City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Everybody ready to go? Are we waiting on anybody else? Well, we have this call this pre meeting to order, and

we can go around the room. For the record, I'm Borje Velasovsky, Mayor. Kevin Bollington, Councillor.

Mary Baumgartner, Council President.

Carol Reich, Councillor.

Leo Groner, City Councillor.

Haley Klein, City Attorney.

Clarke Eyes, Assistant, Senior. Eric

Thank you, everybody. We have approval of the agenda as the first item, and we're doing, I understand, a bit of a swap. Is that correct? That

is correct.

We're going to remove the water system development charge methodology update, and then we will go to we will pull the Safe Routes to School item for discussion as well. But that's always the community priority, council priorities. That will happen under approval of the agenda as noted in the motions for everybody's information. Any further comments on that? No. We can

talk about the item when we get

Then we have mayor and council reports to any advisory group appointment. Let's we can talk about that a little bit now. I've got marriage that made her earlier and others have not weighed in. Was share I was going to appoint Kevin Segura to the Budget Committee, Jim Edwards to the Historic Review Board, and Dan Salte to the Planning Commission. And we have a few boards that are having some forum issues as well and not a lot of applicants.

So, we can have a discussion about that. And then, I mean, I have been doing my duty whenever I talk to any community member saying, hey, we need more applicants for our advisory utility by board of press because we can't get a form of that group.

Yeah. And I've I've been reaching out to people as well and without much success, and it's not a huge lift. And people don't need to know everything about utilities to be on that committee. And the people that we do have on the committee are very good, very knowledgeable. And from my experience, going from city government to a special district that does water, you can learn a lot really fast. So I don't know why people hesitate to be on that one.

I might have a candidate for it. I shall not release the name right now. So

would we not then go forward with, UAB or CCI at the time? Is that what you That

was what

I was thinking.

We also did have we interviewed some others and we Danielle Allen was one that interviewed, and we put her on another board as well. I think everybody had this. Yes.

That's the one we don't want to

lose. The

Raytheon. Yes. Person that was Right.

And I did have somebody that I thought was interested in being on the Audit Committee, and she evidently hasn't stepped forward. So I will reach out to her.

Have a pretty scary statistic about CAG meetings, which I was going to share a council update. That's mine. The only one I would have had to share was canceled last week EDC. But going from year to date, we've had a 33% cancellation of all our scheduled CAG meetings due to forum or whatever. If you go from just March 1 to now, it's 45%.

So about

half of meetings since March have been canceled due to quorum whatever else. That's pretty bad.

Of all so many years? Yes.

That's pretty bad. And that's a self perpetuating problem, I would

say, because we keep having lots of folks resign from committee. Well,

maybe it's time to have a conversation about we need to change up how we're doing them or

Do we have too many?

Yes, maybe.

Yeah. That's probably the agenda topic for the summer. You have

to put it on there and Yeah. How does

Some are necessary. Some are required. So that I mean, CCI, for instance, as an example of

a

required body is one of the ones having

doesn't have

to be separate. In many communities, planning commission Yes.

Our CCI, which is a required body, is one of the ones having attendance or quorum issues, not just attendance, but just having enough people on it, right? I think that's my memory serves. Okay. Well, I don't have solutions right now, but we should talk about it.

Okay. We have up an agenda on that.

Okay. We have thoughts. Great.

Is there any positive incentives for attendance? Hard over Zoom.

Andy? I think the question you're raising though of

whether certain ones can be combined and if we need as many as we have is a good question because there's a lot of staff time involved, there's a lot of legal questions that arise and you don't want it to be a disappointing experience for residents and you also want it to be adding a lot in terms of staff responsibility or timing. So if there's a specific one that have a lot of value, I think that's very beneficial for the city, but there may be others that kind of run their course. What am

I hearing?

Yelling outside sounds like it.

Maybe it's outside.

There were some kids outside before So the

maybe it could have been

you never know. Great thoughts, everybody. So we can talk about that at a future meeting for sure. Do you think you don't have a quorum for UAV, what would happen? Yes.

We need to have UAV. Starter bond. Okay.

So then we've got the consent agenda.

Well, the proclamation.

The proclamation was tough because if you give me those, we've got a lot

of proclamations. We've got one for each

of us. One for each person. National public work suite. I think that's newest former water. Current water official. Mental health awareness month. Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation. That's what we do every year. I that.

Staff member. And in that last year, so I can pronounce it.

The Mhmm. American Heritage Month. Okay. And then National Police Week. Okay. And that's this week, actually. Yep. In fact, we have a spurring in coming up Mhmm. As far as team officers. We do. And then Peace Officers Memorial Day as well. So it's very easy to read those proclamations. Thank you, everybody. We'll hold on to those, and we'll take them upstairs.

And they look shorter than usual. I'm very upset. We're working on taking them,

I can say. The consent agenda will have several items on it, and we're going to take off the state prep school construction contract during the original motion. With that, then any other about the consent agenda items? The question? Answer, yes,

no. Just so I'm clear, the motion for agenda approval is correctly already listed as it is. Okay. Yes, it is. It's already got the adjustment. Okay. Thank you.

So we're moving that and the business meeting or?

So the SEC is being tabled for future meeting and the Safe Routes project is being put on to the Got it. Okay. Perfect.

Okay. So with that, we can move into business meeting and that will be the agenda item. Is there a or any sort of discussion on that?

Yes. Just to explain about the SEC, there were a few loose threads that needed to address before we brought this to you. So Eric is working on those with members of the utility advisory board. They have great expertise and input and so we're wanting to make sure that that is all set to go before they start. So we were thinking that would allow a little more focus on the construction contract and Clark will be here, be there presenting.

But Clark, this meeting is not to give the presentation. This meeting is to ask the council if they have any information need in advance. We'd like to say that if they say that, we have twenty minutes. But again, it's than zero. So, any information need for Clark about this project?

I will probably bring up the questions. Have we worked with this contractor before? I already sent an email to to Clark, and it's the same contractor that did the Cedar Oak, which I was able to observe at my living room window. So I thought that they did a really, really good job. So I'm glad to see that they were a little better on this.

Thank you for the advantage.

