City Council - Regular Meeting

City council, are we ready to go? Alright. Every everybody's here, so I will call to order this work session of the Westland City Council. It is Tuesday, 01/20/2026, And the first item of business is, as always, approval of the agenda. Would anybody like to make a motion?

I move to approve the agenda for the work session of the Westland City Council for 01/20/2026.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for the work session of Tuesday, 01/20/2026. Any discussion? I see none. So you could call the roll, please.

Councilor Bonington? Yes. Councilor Bronner? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Bray? Yes. Mayor Milotovsky?

Yes. So the motion passes and the agenda is approved and that takes us to public comments. I haven't heard if there's anybody signed tonight to speak.

There are none.

And none I see nobody in the room and none online. So we can continue on then. To mayor and council reports, and reports from community advisory groups or city business in general, I'll just start by reporting from the South Fork meeting last week. It was a great meeting where we, a board between that's the board with Westland, counselors in Oregon City, commissioners, the city's water company, and we approved a major contract for engineering firm to come on to help build the water quality systems building, which is essential to the the company making water for the communities of Westland, Oregon City. So that was kind of a milestone moment bringing them on and also met the new project manager that South Fork hired.

So they hired the I think it's their seventh FTE. So not it's very small company, but brought on a local resident who's going to be the project manager in house. So that's very exciting. And I know that the CEO will be coming to a Westland City Council meeting soon to present in the next few months. So looking forward to that. And, Carol, there's your update from South Fork. We can go to anybody can jump in now. That's that's the only meeting I've attended in the last seven days. Public meeting, that is. Councilor Groner, please.

I attended the sustainability attend advisory board. They were working on their annual report and their 26 goals. And basically, one of the open questions was can we get more, electric vehicle chargers, especially in our shopping centers trying to pursue that.

Thank you for that report. Thanks for your attendance there. Dylan Donald, council councilor Bonington?

That was a very suspiciously quiet week in January.

So Sounds

good. Thank you. Council president, please.

Thank you, mayor. I was pretty busy, with advocacy around transit and TriMet with the new proposed cuts. On Wednesday morning, I virtually attended the c four, that's the Clackamas County Coordinating Committee, Metro subcommittee on transportation that discussed had a presentation from TriMet about the proposed line cuts, and I then attended a webinar at noon, same topic. And then in the morning of Thursday, I attended the, joint policy advisory committee on transportation with Metro, which, discusses many things, but, there was some discussion of the transit concerns. And in the afternoon of Thursday, I attended the Metro Future Vision Commission meeting at the Clackamas Community Services offices and just about planning for future, kind of a lot of general topic discussion.

But back a little bit to the TriNet, I'm very concerned about the TriNet's proposed cuts for transit, specifically with communication about the cuts. I spent some time talking this afternoon to the government affairs coordinator with TriMet, and he and I are going to meet again in person to discuss what, if anything, the city can do. Basically, there's an open comment period right now until January 31 that anybody is welcome to submit a comment. But I understand that our ridership is low, but the people who do rely on TriMet, including but not limited to employees of our small businesses and residents who do not have any other form of transportation will be majorly impacted. So I'm hoping that we can put something together and and help to look forward and solve this problem together.

And I also attended the breakfast for the Children's Center of Clackamas County, which is a very important group supporting families in with young children who have maybe been impacted by a drug exposure household or domestic or other abuse situation. And so it was important to learn about that, and I was glad to know that service exists because it's actually its funding is in jeopardy. It was recently in the listed of the cuts. 100% of the cuts of their funding would be cut that was provided by the federal government, and then it was returned within twenty four hours. So they're having some difficulty planning with that sort of chaos going on.

So that's about all. Thank you.

I had a very busy week, and thank you for sharing all those updates with us. And especially thanks for going to that children's center breakfast. And if there's anything we can do to support them, you'd let us know what you learned from that event. Anything else that anybody comes to mind for reports? Well, man, we are moving right along then on the agenda into the two topics of meaty topics for the for the night.

The first, if we're ready, is agenda item five, which is a review of Westlands marijuana prohibition regulations, a topic that's come up over the years when we talk about our city's budget because this is one of those things that we're turning over every stone, looking at potential revenue options. And so I will turn it over to the city manager to introduce the topic. And I know we've got Dylan here who's done a tremendous job preparing us for this discussion as well.

The staff Now you've gone and given my staff report again. That's what I was gonna say. Thank you, mayor and council. Happy happy Tuesday. And this item is on our agenda at council's request, as the mayor mentioned, discussions of the city's finances over the last few months has led to a request for us to review the prohibition on marijuana in West Linn, how it came about, how it might be changed, and what the revenue picture might look like related to that.

So as the mayor said, Dylan's done an awesome job coordinating this over time. And other folks who've been involved in this, including Kathy, including Kristen, including Lauren in the back of the room, are here to help answer questions for you as well. Just as a work session, our purpose is to provide background. And for those watching, there's quite a lot of information in the packet that's posted online. Dylan probably won't cover all of that, but it'll hit the highlights. So Dylan, thank you. Glad you're here and take it away.

Well, as John mentioned, as part of budget discussions in 2025, council asked staff to review this and bring it to this work session. So just want to give a little background in history on marijuana prohibitions in West Linn. West Linn is still one of the few remaining Portland City metro cities with prohibitions on the sale of marijuana along with Lake Oswego, Sherwood, Wilsonville, and Camby. You I'm sure you've noticed Oregon City just across the bridge has about seven dispensaries. There's a map in the packet that shows which cities in the Portland Metro Area currently have prohibitions.

So with that with our prohibitions, we're in ineligible to receive distributions of state shared revenue taxes from marijuana, as well as tax revenue directly from having facilities. And I'll talk a little more about taxes later. Some of the history, we created a moratorium on medical marijuana in April 2014. And then in November 2014, when measure 91 passed, legalizing recreational marijuana and allowing the associated businesses. And then during the '25 sorry, 2015 legislative session, h bill 20 3,400 was passed.

In the packet, it says 2,400. That's a typo. It's 3,400, which modified and implemented measure 91, creating the regulatory framework for the recreational marijuana market. So then after that, in 2016, council passed ordinance sixteen forty four, which referred a marijuana facility prohibition to the voters, which was required under h 3,400, and that passed with 60% voting yes in November 2016, and prohibiting marijuana facilities in West Linn. So about the taxes, recreational marijuana sales are subject to a 17% sales tax.

00% for medical, we can't tax that. The state doesn't tax that. Eligible cities, those that haven't banned marijuana facilities, receive 10% of the total marijuana revenue, which is distributed quarterly, based 75% on city population and 25% on licensure numbers in the city. And then cities can add a local tax of up to 3% on the sale of recreational marijuana under the current ORS. We have a little Westland has a little history there.

Prior to marijuana being legalized, we enacted a 5% medical and a 10% recreational tax in 2014. That could possibly be grandfathered in, but it's not been legally clarified yet by the state or courts, so that could be challenged. So if we were to repeal our marijuana prohibitions, the revenue possibilities are about $40,000 per year from the state shared per capita distribution, which is about a dollar 50 per resident. And you get that whether we have a facility or not. It's just if we repeal the laws, we just automatically get that money.

And then on top of that, for each facility that gets licensed in the city, you get 2,500 annually in state shared revenue license, and state shared revenue per licensee. And then approximately 30,000 to 60,000 per licensee if we were to enact a 3% local tax, possibly more if we could get things grandfathered in. Yeah. And there's a big range there. That that number, there's some agreements where you're not allowed to disclose that, so that's just a rough estimate.

Depends on sales at the facilities, which varies a lot throughout the state. We council can choose to repeal Westlands current prohibition directly by ordinance. Doesn't have to go to the voters, but you can also choose to do a survey or you can adopt an ordinance and refer the voter refer to the voters at the next statewide general election for the ORSs. We do have a relatively limited number of sites for marijuana facilities because they have be at least a thousand feet from schools. That can be reduced down to 500 feet if there's a barrier that meets certain regulations.

You can't put them in residential zones generally. So yeah, we do have a map that GIS created. We had to look really closely at the school definition of schools, and that map represents that based on our current understanding of how schools are defined. Opens up just a couple spots, you know, in the Robinwood area, a little bit, down by the Central Village, City Hall area, down at kind of Blankenship and Tandler, and then kind of the waterfront area are the main areas that could be put. Pretty limited.

