City Council - Special Meeting

Briggs, DC.

Recording in progress.

Good afternoon and welcome to the 04/27/2026 Tualatin City Council Work Session. Our first item on the agenda tonight is a twenty twenty six state legislative session recap and for all update led by Megan George and team for Thorne Run. Welcome Megan.

Hello, mayor, members of the city council. I am Megan. I'm the deputy city manager in to Wallington, and I'm gonna be up here for maybe forty five seconds before I yield the floor to our team from Thorn Run. But just to kick us off, we have now been under contract with Thorn Run for a couple of years and made it through our first long session with the team, or short session. Excuse me.

We already did the long session, but they they do seem to smear together. So we've gone through the full legislative cycle in Oregon. So they are here to present the update from that short session, which concluded in early March. And then we have our federal lobbyist, Greg, in Zoom land, and he is going to give an update on our work on our federal agenda. I'll pop up back at the end to talk about next steps as we think about 2027, which it is not too early. In fact, we are ready to get going. So with that, I'll introduce Leah and Tyler.

Welcome. Good to see

you both. Thank you for having us here tonight. Good evening council mayor, council president. I'm Tyler Jansen. I'm senior vice president with Thorn Run Partners. It is an honor to represent you in the halls of Salem. I'll let my colleague introduce herself.

Hi, everyone. Leah Navarro with Thorn Run Partners, also vice president, and I work really closely with Tyler.

So I we were here about a year ago, and I was relaying with Megan right before this meeting. I think at that time, you had a table of snacks laid out in the corner, and we were wondering whether or not the ethics commission was gonna let us continue to offer those snacks. That issue has been put to bed. You're allowed to serve snacks. And so it actually is a meaningful win that's important to celebrate when we get those.

I'm going to and is this our slide advance right here? Yeah. We have federal up here first. Why don't we jump ahead and we'll do state, and we'll give our colleague Greg plenty of time to jump back and do the federal. For the as Megan mentioned, this is our first short session representing you all.

The short sessions have an entirely different field than the long sessions do. Oregon runs on a two year cycle. The long sessions are every odd year, and they last for six months. The short sessions, when they instituted them around 2010 on an annual basis, the short sessions were designed to be about policy tweaks and budget adjustments. It is like sprinting marathon because it really does feel like you're compressing six months of work into a thirty five day session.

And so for any sort of local government that deals with the plethora of things that you all have to deal with, short sessions really are about defense. And so to not bury the lead, I do wanna say congratulations on defending your seismic reservoir allocation from 2025. In a cuts budget, which is the budget that we experienced this year and which we will be in at the state level through at least 2029, and it's going to get worse, any sort of preventing of a cut on a program or an allocation that matters to you is a huge win. To sort of recap what that advocacy looked like, when the budget forecast came out at the end of the 2025 session, which essentially said that largely as a result of of federal decisions through h r one, the state's Medicare budget, in particular, was going to take a severe hit. The governor directed her agencies to start looking at any sort of programs that might be available for a cut.

And the budget co chairs in Salem, of which there are two, also directed their agencies to start preparing cuts lists. So in December 2025, right before we went into a session, the director of the water resources department went before a subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee and laid out a number of proposed cuts, including a cut to your seismic reservoir project. So it became very apparent that the number one priority is protecting what you have. I want to give a shout out, and if you have the ability to, please, please thank representative Walters, senate president Rob Wagner. We went to them right away and said, have you seen what the director is proposing?

They they had not, and they were quite shocked to see it, and they sprung into action right away. And so we had a good dialogue with them all session, making sure that, as the cuts list continued to get refined, that the seismic reservoir project was able to be pulled from that. The budget co chairs were sort of talking about going into session a $900,000,000 budget hole. By the time that the final gavel fell in March, they ended up cutting I took my notes here.

128,000,000 was the final cut, and the narrative coming out of the co chairs was that they were able to keep it that minimal because they passed another bill generating revenue to the

tune of 311,600,000. And so that was a selective disconnect from some of the federal tax code. So I think one of the big things that we're still looking at is I know that Oregon Business and Industry is still looking at the qualified tax exemption for there is about a $100,000,000 budget impact that allows a tax exemption on qualified small business stock, but I know that Oregon business and industry, has some interest in overruling, and I know that they're advocating that for the governor. The governor chose not to veto that aspect of the bill. But, so that feels a little bit unsettled.

I'm sure it will still be a topic of debate going into 2027. But the top line message, and as it is reflected on the slide here, is that for the next at least four years, we anticipate the marquee issue of legislative sessions to remain the budget. That being said, when times are challenging, it should not preclude you all from articulating what it is you need for the community of Tualatin to be thriving. I'm gonna bounce around a little bit here, but on the note of transportation finance. For about two years now, you all have been reading the same stories we have, and we've been living it in the halls of Salem.

The transportation funding package that was pulled together to help shore up the Department of Transportation's structural revenue issue, that package notably failed at the end of the 2025 session. The legislature was called in in a special session where after much arm twisting, it passed it on a party line vote. Fast forward to December, and it gets referred to the voters, and now it will be on a ballot near you in just a couple of weeks. And the prevailing wisdom in Salem is that it it's anticipated to go down. And so the governor has already set a table for a large transportation visioning work group.

Legislators, for their part, are eager to start getting work done on it. So we anticipate in the quarterly legislative days, committee hearings that we see over the next year, we are going to hear a lot of chatter about building the next transportation package. And what does that all mean for a city government like Tualatin? I think now is an excellent time for you all to be thinking through what are your community's transportation needs and or projects that would be useful that we can start entering into the mix of that conversation. We anticipate that unlike, some budgets will be finalized by September 1, the agency will request them.

The governor will put her stamp of approval on them. They will be included in her budget in December. The Oregon Department of Transportation budget feels like it is a plane that we are going to be building as it is getting flown. And so our advice to you all would be any anything that you can put in the mix early is more likely to have success. Anything that we can arm our state delegation with early is to your benefit.

I'm gonna jump back to economic development as the other big issue that we saw in 2026. You had a couple of competing economic development bills that, most notably, you had the governor putting forward a permitting reform bill that ultimately passed after a lot of haranguing about data centers being included in that bill. So, at the end of the day, data centers were excluded from a tax break within that bill for at least two years, while the legislature gives themself time to think of if they want a more comprehensive policy about data centers. For local governments in particular, one of the major wins in that bill is additional funding for industrial site readiness. So I know that you all as a council, you have all been supportive on on coalitions that we've worked on with League of Oregon Cities and others to say that the challenge for a local government who wants to do economic development and build their tax base is the lack infrastructure actually in the ground.

So we're pleased to see rollout of additional funds in that space. We at Thorn Run will continue to monitor the actual implementation of those funds so that we can flag for you all when there are opportunities to potentially access any sort of infrastructure capital that you may need moving forward. We do anticipate that this schism that emerged over data centers is gonna continue for the next couple of years politically in Salem. We also will say that the industrial site conversation really did spark a conversation about land use, generally speaking, where over fifty years through Senate Bill 100, and there are even ardent land use system defenders who would say it's probably time to take a harder look at whether we're meeting our housing needs, our transmission needs, our industrial land needs. And so we're aware we're aware of at least one legislative work group that will be gathering this summer and considering whether they want to take up anything in 2027.

So when I look ahead, think it's economic development, but it may well turn into a land use discussion as well. So similar for the advice we'd offer on transportation, if there are stories to be told from Tualatin about land, and it's either lack of or, you know, availability and what you would like to do with it, it would be good to to have us armed with that information. I will also say that moving into '27 from a political side, the caucuses generally select their leaders shortly following the November election. We have now enjoyed a speakership and a senate presidencyhip that have lasted for a fully two year term. So they get to go before their colleagues in November, and their colleagues get to decide if they want those same folks in those roles or not.

And so there is always a little bit of shifting after November in terms of committee membership and who gets a gavel and who gets to chair those committees. And so we anticipate that we'll be keeping you all informed as those machinations happen as well. Any questions from the top line of the session? Questions?

You're moving your hand, I think. I'm thinking

and processing. You know, I've heard talk, but do you think they might start to address the whole funding for Oregon and the impacts of measures five fifty and changing that?

It's interesting. Where my brain goes with that is this was a long time League of Oregon City's priority on the TLT reform, the transient lodging tax reform. To me, that success, which was a hard fought success and a meaningful one, felt sort of like a Band Aid on a ball of Band Aids, which really comes down to measure five and fifty. And again, it's a structural revenue issue for local governments. I think that you're gonna see more attention paid to it in the coming years.

The disconnect that I have always observed is that local governments have been in a cuts environment for decades. The state is just now finding itself in one for the first time since, I believe, 2014. And so most legislators have not felt the pain of what that feels like to balance a budget without enough resources. So that understanding is penetrating a little bit. I will also say that there are very few legislators who come from a local government background.

