Welcome.

This meeting is being recorded.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the February 17th 2026 City Council meeting.

Thank you for joining us this evening for translation services.

Please use the QR code on the poster on the left-hand side of the room or on the front page of your agenda.

To begin this meeting, I invite you all to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

And two, which is standards.

Thank you.

May we please have a roll call.

Mayor Pace?

Here.

Councillor Harris.

Here.

Councillor Ambry.

Here.

Councillor Sinclair.

Here.

Councillor Case?

Here.

And Councillors Alcair and Salgado are absent.

Thank you.

Item number two presentation presentations and appointments.

There are none this evening.

So we'll move to item three, which is public comment.

I just want to let you all know that item 8.1 on the agenda, which is the exception to the citywide naming policy, that would be moved to another meeting.

So if you are here to discuss item 8.1, uh the exception to citywide naming policy, you are welcome to uh submit your public comment, but I just want to let you know we will not be voting on that item this evening.

Thank you.

Persons wishing to speak will be recognized at this time.

If you are here in person and wish to speak, please fill out a yellow card and hand it to the city recorder.

When I call on you, please join us here at the front two tables.

You can pick one and speak into the microphone so those on Zoom can also hear your comments.

Because of the translation tool, community members can speak in their language of choice, and the city recorder can display the translation on the screen.

Gracias a todos por estar aquí y hacer oír sus voces.

Queremos escucharlos.

Valoramos a todos los miembros de nuestra comunidad.

Si desean hablar ante el consejo en español, puede nacerlo.

Reyenin La Tarjeta Maria, que se encuentra en la mesa a la izquierda y en Trenguela Abre Meneer.

Aubrey's right over there.

Abre esta, yeah.

Uh, we have zero persons registered to speak virtually, and the deadline to register has now passed.

If you were able to sign up to speak prior to the deadline, if you weren't able to sign up to speak prior to the deadline, you are always welcome to email your comments to the city councilor, to any of the city councillors at any time of day.

This is called public comment because it's time dedicated for you to inform the city council about your views.

We will not be commenting back.

It won't be a conversation.

We'll just listen.

Comments are limited to three minutes, and we do have people who are online.

Is that right?

They did register.

Okay, so we do have people online that registered in time.

Great.

Okay, so we'll be getting hearing from those calling in virtually.

Uh the first one is Jen Klotz.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Jen Klotz, and I lead local government affairs and community engagement for Genentech here in Oregon.

And wanting to speak basically on the jobs act bill.

So as a pioneer of technology, Genentech is a significant economic partner in the state, and beyond creating high-paying jobs, we support the local ecosystem by procuring Oregon vendors in construction, land management, by investing deeply in the community organizations that help Oregonians thrive.

Things like building our future STEM workforce here locally, partnering with Hill High and Rock Creek.

But Genentech's parent company Roche recently announced a commitment to invest 50 billion dollars in the United States over the next five years.

And Genet Tech really believes that the jobs act is essential to improving our business climate and positioning Oregon as a prime destination for that level of capital investment and job creation.

Genet Tech really wants to help build that ecosystem here.

A critical piece of this legislation involves land use because advanced manufacturing requires build-ready industrial land.

And 20 years ago, Genetch purchased 75 acres in Hillsborough.

If Oregon had not had that land ready and the incentives to be competitive with other states, Genetech would not be in Oregon today.

And because of that foresight of the state, we were able to grow from zero employees back then to over a thousand right here, primarily in the Hillsborough community.

But today, the global and national competition is really fierce.

And there's other states and other nations that are really actively aligning their policies to attract and retain the very manufacturing that we excel at.

And Oregon currently is not as competitive as we once were.

So we believe Genentech really truly believes that the Jobs Act strengthens our ability to remain competitive for the next generation of capital investment.

And for these reasons, just as a testimony, Judem Tech strongly supports this bill.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And hang on one second.

Okay, go ahead, Mohammed.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Dr.

Theme, and I've been a Hillsborough resident for 25 years.

I want to start by thanking the city for their focus on redeveloping the fairground sports complex and investing in the health industry of our community.

I'm pleased to see that City's vision goes beyond the lost field of GFCR, GFR.

And that's very I would like to advocate for including bigger ball courts and the fairgrounds play.

These can either be dedicated courts or multi use with other sports like for solar tennis.

As many of you know, is a past wing sport in our city and metro area at my local 53rd Avenue Bar.

Dedicated course stay at capacity with residents often feeling longer way times than playing time.

What makes big ball so special is not the game itself, but the spectrum of people itself.

On any given day, you will see kids and teens laying alongside their feelings or grandparents.

You will see people of all genders, ethnicities, and cultural and economic backgrounds connecting in a way that are really experienced in other sports.

I've been impressed at how effective is bringing the community together.

And a vital space for seniors to stay connected.

It is truly a multi-dimensional sport.

The fair gone sports complex initiative is a chance to build something that truly measures the spirit of Hillsboro.

Energetic that was and welcoming.

Thank you for your time and for your commitment to our community.

Thank you.

We'll next hear from Adelie or Atali Mitchell.

And give us one second for the timer to be set up.

Is she on?

Are they on?

Okay.

Uh Tali Mitchell, you can go ahead.

Hi, my name is Adalie Mitchell, and I'm calling uh in an uh support of the jobs act.

Um, I want to discuss a little bit about my experience with the PCC Quick Start Semiconductor Program.

I was able to attend the very first one here in Oregon in October of 2022.

It was uh sponsored by Intel.

So I was told about this program through community action.

My kids were in the Head Start program, uh and we were very low income, and my husband is disabled.

So I was the primary breadwinner at the time doing child care, and I wanted to find a career that I could advance in.

And so this opportunity was uh provided to me.

I got to get into the program.

It was a two-week full-time program where it gave us a uh background in semiconductors and working in a fab.

Uh we after the program, um, we were given the opportunity to uh interview with Intel.

Uh, and if we met the right criteria, we got jobs.

I have now worked at Intel for three years, um, and in that time I have been given many, many opportunities to advance.

Um, we are now no longer low income.

We are able to support ourselves um and thrive, and I believe that the jobs act will do that for a lot of our community.

I think having other companies come in that could partner with PCC for a quick start um program of their own would be super beneficial for our community members and for our economy.

Thanks.

Thank you.

We're gonna turn to folks in the room now.

And our first person registered to speak is Denise Van Domlin.

Denise, did you want to speak tonight still?

Going once.

Denise Van Domlin.

Okay.

The next person is Pam Code.

Is Pam here?

Okay.

And then Ricky Noak.

Ricky, you can come up to the other desk.

So Pam will pick one desk.

And then Ricky, you can pick the the other side.

So Ricky, hold off on your testimony.

And then Pam, when you're all set, you have three minutes.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah, please push the button in the middle there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It recently came to my attention that our state senator is attempting for the fifth time to sell 1,700 acres of land reserved for agriculture in Hillsboro for the development of data centers, even though 500 acres of land still stands undeveloped.

I'm referring to Senate Bill 1586.

These are my personal views and concerns that I have not necessarily heard expressed elsewhere.

And I thank you all in advance for carrying my message forward, however, you may be able to do that.

So when I heard about the context around the bill, which is rightfully being called a land grab, here is the impression of Senator Solomon's way of thinking that came to mind for me.

In my mind, I saw her saying, okay, I'm gonna sell this land.

Profit.

Oh, you guys wanted something else for this land.

I didn't even hear you speak.

That is to say that the impression that I am getting, which infuriates me, is that our senator is not even trying to act like they're listening to people who abide in Hillsboro before acting, much less consider what is of value to us about the land.

Um just uh being more aligned with those people who she appears to be colluding with.

And this also raises to questions for me naturally.

If this is how our senator is thinking and acting, what about other leadership?

So giving the benefit of the doubt, though, I get it.

Things really move fast these days with information information technology and electronic communications.

It's probably really easy for Senator Salman and whoever else to get carried away when they get excited about big numbers.

But I really wish to see her slow down and get this to be more of an organic process, meaning thinking less corporate and getting face to face, hearing from Hillsborough's humans about what kind of environment they'd like to live in and that they would be proud of.

I will note that I looked up our city flag just before this, and the four green squares represent agriculture.

Um so there is that in terms of our values.

Um let's see.

So evidently what we would like is the preservation of the land for agriculture use.

Um, but she is trying to move forward with changes to our little landscape that we have not consented to, put another way.

We have not consented to our land being altered permanently so that corporations can have their profit.

And once that land is developed, it cannot be brought back for another purpose.

Thank you for listening and carrying my message forward.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Ricky Ricky Noak, uh, you're next, but hold up.

Uh Mary Mullen, you can come up.

Mary Mullen.

You can come up to the other desk.

And then the person on deck is Brown.

Um, and uh, I didn't say this before, but if you want to support someone uh while they're speaking or when they're done speaking, please don't clap because you we may not be able to hear their testimony.

So if you want to support them, please snap.

Um if you have signs, you're welcome to have them, but please don't hold them up.

Please don't block someone else's view.

And um, please don't boo.

Please be respectful.

Okay.

Uh Ricky, uh, you're up.

You have three minutes.

Uh yeah, I think so.

Go for it.

Okay.

Oh, you just turned your mic off.

Wait till it turns green.

Hang on one second.

We're gonna get you another console so we can hear you.

Thank you for your patience, Ricky.

Mark, thanks for the tech support.

Thank you.

Yeah, now we can hear you.

That's terrific.

Go for it.

I will also be speaking regarding the 1586 uh Senate bill.

I think we can all agree that Hillsboro is one of the best cities in the world.

We have thousands of job opportunities thanks to our Silicon Forest and many, many other places that supply us with work.

One of the reasons I love Hillsborough so much is how we are able to have industrial parts of the city while still maintaining our beautiful nature and parks.

Allowing the urban growth boundary to be expanded would upset the wonderful balance of agrarian farmland and technological districts that the people of Hillsboro have worked so hard to cultivate.

I was initially under the notion that, well, it needs to get built somewhere when I first heard about the expansion of the urban growth boundary for AI data centers.

But as I really thought about it, I realize this is not the case.

Not allowing this urban growth boundary to be expanded would not only conserve Hillsborough's rich farmland for generations to come, but would also be a symbol of solidarity against big AI corporations.

We can all say no to the further advancement of AI that has taken and will further take away good jobs for honest, hardworking people all over the world.

Even though we are already seeing the negative effects of AI jobs, it is not too late to help maintain human-powered industries.

I urge everyone in this room to help me in keeping Hillsborough the amazing agricultural city it is, and to testify and advocate against the expansion of the urban growth boundary.

I believe it is our duty as citizens of Hillsborough to protect the breathtaking nature of our wonderful wonderful city.

Please keep Hillsborough the wonderful place to live that it is, and not only protect our rich farmland, but also the jobs of millions of people across the world.

People are the heart of Hillsborough, not bots.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ricky.

Uh Mary, you are next.

And Brown is Brown here.

That was the only name I was given.

Brown.

Okay, wonderful.

And Leif Eccles is on deck.

Leif Eccles, you'll be called up next.

All right.

So Mary.

Hi.

Um I'm Mary Mullen.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate your public service.

I know that um it takes a lot out of your own lives, and I appreciate you.

Um I'm here to speak against uh Senate Bill 1586, which is poorly named as the Job Act.

I think that's not true.

Uh and I'm also here to speak because I am the mother of a daughter with an intellectual disability.

And oddly enough, this whole issue is directly gonna affect people with special needs.

Because what has always happened um is the the budgets are often balanced on the back of poor people and people who have disabilities, and we have to stop that.

And this is a chance to stop it and to to go higher, to be more moral, to be more loving in our approach to our community.

Um I'm also here because I was raised on a farm in Alaska, and I love soil, and I'm here to tell you that soil is actually disappearing just as much as some of our neighbors are disappearing.

And we need to take care of soil.

We have no choice but to take care of it.

Um the connection with people who have disabilities might seem kind of far-fetched, but it's not because my daughter um has a job serving dinner to our elders.

Uh she takes her job very responsibly, but she needs public transportation to get there.

And she rides a bus and she's courageous to do it because people with Down syndrome are um physically vulnerable.

Um you know how sometimes you hear a story that kind of hits your heart.

And um last year I heard of a farm worker family in Hillsboro who had a child with special needs, and they needed all kinds of special electrical equipment and also equipment that used a lot of water to keep this child going, and they could not afford their electric bill.

And to me, that's just so wrong and so sad, and it's a story that has stuck with me for a whole year since I've heard it.

Um so we really need to get our priorities in better order.

Um, and that's what I'm here to employ your employee to do, please.

Um to please elevate my daughter and that child whose parents couldn't afford the water bill and the electric bill.

Make them as important as big tech.

Make them as important of so-called artificial intelligence.

We have to elevate real things and real people.

Thank you very much, Mary.

Thank you.

Leaf, you can come up to the other desk.

And Brown, you have three minutes.

Please press the green button or the buttons so the light turns green.

Thank you, you're on.

So last time I was here, uh I said I don't trust any of them.

I still don't.

They haven't done anything for us working class people.

That has always been in the hands of us, the working class people, because I don't expect them to do anything.

They haven't done anything.

So I'm just here to talk to you all to remind you all that you are the ones with the power.

Without us supporting any of them, they don't have any power either.

And they they've been saying how, oh, well, this is gonna bring jobs, this is gonna bring back money.

That's such a weak excuse because you know what else could bring money and jobs to Hillsboro is if we started paying the school district so that they could hire more positions.

There is a teacher shortage, but they don't they're not adding anything to the budget.

You know what they did?

They cut 20 million from the district budget.

You know how much they allocated to the Hillsborough Hops Stadium, 150 million.

So what does that tell you?

I believe in revolution, and the first step is education.

And why are they attacking that then?

Because they don't want us to be educated enough to realize when we're being exploited or how.

They don't want us to be educated enough to actually organize and remove them so that we can do things for ourselves.

Like, why are we asking them to do these things when they don't even know?

Like they're not affected by this.

We are.

We know what needs to be done.

Like, what would you rather have?

So tell someone, hey, this is how I need you to fix my toilet, or would you rather go and fix your toilet yourself if you already have no how?

You know?

And it's just so ridiculous because they want us to pretend that they're gonna do something about it, but they're not doing uh anything.

They're they're pretending like this is a favor to us to hear us out.

That's their responsibility.

That's their job.

Like they're here to hear us out, but just because they're hearing doesn't mean that they're gonna listen.

Because I saw so many community members at the town hall begging for the budget not to be cut, and what did they do?

They still went through with it.

So even if we're here begging, crying for them to not do these things, they can still decide not to listen.

Like I'm just pointing that out.

That's a reminder.

Um just reminding everyone that when you see people trying to push for these kinds of changes, look into it.

Because you can't unify if you don't educate yourself on these things.

You know, it takes a lot of humility to admit when you're wrong about something, but I promise you you will be so much better for it afterwards.

And like I'm so open.

If you want to talk about literally anything, I am always so open.

I am down to work with whoever has the people's interest, the working class people's interests.

Whoever has these agricultural workers' interests at heart, right?

Because we are the ones running these things.

We are the ones providing all of the resources that they use and that they're deciding on.

Like honestly, we could even decide not to go to work so that these land uh data centers don't get used.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh the next person up is Leif Eccles.

And uh the next person that can come up to the desk is Regina and Shayla.

