Okay.

All right, good evening, everyone.

Today is Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025, and this meeting of the city council is now called to order.

Miss Hawkins, will you please call the role?

Yes, Mayor Buck.

Here.

Councillor Squargan.

Here.

Raf?

Yeah.

Afkin.

Wenlin.

Here.

And verdict.

There.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Now, folks, will you please stand remove your hats and join us in the pledge?

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

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for the folks.

First thing on the agenda tonight is public comment.

If you are here to provide public comment and have not already done so, we have these white slips in the back of the room.

Please uh fill one out and hand it to Miss Hawkins.

Uh but first up I have Mr.

Blow.

Could you come in?

Oh yes.

Please come forward, sir.

Yes.

Are you ready?

Do you want to help him forward?

Good to see you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Did I say something?

Please.

Well, please sit down and then introduce yourself when you have three minutes.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, good evening, everybody.

And I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad to see so many of you.

And uh I don't know if anybody knows me or does not, but it doesn't really matter because I'm still here.

So uh why I'm here.

What is your name, sir?

What is your name?

Thank you.

I talked with Michael and Harrison a little while ago, and I told him, I said, you know, uh Likuswego City Hall should have a piano.

And he said, absolutely.

So I decided not to offer that.

And he said he might be able to help himself.

So that's a question why.

And the reason is that I feel like I had some experiences with this back in Munich when I lived there for 10 years, and every small town uh had a town hall, of course, and then for the concerts and lectures and whatnot.

And uh so I thought when you have meetings like this, for instance, prior to the meeting, you could have someone, maybe a music student, hopefully, from Lake Ridge High School.

My gr my son, my grandson went there.

Yeah, and so I'll tell that maybe a connection with the city and the youth.

Because I think that's to me.

I'm still a very young kid, 94.

Uh so and I think that we should have uh kind of cooperation and appreciation for one another.

So that's something that I offered now to the city.

And if you say yes, then we'll go forward with it.

Okay.

And my second show is uh the summer concerts in the parks.

As you may know, I had concerts at Foothills Park.

Uh going back for years.

And I started that back in Portland, 1981, and I became citizen.

And um I told the lady that yes, I would like to have a concert at Washington Park, being part of the festival.

And she said, We have symphony, and then I said, No, you don't.

And she said, Yes, we do.

And I said, No, you don't, and I tell you why.

If you had a symphony here, I would be playing.

Because I mean the Oregon Symphony.

And I said, I do know that you have opera, because I do play in the opera and we play here.

And so but she said, Well, yeah, um, I have something that uh tells it to the story.

Well, at any rate, so she said, okay, but we cannot help.

And I said, Well, I'll get some help from somewhere else.

And I did.

And so we ended up with two nights at each night, six to eight thousand people.

And they're so uh popular that they asked me to have to keep on doing it.

And so I got stuck on it.

So, you know, and then it happened here in Oswego, and I don't know the exact year, but uh at Foot Times Park, and we had a gorgeous day at Fabulous Music, and offered that again, and we did it last year and the year before, so for a number of years.

And I would like to offer that now, don't be shocked, please, to West Lake Park.

And my reason is that I go out of like I moved up uh to Lacos Vigo in 1968 or 69, that about.

I still here, okay.

And driving out conclusive way, it's enormous development there.

So there's a whole new city.

And I think that those folks who live there, they should have the same chances like everybody else.

Mainly to me, most importantly, the children.

I don't know how many of you are involved in classical music, playing anything.

If you do, that's wonderful.

If you don't, maybe it's time to start up.

So uh basically because the children, you know, they learn from us, and so we should be a good example.

And I tell every night before I go to bed, I take out my violin and do the full letter.

All right, you want Sebastian Loch, here we go.

And I play.

And when children do this, you know, it's wonderful because that's what they do with their fingers, not this.

Yes.

Thank you.

So thank you so much for bringing the ideas forward.

We appreciate it.

I I I would hope that uh you will have no objection uh to the concert at Foot Hills Park as well as West Lake Park.

And if you can help, I would appreciate it, and I might come to you.

Anyone who to help, I'll take it.

Thank you, sir.

Okay.

And thank you so much.

And uh thank you.

Good luck.

Thank you very much.

Good to see you.

We have it, yes.

We have info, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yeah.

Mark Pullman.

Good evening, sir.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Uh Mayor, City Council, staff.

Uh, my name's Mark Pullman, and I live on Toma Road in Lake Oswego.

I am a retired nurse practitioner, been with nursing for 47 years.

Um I'm a board member of the SAB and also a board member of the LOSN.

Um, in this time of gratitude, uh, I would like to thank the the council uh for um giving us a um a grant to help with the transition of gas-powered landscape equipment, and also uh your goal of working within two years, now 14 months, to transition from gas-powered landscape equipment.

Uh as a professional as a medical professional, I know the adverse event uh adverse effects of gas-powered two cycle engines.

We know that that uh that it expels about upwards to uh 30 percent of their gas and their oil um uh unburned.

Um it uh driving um LA to Portland is the same in a Toyota as running one of those power blowers for an hour.

Um we know that the excessive decibel level and uh low pitch uh permeates 90 homes, and that can cause hearing loss and also increases stress and therefore uh a propensity for cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease.

Um we're very I'm very interested in uh transitioning away from them.

Uh we can we can really do this as a council and as uh population.

Um you've uh limited pickleball uh because of the sound uh that it causes.

You've uh uh the government has limited smoking in public places because of the carcinogen carcinogenic uh uh smoke.

Uh so we can do this, and um, I would encourage the council to uh to move uh with all due haste during the next year.

And I look forward to working with you on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate you being here.

Uh Betsy Wasco.

Good evening, ma'am.

Good afternoon.

Um, my name is Betsy Wasco, and I live at 320 Durham Street.

I'm secretary of the Old Town Neighborhood Association and a volunteer with the uh sustainable landscaping subcommittee of LOSN.

Uh I'm here first to thank this council for its forward thinking in setting as a goal the phase out of gas-powered landscaping equipment.

I'm also here to address the argument some have made that phasing out gas-powered landscaping equipment will financially harm landscape businesses and particularly small businesses.

If we're making an economic argument, um we have to look at the true cost of gas-powered landscaping equipment and especially gas blowers, so we can compare apples to apples.

The cost of replacing a gas-powered blower with a commercial uh electric blower is 750 to 2,000 dollars.

These are mainly upfront costs, however, the break-even point is only 10 and a half months.

These upfront costs can be mitigated uh through incentives such as providing grants, which other cities have done.

Landscape businesses may also benefit from no interest or low interest loans from manufacturers.

These few thousand dollars are the costs that we need to balance against the costs of inaction, delayed action, or half measures.

To compare apples to apples, then we must balance the cost of a few thousand dollars for businesses to suit up with electric equipment against the cost of chronic illness, climate change, pollinator loss, overall wildlife impact, and reduction in property values.

$1,500 for an electric blower versus $5,000 for a pair of hearing aids, $1,500 for an electric blower versus $3,728 a year to treat asthma, $1,500 for an electric blower versus tens of thousands of dollars to treat cardiovascular disease, $1,500 for a blower electric blower versus over $100,000 to treat cancer, $1,500 versus loss in property values, because who would want to live in an area besieged with chronic noise and air pollution?

Lastly, $1,500 for an electric blower versus the incalculably high costs of contributing to climate change, pollinator loss, and adverse impact to our precious ecosystems.

So if economic arguments are to be made in defense of a struggling mom and pop landscaper, one can easily see that the true costs for inaction, delayed action, or half measures eclipse the few thousand dollars for their small business.

Please act now, act comprehensively, and act decisively in phasing out gas-powered landscaping equipment and especially blowers.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Jeff Wiens.

Good evening, sir.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and staff.

My name is Jeff Weens, and I live in the first edition neighborhood in Lake Oswego.

I had a career, I had a career with the Ventura City Fire Department in Southern California for 28 years.

Thank you to each and every one of you for your time and dedication to the citizens in this community.

Your hard work and guidance can be viewed by walking around the city.

The very building we're in right now is an example.

Our community is fortunate to have leaders like all of you.

And I asked him, any words of wisdom you can share with me?

And he looked me in the eye with a smile and said, Yes, do the right thing.

Do what you know is right in your heart.

That's it.

Best piece of advice ever.

It served me for the rest of my career and after.

A couple of years ago, you were faced with pickleball neighbors asking you to make a change that some of you may not have agreed with, but you ended up making the right decision.

A person should be able to have sanctuary in their own home.

That was the right thing to do.

Thank you for your efforts to create a path to eliminate gas-powered landscaping equipment.

Please adopt regulations to ban gas-powered landscape and equipment in Lake Oswego.

I would like to leave you with this one thought.

That giant white mountain of ice that takes up the skyline.

That represents the noise that gas-powered leaf blowers make.

Just like an iceberg is so large, the noise is loud and disruptive.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg.

90% of the iceberg is underwater.

You don't see it.

That represents the toxic carcinogen gases that are emitted.

So while people may comment on the large iceberg or disruptive noise that leaf blowers make, it's the 90% of the iceberg that's underwater, the toxic gases that you don't see that affect the short and long-term health of the landscaping workers and the members of this community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Folks, is there anyone else who'd like to provide public comment?

Okay.

Thank you, everyone who provided your comments.

Next on the agenda is the consent agenda.

We have just one item in the approval of meeting minutes from October 7th.

Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda?

Move to adopt the consent agenda.

All right, motion has been made by Councillor Winland, seconded by Councillor Moupe.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes 70.

Okay, now on to council business.

The first item of business this evening is a uh Chamber of Commerce annual report.

So, Mr.

Evans, please come forward.

Good evening, Mayor Buck, members of the City Council and City staff.

My name is Matt Evans, and I'm here tonight representing the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce.

I work in economic development and business research as well as member services.

This marks our third annual report to the city under the 2022 Economic Development Strategy and Resource Plan.

We've been pleased to have the opportunity to build out some economic development infrastructure and information, to work with city staff and to respond to city requests on a regular basis.

Despite some recognized economic uncertainty, I'm pleased to tell you that Lake Oswego continues to have a vibrant business community.

Importantly, business formation continues at a brisk pace.

In the first 10 months of 2025, 270 new businesses were registered under the city's business licensing program.

This number is comparable to 2024 and shows that Lake Oswego's attractiveness as a safe place to open a business has not diminished.

We continue to appreciate the city's willingness to brought to provide us with regular reports on new business registrations, and have been hosting regular new business meet and greets for these new business owners.

These events provide them with an opportunity to learn about the business community, and through the regular participation of Megan Phelan and Jessica New Monolou, what resources the city has available for business.

Lake Oswego is a city built on relationships, and we're happy to provide an early opportunity for that to begin happening for these new business owners.

Lake Oswego is also a small business city.

Over 73% of businesses located here have fewer than five employees.

Switch it.

Oh, can I do it?

Look at that.

83% have under 10 employees, and over 97% of businesses in our city have fewer than 50 employees.

We are fortunate to now have almost 500 identified woman-owned businesses, a number made all the more impressive since this data was not collected until 2021.

We also have over 500 home-based businesses.

Overall, the most prevalent are businesses engaged in building construction, both commercial and residential, and both new construction and remodeling, including subcontractor businesses, such as plumbing and electrical contractors, almost 150 companies in our area are involved in these businesses.

We also have many firms specializing in business management and financial services, along with a diverse group of health and self-care providers.

If you want your skin pampered or a relaxing day at the spa, Lake Oswego is the place for you.

It's important to know, however, that most jobs located in Lake Oswego are filled by people who do not actually live in the city.

Similarly, most people who live in Lake Oswego commute to one of our surrounding communities to work.

We are watching with great interest the developments along Boons Ferry Road that will bring Habitat for Humanity and Hacienda Corporation affordable housing developments to Lake Oswego.

We encourage employees who who work in Lake Oswego but live elsewhere who may qualify for this housing to give it consideration.

More employees living locally means a more stable local workforce.

All this business activity also reveals itself in the health of our office building vacancy rates.

The rate in downtown has been consistently very low, currently resting around 4.3%, up slightly from 2024, but about the same as when we started tracking it in 2023.

The Cruise Meadows area area is higher, Class A office space, a bit over 20%, but compares favorably with some of our surrounding jurisdictions.

We were pleased to recently fulfill the city manager's request for information on building ownership and tenants for the Meadows Cruise area, as well as to provide similar data to the community development department for the Foothills District.

Another sign of health is recent building purchases in the Cruise Meadows area by Director's Mortgage and Hoffman Corporation.

Some other jurisdictions in our area show either difficulty in sales or dramatic reductions in selling prices for office buildings.

The chamber continues to do its part to generate additional business and to reach out to all business districts in Lake Oswego.

Our Oregon wine walk in Lake Grove last May featured 27 local businesses as pouring locations and welcomed over 500 guests for an afternoon stroll and sip.

The downtown wine walk this October was the largest and most successful ever, with 41 pouring locations and over 800 guests.

It attracted participants from Newburgh to Troutdale and Vancouver, Washington to Salem, Oregon.

This year we formed the West End Business Group, which meets monthly to discuss issues of importance to the Meadows Cruise, Westlake, Center Point, and Bangie Road areas.

It joins the Lake Grove Business Group and the reconstituted Downtown Business Group, which has been leading the third Thursday events in the downtown core during 2025.

Each of these districts deserve to have their voices heard.

In the midst of the good news, I would offer two notes of caution.

The first has to do with office vacancies.

One of our commercial real estate partners refers to it as shadow space.

This is office space that is leased but not occupied.

In some instances, companies can't afford to get out of their lease and will just continue to hold it until it expires.

No effort is currently being made to lease or sublease these properties, so hard data on the amount of square footage involved is elusive.

At a presentation earlier this year by a labor expert from the state of Oregon, it was noted that the number of people who will reach retirement age in the Portland metro area over the next couple of decades is going to outstrip the number of younger people who will be available to move into those jobs.

Worse, the metro area is currently experiencing a flat to falling population.

While this specific circumstance may be temporary, the idea of a coming labor shortage due to these two trends is it is within the realm of possibility.

With some employers already having difficulty finding enough qualified workers, this also bears watching.

We believe this expanded partnership between the city and chamber has had tremendous positive impacts on our business community and on the quality of life in Lake Oswego.

Although our current agreement expires at the end of this month, we hope and expect to continue to work with the city on these important matters going forward.

With this in mind, I recall the City Council's commitment to collaborating with the Chamber to quote, promote Lake Oswego as a destination for visiting, shopping, dining, and enjoying the arts and events, close quote, in its 2025 list of priorities.

I wanted to take a few moments to make some general and specific recommendations resulting from our work with local businesses, their owners, managers, and employees, and from our observations of business health since COVID.

These recommendations fall into three broad categories.

The first I would define as a robust shop local marketing effort.

While business cannot exist solely on local customers, it is wise for us to try to maximize the number of purchases residents make right here.

This has a variety of positive outcomes, including shorter car trips or fewer deliveries.

It keeps dollars circulating locally, supports unique retail offerings, and builds relationships between businesses and their community.

The second is introducing consumers outside the city limits of Lake Oswego to the variety of interesting businesses and other activities in this area.

We have several fun events that are already serving as a draw to non-residents, and more could be added if only people heard about them.

The aforementioned downtown wine walk, for instance, drew guests from 25 Washington and Oregon zip codes, due at least in part to our advertising in the Oregon Wine Press magazine and a strong social media marketing campaign.

The Lake Oswego Arts Festival draws visitors from all over the surrounding areas.

What is needed is expanded outreach through targeted marketing efforts.

Finally, the third target of opportunity is people visiting the general metro area who need to begin to see Lake Oswego as a desirable shopping and dining destination.

It's also possible to point to this as a recreation destination through the Lorac, the Willamette River, the skate park, and other amenities.

The chamber has identified some specific avenues we can begin to utilize to access these groups.

I want to highlight three key opportunities where modest investments can produce measurable impact for Lake Oswego and our businesses.

First, we have a time-sensitive opportunity through Mount Hood territory to place a subsidized Lake Oswego advertisement in the Travel Oregon Guide.

We brought the Travel Oregon information forward last year, but the timing fell outside the city's budgeting window.

This year's deadline for reserving ad space is December 19th, although payment is not due until March of 2026.

Mounthood Territory will subsidize the cost of an ad by $3,500.

We recommend budgeting for a full-page presence, which would cost $8,500 after the subsidy, plus design expenses estimated under $2,500.

With city financial support, the chamber is prepared to manage the design, production, and placement of the ad, or we're happy to collaborate with city staff if that's preferred.

This publication is one of the most widely distributed visitor resources in the region, printing 250,000 hard copies and being available online, reaching travelers across Oregon, throughout the Pacific Northwest, and even into Canada.

A consistent annual presence in this guide is essential if we want to remain competitive with other destinations and increase visitor spending.

The chamber is the city's current point of contact for Mount Hood Territory and general visitor information.

We are well positioned to support this effort.

Once the ad is developed, it can be used over a three to five year period and travel Oregon or for other opportunities.

Second, we recommend that the city authorize a coordinated strategy highlighting Lake Oswego's restaurants, retail, recreation opportunities, and local experiences, the elements that both residents and visitors actively seek.

