City Council - Regular Meeting

Kathy, can you hear us, and do I need to do anything with the recording?

No, I can hear you just fine. I'm going to start streaming, and I will start the recording.

This webinar is being transcribed and summarized.

I can... Oh, you haven't done it. I haven't done it. I have it up right here. I just had to log into it. Westland Wi-Fi, which takes you right to framing our future. Thank you very much. When you log in today. That's nice touch, actually. Okay. Tuesday, June 9, 2026. It's a pre-meeting. We're meeting about the meeting, as I say, which is always good to have to get ready. We have public comment and council reports, which includes reports from community advisory groups. No appointments on there tonight, but we can add that on to the next meeting if you'd like to make the historic review board appointment, which I think would then technically convert it to a special meeting if needed.

Could we add it?

Tonight? Tonight? We could add it tonight. Would people like to make that appointment? Yeah. AGs need people.

Thanks.

Let's get them on there. Get it done. All right. So that will be a, we'll add that to the agenda.

Okay. Which point? Do you want to give me the notes later?

Yeah, that sounds good. I'll come up with something. Mayor and council reports, so reports and community advice groups will have a community advice group appointment. And the other comments, then we'll go to consent agenda. into the May 12, 2026 council meeting. No?

I have a comment on that. There was a comment that basically said there was a consensus that we would not address park and pathways. I don't remember such a consensus, although it was a consensus anyway, but on the condition that we do address that at some time in the future.

I think that the intention of that note was move ahead with the ordinance, but pathways later.

Okay, fine. But I appreciate that point.

Where was this at? On the e-bike. Oh, the e-bike. The e-bikes part. Of course, yes, I remember talking about that. Good point. We'll study that a little more.

From a small yet significant misspelling of the Yakima, the Yakima nation spells Yakima Y-A-K-A, not Y-A-K-I, like Yakima, Washington. That should be corrected, isn't it? I didn't know that.

Yeah, so Y-A-K-A.

Yeah, is the accommodation spelling of their own name.

Okay. Well, I won't quote off the consent agenda, but perhaps that can just be noted as a scrutiny.

Correction, yeah.

Okay. With that, we can then move to the business meeting. Actually quite cool tonight we have several items on there and several staff here to talk about so John please take away on the e-bike.

Yeah, one of the night where you're addressing issues in 3 different corners of the city operation that you've got your head will be in a starting off with continued discussion of e-bikes and e-scooters and you had a work session on that gave some direction and we're back tonight to consider adoption and Kristen, Kaylee, and either Chief or Captain will be here tonight.

I think Chief is coming. One of them will be here, so you'll have... And in between the work session and now, Kaylee and I made edits for... the clarity and consistency with state law in your pocket. There's a red-blind version from the version you saw at the work session, and then there's a version for adoption. So you'll be able to see those specific changes, and we'll answer any questions at that time about those.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Second item. Second and third items are in finance. We are super excited to have Caitlin joining us, which is not something that happens every week, but she's doing fantastic work on this, as I will say in the public meeting. So we have seen the charges, and we have community grants. And again, the purpose of this pre-meeting is do you have any last information needs that we can go and rush and get? Do you have any process concerns about this?

We'll cover the content in the meeting.

Are there any questions on the master fees and charges? They're outlined in the agenda bill of what has changed generally. It's all very clear. Thank you for that, of course. And then I'll turn it over to Caitlin for community grants. I don't know if there's anything on the community grants that there were questions.

Other than I've heard on the community grants that the product is providing more of an objective criteria. It's been very well received by the vice committee members. So thank you for doing that.

Hey, Linda did a fantastic job on that. Yeah. And of course, if you guys have any other feedback, you know, happy to incorporate feedback.

Two separate people approached me at different times in the last few weeks. Thanks. Very kind. Done a great job.

Are there any suggestions on what those objectives criteria are?

Well, it was already implemented. So like we implemented it this year. OK. Yeah. So it's essentially a scoring system of breaking it down into categories. and bring it. Wanted to eat it but all of the patient of the application.

And then I think when I was on the budget committee it was easy to be very well-tated and just go like the sound of this group without having any real need to say this is how they fit in with the city the community the benefit that they provide so I think that that's a great a great move to do that thank you.

And those are all outlined in the criteria in the agenda packet. So there's a criteria document, and then there's also the application and the information like the . That was very helpful to read. Thank you for that, providing that.

Excellent. And we'll obviously provide more information at 6.

And the last item here who has been working with the planning Commission and tap on the planning docket our annual festival of long range planning. So if you have questions for Steve about that was the showing that.

Any questions on planning docket.

I have just a brief we've talked also at a work session about like public use zoning or anything like that is that something that needs to be added to the plan or is that something that.

Well the question it is in the work session or men will be added or not. So you'll see in one of the slides, there will be a quick mention of it as far as the piece of the docket that covers getting to the work session. TBD one. OK. All right.

Thank you.

Those are our menu of buffet items for you tonight. Very tasty.

And I like that while covering finance and planning and. We go and legal though. That the city manager report anything else for the good of the order. No, I have nothing or nothing I think I have one thing. All right well then that.

Yeah, I'm expecting some people to show up. Thank you in response to the language proposal. Last week and I was like I will be moved that we put on the agenda for future meeting a discussion of that or other means that we can use basically support human rights in the United States.

It's there because one of the 10 that you find that up for

I'm flexible. Basically, council reports might be the place. Sounds good.

Thank you for that. Anything else? Thanks for raising that. Give it a heads up. With that, we can adjourn until 6 o'clock. We'll see everybody at 6.

Call to order this meeting of the Westland City Council. It's Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. And the first item of business is the Pledge of Allegiance, as always. So we can please rise and face the flag and I'll lead the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

The next item is approval of the agenda.

We have one modification to make.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve the agenda for the June 9th, 2026 Westland City Council meeting, adding community advisory board appointment under Mayor and Council reports. I second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for the June 9th, 2026 Westland City Council meeting, adding the community advisory board appointment under Mayor and Council reports. Any discussion from City Council? I see none, so go ahead and call the roll, please.

Councilor Bonnington?

Yes.

Councilor Bright? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Mayor Bielaszewski?

Yes. So the motion passes and the agenda is approved, which brings us to public comments. And I know we have a few folks signed up tonight, so.

Duane Funk?

Hi Duane. Welcome. Welcome. Just make sure the green light's on and state your name and city of residence and take it away.

I'm Dwayne Funk. I'm a resident of West Lynn, have been for some 30 years. I'm here tonight in support of Councillor Groner and the item that he is going to present. And I'd like to urge the council to take it up and discuss it. It's something the voters need to have a vote on. That good enough, Gail?

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments and welcome to City Council as well.

Terry Cummings.

Welcome back, Ms. Cummings. Just state your name and city of residence and take it away. You have up to three minutes.

Terry Cummings, resident of West Lynn. Good evening, Mayor and City Councillors. A recent public records search revealed a troubling 87-page appraisal report by David Balfour dated March 15, 2021, which valued ODOT's 33-acre surplus property at the very low price of $396,000 due to... Significant costs associated with developing this site, which AKS Engineering estimated could be over $5 million. And this is based on limited information given to Mr. Balfour. As a result, Mr. Balfour determined that the highest and best use of the property is open space or passive park with trails not suitable to be built. He also stated that he was not provided with a geotech study of the subject site and has been necessarily assumed as a result that there are no adverse soil conditions and no environmental assessment has been provided, so it's necessarily assumed that there are no adverse environmental conditions. I think we all know that's not true. but he valued it at that low price of 396, not knowing what else was wrong. Unfortunately, Mr. Balfour's appraisal report was not included in the staff report prepared for agenda bill for the ODOT Surpass Property Acquisition for Council's July 12, 2021 business meeting. I realize not all of you were there at the time, but what the City Manager and Public Works Department Director did instead provide was a blurry map and a brief summary that simply described the property as unimproved land with natural vegetation. A copy of this is in my letter that I sent you. The sheer lack of pertinent information may explain why city councillors voted unanimously to purchase ODOT's surplus property without hesitation. I want you to know that as a result of that public records search, which took weeks, I received a copy of a letter from former city engineer Lance Calvert dated in 2017. shortly after I got sworn in, saying that Westland was interested in acquiring that ODOT property and wanted to know if they'd surplus it, and he understood that it would only have one access road. This was in 2017. I want to tell you, for the record, In no uncertain terms, our city council was never told that Mr. Calvert was communicating with ODOT about surplusing the property. We never gave him direction. It's not in any of our capital improvement plans. It's in none of our council goal settings. I COULD GO ON. YOU HAVE LETTERS IN THE RECORD TO THE APPEAL HEARING THAT YOU GUYS DUCKED OUT ON THAT FROM MAYOR AXELROD AND COUNCILOR SACKALICK AND MYSELF AND COUNCILOR RAELEA, FORMER COUNCILORS THAT WERE THERE DURING THAT TIME WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN PROPERLY INFORMED.

MS. CUMMINGS, YOUR TIME IS EXPIRED. WOULD YOU JUST MIND CONCLUDING IN THE NEXT 10, 15 SECONDS?

OKAY. I WANT TO ASK YOU. I want to ask you, have you ever read Mr. Balfour's report? You've never seen it, have you? Welcome to the club. We also got blindsided in 2020 by the Fessor situation and the Farley situation. This is what happens when city managers don't keep councilor performed according to their duties in the Westland City Charter.

Your time has expired. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Janet Rumba.

Councillor Bonnington has a comment to make.

I will say that as a real estate professional, realtor of over a decade now, I have reviewed this and I took significant issue with the comparables used in it. I found them very strange for the nature of this appraisal. So I would not use them if I were to prepare an appraisal like this. I think they're very strange because they're very far away. They're not really similar to this lot. So that's my opinion on this appraisal. Thank you, Councillor Bonneton, for that.

Any other comments? Okay. Next speaker, please.

Janet Brumbaugh.

Hi there. Welcome. Hi. Just state your name and city residence, and you have up to three minutes.

Janet Brumbaugh. So I want to cast my support for the ordinance for a proposal that any temporary facility for more than 200 people be approved by the West Linn City Council. So no detention centers and no private prisons in West Linn.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Just a comment. The proposal didn't say approved by the council. It said approved by the voters of West Linn. Thank you, Councillor.

Chair Davidson?

