Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

All right.

Good morning, everybody. I'm going to open up this Yamil County Board of Commissioners formal session at 10 a.m. on July 9th. And I'd asked Ken to lease in the flights. Okay. Thank you for that. C is our calendar session. Is there any changes that need to be made? None. None, okay. D is public comment. If you're here to make a general public comment, fill out one of the cards in the back, the tan cards. If you're online, raise your virtual hand. You're here to give comment on an agenda item. If you're here to give comment on an agenda item, we can call on you when you get there. Go ahead and promote. We have nobody in person, so go ahead and promote the first one that you see there.

Morgan? Yes.

Name and address, please, and then go ahead with your comment.

Yes, my name is Morgan McLaughlin. My residential address is 10325 Southwest Cormorant Drive, Beaverton, Oregon. I am the executive director of the Willamette Valley Wineries Association, and a large percentage of our memberships are based in Yamhill County. My comment today is more of a series of questions. We were alerted yesterday.

Morgan, I'm going to pause you there for a second. Is this on an agenda item?

Yes.

Okay. We'll call on you when we get to that agenda item.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay.

No worries. No worries. Who's the other one online?

H. Knutson. I would imagine she's probably agenda item as well.

Paige, are you ready to comment on an agenda item?

Yes, I am. Can you hear me?

Yep. Which agenda item are you here for?

It is, now I got to look for your agenda. Let's see here.

I1.

Yes, sir.

We will call on you when we get to item I1.

Okay, thank you.

All right, thanks. Is there anybody for general public comment? Seeing none, OK, I'm going to move on. These presentations, we're going to get a presentation from Brian Young and get a wildfire update from him. You're up.

Morning, gentlemen.

Morning. Good morning. Son, it is. Hello. Thank you for having me, Brian Young, Yamhill County Emergency Manager. I'm here today to talk about pre-fire season in Yamhill County, what we've done to prepare for it, and kind of what some of the outlook is like. And if there's any questions on fire-specific stuff, Chief Steve Warden, Fire Defense Board Chief, is here to talk about anything fire-related, since I'm not a fire expert. He is. There is a photo of me with a fire hose at one point in my career, right?

Yes.

Okay.

And a sergeant's uniform.

Living the dream. My boyhood dream of being a fireman. So cool. So as you can see, I will just point out that this backdrop, the photo in there is from a 2016 fire up outside east of east of McMinnville. So it is Yamhill County fire, non-destructive, but it's just kind of a focal point that wildland fires do happen in Yamhill County. Good. Next slide. I think it's important that we start out by looking at some of the weather conditions, if you will, without doing a super deep dive. I'm not a meteorologist, but the experts are saying we are in an abnormally dry area. Our time this week, the U.S. Drought Monitor puts most of Yamhill County in the yellow, which is abnormally dry, with a small chunk you can see on the bottom right of the county that is in a moderate drought. I don't know what that's going to look like over time, but July is the driest month of our season, of our year. So even something like a tenth of an inch of rain, if we get that, isn't going to affect any drought conditions or improve them at all. So we'll have to see where that goes. The Climate Prediction Center does talk about the possibility of a very strong El Nino this year. Don't know, you know, without being a meteorologist, don't know what that means other than it does affect weather patterns up here. And we've seen those indications, similar indications, I think it was in 1996, 97, when we had that same strength in El Nino. I'm happy to stop at each slide if there's any questions regarding that, or we can gather that at the end. It's up to you. Okay, so I'll continue with that. Next slide. Anything fire related, we always wanna talk about the safety and security of the general public, right? The residents that are in Yamhill County. We have recently implemented a new software program. The brand name on it is Genesis. And what it is, it's a program that allows us to break the county into zones, evacuation zones, if you will. And through those zones, The company pulls public data through census data, open source data that's available on the internet, much similar to when the communication companies supply public data to the 911 centers. Well, these companies aggregate that information and look at it. And each zone actually comes with an estimate of demographics, right? So the number of people that are there during the day versus the number of people at night, vehicles day and night. So it kind of gives the response and planning teams an idea of what kind of impact an evacuation in that area would look like. So it's a good use of a planning tool. One of the nice things, and we'll talk about it in just a little bit, is there's an API. I won't pretend to know what that means. It's computer talk that two programs can talk to each other. And what Everbridge, or I'm sorry, what Genesis does is it now auto-populates those zones into our alert warnings and notification system, Yamhill County Alerts. Again, more on that in a few minutes, but it's kind of a neat way that those programs augment each other in the sharing of data and allows us to get messages out to the public in a quick and efficient manner. We want to make sure that the evacuees know what they're facing. As part of any evacuation, resources are critical. How do we get the message to the people that are up there? We can certainly send the electronic messages, but any evacuation requires boots on the ground. You just have to do that. It's a check and a balance because some people may miss or disregard a message, but this is a way for folks to really make sure for us to make sure that people are aware that they are in an evacuation zone. As such, Search and Rescue has trained a cadre of people within their organization to assist law enforcement and fire crews in those evacuations. So that's just that added staffing that, that allows us to get those messages out quick. You know, and you look at some of the search and rescue technologies that they have in response as simple as something like an e-bike, right? They've got an e-bike program within search and rescue and they can cover ground in a hurry. And it's, it's, it's a great, great tool that, that they've utilized. Our search and rescue team has just done outstanding things in coordination, not only in in the county, but in the region and the state. So pretty excited that they're going to be a part of that. Furthermore, Oregon State Sheriff's Association has developed training materials in concert with or in consultation with the Search and Rescue Act. Thank you. Advisory Council had a brain cramp there, forgot what AC meant. Advisory Council, Search and Rescue Advisory Council through the Oregon State Sheriff's Association to help kind of standardize those procedures across the state. So in other words, we have something large kickoff here in the county and we need to bring search and rescue resources from other counties to conduct or assist in conducting evacuations. we're kind of on the same page, right? We kind of know what they're doing already. They know what we're doing and we can get better coordination. So looking forward to see that program progress and as it gets vetted out and our details get vetted out and we get actual deployments underneath us. So when we have evacuation, some of the things that we struggle as community planners and response agencies is where do we put these people? We can look back at the Shehalem, the 2020 Shehalem Mountain Bald Peak fire. And, you know, when people had to be evacuated off the hill, in that case, a lot of the pressures, the evacuation pressures were alleviated by livestock owners who were prepared. and were able to really just get out of the area to someplace else. You know, they had a plan set up, a plan in place for them to get themselves and their livestock out. And those who didn't could retreat or respond to the fairgrounds where we had a good cadre of folks coordinating the effort on the ground to bring in people not only from Yamhill County, but we had people from Scott DeRue, MD, contiguous counties and even counties that that aren't connected to yam hill county so it was it was a great effort from a guy I guess a Western state perspective right we were able to help those folks out so. Scott DeRue, MD, The other thing we struggle about a space, where do we put them right, we were able to put animals and livestock in those areas that are designed for livestock, but what do we do with people. So we've worked and we've got great relationships with all the school districts across the county. And not to put a burden or responsibility on them for anything, but quite honestly, they've got space in parking lots, right? So we've kind of developed these, not agreements, but understandings that in the event of an evacuation, where do we put those people? Hey, 2020, a phone call to Newburgh, We set up Newberg parking lot for Newberg High School as a temporary evacuation point. It's a place for those folks to come down and get further information on where they need to go. At that point, we didn't know if it was going to be a sheltering event or something that was going to be short-lived where they can return maybe the next morning or something like that. And that's when the churches stepped in. We developed kind of something called a comfort station. Whenever you name something a shelter, it comes with certain connotations and requirements that you need to have in place. And this really wasn't that sheltering environment. So we were able to steer them towards the churches just to get them out of the elements in a place for coffee, restrooms, things like that. So it worked out great. We do have, for evacuations, we do have... Partnerships with the state, the Office of Resilience and Emergency Management, or ORM, and that's through the Oregon Department of Human Services. They're really the mass care people, the ESF-6, the Essential Support Function 6. Mass care, how do we help people? How do we shelter them? How do we feed them? All that good stuff during a disaster. So they've been a great partner in that. I think it goes without saying, anytime we think about sheltering, what pops into your mind, a big Red Cross, right? The Red Cross is also available for that to assist in any sheltering capacities. And they've been great partners, had recent meetings with them. They've conducted several assessments, shelter assessments at several schools across the county because, hey, I mentioned schools again, another one with large auditoriums, things that we're sheltering can take place. So again, schools are a huge partner in any evacuation. And quite honestly, we've got great school districts in the county. Next slide. How do we reach the people? Well, this is a snapshot or a screenshot of our Yamhill County alerts. All the dots that you see on there represent a contact path. The red is I believe vendor supply data and the green is people who have opt in. I could have that backwards and I apologize for that, but all of that to say that we've got multiple 14,900 and something over almost 14,500 individual unique contact paths to reach, reach folks, right? We encourage people and we saw a spike during the 2020 fires. We encourage people to sign up early and often for that. We don't, spam. We don't sell the information. We don't do any of that. This is strictly for emergency communications for the general public to take action that we as first responders want them to do, whether that's a shelter in place, evacuation, those types of things. So it's a good tool for us. And as I mentioned earlier, those zones from Genesis, they now auto-populate into the Everbridge environment. So we don't have to physically go out and waste time. And I say waste time, but take the time to draw a map on the, on the page and make sure we've got it right. Nope. The zone's in there. We know it's in there and it, it, um, it, uh, kind of passes or passes the test of the WIA or wireless emergency alerting, um, requirements of not having, you know, certain, certain, uh, data points, if you will, too many data points. So they're all geared up and ready to go for those notifications. One thing we also did in the notification group, and it's an ongoing process, And one that we will include more, but we've set up a few groups in there, groups from senior leadership to health and human services staff that we notified they're automatically included on any evacuation notification. That way, they might not be within that jurisdiction, but HHS might have a client or several clients in those evacuation zones that they want to be aware of. We saw that, and this came on the heels of the great propane disaster of County Fair last year. I think we all remember that and have nightmares. But they had several clients that were impacted by that evacuation zone. So the solution for that was notification to the leadership of HHS. And I think it's going to work great because then they can have better optics on what their clients what their client's needs are at the time. Let's go ahead and do the next slide. As with anything we talk about in Wildfire, we talk about infrastructure and communications and really the protection of those assets, those vital assets that allow us to do our job and communicate effectively with responding agencies, with boots on the ground, all that good stuff. So this picture here is a year, year and a half old, but this was our high heaven tower site a couple of years ago. And you'll notice on the far right is a tree overgrowing and it's kind of, or not overgrowing, but the tree that has grown up and its limbs have overhung the shelter where all the equipment is stored. You've got some grown up trees foliage around the fenced perimeter. On the far right, you can't really see it, but there's scotch broom that kind of semi-circles around the entire landing. Next slide. This kind of shows you the same, but just looking into the fence perimeter itself and that tree and just how big and large that tree was. I gave it away, I said was. So let's go ahead and do the next slide. Through efforts, the sheriff and I got together and we hired a crew to come out and remove several, several trees. We got public works cooperation to come out and partner and spray inside the fence perimeter to eliminate the overgrowth that was within the fence perimeter. And it really took care of, through mastication, a big piece of equipment that was on a pretty large piece of equipment up there, went around the entire area site and created a 50, 60 foot fire buffer. You know, so a lot of woody debris on the right there, but over time we'll get that managed. And I think there's, we could probably get some goats up there or something and shoot it down and, you know, see where that goes. Let's go ahead and do the next slide. This is where that tree was. There's a couple of trees that were taken down in here, those two up close, and then one a little bit further away. This property is owned by Yamhill County. We own that property. And I guess just splitting or maybe at the fence line of the perimeter is BLM. We rent that or have an agreement to occupy that space from the Bureau of Land Management. So we own everything down here on the right-hand side. I think it's one or two acres. But that just shows you how we opened it up and how long those trees have been up there. You can see the guy wire that comes off of that tower that we have nothing to do with. They had to cut around it. So it shows you how long those trees have been out there. So effectively, let's go ahead and do the next slide. You can see the scotch broom remnants where they were. I just wanted to show this as a visualization of what was pressing up against the fence. So effectively, we've created a 50-foot fire buffer. So we've better secured our main tower site in Yamhill County. And there's still more work to be done as with anything, but that ongoing maintenance is key. The sheriff and I spoke about this. It's not really necessarily a just for fire, but he and I have had some pretty good conversations regarding winter storms and the safety and security of the site itself. You know, and obviously ancillary or connecting to that would be the fire component. So I think we're in a good place. I encourage you to look up on YouTube Halls Ridge Fire, and you can see some great footage of a tower site that was impacted during the 2020, 2020, what was that, the Santiam Fire? Just outside of Detroit, there's a radio tower that's way up on a peak. You can see it. when you're driving through there but that thing was was pretty hammered by the the fire and it's it's a good visual on why we want to create a fire buffer around radio communication sites okay and next slide i'm almost done but wanted to throw this up there as of today the significant fire potential from the national interagency fire center puts us at little to no risk for significant fire. That's today. Who knows what it's going to be like at the end of July. into August, you know, that's going to be subject to change. This map, just like the U.S. Drought Monitor, is subject to change. I think we'll see some different colors, some moving of some lines. But as of today, right now, that's the risk that the National Interagency Fire Center puts us at. I do want to mention, before I turn it over to Steve or if you guys have any questions, one of the things, again, you can say, hey, that's my, if you want. I did have the opportunity to to attend a drill night a few weeks ago down at Amity Fire. Every year, the fire defense board for both Yamhill and Polk County and the fire agencies participate in a pre-season fire kickoff. They utilize this as a training. It's really kind of a cool thing. Both counties coming together, one location, same page kind of stuff. And they work their way through stations and whether it, how to, do something with hoses, how to do something here. I wasn't part of those because my job was to talk about the Ever, or not the Everbridge, the Genesis program, evacuation program in that drill. But mainly all of that is to say that our fire defense board and our fire agencies in Yamhill County are pretty mindful, not pretty mindful, they are very mindful of fire season and the impacts that it brings. And they take it very seriously. And they do these steps where you get not only paid staff, but our critical volunteer staff to come in and learn about these things. I just learned yesterday that we did send, Yamhill County did send one brush rig task force, which is four brush rigs and a tender to Sumner. Sumter. Sorry, not Sumner. That's somewhere else. You're closer the first time.