We are very excited about having them back again. Sure. Yeah. And how does this relate to our prioritized list of This will not be on our prioritized list of crossings because it's part of the state route to school plan that was put together 2018. Yeah. So it's it's using that GO bond money from 2018 to fund

it. Mhmm. I know. Go back to

the passage of the GO bond, the general obligation bond in 2018. Engineering worked with school district parents to define a list of needed projects to access each of the primary schools. And those projects were not always on the pedestrian safety list in the TSP. They were sometimes chosen for other reasons focusing on getting kids safe. So that safe routes work was thought to be a priority and is a priority, but it's slightly separate from that other.

Okay.

I think it was originally number six and number three was another safe route that was done. Is that right?

We'll find that out. So it's a

high priority and we've done another priority. Many people

might benefit. Any

other questions on safeguards? Okay. And then we have the management report and we will have the jury. Else? We're to be ordered for this meeting. Any other burning questions for the staff for the for the no? Fifteen minutes. Let's say fifteen minutes. Okay.

With that, we're adjourned. Fine.

$5.45 and we'll go upstairs. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Don't lose your proclamations, okay? This is a business meeting of the Westland City Council.

It's already mid May. Can you believe it? 05/12/2026. And the first item is to, do the pledge of allegiance. So I would ask everybody to please rise and I will lead it. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to

the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic under which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, everybody. And now we will move to approval of the agenda. We have a change to make.

Thank you, mayor. I move to approve the agenda for the 05/12/2026 Westland City Council Meeting removing eight a water system development charge methodology update from the agenda and moving item seven b twenty twenty six safe routes to school construction contract to its place eight a.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. So we move the second and to approve the agenda for 05/12/2026 city council meeting removing eight a water system development charge methodology update from the agenda and moving item seven b from the consent agenda to eight a, which is the safe routes to school construction contract for this coming year. So any discussion? We'll have the SDC water agenda item come back in the near future. Just tying up a few loose ends with that. Call the roll please, seeing no discussion.

Councilor Bonington? Yes. Councilor Bright? Yes. Councilor President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Bronner? Yes. Mayor Belasdowski? Zewski?

Yes. So the motion passes. The agenda is approved. And that will take us to mayor and council first of public comments.

There are none.

Nobody signed up online and nobody audience members would like to give a public comment. You have to fill a form out over there if you'd like to. Yeah. Anything on on your mind. So no public comments tonight. So with that, we will continue on to mayor and council reports. Reports from community advisory groups and city business in general. Councilor Bright, go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. Since our last meeting, I attended two planning commission meetings. The first one was a public hearing. The second one on May 6 was introducing the new planner that has joined the city as well as reviewing the planning docket. And on April 22, I attended the South Fork Water Board meeting which was an update on their capital projects and the planning for funding of those.

Thank you for that update. Councilor Bright, anybody I'll just go down the line, I suppose. Council president Baumgartner.

Thank you, mayor. Yes. I attended the meeting for c four on April 15, the Willamette Falls and Landings Heritage Area Coalition board meeting on the twentieth, the Willamette Falls Locks Authority board meeting on the twenty second, the c four partners dinner, c four being the Clackamas County coordinating committee for anyone who might not know what c four is. And it's a very interesting body of our Clackamas City partners and they held a dinner on the May 7 and that was very interesting. The presentations afterward about revenue generation that I was very interested in featuring a couple of city managers from Milwaukee and from I can't remember the other city, but anyway, they were very interesting on revenue generation and opportunities for participating in loan programs, rotating loans that I'm gonna share with council to offer new businesses and and especially businesses that need revitalization.

And then this week, yesterday was the another meeting for the Willamette Falls and Landings Heritage Area Coalition. And today was I met with the executive director of the locks authority and we attended the Clackamas County Commission board's meeting Tuesday work session to ask for funds for the locks and that was also very interesting. So that's about it. Thank you.

Thank you for that detailed report and for all the attendance at those meetings and looking forward to the locks getting some funding hopefully from the county and then the state as well. That's key to the waterfront's future. I attended a swearing in going all the way back into the last month of officer Shockley at the police department and looking forward to swearing in of sergeant Jabrel Johnson this week. Very excited for that. And then a couple last week attended a meet the mayors event with Greater Portland Inc, which is the Portland's economic development kind of group.

And several mayors from the region were there along with a couple of city councilors came and joined that event. That was good to present West Linn in the regional stage. And then last week, also went on a tour of the Willamette Falls site with the Willamette Falls Trust president Kate Brown. It was requested by members of the West Linn Lions Club, of which I am a member, and they wanted to take a look at the fish ladder and the fish counting window on the at the mill property, which is I had never been in there and saw many salmon move through and kind of an interesting vantage point to see that process happening right down there. The whole infrastructure for the fish ladder is pretty interesting.

So I hadn't gotten to see that before. So thanks to John Borden, community member, for pushing for that to happen. So with that, move on to councilor Groner. Thank you everybody.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor Bill Stockski. I attended a couple of neighborhood association meetings. One was Tanner Creek, is kind of a near neighbor of my Sunset District. They're just getting organized.

They elected some officials and they're anxious to basically get started and start getting their grants and they're working on their budget, getting a Zoom account and such. I also attended the Tanner Creek, excuse me, the Sunset District Neighborhood Association. Basically, we're planning an August get together, which is basically a picnic with a band in Sunset Park. Also on May, I attended the arts and culture meeting. They are working hard on a sculpture which will be along 43 in Camerley Park.

Wondering exactly where that will be in the park. Should it be visible from the road for example? And also some safety issues about are kids gonna climb if this is a sculpture. It was an interesting discussion. So that's my report. Thank you.

Thank you councilor. And councilor Bonington anything to report?

Yeah, going that far back in time, I attended the Bolton Neighborhood Association and gave them a presentation on framing our future as I did with Sunset before that. And then we also had the neighborhood association president's meeting which did not have a quorum, but the discussion still continued. I would not say there was anything I should I should really report because it wasn't a real meeting or shouldn't have been a real meeting. And then that brings me to kind of an issue which I I mentioned in the pre meeting, which is that way back in March, started noticing that meetings are getting canceled at a pretty high rate. Year to date, our scheduled community advisory group meetings, this is not including planning commission, not including anything related to council, not including any neighborhood associations except for NAP.