And there's a map there in the packet. If we were to decide to repeal our marijuana prohibitions, we still have the option to regulate time, place, and manner and a reasonable standard. For example, Oregon City added no facilities within two fifty feet of parks, licensed child and day care facilities in public transit centers. And in the packet also there is the League of Oregon City's Guide on Marijuana Law, which goes into a lot of this in more detail. And then to end, our recommendation is just to do some preliminary public outreach to see where current public sentiment is on the issue.

The council wanted to decide to consider this issue further. Thank

you for that presentation of this interesting issue. I'm happy to we're in a work session format. This is the first time we've actually formally talked about this outside of the budget committee meetings that we've had over the years, so happy to open the floor up for any initial thoughts. And I appreciate this recommendation also of doing some, you know, some sort of public outreach about how folks feel about this. Because I do wonder if things have changed since 2014 given, you know, my own opinion is like it's kinda like going to the liquor store these days. But maybe others have a stronger opinion that there's a huge difference there between so we can start with councilor Bonneton and we'll go councilor Groner.

Thank you, mayor. Well, to that point, wondering where people stand. I've been having conversations with people about this since I I learned about it. I think the very day I was sworn into council seemed kinda interesting in light of the fact that we're missing out on the revenue worth talking about. So I started keeping track last year of all the conversations I had with people about this.

And since that point, I've had a 158 conversations. A 132 were totally in favor of it. 58 of them actually said something to the effect of, well great, now I don't have to go to Oregon City. Which was weird that they said that that was the reaction of all those people. And then it was about 10 or so that we're kind of concerned how other people would react.

So I'm not saying that's a scientific study in any way, the rest of them, because by the way, I know that doesn't add up to a 158. They didn't really have an opinion. But my point is I thought it was interesting that all of these conversations with different people from different walks of life kinda all yielded the same answer, which is okay.

Thank you for that. An interesting statistics you have there from your interactions with the community. Thanks for sharing. Counselor Groner.

Yeah. It is interesting that that is not consistent with the polling that occurred a decade ago. Now, it's quite possible the public opinion has changed over the last decade. But I think there'd probably still be some opposition. The only thing I found, the map fascinating. Apparently, we could have a marijuana dispensary in City Hall if we wanted to. I don't think we should, though. But, yeah, I think people will

go to

dispensaries. And why should we not get the revenue as opposed to Oregon City? It's leaving money on the table that we can use.

Thank you, counsel. Especially as we're talking about potential budget deficit, it's good to look at all potential options. Appreciate those thoughts. Any other thoughts down the table? Counselor Bright.

Prior to getting on council, I was on the budget committee, and we had a meeting that was just the citizen members, and that was one of the topics that came up. And so five people on the budget committee, I think there were three that were in favor of it and two that had some hesitation. I tend to agree with the mayor that it's not a lot different than having liquor stores where people can go in and buy alcohol. And I've also recently read that the supply in Oregon far exceeds the demand, and it might not be a good business plan at this point to for anybody to open a dispensary. However, if we remove the prohibition, we would still get that tax revenue from the state, the revenue sharing.

Thank you. Thank you, councilor, for those thoughts. Council president Baumgartner, how do you feel about this issue?

I think that I'm really interested to hear what the public has to say, mostly. That's I'm I'm a little bit of two minds about it. Having grown up in a family with some substance abuse issues, I'm very mindful of people's vulnerability to that, and I know that's a concern for some people. So I just wanna be sensitive to what the community would like us to do.

Agreed with with that and definitely here, you know, on the substance abuse issues, and we definitely don't wanna exacerbate that as a city. So any thoughts on it sounds like there's an interest in at least gauging some public perspective on this from our community, and I just had a couple of thoughts. I do think it's important if we do a survey of the community just to make sure that we're giving an accurate picture of the fact that we could do time, place, and manner restrictions and that and that we could we could look into, you know, having some restrictions on where where this kind of business could go. And then, of course, the existing restrictions in state law about schools and and and things like that where we're not gonna be if you if you open this up, it's not gonna just result in dispensaries right next to schools or anything like that. And the other thing, but just there's limited locations where this could be in Westland.

So I think those are some important factors to make sure the community is educated about. And then the revenue picture for the city that this would bring in given that we're going into a potential budget deficit. I mean, it's not gonna solve all of our budget problems, but every dollar helps. And we we've made a commitment to look at everything, to turn over every stone as we say in the budget conversation. So at least exploring this is I think doing our due diligence. So those are my thoughts on a potential survey, and I'm happy to take other comments on on that and the staff recommendation. Councilor Groner?

I'm curious how much a formal survey would cost and whether that begins to swallow the revenue from approval. Any thoughts on that?

Well, it depends if we're doing one of those informal surveys or whether we're doing statistically valid surveying. That's in the ballpark of 10 to $20,000 probably for a single issue survey that gets you the statistically valid responses. So it could be that you're interested in doing something less than that using our own social media, newsletters, that kind of thing. That was a follow-up question I was gonna ask before ending this conversation. So I'm interested in the answer to that.

Thank you. Good great question. Councilor Bonington?

To that point, I guess what I would propose would be opening it up for public comments and kind of putting it out there on our social media pages as a question, seeing what the response is. And if the response appears divided, then it would be worth doing a poll. But if it's kind of overwhelmingly one way or the other, then I think we have our answer. And then based on the poll, we can decide what we need to do if that goes to the voters because it's still kinda split or, if it's something we can go ahead and just do. But open to thoughts on that.

And if it's if it's evenly divided, could also put it on the ballot. Yeah. Exactly. So council president Baumgartner, please.

I thought of a question. Thanks. It it was doing a poll in the cost of it was kinda reminded me of councilor Breich's idea to potentially have a one or two question card in the utility bill periodically for trying to kind of gauge interest or opinion on a topic. This might be an opportunity to utilize that. Again, not scientific necessarily, but it would be a way to reach out to people at potentially no cost. I don't even know how much I that would

mean, we could certainly link to a SurveyMonkey with one or two questions if we want to keep it really short.

Could Oh, yeah. Couple

of questions. We could do however we want to do the survey using SurveyMonkey. Put in the utility bill, that's the newsletter, the website, all the places.

You know? Carol has some I think that that would be a good a SurveyMonkey kind of informal style would be a good way to go to just at least start approaching this issue. I don't think we need to do a statistically valid poll just yet, especially given the cost and cost and return on investment. That'd be my thoughts. Councilor Bright?

And using the utility billing to put that question out there, that way it reaches all of the households in the community.

Great point. So is there a consensus via nods of heads or to kind of go the direction of an informal survey, and we can I'm sure staff can draft something up and bring it back to council if needed or put it out to the community. So I'm seeing nods of heads. So, John, do you feel like you have a direct anything else we can do for you at this point on this on this issue to help?

No. I don't think so. I'm looking back at Doug who works closely with Danielle on our some of our communications. I think we have enough looking information to design a couple of short questions, providing a little factual information so folks know why we're asking. And my only question is, do you have any timeline considerations? If it if it interacts with anything else you're doing, let me know. Otherwise, we can probably work on it in the next, you know, be doing asking in the next one, two months kind of thing.

I think that's fine. Okay. Fantastic. Everybody else okay with that? Yeah. Timeline? Alright. Alright. Councilor Bonington, go ahead.

I just had one thing I was looking to clarify. With that vote back in 2014, I had heard something about it being advisory or nonbinding. But was that was that true?

That you may have heard that from me because I learned quite a bit from from Kristen and Dylan in the the course of this about what had happened back then. It's our understanding that it was a process established under state law and was the final say in the process was the vote. Okay.

Thanks. My understanding as well. Yeah.

Okay.

Yep.

Thanks.

Any surely there must be some legal questions for Kristen who came all this way to to answer legal questions now. Any any legal questions

for if you wanna just give an overview of, like, the the the risk the risk the different restrictions that a city can put in or what what your thoughts are on that, that would be fine. Think the community

This is why staff loves coming to meetings

with me so much. But you don't have to, you know.

So the local time, place, and manner restrictions, they can be reasonable. I think Dylan gave a great example about Oregon City cannot be within 250 feet of a park. So I think that's example of a reasonable local time, place and manner restriction. But in essence, you know, the state restrictions are generally the floor, and we can be more strict subject to certain exceptions. I think also another local restriction to note is business licensing. We can establish business licensing schemes. So if we're interested in that, we can explore that more and look at sister cities.

