To you.

All right, I'm going to call today's meeting to order.

Will the recorder please call the roll?

Counselor Duggar.

I am here.

Counselor Hartmeyer Prigg, I am too.

Counselor Hassan.

Here.

Councillor Kimmy.

Councilor Teeter.

Yeah.

Councilor Tivnon.

Here.

Mayor Beatty.

Here.

All right.

And for the record, the city attorney asked me to sit here so we can elbow me during the meeting to keep me in line.

So that's why I'm looking at you guys.

Just kidding.

I wanted to be able to look at everyone.

Okay, so the first part of our meeting today is going to be the assistant city manager, and we're going to be going over our fiscal plan.

So I'll turn it over to you.

All right, good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

So I'm Elizabeth Coffey, one of the assistant city managers here at Beaverton.

And we'll be talking to you about fiscal sustainability today and giving you an update on our action plan and local option levy questions.

So we'll just give just a quick second for the PowerPoint to get pulled up.

So today we're going to be going over a fiscal sustainability action plan review.

Give an update on our fiscal year 2026-27 strategy, and then we'll cover some local option levy policy questions for your consideration today.

And you can move to the next slide.

And the next slide after that, please.

So the policy questions for you to keep in mind as we walk through today's presentation are these following three questions.

And we're not asking for any decisions today.

We're just looking for your initial feedback as we start to dive more into the conversation around a potential local option levy.

So three things to keep in mind.

We're curious about feedback if council agrees with pursuing an amount of a minimum of 40 cents per thousand assessed value for a potential levy.

And we'll talk a little bit more about why that potential amount later in the presentation.

Second, we also will be gathering your feedback about a couple of different proposed levy packages to start the conversation as we work towards finalizing those.

And then third, we do want to just check in and see if you want to continue pursuing the potential of a May 2026 levy as opposed to a November 2026 levy.

So but first we'll kick off with a review of our fiscal sustainability action plan.

Just wanted to recap.

You can go to the next slide, please.

In the October 21st council work session, we talked about a short-term, medium-term, and long-term fiscal sustainability action plan, because the city has made great strides in accomplishing many of the efforts that they had in their last fiscal action plan.

And so based on council feedback, we have adjusted the short-term actions to also include a transient lodging tax increase.

And you can see a number of other actions in particular in the short term, which includes exploring a local option levy and services fee, transportation utility fee evaluation, business license fee study.

Next slide, please.

So this is a very, very high-level overview of the short-term actions.

And I think what you can take away from this slide is that we're doing a lot of different things around fiscal sustainability, and we're kind of doing them all at once.

And so we're working on the local option levy if we do proceed with a May uh potential levy.

Um we have lots of work to do between now and May.

Uh concurrently, we will be working on the services fee, and we'll provide an update on that in just a minute.

We anticipate coming back to you with more information about the transient lodging tax in the spring, as well as more information about the business license study.

Uh, concurrently, we're also working on the transportation utility fee as well as services prioritization, and we are about to kick off our fiscal 2026-27 budget process.

So lots of irons in the fire at the moment.

So, speaking of budget, we're gonna transition and talk a little bit about our strategy for fiscal year 2026-27.

Um, before we begin discussing the next fiscal year, you can move to the next slide, please.

Um, I think it's helpful to review last year's uh financial situation and remind uh folks of the strategies that we deployed at that time.

So as a reminder, last year we faced what we called a financial storm.

We had a budget deficit of approximately 15.7 million dollars.

And I think as we move forward to the next fiscal year, it's helpful to think of the deficit like a large hole in our roof through tough decisions like cutting nearly 17 positions and reducing the amount that we spend on materials and services and a number of other solutions that you see on the right side of the screen.

We were able to repair about half of the whole, about $7.5 million worth of the deficit.

However, fully fixing the remaining half required funds that would heavily impact our community.

And so to prevent immediate harm to critical services like safety, we did apply a temporary fix.

We used one-time revenue, which you can think of like a tarp that covered the whole and kept the rain out.

This temporary fix included the use of underspend and one-time savings and totaled approximately $8.2 million.

So this did shelter us for the storm for this year, but it didn't fix the roof.

So now, as we review the forecast for fiscal year 26-27, that TARP is still covering the whole.

So that $8.2 million gap is waiting for us again this year, and we're looking for a more permanent solution to build our roof.

So I hope that's helpful analogy and helping understand why we continue to have a deficit, and even though we have made significant reductions.

Moving on to the next slide.

With that context in mind, let's talk about the general fund forecast for fiscal year 26-27.

There are a variety of factors that influence our general fund forecast.

And the forecast is still very much a work in progress.

Every piece of information is like adding a piece to the jigsaw puzzle that is our forecast.

We add pieces now through the end of February to get that puzzle a little bit clearer, and that picture gets clearer slowly as we do so.

We anticipate having the majority of the puzzle pieces in place by the end of February or early March, and at that time we'll continue working on the puzzle through a variety of budget decisions, and that will culminate with the budget committee meetings in late May and early June.

And so what we know so far that's informing our forecast is as we talked about in the last slide, we used one-time revenue to avoid significant service reductions.

That leaves us with a starting point of $8.2 million for the deficit.

We could use one-time revenue again, but the forecast is developed in advance of budget decisions, and it does not assume the use of one-time funds.

And so that is a positive of around $700,000 extra over what we had projected.

We also have property tax revenue projections in.

We have that data from the county, and we are generally assuming a revenue growth of approximately $2 million, and that consists of the 3% growth that's allowed via the Oregon State Constitution, as well as a factor for a new construction.

We also know that the PERS contribution rate remains the same for fiscal year 27.

However, as wages and salaries go up, so two do the PERS costs because they are a percent of salary.

And the PERS contribution will adjust again in fiscal year 27-28.

We also know cost of living salary adjustments very slightly across union contracts, but on average are about 4%.

We are still working on additional revenue projections outside of property tax revenue.

We are working on our cost allocations for services that are provided to the general fund.

So think of things like payroll and IT.

We will be looking at the materials and services cost increase that's done in partnership with departments across the city through the budget process, reevaluating what capital expenses we might need to tackle next year, and then we'll be calculating estimates for where we anticipate we will actually end up for fiscal year 25-26.

So all of these puzzle pieces that aren't fully in place yet mean that our deficit estimate will change over the next few months.

So the number that I'm about to show you on the next slide is likely not going to be the number that you'll see at the budget committee in May, but we did want to share the draft forecast with you today, just so you have some idea of where we're starting at.

Next slide, please.

So early estimates, and again, this is not finalized.

At this time, we're anticipating a $15 million gap in the general funds similar to last year.

A couple of context, contextual points to make around this number.

Forecasts like budgets assume that positions are filled 100% of the year, which is not what happens in reality.

And sometimes there is an underspend of our expenses because projects are delayed, grant funding is obtained, or we find other ways to contain costs.

So we are currently analyzing what level of underspend we can reasonably assume that we that could whittle that $15 million deficit down.

We did something similar last year, and we were able to whittle that deficit down to 10 million dollars.

And we are going to be working with a financial consultant who will help us verify our assumptions and verify that work.

Regardless, it's safe to say that even assuming some level of underspend, we are facing a significant gap between our revenue and expenses.

And you can see that absent any action, that trend continues over the next five years and that gap widens.

You can also see that the depth of the gap is significant enough that it cannot easily be solved through reductions, which is not to say that we are not considering reductions as part of our fiscal sustainability work because we are.

And so it makes sense to focus the levy around the issues that they have indicated that they care the most about and that they are most concerned about reductions too.

This isn't to take away from the value of many of the other services that we offer, but we are just prioritizing what voters have initially indicated that they are most concerned about.

An important piece of context to note, and we'll talk more about this in a later slide is that our initial voter outreach also demonstrated that if we ask the community for a levy amount that covers our entire general fund deficit, we would likely not be successful.

So we are taking the blended approach as council stated in the last council work session in October, and also preserving suggesting a monthly services fee that would really preserve other general fund services.

Our focus is really on the foundation of the organization and what we're currently doing, not any fancy new bells or whistles.

These include services that are critical to the foundation of operating the organization, but also community-facing services that still rank high on our resident priority list.

And the goal is really to whittle the deficit down to a more manageable amount through those two tools.

The focus of today's presentation is around the general fund, but I also don't want to forget that our street fund is in critical need of resources.

Rising costs, as an example, highway construction costs have risen 70% in the last several years, are presenting financial challenges.

Recurring street maintenance techniques while also increasing in costs are still significantly less expensive than letting streets fail.

Rebuilding a street is typically six to ten times more expensive than regular maintenance.

We've suggested a specific fee for this because there's a legal nexus to transportation.

Next slide, please.

So next we'll give a status update on where we are at with the variety of approaches that we're taking to balancing the budget.

On the revenue side, we've talked a little bit about the potential local option levy, and we'll talk about that more in the coming slides.

For a potential monthly services fee, we have hired a consultant, and they are going to be developing a variety of models of different structure options for council to consider moving forward, and we anticipate having that information back to you in early 2026 at a work session.

We also talked a little bit about the transient lodging tax and that potential increase to cover arts program expenses.

And we just talked a little bit about the street street fund and the transportation utility fee.

One thing that I want to note about the levy and the fee, in particular related to the budget.

Again, we've we've taken that blended approach of including both a fee and a levy, and so one tool will not solve the whole deficit.

And then regarding the levy and the fee, I want to clarify that the levy revenue would not be built into the budget.

We would not assume that the levy would pass.

We will develop alternative budget scenarios that will cover if the levy fails or if the levy passes.

In addition, we have not yet determined if we will budget for revenue from the potential monthly services fee.

We're just too early in that process.

So we're going to be looking for more direction from council when we're able to return to you with more information about the structure and the timing of the implementation of the fee is also dependent upon the status of the levy.

So more to come on that.

On the expense side, departments will shortly begin preparing potential reduction scenarios for us to consider as we begin the budget process.

We're also looking at a service prioritization framework that will help us guide budget decisions, and that will categorize services in a variety of ways that could help you in decision making.

And you will get a preview of that at your upcoming retreat in the next few days.

Next slide, please.

So the focus of today's presentation is really on the levy, but we did have a request from the last council work session to have more information on the transient lodging tax and what other jurisdictions are charging.

And so no action required on that, just providing this information.

As a reminder, visitors staying in lodging are the ones that are subject to the transient lodging tax.

A minimum of 70% must be dedicated to tourism and 30% to general expenses.

We're currently using the Transiate Lodging Tax to support the Patricia Reeser Arts Center and can use it to support the arts program as well.

Those qualify as tourism expenses.

A revenue estimate increase of about 2% would be approximately $860,000, which would cover roughly the cost of the arts program.

So we've done some research into what other cities are charging for their transient lodging tax.

And on the chart on the screen, you can see the seven similarly sized cities in Oregon are listed first in this chart in order of highest TLT rate to lowest.

And those are followed by the other surrounding Washington County cities, and then I threw in Portland there as well, just for comparison.

And you can see Beaverton is right in the middle of the road, and what we're charging for transient lodging tax.

When the League of Oregon Cities did a study in December of 2024, the average in the whole Portland metro area for the three counties is about 4.9%.

So staff will be returning to council later in 2026 to discuss this further.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so now we're going to move on to talk a little bit more about the local option levy and some of the policy questions that council is going to need to be discussing and making decisions on over the next couple months.

And again, just wanting to check in and get your initial feedback on these.

Next slide, please.

So the first policy question is really the amount of the potential levy.

This is a key decision point for council.

And while council will ultimately decide what the best amount for the levy is, we've provided an example of 40 cents per thousand here on the screen, and we've provided that based on the overall tax rate here in Beaverton, understanding that there's a variety of special districts.

We've also looked at past voting history as well as our initial voter outreach.

And so as an example, if 40 cents per thousand assessed value levy would cost the average homeowner in Beaverton around $9.23 per month.

That's based on the average residential property assessed value of 276,518 dollars as a reminder.

That's assessed value, not real market value.

And that would bring in approximately $5.3 million in fiscal year 2627 to the general fund.

Just so you're aware, for every five cent increase to the levy, that brings in approximately 660,000 extra per year and has an additional cost of about $1.15 per month.

A 10 cent increase would bring in approximately 1.3 million more a year and an additional 2.2.30 cents per month for homeowners.

Next slide, please.

So this graph shows the draft general fund forecast with the revenue from a 40 cent levy overlaid.

And if you can do one more click, please.

If you can click again.

So the yellow line you can see represents the remaining budget gap that we would need to close with either a combination of the fee and reductions.

Just for context, to close a $10 million gap, the levy would need to be $76 per thousand, which would have an average homeowner monthly impact of $17.51.

To close a $15 million gap, the levy would need to be a dollar 13 per $1,000 assessed value, and that would have a monthly average homeowner impact of $26.08.

It seems at this point highly unlikely that voters would approve these higher amounts.

And keep in mind that to fully close the levy over the life of the five years, we would likely need to have the levy amount be higher than that because again, one of the issues with property taxes is the revenue doesn't raise rise as high as our expenses do or fast as our expenses do.

So keep this graph in mind as we move on to talk about potential levy packages.

But as we've currently proposed it, we're again focusing really on the foundation of services that we offer here at the city.

So next slide, please.

So we have a couple different uh potential package options to get some initial counsel feedback on.

So community members have indicated that community safety is a top priority.

And an initial engagement shows that residents are most concerned about cuts to police response times, drug and alcohol crime enforcement, addressing speeding and dangerous driving, and just generally keeping the community safe.

And so, as a result, we're focused on the protect portion of our foundational funding efforts through the levy.

We will do some additional voter engagement that will help refine these levy packages.

But in the meantime, council could consider a couple of options around potential public safety levy packages.

So this first package, which we've titled Modern Tools Local Safety, proposes some additional investment in services beyond what is offered today.

And I'll talk a little bit more about why that is.

So the first thing that it proposes is that there were a number of cuts that were made to the police department's budget for this fiscal year, fiscal year 25-26.

And this package would propose that we could restore four of those officer positions that were eliminated because the those cuts did cause some concern within the organization and the community.

A couple of the cuts that were made, two bike team officers, positions that were vacant were reduced.

They do proactive policing efforts to address homelessness, theft, trespassing, and address other livability issues.

We could also choose to restore our mental health response team officer that provides services in partnership with a county mental health clinician to calls involving somebody in a mental health crisis.

Or we could restore resources for oversight of training and add resources to patrol.

So there's a number of different options if we wanted to restore some of that capacity to our police department.

The other enhancement that we've suggested is that we could also invest in transparency and technology.

This is proposed because we have recently been working on how best to pay for some of the police technology that we currently have, and that we will need to figure out a strategy for in the long run, regardless of whether or not it is in the levy.

And so council will receive a briefing about this issue to learn more about it in December and have the chance to ask questions.

But I'll give you a brief spoiler alert now.

The police body worn cameras, which are our key tool in providing transparency to the public, are coming near the end of their life, as are our tasers and some of our in-car vehicles.

The city can choose to purchase new hardware, which is what we have been doing, that has not been budgeted for, and that results in a pretty big ticket line item every couple of years.

Or the city could, for a lower per unit cost, transition to a service model where these are provided via a long-term contract and replaced on an as-needed basis.

This proposal would also allow for additional tools like live translation in the field, streamlined evidence review, and the potential for drones as first responders deployment.

What we found is that police agencies are beginning to transition to this new model of service because it keeps equipment up to date and in good repair, and it also provides officers with more tools to be effective and efficient.

It is also a lower per unit cost over time than kind of continually having the big hardware purchases.

This investment would help us address many of the recommendations in the polls report around modern policing, and again, more information to come in the briefings.

