City Council - Regular Meeting

This work session of the Westin City Council. It's Tuesday, 05/19/2026, and the first item is approval of the agenda. And we're going to move a few things around. We're gonna move the National Gun Violence Day proclamation, up on the agenda along with the Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue State of the District and Friends of Robinwood Station update just so that everybody can go earlier in their the agenda before mayor and council reports. So council president.

Thank you, mayor. I move to approve the agenda for the 05/19/2026 Westland City Council work session. Moving items five, six and seven to follow public comment.

Second. And removing item.

And oh, I'm sorry.

Removing item eight.

And removing item eight.

Be on the June 2 agenda for those in the community eagerly following our system development charges ordinance. So any discussion? Seeing none, you can call the roll, please, Theresa. Thank you.

Councilor Bonington? Yes. Councilor Bryke? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Mayor Bialystovski?

Yes. So the motion passes unanimously. Thank you everybody. And we can move to public comments now. Do we have anybody signed up to speak?

There are no public comments.

None at this time for items not on the agenda. And then with that, we can move to the National Gun Violence Awareness Day proclamation. Council president Baumgartner was first to request that. So she can read that, and then we'll, take a statement if you'd like from the folks from Moms Demand Action. We can take a picture as well, just for you for social media purposes for you all. Go ahead.

Thank you, And I also wanted to recognize the sad gravity of a recent shooting that occurred just yesterday, I believe, in California. So with that, whereas every day more than one hundred and thirty Americans are killed by gun violence and more than two hundred are shot and wounded with approximately forty four thousand gun related deaths annually, and whereas Oregon has six hundred and sixty three gun related deaths in 2024 and ranked twenty fifth in the nation for gun death rates and whereas communities across the nation including West Linn are working to end gun violence through evidence based prevention, intervention, and public safety efforts, and whereas protecting the public safety in the communities they serve is the highest priority of mayors and support for the second amendment rights of law abiding citizens is consistent with efforts to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a danger to themselves or others. And whereas local leaders, law enforcement, gun violent prevention advocate, violence prevention advocates and community organizations play a key role in addressing gun violence and supporting safer communities. And whereas gun violence continues to impact communities nationwide including an increase in firearm homicides, non fatal shootings, and domestic violence involving firearms.

And whereas in January of twenty twenty twenty thirteen, Hadiya Pendleton was tragically shot and killed at age 15 and 06/05/2026 will be recognized as National Gun Violence Awareness Day when people across the country wear orange in her honor and in remembrance of all victims and survivors of gun violence and whereas the wear orange movement was inspired by a group of Hadiya's friends who drew on the practice of hunters wearing orange in the field and chose the color as a symbol of visibility and the value of human life and whereas by wearing orange on 06/05/2026, Americans will raise awareness about gun violence and honor the lives of gun violence victims and survivors. And now therefore, be it proclaimed by the city council of the city of West Linn that the first Friday in June, 06/05/2026 is National Gun Violence Awareness Day. We encourage all citizens to support their local communities efforts to prevent the tragic effects of gun violence and to honor and value human lives. Thank you.

Thank thank you council president for that reading that. I agree with your statement. Would you any either of you would like to make a brief comment? Sure. Thanks for requesting this every year.

Just state just state your name and city residents just for our meeting minutes.

Thank you. My name is Catherine Ryan Gregory. I am a resident here in West Linn. And, thank you council president. Thank you councilors, and thank you mayor.

I don't have anything prepared, but just briefly speaking, off the cuff and from my heart. This is an issue that is incredibly important to me. Unfortunately, my family has been impacted by violence in too many ways. We lost my cousin when he was just eight to an unintentional shooting when he and a friend found an unsecured gun at a friend's house. My sister was threatened by her ex husband in a case of domestic violence with a gun, and my nephew is a survivor of the Oxford School shooting in Michigan.

And unfortunately, my family's experience is not unique. As council president referenced, we have these incidents of gun violence all too all too often. And we can do better. We can do more. And it takes the work and also from cities and even farther up in scale to to do the work to make our community safer. So thank you to everyone here for the proclamation, and we are so very happy to receive it. And thank you again for your commitment every year.

Thank you for your comments and sharing your story. We just wanna keep our community safe.

Thank you for continuing with this work. It's very important.

Would you like to take a picture with city council? We usually do that every year with you, so happy to. Okay. Next on the agenda is the Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue State of the District presentation. And we have several folks from the Fire District here and like to welcome up Chief Smith. The city manager, would you like to introduce the topic? I know we have a great partnership with TDF

and R. Will do a fantastic job introducing themselves. And we got a little sneak preview earlier this morning at our department head meeting. So all the usual information about what the district does for the community of West Lane. Just a reminder for everyone who's here, you want the green light on and the microphone pretty close to your mouth when you're speaking. And with that, take it away, sir.

Okay. Good evening, thank you for having us. We have with us tonight engine five nine, while I'm at fire station, Lieutenant Fritzky, Bruce Opsal, Joe Morales, and Sean Suing. Some of the best we had in the business back there, actually. Yeah. Right here in five nine. So well,

thank you for having us once again. I was this

morning with the leadership team, so I get to I kind of gave them a dry or a dress rehearsal, I guess. Wasn't dry. It wasn't dry. Thank you. Dress rehearsal. Okay. So we have the power PowerPoint up. Thank you so much. Okay. So this evening we're going cover a few things. Give you a snapshot of the call volume or the incidents that we ran last year in West Linn. The numbers are a little bit behind what makes up the our call volume here in West Linn. Gonna break it down for you a little bit. Also oh, you know what? Before I get started, I'll introduce myself too.

Sorry about that. So I'm Brian Smith, division chief of government public affairs. Corinne Hanning is our government affairs officer. And and thanks again for having us. I see many of you have been with us in the past at our community academy. So good to see you again.

Thank all of all of us.

Yeah. All of you. Great. Okay. So now back to the presentation. Okay. And then we'll talk a little bit about what we're doing to prepare for this year's wildland season. And we'll give you a little background about our EMS landscape and things that we are working on to help manage our call volume increases around medical calls, give you a really quick bond capital projects update, and then we'll end with talking a little bit about Storko Well. So here we have what we call an instant snapshot. This is just a breakdown of all the calls that happened last year in Bus Linn.

Eighteen eighty nine calls. And as typical and as you might expect, the vast majority of our calls are medical. And about thirteen seventy six of those calls last year were medical. And we break it down in a way where we realize that our dispatchers at Wackett will dispatch us on a call, certain calls. Sometimes we arrive and find that's not exactly what we are dispatched on. And so we track that in our reporting. And we call that what we found once we arrived. And that's why you see some different numbers there. But, again, typically 73% of medical calls are what we run, and that's not uncommon. And then on the fire calls, had 31 of those.

And then it breaks down in different ways about types of fires that we had. When we look at the medical calls, we break that down further into critical patients and fewer number of those. As you might expect, about four twelve of our medical calls last year were critical. That means the majority of our calls are typically low acuity calls, calls that might not be considered critical, but they're calling 911. And as always, when called, we respond. Then other breakdowns of calls might be our good intent. So someone might be calling 911 because they smell or see smoke. We arrive at that's and arrive to find that it's not what it was. Maybe it was a fireplace or barbecue. And so we track that as a good intent call.

False alarms, again, not uncommon to have a good number of those per year. Westland is no exception. Calls come in sometimes, and it's not actually a fire, but a false alarm. And then so on and so forth. So when we look at the heat map, we see that of the three stations in West Linn, fairly even breakout in the calls.

But the darker the color, the more call volume into that area. That could be a care home or an area that's populated densely. So we also look at the types of or the number of calls broke out by fire stations in West Linn. And I think because you're all Community Academy graduates, you know that we respond with the closest available unit that can take that call type every time that we can. And in Westland, we have five fives, five nines, and five eights responding pretty equally throughout the city.

But in that 1% or 2% of the time when calls come in from other agencies into Westland, That might be like Oswego or it could be Clackamas coming from Morgan City or it could be a TBFNR unit perhaps coming from twelve or ten or something like that. We look at the days of the week and we see pretty equal number of calls throughout the week. Time of day, as you might expect, we get started getting busier around 08:00 in the morning, kind of starting to peak out throughout the afternoon, and then around six or seven call volume begins to drop off. And then look at the total number of calls we've had over the last five years, and we see that that's pretty consistent, give or take about 75 calls a year. So the number of calls last year, pretty typical for Westland.

Okay, next slide. So as I'm sure you have heard, this wildland season is becoming a little bit of a concern with the dry weather. We are not making predictions, but we are making preparations. I was at a meeting recently where the state fire marshal was talking about concerns that she has statewide. And we have those concerns too.