We've had a 33% cancellation rate. So one third of all the meeting scheduled end up canceled for our CAGs. From March 1, that number becomes 45. So nearly half. So that's staff, that's one of us, and then that's the advisory group members who do show up or are prepared for that.

But then kind of have their night freed up and not in probably the way they were hoping. I don't think anyone in here can really offer a solution to that or has any responsibility in that matter. But I think it is something we need to talk about how to make make these meetings more frequently attended, more consistent. How to best utilize our CAG's, whether maybe some of them need to go to quarterly or in some cases exist at all. I don't But it is definitely a problem and I've seen it firsthand with EDC last year when you start out having meetings that are canceled consistently, all of a sudden they all tumble downhill for that group.

And

then it's pretty tough to recover. So I don't know what the reason is but it's a real problem.

And just to be clear, cancelled due to quorum issues, not canceled by the city.

Not necessarily because it's not listed what's canceling them. But I would say it appears the majority of them are quorum issues. But there are definitely others that are canceled for other reasons too.

That's a good point.

Thank you for raising that. That's something we can take a look at as we talked about in the pre meeting. Councilor Groner has a thought.

Yeah, thank you. Just as an session suggestion, I think we do need some sort of incentives. And it occurs to me one thing, the minutes that these that occur for these meetings or even a canceled meeting might include a full list of the membership with a little notation present, not present next to them.

Not the ones I've seen. We can take a look at that. That's a good point. Thank you for raising that. Are And you gonna mention the market? Oh, I'll just mention, we're very excited. The first Wednesday in Willamette summer market is happening tomorrow. So very I'll be down there. I might join I know the city's gonna have a booth this year. And I think Luke Borland from Public Works will be there tomorrow.

So I'll join him in the booth for a while. Great opportunity to buy some produce and support several local vendors and restaurants as well. So very excited. Thanks to Rebecca Hollenbeck and her team for all that they do to organize the summer market. So it can be great upcoming summer on Wednesdays especially in West Linn. Council president, please.

Thank you, mayor. I just wanted to note, make a final note in reporting that I was honored to attend, sadly, the passing of a very important government partner, a tribal elder from the Yakima Nation, Davis, Yellow Wash Washines passed, and I attended the services and along with Kate Brown as a member of representing the city, but also representing the Willamette Falls Trust. Elder Washines was a very important leader and important to our regional goals and partnerships with tribes. And so his passing is is notable and he will be missed. Thank you.

Thank you for that, council president. Thanks for attending that up in Yakima. Anything else from council reports? It's good. We're robust reports today. I appreciate everybody's service as we've We're we've progress I

move to approve the mayor's appointments.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve appointing Kevin Segura to the Budget Committee, Jim Edwards to the Historic Review Board, and Daniel Salty to the Planning Commission. Any discussion? Just to thank everybody who applied, always impressed by applicants that we get to our advisory boards. And we're also going to be talking more about kind of how to maybe get more applicants to some of our boards as well.

So look forward to that. We had a good conversation in the pre meeting about that topic. And so we'll put that on the agenda for the upcoming council sessions in the summer to talk about our community advisory groups. Any other thoughts? Okay. Councilor Bright. Oh, okay. She's ready to vote is what she's trying to signal. So we'll we'll go ahead.

Councilor Bright?

Yes.

Councilor President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Croner? Yes. Councilor Bonington?

Yes.

Mayor Billos Aires?

Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes. Moving right along then. Next on the agenda is the agenda item five. League of Oregon Cities 2026 Good Governance Award and up comes the plaque. So I'll turn it over to city manager Williams. Go ahead and introduce the topic.

Thank you, mayor and council. Very pleased to have Steve Coper and Darren Weiss come to the podium and describe a great award that the city recently received. Darren's done a ton of work on this, as you know, for many, many years. And I think he's starting us off here, Darren. All right. Take it away.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Williams. And good evening, mayor, councilors. Again, Wise, principal planner with the city of West Linn.

And it's my honor to present the Good Governments Award from the League of Oregon Cities to City Council this evening. The award highlights progressive and innovative city operations and services across Oregon. So very honored to receive this award from the league. I'd like to thank the league for the recognition of the comprehensive and community driven approach to long term planning for the Westland Waterfront Community Vision Plan, which the council adopted last November. It was my pleasure to accept the award on behalf of the city at the League of Oregon City Spring Conference, and it was a great pleasure.

A special thanks goes out to you, the City Council, for your leadership along the way, getting to the finish line with the vision plan. Your leadership over the years was critical in us getting to that point. Just for a few numbers for you, the City Council met 18 times in session when we worked on this plan over about ten years. And that doesn't even include all the countless meetings that you attended, working group meetings, special meetings outside of the council sessions, community events that you attended, and of course, the workshops that we held along the way. I also like to thank city manager John Williams for his unwavering trust in in the planning staff to get this project to the finish line.

Community development director Steve Cooper, who's here with me tonight for his support in the final stretch. The tool design group, the consultant team that helped us with the vision plan for being flexible and professional. And then of course, the special thanks to the Westland community partners and stakeholders who stayed involved over the ten years of engagement that in past. And made progress And

the made balance and

first

sheet. A We

We make and

half of 20 sure we're And then

to sure this plan. And again, thanks to the council for their leadership along the way. So to wrap it up, many lessons were learned over the ten years of engagement. There were changes in technology, rotating stakeholders, some shifts in leadership, but the time tested act of meeting people where they are and getting their feedback, whether that's physically or virtually held true. So again, very honored to have received this award.

It was a pleasure to work on this project through all the starts and stops and a pleasure to present it to the council tonight. So again, thank you to council for your leadership and the community for all the feedback along the way and the passion we've of in

the

And the

statements and the the

past. Award, and And I think we're very all honored pleased to have received that. Progress And just thinking back to running for city council back in 2020 and writing my platform and chief among the items that I was trying to accomplish was moving the water front project forward and doing something cool around the falls. And here we are. Five years later, we adopted the plan.