Thank you. I would like to just second the comment made by the Former person who spoke I would hate to think I have not lived in in Westland for that many years But I would never like to think that our community would support a detention center that would hold people here So I just want to go on record that I would hate to see that happen in this community Thank you, thank you Thank you for your comments That is all that are signed up

Would anybody else from the audience, do you intend to speak? If so, you just have to fill out a form to sign up for public comment. So I don't see any other comments. I'm assuming everybody who wanted to say their piece had a chance to do so. So thank you. With that, then we can move into mayor and council reports. And we can start with reports from community advisory groups. Anybody like to make a report? Council President Baumgartner.

Well, first of all, I just wanted to thank the community for your participation and the support of staff and the participation of all of my colleagues at the state of the city address last week, which was very. engaging, and I think enjoyed by the people who were in attendance. And it just kind of highlights what the city is doing. And there's a recording of it. If anybody who wasn't able to see it can go back and watch. And I also attended, along with our community development director, Steve Coper, we attended the Clackamas County Cities Coordinating Committee retreat this weekend. It's just an overnight afternoon and morning sessions with other cities in Clackamas County discussing basically economic development opportunities in one block of ours and in the other block we talked about transportation. So there were a lot of thoughtful meetings of the minds. And that was basically what I did.

Thank you, Council President. Councillor Bragg, I just enjoyed giving the State of the City address as well and had a great time. I appreciate all the staff and community members who were there and councillors participating as well. So if anybody wants, I think we'll be producing, with TVC TV's help, a little highlight video of the event. So that'll come out soon. And then we'll go to. Council Gruner, and then I know you would like to speak on the other items, so we will just do the reports from community advisory groups, the appointment, and then I'll turn over the floor to you for your comments. Does that sound like an appropriate process? Okay, go ahead, Council Gruner. Would you like any reports from the community group?

At the State of the City meeting, yes, I think it was... Very well done. I want to congratulate the staff for the way they did it, and I think it's a valuable community meeting. So thank you all for coming, and thank you for the staff for putting it on.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Bond, any community advisory group?

No, no, actually, but also really pleased with the way the state of the city went. Could not have been more proud to share that event with you all, and Looking forward to what we're doing next.

Thank you, Councillor. And then the community advisory group appointment, I would place before the council appointing Aurelia Rohrabacher to the historic review board.

I move to approve the mayor's appointment. Second.

It's been moved and second to approve the appointment of Aurelia Rohrabacher to the historic review board. Any discussion on that? All right, go. Please call the roll, please. Thank you.

Council Breyck? Yes. Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Councilor Bonnington? Yes. Mayor Velazquez?

Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes and congratulations to Aurelia. We'll be in touch. And with that, Councillor Groner, would you like to, you requested during the pre-meeting to make a comment or statement and to please have the floor and then other councillors can jump in.

Yes, I want to thank first of all the people who appeared today in support of a statement I made last week. I'm not going to rehearse that statement again. It's in the record. What I really would like to add to the record is an article that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday. I'm not going to quote the entire article, but basically it talks about Delaney Ice Facility in New Jersey.

And it has a few statistics about it.

There are, at the time of the article, 591 people were being held there. Of those, 13% had criminal convictions, 21% pending criminal charges. And what that means is that most of the people there had no crimes or not even pending charges. So these are basically innocent people who are being held in a nice prison. What I am proposing is that in the near future, we set an agenda item where we can discuss how we, as citizens of West Linn, what we can do to basically support human rights in the United States. My proposal is one possibility. I imagine there are other possibilities.

I've had discussions with other councillors, and they have their suggestions.

I'd love to hear it, and I'd love to hear a public discussion of what we can do as one city to basically support human rights in the United States.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I really appreciate the energy and passion you've brought to this issue, and you've brought some distinguished community members here as well from West Linn who are passionate as well. And I appreciate the desire to discuss human rights, how we can support all members of our community, including members of our immigrant community. And West Linn is a welcoming place. community and i believe every resident here deserves to be treated with dignity and respect now with respect to an ice detention facility we are not aware of any proposal request or activity involving such a facility in west lynn given that i believe our conversation is best focused on issues and needs that are currently before our community and on practical ways that the city can support immigrant community and all residents to ensure that everybody feels welcome and so i'm open to a conversation centered around human rights and how we can best support our all of our community members here in West London. Thank you. Council President would like to make a comment as well.

Yes, thank you, Mayor, and I appreciate also Councillor Groner bringing this concern, and I also myself have shared views, one of them in the form of a letter I sent and was published in the review in January of this year, specifically regarding the erosion of civil rights, human rights, process of law that I am seeing myself happening around, not necessarily within the city limits of West Linn, but I do agree that the concerns beyond our city limits should be something that we address. So I... Agree that we should pursue Concerns and I would love an opportunity for the council to discuss with relevant Professionals in the area who are actively participating and supporting specifically immigrant communities right now I sent a list to counselor groaner Including but not limited to the Immigrant Rights Coalition of Portland, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, IRCO, the Immigrant Rights Project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center, the Northwest Immigration Rights Project, the Immigration Legal Services at Catholic Charities of Oregon, advancing of immigrant justice through faith-based community support, and the Portland Faith Leaders Stand with Immigrants Initiative and in the Presbyterian Church. So there are many tools that we could use and many partners that we could partner with. So I'm looking forward to having this discussion. I am not interested in, at this time, advancing specifically a policy or an ordinance or legislation banning certain facilities, partly because I'm concerned if we identify, let's say, a certain number of bed facility, then we are limiting other uses as an unintended consequence, such as a hotel, which our community has asked for and we do not have in West Linn. So that's some of the unintended consequences that can come out of legislation. So I think there's other ways that we can support these vulnerable communities. And I think it's important that we do that and talk about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Council President. I appreciated you helping co-host earlier training on immigrant rights at the historic city hall with the Immigrant Rights Coalition. I know you went on a tour of that facility as well. So thank you for all that you're doing. Any other comments from city council? I'll coordinate with the city manager on a date to set that agenda. I'm pretty sure our community service director will be happy that we're talking about the topic of human rights and belonging and how we can all feel welcome here in West Linn. So we'll schedule that. Thank you. And thank you to community members. We hope you stay involved in other city issues as well. So welcome. So with that, any other mayor and council report items or we can move on on the agenda? I see none. So, OK, we can move on to the consent agenda, which includes the June 9th, 2026. Excuse me. I'm reading the motion wrong. It includes the May 12, 2026 council meeting notes, and there was one Scrivener's error related to the Yakima Nation that Council President brought up. there was slightly misspelled with an I instead of an A. So as long as that can be corrected, we won't pull them off the agenda. So with that, go ahead and- Thank you, Mayor.

I move to approve the consent agenda for the June 9th, 2026 Westland City Council meeting, which includes the May 12th, 2026 meeting minutes. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to- approved the consent agenda for the June 9th, 2026 Westland City Council meeting, which includes the May 12th, 2026 meeting minutes. No discussion on consent agenda. So please call the roll.

Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Bronner? Yes. Councilor Bonnington? Yes. Councilor Bright? Yes. Mayor Bielaszewski?

Yes. So the consent agenda is approved. And thank you. And with that, moving right along then into the A business meeting and agenda item 6A, agenda bill 2026-06-09-02, ordinance 1772, relating to the regulation of e-bikes and e-scooters in West Linn, an issue that we continue to hear about from the community and many of us have seen with our own eyes people zipping around on the e-bikes in an unsafe manner. So it's good that we're finally talking about it in a more formal way.

at the city mister williams thank you mayor and council and we appreciate your attention to this uh... which is indeed one of the issues that we've been getting many calls about uh... this uh... this spring and in the last year and i appreciate the work by the police department chief rollins and others in our legal department led by the city attorney and chris james uh... to prepare an ordinance for your consideration that would assist us with enforcement and education. You had a work session on this on the second of the month. Wanted to focus the importance of education before enforcement, which is exactly how we approach this. Chief, good to see you. Captain Garland did an awesome job last time, but we're glad to have you here. And we're going to present the context of this and changes made since the last council discussion.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, city councillors, good evening. Thank you for having us back to hopefully finalize this very important work surrounding the ordinance regarding the enforcement of electric scooters and electric bikes within the city of West Linn. Before we get into the ordinance itself, I would like to take just a minute and kind of recap how we got here, why we're here, and kind of why this is important. Over the last couple years, we have seen a market increase in the ownership and the ridership of electric bikes and electric scooters, especially by juveniles within the city of Westland. And over that same period of time, we have seen a corresponding increase in complaints regarding the ridership, especially of juveniles, of electric bikes and electric scooters. Last week, Captain Garland was here. And I think the main question that we posed to the city council was, do you support the development of an ordinance that regulates the operation of e-bikes and e-scooters within the city of West Linn? The background on this, again, we've seen this sharp uprise over the last few years in the ridership, and most of the complaints revolve around safety issues, and I think that is really the prevailing issue with the regulation of these We'll call them vehicles just just to make it easy is We we need to be able to regulate and make sure that the safety issues not only for the riders But also for the pedestrians and the rest of the community is being taken into account most of the complaints revolve around things like juveniles just being too young to safely operate these vehicles safely and The unsafe riding on sidewalks, excessive speed, failure to yield to pedestrians. And so the Oregon law right now, while it does address some of the aspects of the regulation of these vehicles, I don't believe that it does an adequate enough job in giving law enforcement enough tools to be able to efficiently enforce the laws that are on the books. And I'll give you a very specific example. It is prohibited by law for anyone under the age of 16 to operate an electric bicycle in the state of Oregon. Yet there is no specific statute that allows for the enforcement of someone who is under the age of 16 who is riding an electric bicycle. I think that's a problem. And so the development of this ordinance, we sought to address some of what may be called shortcomings within the actual law as far as giving law enforcement within the city of West Linn better and more efficient tools with which to safely enforce the operation of these vehicles within the city. The last draft of the ordinance was presented to you last week. And so as we jump into the actual ordinance right now, I want to note a few things that I think are very efficient and some of the challenges that we sought to address and how they were fixed within the ordinance. What you'll notice is the first section of Ordinance 1772 really has to do with definitions. And here it is just very clearly and very plainly outlined, not only for law enforcement, but also for the community at large, as to what these vehicles are. What are we talking about? It clearly defines what an electric-assisted bicycle is. It outlines the difference between the classes, Class 1, 2, and 3. Council Member has a question for you, Wynton.

Quick question. I've seen some unicycles, electric unicycles, on the roads of West Linn. Are those covered under the Act?

