Good evening.

I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Forest Grove City Council at 7 01.

Will our city recorder please call roll?

Councillor Gustafson?

Here.

Council President Von Zuela.

Here.

Councillor Schimmel?

Here.

Councillor Falconer?

Here.

Councillor Martinez?

Here.

Councillor Marshall.

Here.

Mayor Wenzel.

Here.

We acknowledge the land on which Forest Grove City Council meetings are held as located on the traditional village sites of the Athalati, a tribe of the Calapuas who originally inhabited the Twalton Plains, including Forest Grove.

Will the council and the audience member please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

One nation under God Liberty.

Thank you very much.

Really quick, if anyone lost a cell phone.

I have it here.

What's the deal?

If anyone lost a cell phone, I have it up here.

If in case you couldn't hear our city recorder, if you misplaced your cell phone, uh Mariah has it up front.

So just go ahead and see her to the side if you realize you're missing yours.

Okay, we're gonna move on to item B on our agenda, which is public comment.

Time provided for anyone wishing to speak to the city council on an item not on the agenda or on the agenda but not scheduled for a public hearing.

Comments are limited to two minutes unless additional time is granted by the presiding officer.

The public comment period shall not exceed 30 minutes unless a majority of counselors present vote to extend the time.

Zoom attendees may use the raise hand option to be called on.

Okay, let me find my public comment.

I only have two people signed up for public comment.

Uh Mr.

Dale Feek, could you please come forward?

Hi, Mr.

Feek.

Hi, Mayor Wenzel, Council President on Zoom, uh Venezuela and Counselors.

Dale Feek in Forest Grove since 1966.

A wonderful city to live in and raise a family.

I have three comments, but I'm gonna do just two here because they've signed up also for testimony for the sanctuary city.

Mike Rogue, and I've already sent an email to you to this effect, wrote a story titled A Nine Gigawatt Problems.

Surging Demand pushes new energy crisis.

Datison is lured by billions of dollars in local tax breaks, turned everything upside down.

While consumer and commercial power demand has remained relatively constant for more than a decade, big tech companies have sent electricity consumption soaring from one side of the state to the other.

But I lost.

Little picture, we may have helped the right bear in Forest Grove.

My point of view.

Exploit such events in order to consolidate power.

The sudden disaster requires the end of checks and balances.

The dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick on the Hitler Hitler in book.

Do not fall for it.

The things that are happening right now are terrible.

Don't fall for it.

Because of the recent action device and border agents, I'll make my further comment.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Feek.

Mercedes Garcia.

Good evening.

My name's Mercedes Garcia, and I've been a resident of Forest Grove for three years.

I'm a retired teacher and school administrator.

As a newcomer in Forest Grove, I felt comfortable and safe until ICE agents came to town.

Now I and many other residents are fearful and outraged.

I'm grateful to the Forest Grove City Council for what they have done so far to help support us in these frightful times.

I'm grateful to Indivisible Forest Grove for the support and guidance that they have given to our local law enforcement and to all the organizations, churches, businesses, and individuals who are doing their part to ensure the safety of its residents.

Tonight I have four requests to make of the Forest Grove City Council.

First, I would like to request that the City Council confirm sanctuary status for the city of Forest Grove and that the Code Chapter 39, which will protect Forest Grove from misuse of local resources in violation of state law for federal immigration law enforcement be added to the ordinance.

Secondly, I would like to request that the city council consider and approve the adoption of resolution number 2025-61, which would extend the emergency declaration and should ensure that the city is fully prepared to respond to the ongoing emergency and include a more robust appeal for the support of congressional and state leaders to assist in this effort.

My recommendation is that it be extended for as long as ICE personnel are in the area.

My third request is for unanimous support of the city council members in the above requests so that our community can have reassurance that the city of Forest Grove is supporting all of its residents.

Lastly, I would like to encourage that Spanish translation services for city council meetings be made more widely known in order to welcome the participation of Spanish speaking residents.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Is there no other individuals signed up?

Okay.

Uh please come up and state your name for the record, and then you'll have two minutes to share a comment.

Hi.

My name is Annette Herrings.

I was severely assaulted and attacked by ICE in Forest Grove on December 9th of last year.

I'm a Forest Grove resident.

I'm white.

I'm an American citizen, and I'm an attorney.

It's just me.

This is my neighborhood.

I saw masked men surrounding a Hispanic woman.

I pulled over.

It's my neighborhood.

That's my right.

And these men, none of them were white, by the way.

None of the ICE guys were white.

Some of them were speaking with accents.

Filipino and Mexican accents.

So when I rolled in peacefully to the parking lot, I rolled down my window, and I said Guten Muggin mine a Nazis, Vosendina Fiorer, which is English for good morning, my little Nazis.

Where's your fear?

They didn't like that.

And within under a minute, under a minute, I'd been pepper sprayed in the face in my car.

I hyperextended my elbow because they were pulling my elbow in the opposite direction out of the car.

It took four of those losers to take out a 50-year-old fat woman and throw her onto the ground, wrestle her, push her head into the concrete, giving me whiplash.

And then you know what?

They threw me in the back of the car and took me off all in under a minute.

And keep in mind, I found video evidence right before I got there.

They asked people who were already there to live stream what they were doing because they're good people.

They drove me 45 minutes to the Portland Detention Center.

I sent in a public comment about my 45-minute conversation with these guys.

And I want you to know that those ICE people agreed with me that we are in a fascist state.

They agreed with me.

And they did not want to be here.

And I encourage you all to go back and look at my conversation with these guys.

They put me in jail for three and a half hours, let me sit there.

They let me go after I believe the executive director of the ACLU called them and said, you have a civil rights attorney in detention.

They took my fingerprints, and then the guy there said, Oh, uh, the ice camera is broken.

Can I use somebody's phone?

And they took a picture of me with a cell phone, and I smiled and I walked out.

This is not America.

This is 1933, fascist Nazi Germany.

And that is one of the things that I was talking to those guys about was my recent trip to the Munich National Socialist History Museum.

And I said, this country has ticked off every single box of the Nazi fascist playbooks.

Every single one, including concentration camps.

The only difference is we contract out.

So if any of y'all have questions, I am here for you guys.

Because I am a part of this community, and this is our community, you guys.

This is our community.

And we have to protect our neighbor.

We have to get to know people and protect our neighbors.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Herrings.

Are there additional individuals who would like to provide public comment who may not have signed up?

Okay, go ahead.

Come on up, Miss Lumay.

Hi, thanks for listening to this really serious stuff that's going on in town.

I'm gonna be really brief, but I just want to say that this isn't the first time that people have been brutalized by police in the United States.

And it's really tempting to say that this is not America.

But this is America.

This is the United States of America.

For example, when I was in my 20s in the 90s, before I got diagnosed with autism, and I didn't really understand my own sensory responses.

Because a doctor called police to escort me to a mental hospital because I went in asking for help for having not slept for a week because a lot of us on Spectrum have sensory and sleep issues.

And so I'm a survivor of police violence.

And that happened in the US of A.

And like, I mean, I think we all remember Manzanar, you know, we all remember the genocide of the Native Americans.

And so I I would like to, that's just sort of something I wanted to just get off my chest is that this is the United States of America.

And so it isn't that we need to go back to some glory days where we used to be a good country.

We need to go forward and actually do the right thing.

And I served on the CPAC when we had it.

Um, citizen, what is this?

Citizen Policing Advisory Committee.

And it's been discontinued because you know, I know that it's it's hard to handle that many different um that many different boards and commissions, and I hope that y'all take up that stuff in the future.

But a lot of the conversations we had in CPAC bear right down to this moment because we were trying to talk about how we need at least our force group of police to sign on for, you know, not using the type of excessive force, you know, that results in this kind of thing.

And I believe we still have a loophole saying that even our local police, you know, if needed, there's this sort of an as needed type addendum to what police can do and what they can't do.

So I just want to say that, you know, as we move forward trying to deal with what I think we all know is wrong, um, having federal agents breaking the law and terrorizing our community.

I just would like us all to bear in mind that this is the United States of America.

We need to do better.

We don't need to return to something that glory days that didn't exist before.

Thank you, Miss Lou May.

Anyone else in the audience?

Okay, I'm gonna go.

Yeah, in order.

Come on up, sir, and then Ms.

Anderson, you can come after him.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Johnson.

I am with Indivisible Forest Grove, and I'm signed up to address the uh sanctuary law, but I, after listening to this, cannot resist putting my two cents worth in.

I have read uh Ms.

Herring's document.

I have seen the video, both in the longer one and the shorter one.

And the only thing you know, they speak for themselves.

I'm not gonna get into any of that.

I'm just gonna say that this is what you get when you promise to demort, I don't know how many people million people, 11 million, 20 million, you know, soon it's gonna be 40 million, who knows?

Uh, and then hire a bunch of unqualified people, give them minimal training, hand them a lot of technical gear that uh half of them don't know how to use properly, and give them guns and tell them you gotta arrest 3,000 people a day, because that's how many I want to deport.

That's what happens when you do that.

I can't even begin to tell you how many constitutional principles and principles of that's basic fairness that violates.

I won't even try.

I will simply ask imagine yourself a jury or a judge or a defense attorney interviewing some of these uh officers who are doing these terrible things, and some of the simple questions you could ask.

Did you think about going over and asking Miss Herring to move her vehicle politely?

Is it possible you could have backed up and gone around her that way?

Did you have to drag her out of the car?

Did you have to practically break her arm?

Did you have to throw her on the concrete and pepper spray her in the face?

Was that all really necessary?

We fire any officer in Forest Grove who behaved that way.

I believe we would.

Thank you, Mr.

Johnson.

I'm Arianne Anderson from Fort Grove.

On December 9th, I happened to be at a bus stop here in town, and a Hispanic mom came up to me terrified and showed me a video that had happened to her that morning when she had pulled into a parking lot, and um ICE agents were there and approached her, and she was terrified.

I believe she had her kids with her, and no warrant, no um reason to approach her, except probably because she was Hispanic, and then a Caucasian woman came up, which I believe is Mrs.

Herring.

Ms.

Herring, and um when the attention was drawn towards her, this Hispanic woman started to videotape what was going on, and that's what she was showing me.

And it was terrifying.

Terrifying what happened to her.

These four big guys holding her down, throwing her into a car and driving off with her.

I had no idea.

We had no idea who she was, what had happened to her.

And so I'm so relieved to find out that she's here tonight sharing her story, but it's terrifying what's going on.

This Hispanic mom was so terrified at the bus stop for her children for the community.

She said they're now going after white people.

She, you know, just couldn't believe that now their attention is turned to the Caucasian members of the community also.

If you help in any way the Hispanic community, then you're a target also.

Thank you, Ms.

Anderson.

Further public comment from members of the audience.

Come on up, please, sir.

My name is Santiago Estrada.

Um I have been a member of this community since 1978, in and out.

Graduated from first growth high.

My entire family did.

And uh, you know, if Annette, the civil right attorney, white woman, has been through all this.

Can you imagine while we are going through people that look like me just by being Hispanic or having an accent?

It's horrible.

I've been in many countries.

I've visited many, many countries, including Nicaragua.

And never had any issues with police.

I never seen anything.

I was born in Mexico.

I'm a U.S.

citizen.

I'm terrified of what's going on over here.

I'm terrified to go outside without my documents.

Should I carry them in front of me saying, hey, watch, you know, I'm a U.S.

citizen.

Why?

I think everybody here and everywhere that is non-Hispanic or white that are stepping up, you know, to do something, to say something.

Because it is terrifying, and it's not gonna change.

It's getting worse.

It is getting worse in.

I don't know what to do.

I just came over here to listen to what's going on and see if you know we can come up with a change.

They look at me and they look at somebody else that is, you know, looks like me and immediately think it's a bad person, just by you know how we look.

And take you.

If a net was taken, being an attorney.

Imagine what the rest of the population is facing.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

I want to make sure that I don't, you know, if anyone else wants an opportunity, please come come on up.

Thank you.

Hello, uh, my name is David Dion.

I've been a resident of Forest Grove since 2009.

And I'd like to point out that as horrific as the racial and political motivations behind the events that we're seeing are.

And that is that these are masked men who come into communities wearing no identification, claiming authority that cannot be verified, and frequently acting against people who ask for that verification.

There is more danger here than just a political operation to ethnically cleanse this area and this country.

But is being forced to accept an arbitrary authority from a group that habitually refuses to identify itself.

When masked men approach someone on the street, we cannot be certain without putting ourselves in danger, whether we are looking at federal agents or kidnappers taking advantage of the situation, and I think that's something that we all need to keep in mind when we're discussing this issue, because that is beyond things.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Come on up, please.

Hi, my name is Aaron Graham.

I've been here four years-ish.

I was also present at the event on December 9th with the net.

And at the time, watching, you know, a bunch of masked men with guns haul someone into an unmarked van and disappear them in under two minutes was quite a uh this happening ten minutes from my house, uh, was quite an experience, but now it seems like a near mess considering what happened with Renee Good recently.

And I just want to add my voice for the other people who've already said this.

I'd like the police to seriously consider making new uh protocols for dealing with reports of ICE activity, because part of the problem at the moment is that ICE uh comes in, does stuff so quickly that the police literally cannot get there in time.

Um like I said, the the entire incident on the ninth took less than two minutes, two minutes from arriving to being carded off in an unmarked thing.

And I don't know enough about how police procedure works to have specific suggestions, but uh I'd like to ask that people with more experience than me put a little thought into this.

Thank you very much.

Before I move on to Zoom attendees for public comment, just gonna give a once more option.

If you would like to give public testimony or public comment, you may do so now.

Okay, seeing no other hands, I'm gonna ask people participants on Zoom.

If you would like to share public comment, please use the raise hand feature.

We'll give it a minute.

Okay, seeing no raise hands.

I'm gonna break from procedure.

Typically in a city council meeting, public comment is designed for us, your governing body to listen to the public's comment.

We don't come, we don't return a comment.

We don't have a discussion.

