Good afternoon, everyone.

This Tuesday, September 16th, 2025 meeting of the Lake Osico City Council is now called to order.

Ms.

Hawkins, will you please call the roll?

Yes, Mayor Buck.

Here.

Councilor Rath.

All right, here.

Councillor Afgan is on Zoom.

Councillors Maboop.

Wendlin.

Here.

Verdict.

And Corrigan.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Now, everyone, will you please stand or move your hats and join us in the pledge?

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

Thank you.

First item on the agenda is uh public comment.

And if you are here to provide public comment and have not already done so, please saw White Forms back to the table and hand it to Ms.

Hawkins there.

But first up, we have our Clackamas County Clerk, Catherine Whitmall in here to talk to us about National Voter Registration Day.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Catherine McMullen and I'm the county clerk for Clackamas County.

I want to thank you, Mayor Joe Buck and the City Council for allowing me to speak today.

Today is the National Voter Registration Day holiday.

It's an opportunity for us to celebrate every eligible citizen's right to vote easily and without hassle.

I want to invite invite you as local election officials, local officials across Oregon and the count country as we celebrate National Voter Registration Day.

We're encouraging Oregonians to take a few moments today to check their voter registration to make an impact and to vote local in this election in the next one.

In Oregon, you're eligible to register to vote if you're a resident of Oregon, a citizen of the United States, and at least 16 years old.

Once you turn 18, you'll get that first ballot in the mail.

So it's always a good idea for people to maybe instead of getting a car on their 16th birthday to get that voter registration card.

The City of Lake Oswego has 30,741 registered voters across three counties, with 93% residing in Clackamas County.

Lake Oswego voters make up 8.9% of Clackamas County's 319,600 total registered voters.

County election officials recommend you take three steps.gov.

Second, sign up for track your ballot.

That's a service that's available here in Clackamas County, and you can go to Clackniss County elections to find the link and sign up.

You'll receive an alert when we mail you your ballot, another alert when we've received it back, and a final one whenever we verified your signature and accepted your ballot for counting.

And finally, make a plan to vote in the next election and everyone thereafter.

And that plan includes knowing when your ballot's going to come to you in the mail, when and where you're going to vote, and then how you'll be returning your ballot, whether it's through the mail or directly back to an official ballot drop site.

County elections officials are a reliable source of trusted and accurate information about elections processes and voter resources.

So I invite you to visit Clackamas County Elections website, which is Clackamas.us forward slash elections for the most up-to-date information about each election.

So I want to thank you for your time today and happy National Voter Registration Day.

Thank you, Clerk McCallin.

I appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

Carol, Carol Alkart.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I'm Carolkert, the land use liaison for Fan Forest Hills.

And I'm speaking briefly today on item 13.1, the Laura North Anchor Fifth Addendum to the DDA.

Fellow board member Jim Bolland and I have worked together on several versions of North Anchor plans over a long span of years with several developers.

Other developers fell away, and with UDP, we've gone the distance, culminating in a unanimous DRC approval of their plans.

With Laura continuing to work through the property development side of the equation, I appreciate that written into this fifth admin is an agreement that involves the city holding money that, though fully refundable, is of a consequential dollar a month such that the interest it will aren't over the holding time frame will be of value to the downtown urban renewal district.

The estimate our city finance director kindly provided to me was somewhere in the range of 70 to 100,000.

That's it.

Thank you, Miss O'Perg.

Is it young Palmer?

Good afternoon.

So I had a slideshow.

This is what you just introduce yourself, please.

Oh, my name is Young Palmer.

I'm an Oregon resident.

Okay, so I don't I made a slideshow, but I guess we don't do those.

No.

Okay.

So I wanted to tell you guys about something for uh first responders, police officers, firefighters.

Uh it's called phototherapy.

Right?

It's a new technology, it's only a couple years old.

Um my friend and Tiger is 84 years old.

She doesn't heal at all.

Her body doesn't heal.

She had a cut on her neck for months.

She calls it a when she gets a cut, she calls it a sore because it doesn't heal.

So I gave her one of these phototherapy devices, and she was healed in four weeks.

The cup was gone.

So she's so she healed like she's in her 30s or 40s.

Uh and the reason I wanted to share that is because these are this is a set of patches.

Uh I'm not going to open it, but um, if you want this, want this to give to a volunteer so we can try it.

I'll give it to you.

Okay, so inside the patch, there's um amino acids and sugar.

And the way this, the way this technology works is exactly like you know how when you're in the sun and you get UV and it makes your body make vitamin D.

So you've heard of red light therapy, or like you stand in front of a red light and your body produces collagen.

So what this does is it absorbs infrared that your body produces, and it activates what's in the patch, and then and then that sends out the signal to your nerves, and then your nerves produce a copper peptide called GHKCU.

Now, GHKCU is like uh you make it when you're young, and then when you hit 27, you start making less and less and less.

And that's um GHKCU is what heals you because it produces stem cells.

So my friend in Tiger is using these, and she's healing like she's younger than me, like she's my age basically.

Um another benefit of GHKCU is it reduces inflammation.

And uh many emotional and mental problems are caused by inflammation in the brain.

And so I've given this patch to everybody I know, and they've all noticed improvements in their moods and in their significant others' moods.

Um reducing inflammation also means alleviating chronic pain.

My friend's mother has chronic pain in her knee.

She said it reduced the pain by about 30%.

Which is good.

Okay.

Um sorry, your time has expired, but we appreciate you coming to share the information.

Okay.

Is there a way I can share this?

We'll try it out on Counselor Windland.

Thank you.

Do you want to want this?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

There are two of you who signed up for public comment.

Troy and Layla.

Okay, and but we'll have you during the public hearing on that.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Is there anyone else who would like to provide a public comment?

Not okay.

Okay.

Then we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda, which is a proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month.

The history of Lake Oswego is deeply enriched by the invaluable contributions of the Hispanic and Latino community members here, including immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, whose presence continue to shape and strengthen our city.

This year's theme is collective heritage, honoring the past, inspiring the future, which reminds us the importance of recognizing legacies, traditions, and sacrifices of Hispanic and Latino communities while celebrating their resilience and leadership.

This theme calls us to honor those who came before us while uplifting future generations to continue shaping a more inclusive and equitable society.

We encourage all residents to join us in honoring the histories, achievements, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino individuals, past and present and future, to continue fostering a community where every neighbor is valued, respected, and empowered.

And you can find this proclamation as well as all other city proclamations on our website.

Alright, with that, we're going to move on to the consent agenda.

We have two items on the consent agenda this afternoon.

Resolution 25 39 is a resolution authorizing me to execute a municipal judge employment agreement and resolution 25 40 is a resolution authorizing the city manager to sign the franchise agreement extension between the city and Comcast Oregon.

Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

Move to adopt the consent agenda.

Second motion has been made by Councillor Corgan and seconded by Councillor MOOC.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Council Afghanistan.

So okay, the motion passes 70.

And now moving on to Council Business Item 8.1 is a 2026 pavement rehabilitation project.

This is work order 378.

And we have our director of special project, Stefan Brodus here to talk to us about it.

Good afternoon.

So the agenda for this afternoon's presentation is uh fairly brief.

It is I'm going to give a pretty quick uh reminder about the pavement management program and what we've been up to over the last um eight years or so.

I'm gonna walk through some of the preliminary results from the pavement condition assessment that's been performed, and then um give some insight into next summer's paving.

So as a reminder, we uh executed the 2018 to 2022 pavement management program.

Uh and we had quite a bit of success that I'm very proud of uh from a uh key performance indicator metric perspective.

We improved our pavement condition index from a 68 to a 75, which was a huge accomplishment.

What did that actually mean on all in the streets on the road?

Uh these are the following uh you know performance uh measures that we had.

58 lane miles were paved, 63 lane miles slurried, uh almost 300 curb ramps constructed uh in alignment with our uh self-evaluation and transition plan, and then uh 280 stormwater catch basins were also uh retrofitted with uh current water quality components to them.

What did that mean from a pavement condition index uh and the trend line where we're going?

So obviously with that level of investment, uh we were able to make quite an improvement in that line.

So we went from uh 68 about 10 years ago to a 69 in the first year of the program, and then by the end of the program, the PCI had increased uh up to a 75.

A few years after the program, uh we saw a smaller budget uh and uh which obviously resulted in less paving.

So we went from a typical budget of about eight million dollars per year during the program, um, which was uh quite a budget, uh, and then that was reduced to three million dollars total over the last three years, so about one million dollars a year.

So as you can imagine, we paved quite a bit less with that level of funding, but we still managed to have quite a few significant achievements.

And we were able to do that by doing cost-effective measures like repairing a single intersection that had failed instead of doing a long line paving.

We could uh tact tactfully identify just single spot failures.

We were also able to take some long line segments that were designed previously but were cut maybe due to budget constraints, or the timing was in conflict with like a utility project or development or something like that.

So we were able to take those uh road segments that were already designed but shelved and then implement them to keep our uh overhead down.

So this is a map of what we accomplished over the last three years.

Uh you'll notice some dots on there, those are mostly where we uh patched spot failures.

Um but there are some uh notable long line paving in here too.

The previous slide had some pictures of Carmen Drive.

Uh another one up here that's not necessarily the longest line, but but probably the most impactful of these was when uh we paved First Street, uh, which was uh great accomplishment.

And and I really want to thank all the people on the team that helped uh coordinate with the residents and the business owners in that area to get that you know pretty important segment of uh commercial area in town paved with with relatively low impact.

Um moving forward to the next five years, which will we intend to replicate the program that we did from 2018 to 2022, albeit slightly smaller in scale.

Uh we will continue as a part of this program our pavement condition assessment on a three-year cycle, as we've done for the last many years.

Uh and then the scope of that program is still to be determined, and it's based on what we find in the analysis, and then based on sequencing these paving efforts along with uh other projects.

You hear me talk about dig once all the time, so this is trying to make sure we're sequencing our utility repair projects and our paving projects in that order, not vice versa, where we're digging up new pavement.

So uh the the overall scope of the five-year program is still somewhat to be determined, like I said.

Uh we do intend to uh complete that uh pavement condition assessment, identify pavement condition index goals for the program, as well as continue to emphasize uh streets with larger volume or arterials and our collectors as we've done in the past.

So, as a reminder, uh typically we try to uh catch roads when they are in still relatively decent condition before they get to full failure.

This map uh up here on the screen, I think I've used different versions of it in the past, maybe different illustrations, is all very much the same concept of preventative maintenance is the most cost-effective way to maintain a pavement network, uh, and we do so by doing uh slurry seal where we can to catch roads before they fail.

We do uh preventative maintenance with rehab on our bigger roads, our arterials and our collectors, in order to keep the thickness of the pavement that we need to put down relatively thin and avoid full-blown reconstruction and other measures that can increase in cost exponentially.

So, where is our pavement condition index number right now?

Uh it has dropped, which was expected.

Uh, we gave this presentation a few years ago, kind of at the culmination of that 2022 program, and we said the pavement condition will drop, paving management, pavement rehab is a never-ending job, and we knew that going from the level of investment that we had to a lower level was going to see a reduction in this pavement condition index.

I'm actually quite pleased that the assessment from earlier this year found that it only dropped to a 70.

Uh, we were worried that it could have dropped further uh given the level of investment over the last three years.

But another takeaway in here that you don't see just from that one number of 70 is that our arterials and collectors are quite strong, and they're they themselves are higher than this number, which is brought down by uh a relatively lower score on our local streets.

So uh that's basically where we're at today.

Looking forward to the next couple years and specifically next summer, uh, what we're looking to do is to start implementing these findings and recommendations from the pavement condition assessment.

And what that'll include, of course, is the same three things that we've included for many years now, mostly paving, but also uh the uh 88 curb ramps where they're triggered by the Department of Justice, which is everywhere, there's a corner.

And also our retrofitting our stormwater catch basins to address structural issues and also to retrofit them with the current stormwater quality uh components on them.

So what I'm seeking for uh authorization today is to proceed with the design phase for next summer.

So previously this council approved the professional services contract for program management services, and what we're seeking today is to amend that contract that was intentionally set up uh to be amended basically on an annual basis for every next year of the program.

So this amendment is in the amount of about $650,000 and takes that total contract value up to just around $1 million.

So that is my presentation today, and be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Could you give us, you know, when you had the map of the most recent paving projects that we did?

So how much did this cost?

So total on screen here is just under $3 million.

Uh and that wasn't uniform by year.

Uh, this most recent year uh 2025 was to the tune of about 1.5, 1.75, somewhere in that, and the previous two years were a little bit smaller than that.

But what you see on the screen here, about three million dollars worth of work.

It's important to note here that um you know some of these are not full width paving.

So for example, you see B Avenue up there, and that was kind of the the mantra of the last three years was trying to do really tactful paving instead of just full width paving everywhere we went.

So B Avenue up here, we did not pave the entire road.

Uh in that segment, in the north lane or the westbound lane, there were some failures there, uh, probably due to a utility settlement.

And so that south lane, the eastbound lane was actually in pretty good condition.

So we just didn't touch that.

We just paved the north lane.

So it was a really cost-effective way of getting there.

Um yeah, the it's expensive to do the paving.

I think we all know this, but just as a reminder, I mean, the reason why we could ramp up all that paving in those um 2018, 19, 20, 21, was that we we bonded on the increase in the gas tax from you know House Bill 2017.

And so now that we when we collect those additional revenues, right, we're paying the debt that we incurred to do all of this at once paving.

So I think we that's why we can't continue that same level um because we um to achieve even this level of pain, we spend millions from the general fund that we divert into the street fund to accomplish uh the work, um, which is important work, but it would be yeah, impossible um really without us sacrificing significant other things within the city to continue that at a higher level.

Uh counselor Winland Thanks for the presentation.

Um couple questions.

So what do you know the breakdown between um paving versus ADA versus curb ramps versus?

I don't know the exact percentage offhand, but but I would say in the years of the program, so 2018 to 2022, it was probably somewhere between 20 and 30 percent were curb ramps.

Uh the stormwater structures were probably somewhere between five and ten percent, with the paving being the rest.

In the um last three years, one of the ways uh that we leveraged the the money was the the curb ramps were not triggered very often, either by doing patching in um, let's say an intersection that failed, the patching doesn't quite trigger a curb ramp, uh, or by doing a road that doesn't have sidewalks, by paving a road that doesn't have sidewalks, I should say, there's no ramps to build.

Um on the screen up here, there's not uh as many curb ramps per lane mile as we did during the program.

So the costs over the last three years uh were relatively low uh for those uh those secondary categories, we'll call them.

Um but I would say when we're doing our full width paving, it's the the curb ramps are very much a significant cost to that, and probably somewhere between 20 and 30 percent.

Okay.

Um then so the other part is the um stormwater part.

Is that paid out of a different fund than paving?

It is, yeah.

So our stormwater improvements are paid out of the stormwater fund, and we uh pay the we pay the corresponding invoice itemized invoice accordingly.

Okay.

So it's not so kind of when we're talking about the three million.

It's the stormwater was included in that three million it would have been for any of those catch basins that were included, those would be paid from the stormwater fund.

Okay.

So really we're paying less than three million in paving over the last three years, yes.

Yeah, yes.

So weren't we allocating three million a year for paving?

You send three million dollars a year of the general fund into the street fund, but it goes through a combination of the paving projects and other capital projects in the street fund.

So, for example, the Lake Beaver Boulevard project isn't considered one of these paving projects, but it will result in some pretty nice new pavement when you're done.

Okay.

But um okay, and then so that the contract that we want to sign.

Um that's to get us the starting point of what we need to do with you say with the 24 million dollars over the next four years.

Right.

So there's an existing contract in place uh to the tune of about 350,000.

And the scope of that is for them to perform the pavement assessment.

Uh so they go through every street and and analyze the level of defect to identify a score for for every street we own.

And then from there, they start developing a um a package of work basically for each of the five years.

What this specific amendment is seeking today is to take the the package for next summer and to convert that essentially into engineered design plans.

So we're this amendment is seeking approval for the engineering work that needs to get done in order to pave next year.

And next year will be four million.

Plus or minus.

Yes.

So I I just I think there's some missing parts in your presentation to tie things together.

It sounds almost like we're paying $650,000 to do a million dollars worth of work based on what our budget has been, but it's really for future work, which is more funded at $4 million a year, roughly.

And that's coming from where that four million.

Well, it's coming from the street fund.

So the revenues in the street fund are made up of state gas tax, uh registration fee, county registration fees, and the general fund distribution, and also your street fee.

So you have a variety of sources of funds in there.

Okay.

And will this you think the 24 million will take us back from 70 back up to 75 or 76 in the index?

Because I think what if you go to the slide that shows the red, green, blue, that one behind it there, that one.

I mean, we're not even in the satisfactory, we're barely in the satisfactory area, right?

Um and we're getting into the fare, and then for those who don't, I mean you explained it, but exponentially, if we get down at a fair poor, it's going to cost us a fortune, the money that we'll never have to get us back up to satisfactory.

So I'm just trying to find out what this contract will we will have a better idea of where the 24 million will take us in the index.

We will.

And of course, the actual PCI is gonna depend on uh which streets end up being selected for inclusion in this project.

It'll also depend on what other streets get paved as a result of other projects like Lakeview Boulevard that the city manager mentioned, what streets get paved as a part of development efforts and their frontage improvements.

So it's hard to say exactly five years where that will be, but with this level of investment, it should definitely be able to increase what whether that's a 73, 75.

We'll need to see until the the report is finalized.

Um but my guess is it'll be within that range of of bringing it somewhere close to where it was a few years ago.

That number, that overall number.

Right.

Thank you.

Nature's speed bumps, right?

Counselor move.

One giant speed bump.

20s plenty.

So 70s plenty.

Okay.

So uh I yeah, thank you really for all you do, not only this, but as a few news that we have that you're doing a wonderful look on many projects you have.

Thank you, Stephen.

And but like I'm honestly talking on behalf of a gentleman who came here a couple of months ago about Blue Heron Road.

And you know, it was I was touched by his uh uh, you know, like that's a funded project in your CIP, it's not part of this.

Okay, no, I'm that because when I saw this, what that person talk about was it was very seriously damaged road.

And I was just saying where we are at on that, if it's funded.

Thank you.

That was my question.

The rest I yeah, no, oh yeah, but it's it because yeah, that gentleman I want it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor Bob.

Counselor Rap.

Um, that was not my question, but um What was what you said?

So easy.

Um thanks, Counselor Wenlin.

You that you touched on one of the questions I had.

I was gonna be like, well, 600 grand for a million dollars worth of work, it doesn't make sense, but thanks for clearing that up.

Um not necessarily for you, more of something for all of us to consider.

Um I've I've said this once or twice before, um being on the council for a little over four years, and that is I truly believe that one of the most important things we do as a council is pave roads.

Um we're really not that important as politicians or council members.

If we can, you know, people look at us and if their road in front of their house gets paved, or you know, it it significantly improves livability here.

And and as miners, it may be it's just paving roads, it it's it's very impactful for people.

And so I I you know, if uh can you go back to the slide with just the number of projects from 23 to 25?

Um I would when I look at this and I see this cost three million dollars over three years.

I understand the economics job, I'm not arguing about what we hadn't or didn't have to do it.

But if I'm a lay person from the community looking at this, and I'm saying in three years this is all you did, I think that's a hard thing for us to like come back and say, no, no, no, we're doing the right things, we're doing the right thing.

So I because I don't think people understand that what happens behind the scenes with the economics of paving roads and bonding and things like that.

So one, I would just be a little make sure we can always um support the things we're doing around paving and making sure people understand that we have a long-term plan and something that we should always focus on.

Paving roads is very, very important.

And so this goes, we'll come back around a little bit in the sense that we should always be focusing on doing the simple things right in our city.

And to me, one of the simplest things is making people's roads smooth and easy and livable and drivable.

And so for me, as a counselor who's a little bit more on the fiscal conservative side, when I see us spend money on things that I don't feel are maybe the most where I would spend money, I like to make sure that we're always focusing on things like this.

So I'm gonna go back to the 20s plenty thing, and uh I'm not gonna badger that one to death, but spending 200 grand on signs when you know 200 grand um over the course of a million dollars when you know that's uh you know what 20% of a pro of paving roads, that's significant in the sense that we're only spending a million dollars a year.

So I just want us to always be thinking, as we're we have a lot of projects to do.

Um we have to prioritize it, get it.

But I would just urge us all as we're thinking about all the little things we want to do and the nice things versus the must-haves.

Let's really always try to focus on paving roads.

I you know, we make jokes about you know how some certain ex-counselors really love it and the PCI this and I get it, I laugh about it too.

But it really does impact people in a in a really impactful way.

And I just want us to constantly make sure we're making the right fist f financial choices when we're spending money on things.

So it is one of the biggest things.

It is one of the biggest things that we put a discretionary amount of money into, you know, to be fair.

I mean, we we don't have to put that money into the street fund, and we invest a significant amount.

It's just so expensive to pave the roads.

But I agree, it's a very important thing.

And it remains high on the as the community wants more investments in pedestrian infrastructure.

What they do maintain a high level of of desire to have the roads paved as well.

So and I think it's also to our to our defense.

I should add this earlier.

You know, I don't think people understand enough about our dig ones policy.

So, like paving roads is not just digging it up and throwing some concrete and and asphalt down.

Like we we pull pull all the power down, put it underground to keep things safe during storms and things like that.

So it is more complicated than people understand.

And we when we do, you know, as a city and an engineering department, we are very mindful that when we do dig it, dig things up, we finish it the right way.

So it is, you know, uh it lasts a while.

So good comments.

Thank you, Councilor Raff.

Counselor Corgan.

Yeah, I just have a quick question.

Thinking about the the streets where we get the most traffic are um arterials and our collectors.