It's actually Greenhorn, if anybody knows where Greenhorn is, population three or four. It sounds like my kind of place. It's rural Baker and Grant County.

So that shows the preparation and also the partnership that Yamhill County Fire Agencies have at the statewide level. So it's a good program. And it shows if we have something large kick off here, please know. we'll be able to draw from those resources as well. So I think 2020 was an eye-opening year for a lot of folks and a lot of changes have been made, but I can't speak to all of those changes that have been made at the fire level, but they're paying attention to wildland fires more. So that's all I have unless you have any questions.

I do. Thanks, Sergeant. Thank you, Chief, for coming. We appreciate it. Question about the evacuation system that we sort of cobbled together last time. And it was really profound, the help that was given to people just because they had the fairgrounds and all the people who came with food and water and clothes. And it was great. And the animal care. What are some of the lessons learned and some of the things that we might do differently and increase our capacity and just sort of get ready in case that happens again?

Well, I can tell you, Gary Wertz and his team at the fairgrounds, they hit a home run in my mind. They took the lessons learned from 2020 and utilized that to purchase more barriers or I don't know what you'd call them gates, um, to, to be able to better pen more animals and pen animals that are similar. Like we're not going to put a horse with a cow and a, you know, whatever intermixing animals because of disease and things like that. So they've stepped up and they've, they've got a lot of provisions, um, you know, from wheelbarrows to muckrakes to, you know, all, all the things that support those types of activities. But the big one is, is just the understanding and the cooperation, the willingness, you know, the, they're like, yeah, fairgrounds is, yeah, let's, let's do it. Let's help these people out. So huge partner in that. So those are some of the lessons learned. You know, I, I think we can all learn lessons from that, from that day. You know, whether it be, how we message. And I think we've got to come a long way on the messaging itself. But when you start working with other agencies and what those coordination pieces look like. So conversations have started post-2020 and they continue today. And that's based on relationships, right? We want to know who we're talking to. And that way, I think it just makes for a more efficient and effective response.

Thank you. When, sorry, when fires were happening on Chehalem Mountain 2020, are you guys knocking on doors and then telling people what their resources are? Is that how the system works? If you had animals, you can go to the fairgrounds. If you need a place to stay, you can stay at the church. If you need clothes, is that how the process works? Because I was about one road away from being my door knocking on and Had everything loaded up, or close to loaded up, but didn't need to. Thank you, buyer. But didn't know exactly. I had a place for my animals, but where am I going to go? Yeah.