This package was also maintain and allow us to preserve approximately 13 officer positions that support essential public safety services.

So services like responding to 911 calls, our response for priority one and two calls is currently under seven minutes, which not to pick on Portland, but last year they had an average response time of 20 minutes.

Maybe not a fair comparison, but our national response time is also below the national average of 10 minutes.

We know that if there are fewer officers due to budget reductions, those response times will increase, and the community has indicated that they would be concerned about that.

This package also protects responses to dangerous driving.

So far in 2025, our police have responded to over 500 DUII incidents, which is crucial for community safety.

And so overall preserving those officers helps keep the community safe.

Next slide, please.

And so recognizing that the last slide did cover some service enhancements.

We also wanted to provide council with information on what would happen if we don't move forward with those additional costs.

And so we have this other option, option number two, which is really to just focus on the core public safety services that we offer today without enhancements, without restorate restoring the positions and not adding the new technology features.

We would still be able to maintain police response times, respond to drug and alcohol crimes, address dangerous driving, and generally keep the community safe.

This would allow us to preserve more officers, approximately 21 officers.

So the graph that you saw with the deficit gap and the levy revenue overlaid assumes that we don't have additional investments in service, like adding the technology investment and the restoration of services.

And so that's why this package you see more officers preserved, because with the previous package with service enhancements, we are adding some costs into that levy.

So that's one trade-off for council to think about as you're thinking about where you might like to go with the levy.

Of course, the trade-off of going with this package is that we wouldn't see the enhanced service through the restoration of some of our alternate responses like the bike team or the mental health clinician, or have the option to have a small expansion and patrol.

We also will eventually need to evaluate how we are going to pay for our body war and camera replacement and our tasers replacement, which will be coming due in the next few years.

Next slide.

Oh, thank you.

So I just wanted to provide some examples of what $9.23 a month equates to.

And I do want to recognize it's no small thing to ask our community to make an investment in our services.

But I would like to point out that there is tremendous value that is provided through either levy package that's presented.

There are really critical services like responding to 911 calls, enforcing DUII driving, and addressing crime and spread out across the community.

The cost equates to a pint of soup or the cost of a monthly streaming service, or some of the other examples that you see here on the screen.

And it's just an example of how taxpayers do go far under the stewardship of the city and how we will be doing our best to stretch every penny to provide services that the community needs and depends on.

Next slide, please.

All right, I'm coming near to the end.

The last policy question for you to consider is the timing of the levy.

So as a reminder, for a May of 2026 levy, we would receive the revenue in November of 2026 if we are successful.

And that would mean that for our fiscal year 26-27 budget, we could amend that to restore cuts in services.

For a November of 2026 levy, we would not receive the revenue until November of 2027.

So that means that we would need to strategize how to address the deficit for fiscal year 26-27 through service cuts and/or one-time revenue.

And then just to walk you through if you want to pursue a May of 2026 levy, here's what you can expect in terms of when you will need to be making some decisions and when you'll get additional information.

So we plan on returning January 13th for a special council work session to provide a more refined levy package for your consideration.

We will be doing additional message testing with voters in January and have some council briefings in January as well.

February is really the key decision making time around a May 2026 levy.

That's when we need to have council evaluate the draft ballot measure and provide feedback.

I would anticipate that would take probably a couple of council work sessions in February.

And then we would need to have a business meeting to actually vote to refer the measure to the county.

March, we would need to hold our challenge period for the measure and then submit the measure to the county.

And that's really when it turns over to the community for their campaign because staff will be limited to informational outreach only.

And then April and May are really focused on outreach and campaign with the election being May 19th.

Next slide, please.

So just to recap, next slide, please.

Uh so as a reminder, three policy questions for you to provide some initial feedback on today.

Um what are your thoughts around pursuing a minimum amount of 40 cents per thousand?

Uh what feedback do you have about the proposed levy packages?

And do you wish to continue pursuing the potential of a May 2026 levy?

And we will be coming back to you in January on January 13th.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the presentation.

Uh par our um bless me know you want to tell.

Counselor Hartmeyer Prague.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you so much, Elizabeth.

I have a question on the um public safety levy options, and the one that was like restore some services, and then the second was um just like preserve.

Is that is the implication though, like we could restore certain services, but there's still potential cuts to officers?

Like I wasn't quite sure, right?

Because it there was like a preserved 13, I think it said, and option one, but it restored the bike team, and then it could help with some of the tech.

And then the second one said just preserve 21 officers.

So is if we choose option one, there's are people uh like is there still a um a potential head cut reduction required?

Okay.

Um so what we're really proposing is an overall financial package, right?

That includes both the levy and the potential monthly services fee.

And so the trade-off that you would need to consider with package number one, where we are making some additional investments, is that that will um eat away at less of your deficit, right?

And so then the choice that you have is do we make up that with a slightly larger fee?

Um, or do we make that up with service um reductions, right?

Which wouldn't have to be within the police department, it could be across the organization.

And so um the 13 versus 21 officers is really showing that you know, if you think about the levy equaling people through the first package, you can preserve 13 of our officers that we currently have in the budget through levy funding because we are spending $2 million essentially in investing in some additional restoration and services versus the second package, you can preserve more of those officers in the budget through the levy funding because there's not those additional costs.

Okay, I understand.

Thank you.

And that's a helpful distinction that we have to make it up elsewhere too, right?

Okay.

Um, can we get the questions back up?

Would that be okay?

I don't know if anyone else needs them.

Um, but my answer to one of do I agree with pursuing the minimum amount?

Yes.

I think um that amount just from what we heard today, seems like maybe our best option of getting it passed.

I'm hesitant to go much higher.

I like the idea of us going higher, but just from what we're hearing and you know from the presentation, it seems like the 40 cents is probably the right level.

Um I do really like the investment piece of option one of the levy because oftentimes the community wants to know what am I getting for it?

And I think that it's a hard message to resonate.

You're getting the same, um, even though like it's just reality, right?

And it's for really good reason that we need additional funding and we need more revenue.

So, but I think that the storytelling of that is really strong.

And I think to be able to restore our bike team also is really important.

It's been such a critical function.

Uh, so I'm and that was that'd be my preference, and I think that the May 26th timeline is absolutely um the timeline that we should pursue.

The other question I had is um I know um in advance of this meeting, um, the city had shared on social media.

We have this upcoming work session, right?

And I did what you're never supposed to do, and I read the comments.

And um, there was a couple of folks talking about like our um our reserves, right?

And there were comments like, I don't want you to talk about raising funds if you have money in the bank.

And so I was thinking about that.

But if we were to, and as we talked about at our last work session, if we were to reduce our reserve amount, that is a one-time, that is a one-year one-time potential contribution to solutions, correct?

That's correct.

And I think again, if you think about that roof analogy, it really is just it's helping you out that year.

Um and the more that you use those reserves, they will dwindle down, right?

And so it is a great option.

And the reason that we're considering it now is because there is so much financial sustainability work going on, and that takes time.

And we may not want to reduce some services or eliminate services while we're doing that work.

And so it's a band aid that we can apply, but it's definitely not a permanent solution.

You're correct.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's a really important distinction.

And I know we've actually talked so much um through these sessions about the problem that we're facing.

Um there's been really strong management through it all, right?

And I just want our I want our community to know that that city staff and your council, like we take this so seriously, and we're trying to find these sustainable ways of closing this gap, and it's not um we're not just setting out a bunch of money that that could be used to fix this, right?

And so I just I think that it's important that we we look at those strategies in those short term, right?

Because yeah, I would love to see us preserve some of those services to get us to that point that hopefully the longer term relief is coming through, but that that doesn't help us in the long run.

And so I just wanted to bring up that.

So thank you.

Counselor Dagger?

Yeah, I'll answer one and three really quickly because those are easy.

Um, yes and yes.

Pretty pretty straightforward for me.

Um, what's informing my feedback on this on on number two?

Um actually before I do that, can can you remind me?

Um I asked this to Councillor Hardmeyer Priggin, she can remember either, but but our YSO program, I believe, is subsidized.

Is that correct?

Like we're not the school district does not pay us 100% of the cost.

I know there was a ramp, and then I think we push some of that off.

Do we know offhand they pay for the time in which the YSO officers are providing service throughout the year, but they don't pay for the full year.

So those officers are doing work that would be there regardless of whether we'd have the program or not.

Um, and the ramp up was to get to the actual dollar amount.

So they are progressing in that.

And that is how far are we along that?

Um, I think that they will probably be halfway by next year, and so we'll have to discuss that with the new superintendent because we did hold them flat for one year.

Yeah, I remember.

Yeah, and we had enough wiggle room to do that, but not for the subsequent year.

Okay, yeah, I I thought so.

I I just want to make sure, like, I'm just thinking about public safety throughout everyone.

Like we cannot afford it, it's gonna be a really awkward conversation if we go out and tell the voters we need this money for this, but also we're subsidizing this over here, and this, you know, this service over here is also somehow we're paying for um in general.

I think I support the second public safety version.

I just feel really uncomfortable adding new services at a time when we're telling voters and we're telling residents, trust us with money, we're broke, we can't afford anything.

Like this is this is we've done everything now.

I don't want to promise them anything.

And but but but where my mind goes immediately is what if they say no?

If we say we're if we're using this to protect 21 positions and they say no, do we eliminate the 21 positions?

Is that what the voters are telling us?

Like that's an uncomfortable place for me to be, but like that is the question, that's where we're at now, I think fiscally.

And I think we have to be really careful with our messaging.

But that's you know, like I don't like the idea of promising new things.

I wish we could do that.

Don't get me wrong.

I I love the idea of translation services, I think that's brilliant.

And and we've got to figure out that long term, but from a from a levy purpose, I think we gotta just focus on the basics and protect as many people as possible and keep it keep it as simple and and as easy to communicate as possible.

Can I clarify one question?

Um this may be for Elizabeth.

So the investment is not extra.

There may be some things that come with it, but regardless, we will still need to purchase tasers, you will still need to purchase cameras.

That that expense does not go away.

This is merely telling the community that we need to invest in these things.

So I want to clarify that even if you pick a package that doesn't have this, we still have to pay for this.

And as Elizabeth noted, that just means that that fee part just got bigger.

So it just shifts to another funding source, but they need those to do their job.

So we don't really have options on saying no to the equipment, but anything beyond that, then the answer would be yes.

That's that's helpful clarification.

Uh I think that's it for me.

Counselor Teter.

Thank you.

This is a good good presentation.

I do agree with the 40 cents per thousand assessed value rate, and I do want the May 20 2026 timeline.

Um I lean towards option one or the option one levy that would also support some of the tech upgrades.

Um structure that we would need to be paying for anyways, and the ability to help fund the bike team officers potentially fund mental health response team clinician, I think is a really good story for us to tell.

Um the county levy public safety levy just passed with a pretty good margin.

This option one feels pretty similar to that.

Am I reading that correct?

That's correct.

We actually looked at the county ballot measure language um while we're evaluating some of the package options.

Okay.

Um I like that.

I think that's a really good story to tell because it's not that we're adding a whole lot of new services.

We're just trying to do what we do better.

And as a city counselor and as a city council in general, I think it's often hard for us to invest in technology and tools to do the work.

And I think if we're telling the community like hey, can help us do this.

Um it can help us do our work more effectively and provide uh really well-rounded public safety.

Not just not just people, not just patrol officers, but the technology to do the work.

So I I like that a lot.

Um yeah, I like this.

If I remember the other piece, I'll jump in in a minute.

Can you um just an initial question and then I can try to answer the questions elaborate a little bit more on the transparency and technology?

So I know you talked about aging body worn cameras, but you also mentioned something about like the technology file, like a bigger package that allowed something, and then um maybe a little bit about drone deployment that's sensitive in some places right now.

I will go ahead and get started and give you some very general answers, but I might phone a friend uh if that isn't kind of sufficient.

And you will I recognize that we're kind of um giving you some brand new information today and kind of asking for your initial feedback before you've had a chance to have briefings.

So the timing just got a little bit reversed for this one.

So you will get quite a bit more information in your briefings this month, which I think will be a good opportunity for you to um get all the details that you need.

Um but the um the service comes with both the hardware as well as the technology pieces, and so um they provide the option to have drones as a first responder model um which would provide real-time information faster while um officers are trying to get to the scene.

Um they through the cameras, I believe.

Um uh and deputy chief, please correct me if I'm misspeaking on anything.

Uh just come on up if you need to.

Um that provides real-time translation um in a chaotic emergency situation.

Um and then we would also be able to add more um in-car cameras, um, which provides just better transparency in those situations.

And then there's some just a variety of different um efficiency tools, and so um it provides um officers with a better searching capability when they're searching for that video evidence, um, so they're not having to spend quite so many hours combing through.

It helps them write first drafts of reports and basically just provides more efficiencies through technology for some of the more routine um paperwork tasks that they have to do, and so the goal is to have them spending a little bit less time on doing those tasks and more time like out in the community.

So I don't know if that generally answers your question.

Do you does the sergeant?

Do you want to add anything?

You don't have to, I'm just checking.

Okay.

Um what was my next question?

Oh, the count uh counselor teeter mentioned the mental health response piece.

Is that part of this?

Did you say that if you said it and I missed it?

Yes, so I think that's an option.

Um so if council would like to kind of proceed with package number one, I think that's the next question that we'll be working on, bringing back to you in January.

Is you know, there were more than four positions that were cut from the police budget this fiscal year.

So we have some options.

Um, one of those options is restoring our participation in the mental health response team.

Um so there was an officer that um was paired with the county's mental health clinician, um, and we um also paid into that um program.

And so um with the cuts to that service, it I want to be clear it doesn't mean that the county's not gonna respond to a mental health crisis here, right?

It just means the resources are more locally available, and we have an officer that's specially trained on how to respond to those crisis scenes.

So that is an option to consider if we decide to move forward with that restoration package.

Okay.

So I I guess if I were to answer the questions in order, um I am willing to support a minimum amount of 40 cents per 1,000 assessed value as we continue to have these conversations.

We have very active federal agent presence in our community, and I know that if we lean too hard on policing as the answer for the local option levy, which I'm not saying we're doing, but I just want to make sure I say this.

I really I think it's gonna be a hard sell.

I think it's gonna get harder out there.

There are a lot of people in our community that want to know how our officers are helping.

I believe our officers are doing everything that they can within their power to support keeping us all safe, but that is going to be a continuous community conversation.

So I just want to be thoughtful how we're moving in these discussions, because for a lot of people, public safety is policing, and for a lot of other people, public safety is the exact opposite.

And so just thinking about that messaging and how we move as we continue to have these conversations.

Counselor Tibnon.

Thank you.

Um just a really quick question in terms of the May option.

Say we go out for a levy and it doesn't pass.

Can we rerun it in November?

I'm assuming so.

Just want to clarify that.

Uh yes, counselor, you can um that's a decision that you as a body can make.

You can uh if you uh don't make it in November, you can try, or excuse me, in May, you can try again in November or in May of 2027 also.

Yeah, I I say uh yes to number one, yes to number three, and in terms of um a couple of things I heard my colleagues say, agree with counselor Duggar about the the messaging of this, and and I hope that we get to weigh in on that.

Is that part of our work sessions too, or is that gonna be left just to to staff to figure out the comms plan?

Um we do anticipate um keeping you informed about the communications and outreach plan.

We're still, you know, still lots of decisions and feedback that we're looking for from council at this point, but we will have something for you to um to see.

And then also I would say that the ballot measure also has um and the explanatory statement is really a key messaging strategy as well, and that's something that has to be approved by council.