Um, but you know, my comment I'm gonna be selfish.

My comments don't come until the end of the meeting, and I want to respect your time.

And I want to say a few things.

It this is heartbreaking on so many levels as a community, as a nation, as a country.

And um, this council, you know, I have has tried to brainstorm approaches.

I can this is what I can tell you right now.

We have committed as a council to meet to use one work session a month, and I'm gonna tell you when it is so you can attend.

The second council meeting of this right no, yeah, the second council meeting of each month will be a work session on the city's response to federal agents um in our town.

So I'm gonna during my council comments tonight, I'm gonna propose some topics for next week to discuss.

In the meantime, as the mayor, I'm on the Metropolitan Mayor's Consortium.

I'm meeting with regional leaders across this area.

And Congresswoman Bonamici attended one of our meetings on Monday.

So there's some federal delegate like legislation that she is working towards with her colleagues.

And I'm just gonna highlight some of those for you now.

And that would be uh delegating or they're trying to coordinate preventing a detention center.

You might have heard about Newport, but really in the whole state.

Um we really we really don't want that.

And then legislation priorities also include allowing virtual immigration hearings to protect people because people have been getting picked up on their way to do it, quote unquote legally.

So there's legislation for that.

Uh protecting sensitive locations.

There was guidance in the last administrative um in 2016, the first time this administration was in charge that didn't, or that prevented ICE agents from going on to schools and churches.

That has gone away.

And so Congress is trying to ask for that back.

And also addressing what a few community members said and what we've talked about, which uh the ask is to prevent mask or an unidentified ICE agents um from working in our areas, and then allow people to be released on bond.

So those are the key legislation on the federal level uh that I can share with you at this point, and then also some mayor's comments at the end and then a work session.

We do have an ordinance on the agenda for tonight that would potentially codify sanctuary city status and create some other protections.

I can't I all I can say for myself is that I take my responsibility seriously, and I will continue to work.

I don't have the answers.

Um, but all I can tell you is that I will continue to chat with my other mayors in the region, work with my council, ask the attorney general.

You know, I'm gonna draft a letter this week to try to send to the attorney general.

We're just gonna continue to work.

Um, and we're gonna continue to stand with our community and the constitution.

Um, and so and I I appreciate all of your comments and stay posted, keep calling us, keep emailing us, hold us accountable.

Keep calling us, keep emailing us, hold us accountable.

Um, and if you have ideas, share them because we're in this together, and I just appreciate the things you do in your daily life as well.

Okay, with that, I'm gonna move on to item C.

Thank you.

I'm gonna move on to item C on our agenda, which is the consent agenda.

Items under the consent agenda are considered routine and will all be adopted with a single motion without separate discussion.

Counselors who wish to remove an item from the consent agenda may do so prior to the motion.

Any item or items removed will be discussed and acted upon following the approval of the remaining items.

What is the wish of the council?

I'd like to remove item C three.

Okay, there is a motion to remove item C three.

Uh is there a second?

I second.

Okay.

Counselor Falconer asked to remove item C three, and Counselor Martinez seconded it.

Uh all those in favor say aye.

Do we have aye?

Aye.

Thank you, Council President.

Just go ahead, Counselor Falconer.

Um, I'm looking at the list, and I'd like to add human rights day and international women's day.

Okay, so there is a uh do you what was that?

Council president just second that yes, I was going to second that.

Perfect.

Thanks.

So Councilor Falconer asked to add human rights day, and this is to our proclamation list for those in the audience who are wondering what we're referring to.

So International Women's Day and Human Rights Day.

It was moved by Council.

Okay, let's let's work on that motion first.

Okay.

Any discussion?

Sorry, go ahead.

This is a point of order.

Um, the rest of the consent agenda should be voted on before the oh jeez.

You're right.

My apologies.

Okay, so let's uh vote on the rest of the consent agenda.

Without item three A 3C.

Thank you.

Sorry, C three.

I second that.

Okay, so the consent agenda was moved by Counselor Falconer and seconded by Counselor Martinez.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, same sign.

Hearing none, the consent agenda is approved except for item C three in a vote of seven to zero.

Okay, then do we need a new motion?

Can they we reuse that for the additions to the proclamation list?

No, we can take the so we have a motion and which was seconded to add International Women's Day and Human Rights Day to our proclamation.

Any discussion on that?

Okay, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, please say aye.

Hearing none, that addition is been added in a seven to zero vote.

And then Counselor Martinez, you had an amendment.

So um I want to remove Pride month and ban books week.

You want to remove Pride month and ban books week?

Correct.

Okay.

Is there a second on that?

Hearing no second, the motion dies.

Okay, can we is there a motion to approve?

Are there any other additions or deletions proposed for C3?

Not hearing any other motions.

Is there a motion for item C3?

Did we already do it or we're done?

Well, did we approve all the other ones?

We just approved.

I thought we just approved your two.

We haven't approved the whole list.

We just approved her.

Yeah, we just took that whole thing out and now we're adding to it.

So it's just changing.

Mariah, I see human rights day is.

Did you add International Women's Day?

I'm just looking at your typing on the screen.

So I just sorry, will you repeat your question?

International Women's Day, did you add it?

Okay.

But we still have to pass C3 with the list.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's okay.

So is there a motion for I'll move to approve C3.

Okay.

Item C three was moved by Councillor Falconer and seconded by Councilor Gutson.

Discussion.

Hearing none.

All those in favor of approving item C3, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, please say aye.

The item C three is approved by the Force Road City Council in a seven to zero vote.

Moving on to item D, additions or deletions.

City Manager, do you have any additions or deletions?

I have no additions or deletions.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Any proposed by counselors.

Counselor Schimmel.

So I move to add a resolution reissuing the city of Forest Grove's state of emergency originally resolution number 2025-61.

Second.

Perfect.

Okay.

There was a motion by Councilor Schimmel and a second by Council President Valenzuela to add a resolution add resolution 2025-what?

Oh 61.

20-2561 to reissuing the state of oh, I'm gonna start over.

There's a motion by Councillor Schimmel, seconded by Council President Valenzuela to reissue the previous state of emergency resolution 2025 61.

And I'm gonna add that.

Do I have to vote on it?

If it was seconded, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

All of those in favor.

Wait.

In favor of the addition?

In favor of the addition, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those all those opposed, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

It is approved by the Fort Course City Council vote in a six to one vote to add resolution reissuing the state of emergency.

And I'm gonna add it as item.

I'm gonna put it on the agenda as item Five.

Yeah, because then I can have something to look at.

Yeah, great.

Thank you.

Okay.

So now we're gonna start our presentations.

And uh the council will hold questions to the end of presentations.

Presentations are 15 minutes.

However, I want to be really clear.

Our first presentation has two topics in one.

So there's gonna be 15 minutes for Washington County housing and 15 minutes for our homelessness update.

Both are from Washington County, but we're doing it at the same time.

So I would like to sorry, I would like to call up Washington County staff members Jill Chen and Jess Larson.

Hello, ladies, thank you.

Thank you.

This is all yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, City Council members, for this opportunity to present to you the Department of Housing Services of Washington County's annual report.

I am Jill Chen.

I use She Harponels, and I'm the assistant director of housing.

Good evening, Jess Larson.

I am the uh the other assistant director in the Department of Housing Services overseeing our homeless services programs.

Is that this one or the other one?

Next slide, please.

Oh, is that the correct one?

Okay.

We'll just start off about our vision and our mission.

And our vision is that we envision a Washington County where everyone has an affordable home with the supports and opportunities each of us need to thrive.

Our mission is part of that vision.

And the mission of the Department of Housing Services creates pathways out of homelessness, promotes housing stability, and invests in affordable communities for Washington County and our residents.

And I want to make sure that we are all sitting here trying to enable that.

Um we start off with some of our stories of strength.

This is a story of Jasmine.

It is in our annual report with a little uh QR code.

She was one of the folks we helped to go into affordable housing at Terrace Glenn and turn her life around with her family and her two children.

Um, where she was able to get her degree and start creating a stable life and a stable home.

Next slide, please.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you.

In terms of the straight-up numbers, uh, we provide a support for 20,700 individuals uh in all Washington County.

That is the population of the city of Sherwood.

Um, for us, that is critical.

We want to help all of our folks in the county.

We have 26 capital projects, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes that's spread out also throughout the county.

On the right side is how do we help our residents?

77, oh more than 7700 folks with short-term housing assistance, more than 31 folks with shelter, and over 10,000 folks with long-term rental assistance and over 1100 affordable homes that the county itself provides.

Next slide, please.

But these are just numbers, and I will hand it over to my colleague to talk about the housing spectrum.

Thank you, Jill.

And here are some more numbers.

And it's a real pleasure to be back with you.

We we try to make this visit once a year to give you our annual report update.

It's our last year's fiscal report, though it was just completed a couple months ago.

And we're pleased to just keep you posted on the progress we're making across Washington County with the various resources we have from the federal, state, and local levels to invest in housing solutions across the county.

And these numbers, Jill was highlighting some of our successes, which are included in that annual report that was just passed around.

These numbers are also in that report, but sort of speak to the need that remains in our community.

So I won't go through each.

We have limited time before you this evening, but I'll call your eyes to the two numbers in the center of this page.

First is the average income of households that we're serving is less than a thousand bucks a month.

I think you all probably know there are no available apartments that rent for a thousand dollars a month.

And in fact, the average or the median rent in our community is closer to $2,000 or 1773.

I believe this is for a one bedroom apartment.

I'm sorry, I don't know that detail off the top of my head this evening.

But it helps to illustrate the gap between households with very low incomes, especially seniors and people with disability who lived on fixed incomes in our community and what's available in the market and what our programs funded by those federal, state, and local partners make intend to resolve in our community by bridging that gap, though those resources and those programs still leave a lot of bridging to go.

There's just not enough to go around for the amount of need.

In fact, 50% of our residents are severely rent-burden.

So next slide, and we'll get into some of the highlights of our homeless services programming over the last year.

Here we start with what we call our front door programs, how we help someone who's outside, unsheltered, or not yet connected to our services.

We have a variety of programs from outreach liaisons to new access centers, which will be an important critical component of our homeless service system coming on board as we speak, frankly.

So we have nine geographically assigned outreach workers across the region, uh, pardon me, across the county.

And I want to um a shout out to Sean and his team at Forest Grove Foundation, who are the outreach providers here in Forest Grove in western Washington County in partnership with Salvation Army as well.

Uh the access centers are these new service, full service centers for people who are still outside, not yet connected to services or shelters, who want to come in, get a hot meal, put their stuff down, talk to somebody, and maybe start thinking about getting into shelter or meeting with a case manager to talk about housing or talking about mental health or recovery services.

These access centers will be open seven days a week, 20 pardon me, not seven 24-7, but seven days a week from 7 to 7 p.m.

Uh where all of those services will be available, and the key is connecting people to that next step in their plan for care.

This is similar to the work.

Oh, let me mention about access centers.

Another key component that they will bring on into our infrastructure is the ability to turn into an overnight emergency shelter when we go into inclement weather.

We've been relying on gymnasiums and church basements to try to respond to that crisis when the weather turns.

And now we'll have purpose-designed buildings that can be ready no matter what when we need them.

And next uh note on our housing liaison program, these are the the housing navigators of our system who know how to connect people to all the different kinds of services that are out there.

And we just want to highlight that 682 households were placed into whether it was a shelter or transitional housing or some kind of care facility or ultimately their own home because of the work of those um housing liaisons.

So we look forward to their work continuing in all of these front door programs that we host across the county.

Next slide.

So the next step in our um our uh front door system are those shelter and transitional housing beds where someone can start to really get good sleep and start to stabilize in their experience of homelessness and make a plan for long-term housing.

We're proud to have over shelter 400 shelter beds that operate every day of the year, um, serving families with young children all the way to single individuals and even their pets.

Um, so a variety of different shelter options so that we can meet every unhoused and unsheltered unhoused person where they are at and provide the different kinds of needs uh that they may bring, including a medical respite shelter for people coming out of hospitals where they're still sick and recovering, though they don't need to be in a hospital bed.

So they can be in a shelter bed and in fact a motel room where um a medical trained professional comes to visit and check up on them and make sure they're continuing in their path to recovery.

We're also proud to be increasing transitional housing in Washington County.

We have two important projects underway as we speak, one with Transcending Hope, which will focus on wraparound services that are tailored to address mental health needs while people stay in a setting that's a little more robust and enriched in its services than a shelter might be designed to serve people with those mental health needs.

And similarly, helping hands will be operating our new Cornell Road Recovery building that was recently purchased on the corner of Cornell in 26 Highway 26.

And that transitional housing program will be focused on people working through their substance use recovery.

Next slide.

Thank you, Jess.

Once we move folks into housing, how do we keep them stabilized?

One of the key aspects is rental assistance.

We have a number of programs and work with a number of landlords.

There's approximately 1,500 landlords, most of whom are from the private sector.

These are folks who take our vouchers, which is using part of that 89 million from the federal government, the state government, or the regional rent assistance, and house our community.

And these are from anywhere from the Section 8 vouchers you might have heard, or the regional local rent assistance funded by supportive housing services measure, um, all the way to some of the funding from the state.

We're serving, as you can see, a number of different households.

I've already mentioned about long-term rental assistance.

There's also eviction prevention, which is critical in keeping them stable, as well as short-term rental assistance.

Next slide, please.

A few highlights about who we're serving and who is in our communities.

On the left side, you'll see that there's over 4200 children in our household in all of these buildings.

And there's a large number of seniors.

Many of them are on social security or fixed income.

And once they are housed, one of our metrics of success is whether or not they are stable, whether or not they can stay in that home.

And we have a 97% retention rate.

This graph on the right side is the demographics.

Who are we serving?

What's their ethnicity?

What's the makeup of poverty?

Next slide, please.

And where do they serve in our affordable and commuted supportive communities?

Um, Jess had mentioned recently about some of the assets that we are having, such as transitional housing and our access centers.