Great question. They're fast moving. And certainly we would love to have scripts put in place right off the bat. But in the 2020 fires, you know, Tualatin Valley was the first on scene, Johnny on the spot. And we're messaging through their messages, just get out. We want you guys to leave, get out of here, just stay out of the area. And that what that does is it gives us time on the back end to kind of plan and say, there's something going on up there. We need to call whoever it is and, and Hey, we're going to stuff people here. That's when secondary or tertiary messages will go out. And we would advise the crews that are knocking on doors. Hey, this is where you, we want people to send with, this is where we want you to send people if they need to, if they don't have a place to go. So yeah, lessons learned from that. You know, but again, it's through the communication and

And then is there other things that, you know, if you're prepping to leave, you see the fire coming or, you know, we had a little, I had a little bit of time, not everybody did, but, you know, my neighbor at the time was a fireman and, you know, park your vehicles in the middle of your field or something, you know, is that, is there other recommendations that we should, you know, be telling people if we're talking to do in prep to leave, if you know that a fire is happening? could come your way, but you know, I'm videoing all my stuff for insurance, but is there other things that you would recommend?

Yeah. Well, I think that, that preparedness, especially if you live in a wildland urban interface or nearby, I think it's imperative on, on everybody to be prepared to leave, um, whether that be a go kit, um, that you can just snatch and grab and get out of the house, you know, that contains copies of documents or the documents themselves, the originals, whether that's, you know, insurance, car ownership, immunizations, all those things, right? But we want those folks to take care of that stuff up front because then it's less stress on them, you know, but we're subject to what they'll allow us to, or what they consume from us, right? We can tell them to be prepped all day long, but if they don't, they don't.

um but yeah we would encourage folks to be prepared just to do exactly what you said i'm ready to go um in in a moment's notice yeah thank you thanks guys and we learned a lot i wasn't around for it you were but uh the capacity of the fairgrounds for the animals needs to be just a hair more but the interaction with the the human factor of that they needed a place to stay on site with their their animals and that was where we were We have RV, but we really have like no actual, like just camping sites at a very rudimentary level. And we definitely need to look at that as an expansion opportunity, hopefully for us, a twofold one for, are events that we have, but in an emergency where everybody goes with their animals, they have a place to stay also. Yeah.

Excellent point. And if you add to that, the complexities of people shelters, um, the Leslie Lewis pavilion is designated as a shelter. So now you're, you're, you're choking with choking the traffic and intermixing the traffic of people's shelter versus animal shelter and where to send them, you know, so it could get busy pretty fast, but, but I agree that, that, um, uh, expansion, if you will, or, or increased capabilities or capacities is, is probably a good thing, especially when you start looking at those, you know, co-locating. Yeah. So.

Okay.

One other question. What's the correlation between Oregon Department of Forestry? Because I remember Mike Cafferato used to come in, and I think he's retired now, and tend to give us some updates because that has to do with when we close the High Heaven Gate. Do you guys communicate with Oregon Department of Forestry on that level? Because I'm looking at that map that you showed, and you're like, I'm not too much of a risk. We know a fire could kick off with the right conditions the next day. and we could have an issue, but just in general, it shows where there's no issues, but yet Oregon department of forestry says we have high fire risk and we need to close the gate. So what's the interaction there? How often do we communicate with them?

We actually communicate on a regular basis. They're, uh, associate members of the fire defense board. Um, And like this year, we banned all burning on the 15th or the 16th. That was based on communications with ODF with predicted weather events coming. And at that time, the trend towards a drier summer, which usually we do egg burning until mid July or shortly before the fourth, depending on the season, all of that fizzled out and we got a lot of rain. So that's given people a sense of, uh, overconfidence, I guess you could say. So we've had to work real closely with ODF to make sure that we're getting that messaging out. The, the, Campfires and those things are okay, but when you're looking at the levels of fire danger, I think everything around here is at a moderate right now. We were in a burn band when the fire levels were were low risk um but we agreed that it was the best direction to go especially with the ag burns where you have big piles and those things can can burn for for days weeks or months and the anticipation of a of a real heavy drought season um we felt the best close things on so that map that you showed on your slide where it showed green along the west

The U.S. Drought Monitor?

Yep. And so will Oregon Department of Forestry use that information also to help them guide? The reason I'm asking this is if somebody went and looked at your map now and be like, well, why is High Heaven Gate closed and there's no fire danger? How can we correlate both those together to make it one unified message? Be like, no, here's one place you can go look at. Everybody goes to that place to get their information. How can we make it seem like more of a unified message?

When you're looking at the difference between a drought map and actual fire danger maps, you can have plenty of water, but as the season goes in, you're not in a drought, but your flashy fuels are ripe to go.

So how do we get that message across? Because somebody can go find that map that you have there. I'm assuming it's posted online. How do we go get that map to correlate to and have that information of fuel load, whatever. And this is why we've made the decision to close High Heaven. And not us. I'm assuming that Oregon Department of Forestry drives that and we're at high fire risk. in their area and that's why they wanted High Heaven Gate closed but how can we just make sure that message is?

Yeah well I think it's important that the important distinction here is the drought monitor map is talking about from a hydrological aspect you know they're looking at well levels, river levels, River and stream levels, things like that. The U.S. Drought Monitor, they don't look at those fuel loads, as Chief Worden pointed out, right? What do those fuel loads look like under the trees? You know, it speaks to the longer-term impacts of drought over time. Case in point, when you look a few years back when the city of Yam Hill had some water intake issues, right? I don't recall what exactly the drought monitor said at the time, but that was specifically talking to the levels of Turner Creek, right, where the intake is. So from a firefighting aspect, the drought monitor gives us a great planning effort to look at, well, is it going to be dry and how is it impacting water supplies? Whereas the other maps, the ODF maps and other resource maps that FIRE depends on, really look at those fuel loadings and atmospheric conditions, you know, forecasting, you know, whether it be winds or relative humidity, things like that. So it's a guiding tool for FIRE. It informs FIRE in the long term. And the U.S. Drought Monitor informs everybody else really on that, what does the hydrological outlook look like?

Chair, just to clarify, were you talking about the very last slide, the last map that had the fire danger identified, not necessarily the drought map?

No, I'm talking about the one that had the green on the West Coast.

The fire potential? Yeah. So it was the last one. So okay, great. I was on the U.S. Drought Monitor. I apologize for that. Chief Warden will have to speak to it because I don't know how the National Interagency Fire Center works on how they develop these maps.

I'm just trying to make sure there's like a, because we'll get emails and people call and be like, you know, access is cut off. It's raining right now. Why did they just make that decision that there's a high fire danger, even though we would all agree, be like, hey, it's better to be safe than sorry. But we still need to be able to point them to somewhere of where that decision was made on, even if it's three or four different things that went into making that decision. We need to be able to point them to that. And it's hard when you have a map like that, that says, Oh no, moderate fire danger. And even the signs, which are super helpful in the Valley that show moderate fire danger and not high people are driving around seeing that not knowing that, uh, Oregon department of forestry is using other guidelines to say, no, this is a high fire danger. We're shutting it down. Right. And that,

slide that you were talking about with the green that's currently and i think they're looking at predictors but i can't speak for odf odf is the sole authority outside of fire district boundaries and they they set those based on a variety of things like i said the the fuel load um the the time of year you can have we had a really dry winter and with that dry winter a lot of the undergrowth that had died off in the fall didn't have a chance to break down or rot and it's still dry underneath the canopy that adds to the and you don't know this unless you're you're out there in it and i get that um but that adds to the to the potentials and the risk as you go farther into what we would typically call fire season The most frustrating thing right now is we close things down and it starts to rain and it rains really good. And then here we are left with, well, do we open it back up again or? do we just hold the line? And typically we just hold the line because it's going to dry out really quick. Once the sun comes out, you're seeing that right now. Um, just, just step outside and everything's like, everything's getting to be tender dry. So, um, The messaging sometimes could be a little bit better. I don't disagree. But then I also know that there's a lot of messaging that goes on all the time that people just, oh, here's another fire message. Oh, it's going to be the worst fire season ever. Well, I'm going to still burn in my burn barrel. I'm going to call it a recreational fire. And all of a sudden the wind kicks up and we're out fighting a brush fire. So it's... a balancing act on how we do things. And I know that ODF uses a lot of predictive models, not just solely one source when they're visioning for the coming weeks and months.

Yeah. Pete Parsons with the, with ODF, he's the meteorologist for ODF. He, he puts out videos, I think three months, every three months puts out videos just on what that outlook looks like. And he does comparative data. You know, he'll look back 30 years and try and compare the, uh trends that he sees back in the radar imaging from you know let's say 1996 and you know what that looks like with el nino and the you know all that good stuff and they try to make their best best predictions from there and part of those predictions come from information sources such as that u.s drought monitor things like that um you know but then from a from a local perspective i think you know we could you know we could off you know open a fire ban or start a fire uh fire ban right now and then all of a sudden it's raining the following day oh let's open it back up and then the following day it's sunny and 90 oh we got to close it down and it's just it would be a nightmare for i agree that and we've had that conversation with mike before of no we don't we don't make snap decisions yeah we have to blend it and

I totally understand. I don't think we're going to change anything here in this room, but I agree with Commissioner Johnson. That map is a little misleading. There's fires happening in the yellow right now. That's a hard one to consume. It doesn't quite fit the messaging of we're in danger.