And so we are, as I said, preparing for wildland season. We just recently completed what we call block training, where all of our crews go through a series of exercises and training to, again, better prepare to practice pulling hose, tactics and strategies are discussed, and equipment is checked out to make sure it's working. And as I think you're also aware, we also have a team made up of folks that have additional training. And they're our wild land response team. And they're available to respond obviously in the district because they work here, but also they are available to respond outside of the district when needed, either other places in the state or as we remember too long ago responding to California, for example.

And so that team is also gearing up, preparing for the wildland season. And so just want you to know that we'll be ready to come and respond when needed to wildland fires in your community. Okay. Next slide, please. So when looking at our dispatch center, they do a fantastic job consistently helping us manage our calls the minute it comes in until we arrive, and sometimes even beyond that.

So they're a critical piece of how we manage our call volume, including our EMS calls. So we look at EMS calls, as I mentioned earlier, it is the largest share of our call volume are medical calls. The largest share of those calls are calls that are lower acuity. We might call them basic life support calls, BLS calls. And we are challenged by the increased call volume in those call types, as we've been seeing it for many years.

And the challenge is how we continue to provide service in areas where we have increased call volume from lower acuity calls while still providing that great service. And so we're looking for ways that we can help manage primarily through risk reduction or by adding additional services. I'll talk about just a few of those. One is what's called our APCP program, Advanced Practice Community Paramedic, APCP. This program is fantastic because it takes some of our very best paramedics, puts them out in the field where they're doing one of two things.

They're either adding themselves to critical call types, like strokes or chest pains, cardiac arrests, or traumas. And because they are some of our best paramedics, it's always great to have an extra hand when those call types come in. When they're not doing that and where they spend most of their time is in the community and reaching out to and meeting with what we call our high utilizers. These are folks that are calling 911 sometimes a few times per month or a few times per week or even a few times per day. And so what they're doing is going out there and establishing relationships and helping them navigate, which can be a very complex medical system, as we know.

So it could be prescriptions. It could be appointments. It could be a number of things. But that is working. It's helping very much to mitigate that certain call type. Plus the connections are created out in the community is fantastic. And then also a new program. Hopefully we can talk more about it next year. We'll talk about how it's working. But we just got this going recently.

This is our care facility outreach program. So we have 72 licensed care facilities in our district. And there are several here in West Linn. And the challenge we have there is the call volume and the low acuity call types. But we have found that with education and just connecting with staff, which sometimes you can rotate through.

So it can be dynamic in that regard. But we know if we can be consistently communicating and working with them, we can have a better outcome for the patient and just our response in general and for them, the staff. So also we can provide education around fall prevention, some other things that may reduce both the frequency and severity of certain call types. So again, we'll report back next year on how that program is going. But we're hoping for some good success there.

There are others, but I'll only mention one other. This is called Nurse Navigation. And this is a third party provider of services out of Texas. And so when someone calls 911 and our dispatchers out of whack and take that call, they triage as they do every single call they get. They triage and identify this person may benefit from talking to a nurse, not a four person fire engine, paramedic, whatever.

And so they'll transfer that person over to nurse navigation. Of course, they're nurses, they're paramedics, they can do more, but it's over the phone. And it could be about prescriptions. It could be simple questions that are being asked that they just need an answer to. And at any time, they can send a call back to dispatch. A 911 call is created, and we respond like we would any other time. But that is also relatively new but having a good impact. And that is probably the future or a part of the future of how we're gonna manage the call volume increases around our little cutie call times. So next slide, please. Alright.

So in 2021, we passed the support, I'm sure, from many of you, not all of you, our bond. And it's taken us a little bit of time to get things kind of up and running completely on these projects, as many of them. But we are doing that now. And I'll mention just couple here. One is King City Fire Station.

If you've been through King City, you've seen the station that used to be there is no longer. And I spent quite a few years of my career at that King City Fire Station, off and on over my career. But I'm happy see it go because it was time. It definitely needed to be replaced and it's being replaced as we speak. In Newburgh, a station that also is really past due being replaced is in the process of going through that process being replaced as well.

Next slide, please. Oh, can we go back one slide? I'm sorry. One more thing about our capital projects and our remodels and rebuilds. So when we decide that a station needs to be remodeled, we're looking at a few key things that I'll share with you.

One is we're doing it to upgrade it in seismic capacity. So those codes have changed over the years. And so any new station or remodel station will be upgraded seismically as part of that. Also security, we have found in recent years that we need to provide additional security at our stations. So that upgrade is happening as well.

And then size. So we're making sure that all of our apparatus can fit in all of our stations. That's important. And that if we need to grow in capacity at a certain station, maybe call volume is such that we need to add an additional unit to that station, then we can do that without having to come back to you and ask for another fire station or whatever. We can put more units inside the existing station to help the call volume.

And then lastly, the the equity piece, making sure that all of our new stations and remodels are making it equitable for our female firefighters and our male firefighters alike. Okay. Next slide please. Struggle Well. This program is showing tremendous benefit and progress in how we take care of our own so that we can better take care of the community that we serve.

Firefighter health and wellness has been a priority issue for us for many years. And we've done things like peer support and clinician support, things like that. But struggle well is a bit of a paradigm shift in that we have discovered through this program that while we all deal with struggle, all of us, we can oftentimes take that struggle, learn from it, and turn it into strength. Mindset, part of it is resources and training, and part of it is support from other people to get it done. So we are in the process right now of getting all of our people, all of them, wine folks and non wine alike, through a two day struggle well training program.

And we're about 60% of the way through getting everybody through that. But we're super excited about the program. We're partnered with Bouldercrest, the foundation that helps manage this program. And so we're having some real success. And it's honestly the best thing that I've seen in my career as it relates to the health and wellness of firefighters.

We like it so much, in fact, that in the last session we were working to get a half million dollars of state investment into a program that would allow us to take our trained firefighters who have this training to teach struggle well, to have them provide a two day training session to all first responders, all first responders in Washington County. Certainly would have included our friends from Westland PD as well in that program, to get them two days of struggle well training. That's a four day program as well, but we're doing the two day right now. And the idea behind that would be that investment could be used to just strengthen the resiliency of all of our first responders providing just better service in the end. We were not successful.

We were told that last session not a good time to be asking for money, and they were right about that, but we asked anyway. But then we've been invited to come back in the next session and ask again. We're going do that. Next slide, please. Yeah. So that does wrap up the state of the district for TBF and R. Appreciate your attention. If you want some more information, there's a QR code there with a video that Chief Weiss has a small video that gives you a little more background. But that's there if you'd like it. And then we're happy to answer any questions you might have, at least try to.

Thank you for that excellent presentation. I also wanna thank the folks from Station fifty nine who took some time out of your busy day to come join us and be here tonight. And any happy to open the floor up to counsel for any questions or reflections from recent community academy attendance as well. I know a couple of folks just had the opportunity to do that. So council president, go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. And, yes, thank you all so much for your service and for this overview. I I do remember being struck when I did the academy by this issue of frequency of calls to in that case, it was a nearby care facility, and and it just got me thinking about I mean, obviously, it's important to be able to be responsive, but then is it a reasonable responsibility that's being you know, that maybe there's not the staff on-site that there could be at these facilities and it got me thinking about what what would be required to do that. So I appreciate all of the flexibility, but I also wonder, is there anyone else helping TBFNR? Are you just taking this all on yourselves?

Well, we've we've been engaging in risk reduction around fire suppression, fire education for years. That's not new for us. I try to reduce the frequency and severity of call types through education. We're now doing it in EMS, and we're starting with care homes, and we may be able to go go beyond that. But right now, no, it's it's us. It's our program.

Okay. I just wonder if the care homes have the staffing that they need. Is that any part of the not that that's, you know, I'm not asking you to say anything like that, but it it just came to my attention, and and I'd I'd be interested to take this matter further.

I appreciate that. Yeah. So that's our approach today.

Okay.

We try to

Yes.

Work with our care homes and our managers at care homes in a risk reduction capacity. Yeah. And I'm hoping that 'll have some some success.

Great. Great work. Thank you.

Thank you for that, counsel. I know that's been important to you since you went on that overnight with firefighters. Appreciate it. We'll go to counsel Groner and then Councilor Bonington.

Yeah, about six weeks ago I was overnight at 59 and I think I recognize some faces in the back. Yeah, I really appreciate what you folks do. With the Shakespearean line, the readiness is all and you guys are ready and that's an important factor. Thank you for your service.

Thank you for the

kind words. You. Thank you councilor. Glad you got to experience the community academy as well. Councilor Bonington.