Through our work with LO Business Districts, the Third Thursday program, and ongoing engagement with new and long-standing businesses, we see clearly that while traditional media has value, social media has become the dominant resource for influencing travel decisions and local shopping behavior.

The city and chamber together can play a stronger role in helping local businesses use social media effectively and amplify Lake Oswego as a welcoming destination.

We recommend the creation of a targeted and intentional digital outreach plan coupled with business education and direct promotion targeted toward populations within a 50-mile radius.

If it would assist the city in making a long-term decision, we would be glad to design a six-month pilot project with measurable benchmarks to evaluate reach, engagement, and real world outcomes for local businesses.

Third, we encourage the city to invest in the consistent locally focused marketing presence in print media.

Third, we encourage the city to invest in the consistent locally focused marketing presence in print media, and as budgets allow to explore short spot television ads sometime in the future.

While social media drives a significant share of consumer behavior, local print publications still play an important role in reaching Lake Oswego residents, older demographics, and in nearby communities who rely on traditional media for community information.

Short 15 second television ads could further extend our reach within the broader Portland metropolitan area, reminding residents that Lake Oswego is an accessible, vibrant place to dine, shop, and enjoy recreation.

Together with our digital efforts, these traditional media investments ensure that we are meeting people where they are, reinforcing the message repeatedly across multiple platforms, and ultimately encouraging more local shopping and regional visitation.

These recommendations represent high value, cost efficient ways to expand Lake Oswego's visibility and strengthen our local economy.

We appreciate your consideration and welcome the opportunity to continue working together to elevate Lake Oswego as a vibrant destination for residents, visitors, and customers throughout the region.

The city and chamber committed a year ago to working together to promote visitors to Lake Oswego.

Let's roll that out.

Thank you again for the opportunity to work with the city on all these important priorities.

I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Evans.

Appreciate that uh presentation.

You know, in our um uh in our most recent community survey that we're gonna hear about uh next, actually, you know, one of the top items the community wants the city to focus on is you know economic development.

I often wonder I wonder what you know people are are thinking in that regard.

And um, you know, when I'm kind of curious what what you hear or what you think about when you hear that.

Um, because we have obviously you've reported on lots of positive information about um uh about the local business community and whatnot.

And so on on one hand, I wonder if there's just um a kind of lack of information getting out to the community and more of like an uncertainty.

I know a lot of people were kind of neutral in their response, probably not knowing, you know.

Um, and but uh how much of that could be some additional things, perhaps, like the three items you just mentioned in terms of uh marketing that people don't see and they wonder well, what is kind of going on with the local kind, but just do you have any thoughts when you hear that being a kind of a top priority coming out of the community?

Yeah, it's it's interesting to sort of see what public attitudes towards uh things are sometimes because you get you may get a cascade of negative media coverage of something.

And while people aren't personally concerned about, or it's not they don't see how it affects their lives really, they think things are not going well because of what they read in the newspaper or see on television news and so forth.

There may be some element of that in this serve, the survey response.

Um to me, uh vibrant economic development would include um specifically this shop local piece that I discussed.

Um I I think people would like to see their friends and neighbors working in Lake Oswego.

We have a lot of people who are not residents, and that this is one of the other things that we're gonna be working on, I think in 2026 is how do we take advantage of the fact that we have people coming here to work, but they're turning right around and going home at the end of the work day.

Um we're no better in some of the things that are going on down the river here are they've had they've lost so many office jobs that people are no longer going out to coffee, they're no longer going to lunch, they're no longer staying for a late dinner, going to the theater.

That impacts the whole of economic development, and we don't want to be in that position.

We want to figure out a way to, even if we have a lot of people working here who don't live here, we want to figure out a way to encourage them to stick around after work or come back on the weekends uh and enjoy all the great amenities that the city can offer.

Right.

You know, the um uh the the council in kind of restructured the business license fee, as you know, for um for the purpose of being able to have funds to directly invest back into the business community, um, frankly, in efforts like you've outlined um here, um, we wanted to be able to provide more resources to the business community and and on one of our council goals, you know, is as you described, a marketing campaign to attract more people both within Lake Oswego and outside of Lake Oswego to come, both for our businesses but also for uh recreation and other amenities we have.

Um, I uh I know you've asked us a kind of a time-sensitive question here regarding this Mount Hood Territories um item, which appears to be about a $10,000 ask, and of course, you know, we sit here unaware of you know what's between the couch and cushions, but in general, is the council supportive of taking to the city manager that kind of?

Okay, absolutely.

Megan's got that noted down if we can find that in the couch cushions.

Uh you know, but um we have uh substantially raised the the resources that we have available through the business license fee so that local businesses are you know paying into a um a pot of money that can be used for exactly the uh and what you're describing here in items two, two and three of your uh ask, which I am very supportive of, and I believe my colleagues are too, because we have set it as a top council goal, and your ask uh is perfectly timed here in December as we come into goal setting next year to um better fortify you know that relationship between the city and the chamber.

Um and I think the chamber's been doing a great job, and it would be great to continue working with you and utilizing uh you more in this uh direct way.

Um the chamber is more local jobs, and if we can uh use the chamber um to help run these, I mean you know the community really well.

And I think you're geared up, I like your idea of the pilot program as well.

Um, you know, to give us a flavor of what you're thinking and how we would measure those results.

I think thinking back like way way back when we had the larger economic development department and we did things like targeted media ads.

I mean, one of the big problems there was that we spent a lot of money and folks wondered like what are we getting for this?

You know, it just seemed like things going out into the ether.

And so, you know, being able to um I think it it's different nowadays.

I mean, that was a little bit ago, kind of on the beginnings of social media and whatnot.

Like we have definitely better ways of collecting the data, um, even the new ways the city is able to collect data on you know where folks are coming from, you know, in the city, um, using you know cell phone data is pretty phenomenal.

And um, so I think we'll be able to better show those those metrics and just be more targeted than we used to be.

Right.

Yeah, it's a it's a much different world as far as the strange thing is it used to be at the time you're talking about 40 years ago, used to have to deliver a message seven times to somebody before you started burning into their consciousness with what you were saying.

Now I'm sure that it's much higher than that, but it's much more measurable too how many times you're reaching those people with your message uh through through social media and hits on websites and all kinds of ways you can track what people are actually looking at.

Yeah.

Um I have just one more question, and Councillor Boop has a question.

You know, uh the chamber has put on some, you know, has leadership Lake Oswego and then has started to a um kind of another leadership.

I don't want to uh I forget the name of it.

Business leadership development.

Business leadership, you know, of course.

What are the the barriers to participation in those courses that you uh see that where this there might be opportunity for partnership to help reduce it?

Um you know, to me, the the barriers um would might be the cost, although they're not particularly expensive for for high-level professional training, but you could see where some people would not be in a position to afford um you know a 2900 course.

Um for some people, I'm sure if they're if they're not already in a leadership position in their firm, it may be difficult for them to take at basically a half day off uh once a month to participate in some of these programs uh to get permission to do that if that's necessary.

And and uh so that that could be a barrier as well.

And then, you know, again, uh getting the word out, it's it's uh the same idea.

It's the marketing piece is how do you make sure that everybody that could conceivably be interested in this and available to participate has the opportunity to know about it and then to come forward if they want to do it.

That's helpful information.

Thank you.

Uh Counselor.

Oh, you don't have to someone have their button.

Oh, it's all answered this question without annoying.

I would take it though.

Oh, you want to take it now?

Yeah.

You you missed your chance.

You said I was gonna talk about Aaron, what we discussed many times on what are you saying?

How Lake Oswego is not marketing itself.

And it's uh it shows in your report that people see Lake Coswego in a way that's not true.

It's like all past behaviors or whatever, even that we don't know.

But people you know, I think it's good that the chamber is working on that is the city to go through, you know, like visitors.

We need more people coming here feeling safe because Lake Oswego is a safe place, a safe community.

It can be a third space for many people who are afraid to go somewhere else.

So I think the chamber with the c the city will help raise that.

Counselor and Boop uh uh Mayor Buck, I would just say, I think you're right.

I think if you allow negative perceptions to uh not be challenged that are untrue, uh you kind of get what you deserve in a way.

Um and I, you know, I've I've lived in this area.

I was born here, I grew up on the west side.

Um, and I can tell you I knew I knew what Lake Oswego's reputation was.

Um and and it's there there's no factual to it.

It's all just made up because oh, people there have money, therefore they must be a certain way.

And it's just, you know, it's totally untrue.

I I go to these, the one of the first events I ever went to when I started working for the chamber was our holiday reception.

Um, and it amazed me that you had people you could tell had been friends for a long time, but they were incredibly happy to see each other, even though maybe it had been only a couple three days since the last time they saw each other.

Um the relationship piece of of this city is really eye-opening.

The way people talk to each other, get along with each other.

We're getting 75 to 90 people every Friday morning at networking.

We were just here uh in the city council chambers.

Um and and people are just thrilled to find out whatever whoever's hosting, whoever find out about their business, they may never have heard of it before.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Uh Counselor Afkin.

Mr.

Evans, I have a different perspective than my colleague.

I hear nothing but good stuff about Lake.

Uh, maybe 40 years ago that was a different story, but these days uh I hear how vibrant our downtown is.

And thanks to previous city counselors who made this beautiful downtown for us and the Lake Grove district, so people can come and enjoy it.

One of the things that I may have a wrong perception is that our city is not a journey for people, it's a destination.

And if my perception is right, that means people don't come here to spend a couple hours and do shopping and walk our parks.

They come for events, whether it's the lake events or the arts event or classic car events or the music events or the wine events, they come just for that.

If that is the case, does it make sense to have more events that brings people and just keep attracting?

And if my perception is wrong, how do we and that's not the answer for tonight?

How do we get our city to be a journey city so people come and not just do one thing and leave?

Yeah.

And I love our city, that's why I'm sitting here, and I want to see more people here.

And our downtown goes to sleep right around 9 30.

And it's like maybe we can extend that to yes, yeah.

Yeah, the age does it to you, sir.

But maybe we can do something that the city is still alive till 10 o'clock or 10 30.

But I love our city.

Thank you for everything you guys do at that end.

Thank you, uh, Councilor Afghan Mayor Buck.

I would just say, uh, I think you're right.

And one of the things we're trying to figure out how to track, one of my personal great frustrations is our inability to get people to answer questions, and by people, I mean businesses to answer questions about things that are happening.

We're trying all kinds of different crazy methods, but um one of the things we want to know is when people come to the arts festival, for example, do they then go out to lunch or go out to dinner, or do they go to uh some of the shops uh in Lake Oswego while they're here?

And I think you're you may be right in a way that there are some of these events where people are are not doing more than just whatever the event is.

And I would tie this back a little bit to the marketing piece.

I mean, thinking about this a little bit in terms of the LauraC in that there's gonna be an I think there's gonna be an opportunity, and you guys have your own plans for it, but to me, there's an opportunity there to bring in competitions.

Um and when those when people arrive from outside the area for these swimming competitions or water polo competitions or whatever they are, to market those people, to let those people know, hey, while you're here, here's some other interesting things that are going on, here's some nice restaurants you might want to try.

It a lot of what a lot of people don't know it, something they don't haven't been told about.

And uh so part of our job and part of the businesses that make up the chamber of commerce's job is to let people know about things.

And she said she had four different people come in and say, what a great shop you have.

I didn't even know you were here.

Well, that's there's your answer.

They didn't know they were there, but now people have become regular customers through Third Thursday at some of the businesses along Main Street or uh A Avenue, I'm sorry, here.

So you really you really need to figure out a way to make sure people know when they visit what is here, besides just I'm gonna go drink wine for the afternoon or I'm gonna go see uh great art for the afternoon.

I I need to know what else I can do while I'm here.

A lot of I think a lot of people would I recommend you double down on drinking wine all day on that part of the plan.

I think I think it's gonna get a lot of people here.

I I this is uh honestly, this is a very wine-savvy uh town.

Uh they do.

That's all right.

Um so yeah, again, it comes down to we get have to tell people.

We have to tell people the story.

Thank you.

At uh sports tourism angle, too.

I know I don't know if it's still the case, but I know when it was uh last looked at, I mean, one of the uh one big source of uh room revenue for the hotels and the you know the Meadows Cruise uh quarter was was the youth sports events, yeah, and of course the facilities in town in the Lorack Skate Park, you know, provide opportunities uh to bring more people in.

My daughter was on a traveling softball team, and we spent lots of money at hotels in Colorado and California and all over the place.

And we didn't spend it here, but we played at George Rogers Park a couple of times.

So Councilor Woodland, please.

Well, I just want to say that the inertia of the Chamber of Commerce has taken a huge swing in the last six or seven years.

Uh Matt is one of the reasons Liz Hartman um, her whole staff.

Uh and I will say that uh supporting the chamber is uh part of the I think infrastructure responsibility that we have for the city.

Um I will say that the grants and the support that we have.

Megan and I sit uh have sat on the um liaison uh uh for the city to the chamber.

And uh they watch every dollar and they spend it wisely, and I think um supporting uh even little things like a a quick ad, which we should already be on top of anyway.

But um I'm excited about the possibility of putting communications together as a city with the chamber um so that we are getting the message out.

Um I first got to council, one of my I mean, my main things that I um campaigned on seven years ago was build the brand.

And we need to build the Lake Oswego brand, and and anyone who's in been in brands, you have to constantly do it.

You can't just do it once and then forget uh oh, yeah, we have a reputation.

Well, reputations are only good for that moment, and you have to keep building it.

And so um I think it's great.

We have bit uh it just is such a warm feeling when you have 10,000 people show up for a parade, 5,000 people show up for uh tree lighting uh thing, and you have I don't know, 30,000, 20,000 people come to the arts festival.

I mean, we have some really big draws to this city, and I think it's the ambassador component of a lot of those events that show that Lake Oswego is a really great place to hang around.

And to Matt's point, let's have them stick around for even longer and spend their money.

And that's I think one of the big things that we want them to do.

So full support, and I have to say the the leadership and the um when Matt said people walk up to each other and they you know are embracing each other because they really like each other.

Uh we have a board on the chamber that they're all in.

Um they're enthusiastic, they're giving their time.

Uh a lot of them are giving a lot of money to sponsorships and so on.

Um, and so uh I think it's great momentum, and I think we're all on board to continue that.

So and thanks, Matt, for all that you do.

It's uh what we really like is the information and data too, so that we can make um fact-based decisions, which is a really good way to make decisions.

Amazingly, it really is.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks.

Um, I just want to say uh we've very much appreciate uh Counselor Wenland uh and Megan's participation uh on the on our board of directors.

It's extremely valuable to us to have that perspective available to the other board members and obviously the chamber staff as well.

And I should also say I'm I briefly mentioned um Megan and Jessica previously, but they've been uh amazing, frankly, uh attending all kinds of things, some of which I'm pretty sure are outside their normal work day.

Um I appreciate uh Councilor Corrigan coming to the Lake Grove Business Group meeting this morning, and Jessica was there as the speaker.

She's under the weather, she's not feeling well, and she was still right there at 7 30.

So we really appreciate that kind of support.

Well, thank you very much for the update.

Uh, the city really appreciates the uh partnership here with the chamber to echo Council Windland there.

Um, and we look forward to continuing to work with you in this year to come.

Thank you so much.

Okay, so next item on the agenda is a um we're gonna have we have a few study sessions, and the first is a look at the community recent community survey results.

So we have deputy city manager Madison These joining us and the surveyor uh ETC Institute, Jason Morato, he is joining us on Zoom.

I'm gonna touch that.

Good evening.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, well, Jason gets set up.

Uh good evening, Mayor, City Council.

I am Madison Thieesing.

I'm the deputy city manager, and as uh the mayor shared, I am here today alongside our consultant from ETC with Jason Moraldo to present the results of the statistically valid community survey that went out this fall.

As a reminder, the city contracts with ETC to provide a uh can toduct a statistically valid survey every other year.

The surveys to measure resident satisfaction with our programs and services as well as to gauge level of support for policy initiatives as well.

Um I just also want to note that this is our third cycle with ETC.

So we now officially can benchmark in 2021, 2023, and now 2025.

Um, and lastly, I would just really like to thank all the residents who took the time to complete the survey as well.

And with that, we're gonna dive in because I know we have a lot to cover.

So I'm gonna hand the virtual mic over to Jason Morado, who is the director of community research at ETC Intest, excuse me, ETC Institute who will take us through the community results.

Um from here, Jason, you should have driver's seat to be able to click through your presentation, and we'll take it from here.

Hey, sounds great.

Thanks, Madison.

Um, good evening, mayor and council.

My name is Jason Morado.

I'm the director of community research at ETC Institute.

And as Madison mentioned, we just finished for the third time conducting a community survey for the city of Lake Oswego.

So today I'm going to walk through the key findings from the survey.

We're a national leader in providing market research for local governments.

We've been doing this type of work for over 40 years.

And in the last 10 years alone, we've conducted surveys in more than a thousand communities across the country.

So this is the type of work that we specialize in.

This is just an overview of what I'll go through today.

I'll go over the purpose and methodology of the survey.