No. If you're talking about the ones with just the one ball in the middle with what looks like a skateboard, those are not regulated by the state. The little hoverboards with the two wheels on each side, those are. But the unicycle, if you will, or the uniball skateboard, that's not regulated. So that's where we're at.

Sounds like a hole.

Well, and there are some holes that we sought to address through the ordinance. We didn't get to uniballs, but maybe that can be done in a future revision. So if we go back to the definitions, class 1, 2, and 3 on the e-bikes are clearly defined. as well as the electric scooter. And so that way hopefully there is no question to juveniles or parents as to does their electric bicycle, electric scooter qualify under the ordinance. And then we got into the actual subsections, the actual restrictions and the enforcement mechanisms. Subsections 2, 3, 4, and 5 all deal with very, very specific circumstances under which the riding of an e-bike or an e-scooter would either be a violation or it puts some requirements on things like protective equipment. So subsection 2 specifically, this is a subsection that I believe directly speaks to the whole that is in the ORS statutes and goes directly to the operation of e-bikes and e-scooters by persons who are under the age of 16. This will give the Western Police Department very clear directions and a clear outline with which to enforce those laws that are already on the books. I think that's very important to remember is that all of these laws are already ORS statutes. These are already state laws. They have been on the books for years. We are just now seeking a more efficient way for the Western Police Department to enforce those through city ordinance. And it just cleans up again some of the holes that might have been created. And again, subsection A in that just clearly states that until January 2027, no person under the age of 16 shall operate an e-bike or an e-scooter within the city of Westland. It's very, very simple. It also more simply states what the violation would be. A violation of any of that subsection would be a Class D violation. And then the area where a guardian may be cited for a minor's violation for any of those provisions also mirrors... the ORS statute and several other statutes within the enforcement areas that it allows for law enforcement to cite parents for certain violations of the juveniles. And so this gives us, again, more options, more efficiency within that age restriction category. And then section three gets into the protective headgear. This also mirrors the ORS language, requiring anybody under the age of 16 to wear protective headgear, a helmet. And again, guardians can be cited for a minor's violation of that subsection. And then four and five, operating rules and unsafe operation. Again, most of these, if not all of them, mirror and match what is already in the ORS language. I don't believe that we have created any sort of new violation for somebody to violate. These are all pulled directly from the ORS. But again, this allows the Western Police Department with enhanced efficiency and abilities to, and I think the option to not only cite a juvenile writer, but also cite the parents for the actions of that juvenile writer, I believe is important. And I believe that's a crucial piece to this through this ordinance is because we are not only trying to change the behavior of the juvenile writers, we're really trying to change the behavior of the parents of those writers and taking more into account the safety aspects of what their children are doing on these vehicles. I know Captain Garland also last week talked about kind of our education campaign that we were committed to before we started the enforcement campaign. The original plan that went out to the police department is we were going to do an intense education campaign through the end of the school year. Now, in all fairness, that started almost a month ago, and so we had been at that for quite some time. Given the timelines on the way these ordinances work as we are committed to extending that extra education period Albeit there could be enforcement that also goes along with that but certainly focusing primarily on education Through the rest of this month with limited enforcement where the opportunity arises and when it's needed and then be able to move into July should the ordinance be adopted and with a heavier enforcement approach if that is needed at that time. Hopefully the education has taken care of a lot of the violations. I guess we'll see when we get there. And just to give you a quick little visual on some of the things that we are trying to go above and beyond with the education piece. We're not only contacting and talking to juvenile riders when we see them, explaining them the safety issues, explaining to them what the laws are. We've created some visual help. And so here's what we're doing. We're doing a couple different things. These small cards, four by sixes, were created and we are actually physically handing these to juvenile writers and then to parents. There's two different versions, but they outline all the laws, all the ORSs in very simple language. What are the rules? The large one with three large boxes, we've been handing these to the kids who are riding. It's much simpler to follow, and it's really, really simple. It has the age requirement, it has the no riding on the sidewalks for the unsafe operation issue, and it has got to wear a helmet. The second card has those same three boxes, they're just a little smaller, but it also has some additional information about e-scooters. It has additional information related to the parents, how you can be cited too for some of the actions of your child. And then just a request to kind of ride legally and ride responsibly at the bottom. I actually handed out like seven of these today. Starbucks seems to be kind of a hub. So e-bikes, scooters, the whole nine yards, kids ranging from age 12 up to 14. And again, I think it's really, really important just to make sure that everybody is aware of the rules. I'm fully aware that there may be people in our community who just are not aware. They just haven't heard it. I think most of them are. I'll tell you, almost to a person, every single juvenile that I've contacted over the last two to three weeks, when I ask them, do you know how old you have to be to ride a scooter or a bike? They'll tell me 16. They may fudge around. They'll get with 13 or 14, like, how old are you, 14? Okay, so how old do you have to be? 16. So I think the educational campaign is working. This is just a big blow-up of the parent card, and we have these laminated, and I'm going to go ahead and post these at a bunch of the city parks so that as parents are with the kids in the parks, they have a bigger version to look at through there. So... Just in conclusion, so with the, I believe the finalized version that we have of the ordinance, 1772, I think it adequately addresses the needs that the community has and that the Westland Police Department has in order to more efficiently and more comprehensively enforce and regulate the operation of e-bikes and e-scooters within the city of Westland. And I would humbly request that you all look at that, consider it, and vote to adopt this ordinance tonight. Thank you.

Thank you for that great presentation and all the visual aids and things you're doing to help educate the community. I could entertain a motion on the ordinance, then we can have a discussion, if that's appropriate.

I would just add, I think Chief did a great job, covered, really went into depth on the ordinance, and so you may not need this, but if you wanted, I was prepared to go over the changes that occurred since the work session. But really, most of them, as was stated in the memo, were made for clarity and readability. The substance itself that we discussed and you expressed strong support for has not changed. The only things I would note, because there were a few things we left open-ended to come back to, is that I did change Section 6, enforcement and penalties, used to make almost everything a Class D violation. We've since... the particular violation and penalty into the particular section. So under age restrictions, protective headgear requirements, operating rules and unsafe operation, the violation is specifically clarified there and it is now consistent with state law. We had a little discussion about that on whether we should try and have more severe enforcement or penalties. And at this point, we recommend making it consistent with what we have at state law. The other thing we did was we made clear that if a minor appears in court, they must be accompanied by their guardian. however we did not include compelling an adult to come to court if they were specifically cited themselves we had discussed that option a little bit at the last meeting and based on our review of state law we think the way it's now drafted is probably best for this initial step we can obviously come back and revisit later if needed and but we did clarify again to address the how we want to create a deterrent, and it's hard to when certain violations have a presumptive fine of $25. We did clarify in the enforcement and penalties section that a person may be cited separately for each violation, so you can stack multiple violations. someone's riding on the sidewalk and they're under 16 and they're not wearing a helmet, you could get a higher fine. That's how we approach those issues. In the definition section, as we talked about, the age requirement is 16 up until January 1st of next year. However, at that point, they do change. And so we've drafted the ordinance to capture those changes so it doesn't have to be revisited and it will be accurate. However, if you want to come back and revisit, you know, about whatever that is six months from now or maybe a little less, that's an opportune time for us to discuss some of the other questions you raised, like how would this apply in park trails? That was something we kind of tabled for later. So that's it for me.

Thank you. Great overview, and thanks for all your work on the ordinance from you and Christian as well. We can do discussion now, I suppose. Councillor Bonnington.

I will just say that when Chief said he gave away seven of those today, I was there. I was with him, watched him do it. I was really surprised by two aspects of that. One, how positively the kids reacted to that. Maybe at first they were a little bit nervous, but pretty quickly they were smiling, laughing, they were listening. It was nice to see. It was going exactly how I think we would all want it to go. But also how easy it was to determine how old they were. I had thought maybe there's some gray area there. Maybe it would be difficult. No, it was very clear. It was very clear.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Would you like to make a motion then we can take other comments?

Sure. I move to approve first reading for ordinance 1772 relating to the regulation of e-bikes and e-scooters and set the matter for second reading. Second.

So moved and seconded to approve the first reading for 1772 relating to the regulation of e-bikes and e-scooters and set the matter for a second reading. Any discussion?

Thank you. And I really appreciate the social media presence of some of these graphics and the majority of the responses have been very positive. So those are probably the people calling in the complaints. You know, these crazy kids driving in front of my house. But the majority of the comments have been very positive and I think that's a good way to really spread that education message more readily than every officer that's on the street. So we appreciate that. Thank you.

I think the ordinance won't take effect for 30 days, so we still have plenty more time for the summer to educate and continue the campaign. For me, we want people to ride e-bikes legally and safely, and especially our kids. We know that's a very fun way to get around, but we also want to make sure that everybody's safe. I think we can support mobility while also promoting responsible riding and public safety. I think the ordinance strikes a good balance, and I trust our police officers as well to use the discretion needed to to do that, so grateful for the opportunity to comment on this. I know it's been something we've gotten emails about, and the police department's gotten certainly lots of calls about it over the years. I just wanted to make sure to add that. Council President, any thoughts?

Oh yes, lots. Thank you for this and all of the work that you've been doing on this. This is a lot of work, so I appreciate it. And I know other cities have been interested. I was just going through my email and trying to find the email that, I don't know, Kaylee, did you send us an email that reflected other cities interested in learning more? Maybe you could speak about that just briefly just to kind of

Yeah, I did. As a city attorney, I'm a member of the Oregon City Attorneys Association, OCAA. We have a listserv that city attorneys or deputies circulate questions around that may be applicable to other cities. And so a question came up about e-bikes and ordinances, and someone said, I see that Happy Valley has an ordinance, but are there any other cities who've looked into this? so i shared our ordinance and we got a lot of positive feedback a request to have a call and it's clear that other cities will be following i think soon in our footsteps and regulating in this area and i think also i did share some of the chief's materials that pd has produced and i think people just thought that was really impressive to also have the educational campaign running a little bit before and also parallel But I think Chief Rollins could also speak to the interest within different law enforcement agencies in our neighboring jurisdictions as well.

Yeah, this has been quite the topic in the last several chiefs meetings that we have once a month. And so we talked about this at the most recent one. And I mentioned that Westland was also working on their own ordinance. And I was asked to share that ordinance. And so that has been shared throughout the entire all the police chiefs in Clackamas County. And I believe that I heard from several of them that they were working with their city attorney and their city council to draft their own city ordinances. And so I also shared with them the educational material, and I said, feel free to plagiarize and use it all. We could blanket the entire county with this educational material. So, yes, this whole wave is coming, and I think they all noticed the same challenges and the same shortcomings with the enforcement mechanisms. And so seeking to plug those gaps and plug those holes is a major priority for every jurisdiction in Clackamas County right now.