But the ones who we do have, including your state rep, do a phenomenal job of educating their peers of, like, here's the reality of what this means for a city or a county. There is a study that passed, I believe, in 2025 that we should see out of the legislative revenue office, I think, at the end of this year. And so I'm confident that League of Oregon Cities, Association of Oregon Counties, to the extent that we get to help as part of that local government family get to socialize that, we can help do so.

Other questions? Councilor Reyes.

In the economic development, did you sense anything I know they're just starting all these conversations, but like, incentives for look for businesses in the community or, like, anything that would help cities promote businesses that can come to our city with any kind of incentives or funding since we've had a lot of businesses leave our our state, basically.

Yeah.

A couple answers to that question. I think that there is a hope through some of the permitting reform efforts that some of those timelines that affect small businesses, but certainly that local governments might have the final say over, that you might be able to process things more quickly. And I will also go back to the industrial site readiness for would be employers who want to come, but they say, but, you know, I can't make a pencil because I would have to do all of this work to get the infrastructure in place. We hope that that will help. From the for the businesses who are leaving, that's a little bit of a different question.

I believe that there is a a tax credit available that now they took a more expansive view of to allow folks who are retaining jobs and not just creating jobs and targeting industries to take advantage of, but that is fairly limited. We can also we'd be happy to take a closer look at that if that is of interest.

I was just wondering because I know where the Prosperity Committee met here. So was there any, like, any kind of incentives that would encourage either retention or acquiring new business that come to our city that things that we can do as a city that we forego, like you say permitting and all that. So we allowed more businesses that can come, but incentives that the state can give us versus us in the city giving us.

Yes. Right?

I know it sounds like impossible, but if we wanna see some growth that is like Yeah. A lot, we gotta start thinking about incentives that we can give cities or us or let forgoing a lot of stuff that we have to abide by in order for us to bring a business into our cities.

Yeah. You know, I'll say, you mentioned the Prosperity Council. Some of their work that is happening at the moment is gathering feedback from around the state and certainly including local governments in that as what could we be doing better. What are the tools that you would like us to offer? And so to the extent that you all as a counselor are discussing that and you come up with, hey, it would be really great if the state were to give us this thing, we can we'd be happy to help work on that with you.

To dovetail off councilor Reyes' question, on the Prosperity Council, they still on track to issue a report by, like, the June or something? Is this

Yeah. They're in early stages. Like, I'll say the the big trends that we're hearing whispers of would be there's not much there there yet, but people saying we need to actually just evaluate our land use system and see what's working and what isn't, which is, you know, an enormous lift. The other piece that feels like low hanging fruit is actually building on the momentum of this last session, which is everybody they talk to says that putting infrastructure in place helps speed up the ability to draw employers to the region. And so for a long time, local governments have been asking for that prior to this session.

If you had the capital up front, you could get reimbursed from the state. But what you're able to do now with this new tranche of funding, which hopefully will help in local communities, is you can apply up front to the state to get some of those dollars in.

The question Council Brooks.

Thanks for your report. My question is about the one thing that we do see as the workforce development strategies for essential workers. Or essential industries. So what how do we define essential industries right now?

I'd have to go back to the statute to see how they parsed it out. There are a number of identified in demand industries through workforce partnerships across the state. I don't know I can't recall off the top of my head where they drew that line of who qualifies and who doesn't. But it was, I think, developed in partnership with those workforce boards.

Okay. Yeah, I think that would be helpful for us to understand a little bit better. Other

questions for the state update? Councilor Hillier?

Yeah. Thank you. Mine is a little bit a little more adjacent ish. I'm curious. We keep seeing, especially with the passage of House Bill thirty three twenty one in the long session with the prevention, the forming of the Alcohol Drug Policy Commission.

I'm curious as far as funding streams, I know there's been some movement around the discussion of increase beer and wine tax and then a and a with a a special carve out for Oregon, vintners and wineries and distilleries. And and we know that that industry is struggling. And I'm just curious if there's any movement that you can see, mean, for big alcohol to help fund some of these health and human services things that we see a big hole with that obviously then impacts the other budgets.

Yes. I will start this by also saying just for some context. Prior to coming to Thorn Run, I was Association of Oregon County's revenue lobbyist. So I was pretty close to this issue. Beer and wine taxes in Oregon have not increased since, I wanna say, 1973, something like that.

They're static. A couple a couple of notes on the dynamics there. This was the first session I saw in a very long time that actually didn't have a hearing on increasing beer and wine taxes. Traditionally, representative Sanchez, who is one of the budget writers for the state, has been the most ardent supporter of wanting to do something to increase beer and wine taxes to fund more addiction services. She did not introduce a bill like that this year.

I think we're seeing similar signaling from her that her job in terms of cutting hundreds of millions from a state budget, that she will probably be less involved in pursuing her own legislation because that job on its own is going to take up so much time. I think the last effort that I saw on this in 2021, 2022 was when it was my favorite exercise on if you were to teach somebody how to be a lobbyist, you could take the same information and paint it a different way. One side was saying, you know, this is a 5000% increase, and one was saying, this is a zero one zero dollars increase on your beer. And they were both correct because 5000% of nothing is nothing. I don't think until you have a from a local government standpoint, one of the things missing in that effort was a degree of vocal support from the stakeholders beyond whom would directly benefit from increased funding.

So when these hearings have come up in the past, and it's gonna raise a beer and wine tax to go towards addiction services, the service providers are usually out in front saying, yes.

It's it's

not just not to be corrected, but it it's not just addiction. It's prevention. I mean, I think the legislation is prime it is health promotion, primary prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and then recovery. Right? So the word addiction just doesn't cover it. So no offense.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just to get the language right. Thanks.

I appreciate it. Thank you. But I guess where I was going with it was that from a from a local elected validator standpoint, I have not seen a robust showing of that at the legislature. And again, there was nothing introduced this last session.

Thank you. We're hopeful that the audit through the Alcohol Drug Policy Commission might see some movement in the next two or three years. But thank you for your perspective. I really appreciate Thank

you.

Do you want

to do this? Yeah.

We got one more slide.

Well, good evening, everyone. We've already touched on some of these topics. But first of all, congratulations again on maintaining the funding for the seismic valving project. Beyond the project's importance to the community, this success also reflects the mayor's outreach to the delegation, so thank you very much. And also the continued support from Senator Wagner and Representative Walters, who have been really strong partners to the city.

I know that this information is already outlined in our end of session report, but I wanted to highlight a few key points to provide a clearer picture as to where we are now and what to anticipate as you consider your legislative priorities and any potential projects for 2027. So right now, we're sort of in and when I say we, I mean Oregon, sort of in its early stages of developing its twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty nine biennial budget. And state agencies right now are working on their agency request budget, otherwise known as ARBs. And they have been asked to plan for a pretty constrained fiscal environment with no new revenue for expansions or any new programs. And any new investments would need to be budget neutral.

So the agency would need to make offsets or reductions within their existing resources. And then those ARBs, like Tyler mentioned, will go to the governor's office for review, and then that'll help shape the governor's recommended budget, which we won't see until late twenty twenty six. Given that information, we expect there to be a continuation of a pretty tight budget environment. And the economic forecasts, which are scheduled as shown, will sort of inform legislative decisions on policy and funding. So as those forecasts are released, we'll learn a little bit more about that.

In terms of timeline, so the 2027 session will begin on January 19 and will run through sometime June 2027. But before then, legislative days will take place in June, September, and December. And so that will give us some insight into what lawmakers are thinking in terms of policy and some of the topics that may emerge for the 2027 session. Some of the themes that we do expect, and we already kind of touched on these topics, are economic development, land use and transportation funding. As you're all probably aware, the Governor's Prosperity Council is examining strategies to support economic growth, expand the tax base and strengthen Oregon's business climate, And land use is expected to be a key part of that conversation as it relates to the availability of housing, industrial land, the development of clean energy projects.

And so we will definitely see some policy reform when it comes to issues permitting, zoning, incentives. And so we'll want to examine some of the potential areas of engagement for the city, any opportunities or any impacts. Lastly, transportation funding. So on March 19, I believe, the governor announced the Transportation Vision Workgroup, and they are tasked with developing a long term transportation funding plan and creating a 2027 package that supports public safety, economic development, affordability, and really just transforms the state's transportation future. And so there may be a chance there to advocate for a transportation related capital funding request that fits into one or more of those categories.

So hopefully some of this information provides some context and can help identify some opportunities or any areas of engagement. Any questions?