And now a few months later, after that, we're receiving a good governance award. And now I think everybody in the community is excited about the next steps on the see what happens around the west side of the the river. And that's a good opportunity to announce my State of the City address as well as well, which will be on June 4. And one of the themes is gonna be talking about the future of the waterfront. And we'll have a a panel talking about that with a former governor Brown and staff and council council, and then also talk about framing our future. But looking forward to that as well. So everybody's excited about the waterfront. So thank you. Any other comments on the waterfront plan? Council president.

Thank you, mayor. And yes, this is an amazing honor that the city has received and also notably from all of your diligence, Darren, on this and other projects. I do recall going to a town hall outreach event long before I ever considered running for council and met you and you were presenting information about, I believe it was about roundabouts at the time, but it did get me thinking about how important it is to participate in processes so that we can have what we want to envision together. So thank you for all of your both of your work, and Steve and John. It's really an honor.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you, council president. Councilor Groner.

Yes. It is quite an honor for the work you've done so far. I think it's an excellent plan and I look very much to the future to see it developed and implemented. Thank you very much.

Any other comments? Councilor Bonifant, go ahead. Oh no, had a comment.

Proud of us, you,

everyone. Thank the community as well.

Anything else? Someone had mentioned taking a picture before. Would would would you like to do that? With the Yes, if that's okay. Okay. Sounds good. There was Steve. You mentioned that. So we'll do we'll do that. We can do a council picture.

The Okay. That's great. That might be the first award we've actually won from League of Organ Cities. I haven't heard. Have we ever won an award from League of Organ Cities before?

On the first a submission. I have not in the not in the ten years that I've been watching city hall.

From LOC, I can't think of one

right off the bat. Yep.

City recorder, you can check the archives in the basement. Go through all the no. No. Just kidding. Thank you everybody. And with that, we can move on. We've got several proclamations. It's a busy month for several different things we wanted to recognize. So to start us off, I have an order on the agenda. So it would be the congenital disorders of glycosylation recognition proclamation from counselor Bonington.

Alright. Whereas congenital I'm off to great start considering this one. Whereas congenital disorders of glycosylation, CDG's day is May 16, the birthday of Jack Jaeken, the medical doctor who reported the first CDG patient patients in 1980. And whereas CDGs are a group of rare metabolic disorders that affect normal organ development and the neurological system, Leaving children, adolescents, and adults impaired with significant physical and developmental disability. And whereas lack of public awareness and visibility of CDGs contribute to under diagnosis and difficulties in accessing specialized services and proper rehabilitation and support.

And whereas early diagnosis of CDGs is important to ensure timely management of clinical complications, genetic counseling, and when available treatment and therapeutic remedies. And whereas the goal is to raise awareness and increase the accurate and timely diagnosis of this rare group of inherited metabolic disorders known as CDG. Now, therefore, be it be proclaimed by the city council of West Linn that 05/16/2026 is congenital disorders of glycosylation awareness day.

Thank you. Thank you, councilor Bonington. We have

a member of city staff who has a child who suffers from that condition. So we always it's an annual tradition to recognize that as a city to support them. So we support them. Thank you, councilor. And now we'll go to councilor who will read the Jewish American Heritage Month proclamation.

Thank you, mayor. Whereas in 2006, president George w Bush proclaimed May as Jewish American Heritage Month to recognize more than three hundred and fifty years of Jewish contribution to The United States and its culture. And whereas Jewish Americans have significantly shaped the social, cultural, economic, and civic life of Oregon, enriching our communities as leaders in education, business, the arts, medicine, public service, and social justice. And whereas Jewish American Heritage Month offers a meaningful opportunity to recognize, honor, and celebrate the enduring contributions of Jewish Americans to our nation, our state, and our local communities throughout history. And whereas during Jewish American Heritage Month, we honor the timeless traditions and contributions of Jewish Americans and acknowledge all they have done to enrich our community.

And whereas the city of West Linn embraces the diverse backgrounds and experiences that make our city stronger and encourages all residents to celebrate the history and contributions of Jewish Americans while promoting unity, understanding, and mutual respect among all peoples. Now therefore be it proclaimed by the city council of the city of West Linn that the month of May 2026 is Jewish American Heritage Month.

Thank you, councilor Gardner, for that proclamation. And now we'll turn to council president Baumgartner to read the Mental Health Awareness Month proclamation.

Thank you, mayor. Whereas since its inception in 1949, Mental Health Awareness Month has been a cornerstone of addressing the challenges faced by millions of Americans living with mental health conditions. And whereas this year's theme, more good days together, encourages helping people to have more good days by meeting them where they are, supporting them as a whole people, and recognizing what a good day looks like based on their unique experience and goals. Whereas forty six percent of Americans will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition sometime in their life, half of those people will develop conditions by the age of 14. Whereas in Oregon, roughly thirty percent of adults experienced mental health, mental illness in the last year.

One of the highest in the nation with both youth and adults ranking among the highest for mental health challenges nationally. And whereas engaging in prevention, early identification, and early intervention are as effective ways to reduce the burden of mental illness as they are to reduce the burden of other chronic conditions. And whereas mental health is an essential component of overall health and well-being and by working together to raise public awareness and reduce stigma, we can improve the lives of individuals experiencing mental health challenges and whereas each business school, government agency, healthcare provider, organization, and community member has a responsibility to promote mental health and well-being for all. Now therefore be it proclaimed by the city council of the city of Westland that May 2026 is mental health awareness month. We call upon the community, government agencies, public and private institutions, businesses, and schools to recommit our community to increasing awareness and understanding of mental health.

The steps our community can take to protect their mental health and the need for appropriate and accessible services for all people with mental illness. Dated this May 2026. Thank you.

Thank you, council president, for that. And I will read the National Police Week and National Peace Officers Memorial Day proclamation. Whereas in 1962, president Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the calendar week in which May 15 falls as National Police Week. And whereas National Police Week pays special recognition to law enforcement officers who've lost their lives in line of duty for the safety and protection of others. And whereas the members of the law enforcement agency in the city of West Linn and our police department play an important role in safeguarding the rights and freedoms of our community members.