Thank you so much for all of that. I know that I am very excited to see young people being able to get around on the very hilly roadways. So I like people being able to be independent. And so that's important in having alternatives to being driven everywhere. But we do need to educate people. and include the parents and the adults in this as much as possible like you're doing, so that's really important. Some ideas that came into my mind that you're already probably thinking of or doing is partnering with schools, how we can partner city and school district kind of coordinate since the school has access to children more than we do and I'm not sure if it's been mentioned if that same information is going out on the city's newsletter I was trying to in my mind think of a way to send it out maybe not in a separate mailing but just so that residents can see it even if they're not being presented with it partly to reassure people who maybe don't have an e-bike rider in their family, but have seen what's going on with them. TO SEE THAT THE CITY IS ADDRESSING IT. AND THEN I HAD TO HAVE THIS CONCEPT I THINK I MENTIONED OF HAVING SOME KIND OF A FUN EDUCATIONAL EVENT ABOUT E-BIKES. AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD LOOK LIKE, BUT, YOU KNOW, E-BIKE RODEO CAME INTO MY MIND. BUT I'M NOT SURE HOW THAT WOULD REALLY WORK. BUT MAYBE EVEN I THINK SOMEONE AT THE TIME WHEN WE DISCUSSED THIS LAST SUGGESTED HAVING A PRESENCE AT THE WESTLAND FAIR THAT TALKS ABOUT THIS TOPIC. somehow so but thank you again for responding and doing it in a nice way

Yeah, well, just real quick. We have worked extensively with SRO Remington. So he has taken all these materials to the schools as well, especially the middle schools, in order to get those words out. I know that announcements are made at the beginning of every school year. And the schools themselves have very strict rules about e-bike and e-scooter riding to school. And I believe that's prohibited. So we have done that messaging through the schools as well, just to make sure that message got out there. And I know that they're out of school now. I'm more than happy to get any material to the city for inclusion in newsletters and things like that. And then the rodeo is an interesting idea. They have to be all riders who are over 16 years of age in order to do that. We do have the actual bike rodeo that's coming up. And maybe this is a great time to remind all of the young people in our community that riding a manual bicycle is fantastic exercise. It's great for the thigh muscles. There are benefits. We do have some extreme hills in the city. I get that. But I think a lot of us got around for a lot of summers on the old Huffy, the old twin. And so there may be some benefit to doing that as well.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or shall we call the vote? I see no other. So we can call the vote on the first reading of Ordinance 1772.

Councillor Groner?

Yes.

Councillor Bonnington?

Yes.

Councillor Bright? Yes. Councillor Bumgarner? Yes. Mayor Bustoski?

Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes. And since it was unanimous under the rules, we can proceed to the second reading.

I move to approve second reading for ordinance 1772 relating to the regulation of e-bikes and e-scooters and adopt the ordinance.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the second reading for ordinance 1772 relating to the regulation of e-bikes and e-scooters and adopt the ordinance. Any discussion? We've already had some tonight, so with that, we can call the roll again.

Council Breyck? Yes.

Council President Baumgartner? Yes. Councilor Groner? Yes. Councilor Bonnington? Yes. Mayor Bustoski?

Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes and the ordinance is approved and I'll sign it and then it will take effect after 30 days and look forward to the education campaign ahead that you've spoken about. So thank you. Any final comments, city manager or you?

No, we will work on the public communication, and the police department's already doing a super job, but we'll help with citywide efforts as we can. Sounds great. Councillor Groner.

Just an observation. I guess I learned for the first time that the school does not permit e-scooters or e-bikes to school, and that probably accounts for the number that are parked at the adult activity center during the day.

Thanks. Thanks. Well, seeing nothing else on that topic. Thank you, Chief Rollins. And also on behalf of the city council, congratulations to your daughter as well. You told me she's got a graduation part. She's graduating from high school?

Clackamas Web Academy, yes. Awesome. Early college option. She's finished with 65 of her 98 credits already completed. Wow. Very, very cool. That's awesome.

Well, congratulations on behalf of the city council. I had to give her a shout out tonight. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Appreciate that. Appreciate your service and be in touch soon. Thank you. And thanks to our legal department as well and city manager for their work advancing this ordinance. And with that, we can continue on to the next agenda item. Council President stepped away for a moment. And the next agenda bill is resolution 202605, revising fees and charges as shown in attachment A and updating the master fees and charges document of the city of West Linn. And I understand that I think Ms. Cummings signed up to speak on this topic as well. So with that, Ms. Cummings, would you like to make a comment again? Thank you. Welcome back. I think you know the drill. Just state your name and city residence and you have up to three minutes.

Teresa Cummings, resident of West Land. I would like to let everybody know and ask you to please make it absolutely clear in your fees and charges and on the city website that the city is charging people $184 and some cents per hour for a public records request. Now the state of Oregon charges 25 and ODOT charges 25. I'd like to know why does the city charge $184 an hour? That's prohibitive. Do you want people to be able to access the public records that our taxes are paying for? Because otherwise, what are they good for? I made a request May 10th. It took weeks to get it honored, mainly because the city, first of all, didn't honor its policy to give the first 30 minutes free. Secondly, because the city manager constantly denied my request to waive the fees. I was initially charged up to $3,000 because I was interested in records that actually involved himself and his staff and their communications with ODOT. He had a conflict of interest. I think he should have turned that decision about whether to waive fees over to someone else. Secondly, when I did finally get some records, it was given to me on this format called Foxit, which I didn't open because it's potentially unsafe. So then I had to go through some hoops to get it in a different format. This is how I got the Balfour Report, but it wasn't easy. Okay, so if you really do, by the way, the city website just says staff hourly rate wages plus benefits. The first 30 minutes are free. It does not say how much. And then it says $100 an hour for incurred legal research. Well, $184 sure is a lot more than $100 an hour. I don't think most people would know that unless they had the unpleasant experience. It's $184.32. Okay. So if you really do believe in transparency, I advocated very strongly to make the records as free as possible, absolutely as free as possible. We don't make that much money off of collecting these fees. Meanwhile, this is prohibitive. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. And with any other comments made to, okay. With that, then we can proceed to the staff report on this resolution 202605, which is kind of an annual thing that we do in West Lines. Mr. City Manager, take it away.

No, thank you, Mayor. That's pretty much all I was going to say because Lauren Breithaupt, our Finance Director, is going to give the staff report on this one. As you say, it's an annual review of the city's master fees and charges. So thank you, Lauren, for your work. This is a citywide effort to do this, but Lauren is the ringleader.

Council President Baumgartner has a comment real quick.

I just want to remind people to lean into the mic. I'm seeing quite a few people just kind of leaning over and trying to hear. So if we all just put ourselves close to the mic and speak slowly, that helps. Thank you so much.

Thank you, House President and Director Brightop. Take it away and welcome Caitlin as well.

Thank you. So as the city manager mentioned and as the mayor mentioned, this is an annual update to our master fees and charges. We do this... You're all good, all good.

Thank you.

So we just take a two minute recess and then we'll reset the we'll come back into session. And Director Breithaupt, I think you were just beginning your report, so we can just reset the agenda item and go ahead. This is the resolution on fees and charges document. Thank you.

So every year we come back to the City Council with an update to our master fees and charges that are generally effective on July 1st of the year. We use these fees and charges to balance our budget. And so our budget, we are coming into our second year of the biennium. So last spring, when we approved the budget, we had talked about what we expected for the next year. And then, of course, inflationary costs and standard increases to our utility fees were what we had expected for this year. That is what we have in here. Just to go through a few of the items, our system development charges actually decreased this year, 4.1%. We followed the engineering news record CCI for Seattle for the previous 12 months, December to December, and it decreased this year. And so that will result in our SDCs decreasing. FEES GOING DOWN, WHICH IS ABOUT A $19,000 DECREASE IN REVENUE EXPECTED. OUR UTILITY BILLING FEES AND OUR SERVICES, WATER, SEWER, STORM DRAIN, PARKS MAINTENANCE AND STREET MAINTENANCE, WE GENERALLY CONSISTENTLY INCREASE OUR 5%. AS YOU REMEMBER, WE DID INCREASE THE PARKS MAINTENANCE FEE IN MARCH, AND THEN WE WILL BE DOING THE ADDITIONAL 5% ON TOP OF THAT. SO IT IS A STANDARD 5% ACROSS THE BOARD. WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GO OVER THAT, AND SO WE TRY TO STAY CONSISTENT WITH THAT, BECAUSE OTHERWISE WE WILL NOT BE KEEPING UP WITH OUR COST INCREASES. In terms of administrative fees, our business licenses and sidewalk cafe fees are also increasing 5%. General minor increases in GIS mapping fees based off inflation and increases in costs. Our library went fine free this year to be consistent with other libraries. So I'm sure you have all heard about that. So those fines have been removed from the schedule. Our parks rental fees increased by $5 and some miscellaneous changes to clean up the document and provide clarification. So mostly just the $5 increase in the rental fees. Our planning and building fees increased 5% to reflect costs of providing services. No major changes in our police fees. public works updated updates to updates to miscellaneous fleet these to reflect inflation. We have a couple schedules in here the solid waste one for Westland refuse and recycling and the solid waste for Keller drop box and these both are schedules that we received from those companies. in accordance with their franchises. And we just put them into our schedule. I do want to note that on the Keller Dropbox schedule, I realized that it said 2024. And so I will be updating that to 2026 on the top there because it is effective July 1st, 26. But other than that, there are no other significant changes. And if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer those.

Any questions from City Council Council bright go ahead.