Sounds good. Thanks.

And I'll just add in the LAC guide on page 20, they go into a little more detail on time placement and restrictions that local governments can put in.

Council president had a question, but you answered her question in your response. So the two legal questions. It's all good. Thank you, Kristen and Dylan and the team, and we'll look forward to seeing, what the community thinks about this topic. I'm actually very curious to see how perceptions have changed from a vote when this was all new back in 2013 to '14 to the present day, interesting political science study on that. So thank you.

It'll be a term paper.

Yeah. Maybe so. Anything else on that? Are we ready to move on? We're moving right moving along on the agenda, colleagues. Thank you. Thanks, Dylan. The next item is a follow-up from the last work business meeting that we had where we talked about the city's general fund and the parks utility service fee, and we wanted to have further council discussion about it before taking action in a work session setting. So miss mister Williams, would you like to kick it off?

Or I would. Thank you, mayor. Yes. As stated, this is a continuation of your discussion from last week. At the end of last week's discussion, we you generated a list of informational needs.

We have done our best to put those together. The packet came out the day after the meeting, so we may not have gotten every single thing, but I really appreciate the work primarily from the four folks that you see in the back of the room, Megan, Lauren, Doug, and Danielle, who put all this together and are also working on how we might discuss this with the community moving forward. So it's not my intention in the packet nor was it my ability in one day to write an omnibus staff report. So you'll find that I've linked to multiple meetings where we talked about other things. So it's a it's a classic Russian nested dolls staff report.

Lots of information down pathways to find. But we did try to put together this FAQ, which I really like, with simple short understandable answers to many of the information needs you had and in order to help you have this conversation moving forward. And as stated in the staff report, really the key question is, are you interested in adopting increases to the parks utility service fee to adjust the general funds component of the operation center or perhaps even more than that to help start working on the general fund's future projected deficits. Obviously, the general fund, everything in there is connected, but there is a very strong link between this funding source and a particular section of the work that we do to maintain the city's parks, open spaces, and trails, and that's what we've tried to make clear through this is how how that connection works. And council has talked about a broader discussion with the community about future funding needs in this community.

And we also touch on in the staff report that the that funding conversation is a lot bigger than just this one funding source and this one set of work. And at your last meeting, you discussed the push and pull of doing one piece before having that broader discussion whether that was advisable or not. So we're here to support your conversation on that. We have all the folks in the back of the room who can answer any questions you have. And I think, Doug and Danielle, are you thinking of coming forward and talking communications, or would you rather wait till questions are answered? Probably wait. K. Yep. Yep. You bet.

So perhaps I will leave it at that, and we could start off, if you like, with, do you, do you think that the document that we've put together answers all the questions you have? We really assembled this primarily for this meeting and your conversation knowing that you're an informed engaged audience. A lot of it is written, I think, in in really excellent plain English and can apply a broader discussion with the community, but this wasn't meant meant to be sort of our primary public facing document. It's it's it was assembled in order to to have this conversation tonight. So perhaps with that, unless looking at the back of the room, you think I missed anything starting off.

If not, we are all here to help you continue this conversation. Obviously, work session tonight, so we won't be making any decisions, but we're happy to to take this discussion and keep doing work and supporting you as you move forward.

Thank you. Thank you, John, for that overview. Obviously, important conversation that we're having here tonight. Any we have our our staff experts in the back here from several different departments that we can ask questions of, if anybody has any. And, I have some, but I'm happy to open the floor up to, council first, and I'll start with councilor Bright.

Thank you, mayor. So the parks maintenance fee was established in 2007, and I I believe we have some parks in the city that are newer than that. And so when it was established, was to cover parks maintenance, now we have more parks, that require that as well as as trails. And, you know, my sense in talking with the community, the community really values having those open spaces, having the parks. And I know nobody wants their bill to go up, you know, for anything.

But I think having to, you know, not being able to maintain the parks would be a pretty significant detriment for the city. I'm not sure as far as, you know, do we wanna first focus on the, covering the cost of the operations center from parks maintenance and then, you know, kind of work into these other conversations in the future. That might be the best way to go because that's a very specific thing that we absolutely know how much we're gonna need. So I'd I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts on that.

Thank you. Thank you, counselor, for that. I tend to agree with your especially your latter comments there. I just have a kind of a a broad question from maybe for Jennifer, the finance director, miss Brightop, who's here. I'm just trying to figure out, like, from the standpoint of the operation center, it's a very expensive project.

And, like, we're we're we're could there's I feel like there's been some confusion in community because we've said we we have the money to pay for it, and I think we do in our budget. But by doing it in the way that we're doing like, we're how am I trying to phrase this? What what what would happen if we don't fund this increase in operation? Like, our budget has seemed so tight, and we've been able to fund this $45,000,000 project with existing revenues, but that has to have an impact on our budget, like a a drastic impact on what we're able to do or or cancel maintenance projects or things like that. So our budget can't just absorb that.

Like so so basically, it's kinda like the why are we talking about the $5 and and and increase why it's important. I've been trying to wrap my head around kind of the k. Financial picture.

I will take a stab at that and Lauren and the others have have a lot more information. First of all, I I've tried to be pretty careful in the last, I would say, half year or so to say that we are planning to largely fund this project from existing utility rates. And I've also tried to be pretty straight up with people that certainly there's an impact on our ability to provide projects from this. And so as you've seen in work sessions throughout the fall and in making your decision on the project entirely, we we are devoting rate money to this project that could otherwise go to actual infrastructure projects on the ground. So we talked about the impact on the street fund from the payments.

Certainly, we could maintain more street pavement if we didn't have to do this project. You as a group have looked at this for some time, in fact, in in approving the city's budget and approving this project, approving the contract for the designer, even before that approving a contract to buy the property, knowing that there would be some impact on our ability to provide services. So I think we have not tried to hide I know we have not tried to hide the ball on that. We do have an adopted budget that has this project in it, it's funded, but we did get new cost estimates not in really last fall incorporating the latest information about the site and the cost to develop the site, incorporating cost increases coming from materials increases and labor increases in the in the construction marketplace. All of that meant that you all and we all did not have a final number until at least the second half of last year.

And that is really what led us to this moment is having those final numbers, looking at the budget, and having a conversation about how exactly are we gonna fill the remaining the remaining costs for the project. Yes. I wanna say that it's very clear. We could fund it from existing rates, not touch existing rates, but there are impacts to that. And the primary reason we're talking about the parks fee right now is that the parks maintenance is a little different from the other funds in that it's primarily people driven.

There's less infrastructure construction in that fund and there's more people hours in that fund. And so the impacts were you to not consider utility rates would ultimately probably be into our ability to staff the park's maintenance function. Now that's a little bit unfair to say because it's all general fund. Right? So we would be having a conversation about our entire general fund staffing, which includes police, which includes planners, which includes the finance department, all of the general fund functions we would have to be looking at if we needed to go down that path.

Also, you're having this conversation because did you ask for a very simple answer to your question?

No. No. It's it's it's all doing here. I appreciate it.

The second piece is that we uncovered in the course of all this that in in in the most recent years, we haven't been keeping up so that the the parts service fee isn't paying the full 100% cost of the parts maintenance function. So you have those two pieces of information leading us to this this tonight. So to recap, we've been trying to say that we're gonna do our best to pay for this project with existing utility rates, but especially in the last half year I've been telling people we may not quite be able to land that. And so if we're talking about this $5 increase for the operation center, you're talking about less than 20% of the entire project cost. So we're talking about funding more than 80% of it with existing rates that we're all paying as as homeowners here in Westland.

I I appreciate that. I mean, it's just I I you know, there's I wanted to get at the trade offs that you that you that we've been talking about because it really was amazing to me that we were able to cobble given what I know about the city's budget and the limited revenues and the property tax issues where we're frozen at the $2.12 per thousand that we were actually able to cobble together the money to show that we could pay for this with existing revenues. But there has to be the trade offs, and I think it's really important to the community to to hear about those because of you know, they need to know that this is justified that that why we're doing this 5 talking about $5 a month for the operation center. So I appreciate your answer.