Um I imagine that us by even saying whether it's May or November, we're gonna have a lot to do as well in this.

If I'm remembering from past efforts that I saw counselors when I was um running working on.

Um, in terms of uh the question number two, I'm in support of number one.

Uh the bike team, especially is something I think it's a win for two reasons.

One is we need them back, they were very effective.

It's an area that needs that kind of support that's not in a car that's on a bike, the way they interact with the community, the relationships that they form.

Um we need them back in full force, is what I'm saying.

Um so there's that, but we also said we wanted to, that we wanted to make that happen.

And and I think this is the indication that we're standing behind what we said.

And I I'm excited about the enhancements in technology.

I voice Counselor Hosson's concern about drones.

I I know we've started to introduce those, and other jurisdictions have very much introduced them.

Um I I remember in a recent council meeting hearing the great news of it being um deployed to find um someone who was lost and and an elder who had gotten lost.

It's wonderful.

Um, but there's there's this new territory, and bringing this kind of technology into the community, I think needs to come with some scrutiny from the council.

I know this tonight is not the place to do that, but I do hope that we get to have some conversations around what we are comfortable with and what we're not comfortable with in terms of drone usage um in the city by city.

Um so yeah, yes, number one and yes.

Counselor giving me agree with almost almost everyone.

Yes, two one and three, and option one for me.

Uh uh the question I have is um this levy will buy us five years.

Right.

So we will need the funding after five years to maintain certain level of service currently that we have, right?

Um that's correct.

Yeah, that is correct.

Um the work would be done to how much the levy will cover in total deficit, as my understanding was five million out of 15 years, right?

So right now our deficits projected to be um about 15 million dollars.

Um, and so um in year one of a 40 cents per thousand levy that would bring in about 5.3 million every year.

It will grow a little bit over time, and so you know, we we will see that three percent and new construction growth um over time.

I I just want to make sure that we're keeping ongoing work to reduce the deficit, obviously, that once the levy out have this conversation again, but we want to be in financial health, wellness up to that point diligently to get there.

Um I say this is because we cannot just keep thinking maintaining the service, which has I kept saying we have a structured deficit that causes our deficit, so we have to keep addressing that deficit somehow while we find the money to uh crypto maintaining service, but in in your honest opinion, can we maintain the current level of service going forward?

Oh gosh, well that's a how many of a question to answer.

Um I think that really depends, right?

On what is the community willing to fund and invest in the community?

Um and what are we willing to set as the fee?

Um, and if the revenue is not coming in as projected, then we need to really take a hard look at the services that we are offering.

Um I think to your point about the structural deficit and and looking at the services that we offer, and that is part of the service prioritization work that we are going to be doing, and so we are going to look at categorizing our services so that um council has a better understanding of what services we are required to offer, you know, by state or federal law, um, what are the ones that are required by our code, which in theory we could change, and then what are the discretionary services that are left?

Um what are the options that you have?

And that's certainly a conversation that we um will have you weigh in on that initial framework at your retreat that's coming up soon, and then we do plan on coming back to you in March with um kind of that framework filled out so that you can um look at the services we're offering and have a discussion about um kind of where we're at.

Um I don't know if that's helped or Jenny if you have anything you want to add.

I I want to I want to clarify one thing.

So the comment was made that the levy option it runs for five years.

That doesn't mean that it's going to consistently correct for the full five years because our assumptions and the forecast and actual um budget numbers change, right?

Your revenues could go down, your expenditures can continue to you know increase with a pretty pretty quick clip.

So I think that's very important that you can get in year three and you could have a high cost of living or you could lose a revenue, right?

So anything can change.

So I think that's very important to know.

And that same thing, you can adopt a fee, right?

And that may not cover the full cost.

So I wanted to make sure that we are clear that there's no guarantee in five years that it's gonna fully cover your deficit amount because things do change that we can't predict.

Right.

Okay.

I understand that.

All right.

I just want to make sure that's the same.

It doesn't mean it's not your fault.

Yeah, the things happen.

Well, that makes me feel good.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um I would love I don't I don't look forward to having that conversation.

I don't I don't look forward to having that conversation.

I don't have that conversation.

But I'd rather have it when all of us are here.

Because we have four years of knowledge.

If new people come, then they want to have this nice projects and things change and more things to be done, but you know, it's hard to get them down and sit down and listen to like our actual situation.

So you it is a hard uh answer hard hard question to answer and find a solution, but I I would love to have that rapidly before having to go out and campaign and trying to do other stuff.

So you're saying it's hard to have new electeds that only want shiny shit and don't want to address the budget.

Exactly.

That is an interesting hot take.

Uh which one of you is first?

Counselor Teter.

I've got one comment and one question.

Uh if we're talking about technology that could support our officers, uh, what's the lifespan of cameras that we might be getting or lifespan of drones?

Like is it a five-year lifespan?

Are we talking 10 years or longer?

Um so the extent of my knowledge on that question is that our body worn cameras generally last about three years.

So um every time you recharge the battery, it diminishes the life of the camera.

Um with the investment in technology, if we transition to this new service model, um those would just be replaced on an as-needed basis.

So it's kind of like software as a service for those of you familiar with how IT services work.

Um so it's switching to not having to really worry about purchasing that hardware.

If something breaks, they replace it.

Um but if you would like more detailed information, I might ask Deputy Chief to step in, because I don't know how long tasers uh last.

No, that that's good.

That's just a good frame of reference.

I wasn't sure.

Three years is not as long as I was hoping, but it's a little bit.

Um then my final comment is just in general, the structure that was put forth in this presentation.

The levy being focused on protect and then fees being used for preserve.

I think that structure is really solid, and I think that's really easy to message and um communicate to the community in a way that's I think would be easier for people to understand.

Um I like that, and if that's a structure we keep going forward with, that I'd be I'd be happy with that.

Counselor Hartmeyer, Prague.

Um I had one more question.

Um maybe I don't know if like at what point we can even anticipate this, but we in one of the last presentations also we talked about compression.

Do we have an idea on like where we might hit compression, or is that is that kind of 5.3 what we expect to take home, I guess, after compression.

Uh so compression is this is Susan Collis is my instructor.

Compression is very difficult to predict, it's parcel-based, parcel by parcel.

And compression generally occurs, well, it does occur when the real market value goes down towards the assessed value.

So if you think back to 2008 when we had that housing crisis, uh it happened across the state of Oregon where real market values plummeted and many jurisdictions were in compression.

Currently, Beaverton has on average in the last three years 75,000 worth of property tax revenue compression out of a total base of 50 million.

So it's very small, and my preliminary research shows it's basically because of vacant commercial lots.

So if you think about a property that has a building, that assessed value with that building and the land is gonna go up by three percent, and chances are the real market value is much higher than that.

But once you remove the building and now it's just vacant land, the market value goes down, and so then it approaches that assessed valuation.

And so, for example, um, near highway 217, there's a new hotel.

But it used to be an old hotel, and then when they took it down, that particular parcel was in compression.

But now that there's a new um hotel there, it's gonna go the compression will go away because now there's a new building.

So it's parcel by parcel throughout the jurisdiction.

And right now we are the assessed value is um for um housing is about 50 percent of the real market value.

So there's a big gap.

So it would take um a tremendous economic shock, which could happen, but it would take quite a shock in the economy to have those market values go down toward the assessed value in which where where compression would be a real problem.

But to your point, um compression does first come off of the local option levy um if it gets to that point.

Uh but right now, because of that gap between real market value and assessed value.

Um it it of course nobody knows what's gonna happen in the future.

But it it seems that for the time being, our local option levy would be safe.

Can I make one add to also clear compression comment?

Because compression also doesn't only have to do with property value, it has to do with total taxing, which is measure fifty.

And so we can only maximize ten dollars per thousand under measure fifty.

And so the more people start taxing, the more likely.

So it's not just about what she's saying, which is a faction, it is also about measure 50, which caps so like measure five caps us at three percent growth.

Measure 50 caps us at a possible ten dollar per assessed per real market value, real market value.

And so we we will likely hit that because uh THPRD did a levy, the school district has a levy, TV FR has a levy, and so like I there's two factors of compression, and we will hit it likely very soon, absent of the real market value.

Yeah, the risk does definitely go up with a local option levy.

That's true.

Yeah.

Counselor Husson, I barely put it up and then you call my name.

It's a good view, right?

Um I'm just thinking a little bit outline.

So I just want to say this for everybody.

Um while I am uh have been, you know, very anxious about the 40 cents.

I wonder if there's a conversation to consider to go higher and to do a little bit more than what our community's asking.

I'm not saying that forever.

I just it's something to put on your minds because I worry that this on its own would be a big one.

And so is there something to add?

I don't know that I know what that is.

I just wanted to say it because this is a good thing.

Are you I'm sorry, can I clarify what you're asking?

You you're saying do more than 40 cents because you want to add things.

But potenti just putting it out there.

Yeah, uh the polling doesn't suggest that.

And if we lose, then we have to move forward and cut money.

So if we don't make it in May and we have to go to November, this budget cycle is gonna require us to do a big cut.

And so I think the risk reward of like going a little bit higher, in my professional opinion, having uh lived through the failure of the police building, we wish we would have done what the pollers, the pollsters suggested to us, but we took a different approach and it failed.

And so I I want to remind council too that it's our job to raise the money for this.

And I know this count none of you guys have served on when we did the Charter Amendment or the past two.

So it will be our responsibility to raise the revenue to talk to voters, to put mailers out, and all of you have run campaigns, so you know to do a mailer to a city of this size, plus if we have a campaign person, and so what I would suggest that we do is we didn't call them subcommittees then, but we had a committee of counselors that like drafted the language for the ballot that drafted the mail pieces and and raised money and and did those things.

My concern about parceling it out the way that we have it, which is public safety and um maintain in that, like our labor unions are the ones that can help us fund and do things.

And if SEIU doesn't see themselves in a ballot, why and they're like, well, if you do a um fee, like we don't have to do any work there, that's a council decision.

And then we're gonna be going to the police union, and then if we're cutting services or adding stuff to them, it's gonna be really complicated.

And we're gonna have to go to businesses and raise funds, and what do you think businesses care about?

So I I want us to think about we have this other responsibility besides referring it, which is getting the message out to voters.

And that's not just going to our two voter forums.

That is we gotta communicate and do those things as well.

And so not wanting to do this twice.

We're gonna do another round of polling to to kind of look at uh the assumptions because our first round the numbers were really high.

Um but this was my initial take when I talked to staff.

I said, I don't think we could I don't think the community is gonna accept more than that, because if you look at the the past 10 years of what is passed here, the average is about 40 or 50 cents per thousand.

So we could, but it would defy what the pollsters are telling us and what voters are telling us.

And I hear you.

I think my concern again is what I what I said at the beginning, which is this the way that it looks, while I'm like, okay, I'm I'm meeting you all here.

It it is a hard sell knowing what I'm seeing happen right now in the community.

Counselor Duggar.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because that that was the one little bit of heartburn I'm having with the well, I'm having a little bit of heartburn in general about some of these things, but I wonder if there's not an argument for us to and I know the library has its own fund, but some of that comes from the general fund.

Right.

And I think it might help to put that skin in the game just because we just had this conversation.

We told the community we did not endorse the county's measure just specifically because of this, and this is in response to that now.

We need a response to that.

And I almost think this might be the time for us to, you know, add at least one little bit of the library funding that comes from the general fund to this, just because again, you know, this is a direct response to what the county just did.

Well, I think you know, the other way that I think we need we need to think.

I like the way that the staff has presented kind of like it's tools and buckets that we're trying to pull and lever here.

We, the seven of us, are gonna have to communicate that this is like a one-team beaver's hand fight because if we go out for a levy and it fails, we can't do a fee just to preserve services, it's not gonna work.

We're gonna have to use that fee to do other things.

And so we really do need our staff and our community understanding that these three buckets are really intentional because this is the lever we can pull.

But if one of them breaks, we have to readjust going forward.

So I just I think the messaging is eloquent and it's simple and understanding, and it gives us the tools we need to do things.

And I think you know, to counselor Husson's point, if we were to reverse it and then make a fee for public safety, how do you think the community would respond to that?

And so, you know, I think we we're gonna have this extra layer of responsibility, and I think what we do is I've I've met with a lot of our represented staff, uh union staff.

I've been you know, kind of communicating behind the scenes that the council is going to be making this decision.

I didn't know where we would land or the amount or the kind of the blended thing we do, but we knew we need to create a committee to do this work in tandem because I can't do it just like you guys can't do it alone.

It's we gotta go out there and do it.

And we need our staff up until the point of referring to help with all the language and kind of dial this in so we can plug and play in where we're at.

But I mean, I think the the one last point on adding too many things uh and why I have a bit of a reservation of doing it this way, is then we're gonna be accountable to spending the money this way.

And what happens if we have a downturn or the council decides they don't want drones, and we've now gone out and said we're gonna do this.

And so, like when we put stuff in a levy, we have to then report on it.

Think about what all we see with Metros levies, and we get really angry.

We're like, you said you would do these things in these buckets, why aren't you spending it?

So just thinking about the monitoring it on the back end, the short-term ease of saying we're gonna add a bike team officer's good selling on the front end, but the management over that of five years becomes really difficult.

Um, and we have to produce a report and tell people how we spent the money.

Um I I have less reservations uh about drones, and I I'll say this in caveat it when we decided body worn cameras years ago, I was very anti-body worn cameras because I don't think we had the the rules.

And I I was running school-based health centers at the time, and we had a lot of officers that came into school-based health centers if we had issues of sexual violence or other things, and I said, How are we gonna protect HIPAA and people?

How are we gonna say turn off the camera?

We hadn't had any of those rules yet.

So we went through the arduous process of working with other municipalities and doing that.

And I'd imagine we would do the same thing with drones.

My concern with drones is more about I think the Trump administration is going to limit where we can purchase drones from and other agencies that have drones now, they're made in China and those are going to be unusable.

And so, really, who we're you know, looking to see how the FCC and regulations go with drones is going to be an important place for us to be because TV F and R has drones, and if that law passes, their drones will be unusable and they'll have to purchase them again.

And what's difficult is you know, presidency to presidency, the rules are changing, and we're trying to purchase in the middle of those things.

But um, I've seen them work in lieu of no-knock warrants.

They put a drone in to see people's safety.

There are other ways that communities are using drones.

Um, but to my colleagues' point, we we need a council conversation around the usage of drones.

So I'd be really apprehensive of putting it in a package like this ahead of a conversation where we have some um agreement.

I also just worry about the preservation of 13 versus 21, what happens to the other seven officers and what kind of value does that say to us.

Um I understand we got to do these body worn cameras.

That is a value that the city has in our public safety and contract with our community, so we have to invest in those.

I don't know if it's the right way to put it in here or not.

But I think we can use some of the polling to tell us those particular languages.

Um, I also just think that what I've seen in technology packages that go to voters um for a vote, they don't like spending on technology that they feel like a shelf life is short.

And we've seen it with the schools that have done that.

They don't often do well at the ballot.

You know, I just replaced my kids' iPad she had for three years, and I was really pissed about that because I hate buying things we already own.

But uh yeah, I agree with May.

I think it's the right option.

Um, you know, it's not without complication.

We have three city council races on the ballot, but I think you know it's a good time to get us out there talking about these things.

I agree with the 40 cents.

Um, and I think there's a little bit more work to do on the on the package piece of it, but I don't I think that's germane to the decision that we're making today.

And I appreciate you trying to give us some feel goods in this, because this is not feel goods, and that's what I I see in this package.

I also see that a lot of thought went into what the council has been saying about the blended model, about how we need a little help from staff.

