The Forest Grove City Council held a work session on November 10, 2025, addressing two main topics: the police facility project and the city's response to increased ICE activity. The council discussed value engineering to reduce costs for a new police station, reviewed polling timelines, and then debated potential actions to protect the immigrant community, including an emergency declaration and codifying sanctuary city status.
Note: Public comment was not taken during the work sessions.
So with that, next. Next slide, please. So I think tonight we're really seeking feedback from the council on next steps regarding the police facility. Next slide. Not going to go through all of those. The most key one that I would mention is in May of 2025 after alternatives analysis and needs assessment, etc. We we had a ballot, uh 34-343, and it was not successful. It was a 47.75 to no 52.25. Next slide. So the results of the county elections. This is just to kind of inform the conversation that the council may have afterwards, is both of those levies were approved. They were replacement levies. Normally we ballot the local option levy three cycles ahead of when it expires. It expires in May, or excuse me. It expires in June 30th of 2028. So normally we would ballot for the local option levy in May of 2027. That would leave two election cycles in November and then the following May, if it was not successful. That really leaves kind of two election cycles prior to the city levy. That's uh May of 2026 of next year and then November of next year. Another consideration, and we do have a timeline, and we can go over that as well. But uh there was some money that was put into the budget for polling, approximately 25,000. Typically, you want to try and do a poll as close to the election as you can. Sometimes you may want to do successive polls, so you may want to do a poll to see when you may want to put it on the ballot, and then depending on when you make that decision, you may want to do another poll to see what it is closer to the election. For example, for both the public safety and the library levies that were recently passed by the county, each of those were polled a minimum of twice for both of those local option levies. Next slide. So if you look at potential timelines, part of the reason we're having this conversation tonight is if you look at either May or November of next year, and if you assume that it takes approximately eight weeks to do polling, then that really kind of puts us to tonight. If you want to look at potentially the May election, if you want to look at the November election of next year, then that puts the timeline out a little bit further. Any questions about that timeline? Okay. So is Jeff Humphreys available. If he's not, I think the chief and I know the improvements well enough, we might be able to go through them. If you can maybe bring up McKinsey's presentation, by way of background, McKinsey is our architect. They've been the architect on this project from day one. Um of the things that I would mention prior to getting into this is this really is a conversation about what we call value engineering. Value engineering is a way to try and see if you can reduce the resource requirement for the project you have without reducing the functionality of the facility that you have. Um next slide, please. So this is the draft concept for the police station. Next slide. So I don't know that we need to go into that. Umry, did you want to mention anything about your chief? Excuse me. Right. I would mention that the outside envelope of the building has reduced in square footage through the alternatives analysis, through the needs assessment, and then through the concept and all the way up to 35% design. The facility envelope has been reduced from 27,000 to approximately 22,000, which or 21,500, which is the same envelope that was ballotted in the May election square feet. Next slide. So again, this is just looking at the same building that we had before, really no changes to it. Um the building design life was really geared toward a 40-year building, and so assuming when the construction dates, so if it gets constructed, say in 2026 or 2028, you can add 40 years to that. Uh, we are currently at is it 48 years for the existing facility? Yeah, almost 50 years in our existing facility. Our existing facility by way of comparison is about 12,500 square feet.