We are on the air.

I call the two thousand four hundred and thirty-first meeting of the Milwaukee City Council to order.

This meeting is being held in person at City Hall and by video conference.

The public may participate in this meeting by coming to City Hall or joining the Zoom webinar.

The meeting is being broadcast live on the city's YouTube channel and Comcast Cable Channel 30 within city limits.

If you are interested in speaking, please let staff know by filling out a yellow comment card for those at City Hall or emailing OCR at Milwaukee, Oregon.gov for those on Zoom.

Staff will monitor the comment cards, email inbox, and Zoom participant list and chat.

Comments may be emailed to OCR at Milwaukee, Oregon.gov.

We ask that all Zoom participants who intend to speak label their Zoom username to show their first and last names for the record.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which fans.

The City of Milwaukee respectfully acknowledges that our community is located on the ancestral homeland of the Clackamas people.

In 1855, the surviving members of the Clackamas signed the Willamette Valley Treaty, also known as the Kalapuya, etc.

Treaty with the federal government in good faith.

We offer our respect and gratitude to the indigenous people of this land.

And then we will move on to some announcements.

Continue tomorrow with the Portland School of Rock House Band.

And then next Wednesday with the much beloved uh Norman Sylvester.

Those concerts begin at 6 30 p.m.

in Ball Michelle Park.

The Art and Walt Johnson Creek Neighborhood District Association's annual concerts in the park continue this Thursday with Shelley Rudolph blending jazz, soul, and blues.

And next Thursday, uh they have Ben Rice, who is quite an amazing local musician.

So those concerts begin at 6:30 p.m.

and are held in Ardenwald Park.

So just to be clear, Ball Michelle Park on Wednesdays, Ardenwald Park on Thursdays.

City Manager Emma Sagor will hold an open door session on Friday, August 22nd.

That's this Friday from 9 a.m.

to 10 a.m.

at City Hall.

This is a great opportunity to ask questions, raise concerns, or just learn more about what the city is currently working on.

No registration is necessary.

Those attending are seen on a first come, first served basis.

The session will take place at City Hall in the third floor Bing Cherry Conference Room, which is right as you get off the elevator.

Join the downtown Milwaukee community on Friday, September 5th for the next First Friday event.

First Friday is a great opportunity to support downtown businesses while also fostering Milwaukee's arts, music, and food community.

The Milwaukee Environmental Stewards Group brings their fourth annual sustainability fair to Milwaukee this year on Saturday, September 6th from 10 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

The event includes local vendors, the Milwaukee Arts Committee, Trash and Fashion Show, Food, Drinks, Music, and Kids' Activities.

The event takes place in the parking lot at Harrison and Maine where the farmers market is on Sundays.

You can learn more details.

There's a lot of opportunities there to bring things to be recycled.

And reused.org.

ESG stands for environmental stewards group.

So Milwaukee ESG.org for all the details on who will be there to accept what kind of recycling and reuse products.

For more information about each of these events and others, please visit the city's homepage at Milwaukee, Oregon.gov or call 503 7867555.

And then I have a haiku, and I want to put in a pitch for more haiku submissions, or I'm going to have to end with the haiku because we are getting to AI generated haiku at this point.

And I would like to have my haiku be human generated.

But anyway, golden rays embrace.

Laughter dances in the air.

Summer sings with joy.

It's a nice, it's nice late summer sentiment.

Okay.

With that, we will move on to the Clackmas County Stabilization Center update.

Um, presented by Clackmas County Director of Health, Housing and Human Services, Mary Rumba, and our city manager.

And I should say Mary's the real event.

I'm just the color commentary, the cheerleader.

Good to see you, Mary.

Thank you for having me.

Okay, what am I pushing?

Yes, okay.

Okay, perfect.

Good evening.

Thank you so much for having me again.

My name is Mary Rumba, and I am the director of health housing and human services for uh Clackamas County and really appreciate uh taking a few minutes of your time to give you an update on our Clackham's County Stabilization Center.

Emma, would you like to say anything?

I'll just say um Mary has been a tremendous partner.

Uh we've been having bi-weekly calls, the chief and I and Jason Wax participating with Mary's team, and it's it's just really been a wonderful um process since you took over the helm.

Mary, so thanks so much, and thanks for being here to get the update.

Thank you.

Um, and uh huge kiddos to my public and government affairs team for putting together such a nice presentation for me.

So wanted just to make sure we level set on really what the stabilization center is, and then encounter we can also talk about what it isn't.

But the stable stabilization center is actually two complementary programs.

So mainly you all have been focused on the 23-hour crisis stabilization center, which is is a is a real type of program.

So it operates 24-7, 365 days a year, but the individual who comes to our attention uh can only actually be in the program under sort of rule for up to 23 hours.

So the intent of the 23-hour uh side of the program is really about avoiding unnecessarily unnecessary hospital and uh jail utilization.

So these are individuals coming to the attention of your local law enforcement, your BHU staff, our mobile crisis team, and other law law enforcement.

So uh for those individuals across this community experiencing a mental health crisis.

Uh the intent is really to bring them to a safe, comfortable, low barrier, uh low stimulus uh uh place where they can do some, we can do some brief assessment and really understand sort of what led to the crisis in the first place.

And then the other uh side of the the program is our housing and case management stabilization uh program.