Questions for Leah. Just quick one on over the weekend when we're at Pendleton, we saw the list of the folks who are making up that transportation committee. And if you want to abstain for this one, you can. The members of the committee, is this is it bipartisan or is it leaned to on one side? Because my concern is if the governors pick a whole bunch of democrats to come with this package, we're gonna see the same thing again. Not knowing all the individuals in the list, I'm I'm assuming some of you you might know more than I do. Is it both sides of the aisle representing this committee?

Mayor, I would say yes. Although, we don't really have a clear picture as to who is involved in those conversations, and so I don't wanna misguide you. But hopefully, there is a broad range of voices in that table.

Okay.

Mhmm. I'll also add, mayor, that beyond the the makeup of that committee, I think the governor has drawn a line in saying she does not want anybody with an existing stake in our transportation system on that visioning work group. And what I mean what I mean by that

I can see that for their

names. Right. So what I mean by that is you have, you know, for for the city representation, you have a former mayor. Yep. For the county representation, you have a county commissioner who is not seeking an additional term.

That is different than the subcommittees she has announced, and we think that the subcommittees are gonna be more of where the the meat and potatoes type work gets done. And the visioning committee is supposed to, you know, provide clear direction on this is where we're going to go. What you just raised, though, is a really fundamental question, which is the, you know, the legislature passed a transportation funding package, and it was really my my the minority party pushing it to voters and quickly succeeding in getting the signatures that they needed. And so anybody who's working in the space is asking the question of how are you involving the minority party. Mhmm. And we don't have a clear answer to that yet.

All right. Thank you. Any other questions on this? All right. Continue.

I think we're going to turn to our colleague in DC. Hey

there, everybody.

Hey, Greg. How are you?

I'm well. Thanks. Good to be here with you this evening. It's only 08:30 here in Washington, so bright and early. But I do appreciate I don't know if all of you were aware we were supposed to present this during one of your regular council meetings, and I think we were told that we might not be on until sometime around nine eight 08:30 or 09:00 Pacific time.

So I appreciate this early opportunity to visit with you this evening. I am here to in partnership with my colleagues from Oregon to talk about what's going on in Washington. So in terms of the way that we've sort of presented this information to you, we're following more or less the federal agenda that we worked with you all to put together for 2026. We had a number of items on there, and I'm gonna kinda run through a little update on each one of those. First one on the on the list was to support funding for the Riverfront Park project.

So certainly, we did that once the city identified that that was the project that we wanted to move forward with. We began to aggressively help the city package it. I think that was sometime in maybe January, if I recall. So not that long ago that we finally decided we were gonna move forward with that project. We worked, you know, to package the project, gather all the information.

It's quite a lot of work to go ahead and submit these projects to members of congress and to the senators to try to get their support for it. You know, before I get into details of where that project stands in the process right now, I'll tell you that I thought it was a good project. I didn't see any red flags. We certainly would have suggested that the city pursue funding for something else if I thought that, or if we collectively thought that it wasn't going to have an opportunity for success. You know, I think it it it meets the key parameters for the program that we were targeting.

I have worked on other park projects, including this year for other members of congress, and they seem to have gone well. And yet this project to me was was better than some of those other ones I've worked on on behalf of other clients. So I'll just say that I think the River Park Riverfront Park project is gonna be a real great project. Yeah. I know you all already know that.

You've done a lot of work over the past many years to get, other funding sources lined up, and I I congratulate you on that. I think it's gonna be really transformative for the city. You know, the federal funding that we were seeking is gonna be last in funding as opposed to first in, which I thought was really compelling. You know, it's really gonna support a number of key constituencies within the community that will benefit, whether it's the senior community, whether it's low income folks. It's gonna create a sort of a help create that downtown core that you all are looking for in the community.

So, again, I just I can't reiterate enough how sort of strongly competitive I felt this project was. Unfortunately, congresswoman Salinas decided not to request funding for the project in the fiscal year twenty twenty seven appropriations process. So I'm disappointed to report that. I know that, you all may know that already, but, you know, it pains me once again to admit that that's the reality. So we have some work there to do still with her office to try to, garner support for projects in the future.

But but again, I thought it was a high quality project. We haven't yet heard now whether or not the senators will support it or not. I will say that that it's possible that they do, and they may very well support it because for all the reasons that I've already described. But I will say that it's it's typically not the kind of project that they tend to support as frequently in the senate, at least amongst senators Merkley and Wyden. They often are more interested in housing projects for this type of funding opportunity.

But having said that, it's still possible that they could support it. So we'll find out more within the next month or so. We're gonna spend a lot of time over the next couple of months trying to work with the city and with you all to help develop new ideas for projects for next year. We're gonna get started quite a bit earlier and make sure that we involve the Salinas team, much much earlier in the process so that they can be a more active participant in helping to determine what they might wanna support on behalf of Tualatin next year. So we're gonna we we definitely learned some lessons from this.

We've we've engaged extensively with their office on this project, and and sort of heard their recommendations for how they, you know, sort of want to be approached with with ideas in the future. And so we certainly are going to abide by that and and work with them more closely next year. Oh, also to mention, we still, had this sixty fifth and Borland, project allocation from last year that congresswoman Salinas did successfully get on behalf of the city. Unfortunately, it was a a relatively smaller amount of money. Only she was only able to set aside $250,000 for that project.

So, unfortunately, the city is likely or or is declining those funds because by quote, unquote federalizing the project, you'll actually make it much more expensive than the $250,000 will cover. So we've begun to talk with her office about that as well and try to explain to them, the different well, try to explain to them that it just is not gonna work in the city's favor to to accept those funds. But, certainly, we appreciate her support in having gotten that money. Moving on, we also had, as the next item in the the city's federal agenda for for 2026, we're certainly actively supporting the community development block grant program. So in f y twenty six, congress did maintain funding for the program at $3,300,000,000 nationwide or nationally.

So the city should ultimately receive as well as, you know, the surrounding communities, a relatively similar amount of funding that you've received in the past for that program allocation. Once again, the administration has recommended that in its 2027 budget proposal that they submitted to Congress, I think earlier this month or late last month, they recommend $0 for the CDBG program. They also proposed to eliminate a number of other programs within HUD, including the HOME program, which you may be familiar with, as well as some others. So we're actively pushing back against that to work with your congressional delegation and others throughout congress to reject those cuts. And I do anticipate that congress will be generous again and likely support the kind of funding that you all are looking for for that program.

Moving to the next slide. Going we also have the community fueling infrastructure program funding that you all got for what is known locally as the tank up project. So I believe that was in the $16,000,000 range if I recall, although I may be getting that wrong. But I know it was a substantial award that you all got in partnership with many of your other neighboring communities to do charging infrastructure throughout the the community. Department of Transportation and many federal agencies have been, frankly, not allowing these funds to proceed in a variety of ways, not just for things related to charging, but for things across the spectrum of the federal government.

I don't have to inform you about that. I know you've seen the stories about ways that they're holding up funding. We did recently help the city write a letter to a variety of key congressional legislators to highlight a recent judicial ruling that basically said that what the administration was doing was illegal and that they can't do it. And we are just simply trying to to break loose these funds as effectively as we can. I will say that relatedly, but not exactly the same, the Department of Energy just let go of billions of dollars of funding.

Off the top of my head, I can't recall exactly how many billions, but multiple billions. So there is still hope that this money will come loose at some point. You know, the administration basically says that they're just taking a fine tooth comb and and really reviewing all these projects to make sure that they sort of meet their priorities. But, you know, we're doing everything we can to to encourage them to let the funds go, acknowledging that they're for a very valuable purpose in the community and that they were lawfully, authorized, appropriated, funded, etcetera, etcetera. So we wanna break, get those, out the door into you as quickly as we possibly can.

And so we're gonna continue to work on that. Another priority that that the city identified earlier this year was to support the railroad crossing elimination program. This was a program that was created in the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed during the Biden administration. You might be surprised to learn that that that law is actually expiring at the September year. And so with that expiration, actually, railroad crossing elimination program would also expire absent additional activity from congress.

And so we've been working with congress to, express ongoing support for that program. That's important to you all because we need that grant program to be available so that when you're ready to address, one or more railroad crossing, you know, challenges in the community, that you'll have a federal funding opportunity from which you can actually seek funding to help address that that spot that that creates problems, you know, for transportation and whatnot within the community. So, congress has to reauthorize all surface transportation programs at the September. Gonna be a very challenging lift to do so prior to the election. However, again, whenever that does happen and they do reauthorize all those programs, we wanna ensure that the railroad crossing elimination program is is a program that is reauthorized and extended so that you all have funds that you can seek.