You'll see on this map, our services and our capital assets are spread throughout the county.

Um that side, yes, is Forest Grove and Cornelius.

And you'll see that there is a number of different um both shelter access centers as well as affordable housing in Cornelius and Forest Grove, and it's spread throughout the list of affordable housing projects are to your right.

Um, and you'll see that there's a number of buildings, many of whom are owned and operated by the housing authority, and many of them are also owned and operated by a partners.

One of our projects in Cornelius, and well, it's actually I think this is cornea, it's right over here in the near the uh Fred Meyer, is the uh Plaza Los Amigos with REACH and Hacienda CDC.

This is a uh signing and the ribbon cutting.

We are so thrilled to be able to support our partner in this project.

It is part of the Metro Affordable Housing Bonds with 192 million, which is fully committed throughout the region.

We are on track to exceed every single target that Metro has put forward in terms of total number of units, in terms of very low-income family-sized units, every single metric.

Next slide, please.

In addition, we're working hard on preserving affordable housing.

You'll see here the parkside apartments located here in Forest Grove.

It is one of the buildings that the housing authority owns and operates, and it is part of our renovation of our whole affordable housing portfolio, in which we leverage over 100 million dollars to help improve the buildings, extend the useful life, and um keep our residents in good stable housing.

And which we leverage over a hundred million dollars to help improve the buildings that extend the useful life and um keep our residents in good stable housing.

Next slide, please.

I'll jump into our financial overview to just uh wrap us up here with our uh our annual report.

You'll find more information in the the uh report.

But essentially this is this pie describes our budget, which you can see is overwhelmingly uh uh a significant portion comes from the regional supportive housing services measure.

So we cannot understate how important how game changing those resources have been in our community from shelters to rent assistance vouchers that are keeping people inside warm and dry every night of the year here in Washington County.

Um next is the 23% tie that is made up with housing choice vouchers, and that's the updated HUD name to Section 8, which is pretty familiar, but that's uh significant and kind of an old and very well established and important part of housing affordability here in Washington County.

About 3,500 households receive that rent assistance to keep their housing from month to month, year to year.

And then a smattering of other important key resources, including just what's left of the affordable housing bond, not much more.

Um, but other um smaller federal programs or state funding and not what uh what's not included here is important leveraging of resources like LITEC to develop affordable housing.

So it's not the full story, but it gives you a sense of the range and importance of the various funding sources our department manages.

Next slide.

And how do we do this work?

Well, obviously, not alone.

There are many, many partners working with us.

We have over 25.

Next slide, please.

Community-based partners who operate our shelters and various homeless service programs.

Next slide, please.

Um we're really proud of our national health care uh case conference, nationally recognized pardon me, um, health care case conferencing work, which is done in partnership with hospitals from around the region to catch people as they're being transitioned out of those care facilities before they end up unsheltered and outside and sick again.

Um of course we have advisory bodies who help to shape and inform the work to make sure we are on track to meet our mission and our vision and um all of our responsibilities to our various funders.

And we want to highlight the importance of our partnerships with local law enforcement.

Uh one cool tool that we've been able to deploy are these emergency um shelter beds where any law enforcer enforcement officer from the local community who is working with someone who is unsheltered and wanting to go to shelter can roll up on a given night and a mat will be made available for that individual so they can check in, have a good night's sleep, and figure out what comes next the next day.

Next slide.

So we'll end with Pierre's story, another one of hope and strength.

He uh was homeless when he went to the just compassion shelter in Tiger and then got connected to a career pathway program that got him his nursing certificate, and now he is doing this work as a certified nurse and so grateful to be giving back to his community.

So that concludes um this presentation.

We'll come back for questions, but I'm gonna return my seat over to Lisa for your second conversation on the project uh permanent supportive housing project coming up.

And I'm gonna get another.

Wait, wait, we're gonna do questions.

Can we do questions on this presentation first before you leave?

And that way, then we can do questions.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Does the council have any questions on the presentation they just saw?

Counselor Schimmel.

Well, I want to uh comment positively on something and just invite you to correct any misunderstanding.

Um I think I what I say every year this program is the the regional long-term rent assistance program with the risk mitigation with a uh a local housing pro department that is providing placement support and long-term uh case management.

That that's to me that's the the under celebrated aspect of the program that that I uh I feel real affectionate for.

Um and just for the benefit of the residents here listening in.

Um there are there are formerly homeless folks who who had lived in Forest Grove who received services at a shelter or transitional housing were able to find a decent apartment, sometimes new uh or market rate uh and because of the the way the program works to to pull not just the rent assistance, but the rent rent medication that was in an exceptional way to recruit landlords and and retain them.

Uh and because of the the way the program works to pull not just the rent assistance, but the rent mitigation house that was an exceptional way to recruit landlords and and retain them because they knew that despite any damage on the back end, they were gonna recover that.

So uh and when there's such an exceptional team we have here in Forest Grove that is providing that service.

I know of landlords that just continue to add units as a free up to the program because it's because of the way it's been managed and because they're guaranteed that that rent.

Uh so Forest Grove can be proud of how uh how we be in the the programs and the and the folks here who have uh maximized the the resources and support from the county to be able to uh effect some positive change here.

So I I just think that Arla is particularly under celebrated.

Uh so thanks for arranging all the pieces of that because I I think that's where the county excels over your other counties.

Thank you, counselor.

I couldn't agree more.

Uh rent assistance is often not the tool that's talked about.

It's not as exciting as a shelter bed, uh, but it is the tool that ends homelessness.

And we have uh I believe 1,500 households now who are no longer homeless because of the Arlevaucha.

So thank you for being a champion of that program.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies.

We're gonna call, I think Lisa's coming up now.

On the permanent support of housing.

Thank you so much.

Uh again, I'm Jill Chen, Assistant Director of the Department of Housing Services.

Um, we're here to give you an update about the permanent supportive housing project in Forest Grove.

And with us is our partner from Central Cultural, Cory Fletcher.

And uh we are so pleased to bring this uh project to you because we just closed on the site acquisition uh end of December.

So we wanted to make sure we reached out to you and gave you all an update about what is happening with this site, and uh any questions you might have.

Um we'll give a quick, and this is where the site is.

You'll see that's Jim's Auto Shop right on Pacific Avenue.

Uh we'll have a short overview, some background, uh current uh status and some feedback, and of course, always here.

So I'll hand it over to Lisa Barron.

Good evening, Lisa Varen.

I'm the real estate manager for Washington County's Department of Housing Services.

I use she, her pronouns.

So today we're gonna give you um can next slide, please.

Oh, great.

Uh so Jim's Auto Shop, located at 3127 Pacific Avenue, Forest Grove, um, is a project that we're partnering on with Central Cultural and Care Oregon.

We are looking at up to 60 homes serving formerly homeless individuals and couples with a culturally specific um focus for Latin uh participants to reflect uh the population here in Forest Grove.

We selected this site um due to its accessible public transportation, employment opportunities services.

It's very close to the senior center, the library, grocery, um, pharmacies, uh, and really a good location and a commercial corridor of town.

Next slide, please.

We were accepted into the Oregon Housing and Community Services Permanent Supportive Housing Institute in 2024.

That was a six-month program that took the three partners and we learned together and developed uh learned all the the ways in which our the ideal um operations, development, all the different portions of creating these kinds of projects, our traffic our staff got trained, and then that helped us start to develop the program that we'll provide at the site based on best practices.

The institute really was a great opportunity, and what it does is it puts this project at the front of the line at OHCS in terms of consideration for funding.

And then after a uh a year-long uh purchase and sale agreement term while we went through quite a bit of due diligence on the property, we did purchase it in December, so that was our Christmas gift.

Next slide, please.

So the current status is that we've evaluated the zoning, the code requirements, existing site conditions.

Um we have an architect on contract to and a development consultant to help us make sure prior to purchasing the property that we could actually build these kinds of units at this kind of multifamily property at this location.

We conducted environmental review and found that the property actually was in pretty good shape, and there's um not uh the there's not a need for significant remediation uh due to the auto-body uh use at the site, and we're currently evaluating the financing options.

One really great part of the story is that we're already coming into this deal with 9.74 million dollars committed between Metro's uh PSH fund, which was a special fund, and three million dollars from care organ.

So that gap financing is essentially taken care of, and we're really excited about that.

Um next slide, please.

So our project timeline is that you know we're going to be working on planning and funding applications.

The 9% low-income housing tax credit application opens up at the end of this week, and we will start the process of putting together an application, pulling together our project team, which will include an architect, a general contractor, various consultants, and um coming up with uh a full application.

So it's a two-part application at the state.

You just uh do an initial quick application, they accept you, and then you provide a full application in the middle of the year, and we're looking toward the end of the year or early 2027, where we would get into permitting and construction start with about an 18-month construction period, then another six-month, six six-month lease period through the continuum of care.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Counselors.

My name is Tori Fletcher.

I am the housing director at Centro.

I use she her pronouns.

Um, Centro has served Washington County for over 50 years.

Um, we are well known for providing wraparound services in Washington County.

We have partnered with Forest Grove Senior Center to provide services here.

We have focused on, we have uh it's a core part of our work focused on individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, many of whom face layered barriers related to health trauma, income, and language access.

Um we have a workforce development program that we have education or we have uh education on youth development, we have employment coaches and small business that we help connect all of our participants to within Centro.

We have senior programming, we have a food pantry, so we provide services from anyone that walks through our doors, any community member in Forest Grove, but we also have a culturally specific lens for our Latin community members, which reflects the population in Forest Grove and Washington County as a whole.

You can see here a photo of Washington County when we are touring our Casampado non-congregate shelter.

We focused on serving families and our seniors and folks who identify as having disabilities.

We will serve anyone that comes through our our doors with empathy and compassion and tailored services to get folks housed and stay housed.

So that is why we are partnering with Washington County over about quite a period of time for the permanent supportive housing institute that was just highlighted.

Um we are very excited about the PSH program, our opportunity to partner with this in Forest Grove.

Um these are the residents.

Um we want to this is designed to serve.

Um, as was highlighted in the previous report, there was 940 people experiencing homelessness that was that were identified in the point and time count in 2025, and we want to connect those folks to services in their communities where they're from and are supported to with their uh services being on site with resident services.

We want to make sure that we have our community health workers there, that we are having folks with your support specialists on site.

We really want to make sure that people are getting the services there, they are going to be able to access transportation right there, which is highlighted next.

I'll just add that um the service model that we're looking at for this property is both a um very deep resident services model combined with case management, which we have found to be the best combination to help uh our residents successfully transition into permanent supportive housing.

Our next step here is community outreach, and we welcome suggestions from the council and from the community that's here today and at large.

Um, if we are going to be doing uh putting out a dedicated web page uh sometime in the second half of this year that'll provide more information about the project, really everything that's happening the first half of the year is behind the scenes, and then we'll be holding community stakeholder outreach meetings.

Um we're looking to reach out to the chamber of commerce, nearby neighbors, community organizations, service providers, and to build those partnerships early and to help the community understand what we're gonna be doing at the site.

Next slide, please.

So Jill's information and my information is on this slide.

We welcome and invite you to reach out to us if you have additional questions or suggestions as we um head into the financing and planning period of this project.

We're really excited to bring permanent supportive housing to Forest Grove and to this part of the county.

There um there isn't a lot of it, and really to help you uh solve the homelessness challenges for people from your community in your community.

Thank you, Lisa.

Are there any questions from the council?

Councilor Shimmel.

Uh well, mostly comments, but uh first, as I've shared with you directly, I support this project and and I will block and tackle for you to see this through because I have deep confidence in you and in terms of building this out.

Um obviously deep confidence in the centro team uh as they've been almost a silent provider for the city for the last four years plus.

And and thank you, Lisa, for stewarding what was probably very arduous process.

Um, but I also want to convey to the the community, yeah.

I I'm in support of this, and I want to make sure that we we don't conflate this project with the public engagement of a couple years ago regarding Main Street.

They're they're completely two different circumstances.

And I want to invite you to approach me with any concern or question you have, whether it's from a business perspective or residential perspective, I'd be happy to walk you through because I I've been vested in the housing and homelessness for the past decade.

Uh I I helped Sancho with the Casa Mparo.

So I'm deeply uh vested in this and then making sure that this is a good fit for a community.

So I I have your backs.

Um and and I'm and I'm committed to to Jill because I I know her experience.

I I trust her.

Um as as a as an example, she uh out reached out and and started to engage us early from the point that there was interest in that property to closure, and and and we brought the chamber in to ensure that there was some enlistment so that we can engage uh the business community on the south side as we engage the uh the residential community on north side.

And again, I invite you to approach me with with any concerns, but but this is absolutely good for Forest Grove.

Thank you, Councilor Shimmel.

Counselor Falconer.

I think Bill made a move.

Did you have anything you wanted to?

Oh, sorry.

Wanted to say thank you so much, Councilor Shill.

Really appreciate your support and all of the city council support.

Thank you.

I have a request.

So you may know we just finished up um 2040 visioning project, and um, you know, hopefully that will sort of provide a really strong foundation for us as we go into a comprehensive plan update and then um implementation through COVID.

And you know, hopefully that will sort of provide a really strong foundation for us as we go into a comprehensive plan update and then implementation through code.

And so what I'm hoping is that you all will provide really great insights into any challenges that you're experiencing from you know when you're getting into the permitting process here in Forest Grove.

I have found our planning department to be eager to learn, eager to adapt, eager to sort of write size.

And I would just really hope that as you're, you know, sort of like approaching your pre-application process, your application process, that you go in and you know, any challenges that you see, anything that you think that we could be doing better from a review process standpoint, from a development code, design standards, anything that you see as sort of hindering this project, let us know what they are.

Um, because you know they might maybe they get addressed at a land use hearing and we'll have to wear different hats, but we'll we also will be dealing with um some legislative change.

And so we'd love to hear from you know your learning and your experience.

Thank you so much.

We really appreciate that opportunity.

And we will um I think we've already started talking with Jesse and his team.