I'll walk through the key findings from the survey and then summarize our main conclusions from the survey.

So there are several reasons to conduct a survey like this.

One is to get an objective assessment of how satisfied residents are with major city services.

It's to determine what residents feel are the top priorities for the community.

We're also able to measure trends from your previous surveys.

A lot of the questions this year are the same ones that we asked in 2023 and 2021 so that we can measure trends over time.

And then we're also able to compare your results with other communities across the country.

So this survey was seven pages long.

It's a fairly lengthy survey.

On average, it takes residents 15 to 20 minutes to complete the survey.

The survey was administered by a combination of male and online to randomly select residents throughout the city.

And that's our standard methodology for these statistically valid surveys, is the male online combination of randomly selected households.

We received 400 completed surveys from the random sample.

And that was our goal to get to 400 completed surveys.

And the 400 surveys at the 95% level of confidence has a margin of error plus or minus 4.9%.

Essentially, that means that if we conducted the survey the same way a hundred times, 95 times the results would be plus or minus 4.9% from what we're reporting.

So the results aren't perfect even for a statistically valid survey, but the margin of error is small.

And we also ensure that the demographics and geographic location of survey respondents reflects the actual population of the city.

Now, in addition to the statistically valid survey, we also promote the survey through social media and gave any resident in Lake Oswego the opportunity to fill out the survey.

And we received an additional 157 surveys beyond these 400 from households that were not part of the random sample.

But for today, we're going to focus on the 400 completed surveys that were part of the random sample, as these results are statistically valid.

So here we have a map of the city.

The red dots are households that completed a survey.

We had a good distribution throughout the city.

And as I mentioned, uh, as we were administering the survey, we made sure that the demographics of survey respondents reflect the actual population of the city.

So here's what we learned from the survey.

We found that residents have a very positive perception of the city of Lake Oswego.

And a little bit when I show your results compared to other communities, you'll see that 95% is much, much higher than the regional and the national average.

We found that satisfaction with city services is much much higher in Lake Oswego than other communities.

You rated above the U.S.

average in all 27 areas that we compared.

We'll look at this in more detail in a little bit, but there are a couple of areas that I wanted to make sure to point out.

One is that satisfaction with the overall quality of city services rates 27% points above the U.S.

average.

And that's one of the most important questions on the survey, because here we're asking residents to take into account all the services that you're providing and really give an overall satisfaction rating for how well the city's delivering services.

And then one of the areas on the survey where you rate it to the farthest above the U.S.

average is customer service provided by city employees, where Lake Oswego rated 32 percentage points above the US average.

We also found that the city is moving in the right direction.

Satisfaction ratings have increased in 56 out of 95 areas since your last survey in 2023.

And that includes 24 areas that have had a significant increase in satisfaction.

When we first conducted your survey in 2021, the results were very, very positive.

You were above the regional and national average in most areas.

But then the satisfaction ratings got a little better from 21 to 2023.

And now they've improved again from 2023 to 2025.

So these are the highest overall satisfaction ratings that you've had in the three years that we've conducted the survey.

And we found that the top overall priorities are economic development, public safety, development services, efforts towards sustainability, efforts to promote equity in the community, maintenance of neighborhood streets, planning for needed housing, and ease of travel by bicycle and walking.

We'll look at that in more detail in a little bit as well.

So I mentioned that residents have a very positive perception of the city.

This was the very first question on the survey.

And here we ask residents to rate the perceptions of uh the city in a number of different ways.

You can see the dark blue are ratings of excellent, the light blue is good, the gray is neutral.

We interpret neutral as average or meaning expectations.

It's a rating of a three on a five-point scale, so it's not a bad rating.

And then the orange are ratings of below average report.

So you can see that overall the positive ratings far away the negative.

The only area that had more negative responses than positive was Lake Oswego as a place to find a job.

And that's a trend we've seen all over the country over the last couple of years.

So that's not a huge surprise.

If you look at the top of this chart, 97% of respondents rate the overall quality of life.

Lake Oswego is either excellent or good.

And 97% also said uh rate the overall feeling of safety in the city is excellent or good.

And then if you look at this third and fourth rowdown, 95% of respondents rated rate at Lake Oswego as an excellent good place to live and to raise children.

This question we asked residents to rate major categories of city services.

So here we're asking residents to rate these areas at the big picture departmental level.

Jason, can I pause you for a second, please?

Sure.

Sure.

Just question on procedure.

Are we going to go through this line by line for 38 slides?

Uh no.

Unless you want to each one like he's doing, or we get or are we going to get highlights and then give us the opportunity to like take it back and look at it or you asked?

No, not line by line.

Um, this is about a 15 to 20 minute presentation, and then questions afterwards if you want to ask them.

Um, although if you want to ask questions, as I'm going to do that.

No, that was my question.

Just want to make sure kind of what the process of this presentation was going to look like.

Thank you, Madison.

Yeah, it's up to you.

I can take questions as we're going through this or take them at the end.

Um, either way.

So you're fine, Jason.

Thank you.

Keep going.

Okay, great.

Um so here we ask about major categories of city services.

So here we're asking residents to rate these areas at the big picture departmental level, and then later on the survey we ask about some more specific areas within some of these categories.

So once again, the blue are the positive ratings, the gray is the neutrals, so we interpret that as average, and the pink are those who are disset, or orange are those who are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

So once again, the positive ratings are far outway the negative.

Um, in every area that's more positive than there are negative responses.

If you look at the top of the chart, you can see the highest rated areas are public safety, parks, properties, and facilities, public library services, and then recreation activities, events, and services.

So here we have a map of the city, and what we did here is broke the results out by census block group.

So this tells us if residents in different parts of the city rate services differently.

Um, this map is for the overall quality of city services.

You can see the entire map is blue.

There's one area, in fact, that is dark blue, which is the highest possible rating.

But this tells us that residents in all parts of the city are satisfied with the overall quality of city services.

Sometimes what happens is even if the results are very positive overall, once you break into these smaller geographic areas, you see some pockets where residents are not as satisfied.

But here you can see that's not the case at all, which means you're doing a great job providing services equally throughout the city.

This map is for how residents feel about the city of Lake Oswego as a place to live.

Here you can see the entire map is blue.

In fact, it's all dark blue, except for there's one area where it's lighter blue, so the ratings aren't quite as positive there, um, but still very good.

So this tells us our residents in all parts of the city give very high ratings to the city as a place to live.

And then this map is how residents feel about the city of Lake Oswego as a place to raise children.

And just like the previous map, the entire map is blue, with most of it being dark blue.

So I mentioned earlier that the city is moving in the right direction.

Since the last survey in 2023, satisfaction ratings have increased in 56 out of 95 areas.

They've stayed the same in eight areas, and they've decreased in 31 of those 95 areas.

Now, this includes 24 areas that have had significant increase in satisfaction since the last survey.

So, in other words, 5% or more higher than two years ago, and only six areas that have had a significant decrease in satisfaction.

So here at the top of this chart are the areas with the biggest increases in satisfaction since the last survey.

Uh frequency of street sweeping along roadways that increased by 17 percentage points since the last survey.

That was the biggest increase in satisfaction.

The other biggest increases were the quality of health, wellness, and fitness opportunities, quality of youth and teen parks and recreation opportunities, efforts to respond to climate change, the quality of parks and recreation and enrichment opportunities, and police response to situations involving individuals with cognitive or mental challenges.

The all of those increases you can see were by 9% or more since the last survey.

So this chart that there's obviously a lot of information on this charts, but this is major categories of city services.

You can see we're showing the satisfaction ratings for the three surveys, with the dark green being the satisfaction ratings for this year's survey, the dark blue are the ratings for 2023, and then the gray are first year we conducted the survey in 2021.

So you can see the results have remained consistently high over the years.

If you can look to where this first blue arrow is, the overall effectiveness of city's efforts towards sustainable uh sustainable building generations, that's the area with uh that's a significant increase in satisfaction since the last survey went from 63% up to 70%.

And it's also up from 59% the first year we conducted the survey.

So two straight years of big increases.

And then right below that, we have the overall effectiveness of the city's efforts to respond to climate change.

That's had a significant increase now, two surveys in a row.

It was a 40% satisfaction rate in 2021, went up to 48% satisfaction rating two years ago, and then this year it's up to 58%.

The only area under these major categories that has significant decrease in satisfaction was economic development, where it went from 65 down to 58%.

Um, but that's about the same level that it was four years ago.

So I mentioned earlier that satisfaction with city services is much higher in Lake Oswego than other communities.

You rated above the U.S.

average in all 27 areas that we compared, and in 25 of those areas, your ratings are significantly above the U.S.

average.

So in other words, 5% or more.

Your ratings are also above the northwest average in all 27 areas as well, and significantly higher in 26 of those areas.

Northwest average includes the state of Oregon as well as the nearby states.

So that's really the regional average.

As we go through these charts, the green bar are Lake Oswego residents who gave positive ratings, either very satisfied or satisfied.

The light blue are the satisfaction ratings for the regional average, and then the gray bar are the satisfaction ratings for residents from all across the country.

So this is for perceptions of the city.

You can see in all five areas, your ratings are significantly above the regional and national average.

One thing that really stands out here is the second row down.

95% of respondents rate Lake Oswego as an excellent or a good place to live.

That's 40% points above the U.S.

average.

And if you look at the road below that, 95% also rated Lake Oswego as an excellent or good place to raise children, which is 38% points above the U.S.

average.

This charts for major categories of city services.

You can see in four out of the five areas, your ratings are significantly higher than the U.S.

average.

That includes public safety, parks properties and facilities, public library services, communication with the public, which is one of the areas where you rated the farthest above the US average.

When it comes to codes and ordinances, your ratings were above the regional and national average, but not as far above as some of these other categories.

When it comes to leadership, communications, and engagement, your ratings are significantly above the U.S.

average in six out of these seven areas.

There's two areas to me that especially stand out.

If you look at this top row, 70% of our respondents are satisfied with customer service provided by city employees, which is more than 30 percentage points above both the regional and the national average.

It's one of the areas where you rate the farthest above the national average.

And then if you look at the second row down, 70% of respondents are satisfied with the overall quality of city services.

And again, that's one of the most important questions on the survey.

And you can see that your 27% points above the national average.

You're exactly double the regional average, which is only 35%.

And then for the public safety comparisons, you can see in all three areas, Lake Oswego rates significantly above both the regional and the national average.

And then the same thing for infrastructure.

So now we'll look at top priorities.

We saw earlier how satisfied residents are with major categories of city services.

As a follow-up question, we ask which of these services should receive the most emphasis from city leaders over the next two years.

So you can see that the top priorities are economic development, public safety, development services, efforts towards sustainability, and then efforts to promote equity in the community.

This is something that we call the important satisfaction rating.

And this analysis is based on two different types of data.

First, we ask residents how satisfied they are with services.

Then we ask which services are the most important for the city to emphasize.

So the idea behind this is that those areas that have a combination of low satisfaction ratings, but at the same time are rated as the most important, are identified as the top priorities to focus on.

And the reason we like to look at this when setting priorities is you could have areas that have a low satisfaction rating, but that doesn't necessarily mean that residents want to see a lot of resources invested into that area.

Maybe they think it's not that important, even though they aren't particularly satisfied.

So this factors in both satisfaction and importance.

So this first table is for major categories of city services.

You can see the top priorities are development services, economic development, and then promoting equity in the community.

This table focuses on infrastructure.

You can see the area that really stands out here is maintaining neighborhood streets.

The next highest priorities are snow and ice response on major city streets, and then mowing and tree trimming along streets.

This table focuses on public safety priorities.

The top priority is wildfire prevention and education programs in the community, um, followed by the availability of information about Lake Oswego police programs, data, and activities.

These are the top priorities related to mobility.

You can see the two areas that really stand out here are the ease and safety of travel by bicycle, Lake Oswego, and the ease and safety of walking in Lake Oswego.

These are the top priorities for parks and recreation.

Now here you can see the entire area is green.

There's nothing in pink or yellow.

And the reason for that is because the satisfaction ratings were excredibly high just across the board for parks and recreation.

Um the top priority here is preservation of natural areas such as forested areas and open space.

Um, but even that is it's more of a medium-level priority to camera compared to some of the other items that we've looked at.

When it comes to growth and development, the top priorities are how well Lake Oswego is planning for needed housing, the overall quality of new development, Lake Oswego, and how well Lake Oswego is planning for commercial services and jobs.

And then when it comes to library services, just like parks and recreation, the satisfaction ratings were very, very high across the board.

So there isn't there aren't any areas in pink or yellow.

Um, but of the list, the top priority is the availability, library's amenities relative to other libraries.

And then when it comes to sustainability, the top two priorities are the availability of information and resources relating to preparing for climate impacts, and the availability of information and resources relating to energy efficiency and/or clean energy.

So that's everything I had to go through.

Just a quick recap.

We saw that residents have a very positive perception of the city.

There's a lot of examples of that throughout the report.

But an area that really stood out is that 95% of respondents rate at Lake Oswego as an excellent or good place to live and to raise children.

We saw that satisfaction with city services is much higher in Lake Oswego than other communities.

And that's been consistent each of the three years we've conducted your survey.

A couple of the areas that especially stood out were the overall quality of city services and then customer service from city employees.

Once again, the city is moving in the right direction.

For the second consecutive survey now, the satisfaction ratings have improved overall from the previous year.

Um, and they've been very good each year we conducted the survey.

Any top overall priorities, and these are based on those important satisfaction tables we looked at economic development, public safety, development services, efforts towards sustainability, efforts to promote equity in the community, maintenance of neighborhood streets, planning for needed housing, and the ease of travel by bicycle and walking.

So obviously, very, very positive results.

Um, once again, and with that, if anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Jason.

That was uh um we appreciate the presentation.

Uh questions, counselor Afghan, please go ahead.

Uh, where is Mr.

Matt Evans to hear that Lake Oswego is the place to live and have fun and uh enjoy.

Uh having said that, Mr.

Mayor, I think we can close the meeting early and go celebrate with this uh report card.

Uh kudos to Park Center Recreation and Library team.

You guys are doing an absolutely great job.

So that comes throughout the report very uh loud and clear.

The rest of the team, you're doing good.

Now we need to do better.

Uh Jason, I have a question for you.

On page 12, overall quality of public library was uh great.

But I think on the uh page 17 uh thereabout.

You mentioned that we lost the most number of points on library quality of services.

So that confused me a bit.

Library facility.

Okay.

Yeah, that's right.

I think the satisfaction ratings for the public library are extremely high overall.

Um, I think this create this decrease here is related specifically to the facility itself, not so much the services that are provided.

Thank you.

But even with even with the decrease, the ratings are still very very positive for the public library.

Awesome.

Mr.

Mayor, also I think our 2025 goals that we set about almost a year ago pretty lines up with the top priorities that people wanted to see going forward.

So that's also a good news.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council African.

Yeah, I mean, for sure, we have been able to utilize the results of these um surveys to help us uh with goal setting.

Of course, then they align with the feedback that we also receive from our uh boards and commissions and community members at large.

Um it's great to see that the work that the team here has done at the city following those goals has really resonated with you know members of the community.

And in addition to the great, you know, customer service work and other just day-to-day work that the city team is doing that reflected in this really positive results.

Uh much gratitude is of course owed that to them.

I mean, this is really phenomenal work, and I'm sure that the team at the city has been very happy to get these results.

I imagine they are being shared around.

Um but also our uh community groups.

I know we have a couple of them here represented here tonight, LOSN, uh LO for Love, Respond to Racism.

I mean, I think when we look at the highest increases, we look at the city's response to um to climate change and sustainability efforts and equity efforts.

Um, that is due in part, of course, to the team here at the city, but also these community groups who have you know stepped up along the same you know, time frame really that we're seeing uh here, and I think have helped uh um helped uh work in partnership with the city to kind of foster these um to foster these these these results.

Um so yes, uh okay, Councilor Boop, please.

Celebration.

But thank you all.

I just want to thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Madison and the team that I love you know, qualitative work, even if all the response are in numbers, it's people talking, you know.

There's a good perception of Lake Osugu.

But I my I'm very happy, honestly, especially it means we are great counselors, we are the best.

You know, yeah, that's the that's what the results say.

But what when you say 97% as a as an educator, I always say I am more interested in the 3% than on the 97%.

You know, it's like the the 97%, it's fine, but why these 3% are not satisfied, and I think that's where we should focus our work, you know, and it's very important.

Those 3% are very important.

There is a theory that's called the theory of catastrophe.

And what it says is the strength of a chain equals that of the weakest link.

It's not the big chain, but the weakest link, that's what breaks the chain.

So we have 3% of folks sometimes who are not happy in this, and you know, we need to work to make those 3% satisfied.

Other than that, we all know we do very good work in this city.

That's like very clear, but we have to if if the three if we're under that, I mean Yeah, but there is four point no, the mean, like it's a minus or plus.

We couldn't either in one.

No, no, no.

It'll be 101.

No, no, no, stop folks.

I mean, like, let's do that.

No, it's a and also it's a survey.

The folks who haven't been 400 responses, yes, it's uh it's a good sample on you know, when you work qualitative work, 400 is enough, but it's a great that's I just don't want us to sleep in our laurels and says that whoa, we are the best, you know.