Yeah. So first of all I want to use this as an opportunity to tell a quick story. I have a friend who I've wanted to recognize for this. Her name's Juliana. She got a pulse point notification and she didn't know what pulse point notifications were. She just had the app. And immediately just saw, oh CPR is needed down the street. Got out of bed, ran there, beat everyone there, but didn't actually know where to go and it ended up being And do

And would be an added layer of availability through PulsePoint. And so when there's a cardiac arrest and we're within a certain distance, then we get notified with the intent of we're willing to respond provide CPR. And many of us carry AEDs as well. And it just brings up the point about the importance of the community involvement when it comes to cardiac survivability. We know the whole chain of survival includes the caller, the person who wanted to do CPR, our friends on law enforcement who are responding in many cases getting arriving before we do because they're on patrol or at the station.

And they bring CPR, they bring AEDs. So all of those things are helping us really improve how we provide life saving cardiac support. And the consequence is we're seeing an increase in survivability.

Can I add one thing? I was just going to mention that typically for community members out in the public, if a person has the PulsePoint app, then they can opt in to receive that CPR notification, but typically, the notification only goes when the event has happened in the public setting. And the verified responder program that Chief Smith referred to is for first responders off duty that need to go through additional vetting through PulsePoint for those private or in home responses.

I know that Robin Peters from TBFNR saved a life responding to one of those when he was off duty in Westlands. A very important program. I have just a couple of things. I'm really grateful. A couple of board members from the TVFNR board reached out to council president and I, and we're looking forward to having lunch with them in the near future. And it's the first time that we've had contact from a TVFNR board member. So I wanted to recognize Clark Balfour and Roy Rogers for that. And we're looking forward to meeting with them next month, and we'll report back to everybody on the results of that meeting. But just to build the relationship is nice with the board. And just one question about the budget of the fire district.

I've been following a little bit in the news about Portland having to go through some potential cuts and even proposing the controversial closure of some

Sachs.

We're in a good place. And we're in

place. That's great. I keep hearing all different governments having to make big reductions and I'm glad that we're, our fire partners are good on that. That was all for me and Councilor Brike you can close us out.

Alright, thank you mayor. I just wanna say I really appreciate the partnership that we have with TVFNR with the city, and it makes me feel very comfortable and good being in this community. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate that. And we also appreciate the partnership and look forward to continuing to work

And is it okay? Can you go on a second overnight or ride along with the fire department even after the community academy? Because that was really fun. But, unfortunately, we didn't get any calls when I was there.

Because you brought the white cloud. That's why. Yeah.

So I would like to go back out again sometime with Maybe we'll get you

at six sevens in Beaverton and you can

Okay.

Be up all night. Then I'll be up like five five times in the night. I I I'm kind of a pulse point junkie a little bit.

I actually

have it up right now. So thank you so much for being here and look forward to

for Thank you for being here. Here.

Yes. Absolutely. Thanks for your service, including on the boat as water rescue. That's an important thing as well. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. We'll be in touch. With that, we can move on to the next item. And right during the meeting, traffic collision in West Linn came up on the on the phone with station fifty five responding. I just saw that.

So that's too bad. Hope everybody's okay. We can now move to the Friends of Robinwood Station update, ahead of schedule. So thank you for being here early. We appreciate your appreciate the We appreciate the partnership with Forest and the tremendous success I think that the renovation of Robinwood Station has brought for our community and all the events that are going on there.

And of course, the community garden there and every so glad to receive update from you all on the progress and what you've all been up to and the next steps.

I like I think that's

it. Presentation concluded.

Good. Thank you, Roy.

Go ahead. Take it over.

Thank you, mayor. My name is Randall Fastabin, and with me is Emily. Emily Harris. We represent, the Robinwood Station. And our specific titles, as I'm the operations manager, and,

we we give you don't have a title, Randall. So

Maven of everything, really, I think, because Emily does a lot of the online registration for us. And and then meets people and gives them tours as well. She's a very busy person. Anyway, here we are. I want you to know something right now that it's been seventeen years since we started this odyssey called the Robinwood Station. Well, we're in our seventeenth year, put it that way. We're in the seventeenth year. So it's it's been quite a ride. So good evening. We are here today representing Robinwood Station.

It's a city asset that is managed by volunteers. All of us are volunteers. There are no there

are

no employees at all. We are a official five zero one three c nonprofit that has been registered since 2010. We're in our inner to our seventeenth year and we have a mission state statement that guides all of our activities. And I'd like to read that statement for you. In fact, it's up there on the board.

To foster community connection and engagement through the operation of Robinwood Station in West Linn as an inclusive community center. We're not just a Robinwood community center. We are a center for all addresses of people who register to use the Robinwood Station, you'd see that there's a lot of people across West Linn that are using the Robinwood Station. And there's a good reason for that. Our presentation tonight is pretty straightforward.

First, we'd like to let you know what we've been doing at the station. It's growth. We'd like to talk about some challenges and barriers that we've had. For instance, the lift. And then we'd also like to present a mutual benefit that we can do together.

Another it's just another enriching of the partnership that's between the Friends of Robinwood Station and the city to take take on some of our challenges and barriers that we have. And then finally, we'd like to open it up to discussion and hear your ideas about what about what the Robinwood Station can do. First off, we're gonna get into some nerdness. And in the slide behind you, up on there, this is the number of hours of usage at the Robinwood Station in 2024 is the blue line. You might notice that our slowest time is actually kind of the summertime, and our busy times are the fall and the spring with some dips in the winter.

That blue line represents an average of five hours of usage at the station every day, which is around fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred hours of usage in 2024. About that time, we had some new board members brought in, and one of them is Emily. And Emily assisted us with putting more things online, and things kind of took off. That next year in 2025, we noted a 42% increase in bookings. We're now at about seven point two hours per day of usage at the Robinwood Station.

Of course, there's some days when there's very little and some days when there's whole lot. But it all averages out to really seven point two hours a day, every day. There's, you know, something could be going on there. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And it's primarily due to we've got some what we could call anchor tenants.

We've got a if you see the pie chart up there, the dark orange is 33% and that's education programs. We have a couple of teachers that are teaching music three to four days a week at the Robinwood Station during the school year. And then we have other teachers that have contracted with us to present summer camps during the summer. It all rolls up to like one third of the activities at Robinwood Station are directly related to education efforts. The next highest one is what we call the blue one, which is 22%.

It's a business incubator, which means people are starting a business and they need a space to do their work. And we have given them that space and we might charge them a fee, but it's a fee that's negotiated that allows them to do their work and to grow their business and then they move on. And this has happened several times at the Robinwood Station. Currently, the business that is using the facility the most is WAG. And that's short for where Ability Grows.

And they're an adult special needs group that uses our kitchen and its three ovens to bake dog biscuits. And they sell the dog biscuits at a variety of places around the Portland area. And they can't keep up with the demand. Sell everything. Their fantasy or what they would like strive to do is have their own facility, their own factory.

But they would like to have a factory that also has residential housing for their workers and care for their workers. It's a it's a really big dream, and we're we're helping them along with that dream. So the next one is 19% private parties. Primarily on the weekends, people have a variety of parties at the Robin Wood Station. There are are weddings, celebrations of life, birthday parties, graduation parties.

A variety of things are done there, and we charge a fee for them to use the space. It might be noted that one of the things that we require people to do is to leave the space the way they found it. In other words, they have to set up, they have to take down, they have to clean it up. It's amazing. This community is really amazing. They do it 99% of the times. It's very, very few times when I come in and find the place is messy, and they forgot to clean up. It happens maybe one time every year. But this community has been incredibly clean. Private parties.

The next one is a 17% which is community events and nonprofit events sponsored by the Robinwood station. These are things like the repair fair or recycling pickup things, clothing swaps, music events, those things, those public events that we do not charge anything for. And that when that when we get a leader in the community that comes forward and says, I'd like to do this, then we ask them for their plan. What are you gonna do? And they give us their plan.

And if we like it, then we'll just go, okay. The space is yours. Let's let this event go on. And this is this is it works. And events happen. And it's it's it's really neat. Like, in this case, we have blood drives that come there. About eight times a year, the Red Cross uses it for blood drives. And we also have there was a a Mother's Day sale this last Mother's Day that was inside and outside. There were booths everywhere, and it was pretty well well attended event.

So also in the pie chart is at the very it's 8% youth events. That's scouts and four h primarily. We do charge them a fee. But the fee is greatly reduced because we'd like to encourage kids to be a part of something, to get away from their computers and get into social and learning activities. So we want to encourage these kind of events as much as possible.