So he's been a wonderful part.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

I have one just a question about community engagement.

And first I would just like to say thank you for wanting to do the community engagement part, thinking about that early.

And uh if you heard public comment, and then also you look at workload, everything going on.

My ask and my suggestion you can take it or leave it, but if you really want to have community engagement with the neighbors, then I suggest canving, having a little mailer or door hanger, and then so giving people some information, like this is what's going on, and then talking to them in person, and then circling back with a community meeting.

And you know, the closer we can get to that neighborhood to host the community meeting.

So whether you reach out to the school district and see if you can use the Neil Armstrong like cafeteria to host it, but really meeting people where they're at and doing the work that way instead of I mean like meaningful community engagement, hosting it here and then not really telling people beforehand, you're not gonna get a lot of people.

And so I just asked that you meet people where they're at for community engagement.

Yeah, thank you very much, and we appreciate the update.

Thank you.

Our next presentation this evening is from our senior center updates, and we have um Anna Gonzalez.

Good evening.

Thank you for coming tonight.

Hi, good evening.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Bless you.

I was gonna say that's a big file.

There you go.

There we are.

Yay.

So good evening.

My name is Anna Gonzalez, and I am here on behalf of Central to talk and give a report about the senior center, as we are already celebrating a year working with the senior center.

Next.

But again, it's just the big picture of everything that has happened.

Next one.

Uh, we continue with the same team and with the same structure, director, manager on site, administrative assistant, and the rotary cook.

Next one.

And we also have a wonderful team of volunteers who provide all the support uh on a regular um day on during the weekdays.

Uh, what I want to focus on today is to talk about the participation and the utilization of the building.

So regarding the attendees, we have seen an increase in the second semester of the 2025.

We continue providing the exercises that were since the beginning, like the yoga, the stretchers, senior exercises.

The regular attendance goes from four to 15 seniors, depending on the weather, to be honest.

We have added new programming, such as the Zumba, Karaoke, and Tai Chi, just to bring another variety for the community.

We have also identified that the meal programs through Mills and Wheels have registered an increase of attendance to almost 80 seniors on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Next.

Also, we have the assistive devices.

This is a project that seniors have decided to continue working on, which basically focuses on when they need a worker or a wheelchair, they can come to the center and grab it from the shed that we have all the devices.

In the last six months, we served 82 residents in total in 2025.

153 seniors got benefited by a worker or a wheelchair.

We have done a couple.

We also supported the Christmas lining.

We also have the partnership with the American Legion at the Forest Growth Veterans Action Network.

They were able to provide us with a flag.

And as you can tell, it is already there at the senior center, and they are the ones who focuses on bringing the flag down or bringing it up.

So really grateful to have that wonderful partnership.

And of course, the small businesses around the area who are focusing on giving us raffles or giveaways so we can give them in raffles and in our programming.

So we were able to ramp up on that matter.

We continue with the leasing with companions, meals and wheels, and the church on Sundays.

And for the newsletter, we continue working, making sure that the community receives this newsletter that has an article regarding health.

We have a healthy menu.

Then we have the activities and the programs that are happening around the community.

And we make sure that we spread the word about activities and events happening in Forest Growth.

And we also have community receiving it virtual, but that's very minimum.

Our pantry.

Great partners to have and support a lot of the community members.

And during the summer, we also receive produce from Betest Good News Pantry.

Great resource for the seniors.

Uh it is break in income and expenses.

Uh when it says loss, I just want to highlight that the loss is the general funding of Centro Cultural, who is paying our all the grants, funds, supports uh are the ones that are covering that amount of the 83,625.76.

So even if it's a sloss, it's basically all the work that Centro has done and we committed to do since the beginning.

Uh and we have the maintenance and repair list of the center.

And joining me is Person Gonzalez to give an overview of everything that the facility is needing.

Good evening.

My name is Ferson Gonzalez, and I'm the director of operations for Centro Cultural.

And we have created this small list of items that the uh senior center is in need.

Um, some of those are a big priority, like the windows are uh completely off the framing, uh the coolers are damaging walls, uh flooring and um other structural items in the in the in inside the walls.

Um there is some other uh repairs that need to happen.

There um the roofs on the south side of the building, it's actually already damaged, so the water leaks through it.

And then because of the wind a couple of weeks ago, we lost our signage.

It's it got it was ripped, so we have to remove it and we are waiting to get a new um a new sign.

Um the AC, the HBAC system does need a lot of help.

Unfortunately, uh those uh units were installed incorrectly, so it freezes overnight.

So pretty much every night um in a cold night, all the bottom of the units are frozen, so they're being having a lot of issues with that.

And also um is creating um the cost, right?

Because they have to be fixed.

And the last build I saw for some parts and labor was over 2,000.

And those are can be fixed by having some risers on the inappropriate drainage to the system.

Uh also internally, I think they did have uh an issue with routers um a few years ago.

So they ate all the um insulation for all the uh venting and uh ductings that um are utilized for the um edge pack system.

Uh and then from there we do have other items that they're gonna need attention, um, just like the um inspection for all the plumbing system because we've been experimenting a lot of issues with it, so it's gonna be a priority, and those are big expenses that need to be considered.

Um the sparkling system in the garden, it has also I think it was made like volunteer base made, so it it's it's just um we have issues this this year where you know like we lost a lot of water because it's not proper, it's too old, so it needs to be fixed.

Uh and then just basic maintenance, um, just like the gutter cleaner and roof uh maintenance, and you know, like around the areas, also you know, pranning the trees, making sure the uh senior center is presentable that by putting some bark tasks and you know, like doing an accurate um uh uh maintenance to the building.

Thank you, person, and I just want to share briefly.

We are doing a survey of one year with all the seniors.

Uh basically I'm shifting gears right now and working about the quality and the perception of the community about us being administrating and the programming.

Overall, the satisfaction is you can tell very satisfied 50%, satisfied 25%, neutral 6%, and very dissatisfied 18.

Um we have programs and activities because we want to make sure that we understand the needs of the community and that what we do focuses on what the community needs.

Basically, and just circling back of what it was said by the mayor.

We are trying to meet the community where they are at.

So this is just uh information about like what are the priorities for the community, day trips, excursions, social events are like in the top of the interest of the community.

Uh most of the people that we are serving right now, they are not using the website.

on what the community needs basically and just circling back of what it was said by the mayor we are trying to meet the community where they are at so this is just uh information about like what are the priorities for the community day trips excursions social events are like in the top of the interest of the community um most of the people that we are serving right now they are not using the website we understand that may not be the specific or other tool that they use to get their information at the moment but that also has given us an idea on how to focus um providing workshops about scamps and making sure that they understand about AI and frauds uh we had a couple of workshops already with a bank to ensure that we continue providing education to the community um topics that they would like to see or workshops and resources it is listed in there overall the community connection they are very satisfied with what he what we have done and when we are asking uh to the community about the big the feedback uh one of the things that really um got my attention was that they want the speakers that they can go to the senior center and talk about forest growth and the history of Oregon is one of the things that they are really passionate to know more and just to remember how was forest growth in the past uh of course day trips activities are the priority for all of them and next one our goals for 2026 are continue providing the same uh programming that we have been done and that we have identified that has success such as the social events dinners and breakfast uh the dates may change it depends on programming but overall this is our proposal of this year next one and also our goals for 2026 is to ensure that our programming focuses on other generations and partners we expanding clubs that are like that allow intergenerational collaborations what I mean with that is the quilting group we have a wonderful group of quilters that join on Wednesdays in the mornings but they have identified that not a lot of people attend on Wednesdays because they are working so they have already shifted onto Friday nights so people can come and learn how to do quilting with all of them and it is open to all ages um we also are looking and exploring opportunities for so the center can become a recreational space for youth and I know we were in talks in the past about hosting the community open house that this year last year was held in in these facilities so we are still open to more collaborations and ensuring that the community sees that building as their own like not only the senior center but also that recreation component that all the community needs in here and that's pretty much it.

Thank you so much and we are open to questions.

Thank you questions Councilor Shimmel.

And actually show for it in one year um especially interested in and understanding the conditions of the building and the real cost of operating and you know directing my attention to my colleagues and city managers the you know this is a level understanding we we haven't had of the both the building and and operating at a level that our community is asking for so I I don't know if it's before or at our next budget cycle really digging into that and I don't know if there's some discretion around this the city contracting a capital needs assessment of that building so we get a professional level thorough assessment of the building and what systems need to be replaced so that that that's an that information goes into our deliberations about what we need to budget uh for that building uh and so we talk more about that out offline but uh I mean those are just two critical things I think Central has helped to really uh enlighten us and um expose uh yeah I guess with respect to the 2040 plan yeah that center plays uh an integral part of that community uh engagement that we want to watch thank you counselor shimmel counselor president balance did you have your hand raised yes can you hear me we can hear you yes all right well hello uh Anna Ferson um you have done so much in a year and I just want to congratulate you um you know I think uh I always expect a lot coming from central um but you have definitely uh done more than just a lot and I am so happy that you're all here in the community and um thank you so much for making you know forest grove a better place or for reflecting what forest growth is about thank you thank you yeah thank you council president well said

Um, I think uh I always expect a lot coming from Central.

Um but you have definitely uh done more than just a lot.

And I am so happy that you're all here in the community.

And um thank you so much for making you know Forest Grove a better place or for reflecting what Forest Grove is about.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Council President Well said.

I would agree um with my colleagues.

And then, you know, also uh I was at the senior center today because you also I think this is my fourth time in a year donating blood with the Red Cross.

So there's lots of partnerships and opportunities that you have opened the doors to and allowing people to come in in different capacities.

So well done.

Thank you for partnering with the City of Forest Grove, and we appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the great thing.

Thank you.

Okay, our final presentation this evening is our community impact grant update from the chamber, chamber of commerce.

Hello, ladies.

Hi.

So, Mayor and Council, thank you so much uh for having us here today.

This is our third year, um, entering the third year of the small business development incubator, and uh when we uh started this initiative, we we knew the importance of establishing um something that would help uh provide businesses and entrepreneurs um a steady walk uh through the process of starting a business, scaling a business, closing a business, finding resources, and uh in its third year, it's become a very trusted um safe place for folks to come in and um attribute that to SECID on our business development director.

Um, next slide, please.

So the goal for our small business development incubator obviously is to provide one-on-one business support to provide equitable business training to have diverse growth.

We want that scaling support in all areas and also to help build strategic connections, um, whether you're starting a business, uh scaling a business, getting a business certified.

So, in all manners, big or small, we want to make sure that we provide those connections business to business.

Um, with that, I'm going to turn it over to SEC, who will talk more about and more in depth uh the work that goes in day to day at the business development incubator and hub.

Thank you, Claudia.

Um, good evening, Mayor Winsel and Council members.

Thank you for the opportunity.

And I'm gonna share just uh some outcomes since we launched um the business development incubator.

And um we have continued to deliver uh impactful services and technical assistance and also events that foster growth and opportunities for our local entrepreneurs.

Uh during 2025, we supported over 250 community members, uh small business connecting them with vital businesses resources as well as guidance.

Next slide.

And continue with the out continue with the outcomes.

Uh we have offer um one-on-one technical assistance deliver uh to our small businesses and are being personalized based on the needs of our participants, and we supported over 90 local businesses owners.

Um, and we supported also uh in help launch 10 new businesses, including within those uh the area of businesses are house cleaning services businesses, uh consulting services, construction, and home-based stakers.

Um successfully, we facilitated multiple business training sessions.

Um, and some of those are listed there.

Uh AI for entrepreneurs, personal and business credit, and personal finance and business one on one.

Um, with these trainings, we uh had 46 participants.

Um, and I would like to highlight one of our events that we launched.

Uh this uh we launched on 2025 in collaboration with uh West Twilight Habitat for Humanity and the Um Cornelius Public Library as well with other other professional uh businesses and other nonprofits and government sectors such as the city of Cornelius, City of Hillsborough.

Um the success of this event was that we were able to bring 45 plus uh uh participants in and also vendors that participated, and these include small businesses, specifically in the area of construction and uh government and nonprofit.

And one of the reasons why we did this uh uh event was because that's what they the need was.

They wanted to connect the small business construction businesses wanted to connect directly with government sectors and also other nonprofits that are doing this type of work and Habitat for Humanity, uh West Twilight Habitat for Humanity reached out to us and said we want to connect with um businesses with government sectors, and we want to partner intentionally because we want to make sure that we are uh connecting with local businesses and investing in our local communities, and that's why we uh sh started this event, and we're happy that we're bringing it up this coming uh 2026 in the summer, and uh we will uh I already have other businesses and partners that want to be part of this event, so I'm sure that we're gonna be uh having another success success uh event.

Next.

Um also trainings and events that uh we put together uh was and all of these services that we provide comes from the local businesses based on their needs.

Uh some of those trainings are uh that we deliver are for our entrepreneurs.

Uh one was about advertising as an entrepreneur, and then we had another one to talk about different tools for entrepreneurs, such as cash flow management, build your banking relationships, and business credit, um, including personal and business credit.

And with this, we partnered with uh US Bank.

Um and then we also brought a bilingual government contracting training in partnership with uh Apex Accelerator and uh PDVG.

Uh it's a professional uh business development group, it's a nonprofit.

Um the EPIX Accelerator training is to focus on supporting uh businesses that are interested to register uh to do more uh business with government sectors.

Um in terms of events, we had the and launched the multi-cultural business expo in partnership with SESTI Food Cars.

Um again, these are events that are being requested by our uh businesses or local businesses in the area, and we partner with them to bring to give the opportunity to other businesses to showcase their uh products and services.

Um in September we launched uh we had the launch and and and round table building together.

Again, we were approached uh from with other partners to put together a community session.

And in we did that partnership with uh West Twilight Habitat for Humanity uh City uh and the city of Cornelius, but also invited other nonprofits here in Forest Grove and Cornelius to participate and other nonprofits that serve Western Washington County to start building more uh relationships and pro uh share the services that they provide to our small uh business community.