I think that's right. And the the reason that you have verbalized many times over the last year or two years or more is the really dire condition of the facility we have. I think if we had a facility that was meh, then we'd all be really struggling with this piece of conversation. But my experience is you take anyone down there or show anyone a video of that place and you look at how close our buildings are to residences, you look at how small the yard is, all of those pieces that you all know has led you and all of us to this very difficult decision. We're gonna forego potentially some capital construction in this in this city in order to fund this project.

And as I like to say, every ninety to a hundred years we need to do this. I think that's it's a it's a tough pill to swallow when we're living through it in the moment, but for another fifty, seventy five, ninety, hundred years, we're gonna be glad that we did do it. I remember hearing from Skanska and from the architects that they are designing this project to have that sort of life lifespan, and I think that's really important. And that's a commitment we need to make to the community. We don't do this all the time. In fact, we we've we've only done it once so far, and we were founded in the 1910. So

Absolutely. I appreciate that and those comments. Lauren, did you have anything to add on? No. Not put you on spot.

I think John did a fantastic job explaining that.

Okay. Thank you for that. I'm happy to thanks for letting me ask a a bit of a lengthier question there, but I just wanted to I've been thinking about that a lot. Councilor Bonneton, go ahead.

So I have a couple

of thoughts. First of all, city manager, I have to take issue with the the concept that it's not an infrastructure project on the ground. I think it really is. I know of several instances where equipment has been damaged just because the facility is not capable of adequately protecting it. And I know a tree fell on something and destroyed an important box they used to anyway, so I think it really is an impactful one.

And when you put off the project for as long as we've had to, it it definitely has to be affecting our ability to provide services. So there's there's no no question in my mind it's completely necessary. I think while we're doing this, we should ask additional questions about whether we can do another dollar or something like that to actually cover some of the parks maintenance that we're not able to do. I feel like if we're doing this, it helps give the public a better better visual representation that this money is going towards something they can see and experience outside of just this project. So that's something I would be interested in doing, not necessarily with this first increase, but this year.

I do find it kinda interesting that we're not getting a lot of public interest in this issue. I don't think it's because there are other meetings going on right now. We've had plenty of instances that people coming in or sending us their their comments and then heading over to the school board meeting or something like that. So it's interesting that we're not getting a lot of feedback here. It can be a little difficult to operate without that, but I'm interpreting it as people are generally supportive of the direction we're going in.

So I think that's a good thing. But the only concern I have is the structure of it. It's inherently regressive a little bit. So I was wondering if there might be some way of maybe increasing it more for the single family residences because I noticed it's split up between single and multi family and not applying that same level of increase to the multi family. It's not to say there aren't luxury multifamily properties here, but I don't know. I'm looking for some way to maybe make it a little bit more progressive of the fee.

I mean we could absolutely, I mean there is two different rates for single family and multi family residents. So we could do that if that was something the council would like to do.

Thanks. Any other comments?

Yeah, and it is based on assessment, is going to vary presumably with income and the kind of house, correct?

It actually is a flat rate per residence.

But per dollar of assessed value, is it not?

No, just it's a flat monthly rate.

Oh okay.

Per household. So single family residence is one rate, and then multi family residence is another rate.

Okay, so that would be regressive. The other thing is that it just strikes me $5 is a suspiciously round number, and how did we arrive at that number?

So the, actually the operations center one, we talked about $5.20 for that. And then the increase to bring us up to the amount that we are currently spending on parks maintenance is actually pretty close to $5. We have approximately 9,000 utility bills, households that are billed, and twelve months of billing, obviously. And our amount that we were under was about 5 and 40,000, I believe, a year, and that really came out very close to $5 even. The amount that we're paying for the operations center each year is about $561,000 a year for the debt service.

And so that's about $5.20 per household.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other? Any any questions down here? Okay. And then, I guess, from your perspective, if we didn't fund the increase, we didn't fund the $5.20, what do you think would happen to the parks fund? Would would we lose people basically and and some ability to do projects, it sounds like? What's the budget outlook in the in the that we're looking at for the parks maintenance fund?

The big picture budget outlook is in the four to five well, three to four years now time horizon. We are looking at multi million dollar deficit unless something is done. So I wouldn't wanna look at it as a parks department question, I'd wanna look at it as a general fund question. We would need to look at all of the services provided by the city's general fund and make a decision. The general fund is different from the operating funds as I mentioned earlier and that it really is heavily focused on people that provide services to the community.

And so as as little as I like to say this, in several years we would probably be looking at making decisions about programs and and staffing levels unless something is done. And that would be that would be broadly across all of the departments that I mentioned earlier.

Okay. Thank you for that. Any so I'm seeing not a lot of other questions. I guess we can kinda move into any any questions for the communications team or a parks director in the back? Or do I know they might the communications team might have some information to share. Mitch mentioned earlier.

Yeah. If you'd like. And councilor Bryke mentioned the growth in the park system over time. I know, Megan, you've been looking at that a little bit. I don't know if you have anything conclusive to report. We're putting together for the first time how the park system has grown and when it grew. And so Megan's been working on that to identify what it is that she's in charge of actually. So happy to report on progress about that. And Doug and Danielle, I appreciate you being here. They have been thinking a lot, as I mentioned last week, over the winter break about how how we would communicate with the community about this and about the broader themes that you're you're interested in.

So maybe, Doug Daniel, do you wanna start off?

Thank you for the opportunity to talk again this week. So I think from what you saw from the FAQs that we've put together is we tried to figure out questions that we might encounter or you might encounter. It's kinda adding tools to the toolbox. We don't necessarily know exactly what project we're building, but we hope that when it is decided that you have all the right tools to be able to build that. So I think it's important to know that, you know, putting putting this as I said last week into the context of where why does it cost so much money right now to do things.

Right? And I think there's lots of ways of explaining it as we talked about from just the CPI employment increases and even in the Willamette Valley, the index for for building in commercial spaces. And I think all of those would show that it's very high and it's continued to from essentially 2007, 2008 to the present time that we have now. These are all reflective in what you might be asking our residents to potentially participate in from a fee perspective. I think it's also important that there's a broader context for which you have an opportunity to share something not just about the fact that this building that you're going to be replacing was built in 1937, I believe.

It's had a very long lifespan and is also now in built up residential component of of our of our city. I think another compelling thing is how we acquired the the the property that was once owned by ODOT where this will now be placed in the cost that you paid for that, which was very inexpensive. So the opportunity there to to get property that you could that could facilitate something like this is another story that might be told that can show your fiscal responsibility as a as a municipality in doing that. As well as whatever decisions that you make around how you want to go about doing this, us to be able to help you tell that story and give everyone a unified front. I think the nice thing about this is the numbers may seem round, but they are exactly the amounts that you need.

You're not asking for more. You're not asking for less, and you're able to tell the community what you're going to get for the resources that you might be asking them. So we're prepared to help you in any of those ways to help to communicate that. Maybe Danielle can speak just of the few ways that we plan on doing that from perspective including the OWL.

Yeah, I think Doug really had the keyword when he said context. That's really the most important piece to help give the public the tools they need to understand why we're in the place we are now. We need to understand our history. We need to understand complex issues about, you know, tax law from the nineteen nineties and how that's, you know, impacting us today. It's it's a big story to tell, but we're using all the tools we have.

Trying to bring back videos about, you know, not just the operation center, the ask the city manager video for that has been helpful. We recently boosted that on Facebook, got an additional 12,000 views, trying to get the word out about that. But also the the property tax video that John made, you know, a couple months ago, which really helps to provide that general education baseline that I think is really missing for a lot of folks that live in this community. And I think, you know, working with yourwestland.com and trying to scaffold our our efforts across multiple platforms so that we can reach our word-of-mouth folks, that we can reach, folks that are more online, but also, leaning heavily on the OWL. The physical print newsletter that's going out this spring is, one of our biggest opportunities because that long form text is exactly the space you have to provide nuance to explain something complicated and to give those details, add that history, add that context, and fully tell your story without needing to worry about being brief or holding someone's attention.

And that is also the only platform we have that really goes to every single household too. So it's really a tremendous opportunity, and I would encourage counsel to consider the timing of that as as much as is possible. We have some extra space, some extra pages scheduled for that OWL edition so that we have some wiggle room in case you know, these are big topics, so we just wanna make sure that, we're able to fully paint the picture that you need the public to understand.

I think it's all it's important that we we can convey to you that we're here to help you in the once you've made those decisions and how you wanna communicate it. So we wanna be able to be an asset in in an for you in that space and whatever is decided is what we will help you to help navigate and to communicate. We're here for that.