And then last but not least, we do want to continue to support local government's ability to offer tax exempt municipal bonds. As part of the one big beautiful bill act that passed last year, we were concerned that congress could take away the ability of local governments to issue municipal bonds. That would also obviously cost the city and therefore taxpayers more money in order to generate revenue for for big projects. Thankfully, the one big beautiful bill act did not impact municipal bonds, so we were able to maintain their tax exempt status. That's great.

But I will say it's not, unfortunately, the only potential threat. Congress is actually working on another what's known as a reconciliation bill, and they're they're gonna potentially wanna pay for portions of it. And when they wanna pay for things, they have to sort of find offsets. And unfortunately, taxes and municipal bonds could be something that they look to again as a way to raise revenue and therefore pay for other spending that they do through these reconciliation bills. So it's something that we continue to monitor, continue to highlight the importance of municipal bonds to Tualatin and other communities across the country.

So we'll seek to continue to maintain those. Just in terms of briefly, don't have a slide on this, but what we'll be working on. I've already mentioned that we're going to be working quite a bit on on new project ideas over the coming year. We're gonna have some of you come out to Washington in September, if I recall, to help us talk to the delegation about some of these project ideas so we can get their feedback as to what they think might be most what they might be most willing to support. You know, certainly, we're gonna do that very closely with the Salinas office, but we also wanna involve the senate offices.

And, you know, we're gonna continue to work on the transportation authorization bill. We're gonna continue to maintain funding throughout the the federal funding cycle for the community development block grant program. We've got a whole host of things that we'll be working on. There's always other things as well. One of the things that we brought up to your staff recently was related to the revamping of the opportunity zone program.

So while that's not captured on your agenda, it's something that I think is an example of the kind of activity that we're engaging in on your behalf, on a routine basis. You know, always trying to pay attention to what's going on in Washington, how it might relate to Tualatin, sharing that information, and having a dialogue about how we can support your interests. So I'm happy to answer any questions you may have and chat about any of these issues in more detail or anything else you might have questions on.

Thanks, Greg. Questions for Greg on the federal level. Wow, you must have covered it well. No questions, Greg.

Thank you. Appreciate the time to be with you all tonight.

Alright. Back to Tyler and Leah or Megan.

So I know we're nearing the end of our time on this topic. So just really quickly, our plan moving forward to get us prepared for 2027 is to start talking with you all about potential capital project asks or funding requests more generally in June. We're having internal conversations and reviewing our capital improvement plan project list for the next cycle. So we should have some ideas, but wanna have a larger discussion with the city council about those to see what feels right, what matches up with what we've heard from others so that we can come up with a a short list. So not a singular project, hopefully, but a short list of possible options.

Next, we'll come back in July to have a larger brainstorming session with the city council with the goal of trying to figure out some of those policy themes that you've identified over the last couple of years as well as potential items to include on a legislative agenda and then to come back again in August with a draft of the legislative agendas for both the state and the federal level with the goal being to pass both of those agendas before we hit September. Because as Greg mentioned, we've got a few folks on council planning to make a trip to DC in September to begin those conversations. And as Tyler and Leah mentioned, that will be legislative days in Salem as well. So that timing is good to start pitching things on our agenda, both funding requests and otherwise. So I had just a couple of other quick things.

As many of you know, the capital has been under construction for a hundred or so years. They're having a reopening reception towards the May on the twenty eighth if anybody would like to head down to Salem to celebrate. And then the League of Oregon Cities has they've done this for the last few years, but a roadshow with their president, and that is coming up in June on the seventeenth. They're doing two versions of that. One will be in person in Tigard and one is virtual.

But the key thing to keep in mind with this president's meeting is that they are reviewing their municipal policy. It's been quite some time since they've updated their municipal policy, and that guides their lobbying efforts at the state level in particular. So it's a great topic to weigh in on, particularly as we think back towards our involvement with the League of Oregon cities over the last few years. All of their policy committees are also looking at the municipal policy as the phase two of the policy committee work. So I'll leave it there unless there are any other questions for me or the Thorn Run team.

Okay. Council Brooks and council president Pratt.

I'm curious, is there a way to tease out any transportation needs from the Riverfront Park project?

Possibly. Yeah. There's the trail connection component of the project, which we have to do because of funding we received from Metro, but also will be transformative to the area. So I think the major question related to that project is timing of when the funds would actually arrive and whether it lines up with our construction timeline. So it might be too late in the cycle for another federal ask. It's also kinda hard to make the same ask even a slightly different version of it. But on the state side, definitely, I think that's one of the projects we should consider.

And what about for doing the entrance to the boat ramp and things like that?

Yeah. Absolutely. I think chunking it out in different ways could be a great strategy.

Okay. Thank you. Mhmm.

Council president Pratt.

You pretty much answered my question. It's like we got a no for now, but are there other ways we can approach this to get some funding for the Riverfront Park?

Yeah. I'll add too. I know that Dustin and Kiera and the Parks and Recruit team are looking at a variety of funding options, including grants at the state level. So perhaps it shows up on our list of priorities, not in the like, an an earmark on the federal side or a Christmas tree bill ask, but it's a specific grant program ask for the funding for that project either as the whole of the project or a component of

the project as counselor Brooks pointed out. Not that it's related to state or federal, but Dustin just told me that our team submitted $2,000,000 nature and neighborhood grant asked to Metro for the Riverfront Park. So we're trying to piece together funding from a variety of sources.

Next up on our agenda is a food cart pod discussion. Teresa? Welcome. Quill is coming up in support. All

right. Okay. Good evening. Theresa Montalvo, Planning Manager. I will just jump right in. If you give me two seconds to get my computer here. Okay. Food carts. Let's see if I

can use this clicker here.

Did I do that? Okay. I guess not. There we go. Wait. Okay. I think

I did. I think I figured

it out.

I was going the wrong direction.

Okay.

So just a little road map of what we're going to talk about tonight. We're going to go over a little bit of the background. I know I wasn't here for a lot of it, but spent a lot of time reviewing some of the tapes and other discussions you all have had. So we'll talk briefly about what our standards are right now for food carts in the city, some best practices. We've met with a variety of peer cities to talk about what their ordinance allow and some pitfalls and some opportunities.

And then we'll talk briefly about two different approaches, what we're calling a market driven approach and then a city supported model as well. So just kind of a little bit of a background. Food Cart pods align with our vision and council priorities chiefly in the space of a thriving and diversified economy as well as vibrant and accessible gathering places. The downtown identity study, which I think came before you in October 2025, we found that there was overwhelming community interest in food cart pods near in downtown near parks. A third of the respondents surveyed considered a food cart pod a must have.

The

study also identified actionable ideas based on community feedback. One of those was circulation, which strived to create a connected downtown linkages between small businesses and various other destinations, one of which could be a food cart pod. And then activity, which was designed to increase shared spaces, specifically mentioned food cart pods and their ability to combine food and people and activity in vibrant location. Some additional background, there was discussion among council about finding ways to permit food cart pods in the downtown area as well as expanding it to other areas of the city, chiefly encouraging outdoor gathering spaces that support Lake Of The Commons and the future Riverfront Park that we just talked about. There was some direction to staff to take a look at what other cities are doing in areas such as whether the siding would be on gravel or paved spaces, best practices regarding utility connections, and alternative models that support small business development.

So where are food carts currently allowed? This kind of looks like a long list, but it is very limited in many ways. Chiefly, the allowances are in the around the light industrial and manufacturing spaces. Let me see, I want to use this because I have it now. There's a little bit of allowance in the commercial general just kind of hugging 99W and then we have a little bit in our medical center zonings there as well.

And then we have a bit and I'll speak to this a little bit further in the Basalt Creek employment zone, but very, very limited commercial opportunities. Where are they not allowed? Of course, as you would expect in the residential zones, which is all that kind of yellow and tan color. But then you'll notice that there's a huge swath of commercial various commercial types of zones where currently food carts and food cart pods of course are not permitted. So what are our standards?

And this is where we really differ with, as you probably are aware, a lot of our surrounding communities because not only are we limited in where we allow them to be, but a big driver is we only allow one food cart at a site at one time. So when you kind of I wasn't here when this all came about, but you kind of look at where they're allowed, chiefly industrial manufacturing and you have one cart per site. So you can see it's kind of like to support those types of businesses. You can bring in a cart, have folks have access to lunch without having to leave the site, that type of thing. They're only allowed on paved surfaces, not gravel.

You do have to no obstruction of vehicle areas or pedestrian areas. They must be self contained, so they must have their own water and sewer, kind of a self contained unit, and they must provide garbage and recycling for patrons. There is an allowance for a food cart pod in the Basalt Creek employment zone. The zone allows for one pod with up to 10 carts reviewed through an architectural review, but there again it is also limited. It must have frontage along Graham's Ferry Road and provide screening from public view.