So we charge $10 for a meeting, and that's it. We used to not charge them, and they walked all over us. And, you know, we'd cancel at the last minute or leave the place dirty. But now we just charge $10 and that seems to be the sweet spot. The final piece of pie up there is the little purplish blue piece which says city on it.

And that's for the Robin Wood Neighborhood Association meetings and committee meetings, as well as it represents time that was used by the city for the vision 43 meetings that were held at the Robin Station. So every month, the Robinwood Neighborhood Association at the Robinwood Station. And we turn it over to them as much as they want. So that's basically the the usage for these the station over the past well, I'd say this represents probably the last five or six years. It's pretty accurate.

Early on, we had a lot of different activities that we did, a lot of garage sales and LEGO robotics and things like that. But this is a pretty good representation of what's been going on at the Robins Station. So okay. So the next few slides, I would like to turn the microphone over to

Emma. Thank you, Randall. So tonight, we have a few things that we wanna discuss. The first one is our most urgent request. I don't know how many of you today have been in the Robinwood Station lately. Yeah? Nods? Hands? Yeah. You were there for the Vision forty three open house? Yeah. Well, you've probably seen this lift. How could you miss it? Right? I mean, it's there on this slide.

It's designed to take someone in a wheelchair or on crutches or with a walker. Yeah. Just over two feet. And it's an eight foot industrial lift, and that's why it's so high. When I give tours to people for their parties and stuff, I say, oh, if you're not gonna use this and your guests aren't gonna use this, you can bring a sheet and drape it over that, and it'll go away.

But it's not true. It's it's really not only a nuisance in terms of the size and the placement of it, but it's also now a safety hazard as well. And we have had it unsuccessfully repaired multiple times. It's no longer a viable accessibility solution in the Robinwood Station. We've heard feedback from users about how intimidating the design is and how it puts them on display because it's in the middle of the room, in the middle of the garage bay, and no one using this lift wants to feel like that.

So long story short, it's oversized. It frequently fails, and the people who need to use it don't want to use it. We have some real feedback to share here. So last summer, the little lobbyists of what excuse me, West Linn, their chapter, they had their annual meeting and celebration, and here's a photo from it. It was actually covered by the West Linn tidings.

The one of their attendees, I think he's a middle schooler, his name is Malachi. His mom called me because he was trapped in the lift. And I ran up to the station and tried to get him out of that lift. He was stuck on the upper level, and so we got him into the kitchen. And this is his quote. His experience was so bad it was like he didn't get to go down. So this party that you see here on the main garage floor, he didn't get to experience that. And in Malachi's words, that's bad. We never want anyone to feel like that at this community center. Randall shared our mission.

We never want anyone to feel this way when they come and participate in any sort of event at the Robinwood Station. And then on the right hand side of this slide, this actually happened at the Mother's Day market. This was on May 3. Randall mentioned this as one of the community events in the pie chart. There was a guest with a broken leg. The lift wouldn't work for her. It just doesn't work. We've had it repaired, still doesn't work. Embarrassingly, she shuffled up the stairs. She crawled up the stairs to get to the merchants who were up those five stairs in the kitchen.

We never want anyone to feel like this when they're in the station and they're a guest. So this lift, it's our understanding that when it was installed, it was a placeholder. It was what was available at the time of the remodel and the construction in the Robinwood Station. Well, this placeholder has served its purpose, and we're ready for the next appropriate solution. And we'll see if the video plays here. Maybe I have to click. Nope. Oh, well, I don't know. Can you click maybe, Teresa? And we'll see if it plays.

This is our proposal for the replacement lift that we would like to install. We we came up with this solution because Josh is another member of our board, and he works at an architecture firm. And pro bono, that architect, they looked up the code for the ADA requirements and our space. They took all the measurements in our space and they developed a plan that's going to work for us and for our users. And the reason why it will work is because it contains a much smaller footprint.

It is right sized for what we need. It has it's okay. I can describe how it

works in

just a the video out.

Thank you. It has zero pinch points. Children aren't gonna be caught playing in it like they are now for birthday parties, so it's safer for everyone. It's a simpler mechanical design, which means by nature, it's gonna have higher uptime and be more reliable for users, and the transparent walls will improve the dignity of the users. The total cost of this is just over $29,000.

It's a lot of money. That includes the procurement of the lift itself, the installation, and the deinstallation of that old unit. I go to the next slide here, we'll see. Feel free to to advance it. There we go.

So if the city agrees to buy the lift, here's what we're gonna do. Here's why this would be a double win for the residents of West Linn. In exchange for the city funding the replacement lift, we, force, we commit to purchasing and installing a standby generator. And what that would enable us to do is operate as an emergency shelter. So we would be able to provide refuge for smoke, heat, for during winter storms, we'd be a warming center, and we would be able to ensure continuous power for critical community needs.

Our best estimate of this is this is gonna run somewhere around $30,000, so equivalent to the cost of the replacement lift. That's why it is a double win win. I'm gonna hand it back to Randall, and we'll see if the clicker works. There you go, Randall.

This last February, the the Robinwood Neighborhood Association and the Friends of Robinwood Station issued a joint proclamation, One that is in that we are very serious about becoming an emergency center and that we would stock an emergency center at the Robin Station. Lo and behold, there is a building that is on the property and we are currently paying the insurance on that building as well. And that is the old utility building which is up behind Robinwood Station. The garden the Robinwood Garden is currently using about one third of the space as for storage for their stuff. We would over time and this is this is the other thing is that we would over time, friends of Robinwood Station would fix that building up so that it could be utilized for the our emergency preparedness center or hub as we call it.

We're offering to do that. We have engaged a we have gotten a commitment from a local contractor who is in building in Westland, grew up in Westland, and he has agreed to supervise a a renovation of that building. And he also built the First Presbyterian Church, owner of Cedar Oak in '43. His name is Greg Sams. He's my next door neighbor.

So it's not a big building, but it's big enough for our needs in terms of an emergency management hub. If you look at a map of West Linn, where is the Robinwood Station situated? It's situated right in the middle of the northern end of of West Linn and it's about the only city building in that area. When funding was approved for the Robinwood Station back in 2020 officially approved 02/2022 and the renovation began in March '23. It was cited that by one of the council members that one of the reasons for voting for it is that it is an excellent spot for a ancillary emergency management hub situated where it is in the northern half of Westlake.

We're just taking that idea, and we're just running with it because we think it it's an excellent idea. And we've got the backing of the of the RNA RNA as well. So it needs to be refurbished over time. Would have a schedule all put together, and it we would get all the permits and it and all the work that would be done would be done by friends of Robin Wood Station. And it would be done in cooperation with the city.

We wouldn't do anything without you guys knowing it. It's it's a true partnership in that regard. So we need the we need our elevator fixed and swapped out with a new one, one that wouldn't work. We're also to offset that. We're we wanna put in a a generator, and we wanna fix up the building that's up behind Robinwood Station and make it usable, make it safe.

So, anyway, in conclusion, for seventeen almost seventeen years, the Friends of Robin Wood Station have run the building and create a wonderful community center that is utilized a lot. There's a lot of usage right now. And it makes West Linn place. Makes Robinwood a stronger place. Makes it a safer place.

Who knows? If we create this emergency management hub, maybe it'll also save lives as well. So we take this very seriously. We think it's a great idea. We want it to we want it to happen, and we wanna do it with our partners, the city. Questions?

Well, thank you for the detailed excellent presentation. And I have to say I like your deal making there. What to make a deal? The 29,600 for the lift replacement to get 60,000 in total investment. That's a very interesting proposal.

I will just say I Going back to the last budget that we went through, we had There was a lot of infighting over very similar amounts of money to be to give out to, I think, Chamber of Commerce and some other groups that was so and we were in a we're in a tight budgetary situation, so I'm not gonna promise anything tonight. We can take a look at these issues and and circle back. But I do appreciate that. That's a very interesting idea to to match. So happy to open the floor up to counsel for any sort of comments. Questions?

Sure. I'll take a quick turn. Thank you, mayor, and thank you so much, both of you, Emily, Randall. I appreciate for one thing, all of the hard work and time you spend doing this support for the city, it's people like you who volunteer your time that are really making a difference and improve our community. So I just wanna thank you for that.

And of course recognize it's not just the two of you, it's there's a lot of other people involved as well. So but I have long agreed with pretty much everything you said, especially about the need for emergency community hubs. So I just I guess it's to me it's kind of how do we figure out how to find the money that you need. Yeah. So we can talk about it some more and I'm I'm all for it.

I think the work that Robin Wood has been doing for years with the community garden, the repair fair, so many things. I had a girl scout troop that I was in charge of and we met there, so for my daughter and so just I could go on and I won't but thank you again.