And that that will have a different entryway, although there will be individuals uh coming to the attention and needing services on the 23-hour side where we determine that they need longer, uh a little bit of a shorter respite, and they'll get referred over to the housing and case management side.

So the two programs are complementary uh to one another.

So as I said, what we're trying to do is really avoid um, you know, both law enforcement interval uh intervening with these individuals and having to take them to the hospital, which as you often hear, uh we don't know really what happens when they get to that emergency room, and often they're just released back to the street or jail.

Jail is not the place that we want individuals struggling with mental health and maybe some some low substance use uh challenges uh to to receive their care.

So as I was sort of uh mentioning briefly, the stabilization center, um, some of the services uh that will be and supports that will be provided is off obviously just rest safety and hygiene.

So they'll be um they'll they'll be supervised at all times.

It's really a low stimulus if somebody just needs a shower, clean, you know, clean change of clothes, we'll get that for them.

And then really the team's gonna be assessing what that what sort of led to that crisis.

Are there additional supports or services, or do they just need to be connected to services?

Um, and then if they are houseless, we expect a percentage of these individuals to be homeless.

We'll also be working, that provider will be working to connect um uh them to uh ongoing uh services and supports.

And what we do know about stabilization centers, so I'll I'll be talking in a moment about who our provider is, but what we also know about uh the stable is crisis stabilization centers, both throughout Oregon and as well as Idaho is the average length of stay is about 10 to 11 hours for an individual from sort of start to finish.

So we're not really talking that that many folks are staying for for 23 hours.

And as I mentioned um previously, on the 23-hour uh stabilization side of the shop, the only reference will be law enforcement and our mobile crisis teams, including when I say your law enforcement, your BHU staff.

So some of the cities like you have behavioral health clinicians embedded with their teams, and then the county also runs a 24-7 mobile crisis response team.

Those will be the only reference.

There will be no walk-up services at this, there will never be walk-up services over time.

We we will want to talk about maybe extending it to our crisis line because then maybe a family member is is making that referral, but at this point, it will only be law enforcement and the mobile crisis uh response team.

But at this point, it will only be law enforcement and the mobile crisis response team.

I I appreciate Emma's comment about really the partnership.

So we've been really in conversation since 2023, as you all know.

And these are actually some some recent uh construction pictures, or they're just really fun to be able to share share with you.

So this has been a partnership from day one with our sheriff's office, um, with my department, and really with the city, um both with you all as well as our law enforcement, um, because as you know, the the building had previously been used by the sheriff's office uh for uh sort of their their uh residential program uh uh for folks uh sort of under their under their jurisdiction, and the building was really just sitting empty.

And so uh it's been really exciting both to just be able to uh use an existing building and really bring it to life and really excited to, it's gonna be literally a brand new building, which is really exciting.

And then last fall, last November, we issued a request for proposal uh for the two complementary sides to the program.

Claire Vita, which is uh a program out uh actually um based in Idaho, running, I believe 12 um both youth and adult stabilization centers, and I do have their program director here with me today.

Uh they're running the 23-hour side, and our beloved father's heart is running our housing and case management side.

You all know them quite well.

And uh we do uh we we have already engaged with the local businesses around uh within that that perimeter of our location, but we actually will be doing um uh door-to-door uh support and keep reaching out uh next month uh with postcards and an opportunity date to be determined for them to tour the facility as well.

So uh as Emma mentioned, uh we've been meeting um by monthly, meaning twice a month, really just to review sort of the progress.

Um so it's both an opportunity for the providers to give some updates.

We had some really early good conversations about some of the protocol, including safety protocol, intake, discharge, Claire Vita's been very responsive, and um your chief has been wonderful about providing some input.

Uh, our construction is on track and on budget.

We expect to be completed at the end of October with uh with an opening in December, if not just a little bit before that.

And we have a tentative, not yet um public date to announce of uh a grant opening in early November, and we would love to uh include you all.

We have added a web page to our county, our Clackamas County uh page.

Uh it's it's uh if you Google stabilization center, it will come up.

And that's been an education tool to really talk about what it is and what it isn't.

And there's a really nice FAQ that I think will be a really good guide for community members who are curious uh about whether their loved one or themselves might need that this assistance in the future.

Mary, can I just clarify?

Because the bullets on here, the the opening in December.

Oh, sorry, wrong date.

Okay.

We're not going backwards in history, Emma.

Apologies.

I did not catch that either.

So 2025.

And then the November event would be kind of like a soft opening or a ribbon cutting.

It will be a ribbon cutting because I think we'll still be uh we'll we'll still be you know getting hiring done and all of that.

So but but we expect so that's sort of why I'm not overcommitting the opening to much more than December, just because as you all know, workforce is still a challenge, and we want to really get it right.

Um, but it could be that we do have a soft opening or in that November.

But yeah, early November will be the ribbon cutting.

Thank you for clarifying that.

So I I could pause for any questions specific to the stabilization uh center because the other part of the update that you all asked for was the recovery campus, and that is um different and complementary to the work that we're doing.

So I do have a few questions on this.

Um I kind of was gonna look at uh counselor masse first because he was on our team that was part of these discussions, no questions.

Okay.

Nothing else you think we need to know.

Okay.

Okay.

Um well, I guess one