with Mr. Pereira on improving the flag holes. So they looked sharp this year standing straight up and not as leaning as they have in years past.

And our staff also, when Mr. Wolf called about the size of the flag that was actually on that Friday, our staff came down and replaced it with a bigger flag to meet his expectation. And they also installed a large flag on the side of the building. That was wonderful, even though the wind whipped it down, but it was still great to see that. I did attend a briefing today with the mayor and director Matthew Cleaves and special meeting last Monday. I did participate in that. So that's my report for this week.

Thank you, Councillor. As far as my report goes, I'd like to thank Councillor McLaughlin for standing in for me or sitting in for me, presiding over the June 22nd City Council meeting. Thank you, Tim. You're welcome. On June 12th, I met with some city staff with Leslie Navarone regarding some homeless issues. I was on coffee break with Al Winn and Councilor McLaughlin on June 16th. I did an interview with KCI Radio with Mark Bailey on the 18th. Every Father's Day, I'm invited to go to the Springs Nursing Home and participate in a Father's Day breakfast with some of the residents of that facility. I did it, I think it's like five years in a row. Very enjoyable event. And today we had a conference call or a Zoom meeting with Senator Ron Wyden and our city manager and other members of the community outreach team, Andrea Kloss of the Port and Scott Hagee of the County Commission, discussing the status of House Bill 655, which is the bill that is purportedly due uh transfer 150 acres in our watershed to the city of the dallas so we were getting the uh an update from the senator on his involvement with that and that's all i have our maze may i make one more addendum yes addition columbia basin care

If you've noticed over the years how the improved facilities and the operation of that Columbia Basin Care, they're having a legacy garden dedication on July 20th, Monday at 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock. Go out and check that out. What they've done is just impressive. I think we all got invited to that, so that's great. Thank you. I just made note.

Mm-hmm. Okay, item nine is the consent agenda. Items of a routine and non-controversial nature are placed on the consent agenda to allow the city to spend its time and energy on the more important items and issues. Any counselor may request an item be pulled from the consent agenda and be considered separately. Items pulled from the consent agenda will be placed on the agenda at the end of the action items section. Tonight, we have six items on the consent agenda. First is the approval of the June 22nd city council meeting minutes. Second is approval of the June 29th special city council meeting minutes. Third is a resolution concerning clerical errors and a resolution regarding the confirmation of the nuisance abatement assessment. of a nuisance abatement assessment, I should say. Fourth is authorization to purchase a pipeline inspection van and a CCTV inspection equipment and software package. Fifth is to approve a contract for our annual wastewater treatment chemical supply contract. And finally is authorization to purchase an asset management software for the Public Works Department. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

I'll move to approve the consent agenda. McLaughlin will second.

Moved by Councillor Randall and seconded by Councillor McLaughlin to approve the consent agenda. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Item 10 is a public hearing. Consideration of an ordinance amending the Dalles Municipal Code and clarifying and conforming procedures related to the adopted hearings officer process and making associated technical amendments. Now's the time for the council to conduct a legislative public hearing to consider zoning ordinance amendment number 112-26, city of the Dalles and general ordinance number 26-1430. An ordinance amending title 10 of the Dalles municipal code implementing and clarifying the hearings officer review process, revising related quasi judicial procedures and making associated technical and conforming amendments. the planned commission conducted a legislative public hearing on june on june 4th and adopted resolution number pc 633-26 recommending city council approval of the amendments the applicable criteria standards policies and laws are identified and addressed in the staff report including exhibit a findings of fact and conclusions of law The council will base its decision on those materials and the testimony of other evidence and the legislative record. Anyone who wishes to testify must be recognized by me before testifying. When recognized, please proceed to the microphone or unmute if participating by Zoom. and state your name and mailing address for the record. Generally, the public hearing will proceed with a staff report and council questions followed by public testimony limited to no more than three minutes per person, any staff response, and council deliberations. Those are the rules. Are there any questions about the procedure? Seeing none and hearing none, I'm now opening the public hearing. First of all, do any members of the city council wish to make any disclosure, including an actual or potential conflict of interest or abstain from participating or voting on this matter because of possible financial benefit or detriment resulting from this legislative action? Anybody?

No.

Okay, nobody has come forward and I see a lot of shaking of the heads. Okay, now we will go to the staff report. Mr. Chandler, would you like to give the staff report, please?

Yeah, thank you. Good evening, counselors. Joshua Chandler, Community Development Department. Before he denies the legislative housekeeping amendment to Title 10, municipal code related to our hearings officer process. I've also provided with you up on the dais, Exhibit C. It was included in the packet, but there was some, I think, transmission issues with our PDF, so it didn't show up red line on your document. So just so you have those in front of you, that's what we're discussing this evening. In January, council adopted ordinance number 26-1424, which established our hearings officer process. As staff began implementing those changes, as well as working with our newly retained hearings officer, we identified several additional sections of the code that would benefit from clarification and technical revisions based on implementation practice and our implementation experience and best practices. These amendments are intended to ensure the code functions as council originally attended and provides a clear, consistent review process. These amendments are administrative and conforming in nature. They do not change any zoning districts, permitted uses, development standards, approval criteria, or comp plan designations. Instead, they primarily clarify the hearings officer's decision and notice procedures, update the hearing and appeal procedures to reflect the new hearings officer process, clarify the city's final decision for appeal purposes, update quasi-judicial zone change procedures so they align with the adopted process, and correct remaining cross-references, terminology, typographical errors. As mentioned, this is formally a housekeeping amendment in front of you. The Planning Commission held a public hearing on June 4th, unanimously recommended approval of these amendments. Notice was provided for both Planning Commission and City Council hearings. And as of the day of this publication, publication of the staff report and as of today, there have been no public comments received. Staff is happy to answer any questions, otherwise recommends Council adopt General Ordinance 26-1430 as presented. There's also additional alternatives for Council to consider on page 242 if you wish. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any questions for Mr. Chandler? Seeing and hearing none, We'll go to the public testimony portion of the public hearing. Does anyone from the public wish to offer a relevant testimony or ask relevant questions on this matter for up to three minutes? If so, please state your name and mailing address for the record. Anybody? Let the record show that no one has come forward. Does the City Council have any final questions for the staff Okay. Does the city council feel they have enough information to make a decision?