And whereas it is important that all community members recognize the challenges, sacrifices, duties, and responsibilities undertaken by the brave individuals in law enforcement. And whereas members of our department recognize their duty to serve the people by safeguarding life and property, protecting them against violence and disorder, and protecting the innocent against deception and the vulnerable against oppression and or intimidation. And whereas, the city of Westland recognizes and expresses its sincere appreciation and sacrifice for the individuals of law enforcement in our community, and now therefore be it proclaimed, by the city council of the city of Westland that May 2026 is National Police Week, and, May 15 is National Police Officers Memorial Day. And we extend our appreciation to police chief Otis Rollins and to all the individuals of the police department in Westland for the vital services they provide and their exemplary dedication to our community dated this May 2026. And perhaps I'll bring the official proclamation along to the department for the at the swearing in ceremony this coming Thursday as a as a token of our appreciation.

I'll do that. Thank you. And then speaking of other vital services provided by the community, we have it's public works week as well. So councilor Bright.

Thank you, mayor. Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities, and services that are essential to sustainable and resilient communities, and whereas these infrastructure facilities and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public works professionals who contribute to enhancing our quality of life, and whereas this year's theme rooted in service powered by community recognizes that public work service runs deep, drives innovation, and includes both visible infrastructure and essential often unseen work that together form the foundation of strong connected and resilient communities. And whereas this year marks the sixty sixth anniversary of National Public Works Week celebrating the enduring contribution of public works professionals to communities across the nation. And whereas the city of Westland recognizes and honors the public works professionals who serve our community for their dedication, professionalism, and a commitment to maintaining a self and well cared for city. And whereas we invite the community to join us in celebrating the work these professionals do that help make life better for all.

Now therefore be it proclaimed by the city council of the city of West Linn that May 2026 is National Public Works Week.

Thank you, council president, and thanks to our public works team in the audience and all all of the the different divisions of the public works department that help keep the city running and the water flowing and all of that. So hopefully, we can do something for them as well. Presents proclamation to that team. Maybe we can work on something during the public works week. Council president said we should do that. So we'll make it happen. Thank you. And that takes us then to the consent agenda. Any objection to the two items that remain on the consent agenda? I see no, so we can proceed to a motion.

Thank you, mayor. I move to approve the consent agenda for the 05/12/2026 Westland City Council meeting, which includes the 04/14/2026 meeting minutes and resolution twenty twenty six dash zero four approving the acquisition of real property tax lot 21 E 26 D 00907.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda, which includes the 04/14/2026 meeting minutes and resolution twenty twenty six-four approving the acquisition of real property at tax law 21E260 nine zero seven. No discussion on the consent agenda. So please call the roll.

Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner?

Yes.

Councilor Bonington?

Yes.

Councilor Wright? Yes. Mayor Wiedelnstoski?

Yes. Thank you. So the consent agenda is approved and I'll sign the resolution. And thanks to Kathy for your work on the minutes as always and Kaylee and Eric for your work on the property acquisition matter. Appreciate it.

And with that, after all that council business, we will move to the business meeting, which after the switch substitution at the beginning includes the the 2026 sorry. Can't find that agenda bill. Agenda bill twenty twenty six zero five twelve o two, which is the 2026 safe routes to school construction contract award, which is council priority every year to improve the safety of routes near our schools and neighborhoods. And so we thought we would talk about this during the meeting rather than have it on the consent agenda just to highlight the work that's going on. And it's from a voter approved bond back in 2018.

So I'll turn it over to city manager Williams. Go ahead. Introduce the topic. I may have just stole much of your thunder.

I'll have to think of something else to say now, but that's that's good. And Clark will say it again. And so, I've been here since before the voters passed this bond, and we are we are slowly knocking off the project list, and this will be one of the last transportation projects. Clark will tell you more. But Clark is our assistant city engineer and is gonna be providing information to council on this project.

I do wanna note, if anyone is out there watching and wondering about the agenda, that we will be bringing back the water system development charges at a future meeting. Just had a few extra details to take care of so the packet was complete and accurate for your consideration. So we will you'll be seeing that soon. And with that, Clark, I'd love to hear from you about this project.

Thank you, John. Good evening council and mayor Bilstowski. It's great to be back again talking about another project that we are really excited to get kicked off. So just to kinda talk a little bit about our work on this project. So everybody knows what it is.

It's a safe routes to school project that we have been in design with since about 2223. It is in the Sunset School neighborhood. It is on Bittner And Longstreet, two little sections of sidewalk for infill in that area. And this is a project that was highlighted in the Safe Routes to School planning that was done back in 2019, I believe. As mentioned, this is a project that is funded by the 2018 general obligation bond.

Transportation project. And this will be one of our last projects to be funded with this transportation fund will be expending the rest of the the funding that we have available, which is which is good. Like our city manager said, it's it's good to finally expend all the funds on part of this. A little bit about design. Like I said, we we've been working on this one for a little while.

We've had a we've had several meetings with the community. Back in 2024, we had an open house to walk the project with with the neighborhood association, anybody who wanted to come around. And we also met with the Sunset Primary PTSO and talked about the project with them back in October '24 as well. We used that input and feedback from from the community and to get to our final design. We took some of their their thoughts and their kind of changes things they didn't like, and we we we used that to influence how we we completed our design.

Also as part of that, we added in a a little section between Exeter and Bentner of a little piece of sidewalk that wasn't originally included, but we thought it was a good time to make another connection because there was an existing sidewalk on Exeter. So now we have couple multiple routes of connectivity back to the school from the neighborhood. It's not all connected. We all know this. We still have some infill spots.

But this brings us to a better spot as far as getting children safely to the Sun Primary School. The project rounds a bid. We received eight bids for this project. All of the bids except for one were underneath our engineer's estimate and our low bid was actually substantially underneath our engineers estimate by $145,000 which we're gonna say is good value right now. Contractors are very hungry for work and we're seeing the benefits of that at this moment.

And and also by the way eight bids for a project in the city of Westland is pretty good. So some good competition in there as well. Don't think I have anything else unless there's some questions.

Any questions from the council? Councilor Bragg.

Thank you for that information. Have we worked with this contractor before?

Yes.