In October, we uh participated uh with the West Side Small Business Event uh that happened at PCC and provided resources and due to that partnership now.

We uh added another partner that um is uh the the Oregon I have I don't want to forget I was gonna share it later, but since we are um it's the Oregon Trust Oregon Energy Trust, Oregon Energy Trust Energy Trust of Oregon, yes, Energy Trust of Oregon.

Um that will be partnering where they are going to deliver uh resources and services for small businesses that want to change their uh thermostat infrastructure, and that could be low cost or no cost to small businesses, which we'll be bringing um next week.

Um next, please.

Oh, last one but not least, we had a round table business discussion with uh Senator uh Janine Salman that focused on the need of the of the businesses in the area.

Um we are working really hard to our internal processes on how we collect data and how do we also um support our small businesses and develop programming based on data um data-driven services or programming.

Um and we have increased our partnership this year, um, and also our collaborators plus 10 more partners.

Um Countywide Services, uh we have supported uh Western Washington County small small businesses, not only necessary from uh the city of Forest Grove or Hills or Cornelius, but all Western Washington County bus businesses that have come to us, including um working with our partners and central cultural.

There also have been businesses that have come and attended our um our workshops.

Um in 2026, we're looking forward for our first quarter, as I mentioned, one of those training uh trainings is coming up.

Um, and it will be delivered uh by Oregon Trust of Oregon Trust of Oregon, I think.

Energy Trust of Oregon, sorry.

Um, and we continue to work with Epic's Accelerator to offer more trainings in Spanish and in English for those businesses that are interested to learn how to register to do more government contracting.

Um and I want to share a little bit more about land the landscape about our small business community.

As you hear earlier about different um testimonials from our community, I also met with small businesses and our community is devastated.

Um a lot of small business owners have been affected um by what is happening with um activities with ice activities in our communities.

A lot of these small business owners are struggling.

Um 10 of them reported to me that 80, 70, and 60 percent of the revenue has been down.

That shows how much our small business community is struggling.

So I hope that in the near future, if there are um meetings, please consider the forest or Ponelist Chamber of Commerce to be part of those meetings to strategize on how do we continue to elevate foster a strong local business economy.

Next.

Thank you so much for your support and also your contribution to our beautiful city of Forest Grove.

Or our ongoing efforts in the city of Forest Grove aims to foster thriving small business environment by connecting entrepreneurs with knowledge, network, and support.

Thank you to the city of Forest Grove for your continuous support and contributions to our entrepreneurship community, and we look forward for a prosperous 2026 for our small business sector.

Any questions?

Questions Council Channel.

Well, first I should acknowledge the CEP committee for establishing the community impact grant.

I think it's reaching about by year five or something.

Yeah, it's our second.

So you know, two institutions, two exceptional programs because of the way it was set up and uh three-year commitment uh that well done on that.

Uh I've had a front row seat uh to the incubator program.

Uh and it proves how relationship and biz business are synonymous or really a tandem because not only is my daughter a successful businesswoman, she's a successful woman.

Uh, and it's it's I think it's because of the relationship.

Uh CC that you've you've had with her, and just not just going in business principles, but just developing as a as a person and uh just long story short, it's it's restored a part of our daughter that that we are missing it.

And I'm I'm grateful just at a personal level, but I I also see others who are receiving a tremendous impact from the program.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I may add, you know, uh, this is definitely just a very wide lens of all of the work that goes on.

Um, I I would be remiss if I didn't, you know, um, share that, you know, we are receiving anywhere between four and seven individuals that come in every day.

And um, there was something that's at intake form.

We we do have uh good partnership um with an internship over from Chemitka.

Community college, and uh Ted Essa I has joined us for a year.

Um, we've trained her, she does the intake form and really has allowed um CESI and my time to be just very valuable in terms of um saving time, understanding when and what people are coming in for.

And you did state it correctly, says he basically there are entrepreneurs.

We we highlight that we have 10 businesses, but the reality is that those 10 businesses were during about a six to eight eight-month process of SESI sitting and working and diligently helping to fill out the forms.

I mean, so we're just very thankful and grateful in a time where chambers of commerce are struggling due to renewals because the business landscape is struggling.

Um, we saw three years ago that we needed to diversify.

We needed to do something in our community um to help sustain um you know our chamber arm and to be able to help all business.

Uh so we're very proud of the work that we're doing with small business, and we're very proud with the relationship that we've built with the city and you know, the entrepreneurs that are coming in, people that are coming in day to day aren't coming in from Forest Grove Cornelius, they are coming from Salem from Woodburn.

I mean, and it is because they trust and they know Cecilia, so they know the caliber of um help that they are going to be receiving.

So we look forward um, you know, to having another solid year where we can add our three-year show you all of the highlights of of what really transpired from year one to year three, and we just want to thank you so much.

And I just want to thank SECI for the great job that um she's done um with this um endeavor.

Excellent.

Thank you both.

Great job.

Thank you.

Have a good night.

Thank you.

We're gonna move on to item F.

We uh item F one.

I guess I should just start by the public hearing for ordinance two zero two five-04 is now open.

The city council passed a motion on December 8th, continuing the public hearing for the ordinance number 2025-04 in advancing it to a second reading.

If approved by the force, oops, if approved by the city council, this ordinance would amend the forest growth code of ordinances to a chapter titled Sanctuary City that would codify Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act protecting forest growth from misuse of local resources for federal immigration law enforcement in violation of state law.

Do any counselors have a conflict of interest to declare hearing none?

Are there any additional comments or evidence that staff would like to enter into the record?

Uh Mary, yeah, I'd like to give just an update from the last meeting if I might and give a brief recap from the last meeting as well.

Um December 8th, 2025, the city council held a public hearing and passed ordinance 2025-04 on the first reading.

We are, of course, here tonight uh for the council to consider the second reading of ordinance 2025-04.

If passed, the ordinance would go into effect immediately.

A little bit of background on November 10th, 2025, the city council passed resolution number 2025-61, declaring a state of emergency to address the community impacts of federal immigration enforcement.

And the council appropriated funds for community-based organizations to assist those families that are impacted by federal immigration enforcement.

At the next meeting on November 24th, 2025, the City Council passed resolution 2025-64 declaring Forest Grove a sanctuary city for all persons.

At that same meeting on November 24th, the City Council held a work session and reached a consensus to codify what's known as the Oregon's Sanctuary Promise Act that is contained in Oregon revised statute 18181-820 through 1818 29.

They also reached a consensus to use Portland's recent codification of the Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act as the example for the city to use as a template.

Portland is the only city in Oregon to have codified the Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act.

They did so on October 15th, 2025.

Several other cities are considering following suit.

To my knowledge, no other cities have yet passed it.

All cities must follow Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act.

And generally, what the Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act stipulates is that it prohibits state and local police and government from assisting in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

The proposed ordinance essentially mirrors the provisions listed in Portland's ordinance.

It would create a new chapter 39 under the existing Title III administration in the city code.

In addition to codifying the provisions of the Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act, the proposed ordinance would direct the city manager to one prohibit assistance.

It would prohibit city employees and contractors from assisting federal immigration and from assisting with federal immigration enforcement.

Two, it would ban resource use.

City resources could not be used for immigration enforcement.

It would create policies, training, and resources for city staff to manage interactions with immigration enforcement agents.

It would publicly report any exceptions to or violations of the prohibition on assisting with immigration enforcement.

It would require to the city to submit freedom of information requests to the Department of Homeland Security and to ICE to gain insight into federal activity.

And it would define non-public areas and designate certain city-owned spaces as non-public, which federal immigration agents could not access without a judicial warrant.

That concludes my staff report on the proposed ordinance.

I'd be happy to have any questions by council.

Thank you.

Any questions for the city manager.

Seeing no questions, I will now call on persons who signed up to comment on the ordinance.

Comments are limited to three minutes.

Please state your name and address for the record.

So I'm going to call proponents first.

Dale Feek, 3363, Levine Drive Forest Grove, Oregon.

Little history.

All accurate.

Surprised, cried with you, Mayor Wenzel and Councillor Falconer, when you each gave your own example of people that have been unduly active on.

It evidently did not.

Because on that time it needed to be a four, it need to be unanimous vote, and there were only five city councillors here.

So you did not convince Councillor Martinez to vote yes.

So it failed.

And then other people that recorded that came up and witnessed it.

And showed evidence of how that occurred.

And my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason, Counselor Martinez, that you voted against it, because you said that anybody that comes through the border without proper papers are criminal.

They come to illegal and they're criminal.

And the evidence is very clear that most of the people that come through the through the border are not criminal.

Very few are.

I know it'll pass with majority, but I hope it's unanimous tonight.

Thank you.

Gabriel Arel Arol.

I'm sorry.

Yes, come up if I mispronounced your last name.

I apologize.

Thank you, Gabriel.

Yeah, nobody tells it correctly.

But um, I'm also um with Dale with Indivisible, and uh I am also in favor of the uh sanctuary city or um for horse rope to be a sanctuary city, and uh it's important to me because our city is under threat by ice.

I think we all know that.

Um I wanted to point out that it is a contradiction that we uh employ people to break our laws, so that people who aren't breaking our laws are arrested, um, and uh I understand wanting to take out um troublemakers, but the people making more trouble is ice, they're making more trouble than the immigrant community we have in Force Proities, um, and there is a lot of support to make sure I is no longer frightening our citizens.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gabriel.

Michael Johnson.

Hello, it's me again.

Uh Michael Johnson.

Uh live in uh uh 2719 uh 17th place in the here before, and again, I'm speaking this time on behalf of uh indivisible.

We are very much in favor of this uh this sanctuary ordinance.

Um I'm not too concerned about it, I'm I'm convinced that it's going to pass.

So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time urging you to pass it.

I would like to reflect for a minute or two on why we need to do this, why the state needed to do this, why community other states and other communities across the country need to do this, and on the one hand, we don't need to talk about it.

We all know we know what we're seeing, we know what we've heard.

We know 11 people have been shot, one fatally.

We know 32 people have died in custody, and uh probably more than that.

We probably don't know yet.

We know the horrors that we've been seeing, and we heard about one particular case today that was extremely dramatic.

So we know why we're doing this on the one hand.

But the other hand is this is not a sanctuary just for our immigrant neighbors.

And no matter what you think about the law and whether or not it needs to be enforced, it doesn't need to be reinforced this way.

First thing I think the law needs to be changed, but that's another story.

I'm thinking in terms of this being a sanctuary for our constitution for our government, for our way of life, our system of laws.

We're a country of laws, and those laws are being flaunted in a way I never could have imagined.

I've seen some I'm pretty old, so I've seen some weird things in my lifetime.

But this is just exceptionally worrying, terrifying, actually.

And that is why we don't have the luxury of putting our heads down and letting somebody else do the work.

Everybody here, everybody here, everybody sitting up there, everybody in this country who gives a damn about the constitution and the rule of law.

The more roadblocks we throw in the in in their way, even though they'll run right over them.

We know they will.

We may pass an anti-mass masking statute or something like that, and they'll just plow right past that.

But every time they do that, they give us a action, and a cause of action is a potential lawsuit, civil or criminal, and that will keep them busy enough to maybe we can survive past the next election and the one past that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Are there proponents on Zoom?

Are there proponents on Zoom who would like to give testimony?

Okay, moving on to opponents.

There's no one signed up to speak opposing the ordinance.

There's no one signed up in the other category.

Would city staff like to respond to any of the testimony.

No, city staff does not have a response.

Thank you, Mayor.

You're welcome.

The hearing is now closed.

Is there a motion from the council to approve the second reading of ordinance 2025-04?

So move second.

Moved by Council President Valenzuela, seconded by Counselor Falconer.

Uh there's a motion on the floor to adopt ordinance 2025-04.

Is there any discussion from council?

Councilor Martinez.

So I want to say, Mr.

Feek, no, you were mistaken in repeating what you thought were my words.

Anyone can go back to the previous meeting and listen to the exchange that was done at that time.

That is not so.

We do want a detention center in Oregon because legal help can be brought in for people in state.

If they leave the state, people have to find an attorney for them in that state.

So that causes a problem when they're taken from Oregon to Washington.

Um there is a nonprofit working to try and change the laws.

So our majority legislators don't want to do anything because they don't want to win for the current administration.

So that's a problem right there.

So we need to be pushing on them and helping this nonprofit come together and work on getting the laws changed so that it's not such an issue for those who are here.

Why are people taking so long to get their citizenship?

So 20 years, that's a long time for some people to get a citizenship.

They should be working on that right away so that they can be a part of our community and not worry about deportations that have been going on since Bush Clinton Obama.

Um yes, take videos of what's going on so that you can alert family and friends to where their loved ones may be, but you can't interact with them because then you're at risk.

You know, uh, they started masking and um covering their identity when people were uh threatening their families and ramming their cars.

So, you know, there's a couple of different sides here.

So you can thank our previous administration for all the millions of people that they let into the country without any sort of vetting.

Yep, that's all I have to say.

I have what I'm gonna turn it over to Council President Valentila, but I have one clarifying question.

Uh, in your one of your statements, you said we want a detention center.

Who's the we you're speaking for?

We should have detention center here.

That's your opinion.

I just want to be clear when you say we.

I just want I just want people to know that's not you don't get to speak for me.

We should that's fine.

So I said we should have a detention center here so that people can be detained here and get the help, the legal help that they need.

Okay, but that's I know I'm gonna ask for it.

We're having a council discussion.

I understand that you but right now I can't have back and forth with the audience.

I just want to clarify for the record that it's your opinion, not a we of like we think this.

It's uh I think this.

I have other sources that I've gotten this information from.

I don't have that with me.

Oh, okay.

I well, I just wanted to make sure I didn't want anyone to think when you said we oh, as it's a council council.

No, yeah, that's not a council.

That's an that's an individual counselor opinion.

Yes, okay, counselor, council president Valenzuela.

Yes, um of my first jobs um was for a nonprofit of the diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico to work uh completing applications for the amnesty program that took place under President Reagan because these parties used to be different a while ago.