The easiest thing for us is just to delineate if we do get questions. That's within our own fire district, the signs that you see all the time driving down the highway. And then we just need to be able to point them to another, maybe Oregon Department of Forestry's website and be like, this is what you get when you start getting up the hills out of our fire district.

Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, those signs with the dial on there, those come down.

We coordinate those with ODF so that there's consistent messaging, at least on the signs on the highway.

But for the conditions in your fire district, not in ODF's.

You know, we typically try to stay even consistent with what they're doing up in the forest. They have zones, and even though half the county is outside of ODS protection area, typically you'll see the fire danger signs be consistent with what ODS is posting.

Any other questions?

No, I just want to say that this is the last time you will make a presentation in room 32. So this is sort of an auspicious day because we'll be at the other building. So thank you.

Just don't burn this room down when you're done with it. We can utilize it.

Oh, no. There are a lot of people in line. Right. Thanks, James. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right.

With that, we're going to move on. F is department updates. There is none. G is work session. We have none. H is the consent agenda. I do want to discuss item H3. So I would make a motion that we approve H1 through H2. Is there any further discussion?

None.

None. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. On to H3. I would like to push this off for a week. Actually, I want to ask Cynthia one question first. If you're willing to come up for just a brief moment. In your transit opinion, do you think two of these buses would be good enough for the fair now that transit would not or doesn't do the rounds anymore for the four days of the fair? Do you think two of these buses would fit and last longer?

So for the next five or six years. Is there two decent?

Yes. Of all the, I think there was eight or nine vehicles that were going.

Oh, we're disposing. Yes. Oh, sorry. The two that we were going to, that you're going to use for the fair this year are actually on that list. Okay. We have four of those. So they're in really good shape. The one, the 1700s, the number unit numbers are 1700s. They're just 12 passenger. So for the fare, when the fare is really busy, we've typically used the bigger buses, not the smaller buses. So you probably, you'd have to make more trips or less, you know what I mean? It's not, it'll be more difficult with just the 12 passenger vehicles than with the larger vehicles. But I don't know if I understood your question. Could you repeat?

I want to not sell two decent ones and keep them for the fare.

You might, maybe you would want more than two. Because you could do more frequent service and have more of them. And we do have four, but we were just planning to keep two of them and sell and get rid of two of them.

Okay. Can we table this for a week? Are you okay with that? No problem.

To put it on the radar as well, we had a conversation yesterday about some of these and Commissioner Starrett, I don't know, maybe that there is a bus or a minivan in this group as well that maybe... um one of the veteran affair one of the veterans groups might be able to utilize and we could have that discussion as well to transport veterans and uh those types of things so maybe we can have an actual yeah we have a few minivans and i was going to reach out to i reached out to the non-profits and one of the non-profits is interested in one of those 1700s

and would actually pay us a decent amount of money for it. So that would be helpful for our budget. But I have some minivans that we have gotten replacements for. And so since we've reduced several dial ride vehicles, we could offer some minivans to maybe some other county departments if they could use them.

I want to make sure we're careful and we're not like gifting ourselves $10,000 value. I'm talking ones that are 2,500 bucks that why didn't we just keep that because we have a need at a fair or so. Yeah. But let's, let's table this for a week then. And then for a couple, well, When do you need to know by to surplus this stuff? I assume it's been sitting there already for a month.

The only ones I really wanted to move faster on were the two that we could actually sell for something. The rest of them, probably their value is under $5,000. And whenever it's over $5,000, if it's a grant-funded vehicle, we have to return it to the state. So the four 1700s were purchased with county funding. And so those, if they're still in good shape and we can sell them, then that gives us more revenue. So that was my goal is to sell two of those because we probably could get 15,000 for them. And actually, I think it's one of the nonprofits went and looked at it took it to their mechanic and i haven't heard the final answer whether they want to purchase it for 15 000 but let's say they purchased that one you would still have three and obviously if you transfer the county you wouldn't necessarily have to sell them you know you could probably do a transfer for much less if you wanted to table this i mean would it make sense to go through and kind of triage which ones we're talking our kind of filter which ones we're talking about oh yeah and then we could come back next week uh with more information than the board could I think you could, if you wanted, yeah, we can do it. There's not really any big rush other than the ones that I wanted to try to get some money for. And so the rest of them, yeah, we can have a discussion.

I'm looking curious here and Mark, I'm not going to put you on the spot, but you know, if they needed to take a look at those buses as well.

You guys want a bus?

Well, I was thinking from the ones that you're thinking of keeping like for fairgrounds and, you know, we have them go through them and see, take a look at them.

Okay, cool. Yeah.

Good idea. Okay.

Let's table that for a week then and we'll bring it back around. Thanks. Even though we're going to be virtual next week, right? Yes. Okay, tabling H3. Thank you very much. That brings us up to I, which is old business I1. I1 is consideration approval of an ordinance in the matter of amending the Yamhill County zoning ordinance to allow roads, highways, and transportation facilities in exception areas of Yamhill County, planning docket G1-022, and setting the effective date. We have people that want to give comment on this, and I'm going to go with the first one that I had, which is Clay Downing. If you could come on up, name and address, please. And then we will come to the online commenters next.

Good morning, Chair Johnston. Good morning, Commissioners. Thanks for having me. My name is Clay Downing. I'm coming from Newburgh, Oregon at 125 South Elliott Road on behalf of Cheyenne Park and Recreation District. And I want to start out by saying that I appreciate the county's patience and working with CPRD as we continue to go through some of these things. I know that we're part of kicking this back and onto the radar for the board. And so I really appreciate it. and had a great conversation with your planning director just about a week ago. I want to say that we are open to rezoning some of our properties if that makes more sense on things, but do have some concerns with the amendments. I didn't feel like I had a whole lot of time to look at these. I didn't see it till this week. And so I have some comments. These have been sent to you by email, but it was later this morning. So I've just passed those around for distribution. So I'm going to read those into the record. And there's a few ad libs in here, but they're pretty limited. So the recommendation from Chehalem Park and Recreation District is the County Board of Commissioners defer adoption of any legislative language until one, clarifications are made regarding the definition of trails and accessory facilities. And two, adequate findings are provided to substantiate the proposed amendments nexus and proportionality and consistency with the county's comprehensive plan and Oregon statewide land use goals. So issue one for the rationale for this recommendation would be that it seems like there is a failure to demonstrate consistency with comprehensive plan and statewide land use goals. Specifically statewide land use goals five and eight are not discussed or provided findings of fact for these, as well as the county's comprehensive plan goals, specifically section 11-0 or 0.05, 0.04, 0.02. Issue two is that the defined term for transportation facilities creates additional ambiguity for trail uses. Under section 202 of the proposed amendments, there's a failure to define certain facilities that creates ambiguity through the introduction of undefined references to what such facilities are not transportation facilities. And this is because the proposed amendment recognizes that, quote, off-road, detached right-of-way, multi-use pedestrian trails, including but not limited to recreational trails, bicycle paths, shared-use paths, pedestrian trails, greenways, rail trails, walking paths, or facilities intended primarily for recreational or non-motorized transportation uses are, end quote, not transportation facilities. So such uses or facilities require definition to determine where such facilities will be permitted, conditionally allowed, prohibited, or otherwise recognized in future land use decisions. With these key definitions, the county runs the hazard of prohibiting each of those reference but undefined terms. So that's one of our key things. We don't want to accidentally prohibit things, specifically trails. That's the interest for CPRD here and the accessory things that come along with trails. could be a culvert or something simple. Issue three, roads and transportation facilities are typical facilities in parks and other spaces. For amendments associated with section 405, it is requested that road and transportation facilities are recognized as a permitted use due to the nature of parks being regular, including public serving amenities, including bridges, service drive, culverts, similar features in order to accommodate required parking, ingress, egress, internal circulation, stormwater management, and other accessory needs. And that section 405 is related to the PRO zone. So I'm talking about parks are a normal thing as well as their accessory facilities. And then issue number four, lack of demonstration of nexus and proportionality. The proposed amendments would require conditional use approval of roads, highways, and transportation facilities in zones associated with sections 404, 405, 401, sorry, 404, 405, 501, 502, 503, 601, 602, 603, 701, 702, 703, 802, 801 and 803 of the land use regulations. And according to the Yamhill County Zoning Ordinance Section 1202.01, the purpose of a conditional use is to provide, is to quote, to provide for those uses which possess unique and special characteristics, making impractical their inclusion as outright permitted uses in the underlying zoning district. Such uses shall not be incompatible with the type of uses permitted in surrounding areas. Location and operation of designated conditional uses shall be subject to review and authorized only by issuance of a conditional use permit." Because the proposed amendments are not explained or justified, the proposed amendments appear to indiscriminately expand regulatory burdens associated with normal and typical development in these affected zones. Roads and their associated transportation facilities are typical aspects of development and use of property, both publicly and privately owned property. The requirement to obtain conditional use approval burdens projects of all sorts with unnecessary cost, time and regulatory requirements while providing no demonstrated essential nexus or rough proportionality for such requirements. Further, because the proposed amendments are not accompanied by findings of fact, they fail to justify these additional burdens on property owners and future projects, which has been upheld in Nolan Dolan and other land use case law. So with this, I would kind of wrap up just by saying that on its face, these things may be fine, but without findings of fact, it's hard to tell why they're okay and how they're consistent with other goals. The most concerning thing is the definition, and by only demonstrating which things are not trails, we, through our permissive zoning, would potentially prohibit those, and that's a big concern for us. We're open to the possibility of having to go through conditional use processes, but if we were to go through a rezoning process, which we're open to, we would hope that there would be a benefit to that of ending up in a permitted use. Because that's the point of going through those sorts of exercises. So with that, that's the end of my comments. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thanks, Clay.