I mean, this presentation was excellent, and I think the back end work on that really just speaks uh uh you know credit to what you guys are doing.

I was, you know, really excited about raising the TLT because we're not in line with our other cities, and as a reminder, other people pay this tax and your mother-in-law if you don't want her at your house over the holidays.

So, you know, it's a win-win for everybody.

And I think it would help sustain our art uh department, which is a council value.

We had to, you know, we had a lot of public pressure last year on our decision around the arts manager, and this would continue to demonstrate our value.

But most importantly, my favorite thing is other people's money, and that's what TLT is.

And so if we can use other people's money to pay for art, that would be wonderful.

So I would say overall, I think this is a really great place.

And to recap where the council is, we definitely have seven counselors saying move forward.

Um I want to acknowledge um some of the reservations from counselor Hussen around the technology and working with that and the messaging and how we're gonna communicate this.

And so I think it's really important that we don't just communicate the levy that we communicate all three of these tools at once.

So the community doesn't feel like we only care about public safety.

But the fact that the public safety levy outbeat the library levy, I mean, who knows?

It could have been Beaverton's uh prowess in communicating our struggles that brought that number down a little bit, or it could just be what people are fearing and facing right now.

So I think we have a good shot with this.

And this is no easy task for any of us.

Any other closing comments?

All right, I think is there anything else you guys need from us?

Do we just roll into our next meeting?

Do we need to take a break?

Well, I mean, we'll take a little bit of a break.

They're not resetting the room.

We're not resitting the room.

Yeah, just kidding.

Yeah.

Just kidding.

No.

No, we're gonna it's gonna be a little bit complicated to change the microphone.

So I thought you guys will you guys always talk about wanting to be in this configuration.

So we're just leaving it.

Okay.

All right.

The city attorney who made me sit next to him says we can't start till six.

So we'll take a break and we'll be back at six.

Can't do anything else in 45 minutes.

We can't start the line.

Okay.

Well, we could then well let's take a 10-minute break and we'll come back.

Yeah.

Managing this update to the city's transportation system plan.

And I'm joined by Rob Zeller, my colleague, who has been instrumental in leading a lot of the engagement work over the summer.

So he's here to be able to answer any questions you have about that and talk more in detail about it.

If you have any questions about the process.

Can you go to the next slide?

So we've been working on two fronts over the past six months.

The first is analyzing what's out there today.

That's really to learn and gain a firm basis of what's working, what's not working.

And we've also been talking with community members about where they like to go, where they would like it to feel safer.

We have been listening, we've been mapping data, learning, looking for patterns, synthesizing everything into a coherent narrative that can help us and inform our next steps in the project.

So I'm gonna walk you through a handful of takeaways.

But first, I want to turn your attention to the two maps that are up on the screen there.

On the left, you'll see a zoomed-in portion of a map of Beaverton street system.

It's color-coded according to how many traffic crashes have occurred and how severe those crashes have been over a five-year period.

So the darker the color, the worse the crash history.

Blues and purples, those are streets that are owned by the county or the state, and reds and oranges are streets owned by the city.

On the right, you'll see locations where people told us over the summer that they wanted to feel safer.

And if you look at them together, compare them, you can see that there are several similar locations that light up.

You see Allen Boulevard, TV Highway, Murray, generally our downtown area.

So both are really important to understand.

Because when it comes to safety, we want to be proactive, not just reactive, and historic data can really only tell us so much.

So both of these map maps are going to be really helpful as we move forward to identify places that we we want to focus our attention.

Next slide.

So I want to talk a little bit about the engagement that we did between April and September.

We were out in the community asking folks three questions.

We asked them, where do you like to go?

Where would you like it to feel safer?

And we asked them what they thought of some potential future street designs.

We received 2800 responses.

We connected with residents from every neighborhood, and we heard from people of all different ages with all different abilities and from a variety of backgrounds.

The transportation ambassadors, these again were eight community volunteers that were appointed by the city manager.

They spent a year building skills to really go out into the community over this summer and talk to folks about this project.

They played a pivotal role in shaping and executing the community engagement strategy that we had.

And I really don't want to let this go by.

So a full engagement summary is posted to the project webpage if you want to read all the details.

But the short of it is that with some background support from staff, the ambassadors took a lead role and they facilitated focus groups, they tabled at the library, they tabled at city events, they interviewed people, they helped conduct workshops, they facilitated activities at neighborhood advisory committees, and a ton more that is in the report.

We used a variety of tools that could be deployed both in person and virtually to capture people's thoughts and draw people out.

You can see some of those activities up on the screen.

Towards the back, you can see people plac on large printed maps.

That's to help us understand where they like to go, where they would like it to feel safer.

Then sitting at the table, you can see a gentleman taking a written survey.

So we had written surveys on 11 by 17 pieces of paper where people could draw on them, circle locations that they wished that felt safer, wished they would feel safer, and then write about what at that location was an issue.

Behind them, you can see two people flipping through what we were calling our lookbook.

This was an 11 by 17 book of potential future street designs.

And this was really to help people imagine what could be and get their feedback on what they liked or what they had concerns about, and people could leave sticky notes in the book itself with comments letting us know these things.

Online, we had similar activities where folks could put digital pins in a map similar to that, and also leave us digital comments.

So what did we learn?

We learned that short trips are common in Beaverton.

People are traveling for a lot of reasons.

Both the trip data we analyzed and the information received over the summer directly from the community indicated that residents' employees regularly make local trips under three miles.

Most of these trips are by car.

However, we heard from community members that many would like an opportunity to try taking some of these trips by other means.

So by walking, biking, using public transportation.

If those conditions felt safe, convenient, and welcoming.

This interest really spanned all age groups, and it was especially true for those short local trips.

Of the trips that begin in Beaverton, the vast majority, 71%, are taken for purposes other than going to work.

So, for example, going to school or running an errand, shopping, recreation, and importantly, people conveyed to us that these trips they are often not discretionary.

They're essential.

They are truly necessary to meet their daily needs.

Popular destinations in Beaverton included shopping centers like Cedar Hills Crossing Parks, the library, grocery stores.

And in general, we heard from folks that these popular destinations are also serving as community hubs.

They're places where people like to gather, where they like to socialize.

Most students in Beaverton take the bus or are driven to school.

Walking and biking are less common, but some schools have higher rates of students walking and biking.

These schools are in neighborhoods north of 26 with higher household median incomes.

And then when considering work trips made by residents, most people in Beaverton drive to work, about two thirds of folks.

And a significant number are working from home, about one in five.

People who are working from home, these also tend to be higher income earners.

There's about 10% of residents who use public transportation, they walk, they bike, or take a motorcycle or taxi to get to work.

Of that group, about half of them, so 5% are taking public transportation.

Next slide.

Safety is a major concern for folks.

When asked about safety, people really wanted to share a lot of information.

Among other things, we heard about feeling unsafe crossing the street, biking near fast moving traffic, waiting for a bus to come on streets that aren't feeling welcoming or safe.

Here I want to focus on one particular factor that permeated everything speed.

Speed is dangerous.

The black, blue, and purple image up on that screen shows how several factors combine to either heighten or lower risks for a person who is walking.

On the right, over in the black, you'll see how things play out if someone's driving at 40 miles per hour.

At this speed, a person has a limited cone of perception, meaning they essentially have tunnel vision and they can't really mentally process everything that they're taking in outside of a very narrow view.

So if someone unexpectedly crosses their path and they need to stop, it's gonna take them over 300 feet.

That's about the length of a football field to come to a full stop.

And with that speed and volume comes an immense amount of force that is all discharged into the thing that the car hits, in this case, a person who's walking, who doesn't have any protective shell to really shield them from that impact.

So as a result, that the person walking has about an 80% chance of dying from a collision at 40 miles per hour.

As the speeds get lower, the cone of perception widens, the stopping distances lessen, the force from that collision is also reduced.

So the sort the chances of survival go up.

That's in the purple.

But even at 30 miles per hour, the odds are not great that the person will be able to walk away from the collision without a serious incapacitating injury.

So then over in the blue, getting down to speeds of 20 miles per hour, you can see how that cone of perception is far wider.

The stopping distance is about a third of what it was at 40 miles per hour.

And as a result, that survival rate goes up exponentially to a 90% survival rate.

So essentially the inverse of that death rate at 40 miles per hour.

So getting traffic speeds down to these less less lethal speeds can can really make a difference in helping people be able to keep each other safe.

Because generally, what we heard from folks is that people want to keep each other safe, no matter how they're traveling, even if this isn't always obvious through their actions.

And speed really stuck out when we looked at where injury crashes occurred on streets in Beaverton.

Nearly all crashes where someone was injured occurred on a street with a posted speed limit of 30 miles per hour or greater.

Next slide.

Unfortunately, crashes resulting in injury is are actually pretty common in Beaverton.

If you distributed them over evenly over five years, crashes that result in any kind of injury occur approximately every 10 hours in the city.

And this is when we took out crashes on our two major freeways, US 26 and Oregon 217.

More severe crashes involving fatalities or those incapacitating injuries happened roughly every 11 days.

And as the previous graphic explained, pedestrians and bicyclists face a disproportionate share of that risk.

When we considered past crashes in Beaverton, 42% of pedestrians and 28% of cyclists involved in a crash were killed or seriously injured.

That's compared to 6% of motorists involved in a crash.

Most of these serious injury and fatal crashes, they're occurring at intersections and on major roads, particularly arterials with those wide lanes, high traffic volumes, and again elevated speeds.

This is translating into where folks are feeling comfortable walking and biking.

We heard from several people about how large, noisy, high-speed streets are really acting as barriers to the destinations that they want to reach.

As a result, several people who can drive said that they're feeling forced to drive for all of their trips, even if they're short trips, because they don't feel safe right now walking, biking, or taking public transportation to the destination that they're trying to get to.

Others cannot who can't drive or don't drive, said that they're feeling off cut off from parts of the city because of these safety concerns.

So to illustrate this, we created this map of Shiffler Park.

You can see it in the middle, located in downtown Beaverton.

You can also see several red lines on the map.

And these are streets where the posted speed limit is 30 miles per hour greater.

And we wanted to understand a couple of things.

The first thing was we wanted to understand who could access the park in roughly a 10 minute walk without having to cross one of these high speed streets.

So that's the solid blue in the zone, uh blue in the map.

We can kind of consider that the comfort zone.

Second, we wanted to understand who within a 10 minute walk.

So still within 10 minutes, um, we're being cut off from this community resource.

And that's the hatched area of the map.

All of those folks need to cross over the a 30 mile per hour or greater street to get to the park.

And you can see the entire south side of Allen Boulevard, the east side of Hall Boulevard are hatched areas on that map.

So slowing down speeds on these streets and providing better crossings, um, better protection for people trying to cross them could potentially go a long way to expanding that that blue, that solid blue area, that comfort zone, and really open up parts of the city that are are currently feeling inaccessible to some of our community members.

Next slide.

The quality of the facility really matters.

Having something people will use is more than about more than just the existence of the facility.

And a great example of that are bike facilities, where we have painted bike lanes on over half of the major streets in the city, but many people still don't see them as being actually viable because they they aren't feeling safe using them.

Um in general, we heard how different groups have different needs.

For example, young people want safe ways to get to school, they want part to get to part-time jobs, parks, places to hang out with their friends, older adults and people with disabilities.

We heard about how they want smoother sidewalks and safer crossings and accessible transit stops with better signage.

Um caregivers want to feel confident that their kids or older adult family members can travel safely and independently.

We heard all of these things and needs from different groups, but all wanted safer, more accessible streets.

That was consistent throughout all of it.

So, where are we at in this process?

We have completed the existing conditions analysis and we're on schedule to begin taking a look at what the pedestrian, bicycle, transit, and motor vehicle networks could look and function like going into the future.

We're going to begin this work in the coming month and expect to come back to you and the public in the spring with ideas.

But before, next slide.

Uh before we wrap up, I just want to bring us back to these key actions that we discussed back in April.

These are actions that we believe have the potential to advance multiple community-wide goals at once.

And what we heard from the community over the past six months really tells us that we should continue to look towards and work towards these actions to guide future stages of work.

Um desire designs that reduce traffic speeds and keep help keep everyone safe.

They want wider sidewalks, they want safer crossings, they want connected networks, they want barrier and grade separated bike lanes, more comfortable transit stops, better lighting, greenery.

And there's a real desire for streets that not only serve a mobility function, but also function as places for gathering and places to be in community with one another.

Um people suggested quick build projects, they suggested pilot projects to test new ideas.

Um, and what we heard was that many are ready for change and want to see changes sooner rather than later.

So with that, we have two pretty basic questions up there.

Uh the first is did any of the analysis or engagement takeaways catch your attention?

And the second is do you have any questions or anything to add about this or future stages of work?

Can you pull back up that map uh of Shiffler?

I'd like to point out one other thing about this map.

No family that lives between those four roads can walk their kid to an elementary school without crossing a major road in Beaver.

Uh that is one of our largest child care deserts.

We're making a meaningful investment in this community with our affordable senior housing project that will have community action daycare on the bottom that will be for extremely low-income families.

But there is a lot of families that live in there that still need access to daycare and safe routes to school.

Now I understand and when we look at the locations of them, they're on this side of Allen on that side of Murray.

Our largest investment in sidewalk infrastructure was adjacent to Schiffler Park in 20 years.

And so we do a lot of work here, but to me, that is a huge indicate, like a negative indication because elementary schools are intended to be walkable.

I live in a neighborhood where I get to walk my kid to school every day, regardless of the weather.

And one of the main reasons we moved out of downtown Beaverton because that was so important to us.

So as we're looking at this map from a user standpoint, I also want us to think about functionality, like being able to walk my kid to an elementary school limits two trips a day from my household.

And we are in a neighbor, we have our other child in a daycare in the same neighborhood, we could walk both ways.

It's incredibly important to us.

So I agree with virtually everything you said, but I wanted to point it out that this neighborhood is one of the few neighborhoods in Beaverton that doesn't have this incredibly important asset that we talk about with school kids.

Um so I think I am very much a proponent of lowering the speeds.

I know we have these issues with state agencies and state-owned roads.

Most of these roads we're looking at are not ours besides Allen.

Murray is maintained by the county, and of course, those are two abandoned state highways in the middle of our city.

There's no way we would be allowed to lower the speed limit on Farmington or TV Highway.

That's uh freight thoroughfare.

So I want us to how do we address it in a way that makes sense that moves uh because we are a community that drives, but I think walking is incredibly important to me.

Counselor Harmeyer Bright All right.

Um I think well, first just amazing work.

And like it's been such a long project, like to get to this point, and it's you you keep coming with energy and enthusiasm, and it's just amazing.

And like, especially like the the youth kid, I think was in one of those pictures, and when he came to MYAB last year, like it was just it's really cool, and so it's cool to kind of come to this moment, kind of seeing the pieces along the way.

Um, I think I saw city manager in your stoplight costume recently.

Maybe saw that on our social media.

I did I did see that, yeah.

Yeah, okay.

We both have yeah, so we're all about a healthy transportation system plan.

I love it.

She's all about stopping.

That that stoplight was on red the whole day.

I have some.

You can borrow.

It happens.

Um the one of the maps that wasn't in your presentation, but really stood out to me was in the packet on page 22, and it's the one with all the little purple lines.

And um it's it's indicating the kind of off-street, um, what is it?

It's called barrier protected or grade separated on-street bike facilities and hard surface trails.

Um, and uh maybe we all had this constituent reach out to us, but we had a I had a very interesting constituent reach out about off-street trails.

And he just had a really great like the point of view is really interesting, but also I think that was something that was maybe missing for me a little bit, is like we call out the need.