Thank you council president. I'm gonna go to councilor Bright go ahead. Thank you.

I couldn't help but thinking that we could connect this the vision 43 mixed use zoning that we are in the midst of that. We could be something that could be great for the WAG group to have housing and work space. That would be wonderful. And then another question about the lift is if it were in a more of an industrial or commercial usage, I don't know if it could be fixed, could it be surplus by the city? And so part of that money could come back.

And I know that the bid was also to remove it, but does that mean, like, remove it and take it away, or would it still belong to the city to be surplus? And then thirdly, I was gonna talk a little bit about some of the community events. Isn't there like a music extravaganza open mic night on this Saturday? Is it this Saturday, the twenty third? Or was that last week? Did I miss it?

Yeah. It's this Saturday. There's a blood drive during the day. And then starting at 05:00 is the well, I don't know what Peter calling

I think,

is what

they Yeah. Because call they extract talent. It's not the same as an open mic night where anyone can get up there on the stage. They've sourced and pulled the best to put on a show.

So programming this Saturday is from 8AM to 10PM. Cool. It's a busy place. And

that lift must have been put in for a ADA. Right? I'm guessing.

Yeah.

So we have to have some is it the case that you have to have some way to get up that staircase, basically? So that's why we that's why we need a new something else. You couldn't just take it out. You'd have to have some other Correct.

That is our understanding. And you can get from the lower garage bay to the upper kitchen area by going outside and walking around and going around the parking spaces and going on the porch, but that is not parity. Yeah. Right? Understood. So that's what the requirement is, yeah.

Councilor Bonington, go ahead.

Yeah. You guys kind of beat me to it with wondering whether the existing lift might be something we could sell to get some of that value back. And then also just I can't seem to remember off the top of my head that staircase, how much room there is before the garage door and whether that could by code potentially become a ramp itself. Was that looked at at all?

It was curious that during the design phase where the city and the friends of Robinwood Station and the architect were meeting and talking about it, The codes for ramps changed. And now and it basically, you'd have to have a ramp all the way to the door, a turnaround, all the way back. And basically, it would take up probably at least a third of the floor space to do that. So we kinda nixed that idea. Makes sense.

It it also, during that same time, since the the codes were tightened up for ADA, and so it became pretty much official that we could not get away with not having a lift. Originally, the architect said we were so small that we could probably squeak through and not have to have one and maybe build a ramp outside. But about that time, the coats changed and tightened up a bit. Thus, we got the lift. And the lift was supposed to be on the other side of platform, the concrete platform.

But the time they got the lift there, it was too big to put in that spot. So they put it on the outside, which basically thrusts it out into the middle the And

just to answer the question about resale, it is our understanding and we've heard from the manufacturer of the lift that there is theoretically a market for a lift like this. That lift is city property. So if you want to put it in a warehouse and figure out how to sell it or put it in another civic building, it is your property. They said it's worth a couple of thousand dollars is what their best estimate is for it on the resale market.

Yeah. And it goes

to AG.

Thanks. Councillor Groner, anything to add?

Yeah, just want to echo the thanks and the appreciation for all the hard work and persistence you've done and your contributions to the community. Thank you.

A couple of Lion members here. A few months ago, they had reached out. They're losing their storage facility at Oppenheimer. And so they reached out to me and I put them in touch with Megan and former park director and she has just said, well, maybe the Brown Building would work for them to use a little bit of it for storage for their burger supplies. And I know that nothing can be worked out tonight. I'm not expecting and I know there's plan. We just saw plans for the building, but I'm hoping that everybody can at least have a conversation about whether that could happen if there's space for it. And I know they'd appreciate it and I just wanted to put a plug in for those guys. But I know that, you know, nothing's no promises to be made, I'm not putting pressure on the process. I just wanted to bring them up because I know they would appreciate at least having a conversation.

So anything else from city council? Anything from staff?

Thank you, mayor. We've had the pleasure of meeting with both sets of folks that are here tonight. I always smile a little bit that there's so much interest in this building. Not the best building in the world. The idea of approving an asset like this that is in such a perfect condition, I think, is very appealing.

As I've told everyone, we have a lot of $30,000 projects around park system and our facility system. And so, you heard from the mayor, there's no budgeted line item for this, right? So we have to figure out how it compared to other needs in our facilities. But what I'm hearing is pretty strong interest from the council in exploring this, having a conversation about all the users that might be interested in the building and seeing what we can do to move this project forward. So with that direction from council or urging from council, we can work on this.

Happy to. Thank you for that. Council President.

This might be a little previous, but I was wondering what kind of storage requirements or square footage, if either of you have an idea, whether it's fours or the lions, what we're talking about. I'm just curious, you don't have to come up with a number now, but I'd like to

Come on up.

Yeah, you can Mr. Lown. Just so we can be thinking of a number.

Good afternoon. I'm Tom Lown. I am currently a member of the Lions Club here in West Linn. And we've gone down to that building. We had met with Megan about two weeks before she left went to Wilsonville. And the right hand side of that building has got that garage on it. And that area right inside there right now is approximately 20 by 24 in size. And that's all we would want, would be that side. That still allows the backside of that building and behind where the garden folks are right now. But that would have to probably be brought up to some kind of current standards.

That was a concern that Megan had then is that there's some tripping hazards in there. So, whether it has to be cut away or whatever. I'm just thinking and looking at the picture that you had up there earlier, that's a really nice rendition. It doesn't look like a building at all right now, that's for sure. But if you do have I know Greg too, If if we have an opportunity to meet with these folks and with Greg, if he's willing to do what he said he's willing to do, I don't see a reason why we can't make something work between the two of us.

It would require us to obviously get together and sit down and go over these items together. We weren't aware of their proposal at the time that we talked with Megan. She was more than forthcoming that we would have an opportunity to have that building because we are being evicted out of Outlander. And in terms of history, obviously, we've been here since 1953. And so, we've got nearly seventy five years of existence in the city. And we don't have seventeen years of multiple activities like these folks have had. But if you go back over the seventy five years, probably beat them three to one.

Well, we don't want it to be a competition.

No, not

at Just to be clear, you're both very Yeah.

And there's the other opportunity too there is that on the right hand side of that building is you're looking at to the front where the two garage doors are, there is a access area that can drive out. It probably wouldn't work for our application because we have trailers that would not make that turn to come up over very easily. But it would be a possibility that maybe we could talk about expanding that building out to that side. We'd have to have some input from the city in terms of whether that's possible or not. But we could gain an extra pretty easily 10 feet over there without encroaching, I don't think on the easements that probably have to be there to the roadway.

But it would require maybe some cooperation with the city folks, John, your group to take a look at that as something, can we expand that if FRS and Lions Club are willing to go into this together and work with the donors of their time and maybe even get some help from the Lions Club in terms of putting money into the project as well. We basically are looking for something that will give us that 20 by 24 footprint, give us some power. Other than that, we'd like water but there's no water there. So we'll just settle with what we can get at this point. I think that's pretty much it guys.

We're willing to talk to the folks. Hadn't we were not aware of the extent of what you've gone to at this point to put together a proposal of increasing the value of that facility over time as you fundraise. So, unfortunately don't have time. We're on a short leash because soon as venture folks decide they want to start tearing buildings down and start putting infrastructure in there, then we're going to have to move out. And right now we have absolutely no place to put anything in that twenty by twenty four secondtion.

We would go in there and do the same thing as you folks indicated. We go and do some temporary repairs to make it usable for us. And we would not need to encroach to the backside of the building or down the hallway. We could just stay right in that 20 by 24 foot print.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm sure there can be some conversations and see what can happen. Potentially an opportunity for financial partnership as well. Know the Lions Club has some resources on their side. Just wanted to bring that up. So any other comments from the council? Questions or before? We'd certainly appreciate all that you like, I don't wanna repeat everything that council president said, but all the community events and engage. I got to go to a a Cub Scout meeting there and meet with every everybody. And I've seen the WAG group as well making their dog treats and just an amazing I think you've carried out the vision that we've had for when we put those bond funding, go bond funds into the building.

And it couldn't have gone any better from our perspective except for that lift. We're gonna try to fix and get that fixed and we'll talk. I just, you know, we'll have some budget conversations. I just thinking back to the last budget, there was some, you know, infighting over amounts of money that was like that. So we'll have to see if we can scrap some things together. So I think we would love to make that work and get a solution there and even double our money with the generator. Thanks.

A comment?

Oh, councilor Groner, close it.

Yeah. What I'm seeing is two very community minded organizations at the potential of a lot of synergy between them and I hope we can help them meet their goals.