We have to if we are good, we should be very good.

If we are very good, we should be excellent, you know, and outstanding, and that's what Lake Coswego is.

Our motto is moving forward, and moving forward means we have always to go, you know, achieve high achievers.

But other than that, I'm very happy and really very happy.

Thank you, Councillor Burke.

And also, which means that I hope those folks who rate the library facility as bad, that they would support a bond to build a library because it shows that we need to replace the facility.

That's clear.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Bruppa.

Counselor Corden.

Well, this is this is just blew me away.

This is to be we did really well last time and we did really, really well this time.

And I think that's because we have an amazing team at the city, and um they just keep getting better.

And I'm just absolutely thrilled by that.

Um the first thing I have to say that jumped out at me was the priority for wildlife wildfire prevention and education programs in the community.

So I have to take a second and let everybody know that we will be having uh new brush ring for wildfires coming to the South Shore fire station.

We will also be having a vote for the South Shore, a new South Shore fire station coming up.

And I think that's probably probably a good thing to let people know as they go as they go to the polls that we are thinking about that, and that will be at the new fire station.

The um other thing that kind of jumped out at me was the residents feel the most difficult and difficult items to currently do in like us, we are having your support system move to Lake Oswego, moving to another home in Lake Oswego and relocating to a larger home in Lake Uswig that fit your needs.

Well, is you know, I think that is as difficult and painful as it has been working with the housing production strategy, we have a real natural momentum to momentum heading that direction.

And let's hope that all the work and all the effort we put in will solve will help solve those problems.

Yeah, good point.

I it is uh the you know, the one of the the items um on the list of kind of high priority to focus on was the quality of development services.

And that's that's a difficult one to I was wondering if you know if if we're able to fare it out, what exactly that means.

Yeah, so um right, it is it's phrased very broad.

So I think a lot of times people read that as what is the quality of development that's occurring, um, what it is meaning it's supposed to be development services, as in like the front counter services.

I think if we are wanting to take a deeper dive and understanding that, um, to actually uh uh Counselor Moop's point, this is quantitative.

We would really need to get into that qualitative space and have more focus groups and really understanding are there barriers from getting permits, is there challenges in what development services?

And I think we are seeing this at the at the or you you all are seeing this at the diet, is people's perception of what development looks like and their own subjective and sometimes opinion on what that looks like.

So um I can't, I I uh unfortunately I can't say specifically what that means.

It is just that question.

But if council would like to take a deeper dive and understanding what development services means to people, what their perceptions are of it, and then what that would look like, it would be going into more of a research project.

I would also um echo what uh uh counselor Corden said is there's a lot of things that are happening from the state that we are now, as we all know, not having a lot of control and so I I also don't want to just say this is exclusively city operations, it could be the feelings of what's coming down from the state through development, and people are seeing it now as it's becoming realized in within our community.

There's a lot to unpack there, and we're not gonna get that from that one question.

But if we would like to explore more, I think it would be a deeper dive in it.

Well, it's one of the I think it's the first time we've seen that category kind of rise to the the top.

And it is, I mean, it's high enough that it seems like something to to dive into a little bit and try to understand.

Yeah, I mean it could mean a lot of technical.

It could mean a lot of things too.

And that could be exactly what has happened in this last year, too.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Council Willem, please.

So uh a couple things.

Um, Jason, if you could the people that turned in surveys that were not part of the statistical um group, um uh the 400, did they kind of match or did you even look at them?

And that's okay if you didn't do those results.

Yeah, we haven't we haven't provided those results yet, but we have started looking at them.

Um the priorities are similar uh to what we see here in the statistically ballot survey, and and that's pretty typical.

Um the satisfaction ratings are probably a little bit lower, but that's also typical for what we see in a lot of other communities.

Um but we're still in the process of looking through those, but overall I'd say they're very similar to these results.

Okay.

Then the other question is uh are we somewhat of a unicorn city in the sense that our are there other similar cities?

I know you look at national and regional averages, but we're kind of up against like um Portland and Seattle, which are big huge towns that probably maybe not have you know, they have all their issues and and so on a big uh metropolises.

What about smaller cities like us?

Um are we still pretty high for um cities?

Yeah, absolutely.

Um yeah, your results are still very high.

Um it's true that in these benchmarking comparisons, we're just showing national or regional averages, sure sewing cities of all different sizes.

Um we could show results specifically for your results to similar sized cities if you want to see that.

Um the results still would be very, very high, much higher than the regional and national average.

Um, even for um, you know, similar size cities.

Okay.

I mean, I I think that would be my break in the numbers when you look through it is to get a uh consensus or some sort of analysis to say, hey, like Bellevue, Washington, or a suburb that is similar to us somewhere else, um, and see whether we're kind of in line and more particularly, I'm I uh this is great results.

I'm super happy, and this is the third one that keeps going up, and I'm gonna be glad that I'm going to be off council because I do not want to see the next round because boy, I we were always nervous when the first survey came out because it was so good, and we're going, we're totally screwed for the next survey, and then it came out better, and then uh anyway, um keep we have to keep working, keep working and keep uh getting these higher.

But I guess my my big picture is is um if you break down some of the city services, is there a correlation of what we're spending money in versus other communities that are similar um to us and are sort of the um I'd be interested to see if sort of the same priorities are aligned or not.

Yeah, and I I'm really glad you brought that up actually.

Um last time we did this, we that was one of the questions was comp like cities and not size, because I hear you.

It's it's more like demographics.

Yeah, like a Palo Alto, a City Vale.

I think we we pulled a few from Colorado.

So Jason and I can work together of bringing back that comp like cities and see how their ranking have been not only this year but last year, and seeing if the priorities change.

So we could do a little bit further analysis.

Um, one of the things that when I was in the school board, you would look at the Oregon numbers, and it's like great, but people really want to know like us.

We go, I mean, you didn't compare yourself to the rest of the Oregon schools, you compared yourself to all the other national schools that were um similar size and similar demographics and so on, because that's who we were really um putting our kids up to compete for college uh admittances and and acceptances, and and uh you have your as uh counselor boots said, you know, we are at 97%, but where do you get that extra three percent?

And and those are some of the things that I look at as hey, where are we looking at um areas that maybe we could still continue to be attractive because people still move here um and they have high expectations, and uh we also um uh have uh our taxpayers put a pretty big investment into our services as well.

So it's not just our laurels, it's the money that they give us to spend, and we have to continue to spend it wisely.

But um we do have uh uh in comparison to some of the other cities, we just have more resources, so maybe we should be doing better.

So anyway, but great um great results.

And Jason, it's always fun to hear you go through the um different categories because you kind of forget we're very complex organization, and there's a lot of things that are expected of the city, and to uh bat the hitting average that we're doing, not bad.

So it's nice to see that all weight and one last thing on the development part.

I think a lot of that is related somewhat to the counter experience.

Um, and I think it's the idea that people don't until they have a project or something, they didn't really know that you had to have actually have a lot of stuff done.

And part of that is um I've been harping for a long time to get our code simpler so that people can have a warm experience when they um do a project um to get a permit easily and educate them on what's needed, and I think that's always been a challenge, and um our code is very complex.

So anyway.

Thank you, Councilman Lid, uh Council Murray.

Uh so I first just want to thank the staff because these results really show all the hard work that you all do to help serve the citizens of this community.

So I really want to thank you all for that um from the bottom of the heart.

It does make a big difference, and you're you are all very appreciated.

So thank you very much.

Um, and so first, you know, take some time and and be proud of yourselves and celebrate a little.

But at the same time, I think Councillor Mm Boop had a really good point.

Let's not rest on our laurels and let's also kind of figure out how can we keep decreasing the orange where we can?

How can we keep improving?

Where are those areas that we can just keep going?

Because I'm not sure how we improve on this.

I kind of to Counselor Wenland's point.

This is really hard.

At a certain point, things are probably going to shift, and we also have outside influences that we don't have control over that can impact survey results and just how we feel at any given moment.

But I think is you know, again, let's keep doing really well the areas that we are, but let's not forget about looking at where can we improve and continue to do that.

Um, but I'm just really proud of the work that our city does.

So I just really want to thank everybody.

And I also want to add a little bit on to Counselor Corrigan, because she was talking about uh the fires and the concerns, and one of the other services that I'm not sure people realize is available from our um fire stations is that you can have um a firefighter come to your house and do an assessment of your property and how ready are you from a property perspective?

How ready is your home for a wildfire and what can you do?

And they'll give you this extensive report of things that you can do, and you don't have to do everything, you can pick and choose what's manageable.

But I think it's a really an amazing service that we offer to um our community, and I I've done it.

Um, and I've you know, Sully, I picked the things that I can kind of chip away at and get moving on, but I highly recommend that everyone take advantage of that service, and it's a good way for us to um do what we can as individuals because it takes a community to have the community that we live in.

It's just not the city, it's all of our organizations, and with that I want to thank you know, the LOSN, Respond to Racism, LO for Love, um, the watershed group, everyone, it's all of these groups that really help make a difference in our community.

Um, you know, it's our the historical society, the preservation society, the chamber.

It's a team effort that makes this community what it is.

And I'm just really so appreciative of the work that everyone does in the community because I think that's also reflective in these results.

It's not just the city, it's everything coming together.

So thank you all very much.

Thanks, Councillor Burdock.

Well put.

Um, does everyone want to dig in more to the development services question?

Yes, okay.

Consensus is yes.

It's not unanimous.

Um, and then is it possible that can we share this report out with to the boards and commissions?

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, that will be included next week as a part of the summit package for them to prep and ready.

It's great.

Okay.

Well, Jason, thank you very much uh for being here.

Stacey, thank you very much.

Thank you.

It's great.

Thank you.

Good job to the city.

Thanks, everyone.

Have a good night.

Great, thank you.

Why don't we take just a brief five-minute recess?

All right, thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

We are back uh in order.

And next item on the agenda is a our uh an update or diversity, equity, and inclusion uh programming.

We have recommendations, as you all recall, council met um earlier and asked Miss Del Rio, our equity program manager to come work with the DEI Advisory Board.

And this is a council goal that we have uh for this year to look at our work and these efforts going forward.

So pleased to welcome Ms.

Del Rio along with the chair Perrin Tiemann from the um DEI Advisory Board and youth member Vedant uh Ramakrishran.

Thank you all for being here.

Take it away.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Buck and Counselors.

Um my name is Gillian Del Rio, and I am the equity program manager.

And just like Mayor Buck said, I'm joined tonight um by DEI Advisory Co-Chair uh Perrin Tiemann and um youth board member Vedan Ramakrishnan.

Um, and we're here to share the board's forward-looking recommendations that were developed in response to um council's direction in June of this year, which feels like a lifetime ago.

I can't believe we're in December.

Um, so just a little bit of background.

Um so this is where we currently stand with the 2020 DEI task force recommendation report.

There were 37 recommendations that were outlined.

26 of those recommendations have been completed, six are in progress, and five are currently beyond our operational capacity.

Um, in June, council directed me and the DEI board to develop forward-looking recommendations that could inform the 2026 um equity goal.

Um so the recommendations that we're gonna be sharing today come directly from that directive.

Um, with that being said, I'm gonna go ahead and pass um the mic over to Perrin so they can walk you through all of the details of the recommendations.

Awesome.

I don't know if this is it on.

Yes, you're good.

Um so over the past few months, we've been looking through uh community needs, capacity limitations, and best practices in municipal equity work.

Um we've been looking at our previous recommendations and areas that we can continue to grow.

Uh you'll notice a lot of the recommendations are things that the city is already doing, and just our recommendation is to continue to expand and grow in those areas.

So we have six interdependent focus areas today, building a representative community, building a diverse workforce, youth engagement, diversity, equity and inclusion data and accountability, institutional capacity and policy alignment, and equitable resources and infrastructures.

So we're gonna go through some of these in some more detail.

For our representative community goal, um, our focus area is on building a community that reflects the full diversity of Lake Oswego.

This is across all identities, but including socioeconomic, racial, cultural, disability, gender, and LGBTQ by plus identities.

Um supporting underserved residents, increasing belonging and civic engagement, and expanding access to city services through things like the scholarship program.

We have some suggested action items, including establishing baseline demographic data, launching leadership academy for residents, providing community-wide training, and expanding cultural programming and public education around Lake Oswego's history.

As was mentioned earlier this evening, we also want to focus on making sure that our workforce here reflects not only the people who live here, but that the people who work here are able to enjoy the full benefit of our city.

Many of our city staff, as well as those who work throughout the community are not able to live in Lake Oswego.

We'd like to make sure that those who work here are able to really enjoy our community.

So our objectives here are to improve recruitment and retention of diverse candidates, address barriers to staff housing and belonging, and advanced equitable procurement practices.

We have some action items for maintaining good pipeline partnerships, uh, implementing mentorship and internal advancement programs, and exploring some kind of system to support staff, maybe like housing stipends or some other system that would allow them to remain more connected to our community.

All right, thank you.

Youth engagement is a major focus area, and it's one that I'm personally very passionate about.

And I'm especially excited to share that with all of you today.

So our goal is to continue to lead a city that uplifts youth and provides opportunity for engagement with for people across all ages in our community.

Uh our objectives here are to create meaningful ways for youth to learn about and influence city decisions, and also to celebrate and elevate youth accomplishments and contributions to our community.

Uh we have some action items, so action items.

So we recommend establishing a baseline metric for current youth engagement opportunities in Lake Oswego.

We also recommend pilot student shadow days with city council and department directors.

We we like to recommend highlighting youth contributions through Hello LO and other city communication channels.

And finally, we recommend exploring ways to prioritize youth voices and civic decisions, such as a youth member on city council or youth updates during council meetings.

These actions help make city government more accessible and relevant to younger people in our community.

Amazing.

And as so many of us have uh heard tonight, data is really important, and we want to make sure that we have a data framework that really helps us in our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

So we want to make sure that we're uh creating a framework that allows us to see where we're at right now, track progress in the future, um, and show our residents all the progress that we're making.

Um we'd like to see some standardized DEI metrics with an annual report to council that of course would then be accessible to the community.

Uh we'd like to see an equity equity dashboard with workforce equity data, boards and commissions demographics, program participation and language access use, COVID procurement data, and service outcomes segmented by demographics.

We're also recommending that uh council adopt equity impact statements for major policy decisions.

Okay.

And of course, we want to make sure that our institutional capacity and policy alignment is in place.

This is about the systems and structures uh that we would need for long-term equity work.

These objectives include integrating equity into policies, procedures, training, and accountability structures with annual DEI training for staff and elected officials, conducting equity audits every three years, and making board and council service more accessible with things like child care or stipends.

Okay.

And of course, we want to make sure that we're expanding equity beyond programs and policy into access to essential resources and infrastructure.

This is a very broad and long-term goal.

But we'd like to see addressing housing and transportation barriers in our city, strengthening support for low-income residents, and creating emergency supports for vulnerable populations.

We have some action items for exploring pathways for renters and first-time buyers, as well as low-income residents to be able to find their grip here in the community.

Expanding public transit access within and out of Lake Oswego, improving walkability and bike safety, strengthening partnerships for food and basic needs support, and exploring creating a city resource reserve for emergency situations.

Well, with all that being said, um, you know, based on the scope and complexity of the recommended work, um, the DEI advisory board recommends engaging in an external consultant to develop a comprehensive equity plan.

So ideally the consultant would translate the board's recommendation into recommendations into actionable items and strategies, um, develop the metrics, uh, benchmarks and timelines for all these recommendations, assess staff capacity and organizational readiness, um, and finally align this plan um with the 2026 uh council equity goal.

Um so really the consultant would um create a plan that would ensure that the city can move forward strategically while respecting you know the current workload and also operational constraints.

All right, so before we move on to questions, I'd like to briefly share my experience and why this work matters from a youth perspective.

So, as a youth member on the DEI advisory board, I've seen firsthand how young people experience barriers differently, whether it comes to affordability and transportation or civic access and representation.

So these recommendations, especially especially those related to data, workflate workforce development, community representation and infrastructure, help make Lake Oswego a place where youth feel welcomed, connected, and able to participate.

Thank you so much for your time and for considering these recommendations as part of your 2026 goal setting.

We're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Perrin Gillian.

Um Vedant, you also serve on the Youth Leadership Council.

Yes, which is great in your first year.

It's good to have you in both these roles.

And Perrin, uh, you maybe you, if you I don't want to put you on the spot, but you share with us because you were also involved in the city as a youth, and now you are back as an adult.

So how did you first get involved in the city?

I was also first involved in the youth leadership council.

Yeah, okay.

My senior year of high school.

Um, and that experience was part of what led me to want to pursue uh political science uh in my college education and to come back to Lake Oswego afterwards.

That's very cool.

I mean, you're both great great examples of uh the increased kind of youth engagement we've seen in in the past years and really um you know um demonstrating exactly what we hope to get out of that is that uh youth that are become invested in the community and want to return after school and you know build a life here.

So anyway, it's great to have you in this sense role.

Thank you all for serving in your capacities on the advisory boards.

Okay, uh questions or comments, uh, Council Afghan, we'll start with you.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor.