Regina and Shayla.

Regina, are you bringing two or two people up or just one?

Just the one.

Okay.

And then on deck is Blaine Ackley.

So, Blaine, you'll be up next.

Uh Leaf, you have three minutes.

Okay.

Uh my name is Leif Eccles, and I'm a parent of a kid that attends Hillsboro Public School, and I work in the semiconductor industry.

Uh, my views and opinions are my own.

I deeply understand the semiconductor industry and the importance of our industry and to the economic growth of Washington County in the state of Oregon.

Washington County is also home to the most pristine farmland in the world.

Uh Senate Bill 1586, the so-called Oregon Jobs Act will absorb 1,700 acres of pristine farmland in parts of the Twilight River watershed into Hillsborough's urban growth boundary.

And yet there's plenty of space within the urban growth boundary that could be developed.

Hillsboro has continued to expand the urban growth boundary year over year without meaningfully creating new high-paid tech jobs and tax revenue for the state.

But this has driven up the cost of land, pushing out local farms that can't compete with big tech companies.

Senator Janine Solman claims that this bill will create high-tech paid high paid tech jobs.

In the last two years, I have seen firsthand that semiconductor companies in Oregon have been laying off workers or moving their jobs out of state.

There's no appetite to expand semiconductor development in Oregon right now.

Senator Solman also claims that this bill will not create standalone data centers, but there is a massive loophole in our bill that makes this not only possible, but very likely given the market right now.

As long as AI data centers have a small section of their building dedicated to research, they get around the loophole.

AI data centers do not create semiconductor jobs.

They create short-term construction jobs and a handful of IT jobs to maintain a massive building of servers that require extreme uses of water and electricity to maintain.

These data centers suck up our suck up our energy and water resources, causing our utility rates to skyrocket.

On top of that, these companies are not meaningfully contributing to Oregon's revenue base because of sweetheart tax breaks.

School districts across the state, including Washington County, have had to lay off teachers and staff because of tax revenue losses.

This amounted to 275 million dollars in two 2024 alone for the state.

Every year our public schools have to get by with less while out-of-state corporations get rich by not paying their fare of shak of taxes.

When the AI bubble bursts, we'll be left with empty warehouses contributing nothing to Oregon's economy.

Senator Solman's primary stated reason for this bill was to bring high-tech high-paying tech jobs back to Hillsborough.

But companies like mine employ some of the top scientists and engineers from around the world, often on visas.

I have employees that are afraid to travel to to work due to the illegal actions of federal immigration officers that are targeting people because of the color of their skin, regardless of legal status.

Do you know how difficult it is to run a semiconductor fab without people?

Do you think we can maintain a semiconductor RD hub when the tech companies here are starting to decrease the number of experts here due to the political climate?

Hillsboro may be a moderately sized city, but we're home to some of the most profitable high-tech companies in the state and the world.

The real way to drive up tech jobs in Hillsborough is to make this a place that top scientists and engineers want to live.

All SB 1586 will do is make a few landowners rich while not delivering on the promise of high-tech jobs.

Thank you.

Um Blaine Ackley, you can come up and take a seat on the other desk.

And Regina, you have three minutes.

Good evening, Mayor Bayes and Council members.

It gives us immense pleasure to extend this invitation to Fest Femina, a special celebration organized by the women for the women on the occasion of International Women's Day.

This event is dedicated to honoring the leadership achievements and invaluable contributions of women within our community.

It will serve as a platform to acknowledge and celebrate the strength, resilience, and impact of women across all walks of life.

This will be held on March 8th from 3 p.m.

to 6 p.m.

We would be deeply honored by your presence at this gathering.

Your participation will add great value to the celebration and further inspire the spirit of unity and empowerment among the women.

I have provided the invitations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is that you?

That's me.

Right, hang on one second, Blaine.

Uh we have Nellie McAdams.

Nellie?

All right, come on up.

And then we have Luce Vierones.

Luce, you are on deck.

Okay.

Blaine, uh, you have three minutes.

Thank you.

Mayor Pace and Counselors.

My name is Blaine Ackley.

I resigned Ward II in Hillsborough, where I've lived for the past 36 years.

You have my testimony before you, so I'm not gonna read through that.

But I want to hit a couple of points on SB 1586.

Uh uh other speakers more eloquent than I have already said that it's not going to create jobs except construction jobs.

Another point, there have been no public hearings for this at all, other than in Salem, not in Hillsborough.

Okay.

And Washington County Commissioner Fai echoes this concern when she says, why rush a bill of this magnitude?

Honoring past agreements like the 2014 grand bargain that was supposed to last for 50 years in 2014.

Uh honoring past agreements is not a barrier to progress, it is a foundation for responsible progress.

Also, the Metro Council did not vote to approve this measure.

Metro Counselor uh Juan Carlos Gonzalez helped write the bill, and President Lynn Peterson sent a letter, but the Metro Council never voted on this.

And I know this because Garrett Rosenthal is my friend, and he has a Metro Counselor.

So I checked that out with him.

Passage of this bill would just cost us taxpayers here in Hillsborough money, and we will lose our valuable land.

Now to another thing that's more important, our children.

And we want to build four softball stadium fields, one quarter mile away from the Hillsborough Airport, the eighth most contaminated lead contaminated airport in the United States.

That's right.

And let's see, how many of us here would like to have your kids play on a in a field that's surrounded by lead?

Oh, nobody.

Oh, okay.

Uh there is it's a tasteless, odorless element.

It lasts forever, and that's a long time.

And uh you are one quarter mile away from the airport in the flight path, and now you have notice, and you could talk to your lawyers about this, but once you have notice and you move ahead with something, that is called negligence.

And the city is gonna be responsible for that.

Anyone who brings a lawsuit, you're gonna lose.

Okay.

And so the kids.

Thank you.

Uh, we have Nelly McAdams, who is next.

And Luz Vierones.

Luce, are you here?

Okay, great.

Luce, you can take the seat.

And then Scott Ellis.

Scott, you are on deck.

Uh Nelly, you have three minutes.

Mayor Pace, City Councilors.

I'm Nellie McAdams, and I live in Portland, but my roots are in Washington County.

I'm here to ask the city to honor its agreements and to be a better steward of its industrial land and the public's tax dollars.

In particular, I asked the city to withdraw its support from Senate Bill 1586, which would bring 1,700 acres of world-class farmland into Hillsborough's urban growth boundary or urban reserves for no demonstrated purpose.

While proponents of the bill claimed that it would not allow standalone data centers, this promise is meaningless.

The bill allows data centers that are accessory to businesses, and it does not limit their number, size, or total acreage.

SP 1586 claims to support advanced manufacturing, the definition of which was modified by a presidential executive order last July to include data centers.

If this bill is passed, Hillsboro would likely squander the land exactly as it has the 1,100 acres to the east, with hundreds of acres of data centers and only about 30 acres of high-tech job-producing businesses.

Despite the bill's acronym, the Jobs Act, data centers provide very few jobs, and those jobs come at a huge cost for local and state governments.

In Virginia, one data center job is created for every $54 million in taxpayer dollars invested or withheld in tax breaks.

Hillsboro says that it has already spent 120 million dollars on utilities to serve that land that was designated to remain farming for another 40 years.

That's 120 million taxpayer dollars wasted that could have been invested on creating jobs on the land that Hillsboro already manages.

For example, I would love to see more job-producing businesses like Genentech in Hillsborough, and the city should help Genentech expand onto the large vacant portions of their 75-acre campus or onto the 500 unbuilt acres of industrial land inside the city's urban growth boundary.

Senate Bill 1586 would double down on this wasteful spending.

The most detailed description of the expansion is the six-page development prospectus that estimates it would take 35 years for the expansion to break even.

It's unclear if that projection accounts for the tax break that this bill would extend to industries, including data centers.

Most concerning, there was no public hearing on a plan that would expand the city's size by 11%, which city staff clearly worked on hard outside of the public eye.

This is the sixth bill in nine years to bring the same land into Hillsboro, each time for a different reason.

The common theme is that some of the landowners want to sell their land at industrial value instead of agricultural value.

It is not your duty as an elected official to facilitate a massive windfall to a few people, especially when it comes at an extreme cost to your constituents.

This is all in violation of a compromise that Hillsboro and other bodies of government agreed to only 12 years ago.

The grand bargain gave Hillsborough a 50-year supply of industrial land and housing land and protects 1,700 acres as rural reserve.

It doesn't matter if you didn't personally sign the grand bargain.

Elected officials do not sign agreements on their own behalf.

They sign them on behalf of the residents who rely on the certainty of that agreement.

To be clear, this proposed expansion is not economic development.

It is the waste of public resources on an industry that produces few jobs, uses extreme amounts of water and energy and land, and pays almost nothing in taxes.

Just because a few businesses and landowners would become massively wealthy does not make it a wise economic strategy for your residents.

For those reasons, I ask you to withdraw your support from SB 1586.

Thank you.

And next up is Scott Ellis.

Thank you, Nelly.

Scott Ellis, are you here?

Oh Scott, come on up.

And then Aaron Nichols, you are on deck.

Luce, you have three minutes.

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

I am here to oppose Senate Bill 1586.

I'm very surprised that a great senator, a great friend of mine, the senator is proposing this.

Her and I have had lots of conversations about how our senators are not supporting the working class, the farm workers, the less affluent, the more marginalized.

So I'm very disappointed in her and I and all the ones that are following her.

And I'm holding each one of you responsible to vote responsibly.

I am going to go ahead and read you Chief Seattle's letter, which was written in 1855.

Imagine when Chief Seattle was young in Seattle, beautiful land, full of scent of berries, the birds singing, the waters running clear where you can reach and drink the water.

Imagine when I got here to the United States in 1962, basically I encountered a beautiful land, which now my grandchildren can only hear my my story for me.

But can they believe it?

No, they cannot believe it.

And I think we're heading for disasters in the name of more jobs, more money for the affluent, less money for the farm workers, and food that is more expensive for all of us.

We have seen prices rise to the worst ever I have seen.

We are seeing hate.

We are seeing greed that I have never seen in my 75 years, over 50 living in this country.

It is disgusting.

I have relatives in Mexico, in Chile, in Venezuela.

It's disgusting how our greed is affecting other people in the world.

I'm gonna go ahead and read a little bit of Chief Seattle's letter.

The great chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.

The great chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill.

This is kind of him, since how he has little need for our friendship in return.

Well, we will consider your offer.

For we for we know if if we do not so white men may come with guns and take our land.

What Chief Seattle says you can count on as a truly our white brothers can count on the return of the season.

My words are like the stars.

They are not set.

How can you buy our land, the sky, the warmth of the land, the idea of strange to us, yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkles of the water?

How can you buy them from us?

We will not decide in our time.

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people, every shining pine needle, very sandy shores, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and every humming insects is wholly in the memory and experience of my people.

Thank you very much.

Uh we have Scott Ellis next.

Maybe Aaron Aaron Nichols hang on one second, Scott.

Sorry about that.

Aaron, you can come up and sit in the other desk.

And the person on death on deck is Alexis Bastida Pinede.

Scott, you have three minutes.

Go ahead.

Good evening.

My name is Scott Ellis, and I live in that 1700 acres.

Listening to the testimony down at the State Capitol yesterday, and I heard Mayor Pace speak, I heard our senator speak.

I haven't heard one person that actually lives there.

So I bought this land five years ago, and it was rye grass field.

And I did my due diligence to find out anything that could happen.

It's protected land.

So I built a house, I have a farm.

I just finished building a barn.

And I farm this thing, blueberries, watermelons, I farm this property.

And what we're seeing right now is people want to take it.

And what they're saying is kind of the promise of if we do this, this is going to save Oregon.

You know, we've told we've heard about the jobs disappearing.

Over 20,000 jobs have disappeared.

5,000 recently with Intel.

We have a problem in Oregon.

This isn't going to solve it.

And so people are saying, hey, if we do this, this is going to be booming for us.

Well, not for the residents, because we've seen with Intel and some of these others, they get the tax breaks, and Senator Solman introduced dash four to her bill, which increases the amount of deductions and tax breaks for the big businesses.

Big businesses are not invested.

They come in here, corporate companies, they set up shop, they make their money, and if the economy turns, they're out.

They'll file bankruptcy or whatever, they're out.

We get nothing out of it.

So our residents end up with more it costs us more for electrical, more for water, our schools.

So we've heard all that stuff.

So who benefits with this?

The City of Hillsboro.

You get 1,700 acres that you get to bring in to the city of Hillsborough.

And Metro.

And we've heard about the Metro thing.

This is a this is a huge deception.

We have a building that sits just east of Jackson School Road that was just built.

It's been empty for six or eight months.

300,000 square feet building that's up for lease.

It's empty.

It's not like we had somebody wanting to come in.

This thing's sitting empty.

This is what's going to happen on the other side.

All the promises, I would like to see, since I got 20 seconds, I'd like to see if the city of Hillsborough is so vested in this, somebody had to come to the city of Hillsborough and say, here's a map.

Here's all the buildings.

This is our plan.

I'd like to see the City of Hillsborough put that on their website.

And be honest.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Aaron Nichols, you're up one second.

And then Alexis Bastida Pinede.

Thank you.

And then on deck is Myrna Munoz.

Myrna, if you are here, you are on deck.

Aaron, welcome.

You have three minutes.

Thank you, Mayor Pace.

Good evening, Mayor, Counselors.

My name is Aaron Nichols, live at 11,000 Northwest Jackson Quarry Road, Hillsboro, Oregon.

I farm next door.

As you probably guessed, I'm here to testify and send a bill 1586.

Um first I'd like to say thank you to to Councillor Sinclair, who's been publicly opposed, and we we appreciate that.

Um it is definitely the right side of the bill to be on.

Um I would I'm here to I'm I'm a farmer.

I farm uh 15 acres, I feed about 500 people with my CSA.

I go to two busy farmers' markets, I sell wholesale vegetables, I employ about 10 people.

Um this is irrevocably damaging to the soils, as we've heard.

Um I think that's clear.

I don't think anyone questions whether bulldozing a bunch of farmland is gonna destroy the soils.

It's also very damaging to the agricultural community.

I farm to the north of Hillsboro, uh, much of the land is to the west.

Many farmers rent land in both.

Um that will not be an option when we put 1,700 acres of data centers in the only rural route between the two farming regions around Hillsboro.

Um there's also a major question of whether farming infrastructure will survive if we reduce the uh some of our very best soils and and kick farmers off of those.

Uh you know, we our farming infrastructure serves people from Tillamook to Washington.

We are a center of farming as well, um, and it is our second biggest industry.

It's very possible we will see a we'll see a steep decline and some uh a death spiral quite possibly should we should we choose to take this acreage out of farming.

Um it's a bad idea.

But I think that those reasons, you know, me driving a tractor from one field to another is not why over 600 people have testified on this bill and over 92 percent are opposed.

Um no one, by the way, has testified against jobs.

Um we've seen, as Nelly said, only about 30 acres of advanced manufacturing built on green fields in the past 15 years, years where Hillsboro has had 1,100 of acres from the Grand Bargain has been totally unconstrained by land.

We've also seen hundreds of acres of data centers built on former farmland.

It's 15 years of failed economic development, 15 years of growth at any cost.

It's 15 years of placing uh any corporation over our communities.