You said it was a higher number.

My question is how much higher do you happen to know?

I don't have the number on hand.

Uh but our arterials and collectors are going to be a couple points higher than this because our locals are a couple points lower than this number of 70 here, and that's where we get the result in 70.

So our RTRs collector is quite strong, and we we intend to continue that emphasis here in the next few years, but we will I should say uh reserve some percent of this for the local roads because a lot of those are the ones that are quite low, and um some percent has to be allocated to the locals, or else they'll never get done, right?

So that's what we're trying to focus on the the bigger volume roads with some percent still allocated towards the locals.

Sounds great.

Thanks.

Thanks, Councilor Corgan.

Uh Counselor Afghan.

Question is for the director.

Uh I need uh the summary of what you answered the question for uh counselor wedland.

So this contract is 650,000, which I understood.

I understand the scope of work.

There was about 300 some thousand previously, so it's about a million for the design services.

What is the total construction budget that we're talking about?

I heard three million a year, and then I heard 24 million uh for the scope, and I can't uh connect the numbers.

So in here, I'm I mentioned the program budget is 24 million per the CIP, but with flexibility built in, and what I mean by that is in in our six years in the CIP, the first two, as you know, the first two years are committed in the budget, with the other four years being shown as funded but not yet budgeted, right?

So we would come back in two years from now and do an updated CIP, at which point the intent of this was to be flexible so that if that number changed, it we could absorb that within the program.

The other reason why this is is flexible is to Councilor Winland's question earlier about where the funding comes from, is some of the uh improvements within this program will be from the stormwater fund.

So there's 24 million dollars programmed uh into the budget from the street fund uh with the intent of spending some amount of money on this program from the stormwater fund to retrofit the uh uh catch basins.

Additionally, the uh there is a line item in the capital improvement plan for ADA curb ramp retrofits to the tune of about 750,000 a year.

So this program can pull from that line item as well in order to pay for those improvements.

So the actual uh the actual budget of the program is in the CIP for 24 million dollars, but it's somewhat scope dependent on what we need to do, and uh can be less than that, or we could even technically the program could be a little bit more than that, depending on um using those other line items, either the stormwater uh line item or the curb ramp line item.

And that's why we intend to bring back this um item uh basically twice every year, once to get the design contract amended, like we're doing here today, but then again, probably uh in the spring when we go to approve the construction contract, essentially.

So that will be probably in March or April of 2026.

I'll be here again to get the the procurement for the construction of the upcoming pavement approved.

Yeah, that's it.

My question, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilor AfCAN.

All right, would someone like to make a motion to adopt uh the amendment to the professional services contract?

I'll move to authorize the city manager to amend the professional services contract with Concer North America Inc.

in the amount of six thousand or six hundred and fifty thousand three hundred sixty-nine dollars for professional entrance engineering services for the 2026 pavement rehabilitation project work order 378.

Second.

The motion is made by Councillor Winland and seconded by Councillor Verdick.

Any further discussion?

All right, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Motion passes seven uh zero.

Thank you, Director Broadway.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next up we have a legislative uh update.

From Miss The Cena Director Numonalo.

Good afternoon.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

Uh thank you, Mayor, City Council, for having us this afternoon.

I'm Madison Thieesing.

I'm the deputy city manager, and I am being joined by community director for today's presentation.

I wasn't sure if I was introducing you first.

Um so we're gonna go over the legislative session that concluded back in June.

Um, one thing to note uh we are gonna do a high-level recap.

It's not going to be comprehensive of every single bill that will relate to city operations, but the ones that we talked about the most, and then a deeper dive into those related to housing, um, given that has been an attention, and then it will tee up also for the conversation that follows as well for your next presentation.

So we'll just dive in.

Um, I think what we're gonna end up doing is the presentation in total, but if you do have questions along the way, we can we can pause.

But um the intention was that we would run through it first and then go back if there's questions, if that's okay with everyone.

Okay, perfect.

Um, so to recap what we're gonna talk about today, we're gonna do a session overview.

We're gonna do a bill recap about the city priorities, those that were related to housing, which will be a deeper dive by Director Numonolou, and then we'll talk about the transportation package, what we ended session with, but then also what we're moving into the special session with.

Uh, and that we'll touch on next steps, as well as then a look ahead for the 2026 short session, which is wild to think we're already talking about that.

Um, so what we thought was going to be the focus for 2025 was we knew housing and homeless services would be a top priority for the governor, but also just from the continuation of the last few years.

Uh climate change, climate impact, we thought that would be a theme as well.

Um, budget every long session, they have to adopt their budget.

We knew that would be uh a priority.

Transportation was teed up to be the front theme, if you will.

Um, they had done their roadshow through through recess as well as past conversations.

We knew the deficit that ODOT was facing that was going to be a top priority.

And then the question mark is things can happen throughout session that we don't always expect, but then also the federal government uncertainty of what was going to happen with bill changes, budgets, things like that.

So that was what we thought we were getting into session with.

What we ended up seeing was roughly 3,500 bills.

Um, those came pretty fast with housing.

One of the things I know I touched on early on our presentations was housing was a top priority for governor.

Those moved really, really quickly at the beginning of session, and then we kind of stalled out.

We thought we were gonna see the transportation bill bill a lot sooner.

We didn't see it till the final weeks that obviously stalled out.

We will talk about that.

Um, there was not a lot of movement for programs and rebates and uh funding for some of the climate action goals that we have and that we've been trying to advance.

Uh transportation related to safety for e-bikes also didn't move forward.

So there was a lot of things that from from the offset of what conversations we were having internally with our our lobbyist groups, and then also what we were hearing from electeds was was ended up not actually coming to fruition at the end.

Um, what that means is really there's a lot of unanswered needs when it comes to the budget, but then also what are the priorities for the state moving forward?

Um so with that.

Um it was we still have question marks for sure.

Um, so the as a recap for what our priorities were as we went into session was uh we adopt our priorities, which are set into principles, which are the the goals that we have, no matter short or long session, they don't change based off of what are the current themes.

So that is to preserve home rule authority, so our local decision-making authority, avoid unfounded mandates, and then leverage regional and state partnerships.

So again, we don't do this work alone, and so again, as many times as we can work with others.

And then for session, we adopt or for the long sessions, we adopt a priority area.

So going into this session, we our priorities as an organization, and then what our lobby efforts were towards was the comprehensive transportation funding package, restoring of recreational immunity, a pause on additional housing policies and regulations, and then lastly, a comprehensive funding for essential infrastructure projects.

This really was teed up with the need of if we're going to be increasing housing and density to the rate that we are.

There's a high need throughout the state for infrastructure funding related to streets, water, sewer for these expansions.

So that's where that had come from.

This was a approved and by council at the beginning of session.

So that is what guided our our efforts throughout the time.

So these bills were all ones that we had talked about throughout session through the presentations, but I just wanted to highlight where they ended up falling between past and failed.

Again, these are not comprehensive of everything.

The League of Oregon Cities will provide a in-depth report of all bills that impact city operations, which has not been released yet, but as soon as that is shared, I will.

But this is a highlight of those that we had talked about along the way.

So what was passed was recreational immunity, uh excuse me, restoring recreational immunity, which was a huge win.

Um that was one that we had talked with our representatives throughout, as well as um obviously us being able to keep our trails and green spaces and walkways open is extremely important.

Uh SB 916 was the striking workers that has that was passed, which was expanding uh unemployment benefits for striking employees beyond two weeks, including public officials or excuse me, um, public staff, so the public sector being the schools, the cities, counties, etc.

Uh the so I'm just gonna go down each one so that everyone hears the the recap or excuse me, the summary.

So the uh tax oral nicotine, that's the ZIN patches, but that's direct funding for wildfires and wildfire prevention programs.

Uh, we don't know exactly what that means for how much of money would we be getting for that, or if those will be grant programs, but we at least have a dedicated funding source for wildfire and wildfire prevention programs.

Uh Senate Bill 5550 um was the habitat fix bill, which it I know that's it's a weird way to phrase it, but um, we had received funding last year as a direct appropriation for 1.7 million dollars for habitat for humanity for the Boons Ferry Road project.

They were not going to be able to use the entire 1.7 for that project specifically.

We made it as a technical fix to a budget line item that said they could use that on another site, just uh and uh a few miles north uh north of us.

So um I just checked in with them, they're gonna be able to use that full amount of money for both of those projects, both being uh multifamily housing, so townhomes.

Uh well, also it was passed House Bill 2573.

That um is the grant funding for our most recent senior paramedic outreach program that had a sunset, which now was expanded for another couple more years.

Again, a wonderful opportunity as we've been able to receive funding for that.

House Bill 3031, housing infrastructure project fund.

That is a direct funding product, or excuse me, that's a um uh a fund for infrastructure related, sorry, how infrastructure for housing expansion and affordability projects.

Um, that one is new.

That was a governor's also priorities to have direct or uh dedicated funding.

Um passed were I I'm gonna just put an asterisk on it is the housing bills.

That's what we're gonna cover more in depth, so that those weren't not spelled out here.

Those those that had failed that we had been watching, uh, there was a whole host of transit lodging taxing bills, those those evolved over time.

I think there was six or six at the end of the day.

Um, those all failed.

That will be something that comes back most likely for next session.

Climate-related rebates, it was one thing that um we were watching and advocating for was to have more options for if people wanted to opt into programs uh that were related to gas-powered lawn equipment or if they had home energy rebates, having just more um resources at the state, but also easier ways to navigate that system.

Right now, you have to know which agencies to be reaching out to.

So those failed.

Um, e-bike safety regulations.

This was a priority for uh representative win that we also had helped with that failed.

Uh SB 1186.

It just didn't vote out of committee.

Um, and that was to have safety regulations so e-bikes weren't on sidewalks, and then also there was some related to age and um requirements for for licensing and things like that.

Um Senate Bill 86 PD drones, that was expanding our ability to use drones.

Um, we actually had some of our police department advocate as well as testify for that.

And that also failed.

And then lastly, at the very end, as you all know in the final days, the transportation package just never had a vote.

So I wrote failed, but that's probably not the correct phrasing.

It just never came to fruition.

This again, just a recap of things that we had talked through the last few months and where they landed.

We will be providing a full report once that is out.

Correct.

So I'll cover that as well.

Oh, so it's still going on.

The transportation Yes.

So I'll cover, we will dive into what that looks like today.

But the one that was in the last the official session.

And so as we shared, we were hoping to take a deeper dive into the housing bill specifically.

And those are set in Bill 974, the engineering review shot clock, House Bill 2658, which is the limits on frontage improvements, House Bill 2258, Oregon Home Code, and then lastly, House Bill 2138, which was the governor's bill for the middle housing allowances.

And I'm going to hand it over and we're going to go through these fairly quickly, but I wanted to give time and attention to them.

Thanks, Madison.

I am going to be giving a summary of these four bills and talk about how we're going to address them in our processes or other code work.

As you know, I think this is good timing because Planning Manager Olsen was at your last study session and talked about the current work that we're doing with our housing production strategy and other state mandates.

So this will uh we'll be able to talk about how this work is that we need to do will tie into that.

I am going to, I there's a couple of caveats that I just want to uh point out here before I get started.

I am providing an overview of what I think are the most pertinent parts of the bill.

Um House Bill 2138 alone is 49 pages long, so I'm definitely not going to go over the uh every aspect of uh of the bill or every detail of the bill.

Um, but uh I think you'll get a sense of the kinds of things that we're gonna have to address over the next couple of years.

Uh I also want to let you know that there's probably going to be questions I can't answer because these bills are complex, and there's some things that I've asked DLCD, the Department of Land Conservation and Development Commission, that they can't even answer yet at this point.

There's also a lot of rulemaking that still needs to be done.

So there's a there's there's still a lot of unknowns, unfortunately.

Uh, but I'll certainly do my best uh if you have questions to answer them.

So let's start uh right with uh Senate Bill 974.

And this bill has three parts that I want to talk about.

The first is uh what I call an engineering shot clock uh uh provision in the bill.

And it w and this is obviously most pertinent to our engineering department because it requires staff to approve engineering plans for residential development applications within a specific time frame.

Um right now there is no or not right now, actually, it is already effective.

It became or it will be effective, excuse me, in 10 days.

Um but uh currently we don't have any specific timeline for engineering plan reviews, so these would be things like public improvement plans if you had like a subdivision or uh a new multifamily project where they had to do frontage improvements.

We have public plan reviews.

Um the uh new requirement is there's a 30-day uh completeness review.

Once it's deemed complete, staff will have 120 days to issue a final decision, uh, which is approval.

If they don't meet that deadline, there is a provision that allows staff and an applicant to, if they mutually agree to extend the deadline up to 245 days total.

There is a penalty if we uh if the applicant uh if we don't meet the deadline, if the applicant files a writ a mandemus, then we could and the judge uh fines for the applicant, then we could be on the hook for refunding their plan review fees, uh covering some of their design review fees, and um potentially their attorney fees.

So there are some consequences.

Um but like I said, there at least is some flexibility for us to work with the applicants on extending the deadlines.

Uh the second part is uh it it reclassifies certain applications as what a new classification with their calling urban housing applications, and really the only thing that I could find that this affects is that it doesn't allow us to require a public hearing for these types of applications for the initial decision.

If it gets appealed, then it could go to public hearing.

But the initial decision has to be a staff level decision.

Um and the three uh affected application types are rezonings where the zone is uh density is increased.

Um plan unit development applications or what we call plan development applications, and then various applications all only applies to residential development.

For us, there really is only it only affects the plan development and up zoning applications.

Those are right now are things that we do take to a public hearing.

So we would no longer be able to apply a uh a public hearing for those two applications.

So that's really the only change that's going to affect us.

The implementation deadline is July 1st, 2026.

We can um, if we need to make some code changes, which is possible, we may be able to.

We haven't fully looked at the code to see if if we need to make code changes.

That is something we could handle as part of our annual CDC amendments.

If we aren't able to get that done before the deadline of July 1st, 2026, then we can just apply the state code directly.

So there's no huge implications if we can't get the um code changes through before that deadline.

Um and then the last part of this bill is um it it doesn't really have, I think, a huge impact in Lake Oswego because it what it does is it prohibits local governments from applying design standards to residential development that involve 20 units or more, but it specifically excludes multifamily development, because that's usually the type of development in the city where we would see more than 20 units.

We aren't getting you know 30 lot subdivisions here anymore.

That we typically do four or five lot subdivisions, minor partitions, that type of thing.

So um, but the design standards are things like um building facade materials, architectural details, porches, landscaping requirements.

It basically doesn't allow local governments to apply those um kinds of standards if it's 20 units or more, again, not applicable to multifamily buildings.

I don't see this as being a big issue in Lake Oswego just because we don't typically see these kinds of developments or if we do, it's multifamily, which are excluded.

Uh the implementation deadline is in 10 days.

Um, but this does have a sunset on January 1st, 2033.

So even if we did have a code provision that needed to be modified, I recommend you we don't because of the sunset that's happening in 2033.

We can just apply this uh directly if and when it would come up, which I would expect would not be very often.

Director Numanlu, can I so the uh the rezone is a uh, you know, is a legislative decision that we like in the comp plan amendment stuff.

So I don't how would that how would that work?

Uh that's a great question.

Um I don't know.

Um at this point that our code specifically does require a public hearing for that.

Multiple public hearings.

Yeah.

Uh and uh so uh the initial decision that that's a great question.

We are expecting more detailed guidance from DLCD next month.

So we expect these and many other questions that we have to be answered in their more detailed guidance coming up.

But I I don't know the answer at this point.

I guess staff could always just deny everything and then push it to the hearing.

So what on the first one?

What happens if they put in engineering plans that are not correct or something?

I mean, are we still under the clock?

We have a 30-day completeness review period, so um our engineering staff will have to make sure that when we receive an application that we review it for completeness and make sure it has everything that we need.

Um, and then once we call it complete, that's when it starts that 120-day clock.

Well, and we can always deny the permit.

Correct.

Oh, okay.

So we can still deny but that would be super inefficient.

I mean, if we denied the applicant's not going to want that because if we deny it, they have to reapply and start over, which is why they've built in that flexibility of the code.

But that's why the applicants are going to give us plans that we can approve is because denial is not a good path.

No, I was just looking at it if somebody you know was doing a do-it-yourself engineering thing and they weren't an engineer and they put them in and they're bad plans, and you said no, no.

The load is not calculated correctly.

Right.

You need to recalculate.

We can't re can't calculate the load, but you do, and then they keep turning in the wrong answer.

I mean, we're so eventually we can just say we're gonna deny your application.

Okay, good, good question.

Mayor back to circle back to your question.

I I agree with the director's answer that there are lots of practical problems that we'll have to address that DLCD will have to address, but to address your specific question about how in the world could we have a comp plan and say, oh, but we're not gonna have a public hearing.

The answer is right, we would say we're having a public hearing about the comp plan, but this particular element is it you can talk about it, you can testify about it all you want, but it's not going to be part of the record of your decision making.

You see what I mean?

It's just a good hung up.

Don't get hung up on it.

We'll figure it out.

But I'm I'm validating for you.

It's absurd, yes, but we it's a process that we can work through as we do with our other land use things where sometimes people testify about a lot of things that you're not allowed to take into account.

I see.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, moving on to HB 2658.

Um, this establishes limits on frontage improvements that local governments can um require specifically for renovations or alterations to existing buildings.

It would not apply to new buildings, it wouldn't apply to existing buildings where they're putting additions on or changes in occupancy to those buildings.

And basically, we are we wouldn't be able to require frontage improvements.

However, the bill does still allow local governments to apply conditions for right-of-way dedication to collect SDCs, or if you had a local improvement district uh fees that applied, or if there were ADA specific requirements that were required for the renovations, then the local government could also require this.

Again, this is more of an engineering department um provision that they'll need to uh keep in mind when we uh require frontage improvements for projects, but the implementation implementation deadline is not until 2031.

I don't know why it's such a long implementation deadline, but we have plenty of time to address it before now and then.

But again, I don't see that this is gonna be a huge issue because generally when an applicant is doing renovations to a building, if they're not increasing traffic or having other additional impacts, it would be hard for us to require frontage improvements anyway.

So I don't see this as being a huge impact.

Is this all building types, commercial and residential?

No, this would uh my understanding is I think it's just for residential.

Oh, okay.

And is there anything that precludes the uh collection of fee and lieu for public for the uh public improvements as part of this or any other bill?

Well, we couldn't require public improvements, so we wouldn't be able to do fee and lieu, but uh so I I think that could be an issue.

Um if in the same context.

Right.

Because a fee and lie would be the same as exacting public improvements, you're just getting the fee instead of the actual improvements.

But there was no, was there any other bill passed that that that preempts our ability to uh to um exact public improvements?

There was under HB 2138, but they um oh gosh, I'm I might be conflating that with the with the traffic impact um study that was required.

Let me get back to you on that.

Okay.

It's again lots of bills here, and I don't want to I don't want to come up with the wrong answer.

So I'll look into that when uh after Madison uh continues her presentation.

Uh HB 2258, this was called the Oregon homes bill, and there's two parts of it uh that we need to pay attention to.

The first is that it added uh what's called a permit ready plans program to the Oregon Building Codes division program.

So this specifically is um affects our building building permit review, and it essentially uh has quote unquote permit-ready plans that can go straight to the inspection process.

So basically there's these pre-approved plans for the state, and this is for all different kinds of housing types, whether it's single family, ADU, middle housing, um, that if they submit it to our building department, it goes straight to inspection.

There is no plan review whatsoever.

Now, the uh caveat to that is they can't modify those approved plans.

So if there are any modifications that are made to those pre-approved plans, then they have to go through our regular plan review process.

Um of the big questions that I had was okay, so we have these permit-ready plans.

The uh our uh Oregon building codes already had some of these in place.

We've never seen any in uh applied in Lake Oswego.

Um now, if they come in, we're gonna have to uh process them.

Uh but my question is does it preempt our land use regulations?

And the answer at least right now is no.

Um, this bill did not say that it specifically preempted our land use uh regulations that I could find.

So even though they don't have to go through the plan review process, we will still make sure it complies with our setbacks, our height regulations, et cetera.

Uh but again, they can't modify these pre-approved plans without going through the whole process again.

The second part of the bill gets at what they're calling streamlining development review review or certain types of land decisions for single family multi uh or I'm sorry, middle housing, and what they're calling six to twelve unit multi-using how multi-unit housing on lots that meet certain criteria.

And the whole point of it is to make a more expedited process for local land use review if certain eligibility criteria are met.

So for instance, it has to be on a site that's zoned residential use.

The lot has to be at least 1,500 square feet in size, but not more than 20,000 square feet.

It can't be covered by slopes averaging more than 15%.

It doesn't apply to lots that have sensitive lands.

It doesn't apply to vacant lots or open spaces.

There's a maximum size of housing.

It can't be more than 2200 square feet in size.

And it goes on and on.

There's there, I'm not going to go through all of the eligibility criteria.

But the idea is if you can meet all of these criteria, you're going to get this more expedited land use process.

I don't know what that means yet because this bill just directs the LCDC Land Conservation and Development Commission to do rulemaking by January 1st, 2027.

And that rule making in the bill says it needs to address the approval procedures that this will go through, any allowable variances, what design standards could be applied, and even specific tree protection.

So for instance, one of the eligibility criteria might be that if it involves the removal of a tree over 20 inches in diameter, for instance, then they couldn't qualify under the streamlined process.

So lots of questions here.

I don't know how this is going to shake out.

I don't even know yet when the city will have to comply with this.

We're going to have to see once the rulemaking is complete what the requirements of the city will be and what the deadline will be.

But this is coming up by in two years.

Thank you.

All right.

So the remainder of my presentation will be talking about HB 2138.

This is the densest bill that I'm going to be covering.