Agreed. Appreciate that. With that, we can we have just a few minutes left in the meeting. If folks wanna stay around, we can individual councils can chat afterwards as well. We're just gonna turn to the city manager report, and then we'll adjourn.

Hold on. There's the items under item four.

Oh, excuse me. I forgot mayor and council report. Minutes. Probably probably be twenty minutes or so. Thank you. I I I was looking down at the agenda, and we're gonna go back. We're gonna, then transition. But we can, anybody need a break or we're ready to continue forward? Okay. We'll go to mayor and council reports.

Which first item is reports from community advisory groups. Would anybody like to share their reports from the from the last week? Attended a great South Fork Water Board meeting this week yesterday. Been a couple of evening meetings for me this week and talked a lot about our we've met with our financial advisers and had a great meeting about the future of our financial plan at South Fork and some capital projects we're trying to accomplish to keep the water flowing into West Linn and Oregon City. So we can go to councilor Bryke and we'll go down the table.

Thank you, mayor. I attended the Wednesday market last week with the some librarians with Sarah and Amy, and they were giving out free books. Had talked lots of children in the community and handing out free books. I was handing out Framing Our Future cards and talking to people. Met quite a few families that were like, oh, we just moved in here three months ago or we've just moved in and so far we like it.

So I was handing them the framing our future and trying to encourage them to log in to the website and share their thoughts. Also went to sergeant Johnson swearing in which was a wonderful event. And then Thursday night had the water environment services advisory committee meeting. We had a preview of the budget, and I will be attending the budget committee meeting. I'm on their budget committee. We'll be attending that at the board of commissioners on May 26 at 09:15 in the morning.

Thank you so much for that report. Also enjoyed sergeant Johnson's story. And we're so glad we were able to keep him in Westland, a tremendous asset to the community. Council president Baumgartner.

Thank you mayor. Yes. I have been busy with all things waterfront. So there was a pond district tour that I participated in with several members of staff and with the confederated tribes of Grand Ronde, and that was quite an honor to be able to have meet with them and hear and show them the wetlands that we have heard so much about from the community and so much community interest in. I went to a Willamette Falls and Landings Heritage Area Coalition board meeting yesterday, the Willamette Falls Trust board meeting yesterday, and the South Fork Water meeting.

And I'm very pleased to be going to the summer market tomorrow and to talking about framing our future with the community members. Looking forward to that.

I'll I'll be at the market as well for a while. Maybe I'll join you in the booth. One of these markets will have a meet the mayor at the market. That's what I'm gonna call it. And I'll do that. That'll be nice. So thank you, council president. Councilor Groner.

Yeah. I was at the market last week just as they were setting up. Interesting booths. Also a number of us were at Moores Island on the PGE visit yesterday. It's quite a scramble down and up those staircases to get there. I never realized how bad access was to that area. If we're going to exploit that area, something has to be done about access. But it was educational and interesting, beautiful views of the falls. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor. Definitely beautiful views of the falls. Do you see any seals? Anybody?

There was one.

One nice.

Excuse Sea

me. Sea lion. Didn't introduce itself. Yeah. When we were there on Friday, we saw a sea lion eating a salmon right there at the falls. Unbelievable. Councilor Bonington.

Yeah. That was was quite a tour. It it it really struck me that that is the closest I've been able to get to that view since I was in fifth grade. I I find it kind of sad like I really came out of that experience feeling grateful to have been able to see it but also kind of upset that there's not public access to it. It is such an incredible sight to see and so I'm glad progress is being made on that.

On another note, we had the Parks Board meeting on Thursday night, last Thursday night. And the Parks Department is actually taking up a pretty interesting inventory first then

20.

To

wait for those to reach us eventually.

Thank you, councilor. With that, we can move on to into the meet of the mayor and council agenda. We've got a few items that have kind of been brought up at various council meetings and working with city manager. We thought we'd just schedule them for an initial discussion tonight. The first item is just something that council president Baumgartner has thought of in regard to Willamette Park. Would you like to talk Sure. Talk about the idea and the council can think Yes. Reflect on a process and what your thoughts are.

Thank you, mayor. Yes. Indeed. Well, I was happened to be participating in couple of different float activities with Willamette Riverkeeper and also Tualatin Riverkeeper about a year ago. And at one of those, I can't recall exactly which one, the topic of people getting lost and going to the wrong Willamette Park.

I mean, it's not the wrong Willamette Park, but not the one that we know of in West Linn. There is a Willamette Park down on the Willamette in Portland on off of McAdam and a person who doesn't isn't familiar with the area or even people who are familiar with the area might have a miscommunication and make an arrangement to meet somebody at Willamette Park and and not go to the right one. So it got me thinking that there is an opportunity for a discussion with council and our community and the city staff about their feasibility of renaming Willamette Park, and what came to my mind, and I'm certainly open to any other ideas on the topic, but is the fact that the Willamette Park, now known, is the confluence of the Willamette And Tualatin Rivers, and there is no recognition of the Tualatin River in the name Willamette Park. So I also am aware that down river is the Clackamas Park that does recognize that is a convergence of the Clackamas and the Willamette. So my idea came to my mind was to call the Willamette Park, Tualamette Park.

So it is the combination of the Tualatin and the Willamette, if people follow me. And it was just an idea, but I am open to I suggested this concept at our board meeting for the Heritage Area Coalition yesterday, and immediately input was positive, but also went to let's give it out to the community as a naming competition or just a naming contribution for suggestions and I'm open to that. But that's pretty much it. I have had several conversations with the current director of Twalton Riverkeeper, Glenn Fee, who is happy to send in his opinion, but he has been kind of in in unofficially suggesting this concept to people on his trips, and there's been a lot of positive feedback mostly because of the now that there's in increase and only only going to be getting to be more and more tourism on the river and people using way finding apps for instance that will direct if you put in Willamette Park, it may not know where to send you. And a person who's not familiar with the area may end up very well going to the wrong place and it is has actually happened several times, he tells me.

So that's pretty much it, and I'd be interested to hear anyone else's feedback. And of course I wanna talk to the parks board and I mean all the proper conversations that we'd need to have. I'm not really sure how the process would next. You for that. Yeah. That Of course.

Idea and presentation. It's interesting. I did I never really thought about the fact that there were two Willamette Parks, but I did just plug it into my phone, probably because I'm a lifer in West Linn, so I know this is my landmark. One is says eight miles away, one says 1.6 miles away. So it is an interesting situation if you're not from around here trying to find the park. So I'm open to discuss an idea further and, you know, taking it to the community parks board and seeing, you know, what the getting a little more public feedback on on that concept. Councilor Bryke, we can go down to Councilor Bonington, and then anybody else can jump in. And city manager Williams after.

I think it's a great idea. I'm just curious as to the what's the process? What would it take to actually rename it? And I recognize that that also comes with cost.

Some cost, and I'm sure there's community sentiment towards Wyoming Park as well that's one of our best. You want me

to answer that or do you wanna keep going on the questions?

You were you raised your hand a couple times. So go ahead and then we'll go to council Bonny.

There is a naming and renaming policy for Parks. It's on our website. The naming I brought it over because so that I didn't miss key parts. But it's pretty simple. The way usually ideas might come from the community and the renaming policy is that ideas go to the parks board, There's a public involvement component and there's outreach to the neighborhood association that's a home.

And then the parks board makes a recommendation to the city council. The policy does say that, and I quote, renaming of parks carries with it a much greater burden of process. So that's my kind of thing, process, compared to initial naming. And so it just talks about the fact that there's established names and known names and that renaming has to be consistent with the policy. But the number one thing in policy is geographic location and natural features are on the top of the policy.

And there actually is a statement in there in the naming that I hadn't remembered, but it says naming shall also basically, says avoid names similar to existing parks, properties, or facilities in our system or other systems in the metro area to minimize confusion. So there is a there is some some policy about that.

Thank you for bringing the process to us.

You bet.

Reminding us that there's a process. Park sport liaison, please.

Well, one thing that I recently made a fool of myself on the Internet over was not knowing that we have a North Willamette Park too. Are you all aware we have a North Willamette Park too? Is this Yeah. That was a surprise to me and that seems like a third compounding factor in this conversation. It's very strange to have those two things with the same name and then we have the third one down in Portland.

So I'm I'm amenable to the discussion. I would also suggest though that this is a discussion preliminary and I know quite well how these things can proliferate among people in the community. It's a conversation, not something we're just doing. I think that's important to note before it gets out of control.

Okay. Appreciate that. Councilor Groner, any

any Yeah.

Was just thinking that there's also a process involved in Google Maps and Apple Maps. I think there's a way you can send corrections or updates to them. But how long they take to respond, I have no idea.