And now we're told that there's two options for this new 1700 acres, and both of them will bring thousands of jobs and millions of tax revenue.

So why didn't that happen before?

Why are we looking at data centers on the 1100 acres that we brought in last time?

Um I think the reason is, and I I think the reason this bill will not bring jobs to Oregon is that we are not short on land in Oregon.

We have 500 acres in Hillsborough, we have 1,000 acres in Wilsonville, we have the Heinex plants in Eugene.

We have a lot of acreage, all of it quite ready for for advanced manufacturing or any other industry.

What we're lacking, especially in Hillsboro is accountability.

And so that is what I'm looking to see is accountability.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Alexis, you have uh three minutes, but hold up.

And then Myrna, you can come up.

Myrna Munoz.

Okay, you can have a seat right there.

And then Dirk Kenutsen, you are on deck.

Alexis, welcome.

You have three minutes.

Thank you for having me.

Uh my name's Alexis.

I have a small business here in Aloha, but we do a lot of work here in Hillsborough, and I try very hard to provide good, well-paying jobs for my employees.

Um over the span of the last year, I've decided to spend the entire year dedicating 30 plus hours talking to the community, working in the community to try to help people that are facing things like utility shutoffs.

And honestly, it's been incredibly difficult.

I mean to have those conversations with people on a weekly basis when you have families that come in that are having their water and their power shut off to them because they're not able to keep up with their utility rate increases year after year.

And now you have the jobs act focusing on building 1700 acres of land, the majority of which will likely end up going to data centers.

My concern, aside from the irreparable damage to that farmland, is where are all the utilities going to come from?

That's going to require massive investments into infrastructure.

And those companies that are coming in, unfortunately, we're not putting forward legislature that's going to hold them accountable for those costs.

Those are going to be put in to the people at the bottom, the people that are already suffering as much as it is.

It's incredibly disheartening to see things like this happen to be put forward by our own senators.

And then on top of that, you realize that just in the last month, you had a massive power company, Puget Sound Energy, have a bidding war with Amazon over in Morrow County, where they closed on a final sale price for the single largest green power development in the entire Pacific Northwest that is now going to be privately owned at the final sale price of 86 million dollars.

It is very painful to recognize that while yes, 86 million dollars is a lot of money, it is a far cry from the 220 million dollars in tax subsidy credits that Amazon received in the last year.

And the only reason that they went forward with that purchase was because PGE is unable to keep up with the power demands of their existing data centers.

They themselves have acknowledged it, and that is why they pushed so hard for the sale of this land.

Projects like this are going to exacerbate this problem.

That single green power initiative would have provided enough power to hundreds of thousands of households had it been used for public good.

We're now focusing on turning over this land, hoping to bring back high-paying jobs to try to revitalize the heyday of when Intel provided us with a stable form of high income taxes.

Those days haven't come back, and we've tried this in the past, as many have mentioned before.

We've tried the data centers, we've tried the industrial sectors.

The jobs aren't there.

The only thing that has remained consistent is that pieces of legislature like this and initiatives like this harm the people at the bottom the most.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Dirk, you can come up to the other desk.

And on deck, we have Denise Kerr.

Okay.

Uh Myrna, you have welcome, you have three minutes.

I think this is already on.

Good evening, Hillsboro City Council.

My name is Myrna Munoz, and I'm a bilingual educator of over 25 years, a Mexican-American mother of two with a lifetime of participatory citizenship.

I'm so worried about us right now.

I came to Oregon in admiration of our nature.

The land grab that SB 1586 represents is astounding.

I want to submit testimony.

I went to submit testimony at the Capitol on Monday, and was shocked to hear the language that these corporate monsters are using to justify breaking their promises to the people of Hillsboro.

I'm concerned about the democratic principles under which the ideas and protocols outlined in the bill were gathered and decided on.

What was called collaboration included only corporate business interests and not the people that vote in this community.

It seems that we forgot to include loops for feedback from the community with such a big change to our promise.

When I learned about this bill and its avenues for bringing data centers to our region, I was alarmed.

I couldn't believe I had missed engagement processes for this because I know my community feels like me.

We don't want the danger of data centers around us.

How could this happen?

It's become clear to me that community voice was not a priority for the folks collaborating to move this bill forward.

It's inappropriate to follow the federal government's lead with regard to democracy in this difficult moment.

Our senator and all of the people she collaborated with to bring this land grab forward, yet again transparently shared the language of profit over people.

I heard nothing from their collaboration about the impact to the farmers that invested in agriculture here and the business they bring.

I heard nothing from their collaboration about the impact on minoritized communities from this abuse of land, water, and soil.

I heard no reference to any kind of prevention around what we know these data centers will do to our electricity supply.

Does anyone here care about the nine gigawatt problem?

Now is the time to put people over profit and make sure our communities need our communities' needs are centered into the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're up next.

Um, but hold off.

And then Denise, you can come up.

And on deck, we have Jean Christin.

Jean Kristen is on deck.

Okay.

Dirk, you have three minutes.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Mayor Pace, members of the council.

Today I'm here to expose the linguistic fraud contained in Senate Bill 1586-4.

Proponents claim this bill excludes standalone data centers.

We keep hearing that.

But the text from yesterday tells a different story.

On July 23rd, 2025, the federal government issued executive order 14318, which officially reclassified large scale AI data centers as quote industrial infrastructure.

Senator Solman's dot four amendment mirrors the federal pivot perfectly.

In section 21A1, in her bill, we now have a defined definition of advanced manufacturing as activities that depend on the coordination of information, computation, software, and networking.

Mayor, that is a statutory definition of a data center.

By adopting this language, you're not protecting Hillsborough from more server farms.

You're giving them a legal fast track to our rural reserves.

Despite overwhelming opposition, over 400 pieces of opposition so far.

Under the new definition of advanced manufacturing, it will be automatic for the same companies already using these sources in July.

Uh as I stated from the July 2025 Federal definition, they'll automatically be able to build data centers.

So the whole no standalone data centers is completely canceled, which was pointed out yesterday.

Now let me point out that three major Hillsboro players already here and opened, aligned data centers owned by BlackRock, digital realty owned by Vanguard, and stack infrastructure.

These three have already filed federal permits around the country to build data centers in these similar zones.

This filing under the new federal definition, which aligns with the Dash 4 amendment yesterday.

They're not building factories for people, they're building power hungry hubs for machines and doing so by calling it manufacturing.

This is what's going to happen with that land if we don't change uh some of the facts around this bill and the way it's being um worded.

And mayor, I brought this up before, but you did take thousands in campaign donations from the biggest energy lobbies in the Pacific Northwest and then that are owned by national the big three we call them.

And you did take some money from land um people that were hired by the landowners that are classified as lobbyists.

You those were campaign donations, I understand that, but you haven't disclosed that.

Um you should because it creates an ethical situation for you, which I don't think is fair for you or the people of Hillsboro.

So, because of all these reasons, I think we need to take a break.

I know we all want jobs, but we can't have more of this.

This isn't gonna work.

And if there are big employers here, let's exempt data centers altogether, like Hillsborough did with its 350 acres.

Let's do that, and then you got my vote.

Thank you.

Uh Denise Kerry, you're up next.

Uh Jean Christin, you can come up to the table.

And Alan Ripalea.

Alan Ripalea, you are on deck.

Okay.

Denise, welcome.

You have three minutes.

Uh no, but you do have to press the button down.

The button is in the center of the console.

Make sure the light is green.

It is.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Mayor Pace and Council members.

Good evening.

Happy Mardi Gras.

My name is Denise Kerr.

I grew up in Alowa and have lived in Hillsborough for 40 years.

SB 1586, the jobs act, looks like another unforeseen bill with not enough time to conduct research.

It's been less than a week since the bill was introduced, as if it was meant to catch the public off guard.

This is incredibly similar similar to how the TNACOTEC SP4 meeting on October 10th, 2024, was found on the public with the same 1700 acres in uh loophole, my word, intended to circumvent our land use planning goals.

Again, with less than a week for the public to research and prepare.

At the Senator's presentation at the Capitol on uh February 13th, she referred to this bill as a unicorn.

Well, I found it, I found the unicorn people.

There's one obstacle.

I found that the unicorn, like this bill, is Intel's pipe dream.

The previous CEO of Intel, Pat Geltinger is quoted as saying before the 5,000 employee layoff last uh year, 2025, quote, I would be reticent to constrain my dreams for how big it being Intel might be in the future.

End quote.

Intel wants these 1700 acres.

This bill is one of many bills that seek to circumvent our 19 land use goals.

That seems like a very labor intensive for legislatures, cumbersome way of resolving the root cause of these many bills.

It appears to me that the root cause needs to be addressed, and then all the wrestling and wrangling these bills around the rules won't be necessary.

Fix the land use goals and stop trying to circumvent them if they are flawed.

This bill is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's the camel getting its nose under the tent.

It will fragment the farming system in Washington County for our second biggest industry, agriculture, to simply bleed out.

HB 4078 was sanctioned for 50 years through 2065.

It's been 12 since 2014.

Farmers and agriculturists have plans, made big investments in vendors, preparation, equipment, structures, schedules, and more.

Next up is Gene Kristen.

I have one more sentence.

Thank you for coming.

I have one more sentence.

Your time is up.

Thank you.

The next person up is Jean Kristen.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

I'm here.

My name is Gene Kristen to speak respectfully to appeal the proposed street naming in the town home development in the Havenwood area in Hillsborough.

Am I still invited to speak?

I noticed the development team was.

Yes, you can.

As development moves forward, we understand change is inevitable.

But how we choose to name our streets is still within our control, and it matters.

The currently proposed street names are personal family names, such as Wally.

They have no documented relevance to our broader community history.

No demonstrated public contribution and no recognized connection to this land.

Based on the city of Hillsborough's own code and naming guidelines, new street names are expected to avoid confusion, duplication, and arbitrary personal references.

Street names are not private dedications.

They become part of our public map, our emergency systems, our identity, our legacy.

They should reflect either the natural features of the land, geographic continuity, or individuals of clear and recognized community importance.

Additionally, the land carries a much deeper history.

Long before incorporation, long before development, the home, the area was home to the Kalapuya, the Tuality Indian group, and the At Falati people were the subgroup in Hillsborough, Washington County, acknowledging that history respectfully through culturally appropriate naming developed in consultation with tribal representatives where appropriate would demonstrate that Hillsborough values truth, heritage, and inclusion.

It would show that we recognize this land did not begin with us.

There is a clear opportunity to honor this setting.

The Kalapuya, a tribal members are working with their language revitalization.

They have words for V for Beaver, ENA, for water, wallamet, uh fir trees, trillium, sage, hagelnet.

This would create cohesion rather than replace it with something disconnected.

This appeal is about ensuring that development is thoughtful, that names shape identity.

They appear on maps, driver license, school registration, business addresses, emergency dispatch.

They are spoken every day.

They become permanent.

We have one opportunity name these streets well.

I respectfully ask the council to reconsider, reconsider approval of personal family names.

Do they not meet the spirit or the intent of Hillsborough's naming standards?

Instead, I urge you to direct to involve our Native American and neighbor community with the developer in selecting names that let this neighborhood feel like it belongs here, not that it was just built here.

Thank you very much.

Alan is next.

Are you Alan?

Yes.

Okay.

So hold off one second.

Mickey Barnes, you are next.

Mickey.

And then on deck is Jody Clark Lampa.

So Jody, you're on deck.

Mickey, you'll be next.

And Alan, you have three minutes.

Mayor Pace, members of the council, thank you for having me here.

My name is Alan Rappelier.

I'm a retired land use attorney with 35 years of experience.

I've lived here in Hillsborough for 30 years.

And I urge the City Council to not support this bill.

It is a sh as been said before, it's a short session.

It's uh it's been rushed.

We haven't had really a good comment from your uh your citizens here.

I think Washington County needs to get more involved, and uh it can always come back next year if it needs to come back, but this should be rejected this year.

Uh and it's bad planning.

I've been involved in planning my whole, you know, most of my adult life, and uh the hallmark of Oregon planning is local government doing the planning.

Here you have your state legislators, you know, most of them who don't live here, making decisions for us.

And so that's just a bad uh bad uh way to do things.

And again, this is a violation of the grand bargain in 2014.

I was uh participated in that grand bargain, and uh it was very difficult compromises were made.

And here we're throwing that all away.

I mean, one of the hallmarks of local government is that you know adhere to what your former people did, unless there's some really good reasons not to.

And so uh to uh throw that all away uh in this method is a really bad uh bad precedent.

And again, it sets a bad precedent around not just here, but around the state to have the legislature piecemeal, what land gets brought into the urban growth boundary, who gets the benefit, and and that just benefit it'll benefit the people who have the poll and have the money and not the benefit of the local citizens who you know need the jobs and need growth.

And so I mean I'm not against growth.

Uh and I think we here we have some land, some cushion land, you know, it's 500 acres I've heard out there that can be used for industrial land.

So it's it's not a rush to get this done.

So again, I urge you to oppose this.

And uh and you know that and as also as a land attorney, I see that term accessory use, and uh that can be used in very broad term, and so could it's just too wide open door for people to bring more data farms and you know I live in this community as you do too, and I've heard nothing about people being upset about data farms, and I am a set too.

I just don't think they're good for our community, and and we don't want any more of those, so this legislation needs to change to make sure that's out.

So uh and finally, just taking productive farmland out of service that's been you know productive for a hundred uh over a hundred years and will be protective for hundreds of more years.

Uh I think it's a bad idea.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Uh Mickey, you're up next, and then Jody Clark, Lampa, you can come up.

Hang on one second, Mickey.

I'm sorry, I didn't give you the right cue.

So hold off one second.

Uh Jody, you're up, and then Fawn Hosey.

Fawn, you're on deck.

Is Fawn here?

Fawn is here?

Okay, great.

Uh Mickey, go ahead, you have three minutes.

Hello, um, Mayor Pace, members of the City Council, thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Um I I appreciate your time.

I um I do want to express my gratitude to all the people who spoke so passionately and eloquently this evening against SB 5086.

I joined them in opposing this bill.

I'd like to see us um honor the earth uh and uh honor the farmland and the the you know just the sheer generosity of this earth rather than paving it over and destroying that land forever.

I do want to spend a better part of my testimony, however, on another um issue, and that is the uh the softball fields at the uh fairgrounds complex, located across from the Hillsborough Airport.

Uh that airport is the most lead polluting airport in the state.

A review of fuel flowage fee data for HIO revealed that during a 17-year period extending from 2006 to 2023, users of this facility release 22 tons of lead into the lived environment.

22 tons.

It does not go away.

Um, and to this day, about three quarters of a ton of lead is released onto this community by users of that airport every single year.

There have been multiple studies involving over a million children in 500 airports showing that children who reside in proximity to these facilities have elevated blood lead level readings.

One study done in 2021 at Reed Hillview Airport in Santa Clara County found that children living near that airport had blood lead levels equal to the children that underwent the flint water crisis, equal or greater.

And here in Hillsboro, we can't get anybody to even do a study.

This is appalling.

This is appalling.

You can either have that airport, you can have these data centers, you can have industry, or you can have a community that is fit for human habitation, but you can't have both.

You've got to start making some hard decisions.

Uh children, newborns, minority populations, and low wealth communities are disproportionately impacted.

