Thank you for joining us.

So are we recording?

We are.

So we are recording.

We are good evening and welcome to the Monday, July 27th, 2026 work session of the Australia City Council.

For the record, the time is 6 p.m.

Mr.

Spence, if we could have a roll call, please.

Councillor Conklin.

Here, Councilor Mozzarella.

Here.

Counselor Adams.

Mayor Fitzpatrick.

Here.

So first tonight, we are going to have a minor change to our agenda.

We are going to start with item 3B, which is Australia state legislative priorities.

Mr.

Spence.

Thank you.

So this has been acknowledged and discussed in our council as part of our dialogue about wanting a legislative priorities.

We've been active somewhat in our own right, but most cities will have a traditional state legislative priorities agenda.

So any time that we're speaking to our representatives, either at the House level or the Senate level, or even with the governor's office, we are on point and having the same message.

And so what we prepared tonight is really a potential what I call as a lead behind what you would typically do when you have an opportunity to talk to one of our representatives or senators.

And this would outline essentially what our priorities are, and then we'd provide a little more detail.

And this would be really our entryway into, I would say, advocacy on behalf of the community.

If we're going to get into the advocacy process with our state legislators, it really is a long-term commitment.

We've uh been successful.

I think Casa Miraposa is a good example where we work with partners and Councilman Adams and Council Mozzarella spoke and testified, and that was successful in getting advancing one of the community-based projects with the capital budget.

We've been pretty good about sharing our concerns about our infrastructure.

And that's always going to be an issue for the city of Astoria, just given the complexity of our utilities and the age of those utilities.

So tonight really is an opportunity to kind of discuss what those priors would be.

We would then go to a future council meeting and basically find those and affirm those.

What would be an appropriate process to do once we have a affirmed state legislative priorities list would be to invite our state delegation to a meeting probably in fall, right before the session, kind of get an idea what they believe the session is gonna, you know, pertain, what they're hearing, those type of issues, and then have an ongoing dialogue.

It would make sense to identify one to two individuals from council to sort of be that liaison for the state legislative priorities and hopefully advance our priorities on behalf of Astoria.

So with that, um, I'm just gonna go roughly discuss some of the priorities that we've identified um collectively as council, but also um uh from a staff perspective.

So given the focus on workforce housing, and that is a state objective and goal right now.

I think we have a real opportunity to take our customs house project and potentially ask for a capital ass.

That could be an infrastructure or pre-development cost, but I think that's an opportunity to have dialogue with our state delegation and see if we could advance that.

The other one which should not be a surprise is really um we need to advocate at the state level if there's funding for communities like Astoria, rural communities for help with local infrastructure.

Um ARPA is a great example.

We have $13 million that advanced significant projects within our community.

The water caucus, um, the year prior was very, very active.

They listed um millions upon millions of projects statewide.

Um that project or that caucus is no longer active, I think for lack of funding, but that's uh an initiative that would should be a continued dialogue with the city council.

Um, another one is too, we have community buildings and projects.

So it would not be out of line to ask if the if we wanted help on our aquatic center.

So we have an expansion project to provide indoor activities for our youth that would be in alignment with our values, but also it could be an ask at the state level.

Um obviously we deal with this on a different level, but there is mental health and drug addiction issues that really only the state can actually direct dollars and priorities.

So how can we be part of that whole discussion?

We talked about this at the council retreat, but we have a chairwall system that runs or supports the state highway 30 through commercial as well as marine drive, and that's in varying degree of repair.

And so at some point we need to have a dialogue with our state leadership about is that on their radar to ensure that those state highways um are maintained in a thoughtful manner.

There's been another discussion too about SB 48 that was basically um reform in the judicial system or the I guess uh incarceration system.

Uh, we've seen some maybe negative outcomes just in our own communities experience.

It would be good to have some kind of discussion or dialogue with state representatives and house of representatives figure out is there any room for reform in that?

Um a recent example, we had someone who um you know called on one one, someone was threatening to enter the house, and luckily that person was not hurt, but that person did not go to jail based on the current SB 48 guidelines.

So I think from a community perspective, that was surprising to most people.

Um, but as the structure is within this SB 48, there's a point system, and really only the most um serious crimes against person causing injury or death will be actually uh result in a jail sentence.

So I think there's maybe room for dialogue on that discussion also.

So those were some of the ideas.

We provide a background sheet on a number of issues just for ideas to generate the discussion.