This is the essential part of the work, the communications. I appreciate that. Thanks for the update. And councilor Brike has a comment or question for you.

Because the owl goes to every household in the community, And because this is a very large and complicated topic, can we utilize that with some I mean, can't really have a link in the thing, but pointing to like your West Linn to get more in-depth information. And that I mean, you're gonna have some people that get the outlet, maybe don't do a lot of computers, but other people, they use that as a supplement to other sources that they have, whether it's the city's website or, any other social media. And I think just having the ability to take one more step if you've got greater interest to find out more information, I think is important.

I think that's a great point, counselor Brake. What we've done with the app there's only so many inches of space in a physical print. That's always the the drawback. Right? So while it's easy to write on it and, you know, we know that folks sit down at their kitchen table and will engage with their family and, you know, cut out parts of it and put it on their fridge.

So the the physical medium does have a lot of benefits, but that drawback is significant. So one thing we've done in past issues that I would really like to do again in this one is use QR codes strategically placed so that folks can just get their phone out. Folks became much more familiar with them during COVID when restaurant menus all turned into QR codes. And now it's a really accessible tool that most people recognize and know how to use. So it's you can't put the links directly in there, but we can still make it so that they can read more information elsewhere very easily or as easily as possible.

I wanna reiterate it. It's kinda like I'll put on my library director hat. It's like a reference question. When someone comes to you with a question, sometimes they just want the easiest answer possible and someone to really dive into that that answer. So not just the answer you may give them or the section that you may take them to.

We wanna hope to be able to provide that for everybody. So if you really wanna know a lot more about the history of of of employment inflation or, you know, building costs, We'll be priding those links so that we're we're transparent and we're also honest in our approach and where we got our information from. I think that's really important that we're all coming from the same place of information. We're able to direct our community to that same place. So it'll be a multilayered approach depending on how much people want to jump into that answering or or finding out more about the answers to those questions.

Thank you for that question. Any other questions? Councillor Bonington? I'll just

say, I mean, I've said it to you guys personally, but I am really impressed and appreciate the effort you've you've made to get this information out there. I started noticing it without even looking for it last week and was really really happy to see that because that's exactly what needs to happen in order for this whole process to go well. So thank you for that.

Director Big John, any haven't heard from you tonight. Any thoughts on the issues before us? Whatever you'd like to say.

Well, as John had mentioned, I've been going through kind of archives of our property list, looking at when they were purchased, looking at time frames that they've been developed, which that there hasn't been a complete list of that. So it's taking a little bit of time, but it's also quite enjoyable to see, like you mentioned, to see what we're taking care of and how long we have. Just to throw a couple things out there just to consider, as you know, that we have, you know, over 16 playgrounds. And was I just looking at the quick math of that, and we have over 10 that are over that were pre the 2008 that are in the point of needing to be replaced. For example, like, Hammerly was built in 1997.

And usually the length of a playground is usually for fifteen to twenty five years, and we're already at 24 of that. So we're starting to look at those plan or not starting, looking at those plans, looking at trail maintenance that's ongoing, things that we currently can't even fund, that we're looking to be creative with either grants or other mechanisms to find, you know, additional funding besides even this fee. So really trying to streamline our operations with our basic maintenance that we're doing to really stretch our dollars as far as we can. But even things such as the Tanner Creek splash pad, that's gonna need to be re nozzled to have the splash pad function in a few years down the road. And so just to give like a little visual, even this is just off from our park supervisor's list of things that need to occur in each park that are budget some of them from very small for replacing signage, but from moving trees out of areas where we're having concerns resurfacing and even rebuilding a pickleball court that needs to be completed.

So we're building that list that's been kind of ongoing, but really trying to look at it holistically and see how we can continue to move forward with what we currently have and then what we may have to peel back if things do change.

Thank you for that. Doing a great job overseeing the parks. Oh, it's okay. Well, we've heard from our our wonderful team and happy to open the floor up for discussion on from the city council on next steps. You may be curious where I'm at.

I feel like we have messaged the community specifically about the $5 per month operation center increase. I saw that in the newsletters over the last in the last month and then in December. And so I think we do need to do that for budget sustainability. I can't imagine our budget taking on the entire cost of that $45,000,000 facility, essential facility without any increase from the community. And I think that the our bud our budget's tight, the community's budget is tight, and I think getting a major new project for about just about $5 a month in an increase in an increase is a bargain and for what it's gonna do for our city and our all of our departments including parks maintenance, public works.

And, you know, we almost were able to fund the whole thing without talking about rate increases and couldn't quite do it. We got how how much did you say, John? Like 80%, 85% of the way there?

Yeah. 82% is funded by those other funds.

Okay. So, you know, I think it's a good compromise to accomplish this essential infrastructure project by moving that relatively small fee increase forward. And if it were up to me, I would say maybe we table that additional $5 a month for the parks to to offset the whole cost of parks maintenance to get the cost to a 100% or the the coverage to a 100% just so we can have a little bit more time to talk to the community. I'd also like to talk about phasing that in a little bit and maybe have that part of the deeper dive into the city's finances because I don't want us to raise raise fees too much and then preclude our ability to use to accomplish other priorities and just make sure that's part of the broader discussion. I I know that's where I'm at on that, but I'm certainly open to other perspectives and I'm flexible.

Councilor Bright?

I kind of like councilor Bonington's suggestion of do the $5.20 and then maybe just do an extra $1 which is not going to cover 100 percent of parks maintenance, but it will start moving us toward that. And then, you know, and then we'll still have that bigger conversation about other fees to make sure that we're providing the services that we need to provide.

Would that $1 go, in your mind, go to maintenance projects or towards that covering the 100%?

It would go towards covering the 100%. It's not going to get us there, but it will start of parks maintenance. It's not going to get us there, but it will start moving us in that direction.

Thank you for that thought. Council president, do you have any thoughts on down the table?

Yes. Thank you, mayor. And I appreciate all of the collective team's efforts and communication and the preparation of materials and the historical dive for context. I feel very comfortable with, at the very least, the $5 and then some other creative solutions to that we can talk about together to to get to a 100% for the parks maintenance. Generally speaking, I think I said this last time that we discussed this topic.

It is our responsibility as leaders to discuss and debate and talk about cost benefit and be careful and cautious and but also to make decisions. And I'm comfortable people some people we've already gotten a couple of emails from people just generally who do not want ever any raising of taxes, which I just have to honestly say isn't reasonable. That's just my own personal opinion. Anybody can come at me, whatever. You know my email.

But we have to pay for things. So we just have to make these decisions, and I appreciate the effort and also think it's justified. Thank you.

I know we're in a you know, I look looking around other cities. I've seen Wilsonville, for example, has been having some really conversations with fee increases that are, I think, like, to $40. I can't I haven't seen the exact I can't remember the exact numbers from Wilsonville. By talking by talking really about the, you know, the in the 5 to $10 range, I feel like we are in in good shape and and really taking care to make sure that we keep costs down to the community while accomplishing what we need to accomplish. Because you're you're right, council president.

We've got a lot of some essential infrastructure to to build here with this operation center. And I've seen actually the your westlynn.com page now has a page about our value engineering efforts where we worked really hard as a team and staff behind the scene works hard to value engineer the project to bring the cost down and also has some photos of the existing infamous facility as well. So good to look at. Councilor Groner, happy to go to you, then we'll go to council councilor Bon Ton. I go down the table here, and I try to switch it up every once in a while each time. So, councilor Groener.

Yeah. I appreciate the work that's, gone into it. I think it is, you know, between inflation and construction costs, we have to meet those costs somehow. But, yes, we have to do public outreach so the public understands why we have to increase these fees. Thank you for your work.

Thank you, counselor. If I could so it sounds like you're okay with the $5.20 for the operation center. And what how what are your what are your thoughts on the other the covering the parks maintenance? 100% of the cost of parks maintenance. Like councilor Bragg suggested

I see adding $1 to the

That was councilor Bragg's kind of compromise. What oh, and maybe that was

I got it. Oh, that was councilor

I'm sorry. Councilor Bryke suggested it. Councilor Bryke seconded it. And and I just wanted to hear what you had if you had any thoughts about that.

Well, realize that our parks department is very stretched in terms of manpower. I'm sympathetic. I'd kinda like to know what exactly will be accomplished for that extra dollar, though.