Lead damages the brain, causing lower IQs, speech difficulties, ADHD, risk of failing to complete high school, behavior problems, pregnancy and aggression as a teen, and adults, it leads to miscarriages, kidney ailments, reproductive problems, 256,000 premature deaths every year in adults due to lead poisoning.

I mean, this is shameful.

We have got to take action.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Jody, you are up next, but hold off one second.

And don't forget to press the buttons so your mic is on.

And then Fawn Hosey, you can come up and take a seat on that desk at that desk.

Uh Jody, you have three minutes.

Okay, I'm gonna start out with this.

This is why I can't stamp.

So I'm gonna clap.

Okay.

Sure.

Sure.

Okay.

And I hate coming and always being upset.

I'd rather be able to come here and say, hey, let's work on.

You know we didn't want this to happen with the uh 1700 acres.

Nothing opened up to us.

I'm in reading through what we're gonna be talking about, but you're gonna be talking about tonight at the work session because we don't get to talk about it.

Where is it that we're supposed to tell you when we don't want something?

Especially with the short notice.

It was it's like you're trying to pull the wool over ours, and we're not that stupid.

We're just not.

And we don't want this.

We have money.

Let's put that money in our schools.

Let's put that money in our health care.

How about we put that money in help for our neighbors who are still being abducted today at 2 30 at the MM market?

Let's do something for the community that actually benefits the community.

Let's start there.

Maybe we could also start with a courtesy of eye-to-eye contact when someone's made the effort to come in and speak.

No.

Okay.

Um we have lack of community input.

I think it's you guys' role to figure out how you can get more community input.

You know I'm here and I listen and I spread the word.

But you guys need to do it.

You have public information people.

Let's get the word out.

Let's give us time to work on this.

And don't go supporting something until you've got the community behind you on that.

I'm tired of not being invited to your parties and finding out this stuff on my own.

Having to do the research myself.

You're not here for the community.

You might be here for the community in 20 years, but you're not here for the community now, or the people who need food, or the people who need medical access, or the people who need help with their rent.

200,000 doesn't go that far.

So let's take the time and try to do something that we can work together so we can feel good about looking each other in the eye.

Hint hand.

No.

Okay, and um and see if we can't um do something together, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Say again.

You don't need to thank me.

Okay.

Uh you have uh welcome, and you have three minutes.

Thank you.

Mayor and counselors, Fawn Hosey, uh rural Hillsborough.

I'm here with a little historical background on Senate Bill 1586, abbreviated from the PowerPoint that I sent earlier.

As the urban and rail reserves process began, Washington County rigged their analysis.

The county's committee was composed of 15 urban votes, one vote split between two farmers.

They avoided the required way of analyzing farmland for reserves.

They were warned a lot.

Over four years, 20 hearings, a hundred testimonies, panels heard about the illegalities, the county order ignored it.

Before and after their appeals, plaintiffs offered to negotiate, but they were rebuffed.

February 20th, 2014, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that the county had used narrowly circumscribed pseudo factors.

Analysis of the rural reserve factors was illegally imperially impermissible.

It was misapplied, uh, and they misapplied the Royal Reserve factors.

Erroneous application of the Royal Reserve factors is significant, they said.

LCDC must remand the entire submittal.

Lucky for them, Hillsboro got a workaround in the 2014 grand bargain.

Mayor and staff were present during the negotiations, so was I, and consented.

It would be a one-time only legislative land use.

The bargain was agreed upon by all, including Hillsborough.

Immediate benefits to the city were residential South Hillsboro and the North Hillsboro Industrial Area right into their UGBs.

And the 1,729 acres were designated as rural reserves.

Since then, repeatedly and now in Senate Bill 1586, Hillsboro's bad faith is exposed as part of their strategic investment strategy.

Wasn't this settled 12 years ago?

This year, the opposition expressed is higher than ever, as over 600 are registering their opposition so far.

So a deal's a deal, except with the City of Hillsboro.

Embarrassing when the mayor and staff acknowledged the reneging on the grand bargain in 2018, and even displayed ignorance of the appeals court ruling and the Oregon land use process and procedures.

It's clear the City of Hillsborough practices selective ethics.

Stop crossing your fingers behind your backs.

Community has lost its trust.

And you shouldn't be surprised.

So withdraw from the brill and display the pride you have shown in the farmland uh symbolism in your city flag.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, that is all the public comment for tonight.

Thank you all for coming in to do that.

Uh moving to item four, the consent agenda.

The items on the consent agenda are normally considered in a single motion.

Any item may be removed for separate consideration upon request by any member of the council.

Is there a request to remove any items for separate consideration?

Okay, moving forward.

Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second case.

Thank you.

Is there any discussion?

May I please have a roll call?

Councillor's case.

Hi.

Ann Vary.

Hi.

Hi.

Sinclair.

Hi.

Harris.

Hi.

Thank you.

Moving to item five.

The motion passes.

Moving to item five, public hearings.

5.1.

Consider Finance Committee's recommendation to adopt a resolution adopting rules, regulations.

I'll say that again.

Item 5.1.

Consider Finance Committee's recommendation to adopt a resolution adopting rules, regulations, and fees of the Hillsborough Pioneer Cemetery.

Resolution number 2912 is available.

I will open the public hearing on item 5.1.

No one has registered to speak virtually on this item.

Do we have any yellow cards related to this public hearing?

Okay.

The public hearing is now closed.

Do I have a motion to adopt resolution number 2912?

Harrisomos.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second case.

Is there any discussion?

May I please have a roll call?

Councillors Harris.

Hi.

Sinclair.

Hi.

Anne Brie.

Hi.

Case.

Hi.

Thank you.

Resolution number two nine one two is adopted.

Moving to new business.

Um item 8.1 as a reminder, approved which is consider approving the request for exception to the citywide naming policy.

That item will be moved to a different meeting.

I don't know when that is.

Do we know when that is yet?

No?

Okay.

So it won't be discussed tonight.

So moving to item 8.2.

And actually, moving before we move to item 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4, I would like to invite staff up for a brief presentation.

Thank you for waiting.

Staff, go right ahead.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Raheem Harji.

I'm the deputy city manager, and I'm joined here by um Jerome Koch and Sean Morrison.

Jerome is with the Parks Department and Sean's with uh the Parks and Rec uh with the Public Works Department.

Um and we also have a bunch of staff who have worked for many years on trying to get this project to where it is, um, and including one of our parks commissioners do in the audience.

Um we'll go over a quick presentation um on the three items, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4.

Um, and then just take any questions that you may have on any of these items.

So um just a real overview of the presentation.

We'll go through a quick background on kind of how we got here, talk a little bit about a deal with the Washing with Washington County for the Fairground Sports Complex, get into some um discussion on the cost funding and timeline, and then go over the park uh parks and uh recreation commission's recommendation and some next steps to move forward.

If you have any questions along the way, just uh please chime in.

Okay.

Um so how do we get here?

Um so I think many of you are familiar with the new Hops ballpark.

Um back in uh 2023 and 2024 when we were working on um where would be the best location for the Hops Ballpark and where we would work on mitigating some fields.

Um this is what GFRC looked like.

So um just to maybe orient you a little bit.

The Hillsborough ballpark is where the hops used to play.

Uh fields one, two, and three are to the right, uh, and the south and fields four, five, and six, or where the new hops ballpark was um put.

Um you kind of see the area in red, that's the GFRC complex, and uh called out two specific areas called out as proposed west fields and the proposed east fields.

Those were the areas that we were looking at on site to mitigate um fields four, five, and six.

So back in uh 2024, um the city council approved a lease with the Hillsborough Hops for the new ballpark, which um just finished construction.

Um they also approved the parks and recreation commission's recommendation for replacing the field use, which was from fields four, five, and six.

Um, and there were two other items that were um approved by the council basically to start the design and construction work.

The first was findings in support of an exemption from competitive seal bidding for the GFRC softball fields.

That's basically to start the construction work, and then a design contract to replace the fields at GFRC, which is the design work associated with the construction.

Um again, just some more background.

Because of those displays fields, the mitigation plan to replace the use was what you see on the screen in front of you.

This was the minimum that we needed to do, which is recover full use of the Hillsborough ballpark, field three, which we couldn't use field three while the hops were playing, and Hillsborough Stadium, which we also couldn't use Hillsborough Stadium when the hops were playing, just because of conflicts with um fans and fouls balls.

The um mitigation strategy at a minimum uh required us to construct one new grass field in the northwest corner, um, and then one another grass field on the east corner, or alternatively construct two grass fields on the north corner.

Um we were also negotiating hours for community use at the new Hillsborough ballpark, uh which we would get to program.

And then we would also improve the Hillsborough ballpark to accommodate both baseball and softball.

Again, this was the minimum plan.

So back in July, uh the city council approved a plan that did more than the minimum.

So it obviously recovered the full use of the ballpark, field three and the stadium.

Um the recommendation was to replace uh to build two fields on the northwest corner, but instead of having them grass, um turf them, add lighting, parking, and restrooms, and then design them so they would be built for multi-use sports, not just uh softball or baseball.

And then at the time, because we were going to be out there doing some construction work, there was an opportunity to include the design construction of the Crescent Park Greenway Trail that goes to the GFRC complex.

Um and then uh also negotiate hours with the ball with the hops for their new ballpark at about 350 hours, and then improve the ball, the existing Hillsborough ballpark to accommodate both baseball and softball and maximize multi-field options.

So this is what it would have looked like.

Um the new hops stadium, which is just under uh finished construction, would have been kind of where you see it.

And then on the northwest side, we would have built two fields.

But as we shared with council at the time, um, as we approved the loss of use plan, we did find out from the Bonneville Power Administration that they had some upgrades for some transmission lines there that uh would be uh safety concern from their perspective of building uh ball fields right next to them.

So because we had done quite a little uh quite a bit of work, Jerome and his team um did a lot of work in trying to find options on replacement strategies.

We just went back to some of that work and we started negotiating with Washington County for a long-term lease at the Washington County Fairgrounds.

So what that meant at the time was um we could only do the the things that have the check marks next to them.

Uh recover full use of the Hillsborough ballpark, field three and the stadium.

Um we were able to negotiate hours for community use at the new hops ballpark at 350 hours, that's already in the lease.

And then um we were able to improve the Hillsborough ballpark, and I can understand the two terms the Hops Ballpark and the Hillsborough Ballpark can get confusing.

Um but uh Hillsborough Ballpark was previously known as Ron Tonkin Field.

Um we were able to uh replace the turf and make the improvements necessarily to accommodate not just baseball but softball and maximize multi-use field options.

So all of those other things were done except the two replacement fields on the northwest corner of the campus.

So that's where the fairground sports complex came in.

Um before I get into what we're proposing to do, any questions on the history on how we got here.

No, thank you.

Cool.

All right.

So uh just to orient everybody uh where the Hillsboro um ballpark is, uh not the fairgrounds sports complex, sorry, lots of complexes.

The fairgrounds, sports complex, sorry, lots of complexes.

It gets confusing.

It gets.

So it is where the Washington County fairgrounds are.

The point you see, the the green point you see is the where the fields are.

To the east of that is the TriMed Park and Ride.

To the northwest, sorry, the northeast is Wingspan or what's its name now?

Okay, my bad.

And then to the north of that, as some of the comments came up or the Hillsborough Airport.

I think this is a good image to show that you can't really see the runway here.

It's outside of the airport protection zone, so typically the flight path does not go across these fields.

However, it is within close proximity to the um airport again, but not in the airport, not in the runway protection zone.

Just orienting you a little bit closer, as you can kind of see the fairgrounds in their current state today.

Um there's some old tennis courts on the northwest corner.

Um there's the five fields.

Um technically, two of them are not really usable just because of the conditions of them.

And this image is a good one showing you the conditions of the field.

They're not that great.

Um can I just comment on that, Raheem?

Um my son and daughter played sports here, and that they're terrible.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's really bad facility.

So well, we're hoping to change that.

Um and then the other thing I'd like to call out to your attention at the north uh at the corner of um Northeast 28th Avenue and Northeast Veterans Drive.

You see that green area.

Um that's also something that's come into the mix into our in our discussions with the county.

So um just wanted to point that area out too.

Is that the area that's right now it says North Parking Lot?

That's just a good thing.

Yes, just want to make sure.

Yeah.

So here's what we want to do.

Um we want to build a new sports complex in Hillsboro.

Um the sports complex will generally look like what you see here, where we will build um that uh the turf fields on the west side, keep the grass fields on the east side, and improve the grass fields.

And by improve, I mean improve the drainage, improve the lighting, maybe add a few more amenities uh just to make the play and watch experience better.

Um the fields you see on the west side are uh four softball fields.

Um we're trying to maximize the multi-use options so you can kind of see some overlays of soccer fields on there, and then um add a parking lot.

On the north side of Veterans Drive, you see the area called out as the North Parking lot.

Um we want to turn that into a parking lot, but also uh look at maybe using some of that area for other things.

So we're exploring the use of uh using that area for some courts or something like that.

We'll we'll work through that during the design process.

Um the other thing that in our discussions with the county, they still need to use some of that area during the fair.

So we're working with them to look at uh building some type of area for large trailer storage and areas that we can wash uh livestock trailers out, just to make sure there's also a benefit to the fair.

Um just zooming in on the uh west side of the uh future sports complex.

I do want to call out like this is a concept that will be refined as we go through the design process.

Because we have the uh north parking lot now, we may be able to make some of these fields a little bigger and reduce the parking on the south side since we'll have some area on the north side.

And again, we'll go through some engagement process during the design uh during the design work to get some uh user feedback as well.

Councillor Ambrie.

Thank you.

Um the um the grayed out part on the on the east, that that's gonna remain as it is.

Is that that's what you said, right?

Yeah, so thanks for calling that out.

So the uh the fields to the east that look like there's no work going to happen on them.

We're actually going to improve the grass conditions and the drainage and the lighting.

Okay.

Um just if you if you go out there right now, the lighting is in really bad shape.

I don't even think we use it right now, and there's pretty bad drainage issues as well.

So we would take care of all of that as part of this project.

And and the parking is gonna remain.

Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

The parking will still remain where you see it on this map on the northwest corner, and then on the north parking lot.

Okay.

Um Jerome, do you want to add anything to that?

Do you want me to talk about the RB park?

Yes.

So uh sorry, um, Counselor Harris.

So so that area you're gonna improve the grass will be used like for soccer fields, rec soccer, and things like that.

Then it will become useful in the in the mix, right?

Yes.

Yeah, those those fields as uh the the mayor stated very eloquently, they're they're in really poor shape.

Our plan is to improve the drainage and the soil conditions and then also um re-establish a functioning lighting system so that those fields are will be on par with the fields that were removed at GFRC.

Part of the reason that um we are not proposing to convert those to artificial turf is that the county's fairgrounds master plan calls for that area to eventually become an RV park.

So in Raheem's discussions with the the county, um they've agreed to let us continue to use those fields for use sports to improve those fields, um, but they reserve the right to convert that area to an RV park should they choose to do that in the future.

Great.

And are are you going to keep those two diamonds on there as well as improve the grass or you're removing the diamonds just so what's all grass?

No, though those fields will stay roughly in that configuration.

Right.

Um but we will be making some significant improvements there.

Yeah.

Councilor Ambry.

Thank you.

Um is there a covered area as well?

Not currently as proposed.

Um because most of our main focus with these fields was mitigating the fields that were lost at GFRC.