There are different implementation deadlines, and it was even just hard to figure that out.

Just being able to sort that out has been a great relief because it was quite confusing, confusing.

So I have several slides here, and each of them have a little bit different implementation deadline.

So this first part, I'm going to be covering some changes into like definitions of middle housing and cottage clusters and some other provisions.

These all have an implementation deadline of January 1st, 2027, but they specifically call out that the provisions that relate to cottage clusters have to be implemented by January 1st, 2028.

So we get another year for cottage clusters.

Again, I'm not exactly certain why, but the DLCD will need to clearly define which of the cottage clusters standards or which of the standards will have the additional year to implement.

So starting with the first bullet point, what this does is it allows middle housing, and that includes just a refresher, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhomes, and cottage clusters are all middle housing.

They would, when this becomes effective, be allowed to be either attached or detached.

Cottage clusters have a special provision that will say they can be, they can be attached, but you can't have more than four units attached in one configuration.

So if they have if you have eight cottage clusters, you would have to uh break them up into two four-unit buildings.

They also changed the definite definition of cottage clusters so that they're no longer gonna have a minimum square or a maximum square foot of 900 square feet.

They are going to change it to quote a small footprint or floor area, which is completely undefined.

Is that clear and objective?

No.

The LCD is supposed to do rulemaking to define what small footprint or floor area means, but at this point we don't know.

Does it give us more flexibility?

I don't know because we you know, here's the other, here's the other problem that I I specifically asked DLCD about this.

So DLCD has until I believe January 1st, 2027 to complete their rulemaking, but the city is supposed to implement this by January 1st, 2027.

So my specific question to DLCD at their last open house was how are we supposed to implement this when you haven't you may not even have your rulemaking done until we're supposed to implement it?

And their question was, that's a good question.

I don't know.

So there's more to more to come on this, uh, but I don't know what small footprint or floor area means.

They could come up with very specific sizes.

They could say that we can't require a minimum, they could say that we can't require a maximum.

We don't know what's gonna come out of it.

But does it solve the problem of the one?

Well, I think the implications, because I know that you've heard testimony from first edition uh Forest Hills requesting that we have a minimum footprint size.

I would say that given all this uncertainty, I wouldn't recommend that the council take that on because we may have to change the code later on.

We're already going to have to do that because we don't allow attached cottage clusters or triplexes or duplexes right now.

So we're already going to have to change our code.

What this signals to me is that any code changes that we do, we need to be very careful.

When we do our annual code updates, which we need to keep doing every year, because there's always things that we find with our codes that need to be addressed.

We need to focus on things that are not potentially going to conflict with these provisions going forward because we know things are going to be changing.

It's not very efficient for us to change a code and then have to come back and change it again in six months or a year.

So that would be my recommendation is that we don't take on those types of code changes until we know what is coming from the rulemaking.

Okay, next.

This is what I was talking about for a no in uh traffic impact analyses are allowed for projects that are less than 12 townhomes or cottage cottages.

This doesn't have a huge impact on us because right now we already have a provision when traffic impact analyses are triggered, and for these smaller projects, they're currently not triggered anyway.

So we don't see a huge impact in Lake Oswego on uh our ability to require traffic impact analyses.

But on commercial buildings, for example, and you want to build and they so no for town homes.

Only if you have on middle housing, no commercial right.

This doesn't apply to commercial, it's only for housing.

Yeah.

Middle housing, yes.

Uh the next provision, uh, this is actually um can be pretty consequential.

So I really want to highlight this one.

Uh this one allows um, oh no, actually, that's the bonus units.

Well, this other one is actually, I think a good uh addition in in my opinion, in in terms of sustainability and um uh preserving existing more affordable housing.

The they change, they're gonna change the um regulations so that middle housing is allowed on a lot that currently has either a single family dwelling, a single family dwelling in an ADU or a duplex.

So a lot of times what people are coming in is they're they come in, they raise the lot, and then they'll do their middle housing project.

This will allow them to keep those existing dwellings and then put middle housing, say in the back of the lot.

And it doesn't require the existing home to comply with current regulations.

So if it's non-conforming to setbacks or some other uh provisions, it can remain in place.

Of course, the new units that go on there will have to comply with our setbacks height and other restrictions.

It also allows that lot to be to have a middle housing land division to separate the existing dwelling from the new middle housing units.

And then the last one here uh on bonnet bonus units.

What this requires is that if we the city has to allow additional units on lots that already oh wait, the I'm getting I'm getting I'm getting mixed up here.

I'm so sorry.

Um bonus bonus units are allowed if the uh uh applicant provides an ADA accessible unit, and there's a specific provision for that um in our building code and what those minimum requirements or an affordable unit that's affordable at 120% of area medium income.

And this applies to triplexes, duplexes, and cottage clusters.

So if you have a triplex and you provide one unit that is either ADA accessible or affordable, you get a bonus unit.

So whereas the code may have only um said you could have a triplex, you could now have a quadplex.

You automatically get that bonus unit for quadplexes, town homes and cottage clusters, we have to allow two bonus units.

So if you have a quadplex and you provide one ADA accessible unit or one affordable unit, you get two additional units.

So instead of a four-plex, you get six.

Instead of eight cottage clusters, you can get 10.

Within what how do you fit it in?

Well, and and what they're what they say is that um the city has to modify their code to assure that we can uh modify either um I think it's the height, the density, or the floor area in order to allow these units to fit on the site.

I don't know what that means.

Not the setbacks, necessarily.

Not the setbacks.

Well, what about minimum like a minimum lot coverage?

I mean, let's just say it's it doesn't say lot coverage in there, it says floor area height and um uh fluory height density.

Those are the three standards that the cities must adjust their standards for developable area, floor area height, and density so that the extra units can actually be built.

It doesn't the the legislat the bill does not specify how we do that.

Um that is to come out of the rulemaking in DLCD.

So we don't know what how that's going to play out.

We don't know if the applicant gets to choose.

We don't know if we there's a certain height limit that they if they if they're if we have to increase the height, if there's a cap on that that we can provide, we don't know the details at this point.

Doesn't it sound like though if you're talking about floor area and height?

Oh, your microphone here.

Sorry about it seems to me when you're talking about height and floor area.

The only way that you're really those are the areas of the exceptions.

The only way you're gonna get more units fit on is to go up.

And with what we're gonna be talking about later today with the extra story.

This seems and I know you guys are just doing what's uh you know done.

So this is more a comment to our state legislators.

This is crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, the amount, I mean, we're talking about in a residential area and not necessarily a high density area that's next to businesses.

We can have incredibly high multi-unit structures going in.

Yeah, at this point, we don't know what impacts this are is going to have and whether there's a cap on how high how how much higher that they can go over the existing zone limit.

I I don't know the details at this point.

Or like if these if these exemptions um would be on top of the other exemptions.

Exemptions on exemptions.

Yeah, we'll see.

Okay.

Sorry for getting the I don't know.

There's no button.

My brain is in the jumble right now.

It's fair to say though that you hear the bullet points, the 30 seconds.

Oh, this is going to allow whatever.

And then the devil is in the details, and when you get down into the to the details, that's when I think people start having issues.

And this council has expressed many times that we try to control our own destiny, but now I mean I mean I could see again, and it's not necessarily the developer builder's fault because they're going to push the limits to any way that they can because that's what the rules say.

Uh we're having less and less voices as to what um our neighborhoods are going to look like and our town is gonna look like.

And I don't know.

I mean, again, wait till somebody puts uh an approved tree house, you know, at 50 feet.

Um that's a two-bedroom, two-bath condo.

Um, and you know, and they're gonna look down on your neighbor.

Um I hope the rules people figure some things out that um are a little advantageous to home rule, but I don't that probably won't happen, will it?

Okay, we'll keep going here.

Okay.

Uh the next provision is specific to what are called single room occupancies.

And SROs are housing that involves four or more small individual attached or detached lockable rentable units that provide private living and sleeping space, but might share kitchens or bathrooms.

It would be like kind of like a dorm, is the is the way that I uh think about it.

Uh I'm not aware of any SROs in Lake Oswego, uh, but this bill requires us to allow them.

We are required to allow up to six units on a single family zoned lot and in a uh multifamily zoned um lot that allows at least five units, we have to allow three times the existing density that's allowed for um uh typical units uh for SROs.

So for instance, if if it was a multifamily lot that allowed five units, we would have to allow 15 um single room occupancy units.

Now, this doesn't require us to have bigger buildings, so it's just it's this it's the same amount and size of development, it's just more units within the building.

Uh this has to uh be implemented by January 1st, 2027.

Uh, this is something that we could address um and and most of HB 2130 uh 2138, I assume we will address as part of the code audit and code amendment project because it has um the same timeline.

So that would be our expectation, and we actually um for the grant that we submitted to Metro, we built that in that we would be uh assuring compliance with uh state law such as HB 2138.

So that would be our plan uh to assure compliance.

Uh I don't know if you're aware, but we did get word from Metro that we uh got preliminary approval of that grant.

Um Metro Council makes the final decision, and that's um expected back expected at the end of October, but staff is uh Metro staff is recommending approval.

So that's good news.

That's great.

So on a SRO, does that include something like a commercial let's just say somebody wants to have a rehabilitation residential area?

Um like a or a boarding house or beam or a um I don't know in the market here if we're gonna see this kind of development.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a different thing.

Is anything I mean they can't just take a single family uh dwelling and and make it into a kind of a commercial um operation, can they?

Well, it depends on what you're calling commercial operation.

I mean, we would call that like a hotel or a motel or something like that, and that was only allowed in certain zones.

That's not allowed in residential zones.

Um, we do allow certain senior residential housing facility.

That is a commercial use, but that's has its own classification, so it wouldn't be considered an SRO.

So I think this is more of a um, it is a residential use, but I don't I don't see it as a short-term residential use.

I think it is for longer term living.

Um but uh all I have is the the definition here that I got from the state.

We don't have a definition in our code.

Um so again, that's something we need to address in the uh in our update.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh next is clear and objective standards.

This is actually effective right now.

It became effective immediately when the bill was adopted, and it requires clear and objective standards for tree removal codes specifically specifically to the development of housing.

Um it also states that standards can't result in discouragement of housing through unreasonable cost or delay, and it offers uh or and it requires certain um if we offer a discretionary path, so if we have like a clear and objective path and a discretionary path, it puts limits on the type of discretionary path that we can require.

As you all know, we're currently updating, we're currently working on a project to update our tree codes.

So this is something that we have top of mind and we'll be focusing on compliance with um by next spring.

But but I still have a problem with the CLIE and objective in cutting like it it means that any kind of tree can be cut, like any kind, any size.

Well, it depends on how you design the the standards.

Um clear and objective is is means that it it's not open to interpretation.

So right now we have there if there are codes that say um you know the removal can't have a significant negative impact on the character aesthetics of the neighborhood, that's completely open to interpretation.

Um we can't have those kind of standards.

It has to be you have to save 40% of the trees on your lot, or you have to maintain 30% tree canopy covers, something that is clear and measurable that doesn't involve a level of discretion.

It's but again, how we do that, it can be done in many different ways.

So we don't know at this point.

Um we're still in the um uh we're we're going moving into the code concept phase and we're gonna have a study session with the council in November on that.

Uh, but at this point we haven't chosen how we're going to apply those clear and objective standards.

Who's gonna decide CLIA and objective?

Is it the state or us?

As a city, are we gonna put our criteria, say that combination?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, under their framework, we'll adopt our adopt your own framework of what you think clear and objective is, and if someone disagrees that it's not clear and objective, they will take us either to the housing accountability and production office or they will sue us one way or the other.

Yes.

Correct.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um promoting housing density.

Um, this provision uh invalidates uh CCNRs or covenants and restrictions that would apply to developing, say ADUs, middle housing, um, and it actually um also uh extends to pre-cav prefabricated homes as well.

Um it invalidates those.

So anything that were in place before January 1st, 2020 would no longer uh uh apply.

This implementation deadline is January 1st, 2027.

Um, but it it's not going to help if somebody adopts those restrictions now because it's going to a validate.

I think when they adopted the middle housing code, it didn't allow for new restrictions to be put on.

That's why you have the January 1st, 2020 date.

So I think this is good in a sense that at least it provides an even playing field for all lots in the city.

So if uh if you happen to be in a plan development that had these restrictions, um, you can't apply those, and the middle housing uh rules apply to those uh plan developments the same as all other lots in the city.

But that's a big change from I mean that that was something that they initially um used as an argument uh argument to pass the housing bill when they originally did it was that don't worry if you have CC and R's in place and everything else, everything's fine.

So it was bait and switch, in my opinion.

I mean, I agree with you.

I mean, at least it's a level, but they should have been up front when they did the original housing and sold it to everybody because they were definitely in a situation that is a positive stuff.

So anyway.

They've done that on a lot of issues.

Oh, I yes.

Uh the next set of uh provisions relate to middle housing land divisions, and this is again effective now.

Uh and this allows middle housing land divisions to be processed as an expedited land division.

Expedited land divisions um are uh decision by a city manager.

They have to be uh the decision is required within 63 days after an application is considered uh complete.

And these applications, as I said, are reviewed by staff, and then if it they are appealed, they go to a hearings officer, not to the development review commission or the city council, like uh normal appeals would go.

Um, it does not allow uh notice.

Well, actually, it doesn't require notice, any public notice.

Um the notice of decision is the only requirement, and that only goes to the applicant.

It's not required to go to any other party.

Um, no public hearing can be held, and no third party can intervene in opposition, and only the applicant can appeal the decision.

And it it sounds pretty harsh, um, but I will say that when you look at middle housing land divisions, which by the way, you can apply for either before you apply for a building permit for middle housing while you're uh have a building permit for middle housing or after.

Um when we have the uh the appeal process, you know, what people generally don't want is the middle housing itself, but the middle housing land division is just about dividing the lot for ownership purposes.

So there isn't a lot for folks to oppose, and typically what when they are, they want to talk about the actual middle housing development itself, which is not what is the subject of the application.

So um while it does sound harsh, um again, there there isn't it also gives I think uh members of the public some false sense that they can have some change the outcome of that middle housing project.

Thank you.

Uh and this is my last slide.

Uh as I mentioned before, uh the DLCD uh has rulemaking that they are required to do, and actually the deadline I thought it was January 1st, 2027 is actually 2028.

So again, the implementation deadline for the city is January 1st, 2027.

The rulemaking from DLCD is January 1st, 2028.

So we need to figure out how that's all gonna work out.

Um, and this requires the DLCD to adopt rules that prevent cities from discouraging um development of manufactured prefab have prefabricated or site-build middle housing.

Um it it uh they do have to do rulemaking um to determine what limits are on unreasonable costs and delay imposed by siting design standards for AD use and single room occupancies.

They have to create incentives for cottage clusters to support smaller, more affordable homes with um shared community community amenities.

As I mentioned before, they need to define what small footprint and floor area is.

They are also going to um revisit sighting and design parameters for middle housing types and revise what local governments may require under discretionary reviews.

So there is a wide range of um rules that will come out of that rulemaking that we uh don't know what they are at this point.

So I'm sorry to end on that note, uh, but certainly if you have any other questions about HP 2138 or any of the other bills, I'm happy uh to answer that.

Thank you for the good summary.

We appreciate I know you uh director and your team have have put in a lot of uh uh work, not from past legislative sessions and this one already, and we really appreciate all that you're doing to help the community us um uh residents and um um uh uh understand the impact of these bills and what we're facing going forward.

Thank you.

We're not dead.

We're gonna talk briefly about transportation, um, because that's where we're at right now is so uh the 2025 session closed with uh not a transportation funding package.

Uh we are now in our special session.

The highlight for this is LC2, which is the legislative concept, which has now been introduced as House Bill 3991.

Um, these slides are from Representative Wen when he had our town hall, which I thought would provided a really nice recap, and so I just wanted to provide these.

The one thing that what has happened, um they took the original bill, which was very bold, broad, and and was addressing a lot of funding challenges, but maybe overshot, and so it lacks support.

Um it was collecting roughly two billion dollars over a biennium.

And so what it really they focused on what was what is needed for right now to stop the layoffs and service cuts, and then they will be coming back with a longer term funding plan.

So um LC2, which is now House Billine Nine One, a lot of the things about accountability, um, pulling out the tolling language from House Bill 2017, uh the truck weight stuff.

But yeah.

Um here's the comparison.

So if you want to know where we ended session versus where we are currently, I did highlight the stiff transient tax thing because it is now gonna be a one.

So if you look to the left, that's the current bill considerations.

The one on the right is what we ended last session on.

So that's what what was the changes.

I highlighted stiff because one thing I want to note is to bring the House House Republicans to the floor to vote on Labor Day.

They ended up sunsetting the stiff increase to sunset in 2028.

So that's the one thing that is highlighted.

Um, other than that, right now it the bill has passed out of the house.

Sorry, the bill has passed out of the house.

We're waiting for Senate.

Senate's supposed to be convening tomorrow.

That is the current plan.

And then the word is that it should be passed just fine.

Um, one thing to note for just next steps, though.

This was a short-term fix to stop ODOT's current situation of the cuts, the layoffs, the the needs that are right now.

It's not a comprehensive package, it's not addressing the big capital projects that we know that need to be addressed.

So that is the um I-5 corridor, not only the Washington side, but it's Rose Quarter, it's what's the expansion of the Sunset Corridor, um, all those things that were earmarked in 2017 that are not going to be funded with this current package.

So the next steps are not only passing this, hopefully, um 2026 short session will be budget at large.

So the budget, our current state budget, we are now in a deficit way because of the federal tax changes.

Um, and so the budget that was just passed is now a deficit.

So um 2026 will be federal funding addressing, uh insurance funding, uh, long-term transportation funding, and so that is at least a preview for what's to come come February, which we'll be right back at it again.

So that's at least I'm not gonna concentrate on housing in the short session.

Well, see.

Maybe we can have fixes, yeah.

Okay, we are back in order.

Um, moving on to the next item on the agenda, it's a study session on Senate Bill 1537.

These are mandatory adjustments and approved exemptions.

Now we have our planning manager, Johanna Hasty here and uh director Namanalu again.

So thank you for being here.

We'll take it away.

Thank you so much.

Oh it is on.

Okay, but that's better.

Thank you very much, Mayor Buck and Council.

Um, Johanna Hasty, planning manager for the community development services department.

As the mayor said, I am here to provide an update on Senate Bill 1537 and the status of our request for an exemption for mandatory adjustments.

Uh my presentation tonight, I just want to apologize up front.

Um, this has been a long afternoon for you.

You've already heard a lot of details.

I'm not gonna be able to avoid more details.

I'm gonna try to keep it high level.

Um, and I will try to move through it really quickly and focus more on discussion if you have questions about that later.

But very briefly, the presentation is going to um give you a uh high-level overview of Senate Bill 1537.

Um, and that's just for context.

Since the last time that staff came to talk to you about SB 1537, it was May 2024.

I'm gonna focus the presentation, like I said, on the mandatory adjustments program and the talk a little bit about our exemption status and the conditions of approval that came with that.

Um, we'll go over the three areas that the state said we aren't exempt from the mandatory adjustments program, and then finally, like I said, we can open that up for discussion and questions with the council.

So, going back a little bit, uh, Senate Bill or SB 1537 was Governor COTEX bill to address Oregon's severe housing shortage.

It was developed with the purpose of increasing the production of housing units, and that was done through a variety of tools, including measures that address funding deficits, infrastructure, land supply, and then for the focus of tonight, regulatory barriers to housing.

The focus of the Senate bills of SB 1537's mandatory adjustment program is that regulatory barrier to housing.

The state determined or decided that there were certain fairly common design and dimensional standards that, as they were currently implemented across the state, were adding costs and delays to necessary housing or needed housing.

So, as a part of SB 1537, they created the mandatory adjustment program through which an applicant could apply for up to 10 adjustments to those design and dimensional standards, provided that that housing project met eligibility requirements.

Generally speaking, to be eligible, that housing project would have to include a net increase to housing and would also have to meet a minimum number of units per acre, and that was 17 units per acre.

And how that shakes out across the zone, I do have a slide that we can look at for that.

Um, but it does mean that it's not just every housing project that would be eligible for mandatory adjustments.

You had to increase the net housing and also provide minimum number of housing units.

So, understanding that a lot of jurisdictions were probably gonna be unhappy with that, um, rightly so, in my opinion, uh, they did build in an exemption program for the mandatory adjustment program.

Basically, a city would have to uh apply for an exemption and say, well, for every single one of these standards, these design and dimensional standards that you are saying are causing that are a regulatory barrier to housing, we have our own uh local adjustment pathway.

That's the phrase I'm gonna use.

What we say in the code is variances, but again, to stick with the SB 1537 language, I'm gonna say local adjustment pathway.

So when uh Director Nomonalu came to you last May, uh, she asked if we want if the council wanted to go with a mandatory adjustment program or if you wanted staff to apply for the exemption, and your direction was to look for the exemption.

So we did do that.

Um we did do that.

Uh it was a lot of back and forth.

It was interesting to be an applicant on that side of the table.

Took three incomplete letters from the state to call us complete, but they did approve our exemption in mid-July of this year.

Um that was um that was I good news.

Uh I did a little bit of research this morning just to see where other jurisdictions were, and it was interesting.

Um, a lot of jurisdictions did not apply for an exemption.

Of the five that have, City of Portland was the only one that was denied.

Uh, Salem, Milwaukee, Tualeton, and Sandy have had their their exemptions approved.

And going through the conditions of approval, it wasn't full exemption, kind of like us, exemption with conditions, some of the standards weren't fully exempted from the mandatory process.

But anyway, just a little bit more context there for you.

So looking at mandatory adjustments and our exemption from this program.

The mandatory adjustment program went live at the beginning of this year, but while we were under exemption request review, we were not subject to it.