This contractor, well the contractor who is the low bidder, we're gonna award this contract to, is D and D Construction. And they are the contractor who did our last Safe Routes school construction project on Cedar Oak. I, if no one has seen that project, I would encourage you to all go out and take look at it because they did an excellent job and we are very happy with that, with their work and actually very excited to work with them again.

I did a walk and talk with the counselor on that stretch of sidewalk when that project was completed and I could see that work for my house. And and I would say from my perspective and many of my neighbors that I talked to, it was a very well done project. The contractor was very responsive and and worked well with the neighborhood. Yep. So that's good news.

As you know where this location of this project is we've got a lot, I mean that is Sunset Fire Halls there. There's a lot of activities that go on during the summer. So there's gonna be a lot of coordination with them to help maintain access to all these sites while we're in construction. And obviously we wouldn't start construction until after school's out. But we still have some busy summer activities there with parks, camps, and stuff.

Great question. Thank you. Glad we have a good contractor on board. Council President Baumgartner.

Thank you, mayor. And thank you so much for the information. And also, I just wanted to specifically appreciate how you reached out to and listened to and then made changes so the flexibility and the collaboration that you were doing on this project is so helpful to community members and and I'm sure it will be appreciated. So thank you especially for that.

Absolutely. Councilor Groning and councilor Bonny.

Yes. In the Sunset neighborhood and and the neighborhood association meeting, this is a topic that frequently comes up. I'm really glad to see some action taking place there. It's about to be wished. Thank you.

I can confirm that some of the neighbors who will be directly impacted by this started out maybe not incredibly wild about the idea and are now extremely pleased with the direction it's gone in and the design choice that was made with it. So I think it's a really good example of the community outreach we've tried to do around here having serious results, real results you can point to. So that's great.

Thank you, counselor. Any other comments? I would just echo the sentiments from everybody else on this topic. Thanks And for all your work engaging with the neighborhood. Look forward to see this. Another successful Safe Routes to School project. And then I guess this also brings up funding for future projects. This is the last Safe Routes project from the 2018 bond?

Yes. This will expand all the rest of our funds from that. Obviously, we are still looking to hit some of our pedestrian priority list items that we've talked about in the past, assuming we can come up with some funding sources for that as well. But this will at least tide us over on on a pedestrian infill project until we come up with some more creative solutions for that.

We'll still continue to talk about that. The funding picture, we've had some meetings on that in the past and discussions with neighborhoods about these funding these projects. So I'm sure this will roll into our framing our future initiative. Just another one of the community needs that we have to keep addressing because I just think it's important to note that we don't have an identified funding source for much of these projects down the line after we get through with these current ones that we're doing.

Yes, that's right. The $20.18 bond has accomplished projects all over the city and not just road projects, also repairing city facilities and parks all over the city. And it's amazing how much has been done over the last few years with that fund money, which has been very unique for us to be able to do those kinds of projects. To have local bond source for this has been really valuable. And just as a reminder, we do have a website that tracks all of the bond projects.

Anyone who wants to take a look at what projects were completed, how much they cost, where they were, all available on the city's website. There's a great tracker that's available. Transparency and accountability for the bond funds was very important to us, is very important to us all the way along. So we want to make sure that the community can see at any time, wow, these are all the things. And I think anyone who looks at the list will by the number of projects and the geographic range of them all over the city.

Thank you for that. Agreed. Any anything else from councilor? Shall we I'd entertain a motion on the contract.

Thank you, mayor. I move to approve the 2026 safe routes to school construction contract to D and D Construction and Utilities Inc in the amount of $576,967 and authorize the city manager to sign and execute all related documents.

Second. It's been moved and second to approve the twenty twenty six safe routes to school construction contract to D and D Concrete and Utilities Inc in the amount of $576,960 and authorize the city manager to sign and execute all related documents. Any discussion? We've already kinda had the discussion. So with that, seeing none, we'll call the roll.

Councilor Groner? Councilor Groner? Yes. Councilor Bonington?

Yes.

Councilor Bright? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Mayor Belisovsky?

Yes. And the motion passes and the city manager is hereby authorized to sign and execute all related documents and deliver the project. So thank you. And we look forward to seeing that another Safe Routes to School project coming to fruition. Thank you all. Appreciate it. And hopefully, we could let the neighborhood know as well that we're moving forward. I know I have a couple Sunset residents who are active in the neighborhood association up here, so we'll do that. Thank you. With that, it takes us to the city manager report.

Thank you, mayor. Happy to start that off. And I'm just thinking while our bailiffs are here in the room, I was reflecting at the beginning of this meeting how we have these folks who come to every one of our meetings, one of your meetings, and without which the meetings wouldn't run as well as they do. You've got Ken over here providing security and all sorts of other logistical things for years doing this work. We appreciate them. You've got Kevin in the back room running the cameras and the sound and the audio. He'll hear me say that in about three seconds.

And he's a Westland resident also, always say.

Westland former Westland resident. Malusky and Theresa in our office. I just you know, it's a it's a team effort to get these meetings together and have them operate as well as they do. So I just wanna appreciate you guys for being here. Even on a night where we have a very small audience, it still helps us feel safe and secure with you guys here. And the TV and the audio quality is fantastic and the meeting's running really well. So and there's lot of people behind the scenes too. So I just thought I would mention that. Diving into the city manager report, your next meeting is next Tuesday. It's a work session.

We have TV, F and R in the house. We have, I think, a report from the Friends of Robinwood at that meeting and perhaps some discussion initiated about next moves on the future of that utility building out in the backyard of Rockland Park. I don't know which one is the backyard at Rockland Station, but in the yard. And then I think we'll be bringing back the Bancroft financing, SDC topic for that meeting as well. In early June, right now we have no work session items for the June 2, but given Councillor Bonnington's statement earlier, I don't want him to start measuring our meetings.

We'll see if we can dig something up. But seriously, we also have stated the city that week. So I'll be in touch with the mayor. If we can find items for that work session, we will schedule them. But you already have an evening that week. And then the business meeting is June 9, and we'll have our annual fees and charges and probably a few other things on that meeting as well. A couple of follow ups I wanted to think about from previous council direction. I mentioned the SDCs earlier. That was an item reviewed by council in work session earlier this year. You agreed to move the SDC part forward, but have more consideration of the water rates and that whole question.