Thank you for all of your recommendation and hard work.

I want to make sure that my comments are not taken in a negative way.

So I'm ready to sign the check on all of your recommendations and move forward because they all add value.

I want to challenge you a little.

When we talk about equity.

That directly ties into diversity, and that directly ties into inclusion.

So, how do we bring that to the center of our conversation?

When we look at the families who cannot live here in Lake Oswego.

How can we have diversity?

So we can have a population of people who come and work here and leave.

When we have families who don't have food on the table, and everybody has to go work to put food on the table.

How can we have diversity?

So what you have recommended makes a difference, and I love that.

But I also want to look at that next universe and say, how do we get there?

And here's an example.

My daughter is a nurse with six years of experience.

She works at the bone marrow transplant up at OHSU.

She makes good money.

She can afford living in Lake Oswego.

So how do we get this interesting, complicated, complex situation at rest, such that 10 years from now, 15 years from now, you guys are sitting over here and say, we did something 15 years ago that made a difference today.

Thank you for your hard work.

Thank you, Councillor Afghan.

Counselor.

No, yeah, I'm speaking as the liaison to the great commission.

I really think Gillian is doing a wonderful work in the city, doing this work.

Thank you, really.

It's uh it's a very difficult job because, like you say, um we just talked with uh uh the chamber about Lake Coswego and the perception of people, but it's also important to talk to people about the perception of DEI because when you say DEI, there's some stuff in people's brain that light up and that brings the negative, the division, and even a certain administration is like saying DEI should go.

And I'm just I am an educator, and I I'm not a small educator.

I taught for almost 40 years.

I have the highest degree in education also.

So when people, I just say, do we talk the same thing?

And that's when we always have to say what DEI is.

What is diversity, what is equity, what is inclusion.

Anyone, it's like you tell people, oh, you know, but it's it's a prohibited to breathe air.

There's no air.

No, the equity is important.

There is any society should have those things of diversity.

Diversity can happen even in the highest place of the world where a square foot is almost 20,000 dollars.

So we can have diversity in here.

There's economic diversity.

That's one thing of diversity economically.

We can have racial diversity, we can have gender diversity, every diversity is large.

And each one of them can happen in Lake Oswego.

We are building affordable housing in Lake Coswego.

People forget that 100 units out there that we visited, you and I, and you know, people are living there.

They cannot afford to buy a one million dollar home, but they're in the community.

They're we are building on Boone's face, some other things.

So even in that economic diversity, it's happening.

Lake Oswego is doing great work, and we it should not us, even before us.

There were affordable housing in Lake Coswego.

I saw him, you know, there are some I was even here on State Street.

So that's what diversity is, equity.

All society has to have some equitable way of uh doing you.

I cannot be treated the same way as a 96-year-old gentleman who came here.

He has all his senses, but we can't, but he plays music.

Are we gonna say those people cannot be in here?

We need those people here, we need those age.

And how do we build equitable society and communities is to allow to build things where he can walk without being hurt by a car or another thing?

Those are in equity, it's all those are expensive, but that's what makes a society a good society.

And inclusion is that too.

We have to build inclusive societies.

We cannot have the city hall without why do we have the elevator?

Because we want someone who is a wheelchair to come here before they were building.

This is it.

You couldn't have you have a wheelchair, it's your problem.

I said that at Lake Ridge in one of your rooms, a person with a wheelchair cannot go there.

It's not fair.

It's the things, and that's why I think the work you are doing is wonderful.

And all I I am there.

Megan came talk to you about things.

And the good things is you are asking the good questions, and you want this community to move forward.

Everyone, all the people who are in that committee, that you do that's why I'm very proud to live in Lake Cosigo.

And you are doing a wonderful work.

I just wanted to share those.

I am with them.

I am the voice saying, oh, if you ask council, then they will say no.

Like when they say something that's budget, I say, no, we have a budget.

They have things we cannot do.

And yeah, but they still have it here.

It's a good, it's wonderful.

But I just want you to say that every time that DEI is a necessity for us to move forward for us to be more humane and more progressive society.

That's how we should go.

And that's what you're doing.

Thank you very much for your work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Booth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think the recommendations are great and very helpful as we go into goal setting.

You know, would be it would be it was, I guess it was kind of outlined in the report.

There's some things that clear we have the capacity here to do in the city, and other things are just kind of outside our capacity.

We want to engage someone else to help us with.

And I see a lot of this kind of communications-related stuff, which has been a topic of discussion on the council in general.

Like, how do we get information out to the community?

Um, what information are we sharing with the community?

All those things are like very important.

I think there's a lot of room for improvement in the way we communicate with the community, and even just recently with um, you know, cuts to social services, be like, wait, what are the resources that are available?

How do we let residents know about that?

I mean, to the city's credit, we'll say it was a nice little thing on the front of the hello, hello hello, talking about social services available, which was great to see.

And um, but we could do um uh uh a better job really integrating um these these services that really speak to kind of the the um a part of the framework here providing resources to ensure you know equity and building equitable infrastructure, um you know, weaving uh improving our our communication.

Um I think one of the great things about the youth engagement too is not only just engaging the youth perspective and the youth voice, but it's your families, you know, it's like that has been a big um uh side benefit of the youth engagement, is then getting to engage with the families of the youth who are the ones we have the most, some of the most challenge engaging with, because you know, it's folks working age kids, obviously, and so you know, not coming necessarily to the council meetings or dialed in um in the same ways as other community members.

So um there's there's a kind of uh mushrooming benefits of of all of this work that just make the community a better place for everyone.

And you know, I think with our with whether it's the workforce here in the city or folks, we want really everyone like within our city team and within our community to have access to good benefits, whether it's mentorship, whether whatever it is.

We want everyone on on uh within the community and uh here on the city team to feel like it's for them, you know, that like we are here for them, not just for certain people or others, but like it's you know, something for everyone, you know, and that's I think goes a long way in keeping people really engaged with the importance of this work and um and believing in it and and everyone feeling because everyone should feel the benefits, everyone should feel the benefits.

Um so I think it would be helpful to better understand like what exactly what could we be doing, what are those, and and it's it's good the way you outlined it because we have good short-term things, medium and long-term.

What can we do within our capacity here at the city now to better communicate, whether that's just with residents at large, whether that's um in newsletters.

I love the, you know, well, even the training, you know.

So we've talked about training recently here because when we adopted the uh fair housing uh policy, uh uh amendment to the comprehensive plan.

We talked about bringing that training to some of our boards and commissions, and I will say, like, it has been, and again, credit to the community groups.

We have, you know, represented here in the crowd tonight, respond to racism, LOSN, LO for Love, the Watershed Council.

Like when we have had difficult, these questions around access to housing and access to services in town.

It has been thanks to those groups whose members have come and testified in favor of these things that we have been able to have the political support to pass them.

Otherwise, I really feel like it would have just been folks opposed, you know.

And that is a recent change.

So work that we can do to help build more community capacity, whether it's around housing, whether it's around transportation, is really important.

And the city, I think, has done a great job.

This council will give you all credit in supporting, you know, these um in supporting these groups, the grants and other efforts.

Um, and I hope that we will continue uh to do that because it is um important work that you all are doing.

Again, like Telsa Vertic said with the survey.

I mean, we don't, it's not just one or two people.

I mean, this really is a big community, um, everything that we do is a big community effort.

And we just have to make sure that people, a lot of it is just access to information.

You know, people have to know what is is going on, what's coming down, what's in the pipeline, you know, knowing when to be places, how to engage, and and and and all of that.

So I really like the list.

I think this is really helpful.

Um, because we were at that point where okay, we've accomplished many, many of the objectives on that task force from way back when, and now it is time to just refresh the information that we have, refresh a look at what is the city doing so residents understand you know the value they're getting for the investments that that we're making and how it's benefiting them, how it's making the community stronger, more resilient.

Um then looking at now where do we go, you know, um in in the next year or two, three, you know, five years.

And you know, the data is important for sure.

You know, we love the data, right?

Yes, Council Winner loves the data.

So any further questions?

Okay, okay.

Thank you all, really, for the good work.

We really appreciate it.

Great report.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Final study session of the night.

We're gonna talk about uh our council goal around gas-powered landscaping equipment.

We have a sustainability program manager, Amanda Watson.

Interim Parks Director, Jeff Monroe.

Thank you.

Good evening to you both.

Good evening, councilor, council, mayor.

Um good to see you all.

Um, my name is Amanda Watson.

I'm the city's sustainability program manager, and I am here with Jeff Monroe, our interim parks director, um, to give an update on the city council goal on gas-powered landscaping equipment.

Um if I work it here, is it still gonna show up there?

I'm not sure if we're on the right screen.

Um so as a reminder, um, the language of the adopted um city council goal for this year is was to develop an operational plan, potential code options, and a communication strategy to phase out the use of gas-powered yard and lawn care equipment in Lake Oswego after the city of Portland's ban goes into effect.

This project should have a two-year time frame.

So this is sort of a halfway update.

Um and then also a reminder that we actually have a goal in our um the city's 2020 climate sustainability and climate action plan that relates to this work as well.

So, under um our broad strategy of reducing um air toxins, reducing exposure to toxins generally, um, we do have a goal that to investigate strategies to reduce exposure to emissions from gas-powered lawn equipment and diesel construction equipment.

So, this is looking at part of that.

So, I just wanted to start um with a little bit of grounding of why do why are we focusing on this issue?

Why do we care?

Why is this important?

And you did heard some great community testimony on this at the beginning of the presentation or the meeting this evening as well.

Um, but the long story short is that gas-powered lawn equipment um produces significant air pollution that is harmful to both human health and the environment.

Um and so, as you again, as you heard from um Mark Coleman earlier, most lawn equipment is um powered by inefficient two-stroke engines that mix oil and gas.

And so oil and gas are fossil fuels, as you know.

So, lawn equipment does contribute to carbon dioxide emissions that are a driver of global warming.

Um, you know, in terms of overall US um carbon dioxide emissions or greenhouse gas emissions, rather, um, lawn equipment in 2020, where we have the the latest national data, it was only um 0.45% of UFS emissions, but that still is, you know, it's still a significant.

We're still um still use of fossil fuels that we will need to phase out of our community um to meet our our carbon neutrality goals.

Um, more significant is the contribution of this equipment to smog farming pollution and to um harmful air pollution.

So smog farming pollution um is what we call ozone that is harmful both to human health and the environment.

Um, some of the um types of pollutants that um landscape gas-powered landscaping equipment produces through these two-stroke engines are hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, um, including benzene for malady formaldehyde and um butadine, which are all um carcinogens, um, nitrous oxide, and carbon monoxide.

So again, these contribute to environmental air pollution, but also are toxic to human health, and some of those risks are increasing.

Sorry.

For the car side, yes, car, truck.

That's kind of what you're comparing it to, or like any other car, like uh like gasoline engine.

That's uh kind of a standard um, so I would say it's more your sing your passenger car, so not necessarily the biggest, like a because I just saw the thing at the bottom of my graphic illustrating small phone, which I was wondering if you're comparing it to small off-road engines.

Uh it's the comparison there is with um, so smaller off-road engines are um that's how um the California Air Resources Board categorizes landscape equipment.

So we're comparing those with um your average kind of passenger vehicle.

And this study was done in 2021.

So obviously those emission standards change over time, but that's a great kind of just comparison of um in particular that that's talking about air pollution, smog forming pollution for the ozone.

The lawnmower or leaf blowers could categorize that as small off-road engines.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

What other engines would that be?

Um other types of small off-road engines.

It could be like a generator, um, you know, other types of power tools, um, a chainsaw, you know, anything that's not um power sprayer or something like that.

Yeah, anything that's not a vehicle, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for the clarification question.

Um, where was I?

Um, oh, so again, uh landscaping.

So there's a lot of kind of human health impacts to the pollution from this equipment, and landscaping workers who operate the equipment are particularly vulnerable, right?

Because they're using this for multiple hours a day.

Um, they are kind of especially at risk for health impacts from um air pollution from landscaping equipment.

But other folks in our community who are more vulnerable to this are children, right?

Who are you know developing lungs, as well as people who are pregnant who have pre-existing respiratory health problems.

So those are the types of kind of members of our community that are most impacted by the use of gas-powered landscaping equipment.

Um, you know, the last piece up here is noise.

Um again, you heard some comments about um the impacts of noise on our community.

Um, gas-powered landscaping equipment produces really high decibel and low frequency noise, so it's both very loud, but because of that low frequency, it also travels long distances and can penetrate walls and buildings.

And I know you all had really interesting um kind of primer on um sound and caring in that pickleball conversation, you know, kind of in previous years.

So I know you're familiar with how sound can travel and impact folks.

And so um noise pollution does have health impacts, um, including increased risk of hearing loss, heart attack, high blood pressure, and stroke, but it also impacts quality of life, right?

So we have folks working from home, um studying in buildings or working in buildings that are still impacted by the um noise that can carry through walls.

So kind of just a summary of you know, these are the impacts, and this is why we're we're looking into this issue and wanting to reduce the impacts of gas-powered landscaping equipment on our community.

Um, some of the alternatives, as I think you're familiar to gas-powered landscaping equipment include electric equipment, so both corded electric equipment that you plug in, and then more modern tools like battery electric equipment as well as hand tools.

Um, you know, as part of this work in this first year of the policy, um, is that we looked into how other cities are taking action to reduce the impacts of gas-powered landscaping equipment.

And a port, according to the public um interest research group, there are over 100 or 200 um laws or programs that have been passed by different local governments, local governments, state governments, as well as utilities that support a shift away from gas-powered landscaping equipment to other alternatives.

And these include um laws restricting the use or sale of equipment as well as financial incentive programs that support the transition away from that equipment.

Um, some of the key ways that different regulations vary are on scope and enforcement.

Um policy scope can vary in terms of the types of equipment that are covered by a policy.

So many of the policies that we looked at in other jurisdictions really focused on leaf blowers, and that was kind of the some of the highest impact when you look at noise of equipment, leaf blowers tend to be one of the kind of biggest sources of that because they're used for longer, they're more, they're louder.

Um there's also policies varied on um sort of the the scope of the um policy in terms of being an outright ban versus having seasonal equipment on seasonal restrictions on equipment use um or having time of day or week restrictions.

So we saw jurisdictions that um you know say you can only use landscaping equipment certain hours of the day during the week, and that may vary on the weekends, commonly you know, would be allowed even less or not at all on Sundays and holidays, for example.

And then there was differences in scope in terms of the kind of timeline for a phase out towards a ban or towards restrictions.

So some cities had policies where public agencies would have to transition first, kind of lead the way, or it might start with a ban on or restrictions on use for public agencies and residents, and then phasing in commercial use later on.

So kind of a lot of different variation in the scope of these policies that we're seeing across the United States.

Another key variation or kind of actually keep a key point of these policies or policy design question is around enforcement.

And so there's some variation in kind of who's held responsible for equipment use, particularly whether or not it's the homeowner or property owner that's responsible, or landscaping companies themselves.

Most commonly it was the property owners, and but we did see some cities that designed a policy that looked at enforcing against equipment operators, so landscaping companies, regardless of where they're operating.

There's also variation in terms of whether or not cities dedicate specific enforcement resources towards their policy and the types of resources that they have.

So again, most commonly cities are relying on existing code enforcement resources, but sometimes they would have PD was also helping to police department, sort of non-emergency lines or public work staff would be helping investigate and kind of respond to complaints about violations.

Again, so yes, different processes for reporting and investigating violations, most commonly complaint-based systems, and then some variation in fines.

A lot of cities, I will say, had kind of education first or multiple warnings before fines, but many cities that do have regulations and restrictions have established fines for violations.

And then the other kind of other thing that we looked into in evaluating what other cities are doing is financial incentive programs.

So it's fairly common that cities, states, or utilities develop financial incentive programs to help offset the cost of buying new electric equipment in particular because there's a higher upfront cost for electric compared with traditional gas equipment.

And these programs vary in terms of who they're available to.

Some cities would have programs for residents, cities and utilities actually, some for commercial landscapers, others for both.

And then there's a lot of variation in terms of the amount of incentives available, ranging from you know 100 per applicant up to 25,000 for kind of a commercial business.

And then again, different processes for stakeholders to access those incentives, a rebater voucher program, a reimbursement program, or equipment recycling.

And actually in 2022, the city of Lake Oswego we actually partnered with PGE to host a tool exchange for folks to bring in their gas-powered equipment and trade it for a new electric version at a discounted rate.

We worked with PGE at our sustainability resource fair.

They unfortunately discontinued that program, but it was really popular, and so we had a little bit of a test case of that here in Lake Oswego.

So there's just kind of a broad overview of the different types of, I think policy levers and approaches we're seeing across the country in terms of regulating use of gas-powered equipment.

I wanted to next focus on Portland because your goal again called out the fact that the city of Portland has an ordinance that they adopted, and that we want to learn from their experience there.

So I wanted to give a kind of high-level overview of that.

So this is the timeline of Portland's policy development process.

They passed their ordinance in 2024.

And the first year, 2025, they focused on kind of some education, but primarily they worked with Maltanima County to have an uh incentive program to support small businesses to phase out or to switch from gas to electric leaf blowers.