Now we are in the approval of the exemption, and that goes back to like I said, mid-July.

This whole program, the mandatory adjustment program, does sunset on uh I believe January 2nd of 2032.

So this is in place for the next six and a half years.

Like I said, the uh decision to approve our exemption request came with a number of conditions, and built into those were performance standards that we have to meet over the next seven years at this, or six and a half years that this program is in place.

So, very broadly, I can answer more questions in detail if you if you would like details, but very broadly, the a number of the conditions relate to shining a spotlight on what our local adjustment pathways are.

So HAPO generated what they called a required notice for applicants, and it's basically notification to anyone who's interested in developing any sort of housing in the city that the city that we got an exemption, but we are subject to compliance with those conditions of approvals and the with the certain performance measures that I'm gonna talk about.

And that if someone in the state, as some applicant, doesn't feel that the city is holding up their end of the bargain, there are steps for how they can submit an inquiry about that issue or submit a complaint.

That is the required notice.

That was one of the attachments to your staff report.

Um I found the language a little confusing, but HAPO does not allow us to modify it, so that just is what it is.

The handout or the the second part, the second document that's required as a part of this kind of broad notification is what we're calling our local adjustment handout.

And it's very broad.

So I do think it's going to generate a lot of questions.

But basically, the intent of it is to say, hey, yes, we have standards in place that SB 1537 says is creating regulatory barriers like design and dimensional standards, but we have a lot of pathways to adjust them.

According to SB 1537, these are the standards that they say we should be flexible on.

These is this is how we implement it in the city.

This is the scope of the adjustment we propose, this is the criteria to get that adjustment.

Um if by the way uh you can't get a local adjustment, this is the SB 1537 mandatory adjustment.

So those are the kind of notification conditions that come with this.

Basically, hey, everyone that's going to pull a permit for a single family home addition all the way up to a mixed-use commercial development.

Here are the here's the city must do required notice, and here is how to from the city as far as the adjustment process.

That's going to have to go out with anyone who pulls a building permit, anyone who comes to the counter requiring about housing production, um, anyone who comes in for a pre-application conference for any sort of project that has housing related to it and they're looking for adjustments.

So very broad.

As far as other conditions of approval, there's another, there's a couple there that are built in, basically cautioning the city about amending or writing new code that creates in the state's mind more regulatory barriers.

So interesting following up that legislative update with this project.

There are a lot of programs that we are looking at as far as like say the Foothills Master Plan or the Code Audit.

The state is very concerned about us reducing the flexibility of our current design and dimensional standards and the pathways to adjust them, or adding new standards that again might create costs or delay with the construction of housing.

So again, it's kind of a caution.

They're going to be watching our code amendments or our new code that are that it's uh that we're proposing to adopt.

The biggest uh performance objective here that I would like to highlight, and I think we can come back around to that at the end of this presentation, is that all of this, this exemption is premised on maintaining a 90% approval rate of all land use applications that are about housing and include adjustments.

So, as part of the exemption process, I put together a spreadsheet, and I basically went back five years and I said these are every this is every single land use case from every year that was for housing that included an adjustment, and I had to go through and figure out how that adjustment fell under one of these SB 1537 standards, market as approved, and then they went through and they they verified it.

We are going to have to set submit that as an annual report every single year for the next seven years until 2032.

And so each year I'll have to take that spreadsheet, drop the latest year, if you will, or the earliest year, if you will, add the new year and send that in.

And we have to show that we are maintaining at least a 90% approval rate in order to keep our exemption status.

Now, when we sent it in, we had 100% approval rating.

And what I want to talk to you about a little bit later in the presentation or after the presentation is we have a hundred percent reproval rating because we work really closely with applicants and we steer people towards projects that work within the current codes or within the local adjustments, the variances as we as they're currently written.

These conditions of approval from HAPO for exemption status really steer us away from discouraging, if you will, um applicants pursuing local adjustments.

And so that's another step there that we have to be cautious of.

So we can talk more about that.

But the other part of this that I want to highlight is that 90% approval rate and the adjustments that we're talking about, the land use cases for housings with adjustments that we're talking about, doesn't have to actually increase net housing.

It doesn't have to meet that minimum density requirement that comes with the mandatory adjustments.

It can be for an addition on a single family home.

So it covers every single land use case, regardless of what sort of intensity is being proposed.

So please keep that in mind.

So the rest of this presentation, what I'm going to focus on is the three areas where the state determined that our local adjustment process fell through as far as being in having a local adjustment pathway that met these three the requirements for these three issues.

The first one is special street setbacks, the second is the building height limit and where that conflicts with the city charter.

And the third one is maximum density.

And again, I'm sorry, I know I'm geeking out on a lot of these things, planner geeks speak, but bear with me, and I will be happy to answer questions.

So special street setbacks, what are they?

Basically, it's a no-go area that the city has imposed on certain streets that we know are substandard and that we want to widen and then also improve with uh new public infrastructure, it could be additional lanes, a bike lane, public pathway, stormwater facilities.

Um it's not that we don't get public improvements throughout the city, but these are specially noted substandard streets.

And what the special street setback does is it basically says, okay, this is private property, but this is a no-go area for private development.

So it keeps homes, it keeps gazebos, it keeps pools out of that area.

And then from there, wherever that lands on private property, we have an underlying zone dimensional setback from there.

So why does this matter for the mandatory adjustments program?

The state found that side and rear yard setbacks could be considered a regulatory barrier to needed housing, and each jurisdiction should provide flexibility to them.

And according to the state, sufficient flexibility is a 10-foot adjustment to a side or rear yard setback.

Sorry, what did I say?

10%, thank you.

Um when we did our exemption analysis, we went through and said, yes, we have side and rear yard setbacks, and yes, we have multiple pathways that you can adjust them, even more than 10%.

Um by the way, yes, we have special street setbacks, but they're not really setbacks, they're kind of a preservation of land for future public improvements.

HAPO did not buy that argument.

Um, I pushed on it.

Evan Boone, the former deputy city attorney, let me know that I was probably going to be disappointed.

I was so basically the state said, sorry, you call them setbacks, you have to provide a 10% adjustment to them.

So good news, bad news sort of thing.

Uh again, the state only cares about side and rear yard setbacks.

Special street setbacks only apply to property lines that have frontage on a street.

That is only gonna be your front property line or your street side property line.

So looking at where this mandatory adjustment comes in, because right now we don't allow any variances to our special street setback.

So no one can, there is no local pathway to get it.

So the state said it's a setback, you have to allow a 10% adjustment, the mandatory adjustment applies.

So if we have to do this, it's going to be in a very limited set of circumstances.

And so I put this graphic together to kind of explain how this all works out.

So looking at this corner lot here, and there is no reason that I picked this corner.

Um I don't mean to pick on this property owner, and please um, I'm using hypotheticals here, so please understand that.

So we have a corner lot, as you can see, where the red is, that is how we denote a special street setback in our LO maps.

This corner lot has two front edges, one along Reese Road, I'm sorry, Sunset, which is here, and then one along Reese Road.

So thinking about a mandatory adjustment, if we decide that if we determine that this is the front property line where it has a special street setback, there is no mandatory adjustment required here.

But this becomes the street side, and it does have a special street setback, so there is a mandatory adjustment there.

Hope that's clear.

So let's just assume that the special street setback ends up taking 10 feet, ends up being 10 feet on this public or on this private development.

A 10% adjustment to that would go from 10 feet to 9 feet, so pretty minimal.

I think there is kind of a question because when we say, if you look at this here, it says a 30-foot special street setback.

It's not 30 feet onto the private property.

So from let's say it's the center line of the travel way, you go 30 feet, and how wherever that 30 foot lands on the private property, that area is the no-go area.

So let's say from the center line, you measure it 30 feet, it's five feet into the into the property line.

I believe that the mandatory adjustment is to the five feet that lands on the private property.

Does that make sense?

So a 10% adjustment is only six inches.

I'm hoping that that's the way it shakes out because when I was talking to the city engineer about this, um, they were looking at it and they said, gosh, okay, a mandatory adjustment, how much is that going to impact us with trying to get necessary right-of-way dedication and the public improvements that we need?

And looking at the scope of what that adjustment would be, they are pretty sure that there won't be a significant negative impact.

And so we will be able to get the right-of-way width that we need in order to get the public improvements that we need.

Thinking about it from kind of a streetscape point of view, again, remember we have a special street setback that hits on the private property, then we have the underlying zone setback.

So if we have to do an adjustment to that special street setback of 10%, it's not going to result in development that is really out of character with other streets or other homes along that street.

It's going to be step setback still, and it's not going to be substantially different visually speaking.

So the residential character is not super impacted.

So kind of wrap this up, the state is requiring a mandatory adjustment to special street setbacks.

Right now, looking at it, we don't think that there is going to be, it's it's going to apply in a limited number of sites, because again, you have to have a corner site that has to that has a street side with a special street setback.

So we've already, with those filters, limited down the number of sites that this is gonna trigger that the mandatory adjustment is going to be triggered.

Then you have to again go back to this eligibility requirement.

They only get to take advantage of that mandatory adjustment if they first increase net housing on the site and then meet that 17 units per acre.

Looking at this R75 zone, if they want to get a mandatory adjustment to the special street setbacks, they would have to propose a triplex on that site in order to get a 10% decrease to our special street setback.

So looking at the implications of this mandatory adjustment and talking to the city engineer, it doesn't seem like it is potentially and hypothetically not a serious issue or not an area of serious concern.

Obviously, we're in the brand new phases of this, we haven't worked it through with a particular application, so we could be missing something.

But right now, um again, what we're asking staff for today is do we have, do we have direction from you to go forward and take this out of the mandatory adjustments, figure out how to incorporate a local adjustment pathway for special street setbacks, or do we want to let the mandatory adjustment be as it is, knowing that it's a limited number of sites, that you have to build a triplex, and it's a small adjustment that probably won't have a lot of negative implications on our right-of-way design and the street state character.

So that's the kind of big ask.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go through all of these areas first, and then we can talk about them as a group.

I hope that is an okay approach for you guys.

Okay, so the next one, and this one I will have to tell you, um, there is really nothing to change.

Let me explain why.

So SB 1537 said maximum building heights could act as a regulatory barrier on the production of needed housing.

They said jurisdictions should provide a pathway that somebody could ask for a 20% increase in height and the maximum height limit, or one story, whichever is greater.

Now they didn't define what a story is.

Our own definition references 12 feet, so that's what we're using for now, we can revisit that.

So, yes, the city does implement maximum height limits.

It's a if anyone dared to open that 60 page exemption request staff report, there was a one and a half page table talking about maximum height limits throughout the city that didn't even include all of the exceptions and projections and all of that there.

So yes, we do implement maximum height.

We do offer a few pathways to adjust that maximum height.

It's not a very common adjustment that we've seen, but it is there.

So the one caveat to that is in all residential zones, we have a city charter, and that's uh chapter X, Section 46A, that says regardless of what your maximum height is and what variances you get, you cannot go taller than 50 feet in height.

So all residential zones for residential structures, you have a 50 foot height limit.

So they pointed out that regardless of our charter, we have to allow that 20% height increase or one story, whichever is greater.

So forgive this image on the screen, it is obviously not compliant with our residential design standards.

I actually even stretched it vertically to make it seem more looming.

Um it's kind of a jump scare image, but I think it's helpful for this discussion.

So let's say an applicant um has a piece of property, R10 zone property, it's steeply sloped, and um they want to develop housing on it.

So we would say, okay, in an R10 zone on a steeply slope lot, you have a 35 foot height limit.

And they will say, Well, what else?

Okay, well, we also offer roof form height exceptions up to six feet in um height for roof forms can peekaboo above that maximum height limit.

Okay, great, I'm gonna do that.

So we've gone from 35 feet in height to 41 feet in height.

And then they look at us and they say, Well, what else can you give us?

And we said, Well, you know, we do have variance pathways, the local adjustment pathways, we can talk to you about that.

And they said, Well, I know that the state requires you to give me a 20% increase or one story.

So tell me what that is.

If you're using 20% for a height increase on that 41 foot high structure, your result is something that is less than 50 feet, just squeaks under 50 feet.

So we don't have a charter conflict there.

But if you use the one story, and why wouldn't they?

You could end up with a structure that is taller than 50 feet, 41 plus 12 is 53 feet.

So there we are in that charter conflict.

So we would have to tell them, sorry, our charter limits structures in residential zones to 50 feet in height.

So we can't give them the full scope of the adjustment that the state has said that we have to provide.

So they would look at us and say, Well, I know you have to.

What have you got for me?

And what at that point, sorry, I'm having a weird conversation with this applicant in my mind because I'm just verbalizing that.

Anyway, um, what we would tell them is, yes, you're right, the state does require the city to provide a 20% height increase or one story, whichever is greater.

The only way you're going to take advantage of that mandatory adjustment, though, is if you provide an increase in net housing and you meet the the 17 units per acre.

In this R tone, our R10 zoned lot that we're talking about, that means that they would have to develop it with a quadplex.

Otherwise, they're back in our local adjustment process and they can't go past that 50 feet.

So that's kind of the trade-off there.

You want to develop a single family home in an R10 zone, which is typically what we've seen.

Great.

You have your maximum height, you have your height bonuses for roof forms, you have an adjustment, local local pathways to adjustments, use those.

If you want taller than that, you're gonna have to give us more housing units than that.

So that's the result of it.

The problem is, again, that 50-foot charter height limit is in our charter.

We can't use our community development code or our local adjustment pathways to adjust our city charter.

We also can't amend our charter without a general election, and of course, we cannot guarantee the outcome of an election if we go down that path.

So right now, we don't have a way around this.

There is a possible mandatory adjustment out there.

It will conflict with our code.

We've uh consulted with our, we've talked to our consulting land use attorney.

He confirmed that SB 1537 specifically overrides our community development code and it overrides a city charter.

So we're stuck with this one.

But again, whether or not this is going to be something that happens really frequently yet to be seen, because we're not seeing quadplexes right now on a lot of our R10 zone lots.

So if you have a R.

Okay, yeah, and I and I only I'm only talking about um R10 zones.

I only talked about R10 zones.

How this mandatory adjustment plays out for all of the other zones, including our higher density zones.

Yeah, it could be significantly taller.

But again, in our higher density zones, the way that height is measured is that it's an average of 40 feet across the site if you have a one-acre site or greater.

Half acre site or greater.

Half acre site or greater.

You have an average of 40 feet, and some buildings can exceed 50 feet in height.

So let's say we have an R3 zone property and they want to look at ways to get an increase in height.

And if they bump up against that, they could use our mandatory adjustment.

And how much they actually use is obviously that's driven by the market, that's driven by their needs.

It's very hard to predict.

But yeah, because we have so many different ways of measuring height, and because we do have varying heights that with the bonuses or the way that we measure them, it could get it could bump against that charter in multiple ways.

But with our higher density zones, we are we typically see multi-story homes.

That is where we want to see multi-family.

Um is it completely out of character yet to be seen.

So I'm gonna leave this one alone and move on and talk about probably the most difficult one to describe.

Um so I'm gonna try to keep it high level.

Maximum density, that's the minimum number of units or lots as a part of a housing development.

Basically, Senate Bill 15 SP 1537 said that if a city is approving a bunch of local adjustments that basically add extra massing on a site, you're reducing setbacks, you're increasing lot coverage, you're increasing building height.

If the applicant wants to use that extra massing to g to construct more units, we can't come back and say, oh, sorry, that zone comes with a density cap.

Um, so you can't convert that extra massing to units.

So, again, for an example, if you're looking at the R3 zone, the maximum density for residential units, so for multifamily units on that site, it's 12 units per acre.

So if you have a one-acre site, you're only allowed to place 12 units on that.

So let's say they go through an adjustment process, they get that increased massing, and they say, Wow, this is wonderful.

I'm gonna put 24 units on there.

We can't turn around and say, sorry, there is a density cap, you can't do that.

We have to allow the additional units.

Right now, our code absolutely does not allow any variances to a density, and that's units or lots.

The state has uh clarified that this mandatory adjustment only applies to units, so it's really just condos, apartments, things like that for actual residential units, not for lots created by land divisions like a minor partition or a subdivision.

So we do have to allow a mandatory adjustment.

How much of an adjustment is gonna completely be dependent on the zone, whether or not it has whether or not it has a density cap, what is being proposed as a part of this project.

Um it basically just the state says, and this one, although it's kind of esoteric, it does make sense to me.

If you're giving adjustments to increase massing, you can't turn around and then limit it, limit the number of units.

We want to have units, you can't use this density cap as an artificial way to limit the number of units on a site.

So this one is in place.

Uh and like with all of them, well, with special street setbacks, um, I am looking for the council to give direction on whether or not we want to leave that mandatory adjustment in place, or if we want to alter our own code, amend our own code to have a local process to amend density requirements, and we can talk about that.

Okay, so um where are we at?

Um, I have kind of a short-term discussion to go to talk to you about tonight, and then we can also look at a longer term, kind of more broader view of this uh mandatory exemption or mandatory adjustments in our exemption.

So, first of all, just looking at the three areas where we do have the mandatory adjustments, the special street setbacks, the charter height, the max density, um, we can just keep the mandatory adjustments in place.

Um, obviously, the pros of that um hopefully for what we can see, we're hoping that the impacts are gonna be minimal.

Can't 100% guarantee that can't even really see down the road that far.

We do have other standards in place that would hopefully offset the impacts from those adjustments if they were to be pursued.

This program does sunset in 2032, so amending our code for a program that is gonna go away specifically just to deal with this mandatory adjustment may not be the best use of staff's time, but um this program does sunset, and so uh this that would be one pro of just using the mandatory adjustments.

And so this that would be one pro of just using the mandatory adjustments.

The con, obviously, that you have been talking about from the beginning of this is that a mandatory adjustment supersedes our local codes.

It takes the control out of our hands.

We just have to implement it.

But going back to the pros, if we do get a mandatory adjustment, we are getting more housing units for that.

So a mixed bag of pros and cons for leaving the mandatory adjustments that we have for these three standards in place.

Going to amending the code, remember we can only amend it for special street setbacks and maximum density.

Right now, those are prohibited variances.

If we look at amending it, um, one of the pros is yes, we will regain local control over that.

It'll be subject to our standards.

We do have minimum scopes that we'll have to put into place, like a special street setback would have to be amended by at least 10% to comply with what the state's condition of approval is.

A max density could focus just on residential units.

We're not talking about land divisions, but it does bring us and bring it back into local control.

The problem is is that code amendments take time.

We have obviously a lot of amendments that we're looking at here.

Um the SB 1537 mandatory adjustments apply in the meantime.

So it doesn't just put a stop to the mandatory adjustments.

We have to go through this whole process of figuring out how we want to adjust it and then the process of actually getting through that, which is going to include HAPO weighing in on the matter, because they don't want to see us making possibly weighing in.

They're going to be reviewing it, whether or not they give us notes yet to be seen.

Um but there's going there, I should say that there's going to be more eyes on a code amendment to get rid of a mandatory adjustment.

That's one of our conditions of approval.

Um, yeah, cons, staffing capacity, redundancy issues, conflicts between all of these various code amendments, more legislative updates coming down the road.

I think the obvious takeaway that you're getting from me is um while there could be impacts from the mandatory adjustments, we're hoping that they'll be minimized.

Um, and our recommendation is to wait and see what the outcome of this is to give us a little bit of time with the mandatory adjustment process, um, and then possibly come back later if we start to see conflicts coming up and talk about ways to address that, possibly amend the code.

And then the broader conversation is again if you remember me talking about that 90% approval rate.

Um, and the fact that staff is going to be getting probably a lot more adjustment applications because they're just going to be advertising adjustments everywhere.

There's gonna be a point, and this is kind of I don't want to catastrophize, I don't want to do worst-case scenario.

My my concern is that there's going to be a point where with the number of adjustment applications that we're getting, we're gonna see more and more requests coming through that really are a challenge for us to say meet our criteria.

When you have a higher volume, the chances of that happening also get higher.

And with HAPO saying we can't discourage people away from adjustments, that we have to keep that 90% approval rating in place.

I'm worried, I'm concerned about what that means for implementing our local code.

I don't want to see in particular major variances in residential infill design review, rid review variances weakened.

I think there are really good goals behind them.

Um but when they keep coming forward and people are pushing the boundaries of them, um, that could lead to not a great place.

So I think the broader discussion is at some point down the road, should we re-examine our exemption status?

That's a question back to the council.

Um, again, I think it's kind of a wait and see.

We don't know if we're gonna get adjustment applications flying in 30 a month or something like that.

Right now, we're, I think, between it really varies between 10 and probably 20 a year.

Um, short term, do you want us to amend the code to deal with the two mandatory adjustments that we can control?

If so, we'll have to come back and talk about what that means.

Long term, do we want to talk about the mandatory adjustments exemption and possibly reconsider that decision?

No pros and cons, obviously, both ways.

So again, apologize for all of the detail there.

I know we're getting late.

Um, so I want to turn this back over to the council to answer any questions, um, provide any additional details.

So thank you, Miss Aceia.

That's a really good job helping us to digest this kind of you know, complicated um and new issue, you know, for us to um to understand.

And just, you know, for for clarity, when I'm sorry, you just mentioned actually when I ask this question, you meant the between you said 10 and 20 a year, you're those are applications.

Applications for housing that include adjustments or variances.

That includes okay, but all housing.

Yeah, so it's it's all types.

Every every single type of housing um from single family home additions all the way up to commercial mixed use.

If there was a land use application and it included adjustments, those were the ones that I included in that category to that to that report to HAPO.

Right.

And it really varies because the market varies.

Um and but the average the numbers that I can remember is like 10 to 20 a year.

Right.