Yep. Yep. Yes. Okay.

Is the council ready for deliberations? If so, the public testimony portion of the hearing is now closed and the council will now deliberate. Any comments or questions?

We've deliberated on this twice already, right? Well, we, when we had long discussions on this twice already, right? Yes, we have. All right. Just for the record.

Is the council ready to have the ordinance read and receive a motion? By title only. That was my next question. That's what my script says. Okay, and not hearing anything, will the city clerk please read general ordinance number 26-1430 by title only.

General Ordinance Number 26-1430, an ordinance amending Title 10 of the Dallas Municipal Code, implementing and clarifying the hearings officer review process, revising related quasi-judicial procedures, and making associated technical and conforming amendments.

Would anybody like to make a motion?

be happy to mr mayor i moved to adopt general ordinance number 26-1430 an ordinance amending title 10 of the dallas municipal code clarifying and conforming procedures related to the adopted hearings officer process and making associated technical amendments based upon the findings of fact and conclusions of law set forth in the agenda staff report by title only as presented

Is there a second?

I'll second it.

It's been moved by Council Richardson and seconded by Council Randall to approve the ordinance 26-14-30. Is there any more discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We now move to action items. 11A is adoption of the fiscal year 2025 audit. Ms. Meyer.

Audit plan of action. Check your audit. Okay.

Good evening. So this is not the adoption of the audit itself. That is not a requirement for council. But this is the adoption of the audit plan of action in response to the fiscal year 2025 audit.

Thank you for clarifying my remarks.

The Oregon Secretary of State requires the city to adopt and submit a plan explaining how we will address each finding. As discussed during the audit presentation, there was one material weakness and two significant deficiencies. We are now two weeks into the new fiscal year, closing out the fiscal year 2026, and we have already begun implementing additional review and reconciliation procedures along with stronger internal controls to address those findings and help prevent them from happening again. There's no budget impact to this audit plan of action as these improvements will be completed using existing staff and current processes. Staff recommends Council adopt the fiscal year 2025 audit plan of action and authorize its submission to the Oregon Secretary of State Audits Division.

Any questions for Ms. Meyer?

Well, just a little bit about what I was trying to get at earlier when we had them on the line is that, you know, is this your first year? No, it's our third year. And so, well, in the first year, which would have been two years ago, which was before these were done, were those issues brought up then? No. And should they have been corrected a year ago in the last audit? That's, you know, I don't know what the process is, but it just seemed like I'm missing something here about why did this have to be solved in their third year? So it's day or nay about the whole thing, but it's auditor talk.

The issues that were found previously, most of... Well, all of these issues that were found and reported on were due in large part to the staff turnover a year ago, where processes weren't followed as they should have been with staff turnover.

And so the year-end reconciliation and closeout process was not- I guess what I'm saying is it'd be nice if a line like that was in plain English there of how those came up or possibly came up and how they got corrected, you know? So from our auditing team, not from you, ma'am.

Anyway, just a thought. Well, to follow up on that, you're confident that these will all be addressed and there won't be any issues next year? Yeah.

Yeah, good.

Councilor Ring.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My question was sort of in line, I think, with what Councilor Runyon was just discussing, but I do a lot of root cause analysis in my day job, right? And reading through the audit report, it wasn't really clear what the root cause was. And was this a a simple data entry error, some sort of misclassification of something. I understand that we had turnover, and that's just unfortunate. But one of the things that I take very seriously um, our financial reporting, especially with federal dollars. I deal with that on a daily basis. Um, and I'm, I'm just curious, like, was it something simple like that? And we missed it because, you know, we, we have a gap between, uh, our, uh, finance directors, like off boarding and onboarding. Um, and I, I just want to be doubly sure that we're not going to miss that in the future. So it's kind of hard for me to reconcile with that when I don't have, when I don't clearly read a root cause. I understand that there are, I'm confident that our staff is, you know, caught it and I understand that there's procedures in place but not having the detail on again on the root cause analysis and and whatnot to to be you know 110% confident that we've caught it and that we have a procedure in place to see it again is is of my concern so I'm not sure what else, like how else to ask it, but there's just like a lack of general lack of detail.

Mr. Mayor, one comment I can make, if I may. I think it's important to, and Brita wasn't here at the time, so that's why I'm kind of taking this one. It's important to remember that during that staff transition that we had, we not only had a transition with our finance director, but basically the second in command as well. And I think one of the dynamics here is that those two staff positions were the ones who most directly worked with and supported the other staff members in completing this work with the closeout of the audit. And so when we had a transition, not only with the director position, but also essentially the second in command position, a lot of that knowledge about how we do this, what's the process for this, what the timeline for that, was lost to a certain extent. And I think some of the conversation Breed and I have had is one simple fix for a lot of that is documentation around the policy and procedures that we follow, the internal controls, if you will, but also not just words on paper on what those controls are, but how do we go about actually doing that work so that if we have knock on wood another staff transition at some well we will at some point in the future there is that documentation on file that myself or other staff or whatnot can go and reference and and be able to follow it through that's not to say that the staff that departed didn't leave us with some of that information but there's a lot that takes place down in the finance department and we can always strengthen the documentation that we have

I think one of the things that's been overlooked, at least a little bit, has been not only did we lose our finance director, we also, as the city manager just pointed out, lost the second command. With very short notice, I might add, after being with us for many years, which I had a problem with, but that's another story. So anyway, I think that the finance department, it's been a challenge for them to kind of recover from that. And we wish you a lot of luck in the year going forward. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you.