Thank you mayor. I don't really have questions, but I just want to be really clear with the public that these fees are raised to cover the cost of providing that service and. As everybody knows in their home budgets, costs have gone up. And so this is just so that we can keep pace with the costs that we're incurring as a city. We're not like getting a whole bunch of extra money and putting it aside. It's to cover those costs. And with regards to the system development charges, maybe if our system development charges are a little bit lower, maybe we'll get a few more development projects in. So that could be a wash.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor, for those comments. And from what I understand, you budgeted for these in the last budget that we put in, so the fee increase that we're talking about today.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? I will just add that I don't take fee increases lightly. I don't think any of us do. Council President, I'm kind of repeating what you said, but there's a time where families are feeling the impact of rising costs. I just did an interview about our utility fee system that we have, but these fees do fund the critical services that residents rely on every day. And just as households have had INCREASED COSTS AND FAMILIES HAVE YOU KNOW OUR CITY HAS ALSO HAD THOSE SAME COST INCREASES SO YOU KNOW I THINK PROVIDING PARKS STORM WATER SEWER STREETS AND ALL THE OTHER SERVICES ARE IMPORTANT SO THIS IS THIS PROTECTS OUR ABILITY TO KEEP DOING THAT AS WE MOVE FORWARD I THINK IT'S OUR CORE RESPONSIBILITY SO THAT'S MY THOUGHTS ON THIS MATTER COUNCIL PRESIDENT AND COUNCILOR GROWNER RAISE HIS HAND AS WELL

thank you mayor I would just echo that and say that none of us take lightly including staff raising fees and none of us are. Also unaware of the general economic situation the realities in homes so we understand we also have a responsibility to our community and to the city facilities themselves to keep them maintained and i know that people wouldn't appreciate if we did not maintain the facilities in the way that they is required so i appreciate all the work that you've done carefully on this thank you thank you thank you counselor and counselor groener

Yes, thank you. Nobody really likes taxes, but unfortunately taxes are the price of civilizations, and civilization is not free.

That's all. Succinct, Councillor, thank you. I do note we have partners here from Ways and Connections and Republic. Would you like to say anything to City Council? You're kind of just hanging out in the back just in case we have any questions. Okay, sounds good. Well, thank you for being here and thank you for the partnership and all that you do for our communities. And I think this also does have the waste, those two fees in there as well. So any questions for those representatives? Are we ready to move to a motion? Seeing none, you can make a motion.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to adopt Resolution 2026-05, Revising Fees and Charges, as shown in Attachment A and updating the Master Fees and Charges document.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it's moved and seconded to adopt Resolution 2026-05, Revising Fees and Charges, as shown in Attachment A and updating the Master Fees and Charges document. Any final discussion? I see none. Everybody's said their piece tonight. So with that, you can call the roll, please.

Council President Bumgarner? Yes. Councilor Groner?

Yes.

Councilor Bonnington? Yes. Councilor Bright? Yes. Mayor Bustoski? Yes.

So the motion passes and Resolution 202605 is adopted. So thank you, Lauren. And now we can continue on. to agenda item 6C, which is the adopting the community grants for fiscal year 2027. One of the coolest things we get to do with our limited funds that we have is give out a few grants to community groups that make a difference. So with that, do we have a speaker? Okay.

Jim Wakeman.

Hey, welcome. And thanks for being here and staying with us until we got to this point. Just state your name and city residence. You have up to three minutes.

My name is Jim Wickman, and I'm a resident of West Linn. And I wondered whether I should speak, but as a retired teacher, I know there's always time for positive reinforcement. Thanks. So on behalf of the West Linn Community Chorus, I just wanted to say thank you, especially to the grant recommendation committee. for their careful consideration, and especially to Ms. Coach for her shepherding and helping us get all the information we need to be successful in this. I want to thank the council for supporting this grant program. I'm glad that you said that it was one of the happier things you do, because also as a taxpayer, I'm especially appreciative that you have set money aside for these kinds of programs. Since we were one of the recipients of the grant recommendation, I did get to see the list of who you could give some of this money to, and I just really appreciate all the directions that that money is going. Our particular grant project is to create a 25th anniversary commemorative commissioned work of music. We found a composer, and I knew she had ties to West Linn. I only learned today that she has kids in our school district. So that's very exciting to me. She's got some good insights into what it's like to be a West Linn resident. And I think that's going to show through in this piece of music. It's very exciting. Thank you for considering this. I hope you move in the right direction. And I'll take a seat. Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming and for all you do for the chorus and for being at all of our events as well. I know I remember the tree lighting. The chorus has been there singing. And maybe next year, 25th anniversary, we'll have to have you at the State of the City as well for a little performance. I just thought in my head about that. Thank you. Appreciate that. And I also ran into City Hall in the lobby to a member of the Clackamas community band as well who was very grateful for our Support of their organization a couple of couple of weeks ago So we're making a difference across the city in the arts and also many other areas with these grants So I think that was the public comments. So now we can go to a staff report So would you like to give a little report? I Or is this kind of like...

Yes, we want Caitlin to give the staff report. All I was going to say is we have been hearing very, very good things about the process this year, which Caitlin will explain, but it's actually a...

PRETTY FAIR AMOUNT OF WORK.

IT'S ONE OF OUR HAPPIER ANNUAL TRADITIONS, BUT, CAITLIN, YOU'VE DONE A FANTASTIC JOB, AND A LOT OF THE PEOPLE YOU'RE WORKING WITH ARE REALLY APPRECIATIVE. SO IF YOU COULD PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT YOU'VE DONE AND WHAT'S DIFFERENT THIS YEAR.

YES, THANK YOU. SO GOOD EVENING, MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL. SO GLAD TO BE HERE. LIKE YOU SAID, IT'S ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE DO ANNUALLY. IT'S A VERY REWARDING PROCESS TO GO THROUGH. COMMUNITY GRANTS OPEN, THE APPLICATION PERIOD OPENS EVERY APRIL. So this year we did receive 16 applications for total requests of $44,280. In our biennium budget, we have allocated $25,000 to be awarded. The one thing that is slightly different this year is we did have a prior grant recipient who received $500. They were not able to fulfill their request. So one of the requirements is if they aren't able to fulfill their application to return the funds, So we did get those funds back. So in your packet, the recommendation is actually $25,500 this year to account for those funds that were returned. One of the things that the committee, the budget committee did this year is they wanted to change or alter the application TO INCLUDE BOTH QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE MEASURES TO EVALUATE THE APPLICATIONS. SO IN THE AGENDA BILL IT DOES OUTLINE THERE WERE FOUR CATEGORIES CREATED. SO ONE CALLED COMMUNITY BENEFIT TO WEST LYNN, PROJECT QUALITY FEASIBILITY, FINANCIAL NEED AND USE OF FUNDS AND COMMUNITY REACH AND ADDED VALUE. Each of those four categories was awarded a point value that would total up to 100 points. And then there was also some funding guidance. While it's not required, it would help provide the budget committee some guidance with how to approach the discussion of funding. So applicants that received a higher number of points would be recommended for full funding and then as you go down. One of the reasons why the Budget Committee felt that this was really important is so that we can give feedback to the applicants, specifically if there were any groups that either did not get funding or didn't get their full request. I will be able to provide them feedback after this meeting to let them know and help guide them for future requests. The Budget Committee met on May 27th and compiled their recommendations, which is in your agenda bill. And so we are here tonight to... discuss that and see if you have any questions and then appoint those awards.

Thank you for that report and I got all your emails about the process with the Budget Committee and I want to also thank the five citizen members of the Budget Committee, the non-councillors who provided, every year provide an invaluable resource and given feedback and making a recommendation because I know it's hard to sort through and pick the numbers and amounts and usually gets to us, and we just get to kind of confirm that. So I appreciate that. And thank you, Caitlin, for serving your own community in this process as well. Any questions on the grants? Quite a list that we have of many different groups. I see no questions. So with that, would you like to make a motion then to approve?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve the Budget Committee Community Grant Recommendations as illustrated in the attached.

SECOND.

IT'S BEEN MOVED AND SECONDED TO APPROVE THE BUDGET COMMITTEE COMMUNITY GRANT RECOMMENDATIONS AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT. ANY DISCUSSION? I SEE NONE. SO PLEASE CALL THE ROLL AGAIN.

COUNCILOR BONNINGTON?

YES.

COUNCILOR BRYKE? YES. COUNCIL PRESIDENT BOMGARDNER? YES. COUNCILOR GRONER? YES. MAYOR BIDEN-STONSKY?

YES. THANK YOU. SO THE MOTION PASSES. And the grants are approved. Congratulations to all the recipients.

Thank you. They will appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to also say a thank you to Caitlin. I know that this process is always a very large process and a lot of time. And this year, she went above and beyond to get the criteria revised and worked with the committee. I KNOW MISTY HAS ALSO HELPED WITH THE PROCESS AND SHE ALSO HELPED A LOT WITH THE MASTER FEES AND CHARGES SO I REALLY APPRECIATE BOTH OF THEM AND ALL THEIR WORK THAT THEY'VE BEEN DOING TO GET BOTH THESE AGENDA ITEMS IN FRONT OF YOU TONIGHT. SO THANK YOU BOTH.

NO SMALL FEET.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU TO OUR OUTSTANDING FINANCE DEPARTMENT. ANOTHER GREAT CREDIT RATING FOR OUR OPERATION CENTER SO WE APPRECIATE IT. The next item on the agenda and the final business meeting item before busy meeting we were talking in the pre-meeting about how many areas of the city were covering in one night. Police and legal and now and we had finance and now we've got planning. So we've got the consideration of the 2026 planning docket which comes to us every year as a matter of course to review for what we want the planning department to be focused on. Yep. Thank you.

There we go.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Yes, another fun annual tradition here in West Linn is the adoption of the 2026 planning docket. And Steve Koper, our community development director, has taken over leadership on this project. And I really appreciate the work that Steve has done. He's thinking about the docket in a new way. bringing new information into the process and fostering a great discussion with staff and the Planning Commission. He's here tonight to share with you what that process has been, what his thoughts are, and what the Planning Commission's thoughts are on what long-range planning projects the city should work on. So, Steve, appreciate your work on this. And take it away, leaning forward into the microphone.

Got it. Thank you, John, for the great introduction. And thank you, Mayor and Council, for your time and attention this evening. Steve Cooper, Community Development Director. And as John mentioned, I will discuss the planning docket for this year tonight. I'm also going to tee up the discussion with a little bit of background information about the planning department and what goes into creating the docket. And then lastly, as John mentioned, a little bit of a different way of looking at the docket, although not necessarily a radical change, rather what I would consider a transformational change, which I hope you'll find for the better.

We have a slideshow, so we'll get the slides up. Appreciate that.