Um and that doesn't include other types of um housing applications that didn't ask for adjustments or other adjustments that might be on a residential lot.

We we process a lot of land use applications a year.

Right.

And right now we're able to, you know, work with um applicants because they know we have you know this Yay or an A over whether or not their adjustments gonna meet the code or the variants are requesting, and so we can kind of work um in a fluid way with them to guide the process.

So they put forth successful applications.

Right.

So a behind the scenes thing, it looks like we're if the takeaway is oh, the city just approves 100% of land use applications.

Um, we do not all of the land use applications that we might potentially see, many of them never go anywhere because we've worked with an applicant and we've said, look, it's actually this process if you fully comply and you avoid the time and cost and delay.

Or if you want an adjustment, it's not gonna work under this path, possibly it's this path.

Let's work with your application.

So we do a lot of um work with an applicant to make sure that if they move forward with a land use application, it is successful because it does comply with our criteria.

And like in the same way that you know we allow people to cut down a hundred percent of the trees they apply for because we always help guide people through the process.

And if you know, there's to be an application that's a no-go, then we we we let them know that.

I think it is that you make a really good point that 90% goal that um, or well, that's not a goal, the 90% um approval criteria that we have to meet um is a role, puts the city in a real bind, you know.

Um, and of course, the whole intent of this is to take away the local control.

I mean, that's the point of this and and the other.

I mean, that's it's a more centralized approach.

They don't like these local, they don't like the local voices being involved, they don't like the all the different the state does not like the different criteria that local jurisdictions have placed on housing production.

Um we have seen here locally that despite we all we do have a complex code, but despite that fact, we have produced a good amount of housing over the past years in a tough housing environment uh too.

And it's just interesting to see all of these things that are being considered yet, you know, we have two gentlemen sitting in the back trying to develop a housing project downtown, and these are not with with with the building permit and the approved land use, um, that is in fact uh so well-aged that you know it's going to expire because these are not the issues preventing that housing from being built.

And so it's frustrating that CS put both effort into trying to do all the other things completely outside of this to help them get their housing built while also focusing on these things that don't seem to be really standing in the way of anyone building housing.

And I just wanted to to be clear with if someone can right now, under our code put a triplex on a lot, you know, or a quadplex, right?

These these uh, and then they could under our current code, no issue, boom, they could build it.

These are these mandatory adjustments, that they're not only allowed if you could say, well, I I could build four units here now, but if you allowed me these adjustments, I could put a fifth, you know, or I could build a six with these adjustments, right?

This is just I'm gonna build more than that what's there now.

And therefore the state says you're allowed up to 10 of these adjustments, period.

Okay, so we're not subject to the mandatory adjustments for the full program.

Well, if we were, you know.

Yes, yes.

If we were subject to the mandatory, the full mandatory adjustment program, um, you would have to show that there's a net increase to housing, and you would have to show that you were meeting the minimum of of 17 units per acre.

But then, yes, you could request up to 10 variances to all of these design and dimensional standards um and build what you want to build.

It is a it is a land use decision, it's not just a straight building permit.

Um, how this works with all of the um legislative changes coming down the pike about increased units and density bonuses, I don't know.

Um, one thing I forgot to say um with the with the height limit is it doesn't apply to cottage clusters, but then I'm also hearing additional units on cottage clusters, but only floor area and height.

And so I thought, well, how does that work?

Well, there's there's also now this this this blending of the definitions between, I mean, what before a cottage cluster was a very specific thing, but now we've got these detached quadplexes with bonus units that start looking a lot like cottage clusters.

Just take out the courtyard.

Yeah, which I think is something that they're often considering.

A couple stories to it, and now you've got uh some kind of door.

Well, so I mean, I I do think, I mean, just to answer so we can answer um Ms.

Tacey's questions here.

I mean, I I mean, in my opinion, I think we should, you know, stick.

I don't think there's a point amending the code.

I guess we already have enough to do, and this is short-term.

Um, I think sticking with uh just for these three areas, these specific ones we don't have, because I also think it made the code, then it opens up all applications to be able to apply for these things that they can't apply for now.

So to me, it makes sense just to stick.

Um how does everyone feel about option one?

I mean, okay.

Um I'm glad you guys have this at least figured out.

I mean, just to like opine a little bit, and you and really thank you for all the work you did in applying for the um for our exemption.

I know that was a bear in and of itself, and and then for digging into all of this, and as I mentioned before, um, it's a lot of work the planning department is is doing.

Um I know I don't know you have if you have this answer right now, but I know we would be curious to know how much time the planning department has spent on maybe you could get back to us on it, you know, on complying.

Does that include the sleepless nights everywhere?

Yes, certainly in my own race.

Yeah, really do want to know how how much time um gosh.

We don't need to, we don't need the need jerk to let when you can really spend a lot of time just with this one mandatory adjustment program, yeah, days and days and days.

And so um weeks, weeks and months, yes.

I think what bothers me about this, and we were giving feedback to our legislators, you know, it was well, well, hold on.

This is just for denser housing, you know.

This isn't because we said, hey, this is gonna be people are applying for these exemptions for these large single family, like this is what's what's the purpose of this?

They said, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what it's about.

But with these conditions that HAPO has imposed on us, I mean, that is kind of what it does.

Because I mean, in very short order, we could drop below the 90% right because we're kind of losing our leverage to say, hey, you know, this isn't going to be approved, they'll say, oh, well, you know.

So it doesn't take much.

Um too many applications for us to fall below that uh that that threshold.

Um and I think that we start end up, it puts the city kind of in this position of either approving these variances um to even the even large single family homes in order to maintain the exemption, or um uh uh and having you know, through the exemption, the hope of having some local say over how the exemptions for the various middle housing developments, you know, I mean, hoping to have some say over those.

But these exemptions only do not come into play, you know, when we're only needed to build more units, but rather they kind of are just allowing shortcuts to developers who would otherwise build their projects under our current local codes and standards.

I mean, that's really bothers me.

And to the extent that the exemptions would result in more units of housing, the mandatory exemptions really guarantee that in our jurisdiction, they will just be larger, more expensive units, not units that are cheaper to live in or less expensive to build.

So I really see this as a as a boon to the development community at the expense of local codes and plans that our community has developed over an extensive period of time that create a unique sense of place and identity.

Uh the state's attempt to strip local control away in the name of housing production is short-sighted.

I think an ill-fated decision by lawmakers without any local policy making experience to play to their large donors instead of addressing the real issues behind Oregon's housing shortage, which is a lack of buildable land.

Uh frankly, anti-business legislation legislative rhetoric at every turn and an economy that's circling the drain.

So, but here we are.

And there you have it.

And there you have it.

That's my summary.

Council verdict.

Well, I concur with what you just said, but I I did want to do um a shout out to you and your staff.

You guys have spent hours and hours trying to kind of, I would say, almost thread a needle.

And you guys are the pitch point.

You're getting our frustration, but you're trying to comply with the state, which you know, is adding you're having to do things and not able to do your job.

And so I just wanted to say, I think you guys are doing a really good job with a lot of grace, even though I know I think many of your heads are ready to explode as well.

Um, so I just want to say I appreciate you.

I appreciate what you're doing, I appreciate what our city staff is doing.

Uh with that said, this is now directed to a completely different group because I just really wanted to shout out to you guys.

Um, and please track all these hours because I think this is important because the state is asking to make, you know, we had the House Bill 2001, and we kind of begrudgingly said, okay, we we see that we see that there's a housing need, we see that there's an issue, we want to try to be part of it, we want to do our part of as a city to help uh move things forward and get more housing, and the hours that the planning department, you know, put in to help that happen.

And you know, I think in good faith, we move forward, and we said, Well, yeah, we want to maintain control, and we did that.

And now all of a sudden, we're getting new state laws that are saying, nope, you know what, where we gave you that flexibility, we're now taking that away.

You don't get to define what a duplex, a triplex, a quadplex is.

We're gonna tell you what that means.

It can be detached or attached.

I mean, all these things, and then they're not even clear.

I'm not even sure the state knows what they're doing.

Obviously, by you know, not knowing dates and not having clear definitions.

And I'm extraordinarily frustrated and angry about the state coming in and taking away our local control.

We have expert planners who give phenomenal guidance to us to help us maintain the character of our city while growing our city, and you're being undermined and we're being undermined.

And I just wanted to, you know, I'm so frustrated.

I'm so, I mean, I, you know, I'm so angry about what's going on.

And I'm gonna continue to reach out to our legislators, legislatures, and I just I asked our citizens to do the same.

Reach out to the governor, reach out to Senator Wagner, reach out to Daniel Wen, our congressman, and let them know how you're feeling, whether you're for or against it, let them know how you're feeling.

Because we are trying as a city to say where we believe where we would like to go.

Um, you know, we have uh deputy um testing, you know, advocating for us down at the state, and it seems to be going nowhere.

It seems like it doesn't matter what we are asking.

And I would just ask, we're fine, we want the overarching goals.

We want more housing.

We want people to have good housing.

I don't think anyone on this dias has an issue with that or would disagree with that.

But where we're running into issues is getting into the weeds.

We don't need you telling us what our setbacks are, our lot coverage, our far, our height.

Give us some credibility that we actually know how we can manage maintaining and running our city, maintaining the character of our city while at the same time addressing these bigger issues.

Set high goals, overarching bulk goals, but get out of the weeds, please.

We've had enough.

Thank you, Council Burdick.

No, it's not our fault that we made the best looking community in the state, you know.

Council Windland.

I agree with both of you.

Um I have a question with all the mishmashing of all this stuff.

People are going to apply for some things in the next couple years, few years.

I guess I don't know, to whoever wants to answer it.

Do we have any concerns about the robust amount of changes?

And somebody comes in and needs their permit approved.

Uh we um are we able to make good decisions uh approving that permit um with such gray matter that's out there?

Um, and do we have any liability going forward that if all of a sudden three years from now somebody says, oh well, gosh, you know, Joe Smith got his whatever um approved, and now you're telling me I'm not.

So will we have any precedent setting decisions that might bite us in the whatever?

Um let me take I'll answer your questions very directly in three ways.

I think your first question was um does or should the city have concern about the issue you just raised?

Yes.

I think your second question was essentially um is this going to create difficulties both in the application now, but in creating a class of people in between the time that the regulation takes effect and potentially the time that the regulation sunsets we created a class of people, and there will be another class of people who are not in that class.

And the answer is yes, that creates I would not say liability for the city.

I would say that what it creates is a um a difficult uh problem for the courts, actually.

And if you'll allow me this, um, this situation is not all that different than about when was it, 25 years ago when Multnomah County declared that same-sex marriage licenses that they would issue those licenses.

And if you'll recall, that created a class of people who got married in Multnomah County, and the courts had to resolve what the status, the legal status of those individuals were once the constitutional prohibition against same-sex marriages was passed.

So this situation is not directly on all fours, but you are correct, in my opinion, counselor Windland, that there the legislature has created potentially a very similar dynamic, which is a class of people who will be under the state's program.

And if it's sunsets, we will have created a problem for the courts to solve.

And I guess I would think of that sunset more as a pilot.

I I'm sorry, I've been around this universe a long time.

And uh just because there's this there's no such thing as a sunset.

Um, I think you should assume that someone will remember in 2031 that they have to lift the sunset that you should think of this as a pilot project.

I don't mean to be cynical.

No, but I'm I think the challenge for us, I mean, in reality, is the challenge for us has been that we have spent so much time chasing code, code updates, mandates, we get new ones that conflict with the old ones.

We actually haven't even seen with the exception of the two cottage cluster projects that are happening in first edition, we haven't really seen the whether or not the original 2017 bills and 2019 bills are actually working.

We don't know.

And so we're amending code that really hasn't had a chance to work.

And so for me, the issue is we have no idea and can't really have a meaningful conversation about what is the effect of this stuff because the reality is it's never settled down.

And by the way, we're doing it in the worst financial market ever, where many of these projects are not financeable, so they're not being built.

So I I mean, I think it'll be decades before we know whether this stuff turns out to be good or bad.

And and our poor staff is getting pulled different directions, they can't even do their day job because they're busy chasing code.

I see why so many cities probably didn't apply for the exemptions, they're right.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, maybe one more question.

So if you go in to the office, the desk and you have your plans or whatever, you can just keep asking staff, so what else can you do for me?

Is that kind of people do?

Yes.

I mean, that's it's just very common.

I mean, because we offer a lot of really good customer service, and so we want to help people build the housing that they want.

And so we look through the codes, we try to walk them through the codes, we say this is outright compliant, and well, what are the flexibility?

How why does this standard apply?

Are there variances to it?

We spend a lot of time helping people through that.

This just adds yet another layer on top of that, along with again all of those other legislative updates for staff is gonna have to be keeping track of what standards are in place, um, are immediately implemented or coming down the road at us or amended back behind this scene.

I mean, it's just it's gonna make it there's the possibility, and again, this is my concern for the the current planning staff.

There's the possibility that we're not gonna be able to provide very clear feedback or possibly um inconsistent feedback because we are also confused with all of these code amendments, and we do our best, we absolutely do our best.

But um, given that this particular program, this mandatory adjustment program, and the exemption means that we're gonna be broadcasting all the different ways that you can get variances and the fact that our variances have kind of not clear and objective criteria, um, the amount of times we're gonna have to talk about it with people and work it through for their particular project, and it's it's a lot of work and it could lead to confusion on the applicant's part and staff's.

And it's it's a lot of work and it could lead to confusion on the applicant's part and staff's.

We have an extra insurance policy for these two individuals.

Just in case.

But because I think you all know your city attorney's office is undergoing a transition right now in terms of staffing.

And so I wanted to highlight that for you as yet another impact that the state's mandating that these policy issues not only forcing you all and every other city to handle them, but to handle them in a very particular way, as counselor verdict described, which is they are down in the weeds.

And so that drains staff time, but it also drains your ability to strategically prioritize things like how might we want the city attorney's office to be restaffed.

Um counselor Afghan.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh Dito, everything counselor verdict said.

Uh appreciation for the team who has been trying to make sense out of this and has spent so much time on figuring it out.

And they're so vague that you can define it many different directions.

So thank you very much.

Also the frustration with what the state is doing and overruling and telling the cities what they how they need to do it and what they need to do.

It sure feels like the way the federal government is treating the states.

And the states is now, I feel like uh they're treating us that way, which uh doesn't feel good.

And it takes our authority uh away from us, uh, taking care of our residences.

So it's frustrating.

Uh one of the things I wanted to uh also say is that I don't like this, I don't care for this 90% mandatory requirement because we may do our due diligence and all of a sudden we find ourselves at 89%, and we must approve the last application that's so crazy that it's unbelievable.

Then as counselor Wetland says, now we have a precedent, everybody else wants to do it to do that.

Uh it does not work.

It doesn't, it's just walking into a trap.

Uh thank you, Ms.

Samia Point.

Thank you, Counselor Afghan.

Well, um, I think it would be good.

Let's kind of, as you said, see how things play out, and then maybe we can schedule time down the road to kind of come back and see if we need to evaluate any further.

But in the meantime, thank you for all your your work on the topic and keeping us apprised.

Thank you so much for that clear direction.

I really appreciate it.

We will start the work.

Thank you very much.

You can live with that decision.

Well, we have to.

Okay.

So yes, enthusiastically and with a smile.

Oh, sure.

Thank you, both.

Thanks.

Well, next we're gonna move into a uh public hearing.

Um, we have before us ordinances 2931 and 2965, as well as resolution 24-29.

Um, we are going to uh we have Ms.

Diamond and Director Rooney coming to present.

But while they're getting set up, we'll start with a review of the hearing procedure by Miss Osnack.

Thank you, Mayor Buck, members of the council.

Uh now is the time set for a public hearing on resolution 2429, ordinance 2931, ordinance 2965, all of which relate to LOC our chapter 51, which are utility facilities in the public rights of way.

This is a legislative decision, and it is in your sound discretion.

The public hearing process will begin with a presentation by staff.

Testimony will then be received from the public, subject to the time limits in the agenda, which uh for the purposes here I will remind everyone is five minutes per person unless you are part of a um designated uh group, which uh industry is not.

So it should be five minutes per person.

Um you may cede uh your time for testimony to another person, but in no case shall any person's testimony be increased to greater than 10 minutes.

I'll ask now as I do for every legislative decision if there are any financial conflicts of interest for counselors, and I'll pause.

Hearing none, we are ready for the staff report.

Okay, wonderful.

And this is a continuation of public hearing, so we're we're back.

Yes, we are.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Counselors.

My name is Erica Rooney, Public Works Director and City Engineer.

With me this evening, because it is evening, yes.

Uh, is um Nell Diamond, our management analyst in public works, and then also remotely, we have um Nancy Werner from Bradley Werner LLC, who is our legal counsel on this topic.

And as you said, Mayor, this is pretty much a continuation.

We were with you all last spring.

We had a public hearing at that time, and um it was continued in order to address a number of concerns that were brought up.

And so we are back here today to um kind of reboot it a little bit.

We're gonna cover some things that we did cover last time as well, but just to remind everybody, because it has been a few months, so I think it's good for us to step back, reset where we were coming from, what we're trying to accomplish, and then answer any questions you might have.

With that, I'll turn it over to Nell.

Thank you, Director Rooney for the records.

This is Neil Diamond with uh management analyst with the city of Lake Aswego speaking.

And again, we're going to review the utilities and right away with two ordinances and one resolution to review and hopefully pass today.

So let me get this started.

Well, there we are.

So a brief review.

Um what is the row?

What are we talking about as far as access?

The right of way is the land that the city owns and manages on behalf of the public.

So it's our largest and most valuable asset.

And while this the community uses the public uses the right of way every day, our private and public utilities also use these areas.

Hang on, we got a little bit of a try this.

Sorry, we've got a little technical difficulty.

There we go.

Okay.

So who uses our right of way right now?

Just to review.

Uh we have PGE, Comcast, a lot of the trucks you see all around.

We also have the smaller cell providers.

Uh we also have Crown Castle, Zipley, Verizon, Lumen.

Uh, none of this will apply to any public utilities that we provide, such as our drinking water, stormwater, wastewater, etc.

So what we are doing here is we are, as Director Rooney says, rebooting and looking to update the original chapter 51, which was passed by the ordinance 2804.

It was passed in 2019, and the purpose was to standardize the terms for the utility rights of way in the way that they're managed, because before they used to have individual franchise contracts.

All right.

So a little history.

Uh, in 2021, we hired a consultant to help with managing the licensing of the utility providers, and also proposed some updates to our code chapter 51.

Uh, we also proposed changes with a telecommunication telecommunication legal firm that was under contract with the city at that time.

Uh we had changes in personnel with both departments, we had COVID.

A lot of the completion of review was delayed until last year, 2024.

Um, and again, the recommendations to amend the codes for chapter 21 were made.

Uh, but they've since been modified for current standards.

So we continued our process.

Uh, and again, we were looking.

The goal is to add clarity, revise definitions, and review the fee structures for the utilities in the right of way.

And then we held the public hearing that you all attended as well on March 18th of this year.

Concerns from the wireless utilities stakeholders were raised at the hearing during the public hearing process.

We did a listening session after that time on April 14th, and we have now drafted updated ordinances and a resolution that we are looking to have finalized.

So what are we looking at?

Why is this different?

What's unique about the wireless?

The wireless communication facilities typically include the antennas, the structures, and equipment that is on city owned or structures or polls that are in the public right-of-way.

And so there's a macro cell tower, which I'm pointing at with my mouse there, and those are the larger cell towers that you see.

And then we also have the small cells, and these complement the larger tower and allow for more room or more coverage for our cellular services.

The small cell deployments complement the bigger towers and add the coverage that is needed.

And so you can look around and see different versions of this.

And then within that, there's fiber that is down here that's in the right of way that feeds these cellular providers.

So that's a very high level.

It's probably where I need to stay, but that's how it works.

So they use the wireline to power up and utilize for the cellular coverage.

So again, that's one more illustration here for your review.

There's the macro cell, which is the larger tower, and then the small cells allow for additional coverage in more density areas.

So we're proposing today.

We have amendments, we have ordinance 2931, which amends chapter uh 51 regulating the utility facilities.

We have ordinance 2965, which will replace the old ordinance 2820 that updates the regulations for wireless facilities in the right of way.

And then we have resolution 2429, which updates the fees and revises the methodology that was presented from before.

So I'm going to go through each one, just real high level.

2931 will amend the chapter 51 regulating utilities in the right-of-way.

And it's and standardizes the term for utility providers' use of the right of way.

Excuse me, update and align city regulations and fees with FCC laws that provide for operating in the right of way in cities.

And similar to some of the other discussions that we've heard before, our local ordinances need to comply with the FCC law.

It replaces ordinance 2820.

It'll ensure the consistency with the local, state, and federal laws.

And the new ordinance provides for a little more consistency in language with chapter 51, and then also correct some minor errors.

And again, it's specifically for small cell wireless facilities, and it's consistent with FCC requirements and including our design standards that align with city regulations.

So resolution 2429 that will update the fee amounts and revise the methodology and address the concerns of the wireless stakeholders that were brought up last month, March.

We feel it gives fee clarity.

It separates fees for utility service providers, which are facility owners and utility service providers.

Excuse me, utility service operators and utility service providers.

And there are differences.

The operator is the one that has the hardware, has what you see in the infrastructure, and frequently that capacity is leased to other providers.

The small sale wireless facility definition will now match the federal code definition.

And the gross revenue charge, which we had proposed before, the wireless company, we have changed that to address these concerns.

The wireless companies will pay an annual fee consistent with Apple Poo law instead of the 5% gross fee that the other utilities pay.

On March 18th, we had that public hearing that I just reviewed, and then the testimony was received at that hearing from Wireless Policy, ATT, Verizon, Crown Castle, CTIA, and they expressed their concerns about these ordinances.