And that will be part of Framing Our Future. But we'll be returning to you on those things. You gave us direction recently on the Lady Bee, on the tugboat donation, and work has been happening on that. I'd like

to thank

Kaylee, city attorney Kaylee Klein, who has been doing quite a bit on that, especially while we are in an interim and rec director situation. So we're all filling in, in a lot of different ways. But we are driving that project forward, and we'll have more information for you in the near future. Speaking of framing our future, lots happening there. You are getting reports from our staff, but I just think it's important to highlight some of the good work that's happening.

And it's actually rare for me to see a project that has so many people from so many different departments working on it. There is activity literally in every department around the city. The library has jumped in to help us with video production, narration, all kinds of things happening there. Doug and Danielle are doing a great job leading the project. But each and every department is taking pictures and providing content and infographics and videos of what they do.

Really our mission right now in this phase is to share who the city is and what services we provide and what services we don't provide, which some people have no idea as well. And so you're starting to see magnets on city vehicles that has the logo. You're starting to see banners in parks or on fences, all allowed areas as far as I understand. There's going be some A frames that you see near city facilities that have opportunity when folks aren't driving to scan the QR code and learn more. Steve Coper had a great idea, and he and I jointly sent a letter to businesses in town asking them to partner and put up materials in their windows, or for those with video screens, maybe show our videos once in a while.

So that is happening. As I mentioned, each department is making videos to explain what they do, and so the community can know what that is. We are gonna be at the Wednesday market and may invite each of you to attend the Wednesday market. You may have already been invited to that. There will be speaking opportunities for you.

And if you ever espy a group that you would like to go to and talk about Framing Our Future, we would be happy to support you. You have some materials, but just let us know if you need more or need targeted or whatever it might be. We'd be happy to help with that. And of course, what this is, is a way for us to talk to the community about how the city operates, how it's funded, and how we're going to sustainably provide services and projects for the long term. And we are in an early phase right now, but very soon I'm intending to drive this project forward so that you have usable answers and input that you can do something with in a reasonable time frame.

We're going to move into the next phase, which is here's what we've been hearing that you value. Well, here's how those services are funded. Here's how those projects might be funded. Tonight's general obligation bond project is a great example. Well, you want more sidewalks, you want more safe routes to school, those projects cost money. And here's how the money is provided or here's how the money is not available. So we are that next phase is going to be, okay, here's the services that we've heard are valued and here's some information about that. And let's have a conversation about what you would like the future of this city to be, whether it's about a service or a project. And let's make sure we can fund it sustainably for the long term. It's a really, really important conversation.

And I'm excited to see the level of effort that we are putting into it. So on that topic I believe Councilor Bonington might have had a thing or two that he wanted to add to this before I move on to other things.

So it's crystal clear to me that we do not have anywhere near enough feedback on this. And it is up to us to drive as much of that as possible and get more responses. When I looked last week, believe there were 33 comments on the site. It's not anywhere near enough to make decisions. Also because I sorted through them and kind of picked out which ones had misconceptions about which services we provide, things like that.

I ended up seeing that it appears we're headed in the right direction with the fact that first of all people are benefiting from getting a better understanding of what we provide. But they also are expressing that they prioritize and value many of the things we we thought they might. At the same time, I've had a number of community members not just recently but in the last year specifically ask me well how can I help? Like I would love to work on on Citi's behalf and and speak to my friends and my neighbors. Speak to my groups that I'm involved in.

Put a yard sign in my yard. So I was tossing around ideas about how we could possibly bring people up to speed on the project and equip them to be able to discuss that. We had also in the past discussed having some sort of working group or advisory, temporary advisory group on this before we got to the later phases. So I view those two things as perhaps related. But in the meantime, I think we wanted to make sure everyone was okay with having a test run of sorts with with the interested community members who wanted to learn about this.

Kinda just see where it goes. See if more of them are necessary. How people respond to getting the the briefing so to speak.

So you just to when you say test run, mean like a meeting or a a the the word task force comes to my head of setting up kind of a group of people to work on this.

I think that's something in the future. But I think right now we something is informal and preliminary is just like John and I meeting with them one night and maybe like five, six people from that group that have expressed interest, see how it goes and what we would need to do to make it more of a real thing.

Yeah, occurs to me groups like the Lions Club or Rotary are potential audiences. And I'd be happy to talk to the Lions Club for example.

You for that. Council president Baumgartner, go ahead.

Thanks mayor. That's an interesting idea. I was just while you were speaking and actually while city manager Williams was speaking, it occurs to me that I know you have just kind of voluntarily gone to some neighborhood associations. But for instance tomorrow night is Willamette neighborhood, and I live in Willamette, so that would be logical if I were to go, but if I'm not sure if we are making sure that there's a presentation happening at every single neighborhood association, so if maybe that's already happening. And so

Those aren't scheduled yet, but it's on our list to get in front of every neighborhood association. So anyone that any counselor would like to do in this phase would be awesome. Okay. And then we'll it won't just be one time either.

Right. Of course. I just that's kinda what came into my mind. I was also thinking of addressing this is a little bit off topic of framing your future, but it comes to mind that there are some dormant neighborhood associations still and also ones that are, have in the past at least had struggles with getting quorum. So it kind of also ties back to my thinking of the, also the participation issues that are happening with the advisory boards and there seems to be kind of some common area that we maybe need to talk about and work on all at the same time.

Neighborhood associations, community advisory board participation, and maybe we can also kind of at the same time working into this all of that with framing our future, know, how do we participate, use it as a catalyst to communicate to people. That was some of the thoughts I was having. I do have another question about the June 2 work session, but we can finish this topic and just remind me so I don't forget.

Councilor Bright, go ahead.

Well I wanna say with the feedback that we have gotten and potentially people that haven't responded. Generally if people don't say anything they might be saying everything's fine. But I do wanna say if everybody's saying hey we love our parks, love our police, we love our library, we can't forget the fact that we are absolutely responsible. Back to the public works week, we are absolutely responsible for providing the water and the sewer and street services as well. And that's maybe not as fun or enticing, but it is an absolute must have and obligation.