Well, perhaps based on the feedback from counsel at this discussion, we can start at the parks board and kinda because it originates with them. It seems like the process you laid out is they make a recommendation. Maybe we can brief brief the

parks that they make a recommendation.

Brief the parks board on this idea and come up with a public process that this could follow-up for some suggestions and different things. Of course, all of that part could be a suggestion or that maybe, you know, whatever the process is. Does that make sense?

It does. I think starting with the parks board is a is a great idea and some combination of liaison and council president Bob Gardner and myself can be involved.

Any any follow-up? No.

I I'm I think it's opening up a discussion is what I'd like to do. I think what I heard though is the possibility that what if the given individuals or a majority of them on the parks advisory board say, oh no, never. Then does it stop there?

No, it's a recommendation to counsel. It ends in them submitting a recommendation.

Alright. Alright.

Well, Counsel's we'll just decision for final decision is counsel.

Okay. Okay. Yes. I'm happy discussion to anyone. So but, yes, it should definitely at some point go to Park's board.

Sounds good. Well, it's good to have some initial feedback on that from council. And then does does that wrap conclude that discussion for for now? We had a touch point there. And then this the next item is a public use zoning, which I I kinda just listed the councilors who've been bringing these these things up in public meetings and just so that I'm not expecting a detailed presentation. This is a very dense topic. We also have our community development director here in the back of the room who'd be involved in this kind of endeavor. But do you have any thoughts on it's kinda like, do we wanna continue to put this on an agenda for a formal discussion is kinda what I'm doing with these kinda check check because we have to talk about them at a public meeting, obviously.

Thank you, mayor. And thank you, Steve, for hanging around. This kind of occurred to me in the fact and I I talked even before Steve got here with planning department. All of our parks are zoned r 10. This ties to the next item as well.

We have a city owned property on Cedar Oak Drive that is zoned r 10 that the city purchased. And then the city was going to sell, and the developer that came and talked to us said that he could easily put four houses on this property while I walk by this property every day. And Trillium Creek meanders through the property and nobody can get far enough away to avoid the water resource area. And it just seemed to me that if we had zoning for city owned properties and other public uses, examples, Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue, their properties could also be zoned public use that would, if they did need to remodel, if they needed to expand, wouldn't have to go through the conditional use if fire station was listed as an outright allowable use in a public use zone. So we have parks, have city hall, we have the library, we have TV F and R, potentially potentially the schools, all of these things that are sitting up, most of them on our 10 designated lots.

So that was kind of where I was going there. Steve, I don't know if you wanna come up, if you have anything that you can add.

The zoning czar, Steve Cooper. Any thoughts?

Thank you, mayor and council for the opportunity to be here tonight and have this conversation. So, yes, councilor Bright and I have talked about this topic a little bit. And so from my perspective, just looking for consensus from the council to bring this back for a future work session discussion. Councilor Breich has raised a lot of the major benefits of public use zoning. It's used in a number of neighboring jurisdictions in the metropolitan area.

And it's basically just what she described that it would be typically civic uses. Like schools, parks, post offices, other community centers, community colleges, those type of related civic and governmental uses are generally outright allowed in those zones, whereas in a lot of other zones, residential, commercial, industrial, those zones are either not or excuse me, those uses are either not allowed or typically allowed conditionally because there's an understanding that there needs to be some sort of process, whereas this process of creating this zone effectively acts in the same way, but in acknowledgment that perhaps the public uses deserve a different level of attention, it has the council making the decision to rezone those properties rather than say the Planning Commission making a decision on conditional uses. So, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. If there is consensus, I would come back with a more thorough presentation laying out some of the pros and cons and providing examples of how public use zoning is used in other jurisdictions.

That was a great overview and on the spot too. So I think it's worth the I think what you propose there is a process to have some little study done and then have a presentation about pros and cons and things like that. Be great. Anybody

Yes. I would like to hear more about it. I think it sounds like a a really smart idea. Thank you, councilor Brike.

Anything, any other thoughts or any strong objections to talk of work session discussion about that?

No, think it's a fantastic idea. However, I would be interested in hearing what the public input becomes and how that looks under that that kind of zoning. Because I think we're gonna hear from people who want to know what what their recourse is if if they're opposed to something. So if that becomes nothing, like to know about that in advance, guess.

Yeah. And I think that's a great question. I'm happy to address that further. Just to clarify while we're all gathered here together, building expansions and additions would still go through a design process and be subject to some sort of typically public notice process. If it's large enough, still a planning commission review of the design review and then obviously building permits just as customary?

Great question and flag. So that's going be part of the presentation is what the public process would look like for applications submitted under that potential zone. Councilor Groner, please.

Yeah, I expect some people might be worried about the definition of public use. Does that include a waste transfer station, for example? Which people might have different feelings about.

Yeah and that's a great question. Think that'll be part of the presentation that compares some of how the other jurisdictions that have this public use or kind of equivalent zone treat those type of uses. But that is a great question. The ones that I'm familiar with off the top of my head certain uses that are either conditional still even though they're municipal or other public uses or may be prohibited.

Thank you.

Councillor Bryke, any other thoughts on this?

And could we, in the zoning description, define what is just an allowable use?

Yeah. I mean, typically, and I'll get into more detail on this in in a more thorough presentation. But typically, the levels would be things that are permitted uses. And so those that I there are already be uses that are defined currently in the community development code or if they're for some reason new uses, those would be defined as well. And then there's usually conditional uses additionally. And our code has in some of the zones like accessory uses that are explicitly spelled out. And so those are usually the tiers of uses. And then it's the current convention is that if the use isn't listed in some form, it's considered prohibited.

Thank you.

Well, I heard a consensus we can put a have a work session on this. We're gonna have a busy summer now. We've got topic to talk about.

Excellent. We'll work on scheduling. Steve and I will coordinate with the mayor on

that. The last topic is kind of kind of related, but I've heard from multiple community members and about city owned property on Cedar Oak Drive that I think there's been some restoration work going on with volunteers and and things like that. And it's not actually designated as a park or open space. And so this was something that council Bright could brought up as well. So would you like to talk about that for a minute?

Absolutely. And this is something that I have heard from multiple community members in Robinwood. In particular, if it were designated open space, and I don't think we want to designate it a park, we don't ever It's kind of a sensitive area around Trillium Creek. But if it were designated open space, it would go under the code that says that the voters would have to approve any use other than that. And I think that's what people are looking for.

That they don't want five or ten years down the road for somebody at the city to say, why do we own this property? Let's sell it. And kind of have to go through this again. So having it designated, any change in that designation in the future would have to go to the voters.

I'd like to learn a little bit more. I've I've never been to that actual property. So as part of the process, maybe we can get presentation on what the property is and discuss the merits of this proposal. So is there something we can put on an agenda?

The restoration work there is doing quite well. The volunteer, Dylan Wells, got some funding from the Robinwood Neighborhood Association as well as some plants from the city. And the plants that have been put in seem to be doing okay. We've gone back and pulled some of the ivy and berries to keep them away from the plants. And I think as these plants get established, it's gonna start looking really good. But there's gonna be continual work that I'm also working with the neighborhood to make sure that it's volunteers that are taking care of that and not, having parks staff go in there and and take care of that area.

Any thoughts? You look like you have a thought over there. No. Any thoughts from counsel on this? Is it any Cool cool discussing it at a future meeting. K. Okay. We'll have a formal staff report on that then.

Happy to schedule that. The designation process is pretty simple. It's a council action designating it under that section in the in the charter, so not that complicated. It does have some interesting implications for the property and also for the departmental ownership of the property and funding for upkeep and maintenance. So there's there's some nuance to it that's interesting to think about. I definitely encourage anyone to visit the site too just to see it and make sure. But again, I'll I'll coordinate with the mayor on timing a discussion of that one.

We'll follow the usual process on that, a work session. And then if we consents out of that, we can just have the resolution on the future follow-up agenda. Alright. That's a nice mayor and council reports with different ideas, and appreciate everybody's Thank you, Steve. Collaboration, and appreciate Steve for sticking around and also enjoyed, getting a little bit of time with Steve. Had lunch with him, last week for our one on one meeting. So great. Glad you're on our team, Steve. And I know several counselors have enjoyed spending time with you as well. So mister Williams, this brings us to the city manager report.

Thank you, mayor. Happy to provide a brief report. Number of the topics that came up today have to do or touch on our parks and recreation department. Just a gentle reminder, we don't have a permanent director for that department right now. So we are in interim staffing and workload and processes are just a little harder right now.