Since that hearing, uh we have again, we met with them in April, and the forum participants were similar the Wireless Policy Group, ATT, Verizon, Crown Castle, CTIA.

So we're going to go through here revision uh what their concern were and what our response has been.

They had a uh concern about fee clarity.

The revision now separates the fees for wire communication facilities.

Again, the hardware that you see and the wireless communication service providers, which are the the entities that would lease from the hardware providers.

The entities are both that happen to be both.

If they own the hardware, and they also are the same company that are providing service to the end users, they will not be double charged.

This uh the second one is the definition of small wireless facilities.

What does that mean?

That's been updated to match the federal red regulation, which also means if there's a change on the federal level, that will automatically change what is in our ordinance because it it will match that code.

The gross revenue charge and attachment fee concerns.

Um this was a big one.

The instead of the 5% gross revenue fee, the wireless owners in the right-of-way will pay an annual fee.

And there are two definitions now or two categories that we've defined.

The one is the wireless service facilities, which again, these are this is the hardware, the entities that own, place, operate, maintain the hardware in our right-of-way, and they will pay cost-based fee per the FCC rules.

Cost-based fees are what is what does it cost the city to manage this?

It's not a profit center, it's not a tax, it's a cost-based fee.

And for the hardware for the facilities, that fee is $620, $627.47.

And again, we went through that process of determining what it's really costing us to manage manage the facility.

The communication services, they they are the lessees, they're the entities that lease facilities to provide the services to the end user.

Uh we do not require a license in this new ordinance, and uh that's just requires a $400 fee per year, so that we're aware of what what they're doing and managing that process.

Uh the city removal of equipment concern, we have addressed that.

We have put language in there that we will use qualified personnel uh following our state and federal safety laws.

And again, we look to incorporate these concerns in congruence with uh city council's policy goals.

So our recommendation is to enact ordinances, these two ordinance 2931, 2965, and adopt resolution 2429.

So open for questions.

Thank you, Ms.

Diamond.

I have a question.

Okay.

Actually, Councilor Afkin, do you have a question?

Or was that from before?

Is that left over?

Well, it's left over.

Okay.

Okay.

Um these providers.

Oh, does he have a question?

Sorry, Council.

I do not miss the mayor.

That's okay.

Thank you.

You don't have a question.

I do not have a question, but I wanted to uh give a shout out to Director Rooney who uh analyze all these letters that we got and pulled the team together to look at it legally and also address some of the concerns they brought up.

Sounds like uh uh lobbyists, but uh overall uh director Rooney, thank you for doing that.

Uh thank you, counselor, and a big shout out to Nell and to Nancy Warner who's remote who helped pull that all together on our behalf.

The um the uh for the um service providers and the um what was the other category facilities owner?

Are these fees do do these um entities do they have um a business license in the city?

Yes.

They get a business license.

Yes, if it's a separate entity, it would okay to so to operate within the city, probably they have a good business license and pay the uh now these fees right away.

That's a separate separate thing.

They would have a business license.

Okay.

Um does it for the purposes of this of this whole thing, does it matter who owns the poll?

City on poll versus or if it's I saw the different examples.

I mean, some was like a utility poll, some was was you know, the that mothership poll.

As far as the the mounting goes, the fee that the two fees that I just discussed would be the same.

So it matters if it's in the right of way.

Some cell facilities are on private property or other entity property.

So that doesn't matter.

Yeah.

That type of poll it's on, if it's in the right of way, it doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter what kind of poll it's on.

Okay, whether it's a city owned poll or whether it's a poll.

Yeah, it's in the right of place.

Like a privately owned poll.

Yeah, if it's on in the public right-of-way.

Well, it's in the right of way, there will be fees associated with being physically in the right of police.

Regardless of whether it's a publicly owned light poll or a privately owned poll just for this purpose.

It could be a PGE poll, for instance, or a lumen poll.

And there's a lot of our polls are others, we don't own all of the polls you see around here.

Okay.

But there is no doubt that the facilities for which we're charging these fees are because some of the feedback we got was that these are not in the right of way.

And and I that didn't quite make sense to me.

That was some of the the um written testimony provided.

Was it not in the right of way?

I didn't make sense because aren't they clearly in the right of way?

Well, that's what we're telling me.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you for clarifying.

And uh, you know, the industry is here, and I strongly encourage you all to ask questions about what their concerns were, but to answer your question, Mr.

Bug.

Um the wait, remind me again.

Yes, yes, thank you.

The right of way is what triggers the application of the ordinance.

That's right.

So if the industry is telling you we're very concerned that this code applies to things that are not in the right of way, the answer is the code says it applies to things that are in the right of way.

Okay, thank you.

I know it sounds like a silly thing to ask, but that was the feedback, so I was had asked.

Okay.

Um counselor winlett, please.

Um, I'm so when you said back on the slide that you we're foregoing a five percent franchise fee for just a standardized fee.

Flat fee.

That's correct.

Flat flat fee.

So that's fine.

Um if that's what you guys want, but what are the differences in real numbers?

Because I I mean, in in all honesty, that doesn't really tell me, Jack Diddley, about what we would be receiving versus what we're proposing to receive.

Um that makes sense.

Um yeah, I I can speak to this based on what was presented at the March meeting.

Uh right now, when you look at all of our utility providers, 95% of them are what we call a larger providers, and we get about 3.1 million out of that.

Uh we have five per about 5%.

This is going off of the figures presented in March.

So we're looking at about 125, 150, 150,000.

So out of that group that would not be part of the 5% franchise fee.

Yeah.

Okay.

It just was a little confusing, and it sounds like we're giving up 5% of a lot of revenue for $628 or whatever that number was.

Future you can round up.

That's probably good for the city.

Then I guess after all this, you presented, I mean, industry will talk to us, but do you have um do you feel like the process that we went through was a fair process that everybody had their issues um I guess clarified and raised, and um there is uh a mutual decision somewhat, or did we just counselor and um you know I want to be very respectful of the fact that um that I think um what is fairest to say is that because the small cell wireless in particular is a difficult area legally, it is primarily regulated at the federal level, but you know, local jurisdictions have a stake that I think the fairest assessment of how the city has handled this is that it's been it it's taken some time, and so I think probably from the industry's perspective, it may feel like um that the process was lengthy and we weren't coming to you know a straight arrow decision.

I think that's probably fair.

What is also fair is that this we took this much time precisely so that we could say yes to you in this moment that we did our absolute best to listen to the industry to take into account federal law and to take into account your policy goals.

And we believe strongly that the package we've presented today balances all of those things um very fairly.

Um but of course, you know, the the industry um has a a different set of goals and um that that are not entirely clear um in terms of why they object to the compromise that we've reached, because as you point out, there's a big difference between charging five percent of growth and having a one-time annual fee.

So I'm not quite certain what the industry's concerns are or um about that, but I do understand that from their perspective, it's been a lengthy process that has not, and we have gone through several iterations of the code, and I could imagine that would be frustrating.

But I can say both as the city attorney and having worked closely with staff, and have you know, um several outside consulting attorneys that our entire purpose here was frankly to engage in a process that was very fair and where we felt like we were taking into account um all of the concerns that industry expressed with a very clear goal um of complying legally, we need to treat everybody similarly, but also the very clear goals that we heard from you all about we do not want our code to discourage small cell providers from expanding coverage from making our coverage better here in Lake Aswego, and so that was a goal that we were laser focused on.

So that that brings me to my thank you for the lead-in to my next question is um is there any performance language in this that uh we have some dead zones in Lake Uswico, and I and frankly I want them fixed, and um I'm willing to stall this out until they're fixed, um, or maybe go up to some other arrangement because I I'm um I think we speak for the consumer as well as the city.

Uh and um I have to tell you, I mean, it's um when I when I talk to my friends who are um living in places like Moldova and Ukraine and different places that are worn-torn and under um siege.

Um I talk to people, our friends down um that all over the world that have uh coverage wherever they frickin' go, and it's good coverage and it's fast coverage.

And I'm in Lake Uswego, and I'm paying taxes that are obnoxious uh on all my utility bills.

I mean, I I think it's funny when you look at a utility bill and you see what the base rate charge is, and then you see taxes that almost double what you're paying.

And this is just how we're set up.

But I think the consumer should have something for that.

Maybe there's nothing we can do, but I I think I want to put in there I I would love to have a performance clause that if they don't perform, we're gonna review this and we're gonna either raise money to build more polls and put stuff in.

I don't know.

Um, but I'm tired of the dead zones.

Yeah.

Um and uh and I that's one of my biggest complaints uh from consumers.

Uh and the biggest compliment is paving.

So let's have um compliments about self-service.

Um that might be a Nancy question.

Yeah.

Actually, Nancy.

I I'd like to redirect it, Counselor Winlin.

What we've tried to do is to build exactly the incentives that you want in the code, right?

The code can act as an incentive in terms of this very creative idea, and I know exactly where it comes from your strong business, you know, sense that can't we have a performance obligation.

I think you know, Nancy and I would be happy to look into that.

But what I think might be most helpful for you in this moment is to direct your concern to the very people that could solve your problem.

And they are about to come up before you.

Okay.

Well wait.

I'm excited.

Nancy, did you want to add anything?

No, I I think that covers it.

I mean, I I I guess I could say that I I don't think you have clear legal authority right now to mandate build out for wireless providers, but I I I agree with the city attorney that this is a great thing to raise with the wireless companies when they come to speak before you.

Thank you for bringing up councilman.

I agree, it is kind of crazy.

Councillor Boop and I will talk to each other halfway around the world.

Yeah.

Which is just like nuts.

So true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um Councillor Boop.

Yeah, I mean I just thank you very much for I read, I was pretty upset and like really sort of angry.

I mean, when the providers are saying that the city is breaking the law, and we don't break the law.

We are the city of Lake Oswego.

We have uh council, we have legal counsel that tell my frustration comes what from what uh my fellow counselor just said.

It's very frustrating that you call from Senegal in an island that's called Joffior.

You can go check it.

It's in Senegal, it's an island in the middle of the ocean.

Uh Michael Murrow and myself were calling the mayor of Lake Oswego.

We lost him.

And we had coverage over there.

And it's don't tell me it's not the satellite of Elon Musk.

No, it's the coverage of an underdeveloped country.

It's it, and here we have Comcast, we have all the folks who are here today to say they are not even, they cannot do that in Lake Osico, and they are mad that we put some fees that they need to pay for just being a citizen because we are a city, sort of a non-profit.

You guys have a lot of profit, a lot of money that you make over us.

That's what corporate America is doing.

100% capitalistic view.

And it's a good refined with that.

You're doing things, but you make in profit.

So I mean you should have for me, it's it's even not arrogance, but it's like unquestionable that you folks are coming to say, oh, four or six hundred dollars is too much for pay this.

And no, you are charging, I'm paying four Comcasts, I pay almost three hundred dollars a month for some time for nothing, because we are in the 21st century.

We could these things should be even free.

But you will you and I'm not like um the my frustration comes from there.

But in spite of all of that, you are not doing your job.

If even AT you have, you come in your own home in my garage, I don't have coverage.

And you I don't understand what is it the city's role.

We we gave you all the right of way to use everything for us to have service, but we don't.

And people, there are many dead zones in in Lego on Boons Fey, many places you have an emergency, you are in big trouble.

Even without a major thing like a storm or anything, you are having problems.

So I think honestly you should show you should like in you should sit this one out.

You shouldn't come here and talk about the, you know, like, oh, you have to do this and that.

And I'm being very nice, honestly.

We should vote.

My fellow comes to just vote the resolution and move on.

I think you actually do need to have a lot of people.

No, we have no idea.

I think you're ready for you for it.

But it's I just want to say that that's not normal.

And I am talking on behalf of the people of Lake Osico who elected me.

Like I said last time, no corporate or nobody else control what I am saying is the people of Lake Oswego who are frustrated, like I am on the service they receive from you, and you you should thank you for your work and thank you.

I have to say this, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and uh uh reopen this continued uh public hearing.

And um we'll uh you two stay stay close.

And I just have and thank you two for your patience through the meeting.

Uh Troy, Gaguano.

If you already made you two want to, you can you two can both come up and sit on the We'll talk.

Leela Vega.

And you both represent Verizon.

We do.

We both I'm I'm with Wireless Policy Group Lee Lavaga with Wireless Policy Group here on behalf of Verizon.

Okay.

And I'm sure oh, sorry, please go ahead.

Uh Troy Gagliano with Verizon.

Which one of you wants to go first?

I'll go first if that's all right with you there.

Yes, go ahead.

Um I will go first because I actually want to address exactly the question that you asked with respect to private property.

But first, let me just say I'm very grateful to staff we all are within our industry.

We appreciate the meetings that were held.

We appreciate the response to a number of our concerns.

I would say that we are down to fine-tuning points at this point in terms of our concerns.

And I do want to assure you that this is a step better than what was previously in place, and um we have projects that we're hoping to bring to town.

So uh we we hear from our customers as well.

Um so to your your point about our concerns with the private property piece.

Um, I want to take some time to explain in detail what we're talking about there.

So the macro facilities, the larger cell towers, are primarily on private property.

In Lake Oswego, the code actually doesn't allow those in the right-of-way.

So they're all on private property or property that's outside of the right-of-way here in Lake Oswego.

Um, one surprise that we received in that April meeting was the understanding that the city is considering the the provision of fiber service from a third party, such so every every time you build a macro tower, you have power and fiber optic connectivity delivered to that tower in the same way that most businesses or structures get fiber and power and other utilities provided to that site.

Well, what we learned in that meeting is that having fiber optic service delivered to that site is considered a use of the right-of-way.

And even if a wireless provider's facilities are entirely on private property within the city, that wireless providers would still be considered utility providers under the management of the right-of-way code because they contract for that fiber service.

So you've got the the uh um the operator who owns the structure.

So in the case of fiber, you've got the operator that that owns the fiber, the provider, which is sometimes a selling entity, sometimes a different one, that that contracts with the customer for service across that infrastructure, and then you've got the customer that then uses that service.

Um what we're being told is that even though in this scenario we're the customer who uses that service, that we would be considered a um a utility provider.

Now, the situation in which we agree that wireless would absolutely be a utility provider, is um if there is a a wireless facility, a small cell in the right-of-way that is built by an infrastructure company, for example, Crown Castle or XNet come in and they build these, and they own all of the infrastructure to send out the wireless signal from these small cells.

Um, and then the wireless carrier, so a Verizon 18 tier T-Mobile would license with them to use their equipment to send our radio frequency signals.

In that instance, we unequivocally would be a utility provider managed under the right-of-way code.

Um the concern is being managed under the right-of-way code when none of your facilities are located in the right-of-way, um, simply for being a customer of the fiber service.

And it's it's um our contention that wireless service and fiber service are materially different things.

They are not the same service.

And so the logic of if you're using exactly the same infrastructure to provide exactly the same service, um, you know, whether you're an operator operating it or not, you know, that yeah, that you you would then be a provider if you're providing service over that infrastructure.

But if you need additional infrastructure on a private property to create a materially different service, then you're not using the right-of-way.

Um, certainly no more than any other consumer of that that utility is using the right of ways, for example, the data center or a coffee shop or whatever else.

So that to answer your question, that's that's our specific concern there.

Um the only other point that I'd like to personally raise is just um we appreciate the um the addressing the gross revenue fee concerns and um I think that that um counsel is correct.

This is a highly complicated area of law.

And there are a lot of things that we can that we can talk about that go back and forth on that.

Um I am curious to see um just know what cost breakdown into the $627 and change in that fee, and only because this is something where generally when we see a fee that is set at a level that is different from the presumed safe harbor rate as set in federal law, um, there's usually just a some kind of breakdown with that that that um allows us to see how that's cost-based.

Now, uh it's just something that we we generally see as a standard practice, and it always creates a sense of curiosity for us.

Where'd that number come from?

What costs are it based on?

Um, you know, what is the city doing to monitor and manage our small sales in the right of way?

Because frankly, most of the actual management of those facilities is truly handled by the wireless carrier and the owner of the poll, be that PGE or be that the wireless carrier who built the poll or the infrastructure company.

So those are the two items I wanted to address with you.

And um thank you again to staff for the responsiveness and consideration, and thank you to counsel for hearing our many, many comments.

Thank you.

Could could you just what what are some of the names of the companies that you represent that operate within Lake Oswego?

Within Lake Oswego.

I am here today representing Verizon.

Just Verizon.

I am here representing Verizon.

Uh Wireless Policy Group as a as a firm represents various members in the wireless industry, other others outside the wireless industry, but I am here today um representing Verizon and and specifically working for Troy.

Oh, oh, okay.

Okay.

Are there other wireless providers though that you that the group represents that work in Lake Oswego?

Yeah.

So Meredith Pabst, I believe, is testifying today.

She's representing ATT.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

And I believe that's everyone you're going to hear from today representing but wireless policy group.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you, Mr.

Marion, Council members.

Uh Troy Greg Leon with Verizon.

I had some comments, but I'm prepared to just throw those aside because I I do want to address your concerns and see what questions I can answer for you.

Um if I stumbled, forget it.

I'm just gonna forget what I was gonna say.

Um but to Leela's point, and I'm relatively new to telecom, I had a 25-year um career in energy.

So I'm learning a lot of this myself.

And one thing I've learned that you eloquently explained, I'll put it in even more simple terms for myself as a new guy, uh, and I know this can help from a lay audience.

Um in Lakoswego, Verizon doesn't own any of those towers in the images.

We don't own any of the fiber optic cable, right?

Crown Castle owns that, Lumen owns that, and we just lease, we pay them, they pay the 5% gross revenue fees, and they should.

If Verizon did have that infrastructure in the right-of-way, we certainly should too.

But we just lease that space.

I think of it as uh an apartment building.

The county charges that apartment building owner property tax, and that's fair.

But do they then go and charge each individual tenant property tax just for the use?

That's not fair.

And that's the the fairness question.

And and Commissioner uh counselor, to your point.

Yeah, we're not arguing about the $400 or anything else.

It was really that, um, the kind of double dipping or fairness question.

Um I do know, and I also I haven't analyzed the siting policies in Senegal or a lot of other places, but I do know that working in in Oregon and Washington for over 20 years, these are some of the the toughest places to site infrastructure.

Um just comes down to visual impact.

I'm sure you all hear from neighbors and citizens a lot about the looks of that thing.

Um telecoms not alone, energy had to deal with that too.

Um but I do know that we have some engineers looking specifically at putting some small sales in Lake Oswego to address some of the gaps that you're talking about.

I don't know exactly where they're talking about.

I'd be happy to follow up to learn about any spots for you.

You know?

I don't have to do that.

I would love to do that.

I would love to do that, seriously.

And I could bring the engineer or I can take it back to them, but that's the kind of thing, you know.

Let's let's get everything on the hood and try to figure out the problems together.

Yes, I am um I'll take that.

I think you would love to meet them and show them many parts iron mountain month, many citizens, yeah, many of these.

Yeah.

Um and I might uh two minutes here.

Uh um I made any questions on that, or did that kind of please go ahead because we can ask questions.

Okay, thank you.

Um the only other thing I might uh might share is just kind of like the the demand in data usage that we're building to keep up with.

Uh in 2021 to 2023 alone, data usage uh in the United States doubled.

That's the largest ever increase of wireless data that the industry's ever seen.

Um and that's expected to continue, like a tripling of data usage in amongst Americans by 2029.

Um a couple things about who is using wireless technology.

I'll share some numbers here.

These are from the National Center for Health Statistics, they're part of the Center for Disease Control, and these are for the last half of 2024.

So if you look at income levels, and I'm sorry, this is for a percentage of Americans living in homes that are wireless only.

People have a wireless device, no landline.

If you look at income, low-income families, those below the federal poverty threshold, 83% are in wireless only homes.

Renters, 88% of renters live in wireless only.

Ethnic background, Hispanic adults are at 85%.

And even at age from 18 to 64, the average is 86% of those folks, those Americans that age live in wireless only homes.

Um that that's a lot of people.

And um we're we're Verizon spends about 17 billion every year investing in our networks, expanding and maintaining them.

It's important to keep in mind, though, those engineers that I mentioned, counselor, those budgets for us are set at a national level, and those upgrades go to where the path is clear.

The the rules are fairest and most clear.

Um and so we you I I'd encourage the city to keep the rules fair and clear.

I definitely commend staff for the conversation and the open dialogue about uh the decisions where they landed or not the 5%.

We appreciate that very much.

The only thing remaining we have is the uh the concern is the the volumetric limitations on small sales, three cubic feet and six cubic feet.

That's among the lowest we see in the region.

So that that's something we could perhaps pick up.

And my engineers there have said like we could maybe three to six feet, we maybe make that work.

But I would just ask for uh continued conversation and flexibility to allow for uh uh you know an exception perhaps where it might be warranted, depending on a specific location to try to boost service.

Uh with that I'll I'll wrap.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Does anyone have any questions for us to uh counselor Winland?

Yeah, no, I I honestly would follow up with you because our citizens are not happy about that.

And anything that can help us, I am taking it.

You give me any time to meet.

I did it with PGE.

We can I can do it with you.

I am free.

You tell me we can walk.

I can and probably people who are listening, they're gonna send the emails.

Yeah, and tell us that what are the I know many places in Lake Host people where you have nothing.

Iron mountain, you start imagine someone talking a business thing.

Drive to thing and loss.

You can lose millions of dollars.

You can help wise there are a lot of things.

So iron mountain would be a priority, and then we go from there from other places.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd be delighted to do that.

Look forward to that option.

Thank you, Councilor Booth.

Counselor Windlow.

Thanks for having the conversation with us.

Um explain to me sort of So you feel like you're getting double depth.

Is that right?

Or not now.

No, what was originally proposed.