And so when we talk about kind of policy design, Portland's policy focused just on leaf blowers, so not other types of landscaping equipment.

It was more narrowly focused because that was what people were most concerned about in the community and feedback that they received from the industry was that leaflowers were more difficult to electrify than other types of equipment.

And so Multnomah County's incentive program ran last year and they supported I don't have this on this slide, but I will get to that later.

I think they supported 35 businesses.

Yeah, something about 35 businesses, and they spent a little over 200,000 of funds that they had available for that.

So Portland's policy actually starts to go into effect this coming January, January 1st, 2026.

And for the first two years, they have a seasonal ban on use.

So gas powered leaf blowers are prohibited from January 1 to September 30th of the year, but they are allowed between October and the end of December during that wet leaf season.

Is that heavy wet leaves were difficult for folks to handle without the gas powered equipment in particular for leaf blowers.

And then Portland's policy January 1 of 2028, that seasonal seasonal allowance goes away, and gas powered leaf blowers are prohibited year round.

So again, it was a leaf blower only ban, starting with a seasonal ban.

The enforcement piece here, Portland's policy has the property owner be responsible for equipment use.

So they're saying whether or not if you're using your own equipment or if you're hiring a landscaper, that property owner is responsible for the equipment that's that is used on their property.

So that's kind of a more efficient uh enforcement process for them.

And they have not dedicated additional resources at this time to implement the policy.

They're going to be using their existing code enforcement resources and a complaint-based process and an education first approach.

So right now they actually have administrative rules out for public comment, so we don't know how they might change.

But Portland is proposing that for the first two years of their ordinance, so 2026 through the end of 2027, they won't issue any fines.

They will just start with the kind of warning letters and then escalating to a letter of violation if people do not respond to the initial ones, but they are planning to not, or at least proposing to not issue fines until starting in 2028.

And there's that information about the incentive program.

So the incentive program that ran last year did support 35 small businesses to purchase almost 100 electric leaf blowers.

And then new information from last week actually is that the uh Portland's Portland Clean Energy Fund program.

Um, so this uh you know funds uh community-based projects, um, just awarded a million dollar grant um to the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center to support incentives for small landscape contractors to switch to electric leaf blowers.

Um this is I think you know great news in terms of supporting more businesses in Portland to comply with the ordinance.

Um and I know one thing that we you know talked about in the Sustainability Advisory Board about this work is the hope that you know, as Portland transitions, that that's also gonna have impacts on our community because a lot of the landscape companies that operate in Portland also operate here.

So that I think is good news for us, right?

That there's more funding that's gonna support that transition in Portland thanks to the Portland Clean Energy Fund.

So just switching gears, that's that was kind of what do we see in other communities.

But let's look at what are we doing here already?

Um and so you know, several of several of our city departments own uh landscaping equipment.

We also contract for landscaping services for city properties.

Um in general, we're primarily using battery electric equipment, but we still do have and still use gas-powered equipment for certain purposes.

Um I'll give a quick overview of public works in the fire department, and then I'll turn it over to Jeff for a deep dive on parks.

Um Public Works uses landscaping equipment for beautification, um, street maintenance, and for maintaining landscaping at the water treatment plant.

Um the beautification program uses all electric equipment, and they contract, they have two contracts for maintaining properties in the right of way, and those are both all electric, um, which is is great.

And actually, the the first one in 2021 to storm helped storm landscaping to transition a couple crews to work on city properties.

So they they were using all gas, and then um the city's contract helped them to transition to electric services there.

Um, the water treatment plant um has uh just a couple of pieces of equipment, um one gas-powered blower and one gas-powered weed eater that they each use just a couple times per year, so pretty minimal, but an opportunity there to transition.

And then the streets crew mainly uses gas-powered tools, but they do have an electric blower and chainsaw that they use occasionally as well.

The fire department uses equipment to maintain the landscaping at their stations, and actually last year, uh over the course of last year, they transitioned all of their equipment from gas to electric.

They still do own some gas equipment, and they have found that particularly in the fall, um, they've needed to use that to help kind of with the heavier wet leaves.

Um, but they they kind of did uh replace all of the tools that they have one for one with um electric as well and use that for the majority of the work.

Um they've also converted some of their emergency response equipment to um electric, so we're kind of moving beyond landscaping, but they're looking at other opportunities to move away from fossil fuels in their operations, which is fantastic.

Um and I'll turn it over to Jeff now.

Thanks, Mandah.

Thank you.

Mayor City Councilors, uh, I will give you a quick uh quick overview of what we're doing in Parks and Rec.

Most of the equipment's being used in parks, uh, but we do have some in some of our other facilities.

Uh we've been doing this for six years now, and we've been slowly integrating all this stuff in uh based on availability of equipment and budget.

Uh since we have 32 electric tools, 10 blowers, we actually have 12 of those now because we have one up at the Lorac and we have one at the Adult Community Center, uh hedge trimmers, electric string trimmers, which we found out that staff actually really like those a lot more than they do the gas powered ones.

Uh uh chainsaws, uh, pole saws is the same, push mowers.

We have uh four electric riding mowers, and one of them is one of the greens mowers up at the golf course.

And then we have uh with this group we have 21 batteries and battery chargers.

Uh the apartment also has uh three electric in-park vehicles, and we have four electric trucks, three of which are on their way, but keep getting delayed a little bit, but they're they're ordered.

Uh, and then we uh just recently installed uh four EV charging stations out at the public works facility.

Um we have found out a few things in comparison between the the electric and the the gas powered uh electric is more expensive, the equipment, and these this is mainly probably leans towards the leaf blowers.

Uh the weight is uh much heavier, uh shorter runtimes, and it doesn't actually have as much uh blowing power as the other ones.

And this again is stuff that we've experimented with over the last six years.

And Amanda spoke earlier about City of Portland.

Uh, we found out during leaf drop season that the gas powered blowers uh allow us to be able to clean our pathways so there's a little they're they're safer to walk on.

Uh if we have a storm event, uh a good example is we had little storm on Thanksgiving evening.

Uh we looked at the cameras of Millennium Park uh the following morning before tree lighting, and we uh we uh decided that we needed to clean it up because it didn't really hold up to our our standards, and so we brought in four people.

Uh I personally used an electric blower for about a half hour and wasn't making a lot of headway because the needles were so wet.

Um and then we we were able to clean the rest of it up with gas powered blowers, but that's just an example of we will use the electric blowers, but there's just times that we need that extra power to get it cleaned up to meet our timelines.

And this is just kind of a comparison.

Uh I'll do the first and the third, well, be actually the second and the fourth column.

Uh the gas-powered steel BR 800 uh versus the still BGA 300, which is an electric one.

Uh, you can see the blowing force.

Well, first of all, the cost, a little bit difference in cost.

Uh battery replacement for those are about 500 each.

Uh the blowing force uh is 41 to 26, air volume, uh 912 to 571.

Um, and then the runtime is 82 minutes, and the boost mode is basically on full speed, which is what we normally do when we're blowing uh anyhow, so it's about one hour.

Uh it takes about two and a half to three hours to recharge one battery.

Uh a lot of times we'll have a backup battery, so we can go for another hour, uh, but then we're that's about it.

And then we're we're kind of done with the day uh on the electric blowers.

Uh we can go ahead and refill the gas blower and keep going during during the leave season.

Uh the weight, uh 25.8 pounds for the gas blower, 37.9.

So that's 12-pound difference.

Uh and if any of you just had uh Thanksgiving dinner and you bought a Costco ham, they're about 12 pounds, and so that's the difference.

If you pick one of those up, that's that's quite a quite a bit of weight extra to put on some of our staff that's uh that's a little slider build.

Uh noise level though, like the electric ones are uh definitely are quieter, have a little different pitch to them, but they definitely are quieter, and then they obviously they don't emit uh pollution.

So the other kind of piece of the project that we've been working on this year, in addition to learning from other cities and from our own operations and experience of folks like Jeff and his team, is that we conducted stakeholder outreach and sought input from the public to help inform this potential policy options and program options to phase out use of gas-powered landscaping equipment in Lake Oswego.

So one of the things that we did was we developed working with the Sustainability Advisory Board, developed a landscape equipment survey for residents and property owners and for commercial landscapers.

Two surveys that are more or less the same, but you know, a couple questions that differed based on the audience.

We also incorporated a couple of questions about this policy topic, potential policy area at your direction in the community survey.

And so I have results from that, you know, the same community survey that you heard from Madison about earlier this evening.

We also held a landscaper focus group to follow up on the some of the responses from the initial survey that we did.

And then we conducted direct um outreach, in particular to large property owners, kind of large commercial property owners in Lake Oswego, like the you know Oswego Lake Country Club, the Lake Oswego School District, Bountain Park HOA to understand kind of their experience with landscaping equipment and their thoughts on the transition as well.

And the sustainability advisory board also invited the city's contractor store in landscaping to talk to them about their experience with equipment, as well as a representative from the equipment manufacturer steel to learn about the equipment itself and kind of ask all the questions they had about that.

So our landscape equipment survey, this was not unlike the community survey, not a statistically representative one, but it was a very popular one.

We got a lot of great uh a lot of responses, which was fantastic.

So it was open from May to September of this year.

Um we had 397 responses to the survey for residents and property owners.

Um the majority of respondents perform their own landscaping, but we also got input from folks who hire landscaping services or who have their HOA or property manager do landscaping on their behalf.

Um good kind of variety of perspectives.

And then we got 23 responses to the survey for landscapers, which was not as good as you know, we'd hoped, but actually much better than when we first did the sort of a similar version of the survey in 2022 before the city council had adopted a goal.

Um, this was a more targeted, like uh focused questions in the survey, and but we only heard from five companies that last time.

So we got we reached more people, where we are happy about that.

Um, what did we hear?

Um, one of the key findings is that respondents to this survey who do their own landscaping, they mostly use electric equipment, right?

So we're seeing homeowners that may just have one or two pieces of equipment at home is primarily electric.

We got some good input on the different types of equipment that folks are using, and this will help, you know, if and when we get to that stage of deciding like what the scope looks like, right?

Um, what types of equipment we want to include in lawn equipment.

Um we have some more data on on what different types of equipment folks are using beyond just leaf blowers and mowers.

Um we found that most people who hire a landscaping company have a landscaper that uses gas equipment.

So we're seeing that landscaping companies that operate in Lake Oswego, you know, primarily are using gas.

There are companies that do provide battery electric or electric only services, and some people use a mix, but the majority in terms of the responses that we got had landscapers using gas equipment.

This finding was also the same for folks who had an HOA or property manager doing their landscaping.

The majority of those people had gas equipment that was used on their property.

Um we asked a question to both groups about what were barriers or perceived barriers for folks who used gas equipment, what were the barriers to transition to electric equipment?

Um, and uh there was a lot of commonalities between um you know the residents and um companies, uh landscape businesses.

Um both um the most common answers were the cost of equipment and batteries, right?

The upfront cost of electric equipment being more expensive than gas.

Um concerns about the equipment performance, so the kind of the power of equipment, how long the batteries will last during the workday per charge, and how long until those batteries will need to be replaced.

Um there were some concerns that were then uh specific to residents or to the landscaping industry.

For example, landscapers were concerned about the ability to recharge between jobs, right?

You kind of heard this from Jeff as well.

Um it takes time to recharge those batteries if you need to use a piece of equipment all day.

They were concerned about needing to recharge between, and then increased labor costs, um, and that speaks to the performance of equipment, right?

If equipment doesn't perform as well, there were some concern about increased labor costs of taking longer to do the same work.

We then asked the flip side of the question for folks who use electric equipment.

Why are they motivated to do so?

And again, we saw really similar answers from the both the landscaper and the resident group, primarily, you know, kind of across the board, environmental and health concerns associated with gas equipment were what motivated people, but also an ease of maintenance with electric equipment compared with gas, cost savings from reduced use of fuel.

And then the kind of bottom goes from most common answer to least.

Yes, clarification question.

Quick one on when you did the survey.

Did respondents self-identify as currently using either gas or electric?

And same thing for the landscape companies.

Yes, we said if you if you already use it, yeah, you can identify.

So this is of folks who use it.

Um this is the reasons why they're motivated to use electricity.

These are people who already do electric.

Yeah, exactly.

These are the reasons why they, yeah.

Thanks for the clarification.

Um and then actually a lot of people, we should have had this in our answers, clearly our options, but a lot of people wrote in to say that um less noise is a is a primary reason as well for them to use electric rather than gas equipment.

Um both our survey but also the outreach we did, so kind of one-on-one conversations and the small groups, small group interviews, um, had some interesting findings.

And one of the key ones was that transitioning to electric equipment poses different challenges for landscaping companies and managers of large commercial properties than it does for residents.

Um, and really what we found is that for residents, it can be a little bit more.

You can you have you know, a leaf blower and maybe a lawnmower, maybe a weed whacker at home.

And you can go to Home Depot or another business and you can just buy an electric version if it's within your budget.

And I don't want to downplay that.

You know, there's there's obviously a budgetary thing.

Um but for the large commercial property owners and for um landscaping businesses, it's not a one-to-one switch, right?

It actually requires more than just one piece of equipment.

Um, often folks have to have backup batteries, right?

Um, to to be able to get through a full workday or cover their amount of their landscape they have to maintain.

Um, and they have to have a charging system, right?

So they may need a way to charge on the go, um, or they may need to um figure out a way to kind of uh provide for multiple chargers in kind of wherever their home base is.

Um yeah, yeah.

I mean, some businesses were able to kind of have a mobile charging system on an electric vehicle or something, for example.

That was very limited for the most part.

Folks were saying they'd be bringing out um extra batteries with them or you know, were and and charging them.

Yeah, I mean, that would be an option too.

I didn't hear specifically, but yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So that was that was more for.

Oh, sorry.

That was frequently cited as a as a constraint, right?

That like folks didn't have a good option to charge on the go, and so you'd have to have extra batteries.

Um, you know, the upfront cost and of the equipment and equipment performance were uh the primary concerns that we heard in our outreach to stakeholders.

Um you know, in terms of the equipment performance, that's both you know the the types of the job, but it's also maintaining um, you know, maintaining the standards, right?

So you might say that um for parks, for example, they need to have performance, they need to make sure that trails and pathways are safe.

For other businesses like the country club or like landscaping um businesses, they're needing to um maintain a certain kind of level of standards for their clients.

So there's kind of different reasons why performance matters.

Um the other challenge, you know, related to the batteries and charging system.

Um electrical infrastructure upgrades are sometimes needed for businesses to be able to transition their entire kind of uh warehouse of equipment to electric, right?

If you need to charge 12 batteries or or more overnight, um, they might need to have more electrical capacity to their building, and that can be very expensive.

Um, our the city's landscape contractor spent you know several thousand dollars to upgrade their electrical infrastructure to be able to charge enough for their equipment.

Um the other um, so again, it's not a one-for-one um kind of swap out.

It requires also different kind of training of staff and maybe needing to adjust operating procedures on how to use electric equipment effectively, right?

So that you're not wearing, uh you're not um draining the battery um too much, or um you know, you're maintaining equipment to get the optimal performance out of it.

Um we also heard through our our outreach that some tools are easier to transition to electric versions than others.

Um in particular, something like a weed whacker or an edger was much easier for folks than a leaf blower or a riding mower, leaf blowers in particular because of that performance difference in the electric to the gas version.

We heard that you know, weed whackers, edgers, some of the smaller handheld battery-powered equipment was more or less comparable in power to the gas version, but leaf blowers, there was a power difference, and then something like a riding mower because the cost of the electric version is often much, much higher even compared to some other types of electric and gas equipment.

Um the other um the other survey that we we learned from for this project was our community survey.

And we included two questions in the community survey that related to this project and the city council goal.

And the first one was um whether or not respondents um supported the use, uh supported the city of Lake Oswego adopting regulations that would phase the phase out the use of gas-powered yard and lawn care equipment.

Um and as you can see, um 55% of respondents responded yes to this question, indicated they would support the city adopting regulations, and 45% said that they would not support regulations.

So you've got a slight uh slight benefit in terms of the the yes, but it is it is mixed.

Um we excluded the don't know, and so this is the kind of showing those folks.

Um, the second question that we asked um, we asked the extent to which respondents supported potential actions that the city could take to support that transition away from gas-powered landscaping equipment.

Um, and in these responses, residents slightly preferred educational efforts and financial incentive programs over regulations to ban or limit the use of equipment.

Um62% of residents would strongly support or support the city providing opportunities for residents and businesses to learn about alternatives to gas-powered equipment.

Um, that's at the top there.

Um 56% of residents would support providing city funded financial incentives to support small landscaping businesses to switch to battery electric equipment.

However, slightly less, so only 51% would support doing the same for residents.

Um, and so the city's uh consultant for this uh the survey in their kind of findings report, they recommended that the city should continue to gauge support for this item and continue to provide information to residents as in response to these findings, which I think are helpful as as we think about potential options a city could take to respond to this.

All right, so um as I mentioned in the beginning, this is you know was a two-year city council goal, and so um the first phase really learned about understanding sort of the landscape of landscaping, right?