There's an action item, right?

Yeah, we're looking. Nobody's made a motion yet, right? No.

I didn't want to miss that piece.

So, Mr. Kleeb, Ms. Meyer, are you confident that the fiscal year 2025 audit plan of action firms up the... the hole that we experienced or the pothole that we hit during the transition of staff, do you feel like this is gonna take care of it?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

And it's required. We have to send this plan in to Secretary of State.

That's the aspect that's required. And as Brita mentioned just a moment ago, she's executing this process right now for her first time. So it's a really great opportunity to become familiar with that process and frankly, write down all the questions that may come up and make sure that we've connected all those different pieces of this process done correctly.

I think you've heard from your a couple of your counselors, several of your counselors maybe tonight, that the audit process is not all that we laypersons could wish it would be. That lack of plain language is a real detriment to us in understanding what the hell's going on. And it's frustrating. And we have not voiced our frustrations, but I think now is the time to voice those. I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated that we get what's required from our auditors and not something in English that says, and this is what this means. You guys are doing okay. Or you're not doing okay. This is a real problem. And at some point, we need somebody to step out from behind the sort of hyper-technical, hyper-specific jargony language and just give us plain language opinions on what's going on. I mean, all of us presumably read through the budget and have lots of time with that every year, but it would be really helpful to push on either staff or the auditors to just give us a few sentences in English.

And Counselor, if I may, I think I kind of take that opportunity to also mention that the Finance Director and I have been talking about other different ways that we can better communicate to the Council throughout the course of the year on our financial position and what's going on. not just during the audit and not just during the budget process that I think may help bridge some of that gap.

I'd appreciate it because I think we're in pretty good shape and there's nothing to, so far as I can tell, nothing to hide from, but it would be nice to really be able to be conversant among ourselves and kind of what the big picture looks like.

Just to add to what I said earlier when the company was on the screen is the audio is not good. We pay a lot of money for audits. I understand that we're a small community, but it sure is helpful when you have the individual doing a presentation right here in the room where we can actually come to a thought and get it answered and whatnot because I've been reading audits for 22 years and like Dan I still look at them and it's all in auditor speak and You need that human touch, you know. I'd like to see the auditor come and meet with the counsel in person. Anyway, just my thought. Thank you, Counselor. And I certainly, whatever room-type microphone he was using was just not good. They should do a little better job of that, at least for what we're paying, have a microphone that he could put up close. Because it was breaking up at different times. It was just hard to follow for me.

Okay. Anybody else?

Yeah, Mr. Mayor.

Oh, sorry. Councilor Ring.

No worries. I just wanted to reiterate I have full faith in our staff and I believe that our new finance director and our city manager are very capable of implementing proper change and corrective actions and things like that. In the future, it would certainly help to have a bit more visibility into the auditing and things like that. I hate to beat a dead horse, but this is very, very, very critical for federal funding especially. I've seen admirals replaced because of simple clerical errors in a comptroller's office and things like that. I want to make sure that we are above reproach as a city, and I would challenge... maybe not so much our staff, but maybe our auditor reporting or something to provide us with more detail and into the root cause analysis, into the findings, so that our staff can clearly articulate the corrective actions and things like that that are being implemented. It would be incredibly helpful. But again, I do have full faith that our city staff, we've hired great people. We employ great people. I think we have a wonderful team and a very capable team. And just wanted to echo that sentiment.

Great. Thank you, Kyle.

Agreed.

I'm looking for a motion for the adoption of the plan of action.

Mayor Mayes. I move to adopt the fiscal year 2025 audit plan of action and authorize its submission to the Oregon Secretary of State Audits Division. Is there a second?

Richardson will second.

It's been moved by Councillor McLaughlin and seconded by Councillor Richardson to adopt the audit plan of action. Is there any more discussion or questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries five to nothing. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Action item 11B is consideration of an ordinance amending

certain chapters of the dallas municipal code for legal sufficiency mr cara thank you very much mayor mays city council um i'll try to be mindful of your time this evening as always uh in light of your executive session which i think is still going on tonight actually i understand it's been cancelled i should have announced that at the beginning of the meeting sorry oh I wasn't even trying to do that. Okay, I'll take all of your time.

Thanks, Woodley. The clock on this guy. Maybe we should have that executive session.