Oh, okay.

So we're past the double dipping.

Great.

Okay.

I just want to make sure that we're because I think we were all in the same boat that we don't like double dipping either.

Um so that's that's clear.

So your main concern, your outstanding main concern then is that you feel like there are cell towers that or cell function functioning units um in places that are on private land that you're getting the right-of-way charge.

Is that correct?

Yes, and frankly, we did when I was last here.

That was not my understanding.

And that was something that was clarified in the follow-up meeting in April, that being a customer of a fiber provider and having that like we pay the fiber provider, the fees are are charged to the fiber provider based on what we pay.

But that we are being regulated for use of the right-of-way for contracting for fiber.

And that just doesn't check out.

That is that is a primary concern.

We do have a few other concerns, certainly.

Staff did not give everything we asked for.

But that is really the core concern that I'm left with that the concept of sites on private property being subject to right-of-way fees when there's no new infrastructure use of the right-of-way, frankly, that's just unprecedented.

We just don't, that's just something we have not seen.

And particularly concerned about that because it just opens a whole bunch of questions in terms of what are we going to see next.

What's what's the what's where does that methodology go if we start considering using fiber service as being a use of the right-of-way when there's we're we're not having any like impact on that right-of-way.

So what you're saying is that you're not even using that space.

So just the fiber provider is paying the franchise fee.

In an example of the like a lumen or a Zip Lee fiber, if they are in the right-of-way, they have an impact, they have a presence there.

Uh if they got to go do some work, they have an impact on the right-of-way.

Um yes, they they would.

And if Verizon had that infrastructure in the city right-of-way, we'd no problem to pay the um the percentage of gross revenue.

But what Verizon does in this example, we just it it's a fiber optic cable.

We just send when you pick up your phone and make a call, that is data going over light in a fiber optic cable.

Well, landline phone, like the wireless phone.

The cable connects to something else.

So the so the way that it works is you've got your switching center that and your your fiber service, and that's usually a data center run by your fiber provider.

So say it's Lumen.

They've got their their switching data center.

They've got their cable that goes to the fiber connects to the Verizon switching center on the one side.

On the other side, you've got lit fiber service, so multiple users are going through that that same fiber cable.

They deliver a portion of service with certain data capacity to the cell site in the same way they would to your home or to a like a data center is a good example.

They use a lot more data than we do.

Um, but um generally, you know, it's anywhere from a one gig to a 10 gig service that gets delivered to a cell site.

Um and then that um the the data that's actually traveling along that fiber cable is doing so via light.

That day the the wireless tower, the equipment at that tower, there is um you know, baseband units, meaning basically computers.

There are um various components that connect to the fiber cables.

There are radios that take the signals and convert them to radio waves.

Wireless technology, cellular technology is radio waves.

So our cell phones are using radios um similar to the way you would listen to the radio in your car, it's the same similar kind of wave.

And so um what wireless carriers are providing really is radio waves that carry data traffic on a mobile basis.

Um we are not providing fiber service to a particular address.

It's a materially different thing.

And that's why most of us have a cell phone and also a home fiber or internet connection, because they're very they're different services people use.

But the equipment in question, right, is what the is these towers, these radio things that are connected to the not the fiber itself.

We are being told that we would be charged, or that not it's not really even about the charges.

I hate to even say that.

Because it's not even about the $400 a year is really not the issue.

The issue is we are being considered utility providers regulated under the right-of-way policy for being customers of a fiber provider.

Aaron Powell Because the tower is on public on private property.

What we're told is that it's because even though our towers on private property, the fiber goes through the right-of-way, and the only way to avoid that fee would be to have microwave backhaul services that do not touch the right-of-way, which is frankly less efficient and and not practical for us.

Okay, we'll get clarification on that.

I did sorry, counselor when that I mean uh interrupt your question.

Uh I had the same one.

So I uh I really like the statistic uh statistic that you have as far as the um number of houses that are wireless only, and I would say that um we're probably getting closer and closer to being almost a hundred percent.

And I would say that we're probably getting closer and closer to being almost 100%.

Um just about.

I mean it's cable.

No, no, no.

No.

No, in the in the sense of um landlines for telephones.

Right.

They're talking about people that don't have like an internet connection.

No internet.

They have no cable, but they only have wireless.

Only like a self-data connection.

Correct.

To clarify, this statistic is talking about for voice service.

Um, so what I am saying is, yeah, but the boys service um and it's it's almost going to be 100%, I think, in the world sooner or later.

I don't know who has a connected line, but um uh I think that just goes to show that we need service that's reliable.

Um the unfortunate thing is it's not just in Iron Mountain when you're driving.

Uh I have neighbors in my neighborhood that um basically they walk out on the streets sometimes to get cell phone coverage um because they can't they don't have it in their house.

And so um uh and I don't know.

Uh I'd like to go back to the point I will say I've been on council um pretty long, and I remember the initial conversations that we had with the group on the size of the cell phone towers.

And uh my understanding at the time was that the cell phone towers um yes, there was big ones that were older technology that would work that were big and ugly.

And then there was uh the newer ones that were coming through that were smaller and more efficient and even more powerful.

And that um uh this being like us, we go, um we we would like to have aesthetically nice looking um whatever you want to call the little cell things, small cells, small cells, because um at that point we were all going to be by now we would be driving our cars, we wouldn't be driving our cars.

It was all driverless at that point in time when we were talking about this, and they'd be every 500 feet um these little towers.

Right.

That hasn't happened, and that probably won't ever happen.

Maybe it will, but uh my point is is that um we consciously did that.

We I'm unaware that the technology is that different from big versus small.

So um, I can speak to that.

I was presenting to councils around that time, and one of the people who was speaking to that.

And um I can tell you so at that time the to fill everybody in, what was essentially communicated at that point in time is that the macro towers are still going to be needed and always will be needed as far as we know.

They provide coverage over wide areas.

There is more and more capacity needed, and small sales are very good at adding capacity in targeted areas where they're needed.

That's still absolutely true.

Um at that point, we thought that there would be thousands of these coming in, one every 500 feet was uh an estimate that we had.

And um frankly, they cost more and performed worse than industry thought they would.

And um, and so that leaves us in a place where we're still trying to keep up with those data demands.

We need to keep up with those data demands.

And we are um there are more nuanced tools now to do that.

Really um cell sites now can range anywhere from those largest macro sites down to the smallest small cells, and there's a whole gradient in between.

Um when it comes to deployment specifically in Link Oswego, uh the Troy mentioned the volumetric standards.

That's the reason that's in our notes is that um ordinance 2965 is new in this rendition and opens up that portion of the code.

Um we'd be happy to talk to staff about um the code and what's challenging in the code in terms of both macro site and small cell siting and what might help us deploy more.

Certainly, this takes a step in the right direction by um removing some of the fee burden ongoing in the right of way and helping us draw that investment.

Um the the small cell technology has truly evolved now, and it is the same frequencies, whether it's the big tower or the smaller towers coming in, it's just different power levels.

And what we're trying to do with our small cells is add more frequencies to them so that each small cell does more so that it provides better service.

So as small cell projects come in, um there there is a desire to have them be still aesthetically pleasing, but not you know, three cubic feet of antennas, maybe closer to you know nine cubic feet of antennas, but still with design standards that keep them looking nice, so that they can do more.

Um also in pre increasing our ability to cite macro facilities goes a long way.

And it's challenging to cite macro facilities, especially near large track residential areas.

And what's happened over, I'd say the last 20 years is that we've gone from a place where where cell phones were for emergency use and landlines were your primary method of communication, to now when people who have a landline, it's for emergency use and your cell phones the primary method of communication.

And it's in your home, you're using your device at home a whole lot more, not just on your cell phone when you're out.

Like all four of us in my family are often on our cell phones in my house.

I have two an almost teenager and a teenager at home.

Um so that need has been slowly shifting to needing to cover the residential areas where people are more concerned about aesthetics, but also where there are fewer places like commercial businesses, non-residential uses where it's appropriate to cite those towers.

So that creates a situation where the more flexible the regulation, the easier we can bring in solutions.

Um, but it does ultimately become a nuanced case-by-case basis where you're you're given an objective from your radio frequency engineer that says we need to improve coverage here.

You look at the local code, you look at the properties in that area, and you figure out what's feasible, and that gives you your short list of landlords you can approach, and then you see who's willing to work with you on that.

Um, or you look at the right-of-way.

And um, yes, several ideas.

I don't want to monopolize everyone's time here, but please um we are happy to sit down and have those conversations about how to improve the ability to bring um coverage and capacity because we hear those people too.

They're complaining to us too.

Maybe if I may one oh, I don't know.

Go ahead.

Just to follow up to what Lila said, uh as you may imagine it's not easy to build 80-foot towers everywhere if we can co-locate them on you know, light poles at a stadium or uh a water tower or something like that, or a PGE pole.

We certainly want to do that.

But the the thing I think the beauty of small sales is you can use that existing network of those macro sites, the big tall ones, and just kind of fill in coverage gaps and holes.

You know, if you have a road and you get a dip in the road and you get a dead zone there, you could put a cell a small cell in that little spot and it'll cover several hundred feet.

And so you can kind of fill in with small cells and maximize the existing macro sites too.

Well, I'm oh good.

Okay, um, are we okay moving off of this?

So we can thank you both for engaging in the back and forth and for your testimony.

We appreciate you being here and sitting through all the houses.

Thank you.

And there's there's no one online.

We okay.

Who's who is oh, oh yes, I've yes.

I have a list.

Yes, okay.

Um Meredith, Meredith Pabst.

Thank you for your patience, Ms.

Pepst.

Yes, good evening, um, Mayor Buck and Council members.

My name is Merity Pabst, and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of ATT.

And I've been revising my uh comments as you've been hearing from others.

I'm hoping to avoid um repeating issues.

Um I did want to um mention also how much we appreciated staff's time um during this process.

Um, I you know, I would really like to compliment them on being available and listening to our concerns and um trying to meet us halfway through the process.

Um I did want to speak specifically tonight about the concerns about the methodology of of the fee for uh wireless providers without facilities in the right-of-way.

So ATT owns uh no utility facilities in Lake Oswego's right-of-way.

And I think one way to think about our concerns about the methodology is to look at how um Oregon cities have um charged fees, either right-of-way related or a service provider fee under basically three general bases over time.

And the first is with the franchise agreement, and um, and historically that's what the city did.

And ATT does have franchises with jurisdictions like Portland and Salem, where it does have wireless facilities in the right-of-way and it pays fees for those.

Um, but no Oregon City suggested that ATT, if all its towers were outside the right-of-way, would need to get a franchise agreement for fiber service that it buys from someone else.

Um that just wasn't part of the whole concept or structure of that.

Uh, and it was generally understood that the purpose of the franchise was to allow occupation of the right-of-way to install and use the facilities.

Then later, Oregon cities have been transitioning into a right-of-way license code, which has a lot of advantages, and ATT likes some of those advantages too.

But it has found that while most Oregon cities only charge wireless providers if a per site fee if they have facilities in the right of way.

There is a minority of Oregon cities who have attempted to collect right-of-way use fees from providers that don't have any facilities in the right-of-way.

And we don't think that indirect use may be used to collect fees for right-of-way use because it's indirect, not actual use.

There's a case in Oregon, Quest V Portland that talked about this distinction with respect to the state authorized privilege tax, and pointed out the difference between actual use and indirect use.

And to the extent this local charge is to be a charge for using the right-of-way, it is our view that it can't be charged for indirect use either.

The third category of fees that we've seen over time are privileged taxes charged generally for the privilege of doing business in a community.

And specific to utility providers.

So Portland has had the PLF and the ULF, the utility license fee.

And then there's similar fees, say Eugene has a 2% registration fee.

Since 2019, state law in the corporate activity tax preemps, local tax based on gross receipts.

I haven't seen any new taxes passed since then.

Here we feel like this fee looks more like a charge for the privilege of doing business in the city because there's no actual use of the right-of-way in under this FAG pattern.

It's called a right-of-way use fee instead.

And again, we we appreciate that the fee fee amount has changed.

It's a percentage of revenue now, or excuse me, it's a flat fee now rather than a percentage of revenue.

But I can tell you that ATT has been declining to pay these fees based on this methodology in Oregon and would likely do in this instance as well.

Finally, I want to chime in on additional comments that you receive from CTIA and others tonight.

Thank you very much for your time.

Yeah, thank you, Ms.

Let's move on.

Okay, okay, okay.

Um, because like Kathy Putt like they decline to pay, then we get them out of OCD.

That's all that's coming up here.

Hi, Ms.

Putt.

Hi there.

Well, it's you guys have had a long meeting, um, and I apologize.

I'm going to take it just a little bit longer because um, unlike the wireless carriers who have already testified, I am representing Crown Castle, which is a wireless infrastructure provider.

So we are just a little bit different, and our concerns are just a little bit different.

Um, so for the record, I'm Kathy Putt.

I do external affairs for Crown Castle throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Crown Castle is a shared wireless infrastructure provider operating here in Lake Oswego.

Super appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony today on proposed ordinance 2931, proposed resolution 2429, and proposed ordinance 2965.

As you know, wireless services are critically important in today's economy and in our everyday lives.

But in order to provide this critical service, we need the ability to operate and upgrade our networks periodically.

Unfortunately, none of that will be possible if the proposed legislation is adopted in its current form.

Well, the staff report states that stakeholder concerns have been addressed.

Our concerns as a wireless infrastructure provider have not been addressed despite numerous letters, meetings, and discussions with staff.

Starting with proposed ordinance 2931, section 5101.100, which can be found on page 84 of your packet, leased capacity.

As currently written, this section would create an effective prohibition of service for Crown Castle.

As a wireless infrastructure provider, Crown Castle builds, operates, and maintains a network of tower, towers, fiber, and small wireless facilities.

And then we lease capacity of those facilities to our carrier customers.

Crown Castle owns the facility, including the antennas, the fiber, and all the related equipment, except for the radio, which is still owned by our carrier customer.

That is where the spectrum comes from.

Subsection two does not allow a provider to lease capacity on its network to others if additional equipment owned by LSC is required.

As currently written, this section would not allow us to lease capacity to our customers, which is really the entire basis of our business model.

As a side note, this language is new and has not been an issue in the past.

So it is very unclear why the city is pressing for such prohibitive language.

Deletion of this requirement would allow us to continue to operate within city limits.

And therefore, we strongly urge you to reconsider this provision.

Moving on to section 5101.130 public right-of-way fee, also problematic in that it charges fees on both the operator, us, and our customers for use of the same facilities.

As the licensee or operator of the facilities in the right-of-way, we expect to pay for use of the right-of-way.

However, federal law dictates that those fees associated with our usage need to be based on actual and reasonable costs to maintain the right-of-way.

There's no cost to the city when our customer uses our infrastructure to provide service.

And therefore, they should not be required to pay any fees to the city for such use.

This whole section requires further work because it is focused on imposing fees for various types of users of the right-of-way rather than imposing cost-based fees on telecom facilities located in the right-of-way.

Switching to proposed resolution 2429 related to fees.

Despite SAP reports stating that stakeholder concerns were addressed, our concerns have not been addressed.

On page two, the city proposes to charge utility operators, such as Crown Castle, separate fees for both small wireless facilities and for the fiber that is a critical component of the small wireless facility network.

Neither of these fees, however, appear to be cost-based, as is required by federal law.

In fact, page 17 of the staff report mentions that entities that own place operate or maintain small wireless facilities in the right-of-way pay cost-based fees per FCC rules.

And yet the fees recommended in this resolution do not appear to be based on city right-of-way costs.

On the next page, the city proposes to charge service providers who don't own facilities in the right-of-way a flat fee of $400 per year.

Again, these providers are using existing facilities in the right-of-way.

So there shouldn't be any cost associated to the city, and therefore no fees should be applied.

Switching to proposed ordinance 2965, Crown Castle listed numerous issues with this ordinance in our written comments submitted yesterday.

There are significant portions of this ordinance that are not consistent with federal regulations and as currently written, would preclude Crown Castle from even being able to upgrade our existing facilities in Lake Oswego.

This ordinance was originally adopted in 2019 and a lot has changed since that time.

If the city values connectivity and private sector investment, we urge you to delay adoption until we can reach a mutually agreeable agreeable solution that conforms with federal regulations.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Ms.

Putt.

Appreciate your testimony.

Skip here.

Councilor Afkin, do you have a question?

Yes, hold on.

Sorry.

Councilor Afkin, go ahead.

I had a question for the uh person who was just talking about Newcastle, the hardship.

I was wondering how many, how much are we talking about a year that this hardship is referred to?

Well, it's not, it's not that it's a hardship.

I think the dollar figures are rather small.

It's that they're not the way they're calculated, they are not calculated pursuant to federal law, which requires that they be cost-based.

So whether you're charging 5% gross revenues, whether you're charging a per linear foot fee for fiber, um, those are not cost-based.

And you shouldn't also not be allowed to charge the, I think another council member said, so are we past the double dipping issue?

No, we're not past the double dipping issue.

Rather than charging uh one operator twice, though, you're charging us for you're charging us and you're charging the carrier customer for use of the same facility.

So unfortunately, the the standards that are in 2965 would not allow us to even upgrade our existing facilities.

We're actually exploring a project currently to upgrade our existing facilities, and these standards wouldn't allow us to do that.

Um, so you know, somebody else had previously said what is our goal?

Our goal is to deploy in a community where the fees and the regulations are consistent with federal regulations.

And if they're not, we're not gonna fight about it.

We'll just go on to the next community.

I hope that answers your question.

It did.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilor Afgan.

Mr.

Newberry, thank you for waiting.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

I'll be brief.

Uh, my name is Skippy Berry, and I serve as president and CEO of the technology association of Oregon.

We represent 500 tech and tech enabled companies in the region, many of them located in Lake Oswego as well.

Um as you heard earlier, the pace of technological change is is only increasing and reliance by residents as well as businesses on wireless infrastructure is increasing with it.

And with this dependence, um, we're increasingly looking to this technology to supply things like healthcare and banking and education and government services and public safety and employment opportunities.

And to remain competitive, we have to compete both to attract residents and businesses and keep them here.

Um, so we also need to make sure we're an attractive place for wireless companies to invest.

And achieving digital equity and economic development goals really isn't possible uh without taking practical steps to ensure this type of investment continues.

And so it was great to hear today the constructive dialogue that has been happening with city staff and many of the wireless providers.

Um we were especially asked that the city try to keep rules flexible to allow for innovation in wireless technology, and specific example would be in the design standards proposed for small sales included in ordinance 2965.

So that's great.

Uh, we'd encourage the city not to be too restrictive here and allow for evolution of the technology, which continues to change and evolve.

Um, and please consider further dialogue with industry to discuss some flexibility on total volume in particular, which you heard from Troy and others earlier, uh, and where some exceptions might be warranted.

So thank you for your consideration today.

Thank you for your testimony, Mr.

Newberry.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else uh to testify online or okay?

We're gonna uh close the public hearing and maybe uh Ms.

Diamond and Director Rooney can come back and and between you all and and Ms.

Warner.

Um, well, I I asked earlier just about the one quick cleanup thing.

So I was like, well, is this kind of fee?

I mean, it's a right-away fee, but like was it is it like a doing business fee, like you know, in lieu of the business license.

And I the answer was no, you know, that I just am noting I don't think any of these people have a business license.

Because you know, I know this is all about parity and making sure that there's consistency, and I can't find a single one of these companies rising, ATT, Crown Castle, none of them are on the business license list.

So maybe that's something I can follow up with you on that because I think they do have business license.

But I'll follow you.

I have them today.

Okay.

Well, it's a good thing for us to check into.

Um the uh so perhaps could we address some of these um questions?

The the first uh that were brought up during the testimony around the the first was about the fiber in the fiber that's in the right-of-way and connects to the poll and the poll is on private land.

We talk about that.

Yeah, I'll um let me set the frame and then I'd ask Ms.

Werner also to um to weigh in.

But I think the the frame that might be most helpful for you all to look at it actually came from testimony you heard um from Verizon, which is this legislation is a compromise.

And to the extent that one provider has identified a problem with our approach, our philosophical approach to this.

It represents a compromise.

And what I heard, and Nancy can get into the details, but what I heard uh the folks that testified before you here today tell you is it's not the fee.

It has nothing to do with the money.

It's a philosophical difference we have.

And as legislators typically the answer to philosophical differences between people is compromise legislation.

And that is what we have before you today.

And I'll allow Nancy with that frame to give you the detail about why this particular compromise was reached.

All right, thank you.

And also I didn't say earlier, good evening, Mayor Buck and Council.

Um I apologize, I'm not there in person.

I just want to just kind of very high level.

This ordinance has been in place since 2019, and it the since 2019 it has applied to both owners and users.

So this isn't a massive switch in how the city has what the city's policies have been.

There is some clarification regarding how it should apply to different users of the rights of way, but it is not a shift in how the city has done this.

And one of the reasons Lake Oswego presumably did this, and many other cities in Oregon have done this, this being imposing fees on owners of facilities and also on the entities that use those facilities, is because years ago, before wireless companies were really using the rights of way uh on a on a regular basis, wireline companies were using a strategy of having one entity own the the fiber, the phone lines, whatever it may be, and a separate affiliated entity that was a service provider.

And so if you had a revenue-based fee that applied only to the owners, that setup would allow the company to avoid your revenue-based fees because the owner didn't really have any revenue, maybe a little bit of lease revenue from its affiliate.

The affiliate earned all the revenue in the city.

So cities started doing ordinances in this manner to make sure that those who benefit from the use of the rights of way, whether they own the facilities or they lease facilities that they need to serve their customers, there's a fee associated with it.

So there's no gamesmanship over the fees.

So that is sort of the origin of this.

