Cornelius, Monday, March 2nd, 2026.

We've had our executive session, and now we're moving on to our work session.

Topic tonight is city discretionary community contribution.

Contributions, well, I can't even talk.

Staff uh presenting will be Peter Renman, City Manager, Ellie Jones, assistant city manager, business operations.

Staff.

Thank you, Mayor.

City Councilors, Peter Brandum.

And I don't have a lot of material here, but I just wanted to tee up a actually, it's probably a little more general of a conversation that than I'm comfortable with.

I I prefer to give you a lot more kind of substance, but I decided it's probably better just to open it up and give you a little bit of background and context about how the city has made discretionary community contributions and and to just kind of elicit some some general input at this stage as we're going through the budget process.

And so I just tried to summarize here comparative over the last few years, comparing two of those years, 2023 and 2026, our current fiscal year.

Overall, that that underlying number is kind of the high level where we've reduced it a bit.

And it's also a little bit challenging because what we consider discretionary is you know uh can leaves room for debate.

But the way I tried to kind of group these is memberships, grants, and gallas.

And really it's mainly just one gala that we've that we've supported regularly, as far as I can tell over recent years, whereas we have contributed to some other ones since we've been here when requested.

And and really the purpose of the conversation is just to get some input.

Um I think I'd be more comfortable comfortable if we had some kind of parameters around it, because right now there really aren't, and we you know it's really Ellie and me looking at at the budget and and seeing what the legacy has been and then making decisions on what we do in the current and in future year.

And so what we see by tabulating that is uh 21 in 2023, we had 21 different contributions that totaled just over 60,000, and then we had 10 community events there at 17,300.

When you look at 2026, one of the major uh differences there in the data set is one big one moved over into the events category, and that's the contribution that we make to Alain Mohares for the uh Cornelius farmers market, and that's around uh just under 25,000 for this current fiscal year.

Um within the events category that represents over half of the events uh total.

So just to give you some context there, we have seen some pretty dramatic.

Well, first I'll start with one dramatic decrease.

We were contributing quite a lot to the Family Justice Center, and we've really it's a it's fantastic because I think Cornelius was one of the lead entities to really get it up off the ground and get it established.

And and um Rachel and her board have done such a great job there.

They now have a you know the building isn't new, but newly um for them and renovated and and I haven't seen it since they renovated it, but uh moved into a a big building there, and and they really have a good foundation now.

And you know, I I have had conversations with Rachel there um each year just to say we need to dial back just because we have some other needs and so forth, and she totally understood.

We were at um I think we were at 13,500 contribution in 2023, and we've uh decreased that to 2,000, and we actually haven't seen them invoicing us of late.

So that's just one notable one that I wanted to mention.

I also see some pretty significant increases.

The um League of Oregon Cities is a big uh discretionary, but it's one of those things where we're a member and and we get value, and there are quite a few of those.

Um we have uh pulled out of some of those.

I I don't need to necessarily get into naming them all, but there were some where we just didn't feel like we were getting that much value.

They also weren't on that order of magnitude.

They were smaller, but then things add up.

Um League of Oregon Cities is one of the bigger ones in 2023.

That was uh just under 11,000 per year.

It's up to uh just over 13,000, so it's gone up a couple thousand, it's going to 14,000 next year.

So that that one's gone up over 30% in those three years, and we've seen that with uh with a couple of the other ones again, not at that high of a number, but the same kind of increases.

Um Council President Godinez as the representative to COLPAC and I talked a lot about uh COLPAC having to really increase their rate a lot because uh they haven't increased it since the mid-90s, and so that one's going up a lot, and we we did go ahead and make a decision to stay in and just really check each year to see what kind of value we're getting, and we let them know that.

Um I also talked to some of our neighboring cities, uh in particular Forest Grove, uh, really looked at that one closely because they have a couple of community grant programs.

The interesting thing is that they don't fund those with general funds, they they fund them with uh with money from the the transfer station that's in town and other fees that that they get separate from the general fund.

So that's great.

They have a resource that they can actually turn right back to the community, whereas we don't necessarily have that kind of a resource at this time.

We may um, you know, in the future when Metro develops their their facility there, and um maybe there's some other ways that we can do that.

But just looking at the general fund, um, you know, trying to think of a way that we can kind of put some decision factors around it to help us when we make those decisions, both about to whom we grant funds and what kind of what kind of value um or you know, maybe it's a ratio of our general fund or something like that.

So I know that that feels a little squishy, but I just wanted to set it up that way and and um you know, maybe have a little conversation and see how we might come to some and you know, we're not we're not totally averse to setting up a grant fund of and maybe it's a scrap, a small grant program.

Um, but you know, that takes administrative time and and effort, which again, we we can do that.

Um, but I I'm not as convinced as I thought I would be that that would be the path to go.

So, but definitely open to it.

So I guess I'll just leave it there and see if you have any thoughts yet.

Council, questions, comments.

Yes, Council Good News.

Um I will say I appreciate you bringing this up because I I do think that we need to have some consistency, especially so as organizations are coming up to us, we can be fair for all.

Um I guess the first one that comes to mind right now is galas because we just recently went to a gala.

And I personally have no problem if the city supports that as long as it's an organization that we have been working with.

And I think especially for me, because when I go to those galas, it's really helpful to see all of the work that essentially are part of the money and contributions that we're giving to is going towards, and it's not just that, but it's really a celebration of all the work the community has done.

That being said, I'm also happy just to like give that money separately if that's gonna save us.

But either way, at the end of the day, that it's a nominal fee that still continues to support an organization.

And I think from the organization's point of view, too.

Um, I know Mayor, you had once said like gallas, people expect you to give a lot of money.