Tonight's two ordinances coming up next, this one and one following, sort of echoing our community development director, very largely housekeeping here. Starting with this first one, 26-1429. I believe the staff report starts on page 264 of your packet. This address is three specific code areas. The first is nuisance abatement. The second is traffic control and parking enforcement, and the third is open burning restrictions. The reason for this ordinance is straightforward. Staffs found three places in our existing code which are either incomplete or outdated or harder to apply than they should be. It doesn't create any new program or fee, and it's attempting to just make the current rules clearer, more consistent, and candidly more workable. um the format of this ordinance includes the the plain text um this is an effort to keep our codification costs down although i'm looking at our uh most recent title 10 ordinance that we just adopted here just a short while ago and it kind of blows everything else out of the water so um we'll have to think about maybe um going with more of a red line in the future on these code cleanups as well. Starting with nuisance abatement, Council knows these well. They appear on nearly all Council agendas. Our Codes Enforcement Division is always very hard at work in our community trying to make it more livable. Currently, under our current code, all abatements that are abatements for junk, which is a large majority of them, when they come to Council, the cost of that abatement is assessed. against the real property and Councilman McLaughlin, I think, has sort of pioneered asking to make sure that the property owner is here. Very rarely are those property owners here. And so after that resolution is usually adopted, it gets sent down to our finance department and they enter it on the city's electronic lien docket. like they do for other types of liens that the city has, maybe from noxious vegetation, for example, which is a different part of our code. In the noxious vegetation part of our code, though, those liens accrue interest at the rate of 10% per year. This appears to be just an oversight from when this was originally adopted back in the 90s. There is no interest provision against liens that are assessed against real property for purposes of junk abatement. And so, candidly, there's not really much of an incentive there for property owners to pay those, at least in a timely fashion. And so, this is simply just mimicking exactly what we do for all of our other types of assessments that get imposed on the city's lien docket by adding the 10% simple interest per year from the date of entry on the lien docket. So that's the first of the three. Of course, upon adoption tonight, this interest will not start retroactively applying to existing liens. The second of the three changes articulated in Sections 3 through 11 of the ordinance are on TDMC Chapter 6.04, which is a behemoth of a code chapter that incorporates the city's traffic and traffic controls and parking controls all in the same chapter divided into articles. The first part of that is some traffic control updates currently. They haven't been updated since 1997, and they don't clearly separate council's policymaking role from staff's administrative role. And so under these proposed changes, this is just to tidy up the section to ensure that Council stays focused on making the major policy and budget project types of decisions and the city manager's authority through the administration of that chapter would be shifting towards handling more ordinary operational matters and And by city manager, I mean the city manager personally and through a designee. I think the transportation manager or the public works director or frankly anybody in public works would have the ability to be the designee under this revised code chapter. Effectively just handling ordinary operational matters like signs and signals and crosswalks and parking layouts and temporary traffic controls. In addition to touching up on those, there are some proposed changes coming directly requested from our codes enforcement division with respect to some loopholes currently in our code. we've run into issues where somebody will just move their RV that's been tagged for towing. They'll just move it to a, not only RVs, but trailers and boats on trailers and oversized vehicles, moving it from one street to another. And there is an argument there. And that moving it under our current code would restart the clock. And so it ends up being whack-a-mole. And so this is our attempt to close that loophole and close that workaround by not restarting the clock unless, of course, the vehicle, the RV, the trailer or the oversized vehicle or the boat on the trailer is move to private property, which is where they should be. And similarly, just moving just a regular vehicle on the same block would not be restarting that clock for towing. So again, just very much intending to give our codes enforcement division the right tools for the job. Finally, through sections 12, 13, 14, and 15 of the ordinance, these are amendments to our burn restrictions code, TDMC chapter 7.20. The current burning code identifies the burn seasons, but it doesn't give a clear citation rule when someone burns outside of those dates. or burns without a permit or continues to burn when conditions have become unsafe. And so this ordinance attempts to just keep the same burn dates and ordinary exemptions that we currently allow, but also offers the opportunity for a temporary written safety restriction when conditions require it. which of course we intended to mimic our fireworks code, which requires the city to publish notice and establish clear public information procedures there. And as well as finally just importing some clear escalating fines. We've been using these throughout our municipal code over the last few years, just making those fines very clear and that they escalate for, for those that have been fined for violations of this chapter multiple times. The first violation would be $100, $250 per violation with one previous on the previous 12 months, and $500 per violation for two or more violations in 12 months. And so I have this in the staff report. For example, a first-time offender who burns yard debris once outside of the allowed window and without a permit may be cited and fined $100 for each violation for a total of $200. And so those violations don't stack from the same fire, but they would stack for subsequent fires in a 12-month period. I'm happy to answer any questions on these, but we did try to keep as many familiar provisions here from other portions of our code, just for transparency and for supporting the council's decision-making here, without any jargon, I hope.

Any questions for the city attorney?

I have one, Mr. Mayor.

Council Richardson.

Thank you. Actually, hang on one second. yeah i have two uh first is thought experiment i guess about uh parking if we have somebody has oversized rv or what's it uh that's on the street and you know code gets after them and they park it on a lawn they're on their front lawn not illegal but unsightly and potentially annoying to neighbors. Is that a win for us? Do neighbors have recourse in that case or is it kind of just it's a free country and you can park your stuff on your lawn?

That's such an excellent question. I don't know the answer to it. I've never thought about it.

No one to your knowledge is called to complain about such a thing.

Certainly not to my knowledge, although we do have our police chief and our COS enforcement division officer here who might have, have you ever heard of that? Our COS enforcement officer does not say or says that he has not heard about it.

Thought experiment concluded. My other question is, and this is really my beef, I think at some point this community should probably just ban outdoor debris burning. I think it's a little... It's time may soon be coming to pass if I were king of the world. That said, because there are lots of alternatives, you can get for a few bucks, you can get debris taken from your curb. every week if you want i do um and it's it's super cheap and easy and keeps the air a lot cleaner so but my question is um would it be acceptable or is there any reason why i could not offer an amendment to just tighten up the period of yard debris burning a little bit uh this evening you mean for this for this right this very moment

would that be a substantive enough change that you feel like we would have to come back or could we it could be done tonight i i would you know uh caution that the intent of this ordinance is to be housekeeping in that sense um i'm not sure that that would be like a housekeeping thing maybe it is i i suppose it depends on i mean i'm not proposing eliminating tonight i'm proposing just tightening up the dates a little Yeah, certainly. It's something that it's a particular code provision that we're already amending. We're just not touching the dates in this amendment. But yeah, from a public, from a charter perspective, and from an Oregon law perspective, and from a public meetings law perspective, they're It's all fair game. I would just, the exact text would need to be read aloud into the record of what the exact revision would be.

All right. Fellow counselors, on page 271 of your packet, you see towards the bottom, open burning restricted. Section 12b, windows, yard debris burning is allowed only from April 1 through May 14 and October 16 through December 1. I'm proposing we tighten that a little bit and make that spring period March 1 through 30 and the fall period November 1 through 15. a little bit earlier in the spring, a little bit later in the fall.

You're proposing this is section 12, paragraph B.

Correct.

Yard debris open burning is allowed only from March 1st. April 1st. April 1st.

Oh, no, he's suggesting March 1st.