Um what are the practices here in Lake Oswego?

What do residents um care about?

Um, how would this uh how does this goal impact um large commercial property owners, residents, landscaping businesses in Lake Oswego?

And then what can we learn from our practices here at the city and from what other cities are doing?

Um and so based on that, um, you know, kind of some recommended next steps would be to continue outreach and engagement with those landscapers and large commercial property owners in particular, um, and to um monitor what happens next with Portland's ordinance as implementation starts in 2026 to help inform that next phase of the work, which is the development of policy options, right?

So we want to understand how how could the city potentially want to approach questions of the policy scope, right?

Enforcement and whether or not we have a financial incentive program, which is something the sustainability advisory board has recommended to be a part of an equitable approach to this work.

Um, and so again, kind of uh continuing that outreach engagement, particularly around those challenges that the outreach identified so far that are that are unique to kind of commercial property owners and businesses.

Um second recommendation would be to continue an educational campaign on the health risks associated with gas-powered landscaping equipment and the alternatives, right?

Like electrical equipment, hand tools, leaving the leaves, um, focusing on actions that residents can take to help support that transition to a more sustainable landscaping practices.

Um, for example, residents can purchase electric tools if they do their own landscaping, they can talk to their landscaper about switching or seek out an all-electric service.

You know, there's a lot of things that residents can do.

Um, and and we know that there are a lot of people in our community that care about this issue, and so providing that information to help people understand what their options are while we continue to work on policy development at the city.

Um, the landscape equipment survey also revealed some interesting questions that folks had or kind of potential concerns, such as um whether or not you know electric equipment really is more environmentally friendly than gas equipment, and so education can help to provide information in response to those common questions.

And so education can help to provide information in response to those common questions.

Um and then finally, we can continue to lead by example through phasing out use of gas-powered equipment in city landscaping.

Um, and this could look like parks and recreation, you know, public works and fire departments collaborating on developing that operational plan, right?

That's part of the goal.

So maybe a standardized list of of recommended tools or and or budget needs in preparation for our next biennial budget.

So understanding, you know, um kind of working through those common challenges that we know we still have at the city and figuring out how can we do this to help inform how the community can do it as well.

Thank you.

And please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you.

And uh Jeff, thank you very much.

And uh thank you as well to LOSN for the uh the campaign, not just only the the gas, I don't want to say right, the gas-free, you know, the science, yeah, the gas-free landscaping signs.

I mean, I see those in people's yards.

I mean, that's a great educational effort.

And then of course, working with the city, the grant that we provided on continuing the educational outreach is is huge, you know, and makes a big uh difference and is really helping us to raise awareness here of these questions.

I just I want to ask, is there have have we uh I have had to think like there are so many landscaping companies that work within our city?

And I'm looking at the cost per per blower of the other grant that Mulnoma County did, which works out about 2400 bucks a blower, and and now the larger grant from the Clean Energy Fund have if I would imagine that many of the companies that work here work in adjacent cities, work in Portland, and that that I would think that the city of Portland, if they knew that we were venturing down this path along with them, might, you know, because we do not have access to the same large clean energy fund that they do.

Although I also imagine that that is, I mean, we know that it's large retailers that pay into the clean energy fund, and I mean that is region-wide money, you know, coming into that pot.

That's not just city of Portland taxpayers, right?

These are big businesses and their consumers are throughout the region, you know, um, paying into that.

If they would partner with us to help kind of like in where we could work with this large, we must have the, I really think we have the largest concentration of landscapers like per capita.

I I don't know that for sure, but I mean, this is why it is such a big issue.

I mean, it's gotta be probably a good assumption, and that you know, we could really help portally, because I mean, that is, and I don't know what their outreach has been like in Portland.

I mean, when they help 35 businesses, I mean, that is nothing.

You know, that is nothing.

You know, it just in our little town, there's gonna be many hundreds, many hundreds working.

Um, I don't know what other outreach they have been doing, but that's you know, the big fear is that people feel like the rug's been pulled out from underneath them.

And even after years of all of us, you know, all of us knowing about it, you go out and landscapers are like, what the heck is this, right?

Because they don't read the hello low, you know.

I mean, they don't get the lowdown.

So I mean, I mean, that is what's gonna happen.

So and I think what we have seen is that challenge.

They might read my own newsletter.

I think that's the challenge we have seen in other communities that uh nationwide that have implemented this is and you know, um, I know that Amanda, you did research and I did some of my own research to dig into the local news in these communities that it has created a lot of local tension, you know, pitting neighbor against neighbor and neighbor against worker because you know, folks are really unaware, and it creates that kind of neighborhood conflict that I know um, you know, we we want to avoid here.

And um and then, of course, you know, in in light of what's going on nationwide with with the heavy-handed immigration uh enforcement, there are some communities who are rolling back and pausing, you know, enforcement of it because neighbors are also calling immigration now on folks who are using.

So I know that no one wants you know that to be taking place here.

So the the what we do know is that you know, the harms from this, the equipment is great, you know.

This is like the indoor smoking.

I mean, in a way, like we know it's bad, we know it's bad.

And you know, that was a big thing too.

We remember when I mean when we went away from the indoor smoking, you know, in my industry and bars and restaurants.

I mean, everyone thought it was like existential threat.

Like, how are we gonna survive?

You know, how are we going to survive the indoors?

Like it's gonna be it.

No one's gonna go out anymore if they can't smoke indoors.

And obviously that was not the case.

And I remember like we pulled that band-aid off, you know.

My obviously young, younger kid at the time.

Um, and you know, my family pulled that band-aid off uh ahead of the regulations coming into effect, and and it was just better, you know, all around for everyone.

But it was a lot of uncertainty.

You just didn't know.

And so I can totally understand where these businesses are coming from, and they do have an upfront cost, you know, it didn't cost anything up front to not allow smoking.

Um but uh but but but the obviously that that financial concern was there.

So I think the the harms to this are unquestionable, but the questions is like how we roll it out in a way that is fair and how we communicate with all these many, many, many small businesses that we know are just not, I mean, how we even do that.

Um, but that's why I I really like the approach you outlined here, because we can approach people with these incentives.

Like if we're able, because I mean, where are we gonna even find the amount of money that would be needed to make a dent?

I mean, it's we don't have it.

We just, I mean, that's we could do a little something, but I mean, 10 blowers, I mean, you know, so but partnering with our wonderful neighbor to the north with their large pocket and maybe leveraging some of our uh our residents and connections with the landscapers.

I mean, I think would be a great if they were open to that.

And I'm happy, you know, to help on the political front, you know, uh, if uh if need be to uh work something out with them.

So I think that could be that's a great idea.

I think there's definitely an opportunity to partner partner with Portland and or the pollution prevention resource center, that that grantee of P stuff, just to at least share information and understand where those grants are going, right?

Or um have them potentially be able to kind of let those landscapers know, you know, what direction we're headed in, or that we're looking into the city, right?

Kind of with that awareness.

Um I I know that that pot of money, Portland Clean Energy Fund is pretty restricted to use in Portland.

Um, but again, that doesn't mean that that equipment can't then be used here.

So I I think there's good opportunity to kind of um work on outreach with them, kind of compare notes, maybe understand um better.

What's that gap that we would need to fill, maybe on those landscapers that don't work in Portland but work here.

Um I think that's another thing through that's kind of where I was coming from in that recommendation to continue outreach to is and continuing to talk with landscapers and um landscaping industry representatives that work here, helping to understand a little bit more kind of what is that, what is a meaningful and financial incentive?

What would that actually look like so we can get a better sense of um what kind of a budget ask it would be for us because it's been variable, like Evas Evanston, Illinois is one of the cities that has a ban on leaf blowers.

They dedicated about 180,000 for their incentive program.

Um Kirkland, Washington does not have a ban, they had a resolution, they've kind of kicked the timeline out a little longer.

Um, but they had two separate um trade-in events, um, kind of incentive programs, and they had about 500,000 in ARPA funds.

So it's it's really variable.

Um, and so I think more outreach would help us understand and coordination with Portland would help us understand what's that amount of funding if the city you know had funding and wanted to dedicate it towards it, what would be meaningful?

Right.

We need to do a little bit more work on that question.

Thank you.

And uh my colleagues have questions.

So, real quick, the um to the um one challenge we have is you know, we we license regionally landscape businesses.

We do not license them locally, and I know other jurisdictions nationwide that have switched have that like kind of local licensing program so they can better identify, and we just do not have that tool at our disposal.

Of course, we do have the regional, you know, tool, which I imagine is the same tool that Portland is is using, but it's hard for Lake Ostwegos specifically to you know communicate when um or we wouldn't want to impose you know yet additional come come down to City Hall and pay for an additional license in addition to your regional one.

Okay, count uh counselor RAF.

Um great presentation.

Thank you for putting all the work in.

Um and Joe, I do appreciate you or mayor, I do appreciate you mentioning the issue with immigration and how that definitely is something that we need to be very concerned about in the community that this affects.

And I so I'm gonna start with this, and you guys all know it's coming because I haven't wavered on my position on this in five years.

This is the dumbest use of our resources I've ever seen.

Uh I said this when we did the 100,000 for electrical equipment, you know, my first like week on the job.

Okay.

So I think this um and by the way, this doesn't discount any of the great work you've done.

I'm just this is my opinion, and I hope that the rest of us listen.

Um, I don't think it's gonna happen, but I feel like this as a city, we have we have in certain times, it's probably my biggest gripe.

We have a tendency to overstep sometimes.

And I think in this situation, you know, mayor, I I understand the cigarettes smoking in restaurants, but this is people people's personal property, so it's a little different in my opinion.

Um, I don't like the idea of government intruding on people's personal property and in their homes.

I don't believe personally that that's where we need to spend our time.

Um as Mayor mentioned, and he and I both agree on this.

This does definitely um disproportionately affect people of color who are predominantly the people that run these companies.

Uh, you know, I see people from uh respond to racism here, and you know, you do great work.

I'm surprised you haven't taken up this issue.

Uh I think it's it's a glaring problem, in my opinion, that needs to be addressed and have more vocalization behind it.

I am of the preference.

I think your suggestions are actually more in line with what I'm feeling.

Like, hey, let this Portland thing play out.

There's no rush for us to do anything.

I think this is a uh a problem that we should let market dynamics fix.

I think education is really good and really important.

Uh let people make their own decisions on what they want to use.

I think that this is a problem that only reared its head during COVID when people started working from home, which leads me to think and believe that this is a problem of privilege.

People that can complain about this have also the ability and the means to work from home or have the ability and means to afford landscaping.

I don't think, and because of that, I don't think this again, I don't think this is something that we should be meddling in.

I also don't think that we should measure and measure our response uh with what Portland does.

I think it's two different cities, two different communities.

Um I think we should drop this all together.

I know where this is gonna go.

That's my personal opinion.

Um thank you for letting me wax on about this.

So again, thank you for all the great work.

Um I know this is a touchy issue.

I think it's a I think it's wasted time.

Thank you, Council Raf.

We appreciate your perspective.

Counselor Afgan, you're going to hear my opinion, and hopefully after the meeting, uh my colleague and I will go have a beverage of our choice and talk about something different.

Uh Director, I am so pleased and impressed by Parks and Recreation on all fronts, including the conversion to electric equipment one step at a time.

This has been a six year journey, and I remember that when we were talking about budget, I would ask this question from every director.

How are you doing this?

And what I remember is that we're going to buy electric pickups and go that direction, and I'm so pleased to hear that we have started that.

So you get an A plus from that perspective.

You presented some very compelling data about electric blowers and gas blowers, the weight, the cost, the maintenance and the power.

I want to poke at that.

So I'm going to ask some provocative questions, not because I'm discounting what great work you have done, but I want us to also look at the topic a little differently.

So when our employees use the gas-powered blowers, do they wear hearing protections?

Yes.

That's great.

Do they wear respirators?

No.

So is it okay for them to inhale this carcinogic and toxic fume?

I don't think that's my to determine that's up to them, their grownups, and they can determine what they should or should not do on the job.

So if I'm working for you and I hear all of this information about toxic fumes and carcinogic that I'm going to inhale, I'll tell you I'm not going to work uh with this piece of equipment.

And I think it's our responsibility to make sure our workers are working in a safe environment, especially when we're talking about their health.

So that's really wear.

They had input on this information that we got tonight's.

We're not talking about N95 masks.

We're talking about respirators.

Yes, when you're talking about carcinogic and toxic fumes, you cannot do N95.

That's correct.

That's stuff.

So I again I want to put everything on the table and not just what we saw about how heavy it is and what's the cost.

We want to look at the whole pictures.

So we are very proud of how we maintain our parts.

But at the same time, when we use a gas-powered blower, we're polluting the environment.

We're putting all of that toxic and carcinogic fumes on our grass that the kids play in.

So again, we're awesome.

I'm proud of us, but I also want us to put these other things on the table and start looking at them and not just be commercially, yes, no, this is not just about money.

So that was what I wanted to put on the table.

But what's my position?

I keep looking at this, and I go, this is the right thing to do.

We must do it.

Black and white.

As a policymaker, I'm not challenged with, okay, unlike pickleball, we did that, we stopped it.

There was nothing past that.

With this, if we do this, I'm talking about the people in the back right now.

If we say stop this, then there are consequences that I don't know if we're ready to deal with that.

And some of them just came up, and there is a lot more.

So it's the right thing to do.

I I shouldn't be looking at you, director.

I should be looking right between you two at our public uh speakers.

So it's some of it, some of the reasons came up, but there are a lot of other uh items that we have to address.

So as a policymaker, I'm conflicted here.

It's the right thing to do, but the consequences are much different than pickleball.

So as I sit here today, we do not have landscapers anymore at our house.

Because somebody named Ms.

Betsy Wasco ecated me on the blowers and the effect they have on environment and me personally.

I also believe that any time I do something or you do something that impacts the environment that I live in, that should be regulated.

You should not be able to stand in your uh private property and pollute the world just because that's your private property.

The second it impacts the environment and my environment, that should be regulated.

So those are the type of things that uh Betsy schooled me on.

The other things that she did was we don't need to remove leaves.

I always wanted to have my uh yard clean.

These are the the items, the things we learned from 80s and 90s and have come forward, and we're still doing them, but we don't know why we're doing them.

So doing the heart escape, that's one thing, but doing the landscape, removing your leaves, that's harmful to the environment, that's harmful to the ecosystem.

And Betsy would tell me, all these worms, they're not there are no worms on the street anymore, and I'm going, that's a great thing.

But she taught me that these worms are actually part of the ecosystem, that if we don't have them, we're going to get hurt in the future.

So where do I sit on this?

It's a hard thing as a policymaker to be able to say this is the right thing to do, but we don't know how to deal with the consequences.

So the recommendations you had, check, check, check.

But I want to be more specific than what you had up there, what's in my head.

Education is good, but educating with mail deliveries at 7500 bucks every year, I don't know how effective that is.

But I know that my neighbor, Ms.

Watsko, was so effective on me that not only I have electric blowers, but I also don't have a uh yard maintenance person anymore.

So how do we do that with our education uh force?

I also want to educate the homeowners that they have a lot more power than we do as policymakers.

They can demand that their maintenance yard company have electric stuff.

We don't have to have a policy, but the 40 44,000 people we have 50%, 55% of them said we should go this direction.

Go make it happen.

The same way that my neighbor helped me do that.

Last but not least, I want the sustainability advisory board or LOSN or both of them.

Come up with, okay, we're gonna put this policy in place, but how do we enforce it?

So all the problems that we were just talking about don't surface after the fact.

So be proactive.

We want to go there, but we need help to go there.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Counselor Afghan.

Uh counselor Windless.

Well I guess I fall somewhere in between.

Um a couple things that I think would be helpful for me to get some to get a grip on it is uh we have six years of data with our parks and rec department.

I'd like to know, I know there's initial equipment upfront costs.

Um, because I was I was not in favor of I think it was another 400,000 dollars or something that we had to put in the contract to get the electric equipment.

Um I was not in favor of that.

Um I I felt that that uh we were funding a business um ahead of the commercial equipment that was available.

I think there's a lot more commercial equipment that's available now, and I think you've you've seen the market grow, certainly in the last five years.

But I guess part of it is the upfront um investment, but also how often do we have to replace those 500 dollar batteries on a commercial use?

I mean, is that every two to four years?

Two to four years, so we can run them for two to four years, and then it's uh another expense.

Okay.

Um it would be interesting to see the six-year costs of really what the delta is between if you just had gas powered equipment versus what we do, so we can we can give people data to say, hey, you know what?

This is the investment that you're gonna make over time, and um and be realistic about it.

Um and I'm not asking for answers now.

Yeah, no, I don't know that we've tracked the comparison.

I know that we've spent just shy of 400,000 400,000 on electric equipment in the last six years.

We have, but then we've um we've signed contracts with stores.

Yeah, that doesn't include the parks contract and the storm contract.

Right.

And we could be saying that could be another million million and a half bucks.

I mean it when you look at um six years of uh contract differential of uh two or three hundred thousand dollars.

So I'm just saying uh again, data talks for itself, and I think that's helpful.

Um I talked to three or four landscapers just anecdotally um on walks on just different um times when I see people.