That's the only place in the city right now that you can locate more than one food cart on a site at a time. So local regulations for pods. What we found in our research is that the majority of the jurisdictions in the metro area have what we're calling a market driven model. That is it's food cart pods are used like anything else in the code. Their codes say where they can go, how they're supposed to be developed and then the market could come in anybody wanting to develop that and do so much like you would have an office park or a manufacturing park or something of that nature.

There are some variations for the scale of development and the number of carts permitted. So each jurisdiction generally sets some parameters of how many carts make a food cart pod, how many carts are too many for a site. All cities require carts to be on a paved surface. I know this was a subject of discussion in the past. There's quite a few reasons for that chiefly is accessibility.

I think we all want these to be destinations. So I think allowing it to folks of various abilities, folks with strollers, folks in wheelchairs, that's one of the chief reasons. These are also vehicles still and most jurisdictions including Tualatin require all parking spaces to be paved and these are vehicles essentially parked somewhere. Some cities require covered pavilions or shelters. We found that most jurisdictions offer a mix of either allowing self contained and then in some instances also allowing an ability to connect to city services, water and sewer in certain instances.

Usually that's tied to scale of the project. So and you'll see in the next slide, we'll talk a little bit more discreetly about the different jurisdictions. But generally speaking, if your pod is going to be one or two carts, most jurisdictions allow them to be self contained units. But when you start to get to much more vibrant like eighteen-twenty carts, usually there's some requirements to connect to services, not always. And then always there's some sort of setback and screening requirements.

Food carts are a challenge because they're everybody's codes are designed around focusing on buildings. You have building setback, you have building height, you have where buildings can go, all these different things in our code. And food carts really threw everything for a loop because they're nothing says where cars besides, you got parking space in your parking lot, that's where your cars can go. So that's why most jurisdictions write very discrete design standards for food cart pods so that we can dictate what they're going to look like so that they don't impact surrounding properties. This is a bit of a comparative we contacted more locations, but you can see across the top Beaverton, Happy Valley, Sherwood and Tigard.

All of these jurisdictions save Tigard have the market driven approach. Tiger does have both market driven and a city supported, which I'll talk about a little bit more in a moment. As you can see a variety of zones where they're allowed all of which though include their commercial zones and then some include their various types of industrial or commercial. There's some variation between permit types largely most of them are a Type two review, which would be a staff decision with notice for surrounding property owners. Happy Valley has some go to a Type three based on size.

So if they achieve a certain size then they have to go through a Type three with a hearing. Sherwood is a bit conservative. They are they all require conditional use permit and they are considered a Type four review. You can see the commonality that they are all required to be on a paved surface. There's a mix of utility allowances both self contained which is showing up here as temporary and then more permanent connecting to city services.

And then we get into some of the design structures. Some say you need to have site built permanent restrooms on-site. And then for instance Beaverton and Happy Valley allow you to have a like a portable restroom based on the size of the food cart. So if you're only going to put three on a site maybe it's okay to drag on it like a shouldn't say honey bucket but like a honey bucket. That was the first thing that popped to my head. And then there are some in the jurisdictions that say Sherwood chiefly that you're required to have

a

structure on-site. So they wanted this to kind of be a destination where like maybe you have a restaurant already in a structure and then you have a food cart pod in addition. So there's some similarities and a wide variety to create regs that more closely fit with various city goals. So a market driven approach, we have heard we kind of tried to do a little bit research internally. And I spoke with Sid, a lot of food cart developers have reached out to him.

So we've heard from interest from seven private developers. We've spoken to five of them. And that a market driven approach would be responsible, as I said in the beginning, to counsel goals and visions. The caveat with that is it would market driven. So we might say this would be a great site for a food cart pod, but it would be subject to whether someone chooses to come in and pursue it there.

We'd have a little bit less ability to direct where that goes in some ways. But I would say that once we pursue that, right, if hear from you tonight that like, yes, we want to pursue some design standards and things, it's a one time thing. It goes into the code. It becomes regulated very similar to all other uses in the city. So it's kind of something we know how to do.

We just need to craft these particular regulations with your guidance of what we want them to look like. I will also note that as I said earlier, because they're not buildings, we do need specific design standards for them. So even if we were to kind of pursue a city driven approach, right now we don't really have any good tools to say what are they going to look like city, how do you want them to look. So in any avenue we are lacking in that area right now. And these are just a couple of guidance just slides to show different ones in the region.

I think you're probably all aware or familiar with most of these. We have the BG Food Cartel in Beaverton. That's one of the largest in the area. We have HV Station in Happy Valley and then Oregon City's OC Brewing, which is an example of being with a site built business and then extending on to have a food cart pod with that. And then the city supported model which is really interesting.

We did a lot of research and talked to folks. We found us different but somehow city supported models in Tiger, Eugene and Milwaukee. All of those programs are run out of their economic development divisions. So I would say that in order to establish a city supported approach, we would need the code as I mentioned updated to provide standards and zones where food cart pods can go. We would need future work sessions to establish a program and I'll talk about that more in upcoming slides, but it would require development of a program, likely a funding source and then figuring out staffing for that what that approach could look like.

The model in Tiger, was very interesting. What the city did there, I would note they first did have their food cart pot ordinance in their code and their zoning code for like a market approach. And then they kind of went a little bit further and they purchased used food carts and developed basically a city supported incubator model. So that model they get reduced rent for a period of about twelve months and they also get a variety of other economic development support for if they want to kind of move on to brick and mortar and things like that. So they do get quite a lot of support from the city in that in that response.

That's the Universal Plaza. I'm sure you're all probably very aware of that site. Eugene has city supported model, then they have, two sites where they permit food carts in downtown parks. And what that model essentially boils down is that you can rent a site in that and bring your food cart to those parts and they do allow you to connect to some services. They have the maintenance by their facilities team.

When we talked to Eugene, I think one of the bigger hurdles for food carts in this program was getting the necessary insurance that the city required. So that's been a bit of a hurdle for them for that. And then I would just briefly Milwaukee is basically the same model where they have a park and they will rent out spots within that park. So brings us to questions and what we were hoping to hear from you is whether or not you're supportive of us going further and developing and expanding where food cart pods can go in the city, including design standards. And if that is something under a market driven approach that you would like us to do as our next steps or if there's some other approach you would like us to explore.

Thanks Teresa. Questions for Teresa and or Aquila? Counsel Brooks.

Thanks for the presentation. Yes. My first I guess my first question is when some some of the conversations that we're having with the downtown redevelopment has to do with public space. So for an example, like if there was ever food carts around that pond or whatever, that would be something that I imagine the city would have to rent unless we sold I mean, I can't see it a different way. Is that but would

Can you clarify that the city would have to rent the space or the you mean the carts?

Not the carts. The space. Because you said one of them owned. Yeah. Because it's not because it's so would that be a city centered? Like, I'm not saying work with MISO and help somebody start a pod.

Yeah. That would still be a a city supported model. Yeah.

Yeah. I would for myself, I'm curious about learning more about that, especially with how we're looking at different land use opportunities in the downtown core, it might be a good stepping stone for how that moves forward in my mind. So I wouldn't want it to be like off the table even though I'm very interested in best practices and market driven models. And I've been familiar just with some of the trainings I've gone to with having an anchor and all the things that help support it be successful. And then my other question is, just because the consultant brought it up and then we had this great presentation at the LLC conference just last week about these small retail opportunities, would it be a time to do them at the same time as far as design standards if we were going to do like mini pod retail opportunities?

I have a great article to send. I'll send it out to everybody. They're so adorable. And just from the Arts Committee alone, the artists always talk about not having a place that is rent friendly enough for them to be able to do things. And there's a lot of people that always are looking for more local businesses. And it could be another way too of increasing circulation, as you guys said, and entrepreneurs getting a little bit of a stepping stone. Anyway, those were my two.

Okay. Yeah. And so to your first question, I think that's a really good point to tie it in with the downtown revitalization work. That's one of the reasons why we didn't wanna pursue too much of the city supportive model at this point because in those CAC, the Community Advisory Committee meetings, there has been well, the group's going through all the recommendations that came out of the identity study and everything that U of O is doing, but there has been a lot of discussion around food carts. So we kind of didn't want to get ahead of what that group wanted to see.

So I would expect that there would be some kind of recommendation coming from that group around food carts in the downtown, whatever that may look like. And then on the to your second question about the retail, like the small retail opportunities, I guess I'm picturing kind of like what they have at Saturday market, like the little booths where people sell stuff.

Sort of. But these were like adorable little sheds. They're almost they're like very adorable. They're not

So if that's something that the rest of the council wants us to look at, we we could pursue that. It might I don't know if we'd wanna split up the efforts or make them part of the same effort,

but Okay.