I'm proposing we would change it to March 1 through 30, so the month of March, and the first two weeks of November, November 1 through 15. Just tightening up the window a little bit.

I would suggest that perhaps this might be considered by some people more than a minor tightening and that it come back before the city council

I will hazard that eventuality myself. I'm asking my counselors to consider and go along with it. I think a little tighter window is totally acceptable given that we have free yard debris drop off in the spring. And again, you can get curbside pickup every week of the year for just a few bucks a month. I actually have quite a lot of debris and I get two bins picked up every week. And I can tell you, it's very convenient. So if I can do it, I'm sure other folks could do it. And this does not outlaw burning. It just sort of concentrates the amount of time that people would do it.

This is super petty and technical, but you're suggesting March 30th and not the 31st?

mr mayor you do not have a vote on this matter i'm suggesting conversation with my fellow counselors uh i'm hoping any of them would go along and if they want to change it to the 31st then i would well that's what i think just think that i would yield on that yeah fine march 1 through 31 31st council ring do you have a comment yeah i'm i'm curious like what the rationale is to

to limit it because my understanding is that we already have an administrative capacity with our city manager to modify burn restrictions and things like that to align with like Wasco County and whatever mid-Columbia fire might put out for the year. Like this year, right? We had a light winter. It's a little bit drier. I don't know I scratched my head on whether or not modifying that this evening without the opportunity for the public to take that into consideration and make that change. That's where I'm hesitant, right? It's not that I agree or disagree with changing the dates, but I'm more concerned with giving our residents the opportunity to come and say something to us before we change it rather than after. Sure.

Mayor Mays, I agree. I agree with your comments because I was on council when this was passed and it was contentious and it was highly debated from both sides of the argument. And what happened was there was a committee formed and those two opposing groups got together and they came up with this ordinance. So there was buy in from the community and it was give and take. But if we if we modify now without going through a process, without going back to the public again, I think would be a mistake. So I'm not in favor of, I'm not opposed to looking at additional restrictions if there's an underlying reason for doing it. Some people of course would take, would choose to disagree with that. But anyway, I think that I'm not in favor of modifying tonight, but we could, if we put it out and look at it with the community involved, based on what I just shared with you about the process, then I would look at it.

Mr. Mayor, just to be clear, it sounds like there's no real consensus to move forward with that modification that Council Richardson put forth, but the city attorney very much intends to have this ordinance adopted, which would modify the chapter in other ways, but that still is okay.

That's the proper process. Okay. And we need to gain buy-in from the community for any changes to the ordinance.

I take your point. I think there's wisdom in it, but I also think it's possible that belabored a relatively minor change.

Why change it?

As I already said, I would like to tighten it up and not have six weeks on one end and four weeks on another. I think that we would do ourselves a favor by not having more open burning and having it fairly restricted to damp and windy times rather than sort of the nicest time of the year when we have lots of people that want to be outside and lots of people starting to visit.

Well, I'm going to ask, have we received any major complaints because of the burning van to your office, Matthew?

I can't recall any formal complaints to my office about the burn ban specifically. I have received comments from time to time from different constituents about dust and smoke debris, smoke generally, but not tied to a specific window to my recollection offhand.

Let me just ask this. scott or rod or either of you uh winnable on this point this evening i had no complaints that was not my question my question is your question would you are you are you persuadable on my proposed amendment this evening

I'm agreeing with Tim, who was here in the original process. And if there's not a really driving reason to change it, I don't see the need, because I've heard nothing about needing to change it. And Councilor Ring had similar thoughts. So...

Councilor Randall? Yeah, and I would say I would agree also that the public probably needs to be involved in this discussion, especially the ones, the curtailment you're proposing in the fall, which is when most people burn their leaves. And so I think it's kind of a big impact on some people, especially with the larger lots in the city that have quite a bit of debris that they're burning and may not be feasible for them to have the recycling that you speak of, the containers on the curb to be used. But anyway, I think the public should be involved in that discussion. All right.

Thank you very much. Also ring.

Hey, Ben, can you hear me?

Ben, you might want to just turn off your camera. Maybe your audio quality will improve, but your connection's pretty horrible. Is that better? Well, you were silent, but now, yeah, you do sound better, yeah.

Okay. My question is related to item 11C, with lawful access. Can we address that?

We're not there yet. We're still on 11B.

Oh, I think we're done with 11B. Oh, I'm sorry.

There hasn't been a motion. Where are we?

I think we have to... No, someone has to... Sorry, I apologize. Yeah.

It's okay. Anybody like to make a motion on item 11B, the ordinance amending our code for a legal sufficiency?

Mr. Mayor, I'll move to adopt general ordinance number 261429 by title only as presented. Is there a second? McLaughlin will second.

Moved by Councilor Randall and seconded by Councilor McLaughlin to adopt ordinance 261429. to amend our municipal code for legal sufficiency. Is there any more discussion? All those in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. It's quick. Mr. Mayor? Oh, sorry. Read it by title.

Title. You said under discussion. I'm just trying to make sure. So we are or we're not changing... the burn part of it, or what are we doing?

Council Richardson was asking for some opinions to form some sort of consensus, and I don't think he.

The motion and the second on the table is as presented, so that's the discussion.

So there was no motion to change anything? Correct. Okay.

Okay, my apologies. I had it right here in front of me. Is there anyone here on the council that would like to have the ordinance read in its entirety? No. Would the city clerk please read the ordinance by title only?

General Ordinance Number 26-1429, an ordinance amending certain provisions of the Dalles Municipal Code Chapters 5.04, Nuisances, 6.04, Traffic Control, and 7.20, Burn Restrictions for Legal Sufficiency.