All right. You want to promote, was it Morgan that was first?

Good morning. My name is Morgan McLaughlin. My residential address is 10325 Southwest Cormorant Drive, Beaverton, Oregon. I am the Executive Director of the Willamette Valley Winery Association, a 501c6 that represents a majority of the wineries in in the Willamette Valley, as well as Yamhill County. It came to my attention yesterday for this specific agenda item about some potential unintended consequences related to walking trails, walking paths through agricultural properties, including properties that house wineries and vineyards. We are currently working on projects to bring more connection to vineyards and land when folks come and visit wineries and tasting rooms, to be able to do walks and hikes around vineyards, to learn about grape growing and sustainability practices is an important experience for our wineries. And I just want to ask questions that this potential regulatory or zoning change, sorry, I don't know all the proper language, might unintended, the unintended outcome may be to restrict these types of experiences in the future. So that's my question slash comment.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. And next up will be Paige. Good morning. If you can hear us, go ahead with your name.

Yes, very good. Thank you. I am Paige Knutson-Coles. My residence is 208 West 2nd Street in Newburgh. That's my personal residence. I also have a business at 9419 Northeast Warden Hill Road in Dundee, Knutson Vineyards. And I just wanted to follow up what's already been described both by Mr. Dowling and Ms. McLaughlin about the importance of being able to take people out onto the land where our vineyards are. It supports agritourism and it brings visitors to the region from all across America. And we often get people from foreign countries as well. It really provides educational opportunities about farming practices, about our winemaking. practices, but also provides a lot of information to people about the history of our world-class winemaking region, our wine industry. As a producer, it helps us sustain our farm operations and our conservation efforts. We're very committed to sustainability and conservation on our property. And it connects people to the land in a way that benefits the local economy. It promotes healthy activities, exercise, fresh air, close interaction with nature, views of the valley. And it really is important to us to be able to not have a lot of restrictions that may hamper our ability to offer that to our customers. So thank you.

Thank you, Paige. Is there anybody else? If you're online, raise your virtual hand. If you're in the audience, raise your hand. Seeing none. All right. It is up to discussion for the board now. Do you want to make a comment?

Do you want to go ahead?

Sure. I'll agree with Clay and Morgan and Paige. I think that this is a very inconsistent policy for a single issue. I started thinking of examples of where this would come in conflict with. And right off the top of my head, in at the ground. They have a series of trails. They own 400 acres off Panther Creek. If they wanted to expand those trails, the way that I understand this is that they would have to maybe take their farm out of farm zoning in order to have a park zoning.

yeah so the only zones that will be where trails will be a permitted use and this is separate from the transportation facility section of the pro is if their property is zoned parks recs and open space open space and it is listed as a outright permitted use in that specific zone and only that zone so if i have a farm then that wouldn't there's not like an overlay or

um i didn't think about an overlay but um again you're adding we're adding another layer of government and you would not be able to build it on efu land if that's what it was yeah so if i'm stoler and i have a couple hundred acres and a hundred thousand people come through my winery and i wanted to build a trail that highlighted that wouldn't be able to do that if i have 10 acres and my kid wants to ride a dirt bike around the property Again, I think that that comes into conflict where you see this, you know, I think Crystal Riley Park is another example if they want to expand those trails that are up there, whether I know they're in a debate right now of dirt bike or mountain bikes or horses or walking. It puts that at conflict. Our own parks, I think it puts us in, with some of your stated goals of Metzer Park and Baker Creek, that section that is outside of our own park that's Weyerhaeuser would put us in conflict. So I think that this is really limiting our personal property rights and taking away rights from personal property. So I can't support this as... as written today. Um, I think that just heard from a couple of our, one of our larger industries in our, um, County and, uh, you know, I think they're looking for tools to be able to, um, bring people here to their businesses. And there's, I mean, uh, there's a short trail of kind of a pilot program right now from Adelsheim to Arborbrook, their neighboring Nick Mikesell, neighboring wineries, and I think that they would like to look for grants in order to expand that up and down what caulkins lane and. not only would that take away their ability to get grants from outside of just travel Oregon, but we also are telling them they can't do that. So again, that industry is not in a great shape right now. They're looking for reasons to get people here outside of just come taste our wine. They're looking for more experience. And so I'm, so from an economic standpoint, I'm, I'm a no from a personal property rights standpoint. I'm a no. So yeah, that's what I have for now.

Jody, how did trails and walking paths and whatever, if it was on a farm or EFU or AFU, how did all of them happen up to this point? I will say that... Because all of this started years ago when we were trying to get roads, because roads were not allowed in EFU, and there was concerns with the bypass.

Roads were presumed to be permitted everywhere, basically. And there was a state law that changed that brought in a tougher enactment of Goal 12, where... If you wanted to put a road in a farm or forest zone, you could do it in certain aspects. But if you're going to put in a new one, you're going to have to get a land use approval for that. And if you're going to put in a new one that's going to create more parcels, it's a little higher test. So the county adopted those, I think it was in 93 around there, and put them into our code. Yeah, only the resource zones. We didn't put it into the other zones because we just presume that was something that was allowed that, you know, obviously a road would be allowed. And I think Clay even kind of touched on that, that you kind of have this expectation that if you're going to have a rural residential zone and allow residential use, you would just presume that you'd be able to have a road in that. And the trail decision from LUBA noted that we really don't even have that listed in those zones. And When we looked at the trail to begin with, there really wasn't any state law that was clearly defining how to do a trail or not. And so we actually talked to the experts at ODOT and the experts at DLCD to come up with this process. We found out we were wrong at LUVA the first time. They needed it to be a quasi-judicial. It couldn't be a legislative. And so this topic has kind of evolved over the years. What we have decided, at least internally, is that a trail on your own property is not really a trail. It's just you can have a trail on your own property. It's only if you're going to be connecting property or properties together that you're going from one to another. Then you are actually transporting either yourself or goods or whatever. And so that's a transportation facility. And... That's how we interpret it. I don't know if this new definition would lead to a tougher interpretation. I don't think so, but I've been surprised a little bit a few times. I will say that I thought the board actually had a really good solution a meeting or two back. where the proposal was to have everything be a conditional use. Now, I want to say that I proposed it to be just an outright permitted use in all the zones, and the definition, we wouldn't have a definition, it would just be roads, highways, and other transportation facilities and improvements. I would have just had it as a permitted use. But I understand the concern for protection of other property owners who might object to that, there being a need to have a process for something like that. And I actually thought that conditional use, that's a pretty good way to do it, that you're giving the same protection that you would in the farm zone to those that would have a road or trail or whatever in all the other rural residential and exception areas. So, uh, you know, if, if you're looking for anything as a suggestion today, my suggestion would be to adopt something like that. Don't have the definition. Um, because once you start defining it, as clay points out, you have to kind of define everything that you're trying to define in that definition too. And, um, You know he's got a point that you know I think I know what it is, I think everyone in here knows what this, but we might have some different ideas of what that is and that leads to litigation and. So I my recommendation would be for you to seriously think about just putting it as a conditional use in each of the zones.

Can I piggyback on that? Yes. Just to clarify, so we never had roads, highways, and transportation facilities in our code until post whatever thing that came out from the state legislature back in 93-ish.