Um and then I'll talk a little bit about this during the funding slide on what revenue we have to be able to pay for this.

Now, over time, if opportunities present themselves to have covered areas and add more courts or things like that, we will definitely explore that.

But our main focus for the project has been um mitigating the replacement hours we needed to and finding opportunities to enhance that.

Counselor Sinclair.

Hi.

Um in hearing in council receiving testimony um tonight, we I had not read this piece of input pertaining to lead emissions prior to this evening.

Um I know a couple years back when we approved Hidden Creek, the topic of lead emissions had been brought up.

Has there been any soil testing on lead emissions for this area?

No, not to our knowledge, but as we do the work, we could certainly do some environmental assessments and just uh if there are any r issues we could remedy that through the project.

But to our understanding, as we sit today, they aren't any.

Because there hasn't been any testing done, yeah.

There is no testing.

Um I really like the design, and I know this is a need in our community.

I also can't ignore the aspects of testimony we heard tonight from people who have years of experience on the subject of lead emissions.

And I like to ask the staff make a commitment to doing environmental testing on this prior to council making an approval.

Um I would know I did not discuss this prior because I was not aware of this input.

Um I I wish I would have spoken up when we talked about Hidden Creek at the time, but I was a a new counselor at the time and I didn't bring concerns up back then.

And this is something that we all grow from and learn of and have awareness about.

And I'd like to ask the council uh the staff further look into this prior to approval.

Sure.

So um I can clarify a little bit more on the next steps, counselor, because this is not the last bite you get at this.

There will be another opportunity for you all to approve the guaranteed maximum price.

So between now and when you see that, we could certainly do that testing work.

So tonight isn't asking you to approve the final construction contract.

We're not doing that tonight.

But what we're asking for is approval one for the replacement strategy, which um allows us to move forward.

And then two, it allows us to approve a design contract, which with the design contract it gives us experts who actually do this work for a living to be able to do the testing.

So kind of in line with what you were looking to do, we could certainly do that as the next step.

Thank you, Raheem.

I appreciate and I can touch on that later on when we get to the final next step slides.

Thank you.

So this is a good point to also touch back on what Jerome mentioned about the future RV park.

So the county's master plan shows that area to be a future RV park.

Um the county hasn't identified any funding to to move that forward, which is why they also agreed to a year-to-year lease on the area in um to the east.

But to Jerome's point, there may be a point where they do find funding to be able to do that.

And we'll have to decide what to do at that point.

But right now, we're nothing is indicated that they have that funding.

So one fun fact, we've been maintaining this area since 1975.

So if history is an indicator of how things are going to move forward, I'm not sure it would change what you're seeing here.

Thanks for that historical perspective.

Yeah.

So going back to a little bit more of the design, we've already seen this.

So what we're also asking you for approval tonight is for the city manager to execute a lease with Washington County.

This is what the general terms are of the lease, which is what the Board of County Commissioners have also generally agreed to at a work session late last year.

So what we would be uh leasing from the counties a 20-year lease on the North Parking lot area and the West Turf Fields.

That's where we'll be making most of the uh capital investment.

And then a year-to-year lease on the East Grass Fields, which we would ask for some notice of about a year to give us a heads up if they ever do want to um get us out of there.

We would be responsible for all the maintenance on uh the North Parking lot, the West Turf Fields, and the East Grass Fields.

We would be responsible for uh mitigating any wetlands on the property, which there are a few.

And the county will have access to the parking areas during the fair and other designated events.

And like I had mentioned earlier, the North Parking lot will be built to accommodate a livestock washout area so they can use that during the fair.

Um and then the infrastructure improvements to some of the points earlier would be done in a way to consider a future RV park.

We wouldn't be building the R V park for them, but as we like bring in water lines if we need to, or sewer lines, we would make sure they're sized adequately for an RV park in the future.

That being said, the county would still be responsible for paying for their system development charges associated with that infrastructure.

So while we may upsize the infrastructure now for a future condition, they will be paying for that future condition when they come in.

Councilor Ambury.

Thank you.

Um you mentioned the North Parking Law would have some uh uh courts.

What what I'm not very athletic.

What kind of courts?

Um so right now we're we haven't really designed anything yet on that area just because we're still at the very early stages.

But as part of what we typically look at for all our courts is making sure they're multi-use.

So uh futsal, pickleball, basketball, um, other sports that would allow for like just court use.

Um then uh one thing that we didn't agree to with the county was there would be no rent rent payment for the land because the value of the improvements that we're making uh far exceed the value of the land, and considering that they said we don't want a rent payment, which worked great for us.

Yeah.

So these would be memorialized in a lease, and we're as part of item um 8.2.

We're asking that you authorize the city manager to execute that lease.

Great, Councillor Avery.

Thank you.

Are we paying rent right now?

No.

Okay.

And one of the challenges, uh, I'm glad you brought that up, because one of the challenges that we had was we have a year-to-year lease on that southern area that um has the future turf fields and the future grass fields.

But it's a year-to-year lease.

And we didn't want to make major capital improvements without a long-term commitment that they would be there in the future.

So that's why it's taken a long time for us to get to this point.

Uh Councilor Harris.

Uh, for purpose of the record, here as we get into the discussion on this issue, I wanted to declare for the record I have an actual conflict on 8.3 when that comes to vote.

I have a potential contact conflict on 8.2 and 8.4.

That conflict is my daughter works for H HPR.

She doesn't work on this project.

She's not a principal.

Nonetheless, I believe it arises to the level of an actual and then a potential conflict on those matters.

Thank you.

So I will be abstaining.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions?

No?

All right, keep rolling.

Okay.

So um just a quick overview on costs, funding, and timeline.

So the general cost estimate for all the work is about $25 million.

And I say $25 million is because some of the preliminary work that Jerome and his team did showed that we could get all what you see there generally done for about $25 million.

That's also the budget for the project.

Um if we need to spend more than that, we need to figure out an alternative funding strategy, um, which we believe we can do this project within $25 million.

The funding for this is coming from $20 million from the Hops ticket surcharges, which we negotiated in the lease with them.

This would be paid back to us over time.

We're borrowing the initial funding, which you had already approved as part of the borrowing package for a number of projects.

And though that funding can only be used in areas we provide enhanced capacity.

So for example, if we were just replacing it with grass fields and not doing them as TERF, which increases the amount of hours we can use the fields, we wouldn't be able to use SDCs.

However, since we are doing them as TERF and also adding multi-use options like the soccer fields you saw, that allows us to use SDCs.

It was a similar strategy we were using when we were planning to do the fuels at Gordon Faber Recreation Complex.

And right now we have estimated about $5 million.

Like any other project, we look for external funding sources like grants and other things, which we're also going to be doing with this project.

The timeline for this is as soon as you give us the approval, we would start moving forward with design work and permitting.

Counselor Sinclair to your point, that's when we would also do some of the environmental work.

And then we would come back to you for a uh construction contract for the guaranteed to approve the guaranteed maximum price.

That's when you get the final yes, move forward or don't move forward.

And we'll have all those results on testing by that point.

And we plan to get into construction in quarter two of 2027 and be done by quarter four of 2027.

Again, some of this may be fluid depending on the design process.

And we asked them for a recommendation on a revised plan, and this is what they recommended at one of their most recent meetings, which was recover the full use of the Hillsborough Ballpark Field 3 in the stadium, which we've already done.

Improve the Hillsborough ballpark to accommodate both softball and baseball and maximize multi-field options, which we've already done, which I have to highlight is one of the reasons why the AUSL team chose to come to Hillsboro because of this work.

And then build a sports complex at the Washington County fairgrounds to include four softball fields.

All fields are artificial turf with lighting, parking, and restrooms.

All fields are designed to maximize opportunities for multi-purpose use, which those two things uh enhance the minimum that we needed to mitigate, and improve the East Grass fields and upgrade the existing lighting, and then build a north parking lot to accommodate more parking.

And as we do that, we'll look at other options to maybe add some courts or things like that.

Um what we're asking you today to do is uh uh approve PRC's recommendation as you saw in the previous slide, and then authorize the city manager to execute a lease with Washington County in line with the general terms that we've shared with you in the staff report and in the presentation.

And then um execute a contract with the consultants and contractor.

I'll let Sean explain these in a little more detail, but these allow us to move into the next steps.

You will still get an opportunity to approve the GMP.

So I'll turn it over to you, Sean.

Right, like Raheem said, uh following the presentation, we have two council items for approval.

Item 3 8.3 is a design task order for uh Harperhoff Peterson Rogelis for $1.097 million dollars.

Uh this contract includes uh consultant design project management, uh environmental permitting, uh, like we mentioned before.

Um we've already gone out to the site to investigate uh uh some of the environmental issues that are on site.

There's some uh lingering wetlands that we don't think that the Fed is going to take jurisdiction over, but it'll still add time to our permitting timeline.

Uh it also includes geotechnical services, uh multiple concept designs, 60 percent and 100 percent design with construction documents, uh MEP design and permitting, and then any additional services that we need, including uh things like uh contract administration or construction administration.

Um like we mentioned before, we have not solidified the pan the plan for public engagement, but we do plan uh to talk to the public, uh including interviews with the user groups and uh whoever is necessary to weigh in on the the design that we're that we're considering.

Um I'll stop there and um see if there's any questions about item 8.3.

Any questions?

Okay.

Keep going.

All right.

Item 8.4 is the approval of the findings to support the use of CMGC delivery as required by the ORS public contracting rules.

Uh utilizing a CMGC delivery method allows us to competitively select a general contractor to support the design and uh pre-construction process, offering enhanced cost estimating, constructability review, project schedule development, and construction phasing options.

Following a competitive proposal process uh back in 2024, uh the city selected Turner Construction as the general contractor for this project.

Uh we were able to uh uh use that competitive process to move um over to this site because um after we looked through the the contracting rules and talked to our purchasing and legal departments, uh we determined that the two projects are substantially similar enough to allow us to uh use that process that was very successful um last year or the year before.

Um so approving the findings will allow us to move forward with the city manager's approval of the base contract with Turner.

Uh since the base contract is within the city manager's uh um signature authority, uh he can sign that uh and then we would come back uh right before construction to present the guaranteed maximum price, which is essentially the contractor's guarantee of the cost of uh construction, and then uh once we assign that amendment to the base contract, it transfers the risk from the owner, which is the city in this case, to the general contractor, uh, and then we can move forward with construction at that point.

Um so I'm gonna stop here and uh see if there's any questions about item eight point four.

Any questions?

Okay.

Keep going, Sean.

All right that's all I have.

Thank you.

All right.

So um Yeah, that's our last slide.

Um before we go into questions, um, I just want to mention there's a lot of staff who helped get this project to hear.

We've been trying to get this deal with the county for years prior to the Hops project.

Um back there.

Um so just want to thank them.

But um we don't call out one person.

I'm gonna call out Jerome.

Um Jerome has had a lot of patience on um the loss of use strategy and him and his, he's led the team that's calculated the hour for hour uh math on this.

And uh Jerome is also retiring.

So um this is Jerome's last uh city council meeting.

Unless he chooses to come spend his Tuesday nights with us, which I don't think he will.

Um but Jerome just wanted to say thanks for all the great work.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for embarrassing me in public.

Uh it's um it's it's been a team effort, and I want to recognize Raheem for his efforts on this.

He's been talking to the county for how many years to try to get this to uh the finish line, and uh we're just so happy that he's um helped us to get to where we are today.

We're we're excited to move into the next phase.

Excellent.

Jerome, thank you to the city for your ser thank you to you for this for your service to the city.

Thank you very much.

It's been my privilege.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, and to end on this type of uh project is also very exciting.

So any other questions for staff or feedback?

Okay, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

So I'm going to move to item 8.2.

Uh consider parks and recreation commission's recommendation to approve a revised plan to mitigate loss of use resulting from the displacements of fields number four, five, and six at the Gordon Favor Faber Recreation Complex, and authorize the city manager to execute a lease with Washington County proportions of the Washington County Fairground Complex.

Do I have a motion to approve item 8.2?

So moved case.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second, Sinclair.

Thank you.

Is there any discussion?

Yeah, I wanted to say quickly that I appreciate staff's willingness to hear uh what council has concerns and find solutions.

It's greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Um I'd like to add um the work that went into replacing these fields.

Um I know that there were there was a lot of community feedback around those fields being lost.

Uh so thank you again for your for your work on this.

Okay.

Any other discussion?

Counselor Amberey?

No?

Okay.

May I please have a roll call?

Counselor Sinclair.

Aye.

Anvery?

Aye.

Case?

Aye.

And Harris here.

Abstain.

Okay.

And you already stated the reason for abstention.

Uh okay, the motion passes.

Moving to item 8.3.

Consider approving a contract with HHPR incorporated in the amount of $1,097,316 for the engineering and design to redevelop the Washington County Fairgrounds Sports Complex.

Do I have a motion to approve item 8.3?

So moved case.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second, Sinclair.

Thank you.

Is there any discussion?

May I please have a roll call?

Councillor Zanvery.

I case.

Aye.

Sinclair.

Aye.

And Harris.

Abstain.

Motion passes.

Thank you very much.

Moving to item 8.4.

Consider approving the draft findings in support of an exemption from the competitive sealed bidding for the fairgrounds sports complex public improvement project.

Do I have a motion to approve item 8.4?

So moved case.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

Second, Sinclair.

Thank you.

Is there any discussion?

May I please have a roll call.

Counselor Sinclair.

Aye.

Case.

Aye.

Anne Very.

Aye.

Harris.

Abstain.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

We have no other business to consider this evening, so I'll turn the time over to Robbie Hammond for the city manager report.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to add my own thanks as well to the three people that just presented and to a lot of staff that are here tonight.

This project has been going on for so long.

And this is very exciting.

This is going to be a wonderful asset for our community, and I'm really excited about it.

Four items that I wanted to share with you all tonight.

First, we are less than 48 hours away from the 2026 date of the city here in the Shirley Huffman Civic Center Auditorium.

All community members are invited to be part of the evening on Thursday, February 19th.

Mayor Pace's speech will begin at 6 p.m.

If you can't make it in person, you can watch the live stream in English and Spanish on the city's Facebook channels.

Second, a reminder to small businesses in Hillsborough seeing a reduction in customers or other economic instability because of ICE immigration enforcement.

You can still apply for up to $10,000 in support as part of our small business stabilization program.

The deadline to apply is Friday, February 27th.

Full details are on the city website.

These grants are focused on helping to stabilize and retain small businesses in the Hillsborough.

We are very grateful for our partners at Centro Cotural, Adelante Mujeres, and Washington County Chamber of Commerce that are helping us get the word out in both English and Spanish.

Former city manager Tim Irwert, Judy Gates Goldman, Hector Hinjosa, Ron Iwasaki, and several former city council members who are among the human books at the Hillsborough Library Foundation described them.

Thanks to the foundation for organizing the event on February 7th that connected so many different generations.

And finally, we lost an outstanding team member last month when Officer Scott Hanley passed away following a medical event.

Scott served as a police officer in Oregon for 26 years.

Here in Hillsborough, Scott served in the patrol division and the traffic unit.

Hundreds gathered this past um a week to celebrate Scott's life, and there's a video on the police department's Facebook page.

Our appreciation and our thoughts are with Scott's family and his friends and his colleagues at the police department and throughout the city of Hillsborough.