There we go. All right. So starting us off here, we've got our planning department team. So we have five individuals shown here on the slide, myself at the top, and then our principal planner, Darren, our relatively new senior planner, Erica Lin, our management analyst. Taryn, who is shown here, as I'll discuss on the next slide, she's actually a part FTE for our department, but an important part. And then Aaron, our associate planner. So that is us. And so what that means in the overall city budget is it means that we're actually a very small part of the city budget, even though we are a mighty team and do a lot of wonderful things for the city. So as shown on the lower left-hand part of the slide, we're just over 1% of the overall city's general fund. And so the work that we do comes from that. And as with many of the departments in the city, the bulk of our funding goes towards the people, the personnel, so that's about 80% of our budget. And then with the remaining 20% of our budget, the bulk of that, 91%, a little bit over, 90% is devoted to consultant support, basically. And so that is support that we use to take aspects of our long-range planning program that are outside of our in-house technical expertise so that we can put together more complete and better planning projects for the council and for the community. And so you'll just kind of note there that I'm starting to tell the story of what are the ingredients that go into this docket, into our long-range planning. And so the people are the first ingredient, then the money is the next ingredient. Obviously, even with money, we have certainly the limit of staff capacity to be able to manage those consultant dollars. So while I think that the... Consultant dollars are very generous in this biennium. They are ultimately limited by our ability to actually deliver projects. So what do we do with those five and 327 FTE, as well as the additional money that were budgeted for consultant support? A lot of different things. I actually had a hard time summarizing it. So I tried to break it down just into four different quadrants to try to typify what the work we do and kind of explain how it fits into the docket and our overall departmental needs. So in the upper left quadrant, we have development review. And I start with that one because that is the work that we're essentially legally required by the state of Oregon to do. And then if we don't, there's certain consequences for the city, which are mainly legal and ultimately financial consequences. And so when we think about how we prioritize our work, that work kind of comes front and center. And then we do other work as necessary. Following next, kind of going clockwise on this slide, public service, which really flows out of that requirement to meet our legal needs, we have certain obligations just simply to uh interact with customers in order to conduct the work that we legally are required to do. And those two things just alone take up quite a lot of our time. And I'll talk a little bit more about kind of what some of the quantitative measures of those Activities are in a slide or two, but going through again Reporting and miscellaneous and so we have several different duties that relate to reporting that go to the state of Oregon that go to Metro and so forth and then I Summarize this is miscellaneous. The biggest part of that miscellaneous is managing the historic preservation program because we have CLG with the state of Oregon to do so. So we are legally obligated to do some of those things. We also have a lot of other things. Our department supports the Economic Development Committee and all sorts of other things. We are supporting the city's nascent urban renewal program and all sorts of other things. So MISC, I probably should have underlined MISC, but just emphasis on it. And then lastly, what we're here to talk about tonight is the Long Range Planning Program. And so our goal here is in line with our overall public service mission, which is to help create a vibrant community here in West Linn. All right, so some statistics, and before your eyes glaze over, I'll just kind of keep it pretty high level, but there's a lot going on in the slide because there's a lot that we do. Probably the biggest and most impactful statistic that I saw when I pulled these out was the 40 development applications because that basically means, especially when you think about holidays and days off, that's basically one development application a week. And some of those development applications are quite complex, whereas some are relatively simple, but even the simple ones are still fairly time consuming. And then we have all sorts of other wonderful things that we do that are basically often offshoots of those development review applications, building permits, pre-application conferences to set them up, so on and so forth. And then specific to 2025, which is what the full year that these statistics were available for, the planning department worked on four, which is an unusually high number of long-range planning projects. So the waterfront vision plan, which was adopted by council, changes due to the state's CFAC requirements, the housing production strategy, and then a lot of work on Vision 43, which is still in process. A quick note about framing our future. So again, this is not for the council who knows very well what framing our future is, but it's for those people who are yet in the audience and then for those people watching online. Just to emphasize that, again, if you consider the wide range of services our department is able to provide for just over 1% of the overall general fund, which is already a pretty small amount of money, $0.13 of every dollar that taxpayers pay, I think that's important to recognize when we talk about the conversation and particularly as we get into the docket, which will be partly a discussion about what are the great things that we're able to do, but there's also going to be a discussion of what are the things that we're not able to do. So before we dive into the actual docket itself, I just wanted to emphasize the council priorities. So this process of creating the council priorities is typically done through the council retreat, which happens at the first part of each calendar year. I would consider it effectively a parallel process to the docket in the sense that it is developed on its own. It certainly considers the planning process. uh capacity and existing work plan in its development but of course changes to the council party certainly would ultimately shape and inform the work that is planned in the docket and so this year the two that are relevant to the docket is the waterfront vision plan implementation which we're working on currently and then the vision 43 project which we're moving towards the finish line coming up here shortly So a word just about the planning docket itself. It's not at all unusual that planning departments throughout the state of Oregon would have some form of work plan, whether it's formal, informal. Sometimes councils look at them. Sometimes it's just a guiding document that they have. Westland is unique. We have it actually required in our code, and we have specific parameters that are attached to that in the code. So the basics are that it says what it is, which is pretty obvious. The Long-range planning work program so comp plan community development code zoning map amendments. It's For the specific year in which the docket is being set It notes anyone can request it that the Planning Commission is the body that proposes changes and makes suggestions on prioritization of the projects on the docket And then the council can set the docket. It's not expressly required to, although I understand it typically does year to year. And then kind of an escape clause, if you will, the council can then request projects at any time or change the docket even outside of the formal annual docketing process. So as John alluded to for this next docket year, I've proposed slight tweaks to the structure a little bit of the plan. It's not changed the actual underlying projects in the plan whatsoever, but it just creates a little bit of a different look and a little bit of a different structure. And as I'll talk about on the next slide, a rubric or a lens through which we've viewed the projects in order to present them to you all. So we have a one year work plan, which is a renewed focus on essentially what the docket is calling for in the CDC. So we're looking specifically at this year. And um again because of the fact that we do our projects and we know what our uh scope or our universe of possible is based on our budget we're proposing to do that looking through the end of the budget year. Um and then in line with the previous iterations of the docket there is an appendix of unprioritized projects and so each of those projects has a brief summary of the action that might be needed to move it from the unprioritized list onto the prioritized list. It assumes in all cases that of course funding and staffing would be necessary and so these are kind of the other pieces of the puzzle that might need to be added in order to make that project viable. And then it also reiterates the council's exception path for urgent items. So as I mentioned, the rubric that is being applied or lens that's being applied to the docket for this year is a prioritization rubric and so starting at the top we have mandated or compliance. So projects that have either a deadline that works required to do in state law. So example of that was that the council in the past year had consideration of the metro town center boundaries and so we were required by state law to adopt them by a certain deadline. And so that project bumped up in priority because of that. or if we had a project that had a legal risk associated with that, say that we had a piece of code that we couldn't just simply apply state law directly and that we were out of compliance in a way that created a legal and financial risk for the city, then that would raise it up in priority on the docket. And then secondarily, and of course important, funding readiness, so we need to either have appropriated budget or some way of obtaining a grant to fund the project, and then in concert with that staff capacity. And then lastly, you know, assuming that all of those things are equal and perhaps we may not be able to do all things that perhaps once we have the mandated things out of the way, if we have multiple things that we have funding readiness and capacity to do, then we look to council for direction. on how best to prioritize those multiple options. And then lastly, which is an important factor, is we have dependencies in sequencing. So projects that depend on work from another project. So for example, the waterfront vision implementation, we of course needed to finish the visioning before we could move to the implementation phase. Um and then lastly this is a high level summary of the docket results and then I'll actually show the docket itself on the next page. So just to recap we've got the legally required um tier two incorporates what we have funding and capacity for so there are projects that are ongoing and resourced. Tier three is a subsect of that which is not started and not resourced, but they're potential projects. And then there's an appendix which has the unprioritized projects, which means that they're potential future projects if the condition that is identified in the appendix can be met to bring it off of the appendix. And then a couple of future considerations which we can talk about at the end of the presentation which the planning commission received favorably is to realign the docket presentation schedule. Historically the docket has been presented around now late spring early summer and so I'm proposing to um make it uh happen at the basically the latter part of the calendar year so like fall-ish um so that it matches the budget cycle so that we can get through the docket and then understand um how to inform the the budget so that we make sure that we have the money lined up rather than the other way around that we're saying oh we have money and now we're trying to set the docket. And then another future consideration, which we can again talk about at the end of the presentation, is an opportunity to review older, unprioritized projects. Some of them are a decade old, so do we want to just leave them on the appendix, or is there an opportunity to prune a little bit? All right. So here is the docket itself. And so I'm going to do a little bit of orienting because there's a lot going on with this, especially if you have not looked at it before. So the first thing to notice is just that it is organized by fiscal quarters. And so if If that's not your language, which it's not mine necessarily, I'm thinking Councilor Bright is good at this, but maybe others of us are like me and not so much. There's a legend at the lower right that explains what the different quarters mean in calendar months. But again, this aligns with our budget. And so I think it's important to have parity between the two. So that's the first part. And then the second part is the colors. And so that's green, yellow, and red. And what those signify are basically levels of staff intensity or how much staffing is going to be required to do the things. And so like a light touch might be, you know, we're attending project management teams, but the consultant is doing all of the background gathering and data analysis and other things. And we're just basically checking in with them to see what's going on. yellow might be a a project set up where we have deliverables and not just checking the work of the consultant where the city actually has to do things and then red is typically where we're in the adoption schedule or maybe we're doing a particularly intense moment of public engagement where there's a lot of work involved from staff in addition to the consultant itself And then the A in LA, what that means is the A is when the planned adoption of the thing is, and then L signifies that that's a legal or mandatory deadline associated with it. Um, and so, uh, A couple of examples of that there are that the under legally required the top item the zoning and code changes are it's basically because we have a requirement under the housing production strategy to adopt those projects by a certain deadline and we have a budget. that's associated with the same deadline. And so you find L and A there. Whereas conversely, if you look under the top item for scheduled resource, division 43, the A is quarter one of this fiscal year, or excuse me, the next fiscal year, this fall, essentially. There's not a legal requirement to adopt it by that point.

And so it's just a planned adoption there with an A.