It was transportation planning, but I don't recall exactly if it was in the

Okay, so we added it to our three resource zones. Three. Three, yeah. But we didn't think it was necessary to add it to the other zones. Cut to the Yamhalis-West Sider Trail. And one of the LUBA decisions, I don't remember which, the court specifically said, because in our zoning code under each of our zones, we have language that specifically says if it's not listed, it's not allowed. So therefore... We don't have roads, highways, transportation facilities. It's not allowed. So that is where this started. We very innocently, I think, perhaps naively, said, well, we need to get it added since Luba said, if it's not in there, we can't have a road. And obviously there's a lot of roads that come through Ken's office. So we had to fix it. And somehow that turned into a discussion of trails. And so here we are trying to fit Square Peg round hole. And I think my goal in all of this was to help Ken process paperwork that's coming through his office and not enter into this debate that's publicly happening right now over trail. But we got there and I'm really sorry, Ken, that I dragged you into it. So that I just wanted to say on the record.

So if somebody were to file or not file and we found out that they built a trail on their property, what is your opinion now with the way this is written? And let me before you answer that. There's a process to this. We are going through this process now. So I just, I've seen some of the public comments coming in, presuming that they know how the board was gonna vote on this or presuming that this was gonna be set in stone. This is the process. We are discussing this in public. There's no other way for us three to be able to discuss it other than in public. We can keep discussing this and we can keep throwing it down the road too as we progress with this. So this is the process of us. So I don't wanna... make it seem like that this board is just gonna that this may be get written two more times before these are recommendations so that all three of us in one spot yes can discuss what it looks like so i just want to preface that but now to address the concerns of some of them if somebody were to either go build a trail on their property right now and we didn't know about it or came to the county said i want to build a trail because they didn't know whether it required a permit or not with this the way it's written what does that look like as far as for a decision

See, I would interpret this to mean that if you're on some exception land, that you could put a trail next to a road, but you wouldn't be able to put a trail as a standalone. So that it just wouldn't be permitted. That's the way I was interpreting the transportation facility definition that we discussed. So I thought that was the purpose of the definition and the purpose that the board was trying to get at. The concern is that we have a lot of situations where this might come into play where we might not be able to put in a trail that the board might want. Now, I think the majority of those will be along state roads or highways or county roads, but I don't know that they're all going to be like that. Go ahead.

No, it's just the whole right-of-way piece is important. So we're talking about standalone trails. But again, the definition of a trail, we can parse that because is it a walking path? What is it if it's, for instance, on private property? I think everybody who has any... any number of acreage has put some kind of a conveyance, a road to log, to walk, whatever, that's not considered a trail. So in this particular case, how do we get to you being able to get those roads permitted and then also protect the con you know the concerns really do have to do with efu that type of thing um and and again we're looking at permitted conditional and where where is that fine point so i i do have i do have some concerns and i think there was some language at a little earlier on that could have sort of precluded this. And I'd like to go back and pull that out and get that before us, because I think that could solve the lion's share of these problems.

So along those conversations, and I think we're getting, somehow we got this connected to being, or the perception is that it's correlated to the Ewing Enbridge. It does have something to do with it, but that's not really what started a lot of this. So I want to make sure that because they are here, they're engaged in this, with the rezoning of that portion, And they're willing to go down that road. I don't want to hang. If we delay this, my recommendation is we're going to delay this for 90 days. It's going to be my recommendation. So if we do agree on that and we do this, I don't want to continue to hold them up. They need to move forward with this. Is the rezoning of park logical for us in a process that is almost as equal as them sitting here waiting for us to figure out a definition or what this ordinance looks like?

Yeah, in my discussion with Clay, I said that, you know, I want this, his issue to be solved. I want this whole issue to be solved. But I told Clay that I'm willing to, you know, the application for a plan amendment and zone change is $5,500 or so. And I told him that, you know, I'm willing to waive all but the hard costs that we have for, you know, doing the newspaper notice and the, and the mail outs. And usually that's around $250 per mail out and we have two mail outs. So I said, I think it'd be like five or $600. We would, we would charge them for that, but that would allow them to go forward. It wouldn't, be it would be less expensive than having to do a conditional use perhaps in the future and there's not I told him you know I can't guarantee the outcome or anything like that but I would be supportive but no different than we can guarantee an outcome if we agreed that we just do conditional use it would be the same process or more burdensome than the rezoning process right

And correct me, it's a VLDR 10. It's already been rezoned once, which removes a few hurdles.

Exactly. Yeah, it's not farm zone. It's exception land. The AF10, it was kind of developed to be a farmland, but the state rejected that and made it a rural residential zone. So it's not protected by goals three or four.

Okay. You guys okay with that? Okay. Okay. We've removed that from this. We can now sit here. I'm going to make a recommendation that we spend the next 90 days. I would make a motion. 90 days seems a little bit long.

As long as you want. I mean, sorry. We do need to consider the fact that he does get applications for things that require roads.

I think all of the ones that were coming up have been or are in the process of being resolved. So there might be one that I will have to make a declaration of a similar use. I think in the light industrial zone, we have the... ODOT is applying for a roundabout. And the planning director has the authority to declare that a use of a road is similar to another use that's in the zone. It doesn't give me authority in all the exception zones, but in this one it does. And I would be telling the board about that if I made that decision and the board would have 15 days to call that up.

So then there's nothing else in the hopper that is waiting for us to make the decision on this.

Yeah, right now there's nothing that is pending.

But my personal preference is that we don't ask Ken to continue to find avenues for approvals and we fix the problem as soon as we can.

So is 90 days too long?

90 days is okay for me.

I'm more looking just workload for you guys.

I think that's fine.

Okay.

I'm fine with that. I mean, you can go as long as you want.

No, no, I, I'm actually want to make it shorter. Oh yeah.

I feel like 90 is a long time. So we can really work through this.

So I also want to, you know, bring up, I don't know where that Calkins lane project is, but you know, where Adelsheim and Arborbrook are connecting and, cross-properties, because that seems like a much bigger... I don't think anybody would have thought to come to you. They're on their own property, right? So if they are going to try to build or work towards a trail, I think they're having meetings about it currently, so...

I had an issue where a couple of wineries were trying to do that a while back and they wanted me to sign off on a grant for that. And this has been several years ago. And I couldn't do that. I said, you know, I can't say that it's a permitted use in those zones. And you'd have to go through something else in order to do this. So it's only if someone is coming to me to get a land use compatibility or support for a grant or something like that where they're asking me to make a decision on whether or not to, you know, that is in the ordinance to allow it, that it really comes up as an issue when you have a winery or two next to each other. You know, we don't go out and try to

do an enforcement on them. But I mean, we're a complaint-driven process, right? So if one of those neighbors are upset about it, then, you know, they get shut down now?

It could be that we would put them under enforcement if there was a complaint that, you know, a trail was made between two neighboring properties and it was for commercial use and that it's a zone that doesn't allow it. We do have wineries in the AF10 zone, so...

And I mean, like my kids will ride their Gator from one property to, you know, several over to their friend's house.

And I don't think we're worried about that. I think we're concerned about, you know, I know we're not, but if a neighbor, if it's open to the public or if the public are coming out, that's, that's where we're trying to regulate or well, not trying to regulate, but that's what the issue is that if you have an open to the public, when does it become a trail?

Yeah. Yeah.

yeah i mean if i have a grumpy neighbor which i do you know when does uh when when do they get to weigh in on that right if they do they call the county and say you could your kids they could yeah exactly i mean even i mean i mean you can you can you know speak this into the ground because we you know anytime we have

neighbors we have we have people concerned about the dust on the road and they're going to sue us or we have a neighbor who says you can't have this but obviously it it is an existing farm and it does stink and you can't you can complain all you want but it's really not a thing but where do we open up the that as being an issue where the county can now need has to weigh in because of an ordinance like that's all i think concerns are with yeah but i think what jody is saying is that you know people riding you are going traversing neighboring properties is not the same as opening something up for a bona fide, uh, where the public is allowed and it becomes a, you know, I mean, yeah.

Well, I just want to make sure I understand it's common sense, but you know, grumpy neighbors don't always operate under common sense.

You know, if I don't know if it's common sense, I think it is a legal, I guess it's a factual issue and it will be very specific to the intention of the owner. Um,

And that's going to be there whether we talk about this or we totally forget we even opened the door. It's still an issue.

Yeah. I don't know. It's not changing anything. I mean, I don't want to speak out of turn here, but I don't know of any case law that defines what a trail is. So we would be sort of out there on our own trying to do this.

So far, we found avenues for every single one. And I know...

That's not the best way to be making decisions.