Thank you.

Thank you, Robbie.

I do want to make some comments.

Um I I too appreciated the living library.

Learned a lot uh from folks that were there and sharing their histories and also thank you for uh mentioning Officer Hanley and the loss um to the Hillsborough Police Department.

I was able to attend the funeral.

And uh it was great to see so many people out who knew him and whose lives he touched.

So thank you very much for mentioning that.

And with that, the city council meeting is adjourned.

We will begin work session at 9.05.

Thank you that Ariel is going to share with us.

Um we committed to the council that we'll come back mid-session.

Just wanted to give a big thanks to Ariel.

She needs to be at the Capitol tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.

And so she's got a long night.

She's had a long couple of weeks ahead, and also uh we'll call out Dan Diaz.

He's been uh doing a bunch of work uh during this legislative session as well.

So I wanted to appreciate him and our staff for what they're doing.

So turn it over to Ariel.

Thanks, Robbie, and good evening, counselors.

Uh, thanks for having me for this um update on the 2026 legislative session.

Uh, this is a short legislative session.

Um, as you'll remember, uh, the legislature meets every year, but in even numbered years, it is a quick 35-day session, often characterized as a sprint.

So um, I'll start with a quick overview of the calendar.

We looked at this slide when I was last before you on January 6th, kind of outlining the process.

And we're now at um February 17th.

That means that the first chamber deadline was yesterday.

So that is the deadline for bills um to move out of their policy committee.

Um, so if a bill started in, say, the House Economic Development Committee, it has to have a work session and get voted on and moved on to the next step before uh had that had to have had to have happened yesterday.

So there was committees, there's at least one committee that met until 10 o'clock last night to make that happen for some bills.

Um, there's an exception to that rule for any joint committees as well as the uh finance and revenue committees on the Senate and the House side, and I'll get into where that's relevant.

Um, so we're officially um halfway through the legislative session.

Um the second chamber deadline is February 26th, and March 8 is the constitutional signing die or the legislature has to adjourn by then.

Any questions on the process.

We also reviewed this slide at our last work session.

These are the major issues that we were expecting going into session, and I'd say they've largely held through.

Um, there's some additional um key issues this session that have been controversial or notable.

Um, but in terms of ones that impact the city or just the general legislature, um, these have been uh very front and center.

Um on the budget cuts, uh, the ways and means committees are the budget committees for the legislature.

They've held um they held informational hearings leading up to session from state agencies presenting cuts.

Um each agency was required to present a cuts budget uh to the ways and means committee.

Um so they had informational hearings on those this fall, and then at the beginning of session, there was a long public hearing for um impacted members of the public, um uh individuals, organizations, nonprofits, community, you know, community organizations the like um to come give provide public testimony on on potential for those cuts.

Um the the final cuts won't be decided until towards the end of session um as the policy committees start to wind down their work.

That's when we really see action pick up in the ways and means committees.

Um but what we have seen um some movement on is the third topic, federal disconnect, which as a reminder is um refers to um Oregon's connection to the federal tax code.

Oregon has had a continuing connection or a rolling reconnect to the federal definition of taxable income since 2011.

Um other ties to federal tax law get updated periodically.

Um, but due to the passage of the bill at the congressional level, HR1, um, also known as Trump's big bill, um had some major impacts to Oregon's um if due to our connection had some potential major impacts.

So um a bill is moving forward, Central Bill 1507 that disconnects from certain pieces of HR one, um, and that is uh has passed the Senate um on uh totally partisan uh vote.

Um so it passed with uh just e-votes and is now um awaiting its first hearing in the House.

So that's been kind of the first cont one of the first controversial pieces to move forward.

Um the second being transportation funding.

So there have been a number of hearings and multiple transportation related committees related to ODOT oversight, uh related to how to fund how to close the gap, the funding gap that ODA has experiencing.

There's also been a considerable amount of work um on the parts of local governments, um, particularly our membership organizations, um, our partners with the League of Oregon Cities and the Association of Oregon Counties ensuring that any adjustments to or attempts to efforts to find funding to cover ODAT's budget holes, don't cut into the local share of the gas tax.

So the existing gas tax at the current level um is split 50, 30, 20.

So 50% of revenues go to the state, 30 to counties, 20 to cities, and we all rely on that for um operations and maintenance of our transportation systems, um road repair, um bike and ped accessibility and the like.

Um as you all know, uh there was a successful um initiative process this fall to refer a um onto the ballot a repeal of the gas tax increase that passed in the special session.

So that received more than enough votes to be on the ballot that is currently set on November ballot.

And there's a bill that was recently introduced that would move that ballot date to the May election.

So that is also a very partisanly controversial topic.

So that bill is actually scheduled, it's been potentially going to receive a vote on the Senate floor.

It's Senate Bill of 1599, but it's now been moved up to tomorrow.

So it's kind of been delayed, delayed, it's tomorrow.

And there is speculation that potentially it could trigger some walkouts from legislators to deny quorum so that the bill can't be voted on.

One interesting procedural piece about this bill as well.

Again, it's just moving the ballot date, it's not changing the potential of the repeal to be considered by voters, but it has to get signed into law by February 25th.

So well ahead of constitutional signed act of the legislature.

It has to get signed in the law by then because there are filing deadlines established in the Secretary of State's office to get things on a ballot on a statewide ballot.

So in order to meet the Secretary of State's process deadlines, it would have to pass the legislature in time for the governor to sign it by the 25th.

So that is, I think putting a lot of pressure on the channel dynamics.

It's something that everyone is watching very closely as it impacts the process.

Typically, um when we have a majority party and a minority party, you see the minority party using procedural efforts to kind of slow down the process.

We saw a very, very slow Senate floor session today.

They were considering a number of executive appointments to various commissions, which is something the Senate does on a regular basis.

But there was a lot more speech making and comments and things that I think we would normally see part of that kind of procedural tactics that we typically see in these kinds of controversial situations.

So those are those are some of the big things.

I'll get into the two other topics are really directly relate to our legislative priorities as well.

So we'll get into that in other slides.

But that's been the general kind of environment.

I will say there is there are some transportation conversations that feel a little bit more productive.

There's a bill that kind of provides some more clarity and implementation details for how the state can stand up a road user charge, which is how we will begin to move away from dependence on the gas tax.

And so that's that's a helpful bill that seems to be you know having some movement.

Um we've also signed on to a bill uh that would stand up a uh a statewide transit funding task force because of the controversy and concerns that some have raised around reliance on payroll tax to pay for transit, what are other funding option sources that could be identified?

So it's a way to continue more, maybe more stable or consistent funding for transit going forward and in future funding conversations.

So any questions on those topics.

Okay.

Right.

So now I'll move on to our state priorities, which is the main lens that we view bills.

There are a number of other bills we engage on, but in terms of our priorities, um, we had three, as you remember, federal immigration enforcement response, economic development, and housing production and homelessness response.

Okay, so um the first priority, the federal immigration enforcement response is the same slides we saw at the previous work session.

Um, the council's direction was to support um legislation that primarily um strengthened the Sanctuary Promise Act with that main lens and specifically looking for opportunities to support funding for impacted families and small businesses, how to uh protect sensitive information and data, and to require law enforcement be clearly identified and to limit masking.

So the main effort this session around this topic is you're probably familiar with a package of bills known as the immigrant justice package.

And so that's really about 10 bills that um cover a range of topics.

Most of them are, I think I consider very similar to the conversations and work this council has done to look at local policies and how to strengthen the Sanctuary Promise Act through local policies and discussions about how best to do that.

Um, you know, which process, all of that.

Um, so most of these are impacting state policies statewide.

There's a few that will impact cities directly, and so I'll touch on that.

But I'll just run through the list really briefly.

Um I can provide more detail on the fly, some of it can follow I'll have to follow up with you.

Um just starting from the top, um, this is not in any particular order.

There is a specific funding request in House Bill 4117 that would fund provide funding for immigration legal services and a children's stability fund that would fund these at $5 million each, so a total of 10.

And the children's stability fund is meant to provide food stability when there's a working parent who has been detained.

So there's that funding ask.

There are also potentially some additional funding conversations through the budget process that don't have an official bill number associated, but you know, related to school meals and other supports that would that would support this package.

Senate Bill 1587 relates to data brokers, and so these are companies that make money off of aggregating and collecting lots of data on individuals and they sell that data.

And it's been identified that ICE and federal agencies are using these federal or excuse me, these um private data brokers to get uh inform uh immigrant uh sensitive information.

And so the bill has been through several iterations.

Um there's been quite a few amendments looking at how to prevent um the use of these um data brokers in the state of Oregon and potentially setting up a private private right of action for breaking a state law that would prohibit um the use of um Oregonian sensitive data.

Uh HB 4143 would allow the state to withhold payments to the federal government.

Um if they sorry, let me go back to my notes.

Um so if federal funds are being withheld unfairly, as we have potentially seen in previous um executive actions, um, it would allow organical money owed if they're having similar federal funds withheld for potentially punitive reasons related to the Sanctuary Promise Act, um, and it would protect state officials from civil claims for complying with that choice.

Um next, um, there's a bill 4079 that provides some framework and a requirement for school districts and colleges to um have a framework and policy around how they respond when federal immigration authorities are enter on school property, how they notify parents, those kinds of things.

And then there's uh Senate Bill 1594 directs Oregon's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Advancement to create and share model policies that other public bodies can use when enforcing federal immigration law.

So it's really meant for state agencies, public bodies.

Um the bill's not super specific, um, but it's meant to be a resource and direct someone specifically to do that.

Uh House Bill 411 prevents a person's immigration status from being used as evidence in civil court cases and provides some extra workplace protections when someone updates their immigration work authorization.

Uh House Bill 41 uh 14 relates to um how federal or out of state law enforcement can operate in Oregon, um, including um like acting with uh non-judicial warrants and creates a civil cause of action if those rules are not followed.

House Bill 4138 was just amended last night.

Um, and this um relates to one of our uh specific priorities around law enforcement visibility and masking.

So it prohibits masking with some carve-outs for respirators and safety and things like that.

It's and I should say this bill, um, all of the amendments I think were um the process of conversations with law enforcement with Lady Burgan cities and the counties to ensure that these were implementable for local law enforcement.

Um so it prohibits masking, requires some basic um visibility in terms of clearly labeled uniforms and badge numbers.

Um, and then it previously had some um kind of confusing language about how and when local and state law enforcement engages in kind of like federal investigation coordination.

You know, you can imagine that could be trafficking or drug enforcement or the like.

Um, and so that has been um just kind of addressed to kind of restate and reaffirm the Oregon Sanctuary Promise Act that immigration information is not going to be shared unless there's that criminal nexus.

Um House Bill 4150 uh bans state contracts or state funding for any companies that are engaged in deportation activity, and this is more specifically aimed at um some specific airlines operating, not out of, I don't believe uh out of Hillsborough, but potentially Eugene and other airports that were um being we're being contracted to take people um out of state to um immigration uh facilities.

So this would be in state contracts with any of those companies.

Um hang on one second, Councillor Sinclair.

Go ahead.

I can wait to the end if I okay.

And then Houseville, the last one in the package, House Bill 4123 provide some protections around when landlords share tenant information.

So those bills are all in various stages of the process.

Um, like I said, there's been amendments.

Um the one that um specifically impacted local government was House for 4138.

Um, and so that bill has, I think we've seen some good improvements.

Like I said, the amendment just passed last night, so we're still analyzing it, um, but it's you know very in line with the council's priorities.

So um I should be able to share with an update on that probably this week on where that's ended up.

Um, and then there's two other bills that are not formally part of the package that I'm aware of, but one we've also been playing very close attention to for local impact is Senate Bill 1516 relates to automatic license plate readers, which I know have been a focus of Hillsboro and other cities.

Um there it closes a loophole.

Um previously that the data that those um ALPRs collect could be requested in a public records request and potentially shared with federal immigration authorities, or they could request it directly.

This would exempt that data from public records requests.

So if HPD or the city received that request, it's exempted.

We don't have to share it.

Um as part of that conversation, the ACLU wanted to see a minimum or a maximum on how long those records could be held.

So there's a 30-day retention period.

This was again negotiated with law enforcement, um, local governments, uh organizations.

Um then there had previously been a requirement that that data be encrypted if it was going to be transferred.

And it was a very specific requirement that um the like the LEDs, like law enforcement data system that most agency of the land couldn't physically um comply with.

So the dash 14 amendments um sometime before 10 p.m.

last night were um adopted, and it's it just has the um the closed of that public records loophole and um has the data retention um requirements, and then finally SJR 203 is a uh version of the law enforcement um visibility and and masking prohibition bill, but it instead would amend the constitution.

Um and it's a little that one has received that will just say less work, I think, and scrutiny that's has some provisions that are a little unclear.

So I think it probably needs some additional conversation.

Um, but that's that is the um, I think 12 bills in total.

Just wanted you to have an awareness of like the universe of topics that the legislature is considering um and that we'll be weighing in on and hopefully um helping get across the finish line for for those that are ready to go.

And Councillor Sinclair, did you have a question?

Um you answered my question uh providing to 4138 HB 4138.

Uh, did you say it was um SB 1516 for the flock plates?

The ALPR, yes, 1516.

Thank you.

Counselor Ambery.

Um is it um Can you move the mic closer to your mouth, please?

Thank you.

Is there um a bill regarding not allowing allowing ice on um sensitive places at the Oregon level, like schools and hospitals and churches?

I believe there was one introduced related to that.

I I think the nurses association might have been bringing related to um health uh care work.

I haven't seen that.

Okay, um, but I can look for I remember hearing about that one.

I can look and see if that one has made it through, and I can get you some more information.

1570, 1570.

Any other questions before we move on?

All right.

How are you doing, Ariel?

Good, thank you.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

Uh next is economic development.

Um, and our main focus and priority um uh under this under this has been the Oregon Jobs Acts and Bill 1586, which I think you are all pretty familiar with at this point.

Um I'll note some changes from to the bill from when we started session.

I think you're probably familiar with, but I'll I'll cover.

Um, so the bill is introduced.

Um, you can see the bullets there would have um brought in land through UGB expansion in North Hillsboro, expanded the state's research and development tax credit, established a new capital equipment tax incentive um that's a local local program will be optional for a jurisdiction to stand up, and would have um allowed extensions of enterprise zones.

Um that piece has been removed, um, so it's no longer moving forward in the Oregon Jobs Act.

There's also a small update to the regionally significant industrial sites program and some state permitting reform.

So most significant for Hillsborough, the other major change in the bill moving forward is um Hillsborough is now partnering with Metro on a compromise amendment.

Those are the dash four amendments that were heard in a public hearing yesterday.

The bill had its first public hearing in the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee.

That's one of those committees that's not subject to the deadlines that the other committees are.

So it doesn't have it didn't have to move anywhere be voted on.

So it just had a public hearing yesterday.

The Hillsborough Metro compromise amendment and the Dash 4, um, instead of bringing in 1700 acres, brings in 373, and the remaining acreage would go into uh urban reserves to be considered for potential future urbanization through Metro's established process.

The land that would come in immediately, the 373 is subject to some specific uh sideboards in the bill, um, which include, sorry, let me just switch in the screens here.

Um, so for the 373 acres, that land must be planned and zoned for industrial use, including high technology and advanced manufacturing production, including research and development, uses that support high technology and advanced manufacturing, research and development, and commercial uses that are accessory to and support high technology and advanced manufacturing.