Like, I mean, you know, we talk a lot about like we want to see increased pedestrian, increased bike usage.

We see I think pedestrian trend going up that people, even the mayor's example of I would I would take less car trips if it were safer for me to do that.

Was a lot in your data.

And so I'm curious too about like what does the kind of is would part of our TSP fit for us to look also more at that like off-street network for safe pathways around our community.

Yeah, I think it's a it's it is a very important part.

Um as you mentioned, it's pretty fragmented at this point.

So it is the most protected of any of those facilities.

So I think as we look for like towards what those future networks could look like, really connecting that up will be very important, building off that asset.

We have about 50 miles of protected paved trail in the city, and that's a huge asset that we want to be able to build off of.

So in this next stage of work, yes, I think that that will be something that we will be looking at and working.

Um, you know, obviously that's THPRD owns and maintains a large portion of that, but um recognizing that it's recreation and a transportation function that it provides.

Yeah, I think that it also seems like when you see the stats around um fatalities and and serious injury, right?

I think the protected system is maybe the way to go.

You know, like in terms like that off-street network, it could be just a really great continued investment in asset.

Also, I'm kind of smiling when you look at the longest part of the trail of connectedness, right?

And that's the power line trail, and I don't cycle, but I wouldn't I couldn't conmute on that.

It's so much hills up and down, right?

So I think the kind of what?

E-bike bike.

Oh, Counselor Duggar says I need an e-bike to get up the hill.

I've seen Counselor Duggar on his e-bike on the trail, which it shouldn't be used for, but go on.

I'm okay with it.

It's safe.

Um but I think you know, I I think that even seeing um I might be kind of curious to look at your shuffler map on this too and kind of see like just how like I'm excited to see this larger thing come together, right?

And like that, this is such a huge part of us building that plan, and there's so much great work there.

The engagement is just amazing.

Uh so I'm excited to see it continue and see how we can help support like the also in your presentation you had the the um the dots and lines um might be called squares, um of like the existing conditions and the future, but then in that identify needs and solutions.

I love that like it's like we can capitalize on what we have, right?

It's not we don't have to build all new.

And I think that we've talked a lot about about our transportation system with Tim and public works on like also that maintenance of what we have helps us in the long run too.

So I'm kind of excited to see those um bodies of work work together.

And yes, that's it.

Um I I just I wanna make one comment about your your constituent, Randy who reached out who has reached out a lot over the years.

His daughter graduated from Beaverton High School, he's lived here for like 30 years, and he's uh an engineer by trade, and he has uh piped in on city projects in the past, and he did bring up a really uh interesting map about transportation um for us, and being that our voters have the special district with THPRD, and a lot of the trails are maintained by them.

We also have a lot of segments of trails we maintain, and so it would be nice for us in the next iteration to have this overview.

Because I think what's also missing, and this is something counselor Duggar's been working on as his little side hustle this year is wayfinding to the trails because a lot of people just don't know they're there.

And like if you're trying to ride from downtown Beaverton to Greenway, you don't know you have to go through a neighborhood off of Western, and it's not really maintained uh, or it's not really um signed well.

So I do think there's this next iteration of partnership with THPRD on their trails and our trails, and what does that look like to do this?

And just one last gripe on the e-bikes on the trails, like we do need to have a future conversation about that.

Um as runners and having my children on the trail.

When people ride e-bikes at 25 or 35 miles an hour on a trail, a a bike and a kid are not a great place.

So I we do we're long in the tooth for a conversation on e-bikes on the trails.

Counselor Kimmy.

Thank you.

Great presentation.

Uh I have some questions.

When when was the last update, TSP?

2010.

Is there any new findings that was interesting to you compared to 2010 survey or engagement?

Um with the engagement.

There was um what's the major difference?

We th there was not a huge amount of engagement around that plan.

There were I believe three public meetings and it filled maybe two pages of comments.

Okay.

So and it was a very different approach, right?

And that I I I say that because the time period was very different.

So I don't want to diminish that, but it's a very apple to oranges type of deal.

We've taken a pretty different approach than we have in the past one past TSP.

I'd say um in the past we were really focused on doing um capacity analysis and like looking at where there was a lot of traffic congestion.

And and that resulted in a project list that was very oriented towards large capital projects to expand roadway capacity.

And on this one, we're really in line with the the new transportation planning rules.

There were new state rules that came out in between now and then that is really focused on trying to meet a lot of our climate goals and reducing vehicle miles traveled.

And one of those ways is to prioritize um we actually we must be prioritize uh walking, biking, and transit uh investments.

Okay.

That's uh that gives them a different perspective.

Thank you.

Um when you said injuries from major arterials, what time and what season of the day do you think most of injuries have occurred?

So um we'll have more information coming out in a in a full memo.

So keep your eye out on the website.

Those are all about to be published.

I wanted them before tonight, but we'll have them hopefully by the end of the year, I think.

Um I'd say that uh some of the things there were so injuries were more severe under dark conditions, but what was interesting was that it didn't they were that was when there was lighting present and when there wasn't lighting present.

So darkness uh is a factor.

Um I believe we looked at weekdays and weekends, things like that, right?

So um I believe it was like Wednesdays and Saturdays, I think were like the the peak ones.

So the most severe injuries are happening during peak um uh like rush hour, essentially in the afternoon, and then at the the very late wee hours of the morning on the weekend, which um perhaps isn't that surprising as well, right?

That's when you're gonna see a lot more speed, maybe more antisocial driving behaviors, things like that.

Um so those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.

Are there's particular um just trying to see what is actually causing the injuries?

Is it really spitting cars?

Is it darkness?

Is it a lot of people walking versus as misbehaving?

So there's a lot of different factors that go into it.

But again, uh you know, the one that I really want to emphasize here is speed on around the severity again, and that's why I had that graph or that graphic up there, because even if you do have you know someone taking um, you know, not yielding to the traffic control device, right?

I think that's one of them, basically running a red light or just ignoring some sort of stop sign.

Um if that happens at 20 miles per hour in a context where somebody's going much slower, or if you're like taking the corner off of TV highway on a Murray at like you know 40 or something, you know, it's it's a lot, it the impacts are much greater on the severity of the injury.

So again, I think there's often multiple factors.

And I want to be careful because speed in particular, that that's stuff that gets reported um by the police.

But speed often doesn't actually get recorded unless it they have like a speed gun out there or a radar.

So it is not always that is not always reflected in the crash data that we get back because they don't have a way to have like that that evidence essentially.

So I want I I also want to make that clear that we have some where it was totally notable reckless driving speeding, things like that, but a lot of them, even if the person is going the speed limit, the speed limit might actually be 40 miles per hour, you know, which is still a pretty high speed, even if you're going um exactly at that.

Thank you.

Um I was wondering about that, whereas Mayor Mayor has stated that we really can control the speed.

We can really control the driver's behavior as much unless we have a massive traffic where everybody has to go slow.

Um how can you make pedestrians safer and bike safer uh with the question that we have?

And that will be I think there's some nuance in there.

Um, well, definitely for sure.

There are streets that um are big and fast and not under our full control.

Definitely we definitely have a fair share of those.

I think going forward, um, the ones that we do control, um, the ones that are going through the center of our city, there are ways and processes to begin that conversation with some of our partners.

Um the first thing is basically saying what we want and knowing what we want.

And that's that's where we're at right now.

Um so I think it's knowing what we want on the streets that are not in our control, and then taking you know, action on the ones that are in our control.

Um so yes, there are there are regulatory hurdles that must be jumped through, but there are also things that can be done.

Um that we have not done yet.

Right.

So my last question before hire everyone, everyone.

But um whenever I go to other countries or even other cities where a lot of people are walking, streets are pretty well lighted.

You don't feel really dark, trapped and um uh and then sidewalks are also bright and lighted, and also the sidewalk itself, it lights itself and turns red or turns green, right?

Tell them where to go, when to go.

Um and I don't think we have invested enough in that perspective where I think we could be done, not overturning all the sidewalk to make it six feet or eight feet, but things like lighting.

I I want to really see what can we do with the money that we have or something that we could get some potential money that it doesn't really require capital improvements or projects, but something some changes that we could do to make people safer to walk.

And then I mentioned this before where we have potential to make Cooper Mountain development in the future, but we're still building separating residential versus commercial.

So then that forces people to drive when they go grocery shopping or whatever, because you cannot walk a mile and a half, two miles, three miles to the uh commercial areas that you have to go to, right?

I'm not saying we have to change the entire thing, but how can we make sure that people are willing to walk two or three blocks down the road to get something?

Uh unless you live in downtown area, entire Beaverton, almost nowhere you can't just walk to buy a grocery or pick up something.

So it's just I'm just putting it out there that we have to think maybe a little differently.

We talk about speed and cars and vehicle travel and injuries, but uh future conversations, maybe we can make people willing to walk, right?

And then of course, when you walk beside the road with with high speed vehicles, you will you'll feel unsafe.

But how can you how can they get a courage enough to oh, I'm gonna take the walk three blocks down the road to buy a milk, right?

Some of some things I want to talk about in the future.

I think there's something to be said about everybody having different comfort levels for sure.

Um I would just say uh mention that you know there's that speed that impact, the speed doesn't change around people's comfort level, right?

So there might be some people that have a lot more courage that are willing to go out there and cross all those streets, no problem.

Um but the that physical force that if if a mistake happens doesn't change depending on the person's courage.

And that's sort of one other thing just to think about as we go forward.

That's helpful, thank you.

Counselor Duggar.

Cool.

Uh I'm trying to organize these.

Um first of all, thanks.

This was a nerd's dream when I read my packet this week.

Uh I actually referenced the same map.

I I love the the off street trails.

Um I do a lot of biking, so I love that.

Um I do.

That was really eye-opening to me that every 11 days someone in Beaverton is seriously injured.

That that affects not only the person injured in it, but their family.

Um that's 33 people in Beaverton that affected this year at least.

You know, if we look at the last what was it, 17 through 22 or 18 through 22, whatever the averages were, and I can't imagine it getting better the the the bigger the city gets.

Um I'm not surprised.

I'm grateful it's not higher, but I do feel an obligation to make our street safer.

I think many of us ran for that.

About that in our campaigns.

So this is this is very timely.

Um for engagement.

Did you get any recommendations for policy changes?

Rob, do you want to talk to them?

Like we talked about capital, right?

But like capital projects in this, but like did you get any specific policy recommendations?

Um we didn't ask questions about policy changes, so there might be off comments here and there, but the questions were were focused on where do you go, where do you feel safe, and what do you think about future street designs?

Yeah, because one of the things I think about, let me move this a little closer.

Um who bikes a lot.

And I bet Councilor Teter can can talk about this too.

Um they'll just be construction signs in the middle of the bike lane.

You know, it happened the other day.

Uh uh, I was actually in my car, and a cyclist was coming, and the county has construction, and they just blocked all the bike lanes and were like bikes on the street.

And I'm like, Do you know how terrifying that is?

And that is a deliberate policy choice.

I think that the county made.

And that that to mean like like, yes, a bike lane is important, but if we're gonna throw people on Murray Boulevard from their bike, and that we don't even let them know about it, right?

There wasn't a wasn't a mile back, it said you know there's gonna be construction ahead.

It was just, oh hey, the the bike lane is ending for this two-block stretch, and you're you're out on Murray.

That feels like a policy mistake.

And I think you know, I asked Jenny about this for the city.

Um, you know, are there things like that that we can materially do to make things safer that don't have a capital runway, you know, of of many years?

And those are those are questions on my mind.

Um I also you know, I want to give a shout out.

I I think the transportation ambassador program was phenomenon.

Phenomenal, not phenomenon.

Maybe it was a phenomenon.

Uh but like I was I was at I was at, you know, and obviously I didn't need to complete the survey just because I want to I want to consume the data, but like I was at Raindrop um having a beverage and look down and there's a coaster with a QR code that for Beaverton's transportation plan.

Like put your and I was like, this is meeting people where they are.

I love this.

Like, like shout out to the team and so counselor Duggar put it there, but thank you.

I did not put it there, and there's like a whole stack of them too.

I I love I was so impressed.

Um, and and I I think I I want to reference, I think Councillor Kimmy was asking about this, but or you you answered I didn't know if he was when are we getting the O dot data on non uh like insurance claims because I know that's part of our plan was to get ODOT data like when a police report isn't filed, but an insurance claim is, and I think that was coming when the next year, so do we know when that I so the ODOT data is all just police report stuff.

I don't I'll have to look into that.

I don't remember we were told, and I don't remember who did it.

You guys remember that?

Like just about insurance.

Yeah, yeah, like like insurance data for so for crashes and for things that don't have a police report, the insurance companies give that data to ODOT.

I know or something like that.

Do you remember?

Yeah, the okay, there we go.

I think the conversation was because a lot there's underreporting, but I think it was that it gets reported somewhere else.

I just can't remember maybe to the DMV.

Reported to the DMV.

There we go.

So you have to report to the DMV if it's over $1,500 of damage to your vehicle, but it doesn't always trigger a police report.

Okay.

Like I think that might be another interesting filter to look at our crash data and to figure out because what I want to do is obviously we want to triage where the accidents are already happening, and that might be just an I don't know if we can get that in time, because I know I seem to remember it's gonna be like at the end of next year or something that that data was going to be available.

But I think um assistant traffic engineer, it wasn't in this presentation.

And that's why I think there could it didn't come from this group, it came from when we were talking about um uh slowing speed and stuff like that.

Maybe yeah, maybe we can connect with the engineering books.

I would just also mention that um I mean that's probably going to be property damage only, right?

Because it's under 1500 where there wasn't an injury or a um uh death or it's something that impacted a person in that sense, right?

It's gonna be a property damage.

Obviously, there's some impact financially.

But um if we are looking primarily to prioritize and really think about the network where we're seeing a lot of the the injuries, um, and that's the direction, sort of with that vision zero goal of of really trying to eliminate serious injuries and deaths.

We can look into it for sure, but I'm pretty sure that that information would be supplemental and it would be all of the property damage only and the very minimal property damage only crashes.

So just thinking about how that would be used going into the into the future.

It could be interesting to look at, but I also think that it's not necessarily working towards that eliminating injuries and um fatalities goal.

So I just put that up there.

No, that makes sense.

Um couple closing thoughts.

So a couple months ago I I went out to Hillsborough to meet with a county commissioner out there, and I was like, I have time, I'm gonna take my bike.

So it took me like 30, 45 minutes to sit, not not to ride, to actually plan the route.

Because if you just use Google, you get number one, it just throws you onto random streets sometimes with the the bike feature.

Uh sometimes things are under construction, so Metro has some tools, but I was like, you know, if if every time we had to go anywhere we had to do this, this would get fixed really quick because it was a terrible experience for it to have to do that, right?

I know my neighborhood, I bike that all the time, but like I don't want to just ride the same spaces.

Um you guys know this better than me.

It's not just a grab bag of projects, right?

Like it's a system.

And um for me, like oftentimes bike lanes are worse than going through a neighborhood, right?

Just a neighborhood street.

And um I also think Google misses on that.

So like I want to prioritize like getting people to to various places as safe as possible.

Sometimes that's gonna not be a bike lane.

Sometimes that's not gonna be.

But I can tell you my highest priority will be network completeness.

Um particularly for good interactions with inner inner intersections.

Can I tell you how many times I've bothered Jenny and others because you pull up on a bike lane and the camera doesn't see you, and I've got to get off the bike lane and I've got to go press the pedestrian thing after waiting through three cycles, right?

Um so it's not a great experience.