And so, again, just kind of recapping the rubric itself. So the top band is legally required projects. And so you see the projects that are mainly with the plus and the asterisk next to them, which indicate that they're related to housing production strategy oriented projects. And then the asterisk also indicates projects that have grant funding rather than budget funding associated with them. uh to help orient orient you there. Um couple of other things just to note is that we have the FEMA model code we know that that will be legally required obviously with the state of the current federal administration we don't really have a great uh sense for when that's gonna be but we know that will come back on and so I think that it makes sense just to leave it as a flag for something that we will have to do at some point. Um we have a couple of unscheduled unresourced projects um the annual code cleanup which we have hoping to try to align with the vision 43 project so the intent there would be to take some um, non, uh, policy oriented or policy neutral code cleanup items that we've identified over the course of the year and pair those with the adoption efficiencies of doing, uh, a new code update in the chapter pertaining to Hive 43. and then um we had talked about this at a previous recent council meeting there had been a request from council to have a work session discussion of public use zone and so you see that in this quarter quarter four this fiscal year as a green because we're going to come back in july with a work session item and then whether or not that the scope of that expands on the work plan will be determinate of the council direction coming out of that work session. So it's just listed as green, a fairly light effort for right now. And then the last thing I'll note on this plan is that transportation system plan update we've identified as a later but potential need for the future. The transportation system plan at this point is Or by 2028 will be several regional transportation plan cycles out of date. So the RTP has been updated two times already since our transportation system plan was last updated. So at some point we just get pretty far out of compliance. and need to update it. And so that's the flag for that one. And that, to some extent, essentially aligns with the potential opportunity for funding with ODOT's grant program that they have to fund transportation system plans. So that was a lot of information. I have some questions and discussion after this, but I'd love any feedback or questions at this point.

Oh, Councilor Groner. Councilor Groner has a comment. Thank you.

You have an item, annual code cleanup. I'm wondering about the tree code. Does that fall within your rubric, or is that the Parks Department, or new developments?

That's a great question. So the code cleanup are just very small things, like where it's essentially, if we've identified, for example, There are provisions in state law relating to childcare facilities, and our code is out of date with regard to those. We have some old definitions there, and so we're just changing them. It's not a policy shift. It's a code update intended to gain compliance, but it doesn't fit into any other bucket. There are some much larger programs, and I didn't include it in the presentation, but it's in your packet materials. The tree cleanup is one of those projects that's identified in the appendix of unprioritized projects. So it's been identified at some point by a council member, a planning commissioner, a community member as a project that is desired, but it has no funding attached to it, no staffing, and it has some other dependencies that I don't recall off the top of my head that are listed in that document that would be necessary for it to... move forward. I think the thing I'll also just emphasize while we're on this slide is that, um, if it's not readily apparent from the color, we don't have a lot of additional capacity to take on new projects. This is pretty maxed out right now. And so The message that I gave reluctantly, because I don't like giving bad news to the Planning Commission, who had questions similar to some of the other unresourced, you know, unprioritized projects that were in that Appendix A, is that really, in order to take something from the Appendix and put on the work plan, We would need council direction to pull something off of this work plan. And many of these things, as you can see, are legally required. And so we can't. I mean, really what that would look like is it would look like us being told to halt on the waterfront plan and to table that for a couple of years to take some of those items like the tree code or other things like that and tackle them, quite frankly.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you for that. Thanks for the great presentation and for the, I would call it a refresh of the planning docket because for those who have never read it, which maybe many community members have not, it's actually in the agenda packet, but it's a long list of all kinds of projects and it's kind of confusing to get to the actual point of what are we working on and what's happening. So this is a great refresh. Councillor Bonnington, please.

Regarding that appendix A with those unprioritized projects, I think this is a good thing for us to all flag. Several of them are what I have identified as potentially revenue-generating items that we currently do not have generating revenue for us. And I don't think... anyone believes that Salem is going to stop sending us new planning laws that need implementation and will take up more and more planning staff time. So we're having an opportunity cost issue here. And I think in the next legislative session, this should be a lobbying priority of ours, that if there's going to be planning tasks coming our way, they need to be attached to funding. Maybe that's unreasonable. I don't know. But Seems to me.

There's an issue there. Great point, counselor, and I think for some of them we have gotten some grant funding. I've seen and there's some that we haven't, so we'll have to keep fighting for that. Always no unfunded mandates. Channeling my inner Denise McGriff, right?

Council President, yes, I will say that there were some legislators at the C4 retreat and I made that point. because it is important that cities that are being asked to do things are also given funding or assistance where appropriate to do them. But yes, I agree that the list of unprioritized projects on Appendix A is very significant to be aware of.

There was a letter that we got a few weeks ago or maybe back in April that I'm looking at related to the senior housing facility. Is that My understanding is we already permit those in the city limits. So is this kind of another unfunded project or have we talked to these folks and kind of?

So I'll talk a little bit about that. I have a couple more slides if it's okay.

Oh, please go ahead.

To go. So just again to highlight because we talked about it and so it's a good segue here. This disclaimer is part of the unprioritized project list. So because the unprioritized project list was so long, I didn't want to put it all on slides for you. So it's in the packet and I have it here pulled up if there's any that we want to discuss individually happy to do that. But again I think that just emphasizing that each project has an action or actions that are attached to it that would be conditions precedent needed to lift it off of the unprioritized list in addition to staffing and funding and then just kind of giving a little bit of an explanation of why these projects are here. so forth so that is the appendix and then i did want to share with you the planning commission feedback on the docket because i think that is one of the important and useful pieces of the docket process that is laid out in the code so overall the planning commission did recommend that the council set the planning docket as proposed and as i mentioned did support realigning the timing of the docket to the fall or essentially quarter one of the fiscal year. And then there's individual planning commissioners, not necessarily consensus or vote as a whole planning commission provided some feedback regarding some of the unprioritized items. So we had interest in prioritizing updates to chapters 28 and 32, which are natural resource area chapters. As Councilor Groner mentioned, interest in auditing and updating the tree code in the CDC. And so that is separate from the tree code in the muni code. That's tree removal that pertains to development review as opposed to post-development review, which is in the muni code. Interest in updating the sign code chapter. was interest in revisiting the previous review of the community engagement in the land use process recommended by the cci the one thing i will note there that i did share with the planning commission is that there was in the flurry of activity from the legislature a requirement that the i believe it was lcdc which would then designate the department of land conservation development to actually implement this but essentially to update Goal 1 related to community involvement by 2027. So I think there will be something more coming out of that and so there potentially will be something to respond to in that regards. That may be something that does actually itself pull that item in particular up off of the unprioritized list. And then, just globally, an interest in increasing staff, so going back to our framing our future conversation, to be able to address more of the unprioritized items and moving docket consideration earlier. There was, which was not part of the docket, but this was a conversation that came out of some of our previous land use work with the Planning Commission, an interest in taking existing neighborhood plans, which are by and large kind of satellite to the comprehensive plan, but the stated intent of many of the neighborhood plans was that they would be implemented in essentially some sort of local planning overlay through the community development code, but that was never a process or timeline or funding source was never identified for that process. And so the planning commission had asked that staff return with additional information about that topic. And so we'll do so within the next couple of months. um so that could be something that potentially makes its way back onto the docket under the unprioritized projects and then to the mayor's question so the planning commission was asked to consider the code request for what's what we in our code would consider a nursing home which is separate from some of the other types of care facility arrangements that are allowed so it is allowed in some zones but it's not nursing home as a use is not allowed in residential zones. They were specifically looking at the R10 residential zoning district. And the request was for it to be either permitted or conditional. And the memo shows different jurisdictions typically do allow it as one or the other in surrounding communities. The Planning Commission discussed it, but they didn't reach a consensus. And so they did not have a specific recommendation on this request. think my thought on this was and i'd hope to have feedback on this was that if this was something the council was interested in considering we could the option that i saw that most naturally fit to pursue it further would be to get feedback from the state and see if this is potentially an action that would be related to housing production that is It's obviously a nursing home is a place that people live. And so is this a form of housing? I hope to get feedback. I had asked a couple of weeks ago, but I have not gotten feedback from the state yet on that. But that would be the most logical next step is that if there is council consensus to explore this further, we could do so. If there's not, then we can just let it stop here. And so that's one of the questions that we can discuss. And then I have a couple others on the slide. So the first of which is whether or not there's any recommended additions or subtractions to or from the unprioritized list or other changes that you saw just in the overall docketing process itself. And then if none, then the option would be to set the docket for next year as proposed and as recommended by the planning commissions or with additional modifications. And then I would say separate from it, not necessarily part of that motion, but to direct staff to further explore the feasibility of including nursing home as a permitted or conditional use. And then just not necessarily something they need formal direction on, but if you have any feedback or thoughts about realigning the timing of the docket process, that would be appreciated as well. And that does conclude my presentation. Thank you for bearing with me through it.

Can you keep that slide up so we can look at that? Yes. Maybe we can start with the easier question, which is the future consideration on the thought on realigning the docket presentation to the latter part of the calendar year to match the budget cycle. Anybody? have any objection to that, or is there consensus on that? Councillor Bright.

I think that's a great idea. Rather than say, what piece of the budget did we get and what can we do with it? It's like, these are the priorities, the things that we need to do. Is there a way to budget for that? So I agree definitely with moving, realigning that to the budget cycle.

Thank you. I'm seeing nodding, any nodding heads or shake of the head for a no, objection? Okay, everybody seems to be giving a consensus, so we can effectuate that change, and then I suppose we can just talk about the planning docket now, and then we'll get to that nursing home issue in just a moment, but... I'm hearing from staff that there's not capacity to really add things without taking things off and all the things on the list are really important and I think this gets to the heart of the framing our future conversation about where we're going to go as a community going forward with our staffing because I think if you ask the community there's a lot of projects on the list that they'd love to see accomplished but we just don't have the resources to do it such as the tree code issue that always comes up from different development applications so I'M SUPPORTIVE OF THE PLANNING DOCKET AS IS, GIVEN THE CONSTRAINTS AND APPRECIATE ALL THE WORK OF THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT, TO BE HONEST. YOU MAY BE 1% OF THE BUDGET, BUT YOU ACCOUNT FOR A LOT OF THE WORK THAT THE CITY DOES. YOU'RE MORE THAN 1% IN OUR HEARTS. THANK YOU. COUNCILOR BREIT, DO YOU HAVE A COMMENT? SORRY, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD RAISE YOUR HAND.

Thank you, Mayor. I was just going to say I agree with you to go ahead with the planning docket as proposed. And even if there's grant funding for things, that still requires staff time to manage those. So I think we are really constrained by the capacity of the department.

Any other thoughts on the Council President? I see no other thoughts, so you can make a motion to set the planning docket, and then we'll visit the nursing home issue.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I move to set the 2026 planning docket as recommended by the Planning Commission.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to set the 2026 planning docket as recommended by the Planning Commission. Any discussion from Council? I see none, so we can call the roll on that topic.