Um the land may not be zoned for or developed as data centers, so a status storage processing information center except as an accessory to or part of a use described in that initial use.

So for um high-tech manufacturing advanced manufacturing.

Um cannot be zoned or developed for commercial uses, um including recreation, readable products and services, um, it's a number of things, and um may not be zoned or developed for retail warehousing facilities or uh for consumer goods.

Um so one thing I'll say about the I'm sorry, counselor case.

About the bill in general.

Um, I think there have been we heard on the public record um yesterday and in public comment today, um, a variety of I think misconceptions and some in for misinformation about the bill.

Um, one of those being um at a high level, Senate Bill 1586 is a package of tools.

They are not all meant to be used in one place or on hill on the land in Hillsboro.

The uh, for example, the RSIS program update, that is something that the city of Pendleton is specifically requesting for the part of the program they use on their industrial site.

It's not something that was needed or is is considered um for Hillsborough or potentially other parts of the state, although their other small um rural uh significant sites that would potentially use that change.

Um the expanded state research development credit is statewide, and there's a number of supporters on this bill at the coast, um, the University of Oregon across the state that are looking at different parts of this bill.

Um, it's similarly for the capital equipment uh tax incentives.

So want to be clear about that.

Um about the RD credit.

What's that?

The RD.

Yeah.

What about the RD credit?

I'm sorry there.

So that's all that's statewide.

Yeah, these are all statewide incentives.

So it's all statewide except for the North Hillsboro UGB expansion.

That's right.

But we are also have been making the case and explaining why this expansion is um, yes, it's in Hillsboro, but that is also where the majority of the semiconductor industry and some of our growing biotech is located, and that has regional and statewide impacts in terms of the jobs that it brings, the impact to the state income tax revenue and the ability for companies to grow and locate in other parts of the state as part of that ecosystem.

Um I'll also going back to the land, just we'll call it a couple things that we heard in public comment, um, the definition of advanced manufacturing.

Other sections of the bill, um, like the research and development tax credit and the capital equipment tax incentive have a specific definition of advanced manufacturing that is modeled after a federal definition.

Um, and there was some concern shared that that includes data centers.

That is not the definition that is applied to the piece, the section of the bill that has includes the regrowth boundary expansion.

Um, what I read to you earlier is what would be an allowed use.

So there's no language that allows a data center unless it is supporting an advanced manufacturer or supply chain company.

Um we also heard testimony yesterday, for example, about you know, there are there are you know real concerns out there about the impacts that data centers have on the environment.

Um, I think you've had previous briefings and conversations with staff about the data centers that are in Hillsborough, what limitations we have on our existing um industrial areas, um, and what the limitations mean in this bill.

Um, but one thing that was uh said in public comment yesterday is that the limit uh water supply system that's coming on board that we're um pursuing with partners and building out is because data centers have taken all of water, and that is simply not the case.

That project has been a long time in the making and is the primary objective of that project is to have a backup water supply in the event that our main water supply uh system, if there was a major earthquake event, seismic event, it is not sound.

And so having the water, the window uh water supply system is a really important redundancy, which is a good thing in this case.

It's backup so that our residential um you know residential uh service is maintained in the event of an earthquake and fire hosts.

So that's that's the primary reason for that.

So we're just hearing a lot of concern and misinformation that this is about data centers when data centers are an important part of the industry.

A lot of these companies rely on that technology to do their manufacturing to inform, you know, cancer medicine, um, to inform research and development, but um, so that would be allowed, you know, if it's part of that company in this bill, um, but not not that data centers for at large.

Um, Counselor Case, then Counselor Sinclair.

Thanks, Ariel.

Um, I'm sorry, I don't know this yet.

Um, the is with the with the no standalone data centers, are there any like percentage requirements um for for a company coming in so they can't just do like you know a hundred whatever of this and then 400 of a data center.

Like, are there any it can't be more than half a third data?

Yeah, so conversation about that.

Um, depends in the audience, but what I will say that I know I'm having trouble later.

What I'll say that is so they're allowed as an accessory use.

So if if a data center was trying to come in and kind of find a loophole to do that, the the planning department, the economic owner, the whoever's reviewing that would say this is not allowed, this is not an allowed use.

Um, and and you know, they will would point to the statutory language, they would point to how, because what Hillsborough will do is if this when it still passes, um, there's still a local process to update the code and do the comprehensive plan.

And um, part of the conversation we had with Metro was being really explicit about what our code looks like now for our existing industrial sanctuary site, industrial site, and some additional refinements that are specific to the 373 acres, like we allow you know, supporting commercial uses, but on this smaller acreage, it may not be necessary, right?

Um, you know, I think we specifically said yes, we won't allow breweries here.

So um, but in that case, the the city's gonna refine its code, and there's a very clear process to say this is accessory, this is not accessory.

Um, and so that's that's how that would be addressed.

They just they're not gonna allow this is not gonna allow that.

Um, because the goal here is jobs, um, and that's that's what we're that's what we're looking for, and and supporting and expanding the existing uh ecosystem.

Counselor Sinclair and then counselor Harris.

Um Ariel, I have a couple questions.

So one being we're talking about Metro coming in as a collaborative partner and that they the fall under Metro.

Metro, we're talking about this bill being statewide, but Metro is regional.

And so, what is their affiliate?

Like, why did Metro choose to step into this bill if they're not statewide and they're regional, but yet they're dominating the narrative on this now.

I don't understand the collate the the connection.

So there is statewide impact of the land in terms of its impact on the economy on jobs and and revenues.

Um, but the land use is local, regional, so local for the city, regional for metro, metro manages the urban grove foundry.

Yeah.

So they they I you know, I don't want to speak for Metro, but in our conversations and what we've heard in testimony, is they recognize the um need for to spur economic development, the need to show that Oregon is open for business, um, and the and the recognition that there is a lack of large industrial sites in the metro region, the semiconductor process established that studied that, found that, and there's a recognition.

Their recent um UGR decision in um the Sherwood expansion recognized the need for that land, and that was a significant portion of that um decision at the Metro process.

And so um, I think that they see this as a continuation of their commitment to supporting the region's economic development and the region's role in contributing to the state's economic uh security.

And the thank you for guiding me for that.

The second question I have is when we talk about people misunderstanding manufacturing being a definition for qualifying for the tax credit, people are really concerned about the RD credit because that's not advanced, it may be advanced manufacturing, but it has limited amounts of jobs, it's RD.

And so it has a new qualification under manufacturing, which the public assumes is a higher level of employment jobs.

Um that's where that confusion comes in.

And for the environmental, you spoke about the environmental impact on this.

What are some of the analysis associated with this?

Because we're talking about energy increases.

I'm sorry, I'm getting off topic a little bit.

Please excuse me, I'll go back to data fronts.

Please excuse me.

But the data centers, uh, I'm going back to one of the questions you said was that the data centers counselor case conveyed what is the percentage that has to be associated for manufacturers to qualify for that tax abatement.

Are we allowed are the entities at the data center allowed to lease that space once it's established and built out by the entity in that data center space?

Uh so counselor, my understanding is that um whether they're the owner or their leasing, the uses they use.

And so that's the lens.

It wouldn't, um, if it's an allowed use, um, they wouldn't be able to do that.

They can't unless it's accessory to their part of their accessory to their primary use as advanced manufacturing.

That's that's so it has to still no matter what when they lease it or not, it has to be affiliated with the accessory to qualify for the requirement that it that data center only allows accessory to, or yeah, I don't I don't I think it's agnostic unless Dan wants to good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'll try my best because I think this is a common thing that's come up.

Um, first of all, the if there is a data center accessory component that's been discussed, it would still any use of that data processing facility would have to still be in the support of one of those traded sector industries we've talked about.

I think it's really important to note, uh, and we have very real examples of this already in the community.

So this isn't intended to like support one side of this argument or the other is just to state fact of the types of industries we're working with.

It's particularly challenging to set a specific percentage threshold, I think to counselor case's question a minute ago, because for example, if there was an entity that was wanting to come in and design advanced generation of semiconductor chips, and they were going to bring 300 engineering jobs to the community, and a part of that was doing research and development, and they were going into say a 15-acre site or a 25-acre site, and half of their facility needed to be data center because that design is massively requiring data to store the information going into those feature chips designs and performance and testing.

And they came to us and said 30% of our facility needs to be a data center, even though it's what's enabling and supporting us doing this chip design and research here, would we say no?

Because that it clips some arbitrary 10% threshold that we wrote into a statute or something else, or conversely, in Total Jones Firm, as an example, uh OHSU's West Side Research Campus, many examples have these data centers on site, they really change the ratio depending on what is the support need there.

But what we do know is those data centers, to come back to your question, Counselor Sinclair, are would not be leased to say LinkedIn for organizations to post their LinkedIn accounts on, it would have to be there.

So that's the answer is that the data center use as accessory still has to be accessory to one of those traded sector uses.

I would also just make aware from an economic development standpoint, we are already seeing, and this is a question of would the state want to see, where we are seeing certain industry partners coming together collaborating jointly.

So I might have acne advanced manufacturing, not a real company, and I've got my design and manufacturing facility with a data center attached that's supporting that, and all of a sudden I want to partner with your business and your idea and say we're gonna bring that data in and actually test some of that together.

There could be a scenario where it's sublet or a part of that is sublet to you, but it still has to go back to the advanced manufacturing.

It wouldn't be for you to then host your own social media accounts or like you know, post videos of your cat or something, nothing against that.

Because it is very confusing.

Correct.

It is extremely confusing.

So that that I think that's a normal question for the public to have.

And that's a piece of the industry that we definitely hear loud and clear the concerns.

Um we, I believe, as a staff at least 10 point of it, with a focus on these industries and for the economic drivers back to the purpose of the jobs act, to Ariel noted.

We strongly urge the constraint to the data center piece to support that, but that we encourage also a recognition that increasingly so, especially in the sectors we're talking about, access to data and storaging of data and using of data is becoming increasingly important integrating with some of these facilities.

And so if you are too prescriptive or also just throwing numbers out there that you're not really sure of, you can absolutely constrain the very purpose of which we're talking about MSPRING for in the first place.

So I'll leave it there in case there's other questions.

May I just ask one last question as I said with that?

Um Dr.

Diaz for if the like you said, you don't want to be too prescriptive.

So there's a lot of questions that remain.

Um with the tax um abatement and the extension of that is that correct.

Um what happens if it does not produce because there's a now amendment to be a 15 15 jobs per acre?

Is that correct?

Uh so um I'm not sure which incentive you're referring to.

I don't have it in front of me on the sorry.

So the the um there are three incentives that are in here.

Um, but it's not yeah.

I think you you I you might be asking about the enterprise zone program, but that's not just that's no longer in there.

That's no longer so that's what that was included in that aspect to where if there was a tax abatement, there was no claw uh clawback clause to where people didn't meet that employment number, then they pay back the tax abatement.

I I apologize if I looked at Arial too, because I'm not a familiar with specifically the build of the language you're talking to, so I don't want to respond to the wrong thing or misunderstand it.

What I will note is that in some of our existing programs like the Enterprise Zone, there are a job increase requirements, and then we do have certain wage parameters that we put into there.

And if companies do not comply with that over the course of that contract, they can face either penalties or forfeiture and have to reimburse that.

Those are the type of things that we consider can continue to monitor.

Um, where we would caution similarly, like with the constraints too much on the data centers, like yes, make sure that we don't get the things that are being discussed as not wanted in there.

Sometimes it will be raised of make sure you mandate that that company has to hit this employment density and sustain that for 15 years, which is over three business cycles.

And that can become it's important to aspire for job creation and economic impact.

But if you prescribe too much, if companies as they go through economic cycles, you can actually have a compounding effect in a down cycle.

So great recession hits or COVID hits, people start to lay off jobs because they're trying to stay financially viable.

And now if you're doubling down on them with penalties, like that's a piece that we in Hillsborough, and we've talked about this in council retreats.

Try to approach incentives not as corporate giveaways as ways to provide a business-friendly incentive that is also aligning with local priorities and programs, whether that's supporting workforce development or the target industries we want or access of different types of career uh positions.

And so that's where our focus will continue to be broadly in incentives.

Errol, maybe we can follow up in terms of your specific requests if we can get what bill that is and provide a more detailed response to that.

I'll email you with the specifics.

Great.

Counselor Harris, thanks.

You know my concerns about the part of our accessory language.

I'm not going to go over that.

I'm assuming you've seen my can you move the mic closer to your mouth, please?

Sorry.

So I assume you guys know about my concerns about the language that are contained in the current bill based on the testimony I submitted.

I'd also point out that uh Alan Raplier, if you don't know Alan Raplier, he came up and he said he was a um a land use lawyer who's actually the county counsel in this county for 20 years in charge of the land use in this county for 20 years.

So he's he says something I tend to take note of it.

Um, and he had a concern about the word accessory and a lot of things can be claimed as accessory.

I had a couple examples in the letter testimony.

I just thought of a couple more as you're testifying here today.

Can a question for you, and you may or may not know this, Dan, but can three advanced manufacturers get together and decide to build one big data center and share it and be a part of that with that qualify under this bill.

Given my most recent reading of I think the most current language, this is where I always defer to Eril because things are moving quickly in this legislative session as has been noted.

The language as it's been drafted and proposed, that data center could have those three players participating, but it would still need to be accessory to in a part of at least one, if not maybe two or three of theirs, manufacturing facilities in campus.

Well, but they say, well, it is part of it.

So you need on adjacent property, or if we got wires to it, or whatever.

Well, it cannot be so so the definition of the accessory when you look at it from the state law standpoint, and some of this now I interject our local codes the way it works, recognizing those two are our separate regulatory documents.

Accessory cannot be on the other side of town that is still an asset in this case.

That would be considered standalone if it was like three parcels down, still in this north area that we're talking about.

It would have to be on the same site that the considered development site, and it'd have to be integrated into or made part of that campus design.

Again, I I come to some known examples, not to say this will be perfect of all the examples.

When we look at some of the existing campuses that are relying on that, those are integrated into their sites.

Okay, it could be on an adjacent property with a breezeway connecting it or something, I suppose.

But I mean, there's ideas you can come up with, right?

Yeah, I mean, there's I wasn't laughing at it.

No, that's a cool idea.

You know, it would look nice too.

Um, also say say you had an advanced manufacturing that had uh built uh data processing center, I guess it's not really a data center, it's also you know part of the building, I guess.

But so they build excess capacity and then they onboard somebody that's not here, say they're in New Jersey or someplace to you.

You described a little bit, they would partner with someone, right?

And they'd come in here, maybe they took a little space in the factory as well.

Uh, but really the reason they're there is to be able to use the excess capacity in that data center.

Would that be qualified as part of?

Because they would have a business relationship, maybe they even have a joint partnership agreement or something with them.

But they understand that it's a lot cheaper to have a data center in Hillsborough than it is in New Jersey, for instance.

I don't know if that's true or not.

Um, but would that qualify?

Could you come up with some sort of a scenario like that under accessory or part of the advanced manufacturing?

Sounds good.

So, counselor, if I may, um, given that this is a great conversation, also a bit litigious feeling, which is good.

This is the things that we constantly are testing the language against and trying to prepare for its application.