And so a grand bag of individual projects um just doesn't feel that that would feel incomplete to me versus a you know, like like I want the safety of our roads for all of our users, particularly the vulnerable ones, and like like sometimes that means the roads that are perfectly fine now, and maybe they're not gonna show up because they don't need to be repaved or rebuilt.

But that network completes that's gonna be a gap.

Like uh I I want to prioritize those sort of things.

Like even if that means having less of them, but having really great ones that like almost act as like highways or like uh to where we can funnel people to a really safe great experience.

Uh that that would be my priority, and that's all I have.

Thank you.

You sure?

Nothing else.

Okay.

Uh I do need to apologize to Counselor Duggar because the community member that put those QR codes in the raindrop track house text me and said that was me.

So there apparently is at least one person uh watching our meetings, counselor Hussen.

So I know thanks to whoever's tuning in and giving out TST TSV flyers at raindrop, that's awesome.

We really appreciate you.

Uh I'll try to keep my comments brief.

Um I just I want to elevate that all the transportation ambassador work that I've seen in the community via social via friends has just been awesome.

So thank you for leading that.

I think that's been really exciting to see.

I will say I think not that we need to go back to the data of crashes that we're not getting, but just moving forward, finding ways to incorporate that data, not here, but like in as we do more studies, I think it is just helpful to know, like, because there are probably a lot of things that we aren't capturing, and I just wonder that for future reference.

Um my one comment or question is you know, I I hear your presentation and I'm like reduce vehicle speed, right?

And so that's like reducing speed, generally reducing speed limit.

Is there conversation or thoughts around finding other ways to slow people down?

Yeah, I mean, I would say that it goes far beyond reducing the speed limit because even if you reduce the speed limit but you don't give design cues to anybody, um it sends mixed messages, right?

And so I think that it's a whole suite of things that we need to be looking at that are giving the right cues to folks that are driving to to help them understand like what what the expectations are for behavior when you're on that facility, right?

So that's a huge part of it.

That's actually maybe the biggest part of it is really making sure that the design and is is really working towards the behavior that we want.

Um right now we design streets with a design speed that's higher than the posted speed, and I might argue that that's working the opposite.

We get we're getting the results, and that's that's um you know the inverse can be true as well.

And are there like reasonably priced options to do design cues that can like walk back what we've done, in your opinion?

I can't I can't speak to every street in the place.

I think as we go forward, we're gonna really want to be strategic and think about how we can get folks over these streets, right?

Like, where are the passage points to really be able to help people over it?

Yes, you know, generally um, you know, it's gonna be easier on the lower volume streets.

You've heard a lot of that with the neighborhood traffic homing program, and I think Counselor Duggar, what you were talking about, using those streets is kind of like the trail network, you know, they're real assets to be made or had there, like how can you even do more with that beyond a share room, right?

Um and then um, you know, then thinking about the context and the location and the places that people are going to, right?

So around a school, that we could home in on that area and really think about what that means for those streets in that area.

So I think there's so many places, there's so many issues, really focusing in on specific um key destinations that people want to get to and particular like pinch points within the system that we know we need to get people over that giant you know street in a way, and that's that that can provide safe safer passage is gonna be really important as we we look towards the future network work.

Okay.

I just I in my mind I'm like, what are we gonna how do we, you know?

I know that I think of you know, Nadia in her 20s and teenage years going down Allen Boulevard, you know, and probably not very slow.

And what can we do to make that something that people really think twice because I obviously now more than ever, and as we were seeing in the data that we know that that's what we need to do, and so I just work is great.

I I would love to push us to think of designs and ways that we can keep getting that message across because I think behavior change is not something that's very easy.

So yeah, absolutely.

And I would just say that you know, people aren't again.

I try to remind myself like even if people are going above that because of those cues, it's not to cause intentional harm, right?

Like it's just happen it it it is something that is um often, you know.

I I I don't always want to put it on the person, right?

It's very easy.

We've all been in that situation.

We're like, whoa, wait a second, you know.

To your point.

Exactly.

Thank you.

That's also thank you.

I appreciate your comments about over because it's something definitely I know all of us here all the time, like why we can't simply build a bridge.

And I know the last time we built a pedestrian bridge in the city was in the Greenway neighborhood, and that's the reason uh Kate Arnold ran for city council.

So I just to timeline of you know 25 plus years ago.

Uh our earlier council asking around this stuff, you know, a decade ago was that the ADA issues because the the drawn outness of how long the ramps need to be were very um not capable of producing us to go up and over Allen or go over and over Murray.

So in the planning, I would love for us because when you go to other cities, you can walk up a staircase and cross over and go down.

Not all of them have ADA ramps, and so have we researched every extensive option because it would be significantly cheaper for us if we could do an option like that.

Counselor Teter.

Whoa.

Uh hello.

Uh there's a lot that's really good in this.

Um I kept wanting to make notes throughout the report that I was reading that just like comment on this, comment on that.

But it I would go on too long.

So I I just want to say thank you for how thorough all of that was with the existing conditions report.

Um, pointing out things that a lot of people won't notice or don't think are a major issue, but actually are like delivery trucks or door dash drivers that park in the lanes that block traffic and make it difficult for people to get through.

Um bike lanes that end intersections all across the city, like things that are just pretty commonplace, but we can do a lot better if we plan for it.

So there's a lot there in the existing conditions report that was great.

The community engagement comments were just uh really encouraging for the direction that we're headed with all of this.

Um I think back to a conversation I had when I was running for office with a resident from the Westloop neighborhood who asked, uh, how are you going to help people from like the Westloop neighborhood get in a downtown?

Like it's great you're trying to do loop and all these other things in your downtown, but like we want to get there too.

So I think talking in the future about the network connectivity will be really important just to see how different neighborhoods can all have access to the the great city that we're building and continuing to grow.

Um my way here, I was biking down Lombard.

I was biking alongside somebody else who I had just met tonight.

Uh, and he was saying he has biked down Lombard for 17 years, and it's always frustrated him.

And I told him then I was the city counselor and we're actually talking about transportation system planning tonight.

And he was very excited about that.

So I'm excited that maybe 17 years from now, a lot of our streets will be uh designed a lot better, and like we're going a really good direction.

Um it's just great to say like I don't have any major changes for you all right now, like just keep doing the good work and let's keep it going.

I did take the next steps with you.

All right.

Well, since we took an hour for an agenda item that was probably scheduled for 20 minutes, we're gonna have to rapidly move through the rest.

But as you can tell, this is council's favorite thing to talk about.

We love the TSP, and just the past one that was done a decade ago, just so you guys know the past council bitched about it too, because it didn't really reflect, like she said, it wasn't extensive outreach, it wasn't where we thought we were at the time.

And so you have a huge job, and you've done a lot of work and you really listened to the council, and we would just appreciate the work that you're doing on this.

Thank you.

All right, we are on to uh the kind of bigger, chunkier piece of our agenda.

But before we move into the next piece, I want the community to know that earlier today the city uh manager issued a declaration of emergency to address the impacts of federal immigration enforcement activities in Beaverton.

This declaration is an important step to ensure that we can address those impacted swiftly and effectively.

The city council will have an opportunity to review and consider ratification of the declaration in the upcoming meeting on December 16th.

I would also like to say that in uh the same package of response that the city is doing.

We are co-hosting alongside nine cities next Tuesday, an evening of action.

Um, and there's information available on our website on how to get involved in the uh evening of action.

With that, we're gonna move on to our visitor comment section of the evening.

Visitor comments are an essential part of local government business and really help us shape how we work together.

However, in order to keep us compliant with Oregon's open meeting laws, this is a time for us to listen and not a time for dialogue.

If response is needed, the city manager or the city recorder will take down your information and we will provide follow-up.

With that, we do have two members signed up to testify this evening.

The first is Emily Grant.

Emily, you'll have three minutes to address the council when you get ready to go.

Yeah, we're we're in a different configuration this evening.

We just had a work session prior to this, so much for that information you just shared because that's really impactful for what I was gonna come talk to you about today.

Um, commissioners and Mayor Beatty.

Um so I'm a citizen of Beaverton.

I've lived here for the last 18 years.

Um I've raised my children here.

I'm a teacher in Beaverton School District, and I have been looking at what you have put out about Beaverton being a sanctuary city and responses to ICE activity here in Beaverton.

Um the last couple weeks, and I wrote this actually a week ago.

Um, so two weeks previous to winter or to Thanksgiving break, um, there's been a lot of ice activity here in Beaverton and in the neighborhood where my students live.

And specifically the Thursday before Thanksgiving, um a group of our students of my students personally were not able to get on a bus that morning because there were um ice agents in their neighborhood strategically at the time they were supposed to leave and get on the school bus.

Um I guess what I'm feeling is that this doesn't feel like a sanctuary for a lot of my um neighbors and people who live in our community right now.

Um the tactics they're using don't feel just, they don't feel humane.

Um the attendance has been dropping, and I know there's a lot of families who just don't even feel safe leaving their homes right now.

Um I just it doesn't I I really appreciate that there's gonna be um this that you've decided today that there is a an emergency here in Beaverton due to this ICE activity.

Um but I just felt like it's important to speak up and say that um I moved here 18 years ago with an immigrant husband, a Spanish speaker from Latin America.

I've raised my children here bilingually, and this is a city I chose to live in because it felt like a place where um where we could feel safe.

And so I I just really came to plead with you all to consider this and um yeah, and I what I put here is the city needs to take action on their promise to protect our immigrant communities.

Um I urge you to declare a state of emergency, and so I appreciate that that's um in place, and I'm I'm curious to see.

I I'll be back to the December 16th meeting to see what um else, or I'll be watching from home.

What else comes of this and what you know what we can what we can have to assure the safety of um of people in the community who I I love dearly and the students that I'm um that I'm I care for every day at school.

Uh Ms.

Grant, thank you for joining us this evening.

Thank you for educating the young people of our community and sharing with us your firsthand experience of what is happening.

Uh we look forward to seeing you again on the 16th.

And uh we know whatever we're doing right now possibly can't meet the fear of our community, but we're trying within the framework that we're given uh a lot of work being led by Councillor Hussen and Councillor Hartmeyer Prague are definitely bringing the issue forward to us.

So keep talking to us, keep talking to your community members, and you should feel free to reach out anytime.

Thank you for what you do for our community.

Thanks for the time today.

Our second speaker of this evening um is it uh Ishbel?

Ishbel.

Well, that concludes our public testimony for this evening.

We are moving on to our next order of business, which is a presentation of the state of the district from Clean Water Services.

You're not here either.

Cool.

All right.

Mayor.

Yes, we are.

We are.

All right.

Joining us remote using that technology.

Chair Harrington, thank you for joining us this evening.

Commissioner Therese, thank you for joining us this evening.

Chair Harrington, I welcome you to any introductory comments and to introduce.

I assume that's Joe that's going to be speaking to us tonight, but I'll allow you the courtesy, please introduce your team to us this evening.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Beatty.

As you mentioned, you have two members of the Clean Water Services Board of Directors here this evening.

We were asked to present remotely, uh, given space constraints with the setup of your council meeting tonight.

So the four of us have arranged to accommodate that.

Uh our uh chief utility relations officer, Joe Gall will be the primary speaker.

But in case uh the city council has not had the opportunity to meet our interim CEO general manager, Rick Shanley is here tonight as well.

So without further ado, we'll turn it over to uh Rick and Joe.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So before I start to share the screen, I want to give uh Rick an opportunity.

So we're not there physically to maybe be on the screen.

So you have a face and a name.

Uh he's gonna talk uh briefly about his background in a second.

But Rick, do you want to just quickly introduce yourself?

Yeah, thanks for having me and uh Joe tonight.

Um I know you're very busy, so I really appreciate the time.

I'm the acting CEO slash general manager.

Um I've been in that role for about six months now since June.

Joe, do you want to flip?

Do you want me to keep going, Joe?

Or do you need a little more?

I can keep going if you need a little more time.

So hopefully it'll work.

Looks good.

You see the screen now?

Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you for allowing us uh some time in your busy agenda tonight.

Uh we are making the rounds to all of our city partners, giving a brief update about the partnership uh in this case between Beaverton and Cleanwater Services.

So you see on the slide a little bit more about Rick Shanley.

Uh Rick, I don't know if you want to uh get some highlights.

We're not gonna read everything on the I'll I'll try to go quickly here and just point out I've been with Clean Water for about 12 years.

Um prior to that, I was with a private um firm that specialized in water and wastewater treatment.

And my wife was telling the story at Thanksgiving that there was one job I said if it ever came up, and that happened to be a job at Clean Water Services, I'd take it.

And so that was uh when I left that firm and became the treatment plant services manager back in 2013.

So my dual role um is the chief engineer and water technology officer.

So that was really and is continuing to support the engineering group, um, all of our operations and maintenance staff for the pump stations and pipelines and treatment plants.

So that's about half of our FTEs.

So I've had a lot of experience um with that role internally, but um it's this role has really been a highlight for me, and one of the charges that the board put in front of me early on was get out there and meet our cities and our co-implementers.

And through many projects, Beaverton's always been a really great partner, and um so happy to be in this new role and kind of continuing along the path that uh we've forged together.

Thanks, Rick.

Better so just mainly for maybe the audience that might be watching, uh, just some important points about Clean Water Services.

I know the mayor and council uh know a lot of this.

We are your wastewater and stormwater government utility.

We serve over 600,000 residents in urban Washington County.

We don't do that alone.

We do that with our partner cities.

There's 12 of them, and then of course the county.

Uh we get a sense for our budget.

Uh one of the things we're very proud of is we hold the nation's first integrated watershed-based permits.

Very unique.

Um, and it really does drive the business that we do uh together with the city of Beaverton.

We have a very close working relationship with Washington County.

Some people think we're part of the county, but we're a separate utility.

Under ORS 451, the one thing we do share with the county is governance.

So the county board of commissioners, who two members are here tonight, also wear the hat of being our board of directors, very similar to you as a URA and council member.

We also have a advisory commission.

A lot of folks don't realize that advisory commission has different stakeholders that we work with.

Some of those stakeholders include the agricultural community, the business community, the development community, and the environmental community, and then also has reps from each of the uh commissionerslash uh director districts.

Uh and then we have a city rep, Cherylyn Lombos, the city manager of Tualeton is the city rep on the advisory commission.

And you can see how many employees we have at the in our current budget.

In terms of services from CDS CWS, uh it really depends on the city and the location.

So for cities like Beaverton and our large cities, you receive regional services from us.

Uh, the local services, and I'll touch on this in a second, are provided by the city of Beaverton and your staff.

So it is a partnership.

The smaller cities that are listed on there, and then the urban unincorporated area unincorporated areas are areas where CWS provides both the regional and the local services.

So we do both in those uh situations.

And then we also provide certain industrial customers uh permitting for industrial permits, discharge permits, depending on what they are sending to our treatment facilities.

Uh, and then that's unique as well.

There are, I hope you receive the document that we dropped off earlier that has a lot of data in it, uh, but it also shows the companies that are located in Beaverton that receive those uh industrial customers for CWS.

A little bit on the regional services, uh, these are essentially as I described to folks, the big pipes.

So the big 24-inch line lines uh are owned and maintained by CWS.

Of course, our four treatment facilities are owned and uh operated by CWS, those are important regional services.

All of the oversight for our NPDS permit and MS4 permit is handled, but we don't do that alone.

A lot of the information that we report to DEQ comes from the city, and we appreciate the partnership in those areas.

And then these local services, which are described on the slide.

This is what the city of Beaverton provides to its residents in terms of your public work staff and others.

I've mentioned that we have an NPDS permit.

This is a federal permit that we receive from DEQ.

