The Cornelius City Council held a work session at 6:00 p.m. on the Right-of-Way License Program, followed by a regular session at 7:00 p.m. Key topics included transitioning from franchise agreements to a license system, updates on the former gas station cleanup (S-to-B property), the low-income utility billing relief program, and ratification of a new firefighters union contract.
Council members (Mayor Delano, Councilor Gordinas, Councilor Colgan) expressed concern, thanked the speakers, and committed to working with staff to explore options such as mediation, enforcement, and potential code adjustments.
I have Wordley Live Translation. Our first up this evening is our work session at 6 p.m. Right of way license program. And our staff presentation is Peter Brandon, City Manager. Peter. Thank you, Mayor and City Council. Nice to see you all. I'll start by acknowledging and introducing Reba Crocker with Right of Way Consultants who's joining us online via Zoom. And Reba has deep experience in this realm and is helping us with this program. And what we're going to do is I'm just going to walk through it, feel the questions that I can, and then Reba will chime in as needed with the expert perspective. We have hi Reba. We oh and the other thing, Reba, the sound in the council chamber is pretty loud, so when you talk, you can talk pretty softly. One of our tech particularities. They include telecommunications, cable, electricity, natural gas, cellular, water, sewer and stormwater and garbage services. The city holds a contract with each entity to allow for and compensate for use of the right-of-way because there is a cost for occupying it. Many of those contracts are expired. Each contract requires separate negotiation and management, and the fees can vary. So it's essentially a separate contract with any entity in the right-of-way, and that obviously is pretty complex and pretty high administrative burden. And for any of those private utilities, there could be a number of providers even just within telecommunications, for example. And there are additionally, a franchise individually negotiated and agreed for a longer term, which they typically are, usually 10-15 years. They hold both parties to requirements that can become a barrier with changes in technology or changes to the law. And for us with limited staff, it's also challenging to actively manage all those contracts. And in reality, compliance is largely up to the franchisee, which is not ideal. And we do have some entities that are that not up to date on fees, just as one example. So in recent years, some Oregon cities have transitioned to a license format, a much simpler format, which provides for lower administrative burden to manage it, the same terms for any licensee, regardless of who they are. More easily amendable terms when changes are needed. Those terms are typically not written into code. They're just part of that license. Sometimes changes in the law, whether state or federal, do require changes, and it's a lot more burdensome to make them. It provides for greater consistency and clarity for both the terms and the cost across the different companies, and that really benefits both both the licensee and the city. And it provides for fairer and more just compensation to the city for the use of the right-of-way, and we can elaborate on that. One example that Reba provided is that sometimes an entity, for example, PGE will sub-lease space on their poll, and that sub-lessee won't be brigand terms, and so they'll be essentially using the right of way without having to pay for it. It also provides for a stronger legal defensibility. So in order to develop the program, we would amend the Cornelius Municipal Code to include the terms and the process for the license for this program. And Reba has implemented this for a number of cities and actually even authored the model code for the for Oregon cities for the League of Oregon Cities, and she has extensive experience in all of this as I meant as I mentioned. The fees for use of the right-of-way by licensees would be set via resolution so they can be more easily amended as we do for other fees. And we also plan to retain a consultant, um, probably Reba when we're done making the change to actively manage the program so that we can get our arms around the current occupants of the right-of-way and make sure that they're complying with everything that they're signed up for, especially the the fees that they owe. And we're we're very confident that this will result in some increased revenue to the city, which currently is essentially lost revenue. And again, the scope of the utilities to be included in this program are uh electricity, natural gas, water sewer, and storm, stormwater, telecommunications, communications, video, wireless, and cellular services. Uh and some entities that deliver services through the city without delivering to customers in the city may also qualify. That's something else we're going to explore. An example of that might be uh a uh utility uh transmission line that comes through Cornelius. So what are called over-the-top services such as Netflix and Hulu and satellite services such as Direct TV will not be covered since the city doesn't have legal authority to do so. Um the cost for consultant services to implement this, build it and implement it is uh we are confident also based on the experience of other cities, far less than the newly realized revenue that we'll see from this active management. And as we develop the implementing ordinance, it'll be important for our consultant to work directly with the current franchisees to transition them over, and uh Reba also has a lot of experience with this and relationships with these companies, many of them. And we will uh also consult our city attorney. We do have access to an expert in this field. Um her name is Nancy Warner, and I've worked with her for years, and she's really known nationally as an expert in this law. We just want to make sure that everything that we uh recommend to you to approve complies with our existing code and other law, and so we'll be doing that as well. So the next steps are we're already well down the path of completing a draft fee resolution and ordinance to implement, and we'll have our city attorney review both of these before we bring it back, and then Reba will consult with the franchisees to present the new program, the fees and the new code, and then actively manage the licensees going forward.