But if it's okay, we'll ask a question, not to answer your question per se, but to get a sense of where you're at.

If this is being very Socratic, that's right.

Yeah, and we we can spend time here as the council would like this evening, but if that linkage of say that accessory data center that's supporting research and or manufacturing or both here in Hillsborough, but let's say it was also connecting into data and research that was happening in another regional or global hub, and there was information being exchanged and leverage off of each other, which is bringing a benefit here, it's and possibly linking us to an operation somewhere else.

We would say that so long as the accessory use is still accessory to some manufacturing and or research development or those other approved uses, those allowed desired uses, that that would be there.

The excess capacity could still be used, but it would still have to be in support of that industry.

Again, people couldn't be using it for a separate social media hosting or cloud compute or things like that.

They would be, but it's a joint venture where the primary jobs would be in New Jersey for this exact with the partner of the trade of the JV.

I mean, you could come up with a scenario where you say it's part of the JV, it's part of the joint, it's part of manufacturing.

I I just don't know why we don't just change the language to be a little tighter, I guess, is the only question.

It gets back to how much do you, as a council, want to restrict the economic opportunities upon which we're endeavoring in this in the first place?

Because that's the interconnectedness of this infrastructure that we're talking about and the nature of these facilities of both what we're already seeing and a little bit of the transitions going.

It is it is not to put exclusively data centers only in this area, it's definitely not to put standalone data centers, it's to acknowledge the linkages of just that one use type, really in and amongst the the variety of target industries we're pursuing.

And to be general's advocate, obviously here, but I'm not trying to stop what we are trying to do.

I'm trying to stop what we are trying to stop, right?

The data centers.

And I'm trying to come up with scenarios.

Well, well, is this really what we want is to be doing data processing and storage for somebody else?

Because I'll tell you, there's um remember there's a lot past in the last session, uh making sure that much of the electrical infrastructure that's being built for data centers is paid by data centers.

PGE was accused in December of trying to circumvent that rule with some new ways, whatever their rules were.

Uh CUB claims that at least I don't know.

I'm not an expert in that, but it's Cove.

I know that.

But also it's PGE, I know that as well.

So I mean, for what it's worth, and I think that the uh who's who's the state energy uh folks are gonna have a hearing on it in April?

And so we can pass laws, and industries can do things to interpret them in certain ways, and I want to make sure that our intent, which I am 100% in support of, is fulfilled and not able to be circumvented, like PGE is doing with this law that we passed in the state of Oregon in Salem to do that.

Now, what I'd like to also do is have the city um maybe take a look at what PGE is doing.

Page is an agent provider here, they are doing this, and this offloading some of the costs that's under the bill should be borne by industry and they're offloading it to residentials.

What Cub is saying, again, unverified.

But I think the city should be involved in that and take a look at what they're doing and maybe have an opinion on that, frankly.

So if I can just maybe offer up one final response to that, because those points are all noted.

And I do appreciate a little bit of the Socratic testing of this.

Again, we've tested this extensively, even as we review and monitor the language, because at the end of the day, too, we take very seriously the role that our staff in the department play of having to evaluate applications as they come in and either approving them or denying them or conditioning them.

Um and we can get in the mechanics of that tonight if you want.

I just don't know if that's the best use of our time.

But where I'd come back to is some of this language has proven itself out, we believe already.

The Meek sub area that our Hillsborough Economic Development Council has bought, that we also are persistently accused of, you know, having 500 acres of developed land, and therefore we don't need any more, which we have stayed true to the data center ban that is on it and to trying to get that site served with infrastructure to compete for the larger major anchor users is the reason why that roughly 500 acres is sitting there, and we are continuing to put it in front of active projects, and we have made at your leadership and discretion as a council the investments necessary to try to bring that up to a fully serviced and competitive site over the last few years.

That area has a prohibition on standalone data centers that defines and lays out everything we have, probably not even as far as as the current statutory language has been recently amended.

And we can go on a tour.

There is not yet a data center or somebody trying to skirt those rules up in that area.

Now, have we been approached as staff?

Yes.

Have we had to engage project proposals and advise them if you submit what you're submitting?

That is a standalone data center for the definition and application and the policy intent that's there, and it will be denied.

Yes, that has happened.

Um, and so while I appreciate a bunch of the hypotheticals, it does start to almost feel like we can set a speed limit, but if somebody's going to break the speed limit, then are we going to prohibit cars?

And so we have to set the rules.

We have to be ready to enforce those rules appropriately.

And we do have a test case of very similar language that we have been applying in honor of the Oregon land use system and the land use codes that are up there for the better part of about 10 years.

And so I'll just say that's working.

There's no standalone data centers that have yet gone in there, and we are in a severely site constrained environment, as you've been hearing, and data center demand is continuing to grow all over the world in the country, including here in Hillsborough, and we've still not seen one there.

Now I'm not begging for more inquiries on that of data centers, but we have held that line from a zoning administration standpoint since about 200 16, 15, 16.

Last question on that then have there been any applications in that area for manufacturing with an accessory data center.

We have one that has a small data center integrated in it, not in the meek sub-area, but nearby.

Um, we have had none that are in that meek sub-area that I just referenced.

So, really, we haven't tested that yet.

This is new language.

Advanced manufacturing with part of our accessory data centers, new language.

We really haven't tested yet.

I guess that's where we may still be missing ourselves, counselor.

That language is on the books.

We can send you the excerpt out of our code that says that standalone data centers are not allowed.

The data center would have to be accessory to one of our target industries, including like advanced manufacturing.

This is where the current legislative language actually gets more specific and frankly constraining than even our our current zoning language, but that current zoning language does talk about data centers being allowed as accessory uses, and it has not been abused nor been allowed to be submitted to be potentially abused to this point.

So from what I hear, and just to clarify, have you had somebody come to approach you with an advanced manufacturing plus a data center that you've rejected that you said no, this is a data center then?

We have had entities approach us that are a data center with offices and other things that were not well defined or understood or established, and we have turned them away and said no.

But not advanced manufacturing pieces yet.

We have engaged entities that have any interest in doing advanced manufacturing with the data center component, um, but they have not gotten to the point of submitting a formal application for us to say yes or no, but they would have likely been in an approvable category for that.

NSTC was a case in point example of that.

So they so they so you have not gone through the entire process with this particular definition of advanced manufacturing with a part of our accessory data set.

That's all I'm asking.

So this is where it feels a bit like cross-examining because I think I'm trying to answer your question, and and really we have been approached, we have not approved something that would be in violation, and I think along the lines of what there's a lot of input of would not be desired or accepted to meet that definition.

We have not proven the affirmative to I think what you're seeking, which is somebody that has said this meets that threshold, and have we approved it, and then was that right or wrong.

That has not occurred yet in that aspect of my question.

Thank you.

Okay, so I just want to do a quick time check.

Okay so I just want to do a quick time check it's almost 10 o'clock I'm supposed to check in at 9 30 Ariel has to be in Salem again at eight o'clock um and the purpose of this evening is to brief on the legislative update so just wanted to say that as we move forward so we have uh counselor Ambery and then counselor sinclair thank you I I just have a quick comment um so I you know I I I did read the bill and I was a little amused because uh because that language of saying advanced manufacturing with with AJ Center because any company has data centers it has servers it might have two servers in a cupboard or it might need a full room like you know where I work there are rooms and rooms full of servers and has always been that way and I think just because we are very sensitive to standalone data center that the bill has had to write it down but is just kind of saying we want advanced manufacturing and walls right it is like they just come together.

So I think people are very sensitized to it and um so it was it's just kind of so it is I think I think it's being it's been written to kind of allay the fears but it is just like yes advanced manufacturing and a wall and a roof is what we will approve but it's just kind of it's kind of silly.

And I know I know why it's being done but it's just kind of makes it very difficult with this sort of yeah this I equate it to approving a restaurant but no bathrooms counselor sinclair um and we're gonna take a lot of their time um as a layman like the reason people get upset is because when we're talking about accessory dwelling units and then we say globally we don't want to limit ourselves um people think of then our I'm sorry Counselor Sinclair accessory dwelling units I'm I'm sorry guys I'm sorry accessory I'm sorry my room was got messed up okay I just want to check in yes it is like accessories I'm sorry accessory how we were talking about data centers okay just want to check in basically um so when you're talking about accessories and then global aspects and that be open and creative and not limiting because no one can predict the future and what's going to happen economically um that's when people start to think of energy strain on the grid and the grid being PGE uh so having socialized you know costs end up being the rate payers that pick up the difference for the the infrastructure um stability and that's where it comes in and that's why people are so specific on this so I it's just another one to bring it up and that's why people care if it's global or not.

Yeah thank you for that this was something else thank you for that counselor um I will also note in the in the public testimony yesterday in the hearing LPG did testify and speak to their partnership with the region and um how they plan for you know future um demand on the grid so I and I appreciate you sharing you know that's where some of these concerns are coming from yeah so thank you so much and uh the last note I don't want to question a statement and we'll we can talk about this later time I think there's a lot of uncertainty of how many data centers we actually have currently built out and what's uh in approval process and then what we're planning for so we're not communicating enough with our community so it's clear understanding okay and then before we move on I I do I think a be remiss um I have been if I don't mention this I've been on the phone with okay backing up to what we were talking about before is immigration response um and this bill they are very related I've been talking to mayors around the state who cannot afford to respond to ICE we are we are providing 7500 out into the community to support nonprofits and other organizations um in ICE mitigation we're able to do that because when these tax abatements end you know comes in and we are able to have that money we are able to go and and use that for ice mitigation for example ice impact mitigation we walk into the Hidden Creek community center because of this we have fire station number nine because of this um it we're gonna have a new uh headquarters for HPD because of this tiger is putting a um what are you bond out to pay for a new uh police headquarters they cannot afford they can't build it their police right now are in um trailers we haven't had a bond since and we haven't had a yeah we haven't had a bond in a while so I just wanted to say that that um this and and the previous topic are very related on that on the ice piece and then it's also just I just want to keep it in mind that we're able to walk in the buildings that would not exist without this so thank you all right and what

They cannot afford they can't build it.

Their police right now are in um trailers.

We haven't had a bond since we haven't had a yeah, we haven't had a bond in a while.

So I just wanted to say that that and and the previous topic are very related on that on the ice piece.

And then it's also just I just wanted to keep it in mind that we were able to walk in the buildings that would not exist without this.

So thank you.

All right.

And what having to raise tax bonds, not having to not have to raise taxes.

Multiple bonds, multiple failed bonds.

There are nine million dollars in the hole.

Right.

They're screwed.

Right, right.

And I feel really badly for them.

Yeah, you know, right.

So I agree.

I know sorry, double again.

Yeah, I know this isn't a debate between all of us right now, and it will be in the future of houses, but uh this is called the jobs act.

Yeah, and people don't have a roof over their heads, food on the table, electricity.

When we are promising jobs to get potentially, because nobody knows the future of energy increase cost or water, that affects the whole system, but yet Hillsboro receives the benefit of utility franchise fees, more energy put out, more revenues gained, and we do get that money because of that to provide our wraparound services, but individually, people want to know what works for them as employment for their own households, and they're so far away from that that they don't care if there's a park with or a library.

I'm talking about people that are the most vulnerable, like you said, that we're talking about that are impacted by ice.

They want to know they can get that job and how many of them are there, and then the other people want to know how is this gonna impact us long run down?

I agree with what you're saying, and I think a great example of that was testimony tonight from somebody who went through the quick start program who was financially strapped, and she went through the quick start program two weeks and was able to get a tech job.

Yes.

So yeah, that was funded by this, right?

So yes, just wanted to say that.

It's gonna be per acre.

Because 1700 acres is a lot.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

Okay.

Ariel, you want to go to the next topic?

Sure.

The third one.

I did just want to share the next steps in the process for transportation.

Oh, thank you.

There's a public hearing uh tomorrow in the same committee.

Um, and the next opportunity for uh a vote, a work session to be scheduled to be the following Monday.

Um, there we are expecting one additional dash five amendment, very technical.

This is very common in the legislative process, particularly in the short session when things are moving very quickly.

I mentioned other bills tonight that have a dash 17 and dash four.

This dash five will do two things.

It will um it the land use attorneys at both Metro and Hillsborough that we worked on the compromise amendment and the dash four, but how the land is described in mapping cartology needed some adjustment to be clear.

So that's one change.

And then the RD tax credit, which Hillsboro was not the champion on their partners, or big collision working on this bill, needed some technical adjustments in terms of the overall revenue impact of the state.

There is a cap on how much the state would spend per biennium.

Um, because they extended out the sunset eligibility date of the program, they need to make sure that cap matched that.

So there's another technical adjustment that you'll see coming.

But the overall substance of the bill is not expected to change.

Thank you.

Um, so for our final slide, our third uh priority this session, housing production and homelessness response.

This is very similar to um efforts in previous sessions.

Um defend funding for housing production, infrastructure, rent assistance, and shelter.

Um, I talked about the ways and means process and testimony, and we're members of the housing alliance, which is advocating fiercely to maintain existing investments for housing stability and homelessness addiction protection.

Um, there's also a bill that we're supporting and watching closely, which um would establish a new dedicated fund for affordable housing preservation, so to keep at-risk properties that are um uh you know uh subsidized affordable, you know, publicly supported housing.

Um would authorize 100 million dollars in bonds for a fund that the state housing agency would manage and get out into the state um based on like you know most multiple properties.

Um support policy and program improvements.

Um we've sub we've supported a bill, House Bill 4037.

It's a large kind of technical policy package that makes additional refinements and clarifications to recent um middle housing and land use policy related to local housing code and decisions.

Um the bill as originally introduced had a lot of technical um uh kind of issues.

Um we were able to work with our advocacy through the League of Oregon Cities and others.

Um they've fixed those issues, and so we're able to submit a letter supporting that effort.

Um, and then finally, um, the other party was supporting improvements to an existing policy tool, one-time UGB expansion for housing.

That was Senate Bill 1537 that passed in 2024.

Um, the criteria to be eligible to use that tool was very, very strict, and only a couple cities actually qualified.

So they are um specifically changing some of those criteria, specifically in terms of how um how you qualify to demonstrate housing need.

Um, and so the amendments that are um coming to House Bill 4035 would uh incorporate that and update that tool to be more useful statewide.

Just a brief just a brief comment, sort of wrap up what the mayor said about how economic development supports the things we would like to do.

It also helps us with housing because we have a lower tax rate because even if you don't use Hidden Creek or you don't use the library, uh we don't have bonds either.

We we're not having bonding to build fire departments, which everyone needs, police departments most people need.

And what happens then is because we can keep low rates low, we don't have bonds or levels attached to real estate.

Even if you're not a homeowner of your renter, those bills go to your landlord and their rents are set based upon those bills that are coming in.

So if you can keep those lower bills, it does have a downstream effect to affordability for your house.

Um, so it does help in many different ways.

That's why I support this bill.

Obviously, I lost the argument on the language, but you know, I do support the bill.

Keep rolling.

Any other questions?

No.

All right.

Yeah, that was the last slide questions.

Um we've been peppering you with questions the whole way, Ariel.

Any other last minute questions, or not last minute, but any other questions that we have.

No.

Yeah, Ariel, thanks for the work that you're doing on behalf of the city in Salem every day, very long days.

Thank you for doing that.

Appreciate you.

So yeah, thanks to that.

Uh