It's a five-year permit.

You can see what it covers on the screen.

Uh I always tell my city folks, I came from the city world.

I I am very passionate about cities.

Former city manager, I thought I understood what CWS did when I was the city manager in Sherwood, but I didn't really realize until I got to CWS how important this permit is.

And every time I work with your city staff and others, remind them that this permit really drives our business on a day-to-day basis.

And it is a five-year permit.

You can see where we are in the cycle.

We are planning the next uh application, which is the application's due in June 2027.

So we're already thinking and planning about that next permit cycle, but more importantly, we're also planning for 2033 and beyond.

So we are always trying to get ahead of where regulations may be going.

You've probably heard about PFOS in the news.

Uh, that's something that we're very concerned about in terms of the impacts uh to the work that we do, and we're trying to get ahead of that and stay on top of that issue, so we're not caught off guard uh in five to ten years in a new permit cycle.

Um so that's an important reminder that I wanted to stress in this uh brief presentation.

I've asked my team when I went out to each of the cities like where what kind of money did we spend on regional?

These are basically regional projects uh in this case in Beaverton.

This is last fiscal year.

These uh are a variety of projects, some very small, some of these are multi year projects.

It's a mixture of stormwater and wastewater projects.

And Beaverton is unique in the sense that wastewater goes to two different basins.

So some of your wastewater goes to our Durham facility in Tiger, and then some of the wastewater goes to our Rock Creek facility in Hillsborough.

And you get a sense of the amount of improvements we've made that benefit Beaverton but also other communities in those basins in the past year at those facilities.

I wanted to highlight, we just wrapped up the West Basin master plan.

You can see in the map the green area is what we consider the West Basin.

So that's all the area that flows to the three facilities that are located, the Forest Grove, Hillsboro, and Rock Creek facilities, and a good chunk of Beaverton goes to that facility.

And then the orange is the East Basin and the southern part of Beaverton and the eastern part of Beaverton, those flows go down to the Tiger Durham facility.

These plans we do are 20-year plans basically for growth.

So we work very closely with, in this case, the City of Beaverton staff talking about what your plans as a community are in terms of growth and development, what kind of areas you're looking to expand for residential, industrial, commercial growth, so we can prepare and plan for the future to make sure the infrastructure is there at the right time to serve your community.

That 20-year plan, which our board just adopted a few weeks ago, uh, you can get a sense of how much in our CIP is allocated to that, about 920 million dollars through 2045 on conveyance projects.

So those are the pipes that get the wastewater, the big pipes to get the wastewater from our communities to our facilities, our treatment facilities, and then another almost 500 million on treatment plant improvements for a total of about 1.4 billion, and that is in the West Basin.

Uh just to give you a sense of scale in terms of the improvements we need to uh be planning for.

And then the East Basin plan we finished in 2022, uh a little bit smaller numbers, um, more pipes.

You see a number of 301 million dollars in conveyance projects, a number of those are to serve Beaverton, um, and about a hundred million on treatment plant improvements.

And we did this back in 2022.

We're about to take another look now that we're done with the West Basin to update this to see what has changed in the three years, and also to update the um the cost to get them more uh up to date.

This is a snapshot for the next five years of projects either in Beaverton that we are planning NRCIP to do, or uh projects at the two treatment facilities, um, and you can get a sense for the 230 um million dollars or billion dollars that we are planning for.

Um, some of the large projects here uh we see in Beaverton because of the age of some of your pipes, more inflow and infiltration projects.

These are pipes that are older that are leaking essentially.

Um Rick can give you more technical background, but these are pipes that that we need to update and maintain uh to reduce uh water leaving those pipes, and there's a number of them Turner Creek Sanitary and East Basin projects that we'll be doing over the next five years in Beaverton.

Another important project that we're very close to wrapping up, and you're I understand going to be hearing this in the next few weeks at your urban renewal meeting is your downtown Beaverton subbasin strategy.

So this is a project we've been working very closely with your staff on.

We're very supportive of this.

This is an alternative approach to stormwater because downtown Beaverton, what you're trying to do downtown uh to build on the success that you've had so far.

Um, the stormwater solutions in downtown Beaverton uh have to be different than maybe in Cooper Mountain, uh, where you're in a green field type more traditional residential development.

So your staff has been working very closely with us.

We're excited for this sub-basin strategy to be approved soon and to help implement.

And I remember Mayor Beatty talked about you know, uh daylighting the creeks and opening up those creeks in downtown Beaverton, and I think this strategy will hopefully get to some of that uh being implemented in the in the near term.

And I think the strategy will hopefully get to some of that being implemented in the in the near term.

So it's an important project that we are excited to work with you on.

All I heard is that you agreed to daylight the creeks, and that's all we need out of this presentation.

So thank you for another important uh project to all our cities, but I think also certainly to the city of Beaverton.

We are going to take a deep dive uh in 2026 in terms of billing.

It's been about 2008 when we looked at billing and how we bill.

So you, as you know, bill on our behalf, uh which we greatly appreciate.

Um but we've been asked the question both externally and internally.

Is that the right solution in 2026 and beyond?

So we're gonna look at a lot of different alternatives, including the potential to take on billing ourselves.

What would that look like?

What are the pros, what are the cons to do that?

We're not gonna do that alone.

We're gonna do that with our stakeholders, including the city of Beaverton as we go through that study.

Um we will be hiring a consultant to help us through that process, and that should kick off early in 2026 with the goal of having a final report on or before November 2026.

So that's another important project.

I wanted to make sure that the council was aware of that we were about to kick off.

And then two last things, just as uh a heads up.

The first one is we have two permit requirements by November 1st, 2026.

One of these we're about to kick off.

There was actually a kickoff at the board meeting today for clean water services.

We need to update some limited sections to our design and construction standards related to stormwater.

We will be doing that in consult in consultation with your staff uh and the other cities and the county.

Um and then we have completed uh an update to our operating IGA uh recently, which we appreciated the effort and all the time that went into that.

Uh we have to update all of our city IGAs again by November 2026, and we're slowly working through all of those.

But uh, we had a very good experience with Beaverton staff, and we think we have a better uh IGA than we had uh prior to that part.

So that's all I wanted to cover quickly.

I'm open to questions, and certainly Rick is here and two board members.

All right.

Thank you, Mary.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation.

Um I would love you guys to take over your billing.

So I'm glad you're looking into that.

It's complicated uh in our complex governing structure we have here at the city with our special districts and partners to uh we don't always get to answer all the questions because we don't control everything, and that would take some workload off my plate.

So I'm here for that.

Counselor Duggar.

Uh yeah, I want to want to thank you for being here a couple years ago.

Counselor Teter and I biked down to your, I believe it was the Durham facility.

We're really gonna see how innovative and just uh some of the really cool stuff that was happening that I don't think a lot of members of the public know about.

So uh that was a really cool experience.

Um I wanted to be a little uncomfortable here and say appreciate you guys coming.

Um can you talk a little bit about any governance issues or governance changes you've made since some of the stuff that hit the media maybe a year or so ago.

I know you guys have done a lot.

Um, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity because I really believe in this partnership, and uh I I want to want the good people of Beaverton to believe in it as much as I do.

So I just kind of wanted to present you with a little bit of floor to talk about that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council.

I'm gonna defer at least to start to Rick, um, as he has certainly uh uh led us through the process, but both uh Chair Harrington andor uh Director Triese might also have some comments to share.

Yeah, I think I would point out the plan that we've developed that was developed early on to restore public trust.

Um, and we've really focused on um numerous items we actually just finished uh or are in the process of finishing a forensic analysis that um ties together some of the things with spending.

Um we've tightened and updated lots of training policies, travel policies.

Um, we've taken a hard look at the clean water insurance and made some decisions on you know what the future of that is, and we believe that program really benefits our our ratepayers, and so we wanted to make that robust.

Um, and so we've completed that that work as well.

I chair and and commissioner director Trice, do you have anything else you'd like to add?

Well, as Rick said, we've been uh very diligent about working on the plan that uh we adopted uh in, I believe it was April of this year.

Well, as Rick said, we've been uh very diligent about working on the plan that uh we adopted uh in I believe it was April of this year, and uh time will tell as we continue uh through the process and work through uh the level of uh understanding that is needed not only by all employees and our management staff, but also by community members as well.

So thank you for your continued partnership as uh we continue to evolve the agency in uh a more understood uh manner, but continue to be a utility whose at its heart is about delivering value to the residents and businesses that make up the greater uh community of Washington County.

Thank you.

I would just like to add this uh along with everything that's been mentioned so far.

Uh we were very fortunate to have Rick step into the interim role here, and we are just launching a national search, and uh we'll be seeing what the results of that are as we move forward.

That's one piece I'd like to add.

But we also feel very grateful, like I said, that uh Rick has stepped into this role and has uh performed well.

So thank you.

No, I I also want to echo my thanks to you all and appreciate the decisive action.

I think that was a really important and clear signal that you sent to the community and uh to your partners that you take this extremely seriously.

And and it just kind of references again the trust that we've all built together.

So uh I appreciate all that work and uh just wanted to give you the opportunity to share, and I I appreciate for that information.

So thank you.

Good to see you all.

Thank you, Council.

All right, well, I you're getting off easy tonight.

That's all the counselor comments.

I do want to encourage everyone to take Joe up when he offers another tour to go and see things.

One of the very first things I did when I was newly elected was uh toward the watershed with uh Chair Harrington when she was on the Metro Council, and so it's always something it's important to see how our waterways work and how water moves around.

So thank you for visiting us this evening, and we'll let you get back to the rest of your day.

And thank you so much.

Bye.

Thanks.

Keep up the great work.

Uh for you, council.

The next thing on our list, uh Council President, the consent agenda, please.

I move to approve the consent agenda.

I'll second.

It's been moved by council president and seconded by Councillor Hartmeyer Prigg.

Any discussion on tonight's consent.

Seeing none, will the recorder call the roll?

Councilor Duggar.

Yes.

Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg.

Councillor Hassan.

Yes.

Councillor Kimmy.

Yes.

Councillor Teeter.

Yes.

Counselor Tivnon.

Oh, Councillor Tipnon.

She's excused.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor Beatty, yes.

Uh six, yes, zero, no, one absent.

All right, council.

This is our last uh agenda item of the evening.

So our evening is in your hands, and I see that uh uh Robin has joined the grown-up table, and so that means we are ready for a public hearing.

The next item on the agenda is a public hearing on the proposed ordinance number 4876, an ordinance amending ordinance number 2050, the Beaverton Development Code LU 42024-00710-2025 code maintenance project text amendment TA42024-00709.

I now call to order the public hearing.

Before we move into the substance of the hearing, I'm gonna ask the city attorney to cover any legal matters.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Robin McIntyre, Assistant City Attorney.

Tonight's hearing will proceed as follows.

After the preliminary legal matters, staff will make a presentation.

The council will have an opportunity to ask questions.

Then council will hear public testimony in the following order.

First from those in support, then by those opposed, and finally by those neither in support nor opposed.

After council asks any final questions of staff, the hearing will be closed and the council will deliberate towards a decision.

Those wishing to speak at this hearing and attending tonight's meeting in person, you should complete a yellow visitor comment card found on the table by the entry doors.

Once the card is filled out, give the card to the city recorder seated at the end of the dais and wait to be called.

If you've joined the meeting by phone, you can enter star nine to let the city recorder know you wish to speak.

Alternatively, if you've joined this meeting online, you can click on the raise hand feature.

Each member of the public will have up to three minutes to speak when you speak.

Please give your name and address for the record.

Now I will explain the criteria the council must use to make its decision tonight, and then I will ask members of the council if they wish to make any disclosures.

The council's decision on the adoption of the ordinance must be based on consideration of the statewide planning goals and administrative rules adopted under ORS Chapter 197.

Applicable federal or state statutes or rules.

Applicable plans and rules adopted by Metro and the city's comprehensive plan and development code, specifically Beaverton Development Code, Section 40.85.15.1C.

The Council may consider any relevant testimony that it receives.

Failure to raise an issue during the city's hearing on this ordinance precludes an appeal to the land use board of appeals based on that issue.

Any party withstanding may appeal the decision of the city council to the state land use board of appeals according to the rules adopted by that board.

Persons with standing include those who submit written comments or present oral comments.

So at this time I'd like to ask if any of the members of council wish to declare a potential or actual conflict of interest.

Okay, let the record show there were no responses.

And I'd like to ask if any member of the audience wishes to uh challenge the ability of any member of the council to participate in this decision.

Okay, let the record show no response.

Presiding officer, mayor, that concludes the preliminary legal matters.

Thank you.

Who is the staff member doing the presentation?

All right, let's go.

Thank you, Mayor and Councillors.

My name is Steve Regner.

I'm a senior planner with the City of Beaverdon's planning division.

And the application before you tonight is a land use hearing for the 2025 code maintenance project text amendment.

Next slide, please.

This text amendment is a proposal to amend Beaverden's development code, mainly to keep it in good working order.

As staff uh implements code throughout the year, we identify issues with the code, small problems, barriers to development.

Keep a running list and make an annual effort to kind of do a house cleaning effort on the development code to make sure it works as intended.

The goal of this project is not to establish new policy, uh, but to make sure the code is doing a good job of implementing existing policy adopted by council.

Uh this proposal in uh includes amendments to chapters 20, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 90 of the development code.

There are several reasons why we are proposing these amendments.

Uh a couple of big reasons are, as I mentioned, fixing things that just don't work.

Maybe there's vague language, maybe there's conflicts, maybe there's development or there's uh code language that doesn't match the best practices of the development community today.

Sometimes there's an opportunity to implement uh new state law.

Uh Oregon State Legislature has been very busy in the land use realm the last few years.

So this is an opportunity uh to incorporate some of those mandates through this process.

A lot of what we're going to um propose in this um amendment are really minor miscellaneous changes, like I said.

Maybe there's a code citation that's missing, wording that could be a little bit more clear, um, things that really fall in this big basket of it could just work a little bit better.

Uh this year there is a focus or a theme.

We did focus a lot on transportation.

We don't have a focus every year, uh, but this year we worked very closely with our transportation planners and transportation engineers here at the city to make sure that we are reducing barriers and streamlining processes uh for our transportation um components of development review.

Next slide, please.

The materials in the agenda bill, and I apologize, it is a pretty large agenda bill, um, include the staff report dated September 17th, which has all the legal findings for the text amendment proposal.

There is an index uh that goes chapter by chapter summarizing what the changes are and the rationale for them.

There are uh red lines and clean versions of the development code to be able to see what the changes are going to be, as well as being able to read them without all that messy red line.

Uh there's also a supplemental memo dated November 17th.

Uh, this is to include additional um proposed changes to Chapter 60 uh after the planning commission hearing, as well as additional public comment uh received after the planning commission hearing.

Next slide, please.

I'm gonna give a very brief overview, give you a little bit of a flavor of what's in this uh proposal.

My planning commission presentation was 45 minutes.

I promise I will not go that long.

This is really to give the council an idea of what things were changing and some things we're excited about.

So first off, um responding to House Bill 3560, which was enrolled earlier this year, it goes into effect later next year.

Child care facilities, so things like daycares, montessori schools, things like that, will be more broadly outright permitted throughout the city with fewer conditions attached to them.

So it should be much easier for child care facilities to establish themselves within the city.

We're also clarifying rules about where outdoor eating can be permitted.

In our commercial zones, we do have limitations on outdoor says uses, but really that was intended to talk about storage of things for sale.

How much of your wares can you have outside?

And in some cases, the question was well, does this really apply to outdoor seating?

Look through the legislative history.