But it seems like there is a can of worms getting opened up here that potentially could be worse. But let's take 90 days and let's see if we can't fine tune this. I like it. Are we in agreement?

It does seem a little long, but I'm going to defer to county council, interim county council on the length of time that you would find appropriate.

We will bring it back. If we can come to some sort of unity over the best way to make this happen before 90 days, we'll bring a motion and say we'd like to bring this back up in front of the board.

Thank you. Honor before 90 days.

Honor before 90 days. I like it. Okay, good.

Um, I would so move that, uh, is there any further discussion? None. Okay. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you CPRD for continuing to work with us on this. Uh, it sounds like we hopefully have a literal path forward for you, so.

Thank you. Sorry for the extra work.

All right, now we're moving on to Jay. Other business, Jay wants consideration approval of amendment number four to agreement number 180161 between Yamil County and the Oregon Health Authority Board Order 23-176, extending the timeframe from 14 to 45 days to return unexpended funds to OHA upon expiration of the agreement.

I move approval.

Move approval. Motion's been made. Any further discussion? None. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Chair.

Yes. If I may just interrupt the agenda for a minute because I know Ken's leaving. I just kind of wanted to take a moment and just kind of recognize Mr. Friday. Sorry I'm going to call you out, but I just wanted to point out that this week is... is ken's 38th year wow with the county so his anniversary date and just just want to highlight you know can i can i piggyback on that smartest planner i've ever worked with best brain i've ever worked with and i've worked with a lot of land use attorneys bar none

Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Ken. Congratulations.

And we hear from a lot of people who will compliment you on your expeditiousness.

So thank you.

I'm done. I'm out of here.

J-2's consideration of approval of agreement number 187939 between Yamil County and the Oregon Department of Human Services vocational rehabilitation for the ticket to work and self-sufficiency program in the not to exceed amount of $60,000 effective upon full execution through June 30, 2035.

I move approval.

Motion's been made. Any further discussion? None. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Adam J three is consideration of approval and agreement between Yamo County Health and Human Services and Western Oregon University for the placement of students for public health internships. That's awesome.

I would move approval.

Motion's been made. Any further discussion? None for me. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

I like the ending of that, though. That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome.

It's a great program. J4, consideration of approval to authorize Lindsay Manfred or designee to apply for the Maternal Produce Prescription Program through the Health Resources and Services Administration for up to $500,000 per year for four years.

I would move approval.

Motions have been made. Any further discussion?

None.

None. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. J5's consideration and approval of a property line adjustment deed to consolidate two tracts of land located at 626 and 636 Northeast 7th Street, McMinnville, Oregon 97128 into one tract. I'm assuming this is the IT houses. Correct. All right. Do we need a little background on this?

I didn't know it was on the agenda. I missed it. We are still working on a board order for this, but I believe this came from Lindsay Manfren, and it's for two lots.

Yeah, it's a city requirement. So this is the two former IT houses. It's on two lots, and what we have proposed is requiring a lot line adjustment, and as part of that adjustment, we need to sign off on the deed. Okay.

And I did review the deed. The deed's fine. I just didn't know we were already proving it. So that's my bad. I will go get to work on that board order. My bad, Bailey.

Yeah, it's just part of this House Bill, what was it, 5202, and that was $100 million that was allocated for these types of housing programs. So this is just a piece of that, but we have to do the paperwork first.

Because we've already gotten demo permits and everything for that portion of it, it's my understanding. So this is the step to be able to move forward.

Yeah, I think it was part of the city's land use approvals. This was required, which is normal.

yeah yeah i just didn't know which lots or was that was the approval is there any further discussion no that's all right no okay all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye motion passes unanimously thank you J6 is consideration of approval and addendum between EML County and Verizon Connect Fleet USA LLC for telematics services in the not to exceed amount of $38,852.52. And this is retroactive to July 1st, 2026 through June 30, 2027. I would move approval. Is there any further discussion?

None.

All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. J7's consideration to authorize and approve subset intergovernmental agreement number 7300-00016516 between Yamhill County and the Oregon Department of Transportation allowing ODOT to negotiate right of way services on behalf of Yamhill County effective upon full execution. Marks here if we have any questions. I would move approval. Is there any further discussion? none then all those in favor signify by saying aye aye motion passes unanimously thank you mark j8 is consideration approval of amendment number one to contract number tr26001cc between yamhill county and blue spruce builders inc extending board order 25-352 extending the date of completion to august 2020 26 august 20th 2026 i would to make that clean i would move approval Motion's been made. Any further discussion?

None.

All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. J9 is consideration approval of a change order number one to contract number TR26001CC between Yamil County and Blue Spruce Builders Inc. Board Order 25-352 in the amount of $55,273, even effective upon approval through August 1st, 2026.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Cynthia is here if anybody has any questions, believe that this is funding for this through stiff.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, What are we adding to it that's increasing PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Cynthia, you want

We're not really adding anything. It was more both the change orders are related to one of them was something they found with electrical that they just needed to fix and there was really nothing we could do about it. We didn't know about it till they were doing construction. The other one is we realized once once they started doing the project that we something we had had in the original design we really needed to change. And so it really was nothing to do with blue spruce. It didn't really add anything. It was just something that we needed to do to make it right. So we were going to have a wall and put in a window. It wasn't going to work. They had to take that wall out. And then they had to move wiring up above. And then there were a few other things like that that we had to change. So that's what the other.

When you say the other, the $5,100 one. Okay.

Yeah.

I would move approval.

Motion's been made. Any further discussion?

None.

All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. J10's consideration approval of a change order number two to contract number TR26001CC between Yamhill County and Blue Spruce Builders Inc. Board Order 25-352 in the amount of $5,102 effective upon... Approval through August 1st, 2026.

I would move approval.

Motion's been made. Any further discussion?

None.

None. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And with that, it brings us to our... There's no public hearings. L, which is announcements. Commissioner King.

Thank you. Um... Kicking off, happy 4th. I think we said it last week, but just carried over through the weekend and had a great time. Newburgh Christian Church, big thanks for hosting fireworks in Newburgh. That's where I watched those ones. It was a good time, but I think there was lots of our towns and people had, at least from what I can hear, until 2 o'clock. It was a great time. Still going on. I still hear a boom. But hopefully these guys, after our fire danger conversation, I hope that stops here very soon. The three of us took a little field trip I mentioned last week for dog control. I look forward to our work session to be able to chat about our options there. And I certainly learned a lot. Some of my ideas wouldn't work. So thanks to Sheriff and Ken for tour bussing us around. Sanders Estate last night, opening the park there. CPRD, you guys are still here. It's a great turnout last night and beautiful park. That splash pad Jason says is pretty awesome. So I think you were the smartest one there to cool down before the event started. I had some conversations with regional leaders on solid waste and discussions happening around the Willamette Valley. I was Cynthia to talk a lot about what we're talking about here. One thing that wasn't mentioned is second round of interview should be coming up soon for her to be able to go into retirement properly. And the fair public outreach is underway right now, and we should see it in place coming around September 1st-ish or so. So that's our current target date. So coming up very soon. Sat down with the Secretary of State Tobias Reid and had a really great discussion with him. And then New York city council this week, it was a pretty intense discussion about opening a road, Illinois. And I don't know, you guys probably know where this app, but they closed a road, Illinois, Maine and two 40. This is a very weird intersection there. Yeah. and uh the industrial park that's right there they're they're moving out but the the land owners of that are having a hard time finding a place uh for for them to to new tenants there um and as those corridors the two highways um that run parallel to each other kind of uh 240 and 219 college There's really put a big burden on that. So, uh, the, the council has decided to reopen that. And I think it's open now. Uh, it is open now. I drove it, um, in support of, of just, uh, trying to find business and, you know, we're, they've seen, uh, I don't know if you guys knew this or not yet, but DCI is moving to Wilsonville. And so Newberg has really been, it had a big hit in its manufacturing and industrial areas for jobs in town. So it really, I think this is a decision to help what little they can to, to bring assistance to private industry, to, to, to be in Newberg. Um, and losing DCI is a huge blow. So, um, And yeah, I think I'll leave it at that one. Commissioner String.