There's a couple things that um you know they they totally get this electric thing is coming, and I don't think they're going to have any incentive until you really put in the policy.

Um so I think we're fooling ourselves with education.

I mean, I I think education is great, but I think until you put the real teeth in the law, we probably won't get a dramatic change with with a lot of our contractors.

Um couple things that they did say is that they said, well, I would probably look for business, I can't afford it, and so I would look for business in other communities that haven't put put it in.

So that's gonna put our um people at disadvantage.

They also said that it's gonna take me longer to do the job with battery stuff than it would with gas, and I'm gonna lose income because I don't have, or I'm gonna work 12 hours instead of 10 hours or 11 hours a day.

Um then the other thing that was most disheartening was just that um uh they said, wow, I may not be able to run my business this way because they don't have the education of or the I guess the uh um confidence to raise their prices because they don't they're afraid that they're gonna lose um business because there's another landscaper person that's gonna come in and swoop it underneath and take their customers.

And so um so it's that that variability or the fragility that I want to make sure that we protect because it is something that that people um really count on.

I agree, and I'm I think it's great that most homeowners have electric equipment.

I have all electric equipment.

Um I think it's great for single-use houses, but if you're working 10 hours a day, um that's a whole different set of circumstances, and I think we need to to be aware of that.

Um I was at two homeowner meetings, and this subject came up, um two different neighborhoods, and I said, hey, what do we think about blowers?

And they go, get rid of them.

Oh, so get rid of the gas ones to convert to oh hell no, get rid of them all.

I can't stand the sound.

To councillor Rapp's position, these people work at home, and they said, I can't stand any blowers in my neighborhood.

So outlaw all equipment.

That was their position.

So it was a noise issue.

They didn't care about gas versus electric, they just cared about noise.

And so I think some of the data that we have and responses is authentic, and I think it has to do with with noise, much like pickleball.

It was a noise issue, you know, and I get that.

The other thing is the incentives have been pulled back because there's less money available, and that's just a reality.

And I think Portland, in fact, didn't they take the money away budget-wise for supporting um and I think it's a reinforcement front?

Um yeah, and the enforcement funds, they're playing with budgets and whatever, and I'm just warning everybody that a lot of people are pulling back on incentives for things like this because there's less money available to run operations, um, basic operations.

So we may live in a world-class um city, um, and maybe we have the resources to do this, uh, but I know that our budgets are even um we can't come up with a million-dollar incentive to flip um electrical.

So I think we just have to be um cognizant of that.

And I think Portland is certainly going through um financial struggles, and this will probably follow to a lower part of the financial picture.

Um, and PGE has pulled back money now because there's less um money available for this.

So these are just the realities um that I want us to be aware of.

So um I'm all for cleaning things up and electric power is great, but I think there's a realistic reality that we have to deal with.

Um, and I just want to make sure I love the plan of what we're moving forward with.

I think you've got several things that are listed on there that are right and um uh won't cost a bunch of money, but um I wish these groups would actually um go after smokers.

So inside outside, don't care, stop smoking, and I think you'll get a big much bigger bang for your buck than what we're working on today.

So last cigarette, last comment.

Uh-oh.

Oh.

Oh, did you want to respond to that, Counselor?

He's going after smokers.

He's going after smokers.

There's no way to find God.

No.

But yeah, I can just find I don't smoke.

Smoke is bad, and uh your freedom stops where the people's freedom starts.

So you cannot be in your home, pollute people and say it's freedom.

That's libertarian view of uh life, that's really selfish, and you know, it's you know politics in America.

That's why I don't like the libertarians.

Not as person, but as an ideology.

So the other thing is I support the ban on gas blowers.

We have to ban it.

Uh it's the right thing to do.

But like you we were, I was talking to the mayor about that, and also I'm coming here for people of color.

It's a for me, it's a gaslighting when you folks are using this thing and say it's to defend people of color.

No.

People of color are not defended in America.

They're the one being deported by the government.

They're the one being in everything, they had the one when we talk immigration, no one talks about the white immigration.

They talk about the Hispanic and the blacks.

So please know being good for people of color.

We know, and it's a dangerous for people of color to work with equipment that's killing them.

Because this thing is cut, you, as you say, cancer, stress, any kind of disease, you know, ear hearing loss.

And we say, oh, we are gonna leave them because we are we care for them.

If you care for them, you ban this.

Because most of them work for us a people who exploit them and who are generally white folks.

So, and I'm not, yeah, I'm not rationalizing the debate, but this is the truth.

So we can't, yeah.

No, this is the truth.

I'm, you know, I'm not sugarcoating this.

No, I am very clear about what I'm talking about.

Very clear.

I'm responding to what Sir, I have the floor.

I'm responding to what you say.

I'm tired of people using race to when it's like commode, when it's good for people, we use race.

If you want to help people of color, we stop this thing.

This is dangerous.

The leaf blowers, they are killing.

We know it.

We have the stuff.

Why are we being cool and say, oh, it's dangerous, but the money, it's dangerous, but if we push.

What I don't want this debate to be is the debate on gun violence.

When it's us versus them.

And it's going that way.

We have to avoid that in our community in Lake Oshigo that, oh, you are doing gas blower, you are bad.

You're doing uh electric, you are good.

If it's that way, it's gonna be like the the gun.

You won't work.

The numbers we have, 55 saying we are for, like John said, those 55, we know that we it's not a big number to just come and say, like, as if we are making policy, we have 55% of the community, and we say, we are making the you know, blankets, you know, rule, that's a ban.

We are gonna have problems there.

You know, to not take into account.

So education, we have to, and like John said, you have your equipment at home.

I have in my business, the guy who was coming, have his uh, by the way, he's not a person of color.

He has his thing, he's a brave person working very hard for his business.

He was scared that we were gonna let him go.

I told him, I'm gonna buy the equipment for you.

And it's at the school, every time he comes, he takes our thing and does his work.

We can all participate, we do that.

It's what helping these business people who are not only they're white, they're black, they're Hispanic, they're our people.

They come to our community to work, we should respect them and have to know.

But it doesn't mean that whoa, we are it should they're gonna lose their business, we continue to harm our community to harm.

Like I have a school, they have babies over there, three years old, we blow this thing on them.

That's not responsible.

We have to find a way.

So, like you said, if every person in Lake Osico, all the 55% say that no one is gonna do our yard with a leaf blower with gas-powered leaf blower.

It's an incentive.

That's how we change things.

Like we Joe said, we are smoking.

Everybody was smoking in bars outside.

No one is smoking anymore at City Hall.

Because we decided it.

And because we know cigarette harms those who are doing it and the other people around.

It's the same aspect of this question.

We should go in a like in respect and in love to each other, not just like finger pointing.

You are doing gas blow, you are bad.

We just say it's education.

This thing kills.

It's like cigarette, it's not Republican, it's not Democrat.

Anyone who's smoking will die of smoking.

So the gas, the everybody knows it's bad.

We invest money in our community to build nice houses.

Uh what the most beautiful thing I love about Councillor Wenland is when he talks about the blue zone.

We talk about the blue zone.

It's a place where people live long time.

We cannot live long time if we are surrounded with pollution, with dangerous chemicals that can kill us.

So we I think the debate is here.

LOSN.

I am, and I'm I'm to tell that I work with these folks.

I'm the liaison.

I have never seen dedicated people and dedicated person as you.

And I feel so bad that you're leaving the city for a career that of your choice that I encourage you and congratulate you.

But you did a wonderful work.

And what you say, I don't think we say we have to we say we have two years.

We are not coming and say, hey, tomorrow no one is having first of all, we don't have the means to enforce it.

We don't have it, you know.

City managers here, we don't have the means.

The other thing is we have time, like John said, we educate, we talk to people.

We have more, you know, discussion and more possible incentive to give to people to go.

But at some point, when we go, for example, we have 65 versus 35 to ban or 70 to 30.

We are we are gonna ban this thing.

That's like maybe we are not even gonna go that route.

We are gonna go on the route of education.

People themselves, the businesses will know that this is good for them.

And we discussed the uh in on the committee that the commission that investing in this will make more sense in the future than investing in gas-powered uh landscaping equipment.

So I think we we should, but I am for a ban at some point.

We but what we said, we are listening to Portland.

Portland hasn't finished.

We don't know where it's going.

Why would we jump and ban and then it's a chaos and bad in Portland, and then we say, oh, what are we gonna do?

So it's it's smart to look at our neighbor and see what they're doing, and we keep moving, you know, this direction.

We know that it's a goal set, it's a goal, and we want to do it.

So that's my point of view.

But I I'm sorry, sir, but I don't want uh, you know, to weaponize this thing, you know.

Thank you very much for everybody's work.

Yes, thank you, Councillor Groupia Savera.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say something, and thank you very much for your comments.

I wanted to say something really quickly about kind of equity in this issue and um maybe as sort of parting words.

Um, I'd love to um just suggest looking comprehensively at equity when we talk about this issue in particular, right?

So we know um national studies, um, surveys of folks working in the landscaping industry, about 74, 75% of people identify as Latino.

Um so when we're talking about landscaping workers, we can say that you know, majority of folks probably are people of color in our community.

It is true that um, you know, workers are disproportionately impacted by um the health impacts of the air pollution from this equipment.

Um, so we can say, you know, that is one area in which we need to look at equity and look at that disproportionate impact on communities of color, people of color in our community.

It is also true that this is people's livelihoods and jobs, and so I think you know, thinking about equity in the perspective of not wanting to put people out of business, and that's where the um sustainability advisory boards um recommendations around you know financial support for the transition.

Um that is also a way to make sure that an approach to this issue is equitable.

Um, and then we talked as well, you know, you brought this up, Councillor Rap, about enforcement, right?

Um, and how can we ensure that enforcement doesn't target communities that are already being targeted?

So I think um there's kind of a lot of different ways to look at at equity and the disproportionate impacts um to communities of color and make sure that we're mitigating that in this issue.

And so, kind of like all of these different arguments are true.

And so I just say let's continue to look at all of them.

Thank you.

Yeah, definitely absolutely true here.

Uh, Councilor Corgan for you.

Remember to turn that on.

Um, so I think we should stay the course and continue to work on it.

Um whenever we have our healthcare professionals speak up, I really think we should listen to what they have to say.

It seems like they really have something to say on this subject.

Um one question I have is do we have any insight into what in uh upcoming technological improvement improvement might look like, especially with regard to when we can't use the electrical.

I kind of remember hearing something when I was at an SAB meeting.

Yeah, you know, I have a stat on this, and I didn't put it in my notes for today, but I do know, you know, one thing that is changing is battery technology is changing pretty rapidly.

And so um the you know, batteries are gonna continue to get better and store more power and the prices will drop.

So we'll probably see some of that.

Um the upfront cost, particularly batteries may decrease.

Um, and and then the lifetime of batteries may decrease.

So that may help solve some of that um kind of performance issues over time, particularly in the battery piece.

Um, I don't have the there's some stat about kind of how many percentage it's increasing in efficiency each year, but this is something there's a lot of money going into, right?

Because it's also electric car batteries, and um a lot of people are investing in improvements in battery technology and recyclability, both of which impact the like improve the sustainability of this equipment and the performance.

Um I don't know in terms of you probably see.

Yeah, no, we've we've seen over the six years that it's progressed and it's getting better.

Uh, but like the batteries are still still an issue, and then the wind power, but it is compared to six years ago, it's it's made strides.

Well, that's really encouraging.

Thank you for sharing.

And and I'm gonna miss your great work, Amanda.

Counselor uh Verdick.

Okay, I'll try to uh go fast as well.

Um I agree, I think we need to stay the course.

I think if we lived in the ideal world, we could ban them and move forward and everything would be fine, but that's not where we live.

One of my biggest concerns is the enforcement piece of it.

So I think it's gonna be very important to watch how that works in Portland.

Um hopefully some of by Portland banning it, we'll see some of those benefits.

And with SAB and LOSN and then other work with the city, you know, again, education is not perfect.

I agree, but let's keep doing as much as we can.

Let's keep trying to focus our efforts to reach some of these smaller landscapers, and also talk to property owners of how they can be creative.

Um, you know, can you get electric equipment that maybe even you share?

And then you have landscapers who share the electric equipment between a few households.

Um you know, again, purchase it yourself.

All those different things.

I think getting all those ideas out there to help increase the use of electric is great.

But I think the enforcement is a piece that we really can't ignore.

That is huge.

So I think um I agree with the recommendations.

Um, and I think we just need to keep pushing forward in the right direction because that's critical, and educating as much as we can.

And yes, you will be very missed, Amanda.

So thank you for everything you've done for the city.

Thanks, Councilor Verdick.

Counselor Afkin, do you have a thank you, Ms.

Mayor?

Uh I wanted to uh make a few more comments, but I'll be short.

Uh nobody gets up in the morning and says, let's go buy gas-powered uh blowers and uh pollute the environment.

These are the stuff that we have had for decades, and now we're understanding the impact of them.

So through education, through progress, we will need to shift.

This is also uh an aging generation we have now because I know that four three out of my four neighbors are older than 70 years old.

So they're not gonna be out there doing their yards, they're going to hire landscapers.

And when we talk about the landscapers, do we protect them from the toxic fumes, or do we let them have food on the table?

These are these are the challenges that we're struggling with right now.

And uh there are innovating solutions, but the homeowners have to be able to accept that and push it forward, like counselor verdict says.

If somebody like uh counselor wetland has all electric equipment, maybe he tells the landscaper when you come.

Don't use your equipment.

I got everything lined up for you.

There are solutions.

We just have to find them, be innovating, and push them forward until we have a policy that we can all agree on and enforce it.

Thank you, Miss Samir.

Thanks, Councillor Afghan.

So I think we have some good can.

I mean, this is a great, I mean, the presentation, all the information you provide is wonderful, and it will help set us up for goal setting so we can um uh frame how we're going to move forward.

I mean, we're hearing a lot of consensus on uh following the recommendations, continuing this path of education incentives.

I really think if once, I mean, what you read even in trade publications is once landscapers are introduced to the equipment and use it, they really like it.

The workers like it, the companies like it, but it's getting over that, it's getting over that hump.

And the life cycle cost is less, you know.

So, but there's still the upfront, you know, that's cool comfort when you gotta shell out, you know, um, a lot of money up front that you don't have.

Um, but the health benefits, I mean, everything is there, it's just how we um uh move this forward and having a coordinated uh campaign, which I know is part of the current goal, also I mean remains how we can publicize this to the community, share all the great work that is being done behalf of our community partners and the city.

It's just how we um uh move this forward and having a coordinated uh campaign, which I know is part of the current goal, also I mean remains how we can publicize this to the community, share all the great work that is being done behalf of our community partners and the city.

Um, and um I I think will just help move us there faster, you know, as we implement.

Um but uh as some of my colleagues have alluded to tonight is Amanda's last time before us at the city council, and so I want to recognize and thank her for all of the work that uh you have done over the past four years here at the city.

Uh Amanda has overseen a tremendous uh progress implementing the city's climate action plan.

Uh you've been a key part of numerous community events centered around sustainability, and of course that you've been a tremendous resource to your colleagues in the city as well as our to our community at large, and you've really helped elevate the work Lake Osego is doing uh towards a clean and sustainable future.

Uh aside from your uh your work, you are well respected here amongst your colleagues uh here on the third floor and throughout the city uh and amongst all of us here on the council alike.

Um and you've had a tremendously positive impact on the city organization as a whole, uh, and representing both your yourself so well as well as uh the city to the broader region.

So we are not surprised to see you moving on to um bigger things, but we're sad nonetheless and want to thank you for always going above and beyond um uh all you gave here to the community for leaving such a positive mark uh on the city.

We're gonna we're gonna miss you, but we're grateful for all you did, and we have an award we want to present you with as well.

But thank you.

And she had to put up with all the republic uh waste management contracts.

Thank you.

And you have to look in the back of that.

So thank you.

This has been a fantastic community and fantastic council to work with.

Very much appreciate it.

I don't miss working with you all.

But thank you so much.

We know you're not going too far as well.

I'm not going to, yes.

Look forward to continuing to see.

You can always come back.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay.

Uh any information from the council.

Want to thank um uh Parks and Rec and the Chamber for the great uh the tree lighting event on Friday was really well done, a great um um somewhat all day event.

Um, but so thank you for all the and and to the city staff for all the decorating around town.

Things look great.

We really appreciate it.

Um thank you for the extra extra effort there.

You'll see on the 10th, the chamber holiday reception uh at the Iron Light is uh the 10th that starts at five.

Um and it would really be great if uh it's the holiday sort of uh uh it's a it's the most fun event.

It's just all social.

So um we encourage all of the counselors to attend.

Um Iron Light at five.

And please feel free to contact me, I can get you registered.

Oh, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Valen.

Okay.

All right.

Um any updates from City.

Likewise to uh to what you said, Mayor Buck, we really want to say thank you to the staff that put on a tremendous event on Friday.

Unfortunately, I was not able to make it, but I saw some photos that looked like it was extremely well attended, Jeff, about five thousand people.

Amazing.

Well, so huge shout out to all the staff that that put in the work to make that happen.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone for being here.

We're joined.