That's something that

could be

I just wasn't sure if would make it easier or harder if it was a future opportunity, especially since the consultant had brought it up. But I'll send it out, and then people can consider it. I'm just Okay. Those were my two thoughts around that. And I don't wanna put a proposal before the CORA group. At the same time, if we're gonna be considering options, I think that staying flexible is good in case the CORA group would like that. Mhmm.

Councilor Gonzalez. Thank you for the presentation. I've been looking forward to this information. I would be interested in the pod the pod model effect, you know, where you have a centralized bathroom

Mhmm.

Supporting it. I would be very concerned to have the food carts be opened up, and all of a sudden, they start showing up throughout the throughout the various places unsightly. Mhmm. Sure. We have them now, and it's very limited, which is fine. But I would be wanting to make it a destination point. So Downtown Cora, near the river, near the access, a place where people can walk to off the Greenway Trail and then move in or somebody can drive. So we would have to identify those locations. Work with an entrepreneur. It also could be an incubator system for a potential business that starts off there and then moves into something else as well.

But I would be interested in what counsel Brooks said about the little small little stores. I think I've seen those. It would lend to the the vibe, you know. Mhmm. I also sometimes feel that the pod the pod model, it was very popular during COVID, but it almost feels like we're a little bit late into the game, to be honest with you. Sure. We have the riverfront the other cities don't, and that's where we can probably leverage to create a more welcoming destination, walking distance off the river, off the park, hit the food pod. Mhmm. But it does feel like we're late into that game. So

Councilor Reyes and Council President Pratt.

Thank you for the presentation and for, doing surveys. I am also interested in the more of a a place where it's a destination versus having, you know, all over just on one here, two there, everywhere. So I think I I would like to say, oh, we're we're going downtown to the to the food cart area or something like that. So I'm interested more in that. I also feel that, having an an the ability to have, like, the restroom in one you know, it was allowed for people to have like an area where they can just there's a restroom but not like having little honey buckets everywhere because that's sort of the fear.

If you have a one of those, then you'll have to have a honey bucket here then all over town. We don't want that. I I don't at least I don't think we want that. I also feel when the the city the market driven, I kinda like that idea because I don't know how long the Cora or whatever we're doing in downtown area is gonna take. So I feel like people are waiting to hear now what do we wanna do.

So if we have correct me if I'm wrong if I misunderstood. The market driven will be, say, for instance, a private developer gets the land and then develops, and then they manage, and we just we we make sure. And then the other, which is city supported, would be us providing, which I feel like that will bring in a lot of work. Not that we are not here to work, but a lot of the like, we might need to designate someone to monitor that. I feel like it's gonna be a lot, but I don't wanna discard it either.

And I wanna, like, maybe in the future when the core is really, like, developing the core area, then we can have, like, a designate like, the city can support that in some in one way. But if we want something now, I think a private developer will will might be the fastest way in my opinion, but I may be wrong. So that approach, I like, but I also don't wanna I don't wanna I don't want us to not have the city supported approach as well, especially once we are ready to develop in the core area. I do I I enjoyed the presentation. Thank you very much.

And so that's kinda like my thought. Yeah. I I guess I do want to, but I don't I don't wanna wait that long, I get to to have a scenario. So if a developer's ready, I would to create something that's nice, like in Beaverton or these the one in Westland. I mean, there's something like that ready, then I

I will support that. It it would also seem that, like, if we do do a good job of creating a a regulation that results in a design standards to create a destination pod and a market driven approach, I would think once the downtown revitalization work is done, it'd be pretty easy to take that model and kind of morph it into something that's a city approach. So maybe it's a stepping stone in that way.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. That's exactly what I was trying to say.

Council president

Pratt. I'm gonna play off that because I'm generally want market driven, but I know on the CAC, we've been there there have been suggestions of putting it in city owned parking lots, for example. So is if can you kinda have both? Like, maybe start with market driven. I think that's what you're implying there. But and if we did that, could it be be a way where the city basically just leases the or leases the land? Not I don't want Sid sitting there, you know, overseeing food cart pods, but, like, where private market driven people could be potentially on city space and use the space. Is that a possibility?

I think that that's a possibility that we just leased it to a there's a variety, and part of our work will be interviewing different food cart pod developers. So I think there could be an opportunity to say that, oh, you know, if you would like to lease this land for however long and use it for that purpose. Yeah. Okay. It that would be a little less labor intensive as far as having to totally manage the program. Yeah.

I believe that's how Beaverton works. I think to see if Beaverton has subbed out the running of that pod to a vendor.

Okay. And then as to locations, I agree. We don't want a food caught pod on every corner. But I do think like, we could it'd be nice to have one downtown, but I know we have that area in on 1 24th. So I'd like you know, I think there could be more than one destination with smaller pods. Like, there's where you've got a lot of working people. We wanna keep them off to Elton Sherwood. They probably a lot of people that will work there will probably have half hour lunches, so that'd be nice for them. And I know, our friend at the garages would like a couple over there, and that's pretty far from downtown. So I would want it to be a little flexible, but also, yeah, I

don't want them in every corner. You know? I think that's something that in our research we've seen that each municipality has struggled within in a future work session for us would be what's the right size of one that one the one slide I had for Sherwood if you want to build a food cart pod in Sherwood it has to be at least five carts because they wanted a certain size But in some of the other jurisdictions, more than one food cart is a food cart pot. So it's kind of figuring out exactly how we

would Yeah, could size see some smaller ones and then down area, bigger. And then as to those little, they were like little it was really cute. They were little shacks and they were sheds. So sorry. But they were like little incubator spaces for people. And I know that's being talked about on the CAC that ideas come up. I think that's maybe a separate issue for the future, but not too far in the future. It might end up in the design part. Yeah. I believe it will end up

in the design part because it was pretty popular.

Other questions? Councillor Sacco.

Thank you. I do support the market driven model. I guess one of my questions is if we, I guess how you kinda answered this but I didn't I guess I'm just looking for a little bit more of an in-depth answer of, how labor intensive is it to split up the two market driven versus city supported? And my only fear is that as councilor Gonzalez said, we're late to the game on this. And will it delay anything if we don't do both of the both the codes together?

Will it will there be, you know, will it push us out even further with the the the things that we're doing with the CAC? Is there efficiency in doing it altogether?

I I don't think so. I think that doing the market approach, which means location, design standards, how many, we have that information and we can pull that together and put it into the code. I think if we go to a city supported model, then it's which model do we want to do, what kind of hybrid version fits us, what department does that land in, do we have the staff to support it. So I think if we do them together, then yeah, it drags it out. But I think if we can get this done, then we're a little bit closer and then we can kind of answer all of those more in-depth questions.

Okay. Thank you. And then I guess just some comments. I'm on the, to the Excel slide of the the table. I'm in support of, permanent restrooms, and also a a structure because I think that feels more a destination.

But also, we live in the valley and rain is a thing, and I wanna make sure that this is something that we can use year round. I mean, I hate to have an area, that we put time and effort into and then it's only able to be used during certain times of the year, which I'm sure the businesses would feel the same. So, I lean towards, sort of structure required to make sure that that happens. And I also really like the idea of the sheds. I know that's sort of a little subcategory here now.

But I've seen them and they were in the civils report and I think that they're great. But all for fast tracking the market driven food cart pods. And it's been a big topic in the idea committee as well as a community gathering space.

That's a Hillier.

Thank you. I think most of my questions have been answered. This is a great presentation. So kind of I know this probably should have been asked sooner, but I just I see the change in the services. We have constrained budgets and my worry about fire and police services.

Like, is are there more calls for service? It's probably a ridiculous question, but I feel like it needs to become a standard question whenever we're looking at changes to things in our community. So that's just one kind of something I'm thinking about, not that I'm asking for an answer for, but but a concern I do have. And I did hear you speak to liability or the insurance needs of the individual vendor owner of how however that will look, and that and that makes me happy. And, hopefully, the permitting process would fund the permanent restroom because I am also in favor of, a permanent restroom.

However, I do like how, Maple Valley has it. It in some way, like, it's different for the different sizes, assuming that we may, stage it that way. Mhmm. I am also in favor of the fast tracking anything market driven. And I guess my thought about the purpose so I'm thinking about the purpose of the food carts. Right? It's it's to bring community together. It's also to create but but the community doesn't only gather in the core area or our future, you know, destination spots. We have the Basalt Creek area. We have I mean, they're we're kind of all divided in the community, and I don't know if you've spent any days and days on end with loved ones in the hospital, but you get sick of hospital food.