Okay. On Independence Day, I was pleased to be able to attend the VFW American Legion flag retirement ceremony in Newburgh. And this was the only time it is appropriate to burn an American flag. So flags that are tattered or worn or brought and in a ceremonial, very respectful way, they are burned. So I do appreciate how that was done. Also had an opportunity to speak to an American Legion commander who um talked about and he'd served in wars years and years ago commander edmunds and he talked about despite how how dire things look in this country he says we have been in worse straits before and we will climb out of this and i thought it was interesting coming from someone retired military to have that perspective of hope for the country so i do appreciate that last night the sandra state ribbon cutting uh i remember a couple of years several years ago our um economic development manager and I and some folks from CPRD, we looked at the house on the property there as potential use of childcare. And it would have been a wonderful little place that we could have called grandma's house. It didn't work out, but it would have been a great child care option for the area. Also had our meeting of the local alcohol and drug planning committee yesterday. And on that meeting is the sheriff, the CCO, HHS, and the DA's office. And I appreciated the sheriff giving us an update on the drug data seizure and also the, and you might at some point, sheriff, come and give us an update on all the specifics on that retail theft blitz in Newburgh and Mack. and how that plays into the whole drug trafficking situation. Lots of overdoses in Yamhill County, and the sheriff talked about stolen vehicles and focusing on drug dealers. So a lot of discussion also around youth access to services substance abuse disorder treatment. Also, unfortunately, Oregon has been rated one of the worst states to move to in 2026. Consumer Affairs analyzed all 50 states based on economy, crime, and cost of living. And unfortunately, when the governor made the decision not to participate in the national state fair at the nation's capital where everybody gets to showcase their state, left that booth empty. But a woman named Jennifer Lindberg, got the idea that she was going to actually decorate the booth herself, Lingard. And she took a page out of the former Commissioner Phil Henderson from Deschutes County, where he said, all of the things that make Oregon great need to be showcased. So she took stuff in there and put up a little exhibit to showcase all the wonderful things. It would have been a great opportunity to get businesses and people to see what is good about the state of Oregon. So thank you for that initiative. And that's all I have.

And thanks for being part of the celebration for the ribbon cutting and giving a little speech. That was nice to see you up there doing that. July 4th was a busy day, I'm sure, for everybody. Had two parades and then enjoyed going to the 250th celebration at the fairgrounds. That went off very, very well. It was very well attended. And sounds like they're going to plan for another one next year and try to add fireworks and fireworks When they've been having the conversations with Gary's like, oh, yeah, we used to have fireworks and they'd light them off towards the backside of the property by the steel mill. So we'll see if that's going to come to fruition or not. But anyway, Willamina Parade, they get the new award or ribbon for the shortest, longest parade in Yamil County. uh but man they turn out for their parade they love that parade and then the fireworks show afterwards was great um and saint paul as usual probably i would say saint paul's probably the most well attended uh parade or celebration on the fourth of july it's just amazing going over there but i grew up over there and absolutely love every day that i had the opportunity to pack one of its 90th anniversary for the St. Paul rodeo this year. And I had the opportunity to pack one of 90 flags with my family. And so it was pretty cool. Um, had a opportunity to tour part of the maiden Mac, uh, uh, showcase that they do through MADP Amerson precision, uh, had no idea they're back there, but they're back kind of Riverside, uh, in that industrial area. Pretty cool. And, uh, Awesome to hear the story where the dad started out at ADEC and started his own business back in the late 80s and has grown it from there. And he's actually got quite a few buildings back there where they just do a lot of sheet metal work, powder coat. Right now they were making medical carts for Johnson & Johnson. So anyway, that stuff is here. You don't know about it, but good on them to employ people in Yamhill County. Love to see them here. Dayton City Council holds the record for the shortest city council meeting. It was literally 10 minutes long. They welcomed in their new interim city manager. Jeremy is moving on to, I don't know, bigger things, but he's definitely moving on. And I don't think he's going to be in government anymore. I think he's going private sector. Okay, so they appreciate him for sticking around when he did and the interim looking forward to see how the interim city manager interacts with the council and how she does. Mayor Mrakas, Sanders estate again it was great I ran into I won't rehash what a you know the ribbon cutting portion, but I did run into brandon who's Andrew salinas his staff and just so you guys know i'm going to try to put together a. Mayor Mrakas, Not necessarily an event, but they there's been quite a few funding. Mayor Mrakas, Funding. that has come in from the federal level, mostly through Andrew Salinas. So I think it's recognition to that as a thank you. They want to do one specific one for the transit, but I think what I want to do, I want to actually do two because there's also been funding for McDougal and McDougal actually is now fully funded. So I think it'd be great if we focused on that. So just, I guess, keep an eye out on your calendars probably mid to late August. I want to try to put something together where they just we have kind of a just a low key celebration for our thank you for the funding that's come in from through those guys and be on site at those projects so they can see the effects that it has on Yamhill County and the appreciation that we have. Lafayette City Council meeting is coming up tonight at 630 p.m. RACs tonight at 6 p.m., which is our Road Improvement Advisory Committee. MAC greeters tomorrow will be at Miller Woods. So make sure you head out there and support those guys with that.

No, I just wanted to say that this, and you might have, you're going to say that this is the last board of commissioners meeting that we're going to have in this room. And we've had over the 12 years I've been here, we've had some rather one former commissioner used to call it robust discussions. And that was a kind way of saying we used to have some knockdown drag outs, but we would always leave here as friends and go get a cup of coffee. And it was, it was great. So a lot of, a lot went on in this room.

Yeah. So I was just going to put the reminder out. I know we've got things posted all over the place. So we don't have folks here next Thursday because we won't be here. We're going to be in the virtual world on Zoom. And yeah, this is the, you know, my 21 years with the county. You know, I've been coming here and meeting with the board and you know, various roles that I've held. And this has been the Board of Commissioners hearing room since the courthouse was built. I don't know the whole story, but, you know, what, maybe 75, 76 years in this place, in this space. So a major change. And I'm really looking forward to on August 6th, showcasing the new space.

Okay.

And, you know, we do have it.

Boy, you went right out there. You're confident. So, all right. Very much so. Okay.

Very much so.

Even if they're still painting, we'll get her.

Oh, the painting's done. Carpet's going in. You know, and the next big moment.

Last thing I heard was doors were still on back order.

Not for that room. Okay. Everything. Everything's good for that room. You guys steal doors from somewhere else to make it. Our big thing is moving a lot of the audio video and things from this room over to the new space. That's why we're going virtual is because in an effort to manage costs and everything else, we're moving a lot of the equipment that's in here over to the new space. So again, I'm really excited to kind of showcase that. I would also just add that we also have a move date for commissioner, county council, you know, all of us. that are in the fenton house or aka the white house right now which is another one that's going to be a bittersweet move is uh the week of uh july 20th um we're we're going to be moving to the new location you bring that up did anybody else get notices on their desk nope just you

County Council?

So, thankfully, I don't have a lot of stuff to pack in my office, but I had four notices on my desk. I knew it was a joke, but I thought it was a lighthearted joke to remind Commissioner Johnston.

For the record, no one from administration issued that eviction. I would look to the county council.

Is an interim county council under administration?

Just for the record, I literally have, other than my laptop... All of my office stuff is now in my truck since July 1st, when my eviction notice was put on my desk.

I think Kale might have expedited that with the box.

There was an empty box sitting there.

A box for your sweatshirt collection.

I will thank Carolina for helping me pack half of my stuff, which was one other box. So I have two boxes left.

She helped you pack? Yeah. Okay, Carolina, we're going to talk. I got our hot boxes.

Oh, boy. Anyway, sorry. So we're virtual three weeks, grand opening.

Remember, we're taking... One week we're off. Correct.

One week we're off.

And then there will be... We've got a move plan to hopefully minimize disruptions as far as service. So anybody reaching out to the commissioner's office, I think we have a pretty solid plan in place that there might be some minor disruptions if someone's trying to contact our office, but... the week of the 20th but again I think we've got a really good plan in place to really minimize that and we hope to be in the fully moved in in the next several weeks cool you brought sharpies to sign the wall in here right as we're all walking out is that

We'll take one of these and put it in the corner.

Well, we're still going to repurpose this room, you know, because the plans right now with this room would become the new grand jury room. And that would allow the DA's office to expand into that area for some much needed office space upstairs. So a lot of changes here in the next few weeks. So.

Are you willing to discuss clerk moving or? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So I think we finalized the plan. So with, with all the improvements, cause again, kudos to Haworth construction and all the work that they're doing, um, We're still basically on schedule. But as far as the last group to occupy the government services building will be the county clerk. And we've worked pretty closely with Carrie on that plan. And we're... instead of forcing or trying to, because there are some things that require some working with consultants and contractors with some of the equipment, that there's just no way we can make that happen before Kerry starts preparing for the midterm, the upcoming elections. So right now we have a plan to start moving in phases, things that can be moved into the new space, but we're not looking at doing a majority of the move until after the November election has been finalized. So we're looking at December. So we anticipate the clerk will be open for business at the new location, full-time December or January timeframe. Perfect.

All right. Anything else for the good order? Hearing none. Closing it out at 11.