It's it's something we could definitely you know, we have another work session coming up, for example, and before our next business meeting. So we could talk about have a little bit more of a discussion about different approaches to that fee? Good question. Councilor Bonington.

Yep. So I I I think it's it's not exactly classified or top secret information that this is the first step in a process to shore up the entire financial picture. So what we do now is going to impact the way it's perceived and what we're able to do later. So that is why I think the the additional dollar or whatever can be put together that that can be blatantly demonstrative to people of what we would be able to use properly funded departments. What we'd be able to do with them with the understanding that if we don't solve the rest of the problem, then that money is going to have to just go back into to covering whatever short at that point.

But for now, if we implement this, we'd be able to start doing some of those and be able to point to it as we get further into this conversation of so here's what we're able to do now that we're closer to funding everything. Do you want to see this continue? Or what are your feelings about it? So I think it's it's useful to to have that conversation. I'm glad we might be able to squeeze that in. I see kind of an idea of what projects could be done for a dollar or $2. Let's get some topic or some some options before

the Oh, sorry. I didn't mean you finished? You Oh, well, I think there's a question also about whether that, you know, to the extent the city council increased the fee an extra dollar, what that dollar would go to, whether it would go to just covering the existing deficit with parks maintenance or to projects. And that's what I was get talking about earlier. Trying to get at, but because it's a balance to to strike.

Yes, mayor and councilor Bonington. I completely agree and I understand I think I understand exactly what you're saying. There's two approaches to this. If you so past the operation centerpiece, if you were to raise additional funds, you could do additional projects, additional staffing with those funds, but knowing that you still have the underlying structural problem. And I I did hear you say, councilor Bonington, that that's an example of what we could do, But in a way sort of compounds the underlying problem.

Right? And so I think we'd wanna be really really careful and really deliberate about how we talk about it, what it is, how we design it. If it was designed to show, you know, trust us with some additional funds and here's exactly what you get, we would need to be really careful about costing those things out, talking about what they are, and and then delivering them. But also having to say, but we still have this unfortunate thing over here, which is a real concern in the out years. So I just wanna make sure.

One of the one of the worries that I have had about going beyond the operation center is is this exact point, is that if we're doing it in order to sort of make the general fund whole, we're not adding any services at all with it. And folks will say, well, hold on, my fee just went up $10 and I don't see what I'm getting for it. Because what I'm getting for it is the is that we ensure that we're able to deliver our current services or that we're more likely to deliver current service levels over time. That's not as fun. Super, super important.

So I just wanna confirm that that's the answer. That's the way we're thinking about this, and I and I'm hearing each of you say the exact same thing. We'd be happy to have come back with the conversation. Megan does have thoughts and ideas about extra services or extra projects. We have some cost estimates that that are in various stages development. We'd be happy to talk about that. But I'm just duty bound to give the caveat every time. Thank you for tolerating it.

Councillor Bunton, have a follow-up? Go ahead.

Yeah. That is that is precisely what I mean. I think as part of our our comprehensive strategy for having this conversation with the public, This is a good conversation starter if we're able to do it this way, but we need to kinda have a reset of, hey, so what is the level of service that you all actually expect here? And and get people to articulate that. And then we tell them, well, that's what that's what it'll cost. If if there's a problem then, we can have a discussion about it, but I think we need to kinda reset and reframe it that way to to make progress here.

Thank you for that, councilor. Councilor Bright, you may have thoughts.

So I think to the city manager's point, this is a general fund budget. A portion of the general fund is parks. The amount that we collect in fees is not covering the total cost of parks maintenance as it was intended. So if we collect more fees to cover more of parks maintenance, that just means it frees up some other money in within the general fund, which could just be ending fund balance, which is one of our requirements as well. We have a policy for ending fund balance.

Now that's not really fun, exciting, and sexy to the public. You know, they want to see something new. I'm paying more money. I need to see something. But that's kind of not really how it works.

One comment on that.

Oh, please go ahead.

I think it's important though that you do have a really great story to tell with Megan and her team and And all of the things that have happened since that park maintenance fund was established in 2007 and I think implemented in 2008. All of the new things that have come on board. All of the great things that we all enjoy. And I think it's a great reminder of our community for what many people live here is for that open space in those parks and what really has been done for those dollars. Just being able to continue that into the future will be I think a well received message to our community, and and it's a good one to be able to tell.

Agreed.

Director Big John, please.

Yeah. We'll just tag lining on to what Doug had mentioned is that just looking at since 2008, Douglas Park came on, White Oak Savannah has been added, Merrellhurst Heights has been added, and then according to the records, part of Hidden Springs open space was also added in 2017. So those are spaces that with the current fee that we have and the capital money we've had, we've been able to do that growth. And so it's pretty impressive for the size of city we are, the amount of people we service, and the amount of acreage we have. It's it's impressive that we've gotten this far with what we have, and so we just wanna keep it shining.

One question that came to my head is does the parks department have a capital improvement plan, like, for deferred maintenance? Because we're just we're not even going into that space, but I'm sure that's expensive too. I mean, when you think about bridges and the Fields Bridge Park, that old fishing platform, are things like that. You know, it adds up, I'm sure.

Yeah. So the current CIP plan, because I was new when we were starting to do that evaluation, you know, if you look at it today, it's relatively shallow. We have quite a few projects listed this year and next year, but I wanted to do a deep dive into where we really sit looking at our asphalt pathways, the bridge, like the plot fishing platform, and new opportunities as well. And so that's gonna be flushed out right now over the next six months as we're doing the SEC update and looking at that capital list long term.

Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Well, did you have something to add, mister Williams? I didn't I thought I saw your hand up.

No. Okay. It sounds to me like I'm listening to the city council and my colleagues here that there's a interest in at least pursuing the operation center portion of the parks to parks maintenance fee portion as a potential increase. It was which was in the agenda bills $5.20, not just $5, $5.20, which was calculated to be the number that was needed to cover the parks department's portion of the operation center project, which they will benefit from because they will be using the parks department. The operation center for the parks maintenance function.

So I saw that's what I heard from counsel. And then there was some discussion about the and I'm any objection to that recap of the consensus? This is part of it. Okay. So we can schedule that for a, you know, we have a business meeting in February to we could potentially vote on that and have some communications ready to go out to the community about that.

And we have communicated about that already. Then the other component was the additional amount to help cover the cost of parks maintenance to get that closer to the 100% or or cover projects. So it sounds like there needs to be a little more discussion about that or to could tack on another dollar, depending on how council feels. But we just wanna make sure that we know exactly where that money is going, whether it's to projects or the just eating into the potential deficit there. So I I always like to start with what I think there's definite consensus on and then reframe the issue, reframe the issue for everybody.

So any any thoughts on how to bring that back? The second issue for future discussion or timeline at least on when you'd like when counselors would like to discuss that. Counselor Bonington, you can start.

I mean, I'd certainly love to hear what options are available, what we can actually legally do next next time we get together. I don't think it's dishonest if we're not able to do new projects that are unscheduled with it to point to projects that were already scheduled, as an example of of what can be done. Because if if it's not funded, if it's not adequately funded in the coming years, those aren't gonna be happening. So open to whatever works. But within the next meeting is when I'd love to get into it.

Okay. So the next meeting would be in first the first week of week of February is councilor Bryke, you were had also talked about this idea. Are you okay discussing it then? And everybody else? And perhaps, you know, is a thought that came in my head. When we start this discussion, I would like to have a presentation just from our esteemed finance director, just showing the out the outlook of the budget just to kinda always center ourselves because we talk about the budget outlook and and the concerns we have about a potential deficit. It would just be good to to have those numbers in our in our minds just to show that to the community also. Just so to kinda keep that out there for folks about so

I do have one question about the $5.20. Are we making that effective as of January 1, which would go into effect on the bills in the February? So the right after it was approved or would that be going into effect on July 1 year, which wouldn't go into effect really until the August bills?

You've just inserted a thing that we haven't decided yet into the discussion. So that may require a little bit of discussion. How do people what what what impact would it have on the on the budget from the standpoint of, I guess, if you had the increases coming in, you could save up for a little bit longer to pay for the operation center, but we're not Correct.

I mean, it's it's half a year of revenue. So that's kind of the the question there. It's about, you know, I I guess it would be, you know, $202,170,000 dollars in revenue for the year if we started now versus in July.