No, clearly, this is not intended to do that.

So we're updating the code language to clarify what that original legislative intent was.

We're also introducing two new land use applications, both of them land division applications, to better facilitate development in Cooper Mountain, the next big area of Beaverton will grow.

Over the last 10 years or so of facilities development in South Cooper Mountain, we learned where our code was strong, and we learned where it could use some improvement.

And these two new land division applications will really help facilitate taking these large uh tracts of land and be able to break them up into smaller pieces to facilitate development, um, learning a lot of lessons that implementing lessons we learned from South Cooper Mountain.

Um additionally, we are doing a lot of updates to our procedures, how we do things, um, including modernizing a lot of language and in some cases removing some of our internal policies and best practices that we really determine don't need to be in a regulatory document.

We don't intend to change these practices or policies, but it really just did not make sense to have them in a regulatory sense in this document.

Uh next slide, please.

I mentioned earlier before transportation was a major focus of this text amendment, and planning staff work closely with the Beaver and Transportation Planners and Engine to improve the code.

And these are a few of the amendments that we're kind of most excited about.

First, we took a look at how to regulate on-site vehicle circulation for single family and middle housing developments like duplexes and townhomes.

So, where are the driveways?

Our current regulations are either so vague it creates friction in the regulatory process, or they're so strict that results in an overbuilt facility.

Uh recognizing these barriers, we kind of broke it down to its you know main component parts.

What do we care about?

What are we trying to protect?

Um, and created a new set of rules that scale with development.

So smaller scale, um, serving a couple of units will allow for narrower driveways and shared pedestrian facilities.

And as the development intensity scales up, we'll be asking for larger drive wider driveways and more defined pedestrian facilities, like a curb-separated walkway, grade separated curb uh walkway, to be able to accommodate all users and reduce conflicts.

This should unlock a greater potential for middle housing redevelopment, especially in infill sites in Beaverton.

The second major change is uh the proposed transfer of authority from sidewalks from the development code to the engineering design manual.

Generally speaking, the public infrastructure in the right-of-way is regulated by the engineering design manual.

Uh one exception to that rule is the width of sidewalks in places like downtown, where high volumes of pedestrians are anticipated.

Another example is the process to request to deviate from sidewalk standards.

Both of those are currently in the development code.

Uh the rest of the rules and regulations about sidewalk, sidewalk width, sidewalk design, sidewalk construction, that's all in the engineering design manual.

Um in order to be more consistent with how the right-of-way is regulated, um, included in these amendments is a proposal to relocate the sidewalk design rules and the review process to deviate from those rules from the development code to the engineering design manual with the city engineer having decision-making authority.

Next slide, please.

That concludes staff's presentation, and uh we recommend that city council approve the 2025 code maintenance project text amendment.

Staff is happy to answer any questions the council may have.

Thank you for the presentation.

I appreciate your non-political comment around that Salem has been busy working on codes.

Um we feel that deep in our soul.

Merely merely an observation.

Purely observational.

Uh any questions of the staff, council?

Please go ahead.

Do you anticipate any uh different decisions being made?

I mean, I think it makes sense for the sidewalks to be consistent with the other infrastructure, but um you know the do you anticipate any differences, particularly downtown, right?

What can we expect out of this?

Is are the decisions largely gonna be the same?

That is certainly the intent.

So the essentially process right we have right now is a land use application called a sidewalk design modification.

There are approval criteria that need to be satisfied to be granted that approval.

Uh what we're proposing is to eliminate that land use application instead have the process be reviewed through an existing process in the engineering design manual called the design exception.

Um we are working hand in hand with public works and actually are updating the EDM right now to um have some specific uh guiding language about when to say yes and when to say no.

Um and so that language uh very closely mirrors what's in the development code we're uh proposing to remove.

So it'll be the same guiding principles as to whether we say yes or no.

It really the big thing is it's gonna go uh from either planners or planning commission making the decision to the city engineer.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you answered actually the question that I was getting at, which is are is the criteria going to be functionally similar or the same?

Very much so, yes.

Thank you.

Counselor Hassan.

Yes, thank you very much.

This is a very general question.

Because a lot of these documents can be really complex for understanding, and maybe that's by design because of the users that use it.

Is there ever a future where we write these in ways that are more understandable to the public?

Are you talking about the development code itself?

Yeah.

Yeah, that is that's a tricky line to walk because there does need to be, I mean, readability is of course a goal, and we do try and use accessible language whenever possible.

Uh we also need to be able to respond to technical development realities as well as legal realities.

Um a lot of what we write, especially in our design rules, we are required by law to provide what's called the clear and objective standards.

So that any reasonable person could look at it and arrive whether or not it meets the code.

So in some cases we have to use really precise language.

And I think sometimes that results in things that might not be as accessible.

Um we do have our design guidelines which allow for more creativity and flexibility.

There is always an opportunity to use a little bit more accessible language there.

Um, but I recognize that there's absolutely a tension between readability and preciseness as well as satisfying legal requirements.

Um I think that's kind of whenever we're writing code, we do try and um balance that to the best of our ability, but um it's it's never going to be perfect, but we do keep that in mind, yes.

Just a plug for the future, as I know it's hard and I know the complicated art and science.

So I just I wanted to ask for the record.

Thank you.

Absolutely completely understand.

Thank you.

Counselor Teter can tell you about probably the hours of arguments over Shell versus May and why technical words matter.

All right.

Uh Counselor Hartmeyer Prigg.

Thank you.

Um I wanted to just ask a follow-up on the question that was at the very end.

Um the supplementary piece of comment that came for the planning commission meeting in November, and they asked about the setback when it was tied to a patio cover.

Yes.

Did anything change with that?

So um that uh that request had already been incorporated into it.

Um so I I we we treated as a comment in support.

Um but essentially what that comment was asking for has been incorporated into the amendments you have before you.

Thank you.

Counselor Kimmy Um I remember um memo that the uh just sent sent to me with regards to a few weeks or a few months back where we were talking about tiered water rates.

I mentioned something about code implementing codes that would require uh planting uh about resistant plants for future front yards and not requiring people to water the of that do you guys talked about or references or not?

I just wanted to know.

So uh while while Ms.

Latinsky comes to the table, I can say there is nothing in in this uh amendment that has that language.

We do have some existing code language that speaks to um minimum percentage of drought tolerant species, um a variety of landscaping species, so you don't have the monoculture.

Uh so we do have some of that language specifically specifically in the code already.

But Anna, if you want to add more to that, please.

I can just add a little bit more, um, which is just to kind of reinforce what Steve mentioned about there being some existing planting requirements in the development code, including um requirements that the plants that are planted meet certain criteria.

We reference uh a list of trees, for example, that the city arborists has developed that are um will be successful in our climate and for the location that they're planted.

Um, whenever we require plantings, there are also um other lists of um approved species that we refer to.

However, the development code does not at this time govern, for example, everything that can be planted on property, whether it be residential or commercial, only in those specific areas.

It would be a pretty big departure to um to get into more detail to um to mandate with more specificity what can be planted in uh in residential commercial industrial development on private property.

I I get that.

Umise to for saving water, conserved water.

Um currently uh entire HOA is require you to water the grass for summer and water base skyrocket because it is required to keep it green.

That was the genesis of this question line of questioning, and I was at that time we were talking about maybe having some kind of restrictions or let me jump in here.

Yeah.

Uh one I remember you asking this question.

It's important to know that it was not a council directive to tell staff to do that.

So that's why one, why you don't see it.

Two, we cannot legally tell CCNRs and homeowners and say show associations what to do, and that is uh the information that was print planted during that uh line of questioning that like we can't govern C C and Rs as a state law, and so we would never write into our development code rules for CCNRs.

Well, I'm not talking about existing CCNRs or what to do, but we are writing what kind of plants that should be planted, right?

So the the planting requirements that are in place now are specifically related to uh to natural areas to buffers that are required to be planted in the areas where plantings are required, which is again limited portions of property.

We do have identified plant species that need to be planted.

You can't just plant anything.

Um, but we do not we do not um uh we don't we don't tell people what to plant on their entire property when plantings are required, we do require that they be irrigated in order to become established so the new plants don't die.

Um, but we do not mandate a particular schedule of watering um or anything like that.

So it's really to make sure that the plants that are planted to meet development code requirements actually survive rather than being a more comprehensive set of requirements for property in general.

I hope that gets a little bit more of the question.

I'm just asking just follow up one more.

Last Vegas.

Can I jump in with a point of order real quick?

Sure.

Uh I want to call on assistant uh city attorney.

So this is not in our packet about landscaping.

Um so it would be outside of the realm of this public hearing.

Is that right?

Or are we allowed to talk about this right now?

Well, I I think there are some landscaping, are there some landscaping issues in this, but this but um but just to clarify the scope of this project, it's actually pretty narrow.

I know you have a very big packet, but these are really more like code cleanup things.

They're not big policy changes, they aren't big, you know, like with the TSP a bit research into different approaches on dealing with landscaping water, you know, uh saving.

This is really like a fixing things in the code that are broken or updating it to comply with um some recent some recently adopted state law.

So in that regard, it's beyond the scope of of this project.

That's helpful.

Okay, well, the par parliamentarian who is with this has ruled that your line of questioning is is not, and thanks for the point of order.

So if you have another question, please proceed.

It's fine.

Um I'll ask in the new business that we might bring this up in a future conversation.

Thank you.

Any other questions of staff?

Okay, we are moving on to uh public test.

We have one person here in person.

I don't know if we have anybody virtually, no one virtually.

Uh right.

Uh all right, council will be taking testimony first from those in support, followed by those who oppose, and finally uh by those who neither in support or oppose.

Now is the time for testimony in support.

City recorder, you're saying there's only the one here person here to speak on the ordinance.

I have Ralph.

Okay.

Okay.

There appears to be no members of the public who want to speak in support of tonight's matter.

Um there appears to be no one that wants to speak in opposition or in neutral for this as well.

So we're moving on.

Sorry, this script is so long.

Uh all right.

Does uh any more uh do any members of the council have any additional questions for staff?

See none.

Does the staff have any further comments or clarifications regarding the proposed legislation?

Does the city attorney have any more comments?

I do not.

All right.

Hearing no uh future questions from the city council, the public hearing is now closed.

The council may either adopt the proposed ordinance recommended by the planning commission or take other action.

Is there a motion?

I move that the council adopt ordinance number 4876 and ordinance amending ordinance number 2050, the beaver to development code LU 42024-00710-2025 quote maintenance project text amendment TA 42024-00709.

Second.

It's been moved by Council President and seconded by Councilor Teeter.

Any more discussion on the motion?

All right, city recorder, we're ready for a vote.

Yes.

Thank you.

Councilor Hartmeyer Prigg.

Yes.

Counselor Hassan.

Yes.

Councillor Kimmy?

Yes.

Counselor Teeter?

Yes.

Mayor Beatty.

Yes.

Uh six, yes, zero, no.

Motion carries.

Awesome.

All right.

We're on to our last uh item, which is council new business.

Any new business for the council.

Counselor Kimmy.

Yeah, just to follow up on what my line of questioning, which is not the right place, I should say.

Um I'll like I'd like to have maybe future council discuss that.

Uh in regards to conservation of water.

So if it pleases, if not, it's fine.

But I would say for me personally, I think the crux of your issue are you live in a HOA and I've been taking up the HOA board is the right appropriate comment for that because we would be making regulations for the rest of the city.

Um so for me personally, I I don't see that as I don't want a future work session on that, but I'm willing to hear from the council.

Counselor Teter Okay.

Uh yeah, I would say no as well.

We had a we had lengthy conversations about our water rate structure, fee fee structure the past year, and we'll have another water fee conversation next year about rates.

Um we spent so much time on that that I don't feel like going back to that at this point.

And disrupting any of the other work we've got planned.

So I would also be a no right now.

I would suggest joining the HOA board.

Uh Counselor Hartmeyer Bright?

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to reiterate um something you started out when we got to our general meeting, um, that there is a training coming up next week, and we have heard from a member of our community.

A lot of Beavertonians are being hurt right now based on ICE activity.

So I would encourage you if you as an individual are comfortable to get involved to join the training.

Um there are things that you can do.

And I would just check out I think the city shared information about it today.

I don't know if there's more you want to share, but I would just say please participate if it's something that you're called to do.

Yeah, I think uh, you know, the the training itself was really uh suggestion of counselor Hartmeyer Prig, and we worked with ACLU and PERC and Central Kiltral to really develop a training that is not intended for impacted community.

It's intended for our community that continues to ask us like what can I do to help.

Um the training is free.

It's a suggested donation to one of those organizations that are doing a lot of heavy lifting right now without a lot of uh government funding.

Uh they're gonna go over a bit of know your rights, they're gonna go over um ways to see um uh authoritarianism take over, things you should notice.

They're gonna go over MegroWatch, um, and they're gonna give uh and mayors and other cities are gonna co-host this event by hosting it in their own communities.

Um it's gonna be a live feed, but not a publicly accessible feed.

So you do need to register for the event, and when you register, it will tell you based on your address where you will go and view the film, and I think it's a great way for our region and our cities and our city councils to stand up together.

Um, and so the next week for the city council is busy.

We got our council retreat on Sunday, and then we'll be joining each other again Monday after work and then Tuesday night together at the Reese.

Um, and so we do have a lot going on over the next couple weeks where we're gonna spend a lot of time together talking about the future of our community, how to protect our community and the role of city council um and what our year budget framing looks like.

So I think we have a lot going on.

I think the city manager is gonna return uh the emergency order in a future meeting for us to ratify as a council, which gives us that ability to vote on it.

I know there's other things the council asked for in my absence last week.

Um, and so the count uh city manager is gonna bring some of that forward.

I know one of the ones things that we asked for was uh code codification.

So per our council rules, the city manager will be bringing back to us a report of work trade-off for that to happen in the timeline, and it will be an agenda item and we'll vote on it based on information coming to us.

Um, and it's it's a ability for us to exercise the rules we just passed within the last six months on when a new agenda item comes up.

Um the city manager works with the team to tell us uh okay, if you want us to add this to the workload, this is what it's going to impact.

So we kind of are first run at that.

I think it's low-hanging fruit.

This is something we all want, but it's gonna get us developing that muscle of the rules that we agreed to.

So we'll look forward to that in the next two weeks, and then we'll take a two-week holiday recess.

I mean, I think Councillor Hassan calls that break her birthday.

Um so she will enjoy that with her family, and um we'll have time to celebrate with our families the holidays, and then we'll be back at the first of the year going quickly again.

Counselor Duggar.

Yeah, just want to remind people with the holidays too.

This is an opportunity to shop local.

I suppose there's a lot of really uh small businesses that are hurting right now that could use it.

We uh in particular our immigrant owned businesses.

Um there's a lot of businesses on Allen that don't have customers right now, they don't have employees, they're struggling.

Just want to put that out there that if you can and if you are available and have the money and you're gonna do holiday shopping.

I know a lot of businesses that would really appreciate a visit and a drop-in.

Counselor Hussen Since my birthday was out, it's December 22nd.

I like dark chocolate.

And you should only shop local if you choose to do that.

Uh I did want to offer one point of clarification.

I know the code work is big work around codifying, um, but we did have a neighboring jurisdiction that shared a lot of the language, and that's been shared with the right folks.

So I'm hoping that it's not as big of a lift as it is, just for everyone's knowledge.

So thank you.

I don't think it's gonna be a big lift, but we're gonna comply with the rules we passed.

So it's gonna come to us that way.

Okay.

All right.

Any anything else for the good of the order?

All right.

See you guys on Sunday.

Recording stopped.

If people want to take home the extra.