Motion has been made. However, before we vote, I would like to ask any member of the public to come forward if they have any opinions about this particular ordinance. Would anybody like to comment to the city council about it? Seeing nobody. Okay. Is there a last chance for any discussion or any questions? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed motion carries unanimously. Thank you all very much. Thank you all. 11 C an ordinance considering an ordinance to amend the city's municipal code by creating a new chapter. and superseding inconsistent provisions of the city facility management and trespass policy.

Mr. Cara. Thank you very much, Mayor Mayes. Again, despite that this is intending on creating a new chapter in our code, this is very much taking the city's existing facility management and trespass policy which was discussed and approved by this city council in 2023 and codifying it in our municipal code. This is the policy that directly affects members of the public when they determines effectively how when someone may be ordered to leave city property, how long they may be ordered to stay away from city property, et cetera. And so the better practice is to codify it to ensure transparency and endurance here. The revisions are very much intended of being common sense based, and these are revisions to the existing policy again. There's just some clear conduct rules, prompt safety tools, and, you know, with independent review by the municipal judge. And of course, we are continuing to authorize and allow lawful public access to city facilities for purposes of, for example, attending a public meeting. Currently, our policy is interesting. It's both a bit too vague and also a bit too rigid. There's some broad terms that when we go to codify something, we want to flesh out. For example, the policy currently uses a phrase called causing an annoyance or causing an alarm. It's very fuzzy what exactly would constitute an annoyance or an alarm. But then it also relies on a fixed penalty chart, which council might remember we discussed at two separate meetings. And so the ordinance proposed here tonight replaces that approach with specific behavior-based rules covering conduct on city property here in city hall, for example, or at our public works department or at our police department or our library. So we wanna make sure that we're doing this comprehensively, and I believe that we did. The conduct here that we're intending on bringing into this ordinance is the same exact conduct, nearly identical to the policy. It covers threats, violence, damage to property, obstruction, general unsafe conduct, and serious interference with city operations. There's also, of course, protections for expression, First Amendment expression of criticism of the city, for example, and profanity and things like that. Anything that's protected expression is not a violation by themselves. The ordinance doesn't broadly invent any new misconduct here. Most of the conduct, as I mentioned, is already covered by our policy, and so the ordinance is intending just to make those rules clearer and narrower. There are some additions, including interference with lawful field work, weapons possession where state law permits city regulation, and, of course, for refusing to follow lawful safety orders. The ordinance adds a short temporary emergency exclusion, 72 hours when there's immediate action needed. But longer exclusions are required to be written with explanations, opportunities, of course, to appeal or even for emergency exclusions, there's opportunities to appeal and present your case if you believe you are wrongfully excluded. But otherwise, ordinary written exclusions are limited to 90 days. but it can go up to a year under this proposed ordinance, which is reserved for fairly serious or repeated conduct. And so finally, one of the differences between our current internal policy and this proposed ordinance is the intent to protect city crews from intentional interference when They have a lawful right to reach, for example, when they're going out to read meters or the city has easements throughout the city for public utilities and infrastructure and work sites. And so this is intended to just make it harder for people to intentionally interfere with lawful city access for our staff. There are some weapons provisions, but they don't create a world where the city's ordinance violates Oregon law. And so I'm happy to answer any questions, but again, this was broadly intended to be housekeeping as well, in light of the fact that council's had several discussions on the facility policy in 2023, and this is intended to tidy that up as well and put it in our code for transparency.

Thank you. Any questions for the city attorney?

No. Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Oh, Councilor Ring.

Thanks. Jonathan, I was curious, I was trying to think of like what sort of examples, you mentioned the like meter reading and stuff like that. And one of the, one of the, things running through my mind um if there was like stay like a lot of our meters are on like the back or side of our houses stuff like that in residential areas so a meter reader would have to potentially like enter the backyard or side yard or something like that on private property which which is covered like that's a thing that can be done right

That's a thing that's currently already done? Yeah, nothing about this ordinance enhances any access, right?

Yeah, it doesn't enhance the access, but it does introduce... I believe it was a misdemeanor offense. If you entered a property to read an electrical meter and somebody physically stopped city staff or utilities or whatever for reading the meter and assaulted that meter reader, I think is kind of the point of this. Is that accurate?

if if i can add just a clarifying piece before going too far down your question counselor i would i would i would say the majority if not all of our meters are within city right-of-way and we use the property line as kind of that that demark or demarcation if you will between the private property owner side of things and the city side of things. So not to shortcut your question or anything, because you're dancing around an issue I think warrants some discussion. But just for clarity, our meters are in the right of way.

OK. Well, before my meter on my house was replaced, and it was upgraded, right? Because that way you can read it remotely. Which is awesome. But prior to that, like I've had meter readers enter my backyard to read the meter. You can't read it unless you do that because it's so far away from the property. Can I clarify if you're talking? Sure.

Pardon. Can I clarify if you're, are you speaking about power meters or water meters?

Power meters.

Which would be the Northern Wasco PUD, not the city of the Dalles. So that's where this ordinance will cover.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's an important clarification, right? I think at least in my mind. Like, what real-world scenarios would we intend this section to cover? Like, water meters are easy because those are clearly in the public right of way. I believe most of them for houses and residential units and stuff are in the sidewalk, right? But I guess what sort of real-world scenario would this cover?

I'll try and provide you a high-level scenario where it may be a meter-reading situation. That's pretty... I think what may... happen more common is that we have a major construction project in our city streets that are causing impacts to local residents, local homes. And they may be a bit irate, a bit aggressive about it. They make me threatening language, they may spit curse, other actions such as that. And that's not something that our city staff should have to deal with. And so I think in many ways, this this gives us tools to address some of those types of situations.

That's okay. That helps a lot because I think in my initial reading, I was going down the wrong path. Access to private property where the city has an easement to cross private property in order to get to infrastructure that the city owns. I couldn't think of a good example in my head. of a situation where that would happen. So I was trying to think about the scenario in which that would occur. I guess I didn't realize, had we had, I assume we've had issues then with our city employees, our city staff, like public works, you know, doing street work or something. And there was, you know, somebody across the street, either a homeowner or, commercial business that became unjustifiably irate. Is that the right takeaway?