I

think in the in the very big picture, if if having more com communication in advance, explaining it, being able to really explain it is is important for this one decision, then we can do that. It's not gonna be a make or break question whether it starts January 1 or July 1. And I would never never minimize the value of $270,000 to the city's general fund. It's a lot. And it's a big piece of the puzzle.

If we think of it as half a year's funding for the bond payment on the general fund share of the operation center, it's a big deal. But if that is problematic in terms of communication or timing or how you would like to present this to the community. I think we can make it work the other way with starting on July 1. After all, this is really a long term this is a long term funding scenario. We're gonna be paying this bond for more than two decades. So it's it's a it's we're in it for the long haul and it can work either way. Is that fair Lauren? Would you buy that?

Absolutely. Yeah. Either way, as as John mentioned, you know, it's it's not an insignificant amount, but we can make it work either way. And if it's more preferable to have more communications before, then we can do that or we can implement it as soon as that week when the bills go out a few days later.

And really, if you think about what the communication choice here is, you can announce that you've decided and that it's taking effect now or you can announce that it's decided and it's taking effect in July. Communications are the same because what I'm not hearing is it's not that we're communicating a question or asking a question about it. It's really relating a decision and being able to explain the decision. So really the only thing that changes in the messaging is the timing of when folks when all of us need to pay it on our bill.

Council president and then we'll go to did councilors down here have the comments too? Okay. We'll start with council president, and we'll go to Groner and then Bonington.

Thank you, mayor. And thank you for pointing that out. My initial reaction is that, since this is necessary and important, and I think we all agree that it is, if I'm a person receiving that bill, I would appreciate information about it. But I don't, for the considerable sum of money that we're talking about having not, you know, being the missed opportunity because we decided to implement it six months out. I'm not sure how much difference that would, because we're going to eventually implement it.

I I just feel like explaining why we've made the decision, but to implement it as soon as possible, that would be my instinct. But I'm happy to hear other thoughts.

And mayor, I think I may have led us a little bit down a path. I probably used the word decision. Obviously, work session, not making any decisions. You're providing us direction where how we could bring back materials for you at a business meeting. So just looking for the your direction out of the work session level, and I appreciate Kristen for

Is this something that we we could that is a good flag and, you know, perhaps we could even bring back two options at that business meeting. Unless the council comes to consensus tonight

No. I'm not trying to limit the discussion of what the consensus is just to be clear to the public that we're not formally making any decisions tonight. But certainly, you can give us direction on what to bring back for a formal decision.

Thank you for that. And thanks, council president, for your thoughts. Councilor Groner, please.

Yes. Thank you. I think going in January and getting what is it? 275,000 approximately over the six month period. It's an important increment to the city's finances. But

I

think when we message this, we've got to be really talk about both steps at the same time. And, you know, state, this is our January, and here's the reasons for that. And this is what we'll be doing in July, and here's our reasons for that. Because we don't want to basically surprise people with the second step. And there may be steps beyond that. So we may have to put some more background on why we need further steps. So that's my view.

Thank you, councilor. Councilor Bonington?

So we are not exactly having these discussions in a dark smoke filled room or anything. There have been numerous meetings where this has come up. And again, I think it's really really indicative of the the public sentiment that there is not a single person in this room for this meeting. There was not a single person in this room for the last meeting. And my count was one email on the topic from one individual. So it's

I'm angry when

Granted. I think that's to be expected. But because of that, I am I'm pretty comfortable as long as we're all committed to the fact that we need to really kick off this conversation with some urgency and and start talking to the people about what needs to happen, that we go ahead and start it in January. It's completely fine as long as we're all just very very focused on the goal and and getting things going. Because we're actually running out of time to solve this and I'd hate to see that. So

Thank you, counselor. Do you have any thoughts, counselor Bryke, on the January versus July question? Are you

I I can kind of see it both ways. So I think, you know, when we have our next conversation, maybe we can suss that out a little bit more.

Yep. Let's I'm I would I also would like some time to think about that issue of implementing it in January versus July. I just wanna so that that would be my preference just to either talk about it again and the first meeting of February or just maybe that can be set up as a couple of different options for the February when we when we vote on it.

So

If I may Please go ahead. Not to add one more complicating factor to an already difficult decision about timing, but just thinking about our public and thinking about our audience, I think it's worth considering allowing time or as much time as possible or advisable for an emotional response from our audience. People tend to think with their feelings first. Right now folks are feeling pinched. Know, they're hearing about cuts from other places and you know loss of of of the ability their spending power at the grocery store and tend to feel like they're that can create a fear state and, make folks need some additional time for an emotional reaction before we can get to the logic and the reason and start having productive conversations.

That does seem to be the knee jerk, you know, initial response to any kind of news that folks perceive as threatening is, oh, I have a feeling about it. You know, let me express that. And then once I feel heard, then I'm able to listen in return and, you know, hear about history and logic and statistics and figures. So just just one thing to one more thing to consider because you didn't have enough.

And thank you for that, and I appreciate that. I know there's no nobody at the meeting. We have heard from one person on this topic but I also know there's a lot of people out there feeling the pinch and we're doing our best as a city to keep keep our costs as low as possible and respect that, you know. We have everybody up here pays the utility bill and a lot of our staff pay the utility bill as well and it's it's expensive. But what we're talking about is an important infrastructure project and being able to do it with the $5 increases. I think it not as bad as it could be.

I'll add one thing. Think

Go ahead.

You you again, going back to whatever you all want to do and I think it's important that we're we we can again, I think pivot to to the Operations Building and talking about the building blocks that got us to this place. I think you have a really great story to tell. Like I said before, from the land acquisition from ODOT to the amount of value engineering, to the amount of things that have gone into it. So I think we have a fiscally responsible map that we can show to our folks. And again, a lot of them have known about this if they've been paying attention or or wanting to know about it.

This has been an ongoing conversation. So I think we can also come back to you is is how this is gonna be paid for. Because I know that many people may come away with this $5.20 is paying for the Operations building and it's paying for a component of it, and that the other pieces that are being brought to this financially that are paying for can be told in that story as well. So they can see it more from a holistic picture. Oh, this is only one portion of it and we're covering it in all these other ways as John and others have commented about. We can help to present that story to you to be able to tell as well.

Thank you for thank you for that Doug and Danielle as well for your thoughts. Know, when my brain always goes to compromise when I sense disagreement or difference of opinion on counsel. This is just one idea that came to my head. Is it is it feasible or possible to do a $2 and 60 increase for the drive to January 1 and $2 and 60 increase in in July to kind of split the baby, if you will, to kind of helps help the city with the financial picture as we heard from several folks wanna do and then some others, including myself concerned about doing that. The whole thing right after January 1. So I just wanted to know if that's an option.

Right. Yeah. That would be an option. And we're also, you know, we're we'll if it is approved for the July, we're also still going to be coming back in June to review all of our master fees and charges. So I would probably recommend, you know, putting the normal 5% increase and then whatever extra on that if we're doing it all in July or part of it in July in the fee schedule so that we can actually see like we've already incorporated that 5% in there that we would normally do.

So it's not being changed again in July, if that makes sense. But yeah, I think we could do it however council wants. We can even do a mid, know, a mid cycle change to effective a different date too if we needed to. It's it's easier to do, I guess I should say, when we're utility rate changes anyways. So we do increase parts a few of our fees in January and a few of our fees in July.

And so it's a little bit easier just to incorporate into that. But if you wanted to do it effective for the March bills, that would be fine too. So whatever whatever the council would like to do. Okay. Can make happen.

Well, we can revisit we're have a work session on the operations center component or is do you think and that the business meeting to make this final decision? Great. What do you what how do you see this going forward?

So your next scheduled meeting is a work session February 3 in the evening. At that meeting and I was going to cover this under city manager report. At that meeting you have the utility advisory board members invited, and you'll have staff from engineering and consultant talking about the water system and water rates. So yet another thing related to all of this. Also, you have the police review and recommend committee that night on the third. So if we were to have this discussion, it would be at the end of all of that, which is totally totally doable. And we're happy to happy to schedule that.

Okay. And maybe we can do that then, and then we can also come to final consensus on the phasing or or the implementation of the $5.20 so that we can when we go to the business meeting, it's all ready to be voted on in the packet. So does that sound good? Yep. Is that everybody okay with that on city council?

