Another June 16th work session.

I'm gonna turn this time over to City Manager Robbie Hammond to begin and introduce the panel.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Tonight we are going to be giving the council an update on our Avenida Diaz work that we've been really working on for a few years.

You're gonna meet uh I'll let them introduce themselves.

But we have staff that have been working very hard on this for a number of years with our community.

We're excited to present tonight an update to you all.

Tonight's is more of an update.

We will be coming back in a couple of months.

You'll see that in some later slides after going through some more process where there's going to be some more action items and direction for the city council in August.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dan.

Thank you, Robbie.

Good evening, Council President Harrison Council.

I just want to echo what Robbie said, take over the team here in a minute to present.

But I want to also thank our community advisory committee members that have worked on this at and we'll speak a little bit more to that later in the presentation.

Many of them will be joining this evening too, and this work has been very much enriched and rounded out by their participation.

I also want to acknowledge uh Raheem's leadership as a lot of this project as well, even though he's not Clean Water Services, but he too was a key player part of this team.

Um so with that, I'll kick it over to Justin Edma to present.

And uh tonight, as Robbie mentioned, is primarily information, but please do feel free to ask any questions as we go.

We do have some break points as usual, and then we should have ample time at the end for questions and conversation.

Great.

Good evening, uh City Council.

Uh my name for the record is Justin DeMello.

I'm a senior project manager in economic development.

And I'll edma introduce herself as well.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Emma Castillo, and I am a project manager also in economic and community development.

So we're happy to present an informational update here uh tonight.

Um the agenda is relatively light.

I think the presentation is a little bit light on content.

Um, and that is a little bit by design because we have actually so much content.

Uh it really lends itself more to reading than uh an hour uh long work session.

So, as Robbie uh mentioned there at the outset, um, following uh this work session, we'll provide quite a bit in terms of written materials for city council, and then over the coming uh month or so, especially through the month of July, we'll be receiving more that we'd like to share with you directly as drafts of the equitable development strategy, which is the centerpiece of what we'll talk about tonight.

So, tonight is light on specifics, but uh please bear in mind that there's there's lots of specifics that are that are coming.

So we just wanted to use tonight as an opportunity to provide a little bit more of just a general program overview, especially for some of the city councillors who may um be relatively new compared to the when the program began.

Uh, share a little bit about what we've done over the past few years and then really just set this table uh for our pathway toward adoption of uh this document that uh we'll be sharing with council here in the coming months.

So that's the general uh sort of feeling and thought process behind the work session tonight, but we'll we'll skip up uh next to the actual agenda just to give a little bit of structure for the coming few minutes.

Uh we'll kick it off with uh, as I mentioned, the overview of the program itself.

So we'll talk about the geographic area, what we're talking about in terms of the map when we talk about Avenida Diaz, uh, why this program was set up in the first place, uh, what policy basis it was built upon, and so what really the why in terms of why we have a program.

And then the program framework will talk a little bit about what the program is because uh it's pretty wide-ranging in its scope, and so sometimes it's been a little bit challenging, truthfully, to articulate.

So I think um this presentation does a better job maybe than what we've done in the past in terms of what is Avenida Diaz as we talk about a program.

Uh and then really the the meat of the presentation tonight, especially as we think about the months ahead, um, and as we're gonna come back to city council in August, uh, is to really just share with you uh the uh uh equitable development strategy, uh, which is a document of pretty good size deliverable, which we'll be uh presenting for your consideration in the coming months.

We don't have a draft of it ready tonight, so we're really just kind of trying to set the table a little bit so that you know why it is and what it is when it does come into your inboxes here in the coming weeks.

And then uh Dan, I think especially will help us as we move through the last phase and talks about the logistics of uh next steps and the pathway to adoption for this equitable development strategy.

So I'll take a quick pause right there if there's any questions on the agenda.

I have a habit of running on at the mouth as I get up a uh speed.

So I'm trying to be better about taking pauses here every couple of slides.

So we'll take a uh look at the next one here.

So uh where is Avenida Diaz or 10th Avenue?

Uh well, as you can see, we have we do have a map there of a project area that's from about Fifth Avenue in downtown Hillsboro, extending to the east to uh 13th and 18th Avenues, respectively, generally following Main Street, but not exactly on the north, and uh following the railroad track and TV Highway on the south.

So the driver for this uh geometry is that it really is exactly the east end of the downtown urban renewal area.

Uh so it certainly wasn't wasn't arbitrary, but it's tied to that with an eye on potential funding for some of these actions that we'll talk about.

Um we have been cautious and thoughtful about not being very forward about saying this is the boundary of the neighborhood because we want to make it clear that anybody that you know feels that they're part of this community is the community, and there's no arbitrary boundary.

But as we talk about some of the demographic analysis and just the technical pieces of the work, uh we did need a project area for that, and so that's uh the boundary that was established.

Uh a big part too of the why um uh a development strategy and particularly one focused on equity uh is needed for this part of our downtown uh is a is uh there on the right hand um side of the of the slide.

Just a couple of data points that really talk about really the unique uh quality of this community is being uh really uh uh very predominantly Hispanic and also home to uh a great many of the uh Hispanic uh own small businesses.

And so that really makes especially the commercial corridor there something super unique and very, very special um to the city of Hillsborough.

And so that was really rooted, or this program was rooted in the desire to support the community and to help it to thrive going forward.

So there's just a couple of the data points.