It'd sure be nice to have and, like, I saw space over on that side. Like Mhmm. Even if it's you know, we start as as this grows and the code allows, maybe there's some that are a five, some that are a three, or or whatever. I I'm not an expert. But I do think it's important that we consider different parts of our community. And, you know, we're trying to grow the accessibility and walkability, walk and bike, and all those things. And if it's only down in the quarry, we force people that that doesn't that doesn't feel good to me. Mhmm. So, that's just something that I think that we have to consider is is the purpose only to to bring it downtown. All that said, I'd really prefer that we do it well instead of just a smattering here and there.

I don't think that is a good look. I don't think it's effective. It's not good for the business. It's it's not good for all those things. So just being thoughtful and purposeful about where people do gather. And some sort of maybe relief to traffic when high schoolers are going out to lunch. Just thoughts.

Thank you.

Consentative.

Yeah. And just to Councilor Brooks and Pratt since they've seen these sheds. Are there for so it's for them, sorry. Are there, like, for, like, market, like, the like, Saturday market kinda people can go and bring in their fruit or veggies and

They could be crafts or small businesses, and they could be temporary. Like, someone could use it for, like, someone might have a Christmas shop or yeah. Like, pop ups. Very similar like a pop up idea. So they'd be these permanent sheds that the city would build probably, but then different people could use them

Okay.

Throughout the year. And they would bring, like, if you were in the courtyard, close to the courtyard at least, you know, it would bring people in.

Okay.

And bring interest. Little store, outside stores. Little shops.

Okay. Well, thank you. Yeah, that's all.

Okay. Any other questions? Right. I concur. Let's look at the market driven, fast tracking market driven, kind of like what Tiger did, getting market driven done first and then look at a city support model.

I think the city support model will be looked at under Quora same as the small retail sheds because that's been a discussion and maybe we'll land in there when we get to the design of code that that's where we can implement it. And also like as Councilor Hilliard was saying, the allowance of different sizes of food pods because if someone has to buy land, I don't want to if the land only supports four pods, four trucks versus 10, let's allow a different variety of those kind of facilities. Again, with design standards and make and having them look nice like Councillor Gonsal says. We because we already as you mentioned, you have five people willing or very eager to build some here in town. We had one come to City Council already who has a spot ready to go and just needs to code updated.

I'm seeing full speed ahead it sounds like from all of us on the market driven. All right. That brings us to agenda review, city manager's report and roundtable. I have Councillor Gonzales is up for Pledge of Allegiance tonight. All right.

And then I have four proclamations. First one being mental health awareness month proclamation. Who would like to do that one? National Prevention Week, I'm assuming. Shocker there.

Police. Alright. And last one is public service public service recognition. Alright. Any questions or concerns about the items on consent tonight? Have only two. That's short. I'm not seeing any there. Alright. What else? I think that's it. So I'll go ahead and we'll start with the roundtable. Can the city manager speak well enough after the dentist?

They weren't able to fix my problem Oh, no. Because my blood pressure was too high.

Imagine that.

So anyway, I've got a sore tooth. Let's see. We're doing budget work. The first committee meeting, of course, is May 11, your next council meeting. It will take up the entire work session.

The document is off to the printer, so we're we've done our internal work, we're excited to start those committee meetings. So the draft document, right, not the final document. The poll center work is continuing. It is we're rounding the bend. Programs are being accommodated in the Van Raiden Center, and we have found out that it we're probably gonna continue to use the Van Rayden Center on an ongoing basis because it's additional capacity, and it's working out really well.

So excited about that. We are under contract to demolish the piece of the house on the Mathias property that well, it's our property now, the development commission's property that we purchased from Doctor. Mathias that's across from the Grange that we had talked about before. So it's an attractive nuisance at the moment. And so we completely abated it for what it needed to be abated for.

And you'll see it coming down most likely this week or next. We are looking at installing a calling it a dog run is probably too too fancy for a term, but a fenced in area on the lot next to the police department closest to the neighbor, the house, the the red house that's next to the police department. That would solve a couple of issues. One is our k nine units do not have a place to go off leash, and so that would provide a a nice space for that. And it would also give some distance between the backyard of that house and the yard where I mean, the area where we allow camping for homeless individuals.

So it solves a couple of issues and we would be able to pay for it through forfeiture dollars, so that have very limited ways to spend. So it's not very well, it's not we're not under contract for that yet, but it's something that we're we're looking at doing. Our photo red light camera on Tolleson Sherwood Road in Avery, which has been out of service for well on going on three years now is back up and installed and starting in May. So the whole month of May, it will be the warning period. And then starting in June, we'll be back to to ticketing.

So beware. The sidewalk backlog project, we are starting to notify homeowners. This is a two year program and we will be at the May 11 meeting to award the contract and to give you an update, but we are starting the homeowner notifications before we get the contract award. Anyway, the two year program, the first year will be in the South End of town. And so if you live in the South End of town, will most likely get noticed if your sidewalks are impacted.

Couple of other things, we had a very successful Earth Day event on last Friday. 70 volunteers joined us to remove invasive species, mulch native shrubs, planted a 100 native species along the Tualatin River in both Community Park and Sweet Pond. Thank you to our partners, Friends of Trees and Tualatin Swill And Water Conservation District and the mighty parks team and Kate, our volunteer coordinator. I mentioned that our team has submitted a $2,000,000 grant request from Metro for the Riverfront Park. I believe we're gonna try to get at least our our rep, Garrett Rosenthal, out on a walk, and maybe other metro counselors will invite you, and, hopefully, you can come when that gets scheduled.

The ribbon cutting, of course, for Parque Las Casitas is this Saturday, and hope to see you there. I believe it starts at 02:00. Yes. We've been busy the parks team has been busy improving the safety and playability of our athletic fields. They've been releveling bases and adding red clay top dressing to ensure a great spring sports season.

And then finally, I got little buttons to hand out. Tiger Library reopens tomorrow, and their staff dropped off a big thank you basket, including these fun, I survived the Tiger library closure. And we have certainly seen an uptick in visitors and so it was really nice of them to come in and give us some

goodies. Thank you.

I'm going to go switch things up and start with Councillor Sacco.

Thank you. We had the idea committee meeting last Monday and majority of the meeting we discussed the committee discussed the spring and summer engagement opportunities. So look for the idea committee out and about this spring and summer at events near you. And we also debriefed on the Grand Ronde field trip that I believe now was in November time frame, but our our agendas have been very packed. So that group gave a a debrief and talked about, you know, just really engaging with that community and strengthening those relationships, which is really great to see.

Secondly, I would like to ask on behalf of the idea committee that we have a proclamation for Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month and that that be read on May 11. May 11 meeting. And if there's a majority to put that forward.

Didn't we used to do those? I thought we had a

Yeah. We've always done it.

Previously

like our second

I thought we'd done it in one but it's not routine.

Well, if it's not routine. We've been working the the committee has been working on

it. We On

the last okay.

I'm fine with it.

Alright. Looks like that's Thank the you.

Council Hilliard.

I have nothing formal to report. Alright.

Council Reyes.

Not formal, but a community event that we went to with counselor Pratt and counselor Brooks on Saturday. Saturday. It feels like a long time ago. It was just last Saturday, but it was a community event for to to listen on several things that I'm gonna ask counselor Pratt to speak about. But it was just it wasn't just us, but it it several state representatives were there.

I believe some federal representatives, like Selena's representative was there and county, and it was at the Saint Anthony Church. And it was a pretty good event. It was well attended. We were I was there representing our our consular city. And yeah. So it was really nice. It was great. We have food and nice time to come together and and talk about our issues in our community. That's all I had this last couple of weeks. So thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Gonzales. I don't

have nothing formal report other than I am working on something. I know, mayor, that you're on the greater Greater Portland Inc. Council. Mhmm. And I'm gonna be hosting I know governor Kotick had convened the Prosperity Council. So I will be hosting a listening session. This is in in Downtown Portland where we all agreed that that because of what happened to Portland, it affects all of surrounding cities. So in conjunction with the Greater Portland Inc, I'll be hosting one of those and leading that discussion. We already have 70 businesses already confirmed to The be guidelines are very clear. It's it's about business and regulations, and I'm gonna curate all those notes and then send them off to the council.

I've asked three of the Prosperity Council people to be in attendance. They've agreed as of right now, but that could change. But for right now that's what I'll be working on. And we're looking to have that on the first or the second week in May.

Do you have a date?

We're working on a few because we're waiting for the Prosperity Council people to confirm and I have three dates, and it's so conflicting. Of course. It was originally was gonna be May 4, but that has since changed since this morning. So

Thank you.

Councilor Brooks.

Thanks, mayor. Alright. As Maria said, I was at the Saint Anthony's Action Assembly on Saturday, April 18 with council president Pratt and and Council Reyes. I just want to say that Danny who runs the, think it's called the Social Justice Group, did a great job in gathering speakers as well as different advocates throughout the community in the space of housing and also immigration. The tiger police were there, the sheriff's department was there, State Senator Neron was there.