Councillor Bright?

Yes.

Councillor Baumgartner?

Yes.

Councillor Groener? Yes. Councillor Brownington? Yes. Mayor Bidensowski?

Yes. So this docket is set. Congratulations. Thank you for the support. And then lastly, just to touch on that other issue, the nursing home feasibility of amending the CDC to include nursing home as a permitted or conditional use in the R10 zone. We might need a little bit more of a briefing on that, particularly as you know the pros and cons and kind of what other communities do. That's where my head is initially at. But it's something where I'm open to exploring. We certainly want senior housing.

Yeah, and I think maybe just to clarify, to make it more helpful for council to react to, I think that unless this feels like a hard no to council, I'm happy to explore it further and then give council. And Planning Commission also, I think, struggled with wanting more detail. And so unless it's something that you're just opposed to moving forward with, then I think it's something that, at least for the time being, we can put a relatively light amount of effort into and roll along further, and then if we get to a point where it's going to require a significant amount more resources or a significant decision point, we can return at that point. Is that helpful?

That's very helpful, and I know some hands went up, and we'll hear if anybody has a strong no. Councillor Bond, we'll start with you.

It's sort of a complicated question because having seen the potential impact that these things could have on our friends at Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue, I do at least wonder if they should be included in that conversation. But at the same time, it appears to be just based on that letter, strictly memory care. And if that does somehow count towards our housing requirement, then it's probably worth looking into as a matter of efficiency if we're going to have to do housing related work anyway. So no, not a hard no. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Groner, please.

Yeah, I agree. I'm certainly not a hard no, but I would like to understand the pros and cons of that before I make any decisions.

Absolutely. Thank you. And, Councillor President, I think she turned her mic on, so she must have a thought, and then we'll pose it out.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I'm interested in what, if any, definition that we need to be getting clarification on when it says nursing home. So you don't have to tell me. I'm just saying when we do put this language in.

Nursing home is the definition we currently use in our definitions. And so I pulled that because that's the use that exists in other zones that most closely matches what the request was. But I think that that's a fair flag that we would want to develop that as we go and confirm that that is accurate.

Thank you.

I agree with what the City Council said in your proposed path forward. Okay, Councillor Bright, please jump in.

Just something that occurred to me is we're being asked, do we want to look into whether it can be a permitted or conditional use? Would another option be to rezone the property to a zoning that does allow it? And is that way more difficult than, say, just allowing it as a conditional use?

I think that's certainly possible. I think that because it's a quasi-judicial rezone, it would have required the applicant to do so, and so their request was that the council consider rewriting the code. And so that is something that we can certainly, depending on where the chips fall with regard to looking at this generally, that may be an outcome that we say there's not support among... You know, there's not going to be a favorable recommendation for planning commission. The council doesn't feel like there's enough here. Your other option would be to go through that other process.

Thank you. That makes sense.

Great.

It all makes sense at the city of Westland. So with that, we can... can conclude the planning docket discussion and thank the community development director nice to have a community development director now mister copper and thank you for attending the c four retreat as well here you went with council president and hopefully you enjoyed the uh... basically full day of festivities very much so thank you and uh... thank you so well with that we can turn to the city manager report

Thank you, Mayor. I know you've all been eagerly waiting, and I will not disappoint. I do have a report. First of all, as always, upcoming meetings. Next meeting is a work session next week on the 16th. This is going to feature quite a bit of public safety recognition, not just our staff, but potentially a community member as well. We're very excited to present that. We'll also have an update on council priorities. Maybe we'll add one more thing to the agenda, but we're still working on that. The next meeting after that is July 7th. We'll have the West State of the District presentation from Mr. Geist, I believe. Discussion of Westland housing production strategy, so continuing forward a piece that you heard a little bit about tonight, and potentially discussion of the Code of conduct question for city facilities and buildings. So that'll be a good work session. A couple of pieces of news. One is a super exciting good piece of news. You may recall that we submitted a request to Congresswoman Janelle Bynum for congressional funding of a stormwater project. down in the Bolton neighborhood, Buck Street. That request was for $1.25 million, and we were notified by the Congresswoman that we have been proposed to receive $747,000. So in this condition, in this budget environment, it's actually a pretty good win. So we're really pleased that Congresswoman Bynum has been working on our account. Now, the important thing to note is that that bill will be the subject of a quite intensive and probably very complex process in Washington, D.C. You know how appropriations work. There may not even be any community funding requests that are granted. We don't know what will happen. But we are on the list, and it's the House-approved list. So, should it move forward, go to discussion with the Senate, final amounts, but the bill has to pass in the first place. But it's still really good news. So, if you run into the Congresswoman, perhaps in West Linn at an upcoming date, please thank her.

I actually did. I actually did happen to run into her at the parade when I marched in the Rose Parade at the reception beforehand. several Congress people were there and I thanked her for supporting the project. That's great. And I didn't know we had already been approved. Now, Councillor Buntington has something to share about the upcoming market, I think.

Yes. So her office has been doing mobile office hours, which I think is pretty cool, and they've had a really good response from that. So since she stated that she was a fan of old sparkly, I got in touch with them and had a discussion to see if maybe they'd like to come do their mobile office hours right next to Old Sparkly at a Wednesday market. And they will be apparently doing that on the 24th, potentially. We'll wait to see if there's an official announcement.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, that's great news. I'm glad that Congresswoman's supporting our stormwater project.

It is great news. Speaking of legislation, I just want to mention that the mayor and I met with our lobbyist, Doug Riggs, recently. You may recall that we wanted to be, there's two big pieces of work that we're trying to complete before the legislative session. One is to have some interim outreach to our delegation, state and federal, but really primarily talking about state right now. uh, while they're not intensively at work, we want to be meeting with them, building relationships. Some of you have been working on that. Um, obviously we know, uh, our state representative quite well, uh, and she's here in town and, um, We have a good relationship, but we are also working to develop a legislative strategy for the next session. So what are Westland's interests? What are the opportunities looking like for the next session? And how can Westland advocate for its needs? So Doug and I will be returning with a draft legislative strategy that the council can be working on. And so that we want to get way ahead of the curve this year and be able to be working effectively in Salem. And I'm pretty excited for that piece of work. So Mayor, I appreciate your time and energy on that one as well. Freeman our future you continue to get weekly updates from our staff I think the big event of last week was the state of the city event which has been mentioned several times but I know our staff working on that project really appreciated the time and energy that went in on your behalf to. advocating for the project, explaining what it is, and bringing out various pieces of it. We're going to be ruthlessly exploiting some video clips related to the state of the city for public education related to this. So I think we got a lot of good material out of that. And in my conversations after the event ended, i heard a lot of people saying i learned a bunch about what this is why you're doing it and what it means and so i think it was a really good step forward it's really going to be a transition point for us on this project moving into some of the harder discussions about trade-offs about priorities and about the community's interests in achieving certain project and program levels so i think it's a really good moment for us and i appreciate your your time on it The only last thing I want to say is congratulations to Westland Baseball and softball. It's not often that one school wins state titles in both of those events on the same day. It's super cool. We were down in Kaiser for the baseball game, which was really exciting, went to extra innings. Wesleyan ended up winning that one and then later in the day the softball team down in Eugene so super cool might be that we could think about some sort of recognition of the how could I do it the programs here at the City Council or a letter or something so I think it's just a really cool thing among many achievements by the athletes and the academics at Wesleyan this year so it's just just a fun feel-good event That is all I have. Oh, there's one more thing. I'm sorry. If you were stuck in traffic out here on Salama Road earlier today, we had one lane closed. There was an irrigation problem in the median that our crews were out fixing. You may have seen a few Westland trucks there. We had to flag this intersection and... But I think they got it mostly resolved, if I understand. There's a tree in the median that grew into our irrigation lines and cracked it. And so you may have noticed some of the medians on Salamo, again, are a little bit maybe behind the curve on maintenance. We are transitioning to a different contractor on that. And Eric and Matt and others, Wade, are working on getting that contract in place so that Salamo continues to look good. uh like the way we would want it uh we definitely i get phone calls when it doesn't and uh so i just want you to know that it is being worked on and there should be some things happening really soon on salamo so uh that is what i have uh if there's nothing else for me uh no um so that's that's that's good for me until the 16th well we would love to recognize and host the two teams if they would be interested maybe we can connect with

I don't know who that would be, the coaches or something, maybe in July or August or September, something like that, because that'd be awesome to do that, because that's a pretty big accomplishment, both programs winning at the same time. That's never happened before. So, Council President has a question, and then we'll go to Councillor Bonnington.

First of all, just to clarify, is there a plan to close Tanner Road, Tandler Road Drive?

Thank you, Mayor. Council President, there is no plan to close Tandler Drive. There is a development application that has been discussed. It's been in pre-application phase. that potentially could include a realignment to a new landing spot on Blanketship Road, but there are no plans to close that road. I don't think that would work very well for the city's transportation system.

Thank you. There seems to be some misunderstanding around that. The other question I had was maybe a request, and maybe this has already been done, to notice the general public about the curb shaving project that's happening on Willamette Falls Drive, just so that people who see that happening and might have questions will have that answered.

in some kind of a newsletter little blurb i think that's a great idea thank you we will do that thank you council president two two great items to uh address i've heard there's some signs going up saying don't close tandler drive nobody's closing it i'll look in the cameras nobody's closing tandler drive So, Councilor Bonington, you had a comment as well.

Oh, I would just say that if we're going to try to recognize those two teams, we have an embarrassment of riches. And there was also the women's or girls basketball at West Lennon High. And I'm pretty sure there's probably another team that won a championship that I can't remember off the top of my head. But since that one was particularly recent, we might want to include them.

I don't want to be prejudiced.

A city recognition event. We'll invite the whole high school. All the kids that got fours and fives on the AP. We'll have an assembly.

There's a lot of good news, and I appreciate that.

I've thought of this in the past and talked about inviting a baseball team, but it's like, how do you draw the line? So we can invite all the three teams and then start a tradition of doing that because they are the best in the community. With that, we've been meeting for a while. It's 8.07 p.m. I appreciate the council's service, the staff's service, and Kevin in the back for streaming the meetings live and our bailiffs for even covering the state of the city. Thank you for being there. It meant a lot to us. With that, we will adjourn until next Tuesday. See you then.

We're adjourned.