Okay. Well, with that, I will thank everybody, thank my colleagues for engaging in these difficult but important conversations about finances, and I wanna thank our wonderful staff team for helping prepare us for the conversation and helping us get the word out after we before and after we take these votes. So appreciate you all, and we will see you soon. And with that, we can turn to the city manager report. Sure. Everybody stick around for this important report of the boss. Okay?

Moment where staff leaves, so they don't have to hear me talk. They hear me talk a lot during the regular workday, so they don't need this. Just a couple of things. We already just covered your last next meetings, February 3. Don't just don't forget that one's in the evening, usually in the day but we'll make sure the Outlook appointment is updated for the evening. I'm sure it is. But if it's not, we will. February 10 is the business meeting. As I mentioned last week, we have our friends from SMART, the Wilsonville transit system in to talk about their their new services. So that'll be that'll be very good.

I wanted to remind you about a couple of open houses, Vision 43. Many of you know this already. You've seen the email blasts. January 29 at six at Robinwood Station. February 12 at six at the library. And so those are good opportunities. Just as a reminder, we need to if there's gonna be a quorum of city council present, we need to post a quorum notice or don't talk to each other at the meetings, but probably better to tell us if there's gonna be a majority of council at those, we can post a quorum notice. So let us know if that's gonna happen. You don't have to do that right now. Council retreat, also in February.

I believe we would from a couple of availability points, it would be lovely if February 27 was the date for that. We haven't heard from everyone yet, I think. Is that right, Kathy? So if you could let us know tomorrow or right now if you want with the thumbs up. If a daytime retreat on the twenty seventh would work, we will start

day of the week is that?

It's a Friday. Friday, February 27. We had floated two dates, and this one starts looking better for us. That's four thumbs ups. Five. Five thumbs up. February 27. Thank you for that, and I will work with the mayor on an agenda for that for that event. But we are excited to support you there. Mayor, you mentioned the new ops center page on the website.

I was gonna mention that as well. Go to what your West Linn, and you will see there is a great new tile on the operation center. It's also highlighted on the city's main page. So thank you to the staff that put all that together, and Danielle stayed so she can get a thank you in person, which I love. Also, I noticed highlighted on the city's main page right now is that long form video on the food pantry, which is great, and I think it's really cool it's really cool presentation on on their needs and how they came about and all of that.

It's really nice to see that there, so I like that. Lots of exciting stuff happening citywide. I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the the parks department mentions that it's summer right now because they're working on summer events and scheduling, and they are thinking about what movies and what concerts, which kind of blows my mind. They are living in the future in a way that I probably should be, but I can't quite as futuristic as the parks department, but I appreciate that. Lots of great events happening at the library, so check your check your calendar there, the city's web page there.

I noticed that there is a slight chance of the Aurora tonight. We have all these clear skies. Apparently, some people in Oregon did see it last night. You'll have even better luck if you drive to, say, Vancouver BC, then it's even better. But we're right at the outset, so sometime around midnight, you might stick your head outside and see if you can find the aurora, which is

pretty cool.

We don't always get to see that. The last thing I wanted to mention is that Eric and I, Eric Lice, our public works director and city engineer, went down on Willamette Falls Drive today by the school and by Fields Bridge to look at the construction progress, which I get questions about from time to time. I was at Willamette Neighborhood Association and they were asking, what's with all that orange fencing and when's gonna hap what's gonna happen when and all of that. Eric is going to be working with the school. It looks like we can probably remove quite a bit of that orange fencing in the random cones here and there.

Although the project is not necessarily completed, there's a lot of extraneous fencing down there that just sort of looks like visual debris right now. And so Eric and the streets crew will be working on that. With the parks department possibly, and there are some probably additional fences that are needed to make sure that that project is nice and safe, and obviously some more important work that still has to happen. And so as I told folks at Willamette the other day, I think all knows this, the contractor for the school district working on that project went bankrupt, no longer paid their subs is my understanding. And so we are working with the bond agency that provided the bond on that construction.

And that that is, that group is supposed to be hiring a contractor to complete the work, under the warrant under the amounts that's already been paid, and so that process has been slow. And so that is why that project is not completed, but you'll you look down there, you see sandbags in some places, you see temporary erosion control fencing in some places. We are certainly looking forward to having that be completed, and I know staff is working behind the scenes to to make that happen, but we are trying to do it without spending our money that we shouldn't have to spend and the hard money that's already been spent. So that's the status report on that section of Willamette Falls Drive. Appreciate that Megan and Eric have been thinking about that and working on that.

I think that is my whole staff report for tonight. Hope you all had a lovely long weekend and there's anything that I can answer right now, I'm happy to do that. Or as I like to say, if you have any past pressing legal questions, Kristen's right here.

She's sitting in for the city attorney who we hope and expect is not watching this meeting right now, but maybe will later. We'll see this. Just a fun fact. They the the city of Westland built the police station for $5,850,000 back in 2010. Oh, how how expensive things have gotten to build city facilities. I I just looked that up tonight, and I couldn't believe that number. So, anyway, anything else for the good of the order tonight from city council? Any pressing legal questions? No. Council president.

I guess I would just add that, if people would like to get on to the city's website, under the weekly newsletter, you can follow the link to the TriMet survey, and it's still open. City manager, did you want

Keep going with that, and then I have one more thing.

And so we can at least participate in their process. I don't think it's going to have any immediate outcome for the closing of the lines. I also wanted to point out that, unfortunately, the information that was provided to our city comms was not complete with respect to which lines are being cut. So it's line 153 up and over Salama, which also serves the new Lake Oswego rec center, which is unfortunate, And significantly and missing from the website I mean, from our website information, which was provided by TriMet, is line 76 that goes from Tiger Tualatin through Boerland and all the way up Willamette Falls Drive to Oregon City. So that is now gonna continue still serving Tiger Tualatin and and at Meridian Park Hospital and no longer extend into Westland to Oregon City.

So although the line's not being completely cut, the Westland portion of the line is cut. And the other significant aspect that of services that are impacted that I'm told by TriNet they are going to be addressing directly to the riders that this impacts is lift service. So there will no be no more lift service on that's related to those particular lines. There will still be lift service related to Line 35 on Highway 43. But that is who whoever that impacts as few of a number of people that that may be, which Tremont keeps on telling me it's just a few people, well, it still impacts people a lot even if you're just that one person.

So if there are people who are depending on these lift services, that will be significant for them. So I just wanna make sure everyone is aware of

that. Thank you for fire.

The reason I raised my hand is that I had a note, and then I completely forgot to say it. Picking up on that from earlier, would the council like me to draft a letter to Tri Med that's a formal council position on these cuts that we could submit? The mayor and I could work on a letter and he could sign it and send it.

Yes. Think I asked them to come to council. I invited them to come and present to Westland City Council because as far as I can tell, I mean, obviously, impacts to our community are more noticeable to me than impacts to other communities. But I sat in that presentation twice in a row, and what's happening in other communities with services is that they are consolidating lines, but they're still going to be accessible, maybe not as conveniently. But in Westland, the lines are just going to be gone.

So I invited them to come to our council. Whether they will come or not, I'm not sure. But I yes. A letter, anything. I also think this is important, not necessarily because I think that'll reverse course.

They're responding to budget their own budgetary restrictions. So this isn't about being against TriMet. What I would like to do is highlight this concern to this at the state level because it's state funding that is no longer adequately providing funding to TriNet that is causing the situation. And if, for instance, the transportation package gets repealed, which may impact the status of tolling as a question in the future, we're back again talking about what are people's options if they can no longer afford to drive in certain stretches because of tolls, and then they don't have transit as an option. These are conversations that we just need to keep on pushing.

And I've also offered TriMet. I will go to this legislature and and speak to these concerns about as they impact our community and whatever it whatever it takes.

Thank thank you, council president. And I think I saw a lot of head nods about writing a letter, so, we'll look forward to working on that, with the city manager. And thank you for, this past week tracking. Council president attended several calls with TriMet and has been spending a lot of her time working on those issues, and also met with some community business whose employees are impacted by the service cuts to the point where they may not be able to get to work anymore. So it definitely is having an impact on on Westland.

So we'll track that and weigh in and continue to look for ways to improve our transit service in Westland. So anything else? So I think with that, we can adjourn the meeting, and we will see everybody back here in February. And that meeting will be at 6PM as a reminder as we've got a couple of advisory groups coming in for that. So thank you. We're adjourned. Have a good night.