Correct. I think some of it stemmed from a really holistic approach where the original city trespass policy really focused on city facilities, such as City Hall, for example, and an individual comes into City Hall. acting and behaving in that manner, it gave us tools there. But what it did not address is many of our workers who are out in the field. And so that was one of the pieces of this effort is making sure that you know, we are looking out for all of our city staff and some of the interactions that they might encounter.

Okay, that's awesome. That helps a lot. Thanks. I'm good.

Mr. Cleaves, have they, in fact, encountered any of these scenarios? Is this in response to real world behavior, or is it to fend off potential scenarios?

Yes and yes.

It addresses real things that have happened to our people in the field.

And other future scenarios.

Any other questions for the staff? Okay, before I ask for a motion, is there anyone here who would like to have the ordinance read in its entirety?

Very tempting.

With that, would the city clerk please read the ordinance by title only?

General Ordinance Number 26-1431, an ordinance amending the Dallas Municipal Code Title V offenses by creating Chapter 5.05, City Property and Personnel Safety, and superseding inconsistent provisions of the City Facility Management and Trespass Policy.

Thank you. Looking for a motion.

Mayor Mayes? I move to adopt General Ordinance Number 26-1431 by title only as presented. I second the motion.

It's been moved by Councilor McLaughlin and seconded by Councilor Randall to adopt General Ordinance 261429. 1430? One. 1431. Oh, I'm sorry, 31, right?

29 was one before. Okay.

Any other discussion? All those in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously.

Thank you all very much. And Mr. Mayor, I was going to leave the meeting and maybe ask the city clerk to send me a Zoom link and I'll participate in the remainder of the meeting via Zoom. She's shaking her head, but I want to do this publicly so she couldn't say no. Thank you all very much.

Thank you. Finally, item 12. Strategic plan update, Mr. Cleaves.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. At the February 23rd regular this year, we had 2026, 2028 strategic plan. This plan includes our new vision, mission, vision, and values, as well as our refined goals and actions for the next three years. This clearly defines who we are as an organization and what we're hoping to achieve. This gives us that shared roadmap to move forward collectively, as well as manage the workload and prioritize the different actions that we have before us. If everything's a priority, nothing is. And we have limited staff and bandwidth, and this helps us focus on the most urgent matters while not forgetting some of the things that we hope to get to or are aspiring to get to. Just a little bit of reflection on the process that we followed. We began with a community survey, followed by interviews with the city council and the city leadership with our facilitator, Sarah Singer Wilson. In November 2025, we had about a day and a half retreat, developed the mission, vision, and values and those strategic goals. We then followed up with a staff survey to ensure that the plan reflects those perspectives and some of the values that we have. and the document that came from that and which was adopted by council in February has been included in your packet for easy reference, also available on our city website. There are seven key areas that we identified. We started out with six and apparently added one more, I believe, but they are first, public relations, community engagement, and customer service. Second, public infrastructure, dependable vehicles and equipment, and a modern IT. structure. Three, fiscal sustainability, cost recovery and efficiency. Four, a safe, resilient and thriving community. Five, housing production, affordability and renovation. Six, economic vitality and resiliency. And seventh, our workplace organization. Each of these goals areas have numerous actions and we've assigned priorities to them with primary, secondary and tertiary categories. First, second and third. Included in the staff report, as I mentioned, is the strategic plan itself, as well as a spreadsheet with a very brief high-level update on where each of those actions are. You'll see in the structure of the template there, you'll see the update from last time, the current update today, and then an expected action 90 days into the future. You'll see that the column of the past update is blank as this is the first report as we start the fiscal year here. And that's the format that I've kind of created and I welcome your input to make it as useful to you as possible. All of these different actions and the updates that you're reading are through the hard work of our city staff. their dedication and many hours of time spent on each respective item. And I want to make sure and thank all of our staff and volunteers for their contributions to the progress made thus far. And so keeping it on the hour and everything, I can go through my update, the spreadsheet at the tail end of your packet there, kind of line by line if you'd like. I can give you some of my red flags, if you will, or things that are kind of on my radar for consideration or simply answer questions that you may have. I think my biggest question for you at the end of all this is does this format work for you because my intent here is to more or less rinse and repeat this with those kind of updates on a quarterly basis. And so I guess I'll pause there to see the council's preference.

Any comments from the city councilor? Red flags only. Would anybody like to have the city manager read the entire strategic plan in its entirety?

Oh, yeah.

No. Okay. I personally do like the format. I think it's great. Easy to understand. Right. Any other comments?