And sharing what the city does I think is an important way to get people to realize that, remember versus most people will just turn on their faucet and the water's there and they don't think another thing of it.

And I think, thank you for that. Totally agree. I think you're asking about the idea of having a potential small meeting yourself with city manager and some interested constituents in the topic of framework. If you drive, no problem with that. And I would like to really steer this maybe into an ad hoc task force or something like that.

Know I was happen to be going through the voters pamphlet and noticed like Lake Oswego had one for their fire station. And it looks to be a successful way to kinda get community members involved in the projects to then help advocate for them and help really shape what we're doing with Framing Our Future. That would be my eventual goal with that kind of meeting to convene a group like that. And I think it makes sense at some point in our Framing Our Future process to have some volunteers as part of the process. Any thoughts on that? How task don't force has staffing considerations and other things.

No I think this is council priority, the city staff priority. Think at the right phase of this project I think that will be absolutely essential. Especially if we are ever contemplating going to the community with financial requests. You need to have a group out there that understands it and can be part of that community conversation. Think it'd be very wise.

So thank you. Happy to attend as well. Remember that setup. Council President you brought up another matter that you'd like to raise.

Well, yes. About the June 2 work session that I had offered as a date that we might do the Lava Lampre proclamation. And there are potentially tribal members who might like to come to talk about the Lamprey Festival that we're noting along with the proclamation. It's about the Lamprey Festival which is June 25, so ideally we'd wanna get it in enough time that people can hear about it. And I also had a question, would that be a time to discuss my idea that we talked about earlier today, John, about the renaming of Willamette Park.

Which just had its official announcement three seconds ago. Yes. I think we'd we'd be happy to do that. Okay. Happy to turn around some information about that as as we earlier discussed about how facilities are named and what city policy is on that.

Thank you. I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I've kind of done some informal polling of individuals who use the rivers and the parks and the logic of having, not having several Willamette Parks especially two notably very close to each other when people are trying to use some kind of a way finding tool, and then but maybe are new to the area and inadvertently

end

up down in Portland rather than being at the Willamette Park here in West Linn. So, and just for those who are listening and thinking, what? Rename Willamette Park. The idea is to similarly to Clackamas Park that is the convergence of the Clackamas and the Willamette Rivers since our Willamette Park in West Linn is the convergence of the Tualatin And Willamette Rivers. The idea that I came up with is to rename the Willamette Park to Wallamette Park because it then refers to both the rivers that meet there.

Interesting. Happy to talk about that more. Perhaps and I don't want to put a counselor on the spot but counselor Breich you and I have had some conversations about your ideas related to public use zoning. I understand you might have had a staff meeting this week about that and how are you feeling about when that could get on an agenda?

I would like to see that get on the agenda sooner rather than later. I did spend some time with the community development director this week to talk about it. So there's kind of a consensus of the information that would need to be provided to the council so that we would be in a position to have a good robust discussion about that option.

One more item that's on a potential list would be designation of property on Cedar Oak as a separate option from that public use zoning larger discussion.

Yes that's correct.

Possibly we could do that then.

That would be great.

We may have a full agenda all of sudden. Think

that's great.

No cancellation councilor Bonif. I'm sorry. The only other thing I wanted to cover under city manager report, just a piece of good news that I've shared with a couple of you already. I had the good fortune to sign a document earlier right before the council meeting that was handed to me that will access our first half of the $5,000,000 from the state for the waterline replacement on the And Abernathy so this project goes all the way back to the 2023 legislative session where we were very fortunate to have the state legislature allocate $5,000,000 to that project. Only about a third of the amount of money that this project is costing us, of course, from a waterline replacement that we did not ask for but are on the hook to pay for from the state.

But the $5,000,000 was a great accomplishment legislatively back then. It turned into quite a saga of figuring out how to actually access the money that involved multiple agencies at the state level. And ultimately, it was a team from the city including our city attorney Kaylee Klein, including Stephanie Hastings from the finance department, Morgan Lovell, Eric Lice from Public Works. A lot of people jumped in on this to figure out how we could make these square pegs fit into round holes so that the state agencies could talk together, which was a big part of the puzzle. So I signed an invoice today for $2,500,000 of that $5,000,000 which is really great news.

And I

want to

note that this all goes back to legislative advocacy that many of you participated in back then without which we wouldn't even have the opportunity for this. So thank you and good news. And we will continue to give you updates on that project and the timeline and the billing. So that's just the last piece. Wanted to end on a nice piece of good news.

That is wonderful news. That's very exciting. So I'll pass along another thanks to representative Walters and senate president Wagner who played a big role in helping us deliver that funding. Has the cost for that project gone up from 12,000,000 or is it still because you said one third and I was going, okay, that's like 15,000,000 then.

It has. It has.

Oh god.

So we'd happy to come back with a complete thorough report on that at some point.

We'll talk about that because that's Yep. We've seen the bridge project cost go up. But our little our little piece of the puzzle there which was the forest water line replacement is something that unfortunate but it'll help prepare the city for resiliency going forward for a hundred years hopefully. So and thanks to everybody for either work on getting the state agencies to talk to each other. You know, grant was to the water resources department, but the project is managed by ODOT. Who would have thought that it would have taken so long to get everybody on the same page? And it was testament to city attorney and other city staff getting those people talking and the right people in the room because they're such large agencies, I'm sure. So thank you for that. Councilor Groner,

Yeah,

I'd final

clarify. That's cash coming into the city. At what rate is cash going out of the city to pay for this project?

Well, we are paying state. Okay. So, we're rolling out as they complete work and are able to get invoices to us.

Yeah, was just going to say that $2,500,000 it reimburses us. The city has spent a lot already and that's we kind of upfront the money and then we get reimbursed by the grant.

Thank you. Of course, we financed that project several years ago to make sure we had enough money to cover the the cost. This year was supposed to be 2,000,000. Now it's 12,000,000. Maybe more. Thank you for the update and that's wonderful news. Ending on a positive note. Anything else for the good of the order? This was a robust city manager report with lots of discussions. So thank you everybody. We are adjourned until Tuesday.