And what we're trying to do, and to Ellen's point about the compromise, this has been in the city's code for wireline providers and I probably technically for wireless providers as well, but not um the fee structure was only applied to small cells.

Um but we're trying to do is preserve that um, I guess philosophy is a word I could use, and make sure it applies to the wireless folks, but we're doing it in a way that's a big compromise with this very low flat fee.

So that's sort of the big picture of where this comes from.

The only other thing I would say is I think that there was testimony saying that it's understandable that an entity, a wireless provider that leases a small cell in the rights of way would be considered a provider because they're leasing a small cell.

And the issue seems to be the lease of the fiber.

And I'm not sure why there's any difference there.

In both cases, the wireless company is leasing facilities in the rights of way, they're benefiting from the rights of way in order to provide the services they provide.

And again, that just fits within the context of what the city has been doing, and other cities in Oregon have been doing for many years.

So the compromise was again the $400 flat fee as a way of um of being consistent in charging users of the rights of way, but also responding to the wireless provider's point that they don't have the same exact physical connection of fiber that a wireline provider does, even though they do use and benefit from facilities in the rights of way.

So I hope that's helpful.

I'm happy to answer any questions that would help clarify a little more.

So that's thank you for the clarification.

And uh that's very helpful.

And then the uh other item that was brought up was about the least capacity and the statement that uh this would prohibit uh uh Crown Council's business, their model from building or operating.

If if I may answer that, the case law is and the FCC rules are very clear that the cost-based fees apply only to small wireless facilities that are in that are installed in the rights of way.

So any statement that all of your fees must be cost-based fees, including um wireline fees is incorrect, respectfully.

Um the least question is, you know, I guess that the argument there is that a customer of the fiber company that has to pay 400 a year because they are using facilities in the rights of way is a prohibition.

I I'm not sure I see that.

We are not asking Crown Castle to pay two fees.

We've got two different entities that make different uses of the rights of way and generate different benefits from that use of the rights of way.

And as I just explained, that's been a long-standing way that the city has addressed its use of the users of the rights of way, is that owners and users both are subject to uh fees and and users is another word for lesse.

You know, a lot of the wireline providers um and by the way, this happens in the electric utility world as well.

Lease facilities space in other people's facilities to provide their services.

So again, it the lease issue is I basically already addressed it, and I I disagree with the idea that these fees must be cost-based other than ownership of small sales and the rights of way.

So I disagree with the idea that imposing a fee on a completely different company that makes a different use of the rights of way is somehow a prohibition on Crown Castle.

So, Ms.

Warren, just to clarify, are you saying that this argument that we heard all again goes back to the 400 fee?

Of course, I think that is my item.

My understanding of the testimony was that the issue was that the companies that lease facilities in the rights of way have to pay 400 a year.

Okay.

Well, enough said, who wants to make a someone want to make a motion on this?

Can I ask a question though about the radio issue?

The one thing I heard where I was concerned about the drafting of the ordinance was the question about the small cells having only their own equipment on them and that uh that providers.

I think Ms.

Putt talked about it that that and I don't remember the exact page reference.

Maybe page 84.

Page 84.

Thank you.

That there's a code that says the small cell provider has to actually own all of the equipment and that they actually allow the cell providers to put that the provider's equipment in their small cell.

Okay.

That is the number one thing I heard tonight where I'm like, yeah, let's not do that wrong.

So Nancy, can you do you know where she's talking about?

Yes, there is a provision in um the existing ordinance actually, and we didn't change this this specific um provision.

We actually made the lease capacity section um less restrictive.

So this is not a change.

What it says is as a facility owner, an owner of facilities in the rights of way, you can lease your facilities to anyone you want to, as long as that person isn't adding facilities to the rights of way.

Because if a person is adding facilities to the rights of way, they are now a utility operator.

They now own facilities in the rights of way and need to get their own license.

So this is not a restriction on it's it's really just a kind of common sense idea that you are free to lease to whomever you want, but you they can't piggyback on your license and install new facilities.

If they install new facilities, they're subject to their own um license obligation.

So um this is not a restriction on in on Crown Castle's ability to lease their facilities.

It's merely saying if part of that leasing relationship requires additional facilities, then that are not owned by Crown Castle, then that new person is also going to become a licensee.

No.

Doesn't disrupt the lease relationship in any way, if that makes sense.

That makes good sense.

Thank you for that, uh, Council Willing.

Can you answer um why would they say in their agreement that they would it would prevent them from investing or upgrading their system?

Is there language in our well, that's what we just were talking about.

Right, but I over 400.

No, I mean it's not a dollar amount, but uh I guess I'm asking, is there anything in this provision for anyone to become non-competitive or have a disincentive to invest in new equipment and keep us technically um equal or better with uh the marketplace?

Do you want to answer?

Can you answer that, Ms.

Mayor?

Is it I think I mean Councillor Willin, I I think your your question if I could reframe it this way.

You're asking Nancy, me, Director Rooney, and Ms.

Diamond, do we recommend this?

And we do.

I mean, is that a fairer way to characterize your question?

Because I I'm trying to understand why it sounds with all the testimony is that we're going to be in an uncompetitive environment.

Um I see, I think that happens.

I mean, uh look at look at Oregon right now.

There's no institutional money coming in here.

They put a black X over Oregon.

We're okay.

Now I understand the question.

Now you understand.

I mean, if there's no incentive for them to invest, is there anything in the language that that um and then the other question I had is are we out of line with federal regulations?

Um I can certainly answer the second question.

My legal opinion, which is informed by outside council.

Um private legal advice is absolutely clear.

This package before you, we believe is compliant with federal law.

We understand the industry, some in the industry disagree.

As to your first question about um the very legitimate concern that you have as a policymaker that I assume everyone has on the dais is you've just heard threats.

That's what I'm going to call them.

You've just heard threats from the industry that this package that Crown Council will not invest here, that maybe others won't invest here, that our regulations are going to prohibit that.

I cannot tell you, Nancy cannot tell you.

We cannot tell you whether or not the regulations will have that impact.

We recommend passing them because they're compliant.

And in terms of what the process we've gone through with the industry to understand their incentives, their business incentives.

We've tried very hard to ensure that we are not deincentivizing them.

But what you heard today from industry is it's not good enough.

And that's the policy question before you.

Is it good enough or not?

And what I can tell you is the staff that has worked on it, we feel this is a very reasonable compromise.

And that does not that is compliant with federal law, but that accomplishes your policy goals, which we understood to be do not discourage industry from investing here.

Do not allow counselor Corrigan told me, do not allow people to use the right of way and not be charged for it.

Those core concepts we believe are in here.

Industry, some of them told you today, they disagree with our with that assessment.

And I think that it, you know, that's the choice before you.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um would someone like to make a motion.

Move to adapt to resolution 2429.

And enact ordinance 2931 and 2965.

Okay, motions made by Councilman Boop and seconded by Councillor Raff.

Any further discussion?

Want to thank uh the um the staff, um Director Rooney, Stein, and um Miss Osenck as well as uh Ms.

Werner for your outside uh counsel here.

I think you all have worked for a very long time to come up with a good compromise with the industry based on the feedback we heard at the last meeting.

Um and uh we appreciate our industry partners, but we have got to work towards middle ground here and get this done.

And we are definitely not going to be having another meeting on this topic.

Um or we'll talk about the you know cost recovery model is a cost of my headache right now, start adding that to the bill.

Um so I appreciate all the good uh all all the all the good.

Housing and utilities not in the same agenda, but you set the agenda.

I thought it could be done.

It was aggressive, but uh so thank you all for the for the good work.

Thank you all for the good work.

Um all right, uh all those in favor say aye.

Aye aye.

Any opposed?

All right, motion passes seven zero.

Can I make one last comment?

I would like the investigation in by our staff to look at if there are parameters within the um size of the box um that we look at maximizing and maybe there's some wiggle room that we could um I want to be supportive of getting our industry to invest in Lake Oswego so that we have top level service for our customers.

Of course, that's the goal.

And if we have to wiggle some things on the size of the box or whatever we want to call it, um let us know.

But anyway.

Thank you.

Um we'll do sorry, I'm gonna take another quick recess here, and then we lost our guys too.

Okay.

I would thank you so much for coming.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, okay.

We're back in order.

Um we are going to now adjourn the city council meeting and I call to order the redevelopment agency uh meeting.

And the uh only item of business we have is item 13.1, which is an amendment to our uh North Anchor DDA.

And here to talk to us about this, we have Mr.

Cress and Mr.

NATO.

Good evening to you both.

Uh thank you, Mayor, and thank you, counselors, for um for uh being here this evening and uh listening to our request.

Uh there are a couple of items uh within, and I presume maybe staff will talk through some of that.

Um but big picture.

Uh of course we have a uh uh we're happy to have invited our uh a partner, the NATO development company into uh the project to help us perform in a hotel, and we've made a lot of really good progress uh with the hotel with uh um help of frankly uh city staff and uh working through and getting financing together.

So we're feeling really good about the progress we've made there.

And um, and second, uh concerning a uh proposal that came up actually last year in terms of bringing more capital into the project through an acquisition of the uh property with a lot of conditions to for performance, um, but increases our commitment and our alignment on the project and moves us forward uh uh with that with that project.

So those are the two big things.

Yeah, and let me just run through quickly.

There's uh a fifth amendment to the DDA.

I uh when UDP was here in July, they mentioned to you that they had an external investor for the multifamily property.

Uh, but there was some cash flow considerations that came with that.

And um, and you directed us to go back and work with them to amend the DDA to recognize that.

So in front of you tonight, we need you to approve uh the Fifth Amendment to the DDA, which was originally signed way back in 2020.

And here's what it will do.

Uh we had in the original DDA a cash payment we were going to make TDP at the very end of the property uh project of uh 749,000.

Instead, we're converting that that to a loan to them to uh enable them to purchase the property.

They'll use the first bit of it to buy the multifamily property.

Um and that's gonna close in October.

Uh yeah, it's coming up quick.

Yeah.

And then they'll use the second bit of that to close if there's a gap with the investments that they need to make on the hotel property.

Uh the DDA includes uh the Fifth Amendment includes uh what we call a clawback provision, which if they fail to perform, then uh we get to buy the property back at the same price that they paid for it, less any actual hard costs, like if they demolish the buildings, then we would deduct the cost of demo uh development.

Um it does add a little complexity because the uh investor has to actually own the property, and so UDP will be now leasing the property from the investor, but there's terms in the Fifth Amendment to make sure that all the obligations that UDP had under the first DDA, UDP still has.

Um, and then there was some timing about the rest of the city's contributions that we've adjusted to recognize that there's gonna be a bigger gap between close on the property and commencement of construction.

So that's kind of the major elements of it.

Uh I know some of you have had questions.

I know that between us uh the four of us over here, we can answer most of those questions.

So that's it.

Anyone have any questions?

I just want to, you know, um uh reiterate our kid support, you know, for the project and the good partnership that we have with UDP and you know, this is the Fifth Amendment, and you know, just so for people who aren't as familiar, you know, out in the community, uh, we've maintained such good good working relationship um with you all and feel that you guys are doing everything, you know, in in your power to bring this unique project to Lake Oswego.

And you know, one of that's one of the challenges, right?

I mean, if if we wanted to do a cheaply built cookie cutter project, we could probably do that, but that's not what our community wants.

You know, this is a unique project that will only be here in in Lake Uswego, and so that you know makes it a little more challenging.

And and you all are turning over every stone that you can and getting real creative and bringing the financing together.

And and uh for the public, you know, the council is as much as we trust you and like our partnership.

We know we don't just take everything at his word.

We have also discussed over the course of our relationship with third parties this in this environment uh to make sure that the information we're receiving is in fact true, and and other experts that work in your field as well have um uh verified with us that this is a difficult environment to build it, and and and the the headwinds that we're facing are real and they're headwinds that everyone is facing.

can and getting real creative and bringing the financing together and and uh for the public you know the council is as much as we trust you and like our partnership we know we don't just take everything at his word we have also discussed over the course of our relationship with third parties this in this environment uh to make sure that the information we're receiving is in fact true and and other experts that work in your field as well have um uh verified with us that this is a difficult environment to build it and and and the the headwinds that we're facing are real and they're headwinds that everyone is facing you know this isn't unique to Lake Oswego it's not unique to UDP and so we remain committed to this project and the promise um of the the the the good growth and um the value it will bring to um current and future residents uh still remains and so thank you for the continued work uh thank you mayor and um if I may add uh you know I I listened to the deliberations earlier around um uh uh the struggles with local control over what your city looks like and um these type of public private partnerships where there's such a DDA where of course you guys control the conditions of this land uh is an example where you do have a lot of control so uh this is not a situation where we're you know buying some third party land where we can go through put some cottage clusters on or something like that we do need to put up a very specific high quality type of building um that the city's requested for this particular site because it the city feels like it's such an important site um so that's what we're uh that's the challenge that we have accepted and we uh continue to work diligently uh toward that and um try you know make every effort to be available to you and staff to in transparency um of what we're doing and working hard in that direction and I want to thank uh in particular the uh staff for all of the efforts and hard work to to help us uh continue to move these efforts forward and the city council for your support thank you thank you somebody to make it can I make a motion to extend the fifth um amendment to the Laura contract where is it is it actually you have it yeah try on oh it's on the other side oh I I saw the other side okay move to authorize the Laura Executive Director to sign the Fifth Amendment TDA and the city attention to review and approve an associate ground lease I just didn't have the ground lease in there that's all I was set a baby they sorry the page too soon the motion was made by board member Winland and seconded by board member Corrigan.

All right any further discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed and motion passes a seven zero.

Thank you very much thank you for your support you thank you guys thanks for hanging out on that was so short we could have started with that.

All right with that uh we're gonna uh mayor back oh sorry oh counselor afkin oh we were hoping you'd say something you went a little too fast for me oh no uh that's all right though uh I had I had a question for Mr.

Kress with uh UDP uh Mr.

Cress I thought uh you did an awesome job bringing uh NATO investment into the equation that was a great addition making the uh progress uh of funding the project uh definitely moving forward and then with the uh another investment the 1031 exchange uh I also thought that was uh innovating and brilliant so that that also helps moving the project forward uh one of the things I was under the impression was that the terms and condition of the contract would stay the same but as the city manager just explained the terms are shifting changing and I had a couple of questions for you first question is with the loan being forgiven instead of end of construction now it's at financing to be in place what kind of incentive do you have to finish the job or start the construction and finish the job when we had that 7500 as an incentive for you to get the job done.

Does my question make sense?

Yeah yes I think so that's uh I have two questions that's question number one if you would be uh sharing your thoughts with us on that topic.

Um after we start construction, um, we will in order to finance the uh to secure the debt, um, primarily the the debt part.

Um, in order to secure the debt, we will have to sign on a completion guarantee and a number of uh agreements that will uh require us to guarantee that we're gonna complete the project.

Those are those come with a lot of teeth.

Um and uh are I don't know, probably about as strong of an incentive as you can as I can imagine in terms of once you start construction, you know, at least they're gonna take my firstborn son.

Don't tell Will.

Yeah, I was gonna say, is that why he's not here tonight?

He's got a baby.

My first grand.

Congratulations.

Yay.

So it's uh it's the fourth William.

Oh man, you know.

After my dad Bill.

Oh wow.

So that's where he is.

He's on paternity leave, and dad is doing all his work for him.

Doing a pretty good job.

It's great.

Nicely done, Dad.

And grandpa.

Thank you.

So, yes, we'll have personal guarantees that uh generally exceed what would be in an agreement with the city.

Uh well, uh personal guarantees with our lender.

Okay.

Thank you for answering that.

The second question is a hypothetical question that I'm hoping we never ever have to hear that.

What happens if uh UDT decides to close shop and move on?

What what are the legal obligations with other entities and who is going to be a stepping forward?

Yeah, so if the concern is the completion of the project of the project, uh in terms of the okay.

Um in terms of completion of the project, uh similar response.

The uh uh in order, well, I like to say 70% of the work of development happens before you get a shovel in the ground.

And a big part of that 70% of the work is is uh mitigating the contingency that the project won't get finished because that's the worst outcome for everyone who's invested in the project.

So um all that all that a lot of that work is beyond entitlements and whatnot is uh doing whatever we need to to satisfy uh lenders and investors, uh equity investors that we're gonna um uh see it through and deliver a successful economically successful project, uh meaning uh complete it.

If uh if the if a developer shuts down in the in you know in the United States, if a developer shuts down and it's unable to complete, typically uh what will happen is um the bank will put I mean, if you want to get technical about it, they'll put a receiver in place.

Um and that receiver is typically an experienced uh development company that's able capable of completing the project, and the bank will finance the remainder of the costs of the project.

Um that is something they think about when they try to determine how much leverage or how much debt they're gonna provide is to make sure they have capacity to complete the project if the um if the owner or developer is not able to to complete.

Um so from their standpoint, the way they typically look at these is what you know would we own this if we needed to own it?

Would we complete it if we needed to complete it?

Um so that's as a practical matter how it happens.

Um, I mean, it's it uh this is all development is an entrepreneurial endeavor, so um uh failures do happen out there.

So um there's no way to completely 100% mitigate that risk risk.

Uh and um there are processes in place to to provide for that situation.

Uh thank you so much.

Mr.

Mayor, seven to zero is still good to go.

Oh, thank God.

Thanks, Councilor Afkin.

Okay, thank you very much, gentlemen.

We're shaking that we are going.

This uh concludes the Lake of Segal Redevelopment Agency portion of the meeting.

I'm gonna call back to order the city council meeting.

Um and I I just want to give a public greeting to Laurel Hawkins, our new city recorder.

So glad to have you on board.

You were here at the last meeting, but now this is you know your first kind of official meeting.

And of course, then I also want to give um great uh gratitude and thanks to Ms.

Ono, who has been well, is a key part of the city manager's office, and not just the city manager's office, but just a key person in the community in general, but who has really stepped up and has been filling in as as the city recorder uh in this interim, and without whom we would have been really up a crick these past few months.

Hawkins, who um um you're uh I hope you know how fortunate you are to be learning under Miss Uh O'Neill.

Um but again, we just want to really on behalf of the council give you our sincere thanks for everything you have been doing over these past months and we see how much it is.

Yeah, thank you.

Does anyone else have any uh updates?

Council Bennett?

I don't know you know, I have uh I'm sorry, I actually have a substantive item, which is uh council discussion or authorization to send a letter to the uh environmental protection agency about their recommendation that uh they eliminate the endangerment finding, which is what underpins all the work around tying climate change to human health.

So uh I don't know, is Ms.

Watson still I feel super badly for Ms.

Watson has not been feeling super well.

Um and she got to sit through right away, and she got to sit through housing and Ms.

Watson.

Do you want to give a quick report on the very quick though?

These guys are tired and cranky.

Yep, I will keep it as succinct as I can, and then thank you for your time.

Good evening, counselors, um, and mayor, uh Amanda Watson, sustainability program manager.

Um, so this uh letter for your consideration, um, as Martha said, um, would be um related to the EPA's proposal to rescind um this 2009 endangerment finding, um, essentially determination that greenhouse gases um are air pollutants that threaten human health and therefore should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Um, the EPA is accepting public comments on the proposed rule, which would also eliminate federal greenhouse gas emissions for motor vehicles through September 22nd.

Um so we're asking that the city council for your approval to submit a comment letter that would oppose this proposed rule because it would likely limit our ability to meet Lake Oswego's adopted climate action goals.

Um basically federal action to limit greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change is needed to address some of those biggest sources of emissions, in particular transportation, and because state and local governments are preempted through the Clean Air Act from regulating that um in the same way ourselves.

So the effect if um the EPA's proposal would be to pass is that um the EPA would no longer um have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for transportation, but also for things or motor vehicles, also for things like power plants, and that would mean that um cities and states would have no further ability to do so, but we would still be left with the need to respond to climate change and right bear those costs of climate pollution in our communities.

Um so the proposed letter that I understand Martha shared with you does three things.

It points out that the EPA's proposal contradicts the well-established broad scientific consensus on the impacts of climate change on human health and welfare, which has only gotten stronger since that finding in 2009.

Um it provides examples of some of the climate impacts that Lake Oswego is experiencing, like extreme heat and damaging winter storms that will continue to escalate if we don't see economy-wide action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And then the letter talks about the importance of reducing emissions from the transportation sector in particular.

Um so I think this is a really important opportunity for local governments like ourselves who would be impacted by this to put um comments on the record here.

We have um heard from a lot of other peer jurisdictions that are doing the same and advice from organizations like the urban sustainability directors network that this would be helpful in building um the administrative record.

Um, and you know, ideally that the EPA would take comments into effect in considering whether or not to move the proposal forward as well.

So leave it there and happy to answer any questions you may have.

Okay, thank you, Ms.

Watson.

Councilor Afkin, do you have a question?

Uh not regarding this topic.

I wanted to give an update on the community uh resilience and okay, we'll we'll come, we'll come right back.

Well, I do anyone have any questions?

I thought the letter was great.

And I okay, yeah, and thank you, Ms.

Watson, for for writing it for bringing this to our attention spot on.

Everyone good sending the letter.

Okay.

Thank you.

And thanks for being here through the very much.

Thank you.

Good job.

Okay, Councilor Afkin, Crab.

Uh yes, the uh the team as part of the forming and a storming they're reviewing the uh mission and division of what they're supposed to be doing.

There are some refinement that uh they will be trying to get uh on the city council agenda to bring it forward for approval.

Thank you.

Yes, we will have that in the fall.

The crab.

Thank you.

Speaking of crab, all of us.

Crab.

Crab.

Crab, the crab board.

Crab.

The new board.

It's the crab.

Isn't that great?

Okay.

We are adjourned.

Oh no.

Thank you.

Bye, Councillor Afghan.

Thank you.

Bye bye.