Well, if there are any other comments and I might rephrase it from red flags and just some of the things to think about or some of the dynamics with the quarterly report, you know, first and foremost, as I mentioned a moment ago, we will have a pretty big transition in our assistant city manager, HR staff position. So several of the items directly relate to that position's focus and workload and in supporting other departments and department heads. So that transition process will likely slow or delay some of the implementation of relevant items here. Several of the actions identified throughout the report rely on or are waiting for the sustainable cities partnership that we have. And so as the council may recall, That's a partnership that we have with the University of Oregon. It's a really amazing program that leverages a lot of resources through U of O, but it does rely on having a class available and interested on the respective project. And so if there's not a class for the fall term who's interested in working on our tourism strategy, for example, we may need to wait for a spring class, or there may not be a class that picks that particular project up. So there's just a little bit of a dynamic there. One thing to note is that I think many of the, not all of them, but I think many of the actions that may be trying to leverage or utilize the SCYP classes may be a secondary or tertiary priority. So there's a little bit of give and play there. The Safe Routes to School funding cycle for 7th Street has been delayed, as the council may know from a city manager report I gave in the past. But frankly, at this point, this might be a really great problem in terms of staff bandwidth and all of the different construction projects that we have last year and this year and what we may think may be thinking about in 2027. So I would kind of list that as a good problem, frankly. Some of the items are pending our new council, and that may be some feedback from you. If there is any, it might be helpful there. For example, one of the items we've talked about that's on the strategic plan are council assignments to the various commissions and committees. It's a very natural point when we have an election, and if there are new councilors, or even if there aren't new councilors, to have some conversation with the mayor about what each counselor may be assigned to, from queue life to hazardous waste to the airport. You know, your prerogative, of course, but the election cycle has some play in that, in my opinion. And then my final note here is, you know, just again, you know, context for Council that this document's really helpful in helping to manage the different actions that we have in our workload. and that we've gone through a pretty extensive process to identify all these different goal areas, their primary, secondary, and tertiary items, and that if we're going to add a new action, you're going to hear from me, which action do you want to remove to make space for that particular item? Again, with the amount of time that we have, the resources that we have, we have to go through that exercise. And if it's not removing another item because we don't want to forget about it, it may be shifting the different priorities. And so if there's an urgent item that council wants us to work on and it's related to goal two and it's a high priority item, we're going to have a conversation about making some of those different adjustments so we have the best direction from you. Possible and we can allocate the resources accordingly and not burn out staff along the way so that's that's one of the utilities of this document here, we can all be on the same page and communicate that and what. What would result in shifting priorities to the Community and set those expectations correctly. Those are some of the high level items, just in terms of some of the dynamics or nuances to the report as we move forward here. And we'll shake this out better and better in future cycles.

Thank you. Any comments or questions from the council for our city manager? Just a comment from me. I would characterize this whole thing as very ambitious. And I think we certainly, you know, certainly the council's had a lot of input, but we wish you a lot of luck in getting most of all of this achieved through the next year.

Three years.

Yeah. Sorry. Three years. I forgot about the format, which I was just complimenting you on the format, which was very clear about a three-year plan. Okay. Any other comments?

I like the format. I think it works. It is ambitious. I do wonder if the prioritization comments from our city manager might actually work both ways. If the city manager comes up with a new project, maybe we need to have a conversation about priorities, like stick to what you're doing or something along those lines.

I think my staff would agree with you that I'm probably my own worst enemy at times. So yes, you're probably right.

Okay. Well, that's what I like to hear. The other thing I wanted to ask this, I guess the big question is, do we have thoughts on goal setting this year? Or do you feel like, was your plan all along to do this three year plan last year and be like,

No, that's a really good question. And I don't have the clearest of update for you right now, other than we are thinking about a couple of different elements. And that OCCMA conference session last week about elections and when we do those types of efforts, I want to debrief with staff on what some of that information was. Typically, we have our strategic planning, as you know, in November. which is great for our budget process and giving us the direction we need to move through that process, but obviously has some complexities around the actual election and whether or not potential outbound counselors participate, or do inbound counselors who haven't been sworn in participate, or do you wait until January to do it? There's a couple different elements there to work through. In addition to, you know, we've worked with Sarah Singer Wilson for a couple of years now, changing that format, changing that facilitator perhaps. Now that we have a three-year plan, is there something a bit lighter we can do? Or maybe something that's more workshop-driven and maybe does a deeper dive to a particular subject area that aligns with our work, with our strategic plan. Those are some of the pieces swirling around, and I'll have a better update for you in the future.

Thank you. I personally think it would be a fine time to explore perhaps another facilitator just to get a little bit different perspective on things. Thanks.

Councilor Ring?

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I think that just what you're saying, Matthew, and I would agree with this, is that our strategic plan is like a living document, right? It's like a living set of goals and objectives, but we can adjust those as we see fit, right? If an example that comes to mind is the ruin of fire right um if something like that happened in the city of the dells i have no doubt that our priorities for our three-year strategic plan would change um and i think that it's important for uh city council and uh staff like yourself and department heads and whatnot um should have that back and forth. And I, you know, being the newest member of this team, I, I think that, you know, I've definitely found the value in the onboarding, uh, process, uh, and being kind of a, like a, a self starter, so to speak. I think it's important for, uh, new team members post election. Um, you may not be sworn in, but, um, There's a great analogy. A city or government is sort of like a river, right? And you don't get to stop the river flow. The water will continue to flow and you've got to catch up. And how a new team member chooses to do that will, I think, determine their ability to fall in line in January when they are sworn. I would definitely keep that in our minds. When the rest of the city council and even Mayor Mays, you guys have been on this team for a while now, but think back to when you first started with your first election. that can be a bit of a fire hose. I know it was for me. And, um, again, I, I think that, you know, getting people onboarded is an ongoing process. I think it, there's no way that it happens in a matter of days. It happens in a matter of months. Um, And the strategy session, I've participated in two now. One post-election, before I was sworn in, and then last year when we set the three strategic goals and objectives that you're reporting on. repeatedly reporting on to us now and I think uh one of my takeaways and I'll Echo counselor Richardson's recommendation that you know I think a different perspective might be interesting I think it could be helpful but more importantly do we need to do it every year in the same manner in which we've in which we've done it right like We have a three-year plan. We're tracking to it. You're reporting on it. Staff is working on it. I think one of the other valuable lessons that I've learned in my career is having meetings for the sake of meetings is a terrible thing. And I think if we're going to be focused and effective, I kind of maybe challenge us as a team to think about the fact that we have a three-year plan and we need to just march to it and modify it along the way as we see fit. That said, I would like to see some longer-term strategic goals potentially. But I also struggle with the idea that we as elected officials only have four-year terms. So it's like, how far out do we go? And I haven't been able to answer that for myself either. But anyways, my two cents.

Thank you.

And I do appreciate the reporting. I seriously do. It's very helpful.

Okay. Any other comments about the strategic plan? Is there any other business come before this?