Metro Council month Metro Councilor Rosenthal and Juan Carlos Gonzalez were there. Quite a few people were there. And I learned a lot, which it was mostly community members who were speaking, and then there were some very particular asks. And one of the ones that was the most touching to me was a woman from Tualatin. I think she had worked in our school system that whose apartment was damaged during the ice storm.

And three years later, the ceiling almost fell down on her daughter, and it was full of mold. And then the apartment building, I think, evicted them without any written anything, and they couldn't access any of their documents or papers or materials. Their things were packed up. One of the stories that things were packed up, I don't know if they ever saw them again. The other one, the stories, they couldn't find the things for quite a while, and then they finally accessed them.

So pretty powerful things that are just going on right here and right in Tigard. And I'm looking forward to working with our the people you know, us and the other of coming up with ideas. So that was that. Sorry. It was very powerful.

And and they're just doing great work over there at Saint Anthony's. And then on the twentieth oh, I had the mayor's call when we discussed city stuff, and he's healthy. I also had the Tarleton Arts Advisory Committee on April 21, and that's a Tuesday night. We discussed where they we've selected the art and the places for the wraps. There are some proposals around just looking at the policy.

There's something in the direction of the committee that really hasn't been explored much. So we're going to be looking at some ways of looking at what the art committee, diving more into what their role is. And then we also welcomed a new member. So it was a very good meeting and looked at the the fill for the whatever we call it, that little

Logo.

Logo. Thank you. Idea. Then I was at the Pendleton, the LLC spring. They're calling it the spring symposium this year, but it's basically a conference.

The village idea I mentioned, the presenter's name was Becky McCray, and her program's called Savior Town. And so there'll be more information that you can look at from the link. And then one of her her big thing was streamlining things. So instead of creating committees that take months and years, how do you get people's ideas fast tracking without creating a lot of extra bureaucracy, reducing the bureaucracy, and letting ideas sort of flourish in the community more easily? So she has a book.

I picked it up. So if anyone's more interested, let me know. And then yesterday oh, there was an event, and I bring it up. There was an event for the benefit of the Tualatin River Keepers that was a coral event. But the neatest thing about it was it had pictures of the Tualatin River, like, filmed behind it.

So there's all this beautiful music and then images of our river, and it was something like, it was so great. And I just thought, I wish everybody at this council was here right now because it was such a it was just amazing. And then also, just from being here, it's like, I know that log, and I know that but some of these images almost looked like a painting. And the videographer is very generous. And so I just wish there was a way I could get it to you guys. Anyway, that's it. Thanks.

Council President Pratt.

First on the fifteenth, I went to the c four metro meeting. We got metro updates on the regional transportation plan, there's five criterias, but the big one is safety focus. We got a future vision update, and Juan Carlos is leading that, and it's looking at the values of the people from our region and future planning. And then we got a thing on a land banking study, which is interesting, it's buying up brownfields and unused lands. And then the idea is to make it ready for development or buying, like, old apartment buildings, for example, and updating them for use.

But the part that's not really clear is where the funding comes from to do all that. We shall see. It's a great idea. I went to the Byron CIO meeting. I did the website beta test, which was really kind of interesting.

And then, what else? Oh, oh, the LLC conference was great. I there was a lot of, yeah, a a lot of focus on attracting participation from community members and how to get we had, one session, where they had some college kids there too, and the whole idea was talking about how how to get younger people engaged in not only, like, running for council, but serving in city government roles and taking an interest in that. So that was really interesting. And then oh, yeah.

I'm gonna go back to Saint Anthony's. So the thing we went to the assembly was focused on trying to help people with immigration issues such as work permits and and helping them with the process and also on helping people that are in apartments and getting help. There was an ask for money, which everybody I mean, the city asked was a $100,000. So nobody said right out they'd give them the money because it was higher amounts for other levels of government. But we are going to have meetings to look at other ideas of what we can do to help with some of the other counselors and commissioner Snyder.

And my ask is if in the future, once we're more prepared, we could have a work session to have this brought to us to talk to. So if anybody would support that.

So what's the work session on?

They want to come and they requested a presentation to one of our work sessions.

Yes. They give a presentation, but we want to do it once we have some potential solutions and ideas of what we could actually do.

So we're not at the point of scheduling that work session yet?

No. It's just agreeing that we can have one at some point in the future.

All

right. I want to thank all the folks who beta tested at the library on the fifteenth, including Council Hillier. We've seen behind me, we beat up the website pretty good. And very much appreciate people taking time to do that. Some people really dug in and did some great testing.

Later that day, I did the rotary presentation of my last one of what's going on in the city. Then I went to a WEA board meeting where GPI presented basically what GPI does and how GPI can work in conjunction with WEA to help promote business growth in the region. And I ended the day at Sherwood with their state of the city. Mayor Rosner did a fantastic job and his words, his favorite word is amazing. So sure what is amazing.

JPAC was on foursix on the sixteenth. There's a couple of things I'll highlight there. Greg mentioned that the federal surface transportation reauthorization is due in September. It does it's a five to six year program. The current service transportation package expires on ninethirty.

There's no draft bill yet. As Greg was mentioning, they might try to kick the can because of politics and election times. What they've been hearing, they being a lobbyist is that the Republican Party would like a smaller surface transportation reauthorization act getting back to basics. There is no timeline yet on how or when they're going to get to this. But they're also talking about doing formula funding versus discretionary grants.

So they all want to speed up project delivery. They want to streamline permitting regulations and review criteria. They also realize that the Highway Trust Fund revenues are going down. So new fees will be required. They are looking at EV and hybrid fees in the federal government in lieu of gas tax, possibly $100 to $150 registration fee, possibly a wait mile tax at the federal level.

Because right now the way the fund is being used, there will be no dollars left in it by 2028. Yeah. We were alerted by NLC about the basics act that is incorporated into the service transportation discussion and that's about the safety of bridges and maintain our bridge safety. The Multnomah County gave an update on the Burnside Bridge update. They have 60% design is to be done by May '26.

They are starting the process of submitting permits and getting land use approval for the Burnside Bridge. In fiscal year twenty seven, I thought this was interesting. They will get an updated cost estimate of how much the bridge might cost. Right now they are estimating its 1.6 to one

point Recording stock. 8,000,000,000 Recording in progress.

Yeah. You didn't want those numbers to go out, did you? Yeah. So it's 1.6 to $1,800,000,000 for the Burnside Bridge. Yeah.

They've decided on the design that inverted wide design that looks very nice. The reason for the cost being so high is the cost of concrete and steel plus labor. They're assuming they would get this done by the 2033, but no surprises, uncertainty with the Feds to help get the funding done of this project. And then TriMet gave a presentation by the way, the bridge turns 100 years old in May, the Burnside Bridge. Finally, TriMet was proud to announce that their trip planner now includes shuttles and C TRAN into their scheduling system.

It's a soft launch right now, but it's pretty interesting that you can plan a trip and it will tap into ride connection system plus C TRAN system so you can do a complete trip not just the TriMet part. Later that day, I went to Hazelbrook to present for two classes of career day. I was loving that a whole bunch of kids had city of Twalton swag walking in there. I guess they saw they went to the library. Some kids went to the library, some folks went to the police station to see what those careers are in city government and the police department.

The twentieth, I went to the State Of The City at Wilsonville, hearing what their vision is and where they want their city to go. They are very proud as they should be of their permanently affordable facility that's built on the smart parking lot that has roughly 100 units in it once it's completed. League of Oregon City's Pendleton, interesting thing for us was Councilor Brooks and I were driving home together, fortunately picked a stop in the Dallas for gas and we stumbled upon their Cherry Festival. So we were stuck in The Dallas for a while and got to watch their parade of over 100 entries, but it was fantastic. I mean, the streets were lined with kids.

We have Council Brooks and I were just mentioning back in the days when we used to have the crawfish thistle. These kids were getting pelted with candy. It was better than Halloween there, but some really cool floats from businesses, private organizations and stuff like that. But it was kind of cool to see the Cherry Festival and we had to wait the parade out before we could leave the Dallas. And finally this morning, I did Mayor Monday on Coin TV.

They brought up, we discussed my term limit and the state of the city. We discussed housing in Tualatin and we talked about Cora and downtown revitalization in Tualatin. All in three to five minutes. Mia, I'm used to doing with Trevor and Emily, but the new host is Emily. So it was Emily and Mia doing the hosting, but it went well I thought. So with that we have a whopping five minutes left. I'll go ahead and close this work session and we'll reconvene in five minutes at 07:00 for our regular City Council meeting. Thank you.