And Preston Reagan, because immigration has been happening since way before President Obama was born and President Clinton was born, it has always taken place everywhere in the world.

But that was, you know, one of my first jobs, and Preston Reagan had the wisdom to see that the value of the United States, a country of immigrants, and he made something happen that amnesty program to get people legalized, people who had been here for at least five years.

My job was to gather information as part of the application that they had been here for five years, then it was taken to Al Paso, Texas, and people were given a green card.

President George W.

Bush tried to do something similar.

And his party opposed him.

Before the last election, there was another immigration some immigration legislation.

And what happened, Trump said no, because I need this issue, I need this problem to be real.

So it will help me out in the elections.

And nothing happened.

Now I will never look at these ice mask people as victims.

That they need to protect themselves, I believe you said Counselor Martinez to protect themselves, to protect their families, because otherwise they're going to be persecuted.

He deported thousands of people with due process.

So we didn't have these thugs shooting people, dragging people on the on the street, on the ground, like the lady that we just heard give testimony earlier.

So you know, we are in a in a bad place.

But we are not going to blame, I will not accept that it is President Biden and President Obama particularly, that is their fault somehow, because I know President Obama did deport a lot of people, but he also created DACA for the dreamers.

And we have very outstanding young people who have pursued graduate degrees, and I can name you a few because they have been my students, and that have made a great life for themselves by just doing hard work.

We need to look at the reality, we need to look at the facts and see what everyone has done.

And the first time I voted, I voted as a Republican.

No more.

Sorry for interrupting council president.

Were you finished?

Okay, thank you, Council President.

Other discussion.

Councillor Gutson.

Um, thank you.

I and um counselor Martinez, I heard about the you know, uh detention center in Oregon to keep people from having you know, be out of state and still have all of this help.

I don't know enough about it, but um, and I don't necessarily agree with that, but um I it's it's valid what you were saying, and I totally understand that.

Um a couple things, Miss Annette's story.

I don't know if she's still here, um, and this is nothing you know offensive to you, but that story is triggering, and that's good because we all need to hear what's going on.

Um this started this past year.

I mean, it's only been one year, um things got crazy really quick, and based on history that all of us learned in school, when we hear somebody say, Well, it doesn't affect me, it's not my problem, it's those people, it's always the othering, right?

Um, but when you look at history, when this happens, all of a sudden it starts happening to you and you and you.

You're you're you know, you're not brown, and you're getting pulled out of your car and beat up.

This in history has already happened.

So why, right?

We ask ourselves, why does this why are we letting this go?

Um as far as um Councillor Martinez, what you said about you know, getting the ones that are actually criminals, you know, felons out.

Um I I get that, but I'm not allowed to burn my house down when there's a spider, and let me tell you, I would like to.

But it's that's not how you do things.

You have to be, you know, more specific.

You have to look at the people for what they do and not what they look like.

So we're creating this huge explosion to get these little few dots really in the grand scheme of the size of the US, the ones that are actually federal, you know, criminals is minuscule.

So once once we've got agents acting like they have the power of Judge Dread, which is exactly what happened to you, and my extreme apologies for that experience.

Once we get to that point, once they start going after people they just don't like and beating them up, this is far past doing your job.

This is abuse, this is kidnapping, this is assault.

It's it's beyond belief.

And not only am I supportive of this, um, I'm supportive of taking it further, right?

Getting everybody's ideas of how can we do this, stay within the legal realms, and how do we make it so that our state and our city are protected from these thugs at the same time?

It is a difficult thing to do, but I am a hundred support 100% supportive of this, and just my comment to counselor Martinez, who I have a lot of respect for.

Um that might be a different way to look at it is this huge country, and you know, the the small percentage of those brown or white that are you know criminals, think of it as what is best for the whole.

What can we do to make this better?

And this might be just one more little step to help us.

Just that's that that's all.

I you know.

Thank you, Councillor Gifson.

Any I I mean first of all, I want to thank everyone for coming tonight.

I want to thank for the public comment that you provided.

Um as a former U.S.

history teacher, as a proud American, as a grover who ran because I love this community.

The importance of protecting the constitution is because those rules, those checks and balances, those separation of powers, they protect all of us as individuals and as a community.

And so I agree so much with what Mr.

Johnson said about doing whatever we can do and creating like slowing it down, you know, on the book that Mr.

Feek shared with some of us, you slow it down, you work intentionally, you try to figure out.

And I would like to have I I find it a little bit troubling that we are all human beings.

Sometimes presidents, congresspeople, celebrities, they're put on this pedestal of and inflated, right?

Because they have a title.

But at the end of the day, we are all equal.

And when I start hearing people I value and respect, whether it be a family member, a colleague on council, not being willing to see a fallacy in a human being of like this holding on tight to the defense of unlawful behavior.

I'm concerned.

I'm concerned for our country, right?

Because there should be, I mean, no one is above making a mistake, and to not be able to say, hey, I support some of these things, but this is illegal.

This is unconstitutional.

That causes me concern about the direction of democracy.

Um but that's on an aside.

So I very much so support this um ordinance.

And I really, as Mr.

Feek mentioned, I really wanted a unanimous vote before the the end of the year.

Um, but you know, you can't always get what you want.

So if there's no further discussion, I'll ask the city uh manager to read the ordinance by title only.

Orn is 2025-04, amending Forest Grove Code of Ordinances Title Three Administration by adding code chapter 39, Sanctuary City, protecting forest grove from misuse of local resources and violation of state law for federal immigration law enforcement.

Thank you.

Will the city recorder please call a roll call vote?

Council President Valenzuela, yes, Counselor Shimmel?

Councilor Falconer.

Yes.

Counselor Martinez?

No.

Counselor Marshall?

Yes.

Councilor Gustafson?

Yes.

Mayor Wensell.

Yes.

In a six to one vote ordinance.

2025-04 is approved by the Force Grove City Council.

Okay, we still have four more ordinances and some mayor's comments and city council comments.

So we're gonna move on.

Uh resolution 2026.

Now I have to switch to the year 2026.

So hopefully I don't mess up too many times.

Um resolution 2026-02.

Electing electing a city council president.

Uh staff, I'll give you guys a minute to clear out if some of you want to leave.

That's fine.

I still have someone's pink iPhone.

Is there someone's iPhone with a pink case?

Is that does anyone missing a an iPhone with a pink case?

We have an iPhone with a pink case up here.

Yes, it's Gabriel's.

It's Gabriel's phone.

Just okay.

I'm gonna dabble.

What do I do?

I mean, okay, I'm gonna ask for quiet so I can continue with our meeting, please.

And thank you.

Resolution 2026-02, electing a city council president.

Mariah, can you give the staff report, please?

Thank you, council.

I'm gonna report from over here just so I can run all parts of this.

Um I'm gonna go over it pretty quickly since we're short on time.

Uh this resolution is just to elect a council president, which is required to be done annually by the city charter.

Um the process should be pretty straightforward.

Um we'll begin with nominations.

Sorry, projector went off for some reason.

We'll begin with nominations.

Um each councillor may uh nominate another counselor or themselves.

If another counselor nominates you, um just state whether or not you accept that nomination.

Um we have a ballot here that I will type all nominations into.

And then at everyone's uh desk, you should have little sheets of paper that have your name at the top.

Um so once the mayor calls for a vote, you'll just write the person that you'd like to vote for.

We'll go around and pick those up.

Um it's not a blind vote, so we will, as you can see on the graph, we'll write your name where you voted.

Um this is just so everyone can vote without knowing everyone else's.

So I think with count um council president Valenzuela on Zoom, I think we'll just have you state your vote once I've collected everyone else's, if that works for you.

So everybody else is a secret except for mine.

Uh theirs won't be a secret.

Um it all get announced in the end.

So we'll show we'll show everyone's votes.

Um so yeah, that's I believe the end of the staff report unless anyone has questions.

Any questions for Mariah?

Seeing none.

Any motions on the I would like to nominate counselor Valenzuela.

Is Councilor Valenzuela accept that nomination?

I do.

Thank you.

We have Councilor Valenzuela.

Any other nominations?

I just had a question.

Sure.

I thought that at one time we talked about circulating it through.

It's a two-year-old two year.

Okay.

I wanted to make sure I didn't miss something, or we talked about it but didn't follow through with that.

Okay.

I believe it's on the charter for two years.

That's fine.

Yeah, you're discussing.

Yes, correct.

Yeah, or city council rules, not charter, sorry, city council roles.

Two years.

So any other nominations.

Hearing none.

I'm nominating current council president.

Thank you.

Did you get a second?

Do I need us?

I don't need a second on this.

I think we can nominate multiple people.

Absolutely.

You can.

Are there any other ones?

But what happens if there's only one nomination?

Can we just not need to ask her if she accepts or she said she accepts?

Yeah, yeah.

So okay.

So I don't hear any other nomination.

I want to make sure.

I don't think we would need to do that.

That's what Maria just said.

There's only one and she accepted the thing.

So congratulations, Council President Valenzuela.

You got another here.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

So I just thankful to note that I that I do respect each and every one of you.

And I'm very grateful to be part of this team.

Thank you.

Okay, cool.

So now we're moving on to F3.

We're gonna call up our uh we still need to vote on the resolution.

Oh, we have to vote on resolution.

That's insane.

I was like, I thought we were just done.

So since it has a blank, um, the recommended motion that we have is um for someone to say I move to adopt the resolution 202602 um with councillor Valenzuela as council president.

I moved to adopt resolution 2026-02, like in Mariana Venezuela as the city council president.

Exactly.

Okay.

Resolution 2026-02 was moved by Councillor Schimmel and seconded by Councillor Gutson.

Do we have to read it by title only and have a discussion and all that stuff?

Can you read it by title only, please?

Resolution 2026-02, electing city council president Mariana Valenzuela.

Is there any discussion?

Am I done in the wrong order?

But okay, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed.

In a seven to zero zero vote, councilor Valenzuela is our council president.

Congratulations, council president Valenzuela.

And thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, and resolution F3 or item F3 resolution 2026-3 authorizing execution of a labor agreement between the City of Forest Grove and the Force Grove Police Association effective July 1st.

Oh, I'll just I don't need to read the whole title.

I'll turn it over to Brenda and Henry.

Good evening, members of the council.

I think my mic is on.

So we come before you this evening with the resolution for you to approve a new contract for our police association, our current contract for June 30th, 2025.

And although we did begin bargaining back in January, about a year ago, um, we have finally come to an agreement, and the agreement that is in your packet has been ratified by the union and is before you this evening for approval.

Um so just really quickly, some of the major things that we'd like to talk to the council about um is 24 articles were opened in the contract, which is unusual, but there were a lot of language changes.

Um the union had a new president.

We did a lot of looking at things, a lot of them were just clerical errors or excuse me, clerical changes to the contract.

So not a lot of substantive things there.

We agreed on a three-year agreement.

Uh wage increases for everyone in the unit, four percent each year of the contract, all three years.

We also had some spot adjustments, three percent for sergeants, um, code enforcement officer three percent, and property and evidence specialist two percent, and those were based on our market study, and that was just in the first year of the contract.

We also expanded the service recognition benefit from just sworn employees to our non-sworn employees as well.

There were five non-sworn employees in this bargaining unit.

Um so I'll just remind you really quickly about that program in which employees get credits for a VIBA contribution each year of service.

It's 500 for the first five years.

If the employees still here after five years, that bank money is then contributed into their Viva account.

And after five years, so six years, ten years, that bank goes up to a thousand dollars per year of service.

And if the employees here at the 10th year, then all that money in the bank gets put into their VIPA.

If they leave any time before that, that money is forfeited.

So basically it's intended to encourage employees to stay with the city and for the retention.

Also, after 11 years, 11 years and forward, the employee gets a thousand dollars every year that they're here into their VIBA account.

Um the sworn officers had a couple of provisions in their longevity VIBA account that was not extended to non-sworn, and that was the retention bonuses at five and ten years.

That's not new, that's already in the contract, and also an additional 40 hours of vacation at five years of service.

But instead of those things, the city has agreed to provide a one-time one thousand dollar retention bonus for non-sworn employees upon the ratification of the collective barn agreement approval by the council, and once it's signed, that will go into effect.

Um the last substantive issue that I wanted to discuss for you this evening is in our incentive and premium pay.

Umly the city had a six-level incentive pay matrix that we use that combined education and DPSST certification for six different levels of certification pay than an employee could get um to simplify things, and because education is already taken into account when determined for employees who are going um to get their next level of GPSS DPSST.

We have taken out the education component, grandfathered it in, and now we just have two levels, which is four percent for intermediate and eight percent for advanced DPSSP certification.

Um, the last thing is currently our premium and incentive pay is capped at 14%.

So, in a combination, no officer can receive more than 14% of their base pay toward incentive and premium pay.

Um, we have several different premiums that employees can get for assignments that aren't ongoing.

DPSST is an ongoing incentive pay, whereas Bill Training Officer is one that's assigned.

We also have a bilingual premium for employees who speak fluently another language.

So the premium amount didn't change, but we took into account that we don't have anyone who's reaching the cap right now, but we could we have more employees we're hiring who have bilingual premium pay, they could exceed that 14%, and then it would be a disincentive for them to be a field training officer or go into detective or somewhere else where they would be capped at 14%.

So in order to address that, we removed the bilingual pay premium from under the cap.

So the cap remained the same, but now the bilingual pay is separate and not under the cap.

And it's 5% for someone who's equivalent.

Those are the major um changes to talk about, except that the contract that was in your packet originally just want to let you know we it was brought to our attention that we still had some references that were not gender neutral in a few of our articles.

We had changed most of them, so we did go back and make those changes.

Those changes were made in the packet in the contract that was sent to you, I think, earlier today.

There was also one other mistake that we found in Article 28, where we had a clerical error where we left in some language that was supposed to be deleted, and so since we were already fixing that, we fixed that as well.

So now the contract is hopefully all correct, and that was the last contract that was sent to you earlier today.

Are there any questions?