You all know how thinly staffed we are on the management side of that department. So some things may take a little time, and facilities is under that department. So right now, Jeremiah is working with with a skeleton crew of us and getting directions. So things like the lift at Robinwood Station, right, and the and and particularly in the more complicated topic of upgrading that utility building, it may take us a little bit to get our heads around how to how to program out that kind of work and where it would fall. Just just a gentle reminder.

Disclaimer. City manager's disclaimer.

City manager disclaimer report. Yeah. I'm gonna put that on the agenda too. Just a couple of things under the regular report. Your next meeting is June 2, and it's no longer an empty agenda. We have some things on that agenda, including we thought we could add on that discussion of community advisory groups and quorum and how that's going and where we might go from that, if you're willing you're interested in doing that, that soon or we could put it later in the summer. We'll also be talking again about the Bancroft financing and probably one or other two things will pop onto that agenda. The state of the city is June 4. Just as a reminder, that is starting to come up. And we are working hard with the mayor.

There's gonna be, I think, some fun elements to that state of the city. The mayor, you will It's

a great reminder. Yeah. No. I should I should bring up to the council. So we're gonna have a panel on the waterfront, and then following the panel on the waterfront, that kind of maybe a panel style engagement on framing our future.

And I've been working with Danielle and Doug from communications. They're gonna help put some talking different talking points and some things that people can pick pick from and ideas. And, of course, everybody can also put their own flavor on whatever they'd like to to say. But there will be some council opportunities for council engagement just like last year, and I'm looking forward to it and excited for all of you to share in that event because we really are one West Linn on this city council team, not even just with the city departments and things like that. So excited about that.

So expect some more information from myself and Doug and Danielle soon about that with enough time to prepare. I hope hopefully, next week, we'll be able to get something out, give everybody some time. So everybody okay with that process and interested in participating in Mhmm. State of the City? Okay. Sound sounds great. That was I appreciate I needed to I wanted to update the council on that because I meant to at the last meeting and didn't get to. So that that's kinda

It's gonna be

a fun event. It should be about an hour run of show, and then we'll have some refreshments and heavy appetizers afterwards. So I look forward to that.

Sounds great. The Tuesday after that is your business meeting. We'll have the yearly fees and charges, probably community grant awards at that meeting. And since you currently want to have some more Steve Coper in your life, Steve will be here talking about the planning docket, that date, we believe. And I appreciate Steve's work on that. Framing our future, you touched on it. Councilor Brayka, it was fabulous to see you out handing out the business cards and talking to folks. I really appreciate that. And thank you for thank you for coming tomorrow night. I may have to stop by and and and initiate maybe I'll wear a little thick mustache or something and try to have a conversation.

We'll see we'll see how that goes. Goes. But that's great. And Wednesday market really is a great opportunity to talk to folks and get some visibility. And even this early in the season, quite a lot of people down there at the market.

Pretty cool opportunity. Lots of other things going on, as you know, in Framing Our Future. We're trying to get out information continuously, something one or two things in every weekly newsletter, some items in the social media every week, more as the city manager, the tabling at the city market. We're also looking into some polling, so early polling opportunities for the community, including possibly sort of a formal baseline poll and then maybe also some options for spot polling on small things, which is another item that Council Breitke has brought up from time to time and I think is think is great. We may be able to use some spot polling to get people's get people a little more engaged.

As you've heard, we're getting a lot of word out in the first phase, not a cascade of feedback yet, but we are hoping to change that and get people's initial thoughts about, again, the services and programs that they value and how the council might work to make sure we can provide those sustainably. Councillor Bonington, I appreciate you mentioning that parks and facilities condition assessment. That is a really important thing. In previous budget cycles, we've talked about the fact that we don't have a really great detailed assessment of the condition of our facilities, the structures in our parks, the there's a lot of there's a lot of institutional knowledge. There's a lot of knowledge in in our department's brains.

We are working, and I would like to thank John Legarza, our interim parks and rec director, for leading this. We are working to get that condition assessment and a maintenance program, which is really sort of a baseline thing that we need to be able to present to the council and community what resources are needed to sustainably fund our parks and our facilities and have that framing our future conversations. So I'm glad that presentation has started at Parks Board and I think there's much more to come on that. It's really, really important in my mind. Just two more thing three more things.

If you were at South Fork, which some of you were, I think you're gonna see some public information this starting now from South Fork, from other water providers about the water situation in Oregon. Some of that will be coming from the city of West Linn. We are, I think, gonna be needing people to conserve where possible. Summer's our highest water use months because of irrigation and landscaping. And we all know the snowpack isn't great, and there may be some real limitations on us this year.

So I think that's gonna be a multi agency effort to get out information to the community about why it needs to be done. We all believe that you turn on your tap or your hose spigot in your backyard, magically comes out as much as you want. Well, that may not always be the case. So it'd be smart for us to be a little bit smarter about it, I think. So more about that coming.

Another big information coming at the end of the school year and into the summer, e bikes and e scooters. One of our most frequent customer inquiries, citizen complaints, non emergency calls. There are a lot of folks using e bikes and e scooters, not just kids, but adults too, in ways that are not in accordance with law. As the e bikes and e scooters get more and more powerful, faster. Just we're gonna be doing a a lot of reminders, public education, but also some intercepts and light enforcement at the beginning.

No one wants to give tickets to children. That is not how we wanna be, but there are some real safety concerns out there with this, and we do get a lot of complaints about it. It's actually a fairly tricky issue for our police department because they're tasked with trying to change the behavior of our kids in this community. We need the cooperation of parents and families to make sure that you are please give your kids equipment. Give your kids devices that are legal for your kid's age.

There are a lot of devices out there used unlawfully by children right now, and it's a real safety hazard. So you're gonna be seeing more public education. They are trying to get into the schools at the end of the year. Reminder, all summer long, kids are out there. We love kids out there in our parks and and and being outdoors, but it's a real safety issue. So you're gonna see a bit of information coming out about that in the next couple of weeks.

Can I make one comment on that? That's a big issue also in Happy Valley. Yep. And they've been doing a ton of they have a traffic safety committee that's been doing a ton of work on that particular issue. They're gonna have an ordinance come forward to city council actually. Maybe we can track that. Are we are looking

at what they're doing and and and actually we'll We we may come back to you with a question about whether you'd be interested in going down that route.

Yeah. That sounds good. I've just been hearing about that. I met with somebody who's from Happy Valley and talked about that.

Nothing's I'm looking at you people. Nothing's gonna replace parents being involved in the decisions like this. These are expensive devices. The kids aren't necessarily buying them themselves. They're, know, they're so it's it's a it's a real problem that all of us need to work together on.

Counselor, I

don't know what Happy Valley's ordinance would be, but is there a legal path to us potentially finding parents?

There are some provisions in law where parents can be held accountable

for things, but the fine amounts are not large. Those laws do exist and they are used occasionally. Our hope would be education. And of course,

and I know you're not implying that, but there are some provisions provisions in in law law that do allow for that.

Cool. I think that's worth looking at. But I also understand that it is kind of impossible for many many of the the kids to be chased down and stopped by our police. Those things are very fast. They're very mobile. And a police car can't, you know, maneuver through shopping carts and Yeah. Parking It's it's not an easy thing.

What we're mostly trying to do is meet people where they are, meet kids at coffee shops, in parks, at schools, and make sure they know what what the deal is. So thank you. The last thing that I will say that we are working on and we'll come back to you with a question about is a possible update to city regulations on code of conduct in on city property and city buildings. In response to some recent some recent events, we are looking at what other cities do to make sure that there's a safe environment for the public and for staff in city buildings and that people are treated respectfully. The council years ago adopted a which a code that we have that we provide in in this room.

It's not as strong as what some other communities have. And our police chief, our city attorney, myself, HR staff are looking at whether there are some other options that we might wanna bring to you as recommendations just to ensure that that we just to ensure that our employees and members of the public feel safe on city facilities and property. So we are working on that and stay tuned. I think that is all I had for tonight. It's still light out. We can be done.

I'll get on

our e scooters and jet home.

It's five minutes to turn in your ballots, everybody. Hopefully, you already voted. Hopefully, everybody turned in their ballots. And if not, you can speed over and get it get it in. Wait. We don't we don't want you speeding, but you've got five minutes. But I just wanna give a shout out to everybody who ran for office. And good luck to everybody. And good luck to Michelle Bartov, who's a Westland resident, who's on the Clackamas County Court running for her reelection as well. So, we'll check check the results here in about five minutes. And thank you to Catherine McMullen for all the work she does, Westland resident as well, counting the ballots as the clerk. So have a good evening, everybody. We'll see you in June, and see you at the market. We're adjourned.