Questions for staff.

I don't see any hands raised.

So what's the list of the council?

Move that we approve resolution 2026-04 or sorry, I'm on the wrong one.

I'll second.

Okay.

Did you second that first, though?

Okay.

So it's moved by Councillor Schimmel and seconded by Councillor Martinez.

Let's open it up for discussion.

I mean, I I just want to start by saying thank you to staff and you know, specifically Brenda and Ashley and Henry.

That was a really long negotiation period.

Um, so just thank you for the good work you all do, including Ashley, who retired from this before you did, Henry.

I know that's how I feel about all of it.

Any other comments?

Okay.

Will the city manager please read it by title only?

Resolution 2026-03 authorizing execution of a labor agreement between the city of Forest Grove and the Forest Grove Police Association, effective July 1st, 2025, and expiring June 30th, 2028.

Thank you, Mariah.

Will you call for the vote, please?

Councillor Falconer.

Yes.

Councilor Martinez?

Yes.

Councillor Marshall?

Yes.

Councillor Gustavson?

Yes.

Council President Valenzuela.

Yes.

Councilor Schimmel.

Yes.

Mayor Wenzel.

Yes.

And a seven to zero votes.

The Force Grove City Council approves resolution 2026-03.

Thank you very much.

Um, really quickly, I believe according to our council rules, I need to have a motion to continue the meeting past 9 30.

I'll move.

Thanks.

Second.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

And with that, we're going to move on to item F4 on the agenda, an IGA, and I'll just let Jesse take it over.

All right, thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

Um, in 1996, a group of six public agencies in the region formed a partnership to share technology assets and services.

This group was later known as the broadband user group or bug.

The bug serves uh services include internet, firewall protection, GIS data, dispatch data, and emergency communications data.

The bug provides these services only to partner agencies since 1996.

The bug has grown.

Uh Forest Grove was a charter member, if you will, among the six.

It now has 18 partners in the group.

All of them are public partners, um, all the way from banks to King City to WCCLS to Washington County Consolidated Communications Agency.

This intergovernmental agreement pertains to all 18 participating partners.

The partnership continues to provide better services at lower costs than the partners could achieve on their own.

This particular IGA replaces the previous IGA originally passed in 2008 and amended in 2013.

It is nearly unchanged and contains only housekeeping items to clarify certain portions.

The new IGAs for five years, effective January uh 1st, 2026 uh through January 1st of 2031.

From a financial perspective, this uh the expenses of the bug are already built into the budget.

Uh they are projected to be $30,800 next fiscal year and then 31,424 dollars in fiscal year 2627.

That concludes the staff report.

If there's any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them.

Thank you, Jesse.

Any questions for SAF seeing none?

What's the wish of the council?

Move that we pass resolution 2026.

Second.

Okay.

Resolution 2026-04 was moved by Councilor Martinez and seconded by Councillor Gutson.

Any discussion?

Seeing none.

All those in favor of approving resolution 2024.

Oh, wait, Jesse, can you read it by title only, please?

Sure.

Resolution 2026-04 approving an intergovernmental agreement authorizing Forest Grove to continue being a member of the broadband user group or bug in cooperation with 17 other municipalities, districts, and commissions for the purpose of providing broadband services.

Thank you.

All those in favor of approving resolution 2026-04, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, same sign.

Hearing none.

Resolution 2026-04 is approved by the Force Grove City Council.

Item Five, reissuing state of emergency with the original resolution number 2025-6.1.

Yeah, I don't think we need any more though.

I was gonna turn.

Oh, do you have to you have to do it yourself?

So can we put up the two resolutions?

I don't know what I did.

Yeah.

Do you need it?

Jesse, are you gonna run this?

You want me to run it or does Brian have to run it?

What do you want to?

How do you want to do this?

Does Brian need to run it?

Can I run it?

What do you want?

Okay.

So Councillor Schimmel brought forward uh our previous day of emergency resolution expired on December 31st, 2025.

So this would reissue it.

Um so this resolution reissues it.

We would change the date on there.

I believe we would also take out the uh $50,000, the amount, and then if there was a financial request, we would bring a budget issue forward after that.

And is there anything else we're gonna change?

We need to change it.

One language is weird.

Yeah, we need to.

Do we need to update with the date?

We can update with that day or then the X, yeah.

We're gonna switch the expiration date.

Are we gonna use a year?

We're gonna can we put can we put a pin in it that we come back at the end of this year on our agenda calendar if we need to before it expires?

You know what I mean?

That's my question of staff.

If we put a date of December 31st, 2026, can we like add it to our agenda calendar to course?

Yeah.

Are there anything else on this day of emergency that well there's um for the sake of passage?

I I could I'm willing to put a pin in other provisions since we have a work session in a next meeting.

We just want to make sure if we pass the resolution to merely expand extend or reissue the current state of emergency that we can come back after the next meeting with any additional provisions to that, whether it would include money or another section to the I don't no go ahead.

You're gonna answer, but I don't think from a monetary perspective.

So if if the council would like to use additional funds with regard to this emergency declaration for the purposes enumerated in section three and enumerated in the emergency declaration, the council can do that.

It would require uh um uh just a budget amendment and another resolution regarding a budget amendment.

It would be linked to this emergency declaration and citing this emergency declaration.

So the same authorities that would exist under the declaration would apply to the budget amendment, and the council could determine whatever amount they would want to use and for what purpose.

So I hope that answers the process question associated with with the funding part.

So in other words, you don't have to necessarily the council doesn't have to designate um uh a certain amount of funding tonight if they want to arrive at that later after receiving more information, they can.

Uh and it would just be a separate resolution though that is tied to this one.

Um hope that helps.

Yeah.

Um well, just as a matter of uh clarification, there's uh the provisions in the whereas is I think most of all this can do uh are still remain in a fact are still true.

Uh there are seven sections, only one of which to money.

So the essentially have six of the seven that still have some act are intended to be activated by this.

We can it sounds like we can come back in another meeting and address section section three again if we want to issue money, and then since there's a means of time a future resolution to this declaration, I'll I'll wait until the work session where we can have a more thoughtful conversation about any range of provisions that we want.

So just to elaborate on counselor shimmel's request in the way I understood we would keep section three, like something about allocating funds, but by separate resolution, or like how do we do we just take it out completely, Jesse?

Or how do we how is that worded in a way that allows it like a stuck an additional resolution to be tied back to the emergency declaration?

And I think what staff talked about earlier it was read something to the effect of the city manager is further granted the authority to reallocate funds and authorize expenditures under this emergency declaration as prescribed by city council.

Okay, or as allocated by city council, and then a subsequent allocation would fit essentially under section three, it would just definitely define the monetary amount.

Do you think we could take out to provide us with additional flexibility?

Can we just end the the sentence at allocated by city council?

Because what if we need a federal attorney?

Like what if we need something other than money to support community-based organizations?

You could you could take that out as allocated by city council period?

Just more I mean, we if we need to support, I think that we can decide that, but we okay cool.

Okay, any other discussion on this additional discussion just to clarify the you want the expirations set at December 31st, 2026?

Is that correct?

Correct.

Thank you, Mariah.

And is there any there's I don't see any other questions.

So is there a motion in a second?

Or what's the which of the council?

I I move that we adopt resolution 2028.

It's gonna be 2026-05.

Yeah.

Um, with the amendments discussed.

Okay, second.

Oh, second okay.

Thank you.

So resolution 2026-05 has been moved by Councillor Schummel and seconded by Councilor Falconer.

Open for discussion.

Any discussion?

So um yeah, what are we doing then?

This just basically creates a system if we need to procure funds to respond to anything uh regarding federal immigration.

Then we're able to do that.

There's there's six of the seven that declare declarative and the three, we just have to come circle back with the money.

So the sections are what it means to do.

Yeah, and so we're leaving the money monetary open-ended for whatever needs to be done.

No, it means that we could have that council would allocate additional funds.

Under this is just a just in case type of thing.

It's giving authority to take lawful actions to mitigate as allowing the city manager to act on a regional basis and under section two.

Um me to continue to meet with MMC to do work, and then section three is further grants authority reallocate funds, like so if a placeholder, and then what would happen is if there is funding that needs to be accessed, a separate resolution would be brought forward by council and we would vote on it and it and say based pursuant to section three of this emergency declaration.

I'd say section four is probably the an important relevance to get doing it tonight as opposed to waiting.

Uh because I mean given the heightened violent responses, you know, our our our city or cities around the county you know need need some authorization to take necessary action and coordination.

So that I think that in particular is an important one immediately.

Further discussion hearing, none.

Will Jesse read the resolution by title only?

I'm sorry, I was preoccupied.

Okay, you're just like my students, so I'll just wait.

I'm like, I'm just using wait time.

Um could you please read the resolution by title only?

It's 2026-05.

Resolution number 2026-05, resolution declaring a state of emergency to address community impacts of federal immigration enforcement.

Thank you.

And Mariah, will you do a roll call vote, please?

Councilor Marshall?

Yes.

Councillor Gusen.

Yes.

Council President Valenzuela.

Yes.

Counselor Schimmel?

Yes.

Counselor Falconer.

Yes.

Counselor Martinez.

I'll just abstain.

Mayor Winslow.

Right.

Resolution 2026-05 is approved by the Force Grove City Council and a vote of six to zero with one abstention.

And we're gonna move on to counselor communication.

Oh, sorry, I gotta call on people.

Council Council President Valence Vela, will you start us off, please, while I get myself organized?

Sorry for the delay.

No problem.

So uh for the library commission, our meeting, our next meeting is the day after tomorrow, so we'll have news on that at our next meeting.

Uh we had uh the meeting for the policy advisory board.

There were um to apply for funding, there are three categories.

The facilities and infrastructures, one of them, there were three applications submitted.

Uh then there is the second category public services.

There were 13 applications received and then home.

Three applications received.

So we went through the applications through the summary of the applications.

And uh we will have the in-person meeting at the what shouldn't Washington County building Hillsboro on January 29th to listen to all the presentations in person.

And then we will go ahead and have a couple of days to evaluate them and decide uh who will be receiving funding for their in uh specific projects.

We also heard news about um projects uh that were completed with funding from uh the C DBD.

Uh one of them was with the city of Cornelius.

Uh they worked on some uh sidewalk improvements and also Centro Cultural, the completion of uh Casamparo, a rehabilitation place.

So that's that's all I have.

Great.

Thank you, Council President Valenzuela.

Councillor Falconer.

Uh all mine have been on break, um, so I don't have any reports, but I do have HLB and so historic landmarks and um joint water commission coming up.

So I'll have report perfect, thank you.

Counselor Gustison.

Um pretty much the same as as uh Councilor Falconer, but the PAC meeting was canceled last month.

So I'll have a couple more coming up here soon.

Okay, thank you.

And then Councillor Marshall.

Um parks and record was canceled last month.

So have you seen all of your time on January 21st, both meetings.

Perfect.

Thanks.

Sorry for talking while you're talking.

I was just saying that I appreciate this because I plan on using all of your time.

Great.

Oh my sorry, but I have like post-its and post it.

Um counselor Martinez.

So the um with the force grow rural fire department, they're putting up their um reader board here pretty soon on to the the building there in gas or um Gales Creek.

Um is something that the community really wants because they do a lot of events occasionally, actually, not a lot of events, but that's their way of communicating in their town.

So that's about it.

I'll let Jesse do all the fire department stuff, and then Sister City will meet in a couple weeks or week or so.

Great, thank you.

Councilor Schimmel.

Oh, CCE met this month, so they're they're off to a good start.

But I I want to uh move on from that.

That the TV Highway Transit Project Committee is gonna be resuming work they've been rested for uh a good long time, but they're gonna we're gonna do some uh uh get some briefs on what what's transpired in the past six or seven months and then resume work.

Uh so I'll have a better update, but that that's kicking off again.

Uh and just a uh request uh uh we can get Jesse's attention here.

Jesse get your student.

Yeah, I'll give Brian wants to Brian wants to speak directly to you.

It was an anniversary weekend, so he's just here.

Uh just ahead of uh the next uh work session on immigration enforcement.

Uh there's I think if there's anything that is illustrated from from Annette's testimony, it was there's some gaps in the immigration rapid response system uh in terms of disclosure of information that I think is compromising our ability to work toward improving our public safety.

So that incident wasn't known for a month to us, and it was discovered in a newsletter.

Uh and so I I just wanted to see maybe have you help help me do some discovery on you know even as much as what was this process engineered for versus our role as in the policy realm and and uh how we can improve that reporting system uh so that uh when we call Henry or when I call Henry about an incident I heard about his answer is I haven't heard about that, and that's not his fault.

No one's calling police anymore, so there's no replace reports.

Um so that and that system was supposed to do have a closed loop with communities.

So I I want to just probe on on how we can close that.

Um and just as a uh my matter of personal perspective, is there's there's been this passive reliance.

We've been asked on this, not just this rapid reporting system, but the justice system general.

It's like we're asked to just wait, remain calm, and without any discernible action folks are taking matters into their own hands.

So you know, there's gonna be escalating violence if we or the appeal to remain con is gonna get dismissed if if our leaders can't provide some discernible clear uh action for for moving forward, you know, the no the condemnation alone, the um you know, wait for justice, which typically typically is months and years.

There's there's got to be something um more discernible and enforceable uh that we hear from and maybe in their next west side meeting there's something discernible, but I've heard nothing discernible.

So you know, that some of the testimony was we heard that earlier today was you know we need to get more aggressive with with our congressional state leaders, and I would intend on doing that because it it's just incredibly it's reaching disturbance, I'm disturbed uh by what we don't hear.

Um and we're not getting the rapid inform that rapid response information back to us.

So I want to there are a couple areas that I'm gonna focus in.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Shimmel.

City Manager report.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the council.

Just a few things briefly.

Um regarding our east side park.

We did receive approval.

This is the park that's north of 19th Avenue behind the villager apartments on the east side of Forest Grove.

Uh, we did receive approval from Clean Water Services.

Um and we are looking at putting that project out to bid for a spring or summer construction.

So also we did have an opportunity to uh connect with the county regarding some access on the north side of the park to the villager apartment, so that is still in process and we're working on that.

Um you may see some activity on Lower David Hill Road.

Uh that's the section between Thatcher going west to four scale drive.

Uh that is the last portion of the project that we are doing for a wildfire mitigation in the northeast side, or excuse me, northwest um side of Forest Grove where we are taking the overhead lines and burying those lines.

All the conduit is already in place.

Now we're just running the wires.

So kudos to Keith and his crew will probably be out in that area for about a month.

Uh, but then that wildfire mitigation project will be complete and the grant funds will be spent.

And so uh that that will uh position us well going into the end of the warmer season.

Uh fire update.

Uh we have entered into a purchase and sale agreement with the city of Coos Bay uh for the sale of the fire ladder truck.

So that is in process um and and moving forward.

And um I think kudos to uh division chief Niemier and also Chief Gearing for um their work on uh on making sure that we uh got the the best price that we could.

Uh we have been conducting a poll on the uh potential police facility that's been going on over the past uh couple weeks and the initial results are in.

Uh we'll have a work session with council soon about what those results are and just kind of review those and and uh the consultant, which is Petinkin Strategies, Ben Patinkin uh will be available and on hand to ask any questions that you may have.

He is still kind of amalgamating all the results and and uh so look for something soon.

Uh and then the public works uh building uh that was funded in the budget is going vertical, so all of the foundation is complete, some of the walls are going vertical.

Uh that has been a great example of a project the city council approved, a CMCG contract that allowed the designer and the constructor to essentially work together and do some value engineering and also coordinate on how the building was going to be built and when it was going to be built, and it's really going smooth.

Uh so that's a very much a good news project.

And those are the only updates I have.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Jesse.

I have one follow-up question for you.

Is there any chance?

I just want to know a status update.

Is there any chance the pedestrian crossing with the beacon light on eight across from Rose Grove?

Yes.

Can that coincide?

Can we get that in at the same time that park is done?

Because the vision is more green space and walkability on the east side.

And I want all my students from Rose Grove to walk across that street and go to that park.

Great question.

Um it has to be.

It has to.

No, great question.

I appreciate it.

In our last conversation with Odot, that was going to be a project that was going to be done this summer.

Um, and so we're optimistic.

I've also sent out uh some correspondence to Odot to come and present to the city council uh at the second meeting in February and give the council an update uh not only on the Rose Grove Crossing project, but also on uh the U Street design that was um uh going to be included in the 2027 uh statewide transportation improvement program, just kind of an all things East TV highway improvements update.

So more to follow on that, but uh based on what we know right now, Mayor.

Yes, that project is supposed to go in the summer, and that would provide a wonderful connection from kind of the north to the south to be able to access that part.

It'll be it'll be epic.

There's a vision.

So great, great news.

Okay.

Um before I start talking about immigration um and joint regional efforts, uh, just um clerical or kind of small kind things.

Um there was an asked have a work session for counselors to bring their goals and objectives.

And so if you would like to, I'm just doing a friendly reminder.

I would like you to have those things to staff by January 14th at 5 p.m.

So then staff has time.

I don't know where we're gonna fit it on the agenda.

I'm not saying for sure it's gonna be at the next meeting, but I thought the idea was sometime in January or February to have that meeting.

So we need to have those from you.

Um the goals and objectives.

I don't remember hearing about this.

So when with the token, yeah, let me review.

At our December meeting, we had after we had our retreat, we had agreed to those those things that from the vision plan.

And there was discussion that we might have additional things that we want to prioritize or add to the table.

We wanted the 2040 vision to be an a living document that we could add to as well.

And so we had come to consensus to have another work session where people could bring their ideas.

Yeah, and I would add that there were even items from our previous goal setting and retreat that were not part of the conversation at our retreat.

And so we were limited to limited to only talking about the five.

Yeah, so we just wanted I wanted to circle in and remind you all about that.

So when we have the meeting, you come prepare.

Um I just ask a clarified question.

I I remember that conversation.

I just don't remember about bringing new stuff.

So are we bringing new stuff and then pulling up the old stuff to see?

I'm just wondering how because I mean I could think of a lot of stuff.

Why not equal?

I think that we've been like we've all been on the council for a while.

So we know that you keep it, it's for the next two years, it's to go with this budget, right?

Or maybe a long term, but you don't want to.

I mean sorry, I thought that context was some something that was from a previous version that we wanted to I thought the context was the previous and something new because the deal is as you if you take something off, but you don't have to.

I'm just saying what I did.

But I would also recognize the fact that there's seven of us, and if we all bring a list of 20, that's gonna be no benefit at all.

Yeah, and I just clarify, I don't think that the the ask wasn't to bring all the things that you want included in the goals for the next two years.

It was sort of like, you know, how you know, how are we building a living document out of this vision plan and that you know, goal strategies, goals and strategies, you know, can continue to sort of like build up and then you know, then we can discuss them at the next year's retreat and whether or not we you know elevate and prioritize some of these other items, but to just have sort of like a clearinghouse of all these things so that staff is prepared, like knowing where we are thinking it's gonna be more agile too, being able to switch things around if we decide to change something, we can do that.

I won't be reinventing the wheel.

I'm missing my entire career.

That that's that sounds like a train wreck to me.

Well, it's just waste like open Pandora's box at to bring new stuff in when we spend all this time on a on a process.

We have a process, but there was also consensus.

I'm gonna push back.

There was also consensus that, and I don't want to rehash the retreat right now, but when we're looking at economic development and downtown revitalization, and there was no action item in the 2040 plan about the URA and density and bringing housing and bringing foot traffic to downtown, which all of us who do this work and have know that that's how you help small businesses.

Like when we I'm gonna be, I'll just be the person to say it.

I was frustrated at the retreat when I was limited to what, and no offense to the community, like no offense at all.

The community brought action ideas and things they wanted to do, but also I have prior knowledge.

I have what I'm hearing from the state, I have what I'm hearing from other cities, and I want to bring my ideas too.

And our consultant did not let us do that.

They did not let us say, like, here's your the four goals you want to work on.

I mean, I would have been even fine if we picked the four goals we want to work on, which I believe we did, and then said, like, okay, so if you don't think something on this list is a priority for the next two years, what do you do you have a different idea?

We couldn't even do that, and that's what this came out of.

Not my understanding of the consensus, nor did we have minutes that stating that consensus.

I I understood it to be uh pulling bringing in what was in up on a previous version.

Because now we're now we're basically circling back to you know, we're seven people are gonna be inventing their own things, you know, you know, sprinkling them in here and imagining that you know we we know what the right things are versus our boards and commissions that fill in the details of the best, especially on on economic development.

Well, I I I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I'm trying not to be like rude and shut it down, but there was consensus to do this work session, there was consensus to do it the way it was done.

That's I I don't like to prove that what I know, but so right now we're going off, we're like having a full-on discussion about this right now during Mayor's comments, and with all due respect, it's like one off.

So I can't there's I fully believe there's nothing I can say to you that will change your mind.

And honestly, I don't know if that's appropriate now.

All I can say to you is we're having a work session to review our goals and priorities, and we can check after this meeting about the minutes, we can check for consensus, and staff can email us out and say this was the consensus for this next work session.

But to me, that's how we move forward.

Um, real quick, and I've done vision before, and it is not Pandora's box to continue to add strategies that activate the goals that are invision.

And then also I make a suggestion for tonight.

I would do we have consensus to bring additional strategies to this next work session and to please email ideas that you might have to Jesse before then.

I mean, new stuff, yeah.

Um, I I remember what counselor Schimmel remembers, and I could be very well wrong as well, right?

But um that's that's fine.

Whatever it is, you know, whatever we agree on is fine with me.

Would you like to bring items for discussion of the next work session?

So I think you have a sense because that was one thing I was frustrated with too is that we didn't if we had other things concerns from the year that we weren't able to explain.

And you know, I've this issue of like what was the consensus.

So as the presiding officer, what I try to do is say at the end of each meeting, I'm hearing the consensus is this.

Is there a way we're not really getting our minutes to a way that so this is I'm not like trying to throw staff under the bus at all, but we this has come up in this diet.

This is the second time where there's been a question about what the consensus was or not.

And so I'm just looking at what can we do as a system.

So we don't have this, so we can go back and refer to say this was the consensus at the work session.

This was like you know what I mean, in a timely manner.

So we're not having this well.

I just have an idea.

Okay.

With all of my projects, I have a decision list.

I mean, this is all of the decisions what we made, all the consensus that that's its own list instead of having to go through the minutes, which aren't I have not found to be user-friendly when I'm looking up stuff.

We have like the minutes haven't been in the in the packet.

They used to come in our packet, but that's another story like that we need to just explore.

You know, I need to re um so back to state of the city is gonna be on March 12th.

I'm inviting you all to participate in the capacity you would like to get uh it's gonna be sorry, March 12th at Theater in the Grove.

Uh, Theater in the Grove is being really kind to host us.

I'm really excited.

Uh we I'd invite you to work with me.

You can do a TV C TV interview again if you like that, or if you don't like that and you want to speak on stage, like I can facilitate that as well.

Um, let me know your thoughts.

I'm meeting with uh Stephanie and Joyce tomorrow to go over that.

Uh Washington County Corinne Committee met today.

Primet is planning um lots of cuts.

So they're gonna make 300 million dollars in cuts.

There's March in March, they're gonna reduce the frequency of lines.

In August, they're gonna cut lines completely.

That's gonna total a 6.5% cut.

Their goal is a 10% cut by July 1st of 2028.

Um what it's increased their costs or security cameras.

Um they have yeah, so anyways, that was what we forced grow up, but isn't really I think maybe our frequency will get cut a little bit.

Who knows?

But we have one line, and so they can't really butwall it in, it's really impacting toiletin and tigered.

Um the NLC students are gonna go to DC, so that's good news.

Um the mayor's plus, oh, so the thing I'm talking about with Washington County Corney Committee, and maybe staff could help with this is I really want the WCC, the Washington County Corney Committee to take a really proactive stance on protecting MST, because the Washington County um commission is Washington County's in a 10 million dollar budget deficit, and so they're gonna be making hard decisions on what to cut, and we really need and I'm afraid that they're not gonna go out, like they're not gonna look at the library because they just had voters approve um a bond or a a levy and then also public safety levy.

So that kind of leaves MST.

Forest Grove is highly, highly dependent on MST money.

They've cut it the last two years, and so if we could have projects, the economic cost of deteriorating infrastructure, like I feel like we should go in really heavy and proactively about why they cannot cut MST.

And so if we could have projects, the economic cost of deteriorating infrastructure, like I feel like we should go in really heavy and proactively about why they cannot cut MST.

So if the city could provide some information, so I can give that to WCCC or Gray can on the TAC, that would be helpful.

So immigration, I meet with the regional immigration group on first and third Mondays.

Governor Kotec has come to speak, governor or Congresswoman Bonamici.

You talked about the legislation I shared earlier.

Um I also am going to with the um support.

Well, we'll see.

I'm gonna take a some a letter, an idea for a letter to the attorney general.

I'm gonna present it to the MMC executive committee and see if they will support writing a letter to the attorney general.

Um for like four cities, and some of the questions I want, I just want guidance from our attorney general, right?

What is the what is the role of local law enforcement in ICE or federal agent arrests?

What's the role of the uh national guard?

I think I had another question, but I have too many pieces of paper.

Hang on.

Well, you probably don't need to know all my questions, but definitely asking for some guidance on some of these things.

Maybe I should progressional.

Then we did call for the last thing, and then I'll let you all go.

So we did ask staff or we did set aside a work session, the second meeting of the month on federal response in force grove.

And so for the first meeting, we need to give staff direction, and I kind of want to run this by counsel.

So, what I would like the staff to focus on.

Oh my goodness, why do I have all these things?

Okay, I would like the staff to focus on these, these are my ideas using the video and public comment we received in this tonight's council meeting as a case study.

What is the role of local police?

If that's so that situation did happen in force growth.

We know it happened.

Do you want people?

Do you want me to watchers or legal legal observers calling the police department?

If the police department was there, what would be the local enforcement protocol?

How would you respond?

What is the role of the city in preserving physical evidence?

Um, and then I want the city to identify and present with us at this work session.

Who is our incident commander?

Who is the person in charge of we're in a state of emergency, people are not feeling safe, these things are happening.

Who's in charge of navigating attorney general relations with federal officers, local law enforcement, the county, and then I want a standard communication process for all things that emergency or any situation.

I know this is about immigration and federal response, but any time the citizens and the community members are gonna look to the city for a message.

There should be a standard system and process for things to come out.

Uh, you know, I've been kind of frustrated, like trying to navigate that, and when I can't get a hold of like, so I just I don't want to out all of that right now, but I really feel like we should tighten up some things in this in our systems and process because as things become more uncertain and uncomfortable, people are gonna look to their community and their city for more.

And even if we if our commute, even if our communication messages we don't know right now, we are aware of the situation.

This this is our next steps, like that needs something needs to come out.

So I think we need to have a standard communication, who's in charge, who responds, who okay's it, boom boom, boom.

So that's what I would like our first work session to be about.

And then my thought is af moving forward after that, at the end of each work session, the council comes to consensus what they would like the staff to bring back or what they would like to discuss for the next work session.

Uh the only issue with that is it's as things come at us fast.

If we need to like reroute or change, then we can talk about it at the meeting in between, potentially would be.

So I'm just trying to get a if the council has another option.

I'm just trying to figure out an approach.

The council asked for it, so the council needs to provide the substance, the meat of what they want to chew on and discuss and figure out.

But I'm trying to figure out a system or a process to make sure you all have a say in what we're doing.

So that's my go at it.

Any thoughts about that?

I think those sound like really topical experts.

And are we okay with then at the that meeting deciding what we should talk about the next meeting?

Is that okay?

I see ahead of it.

Now we can change it, right?

Good evening everyone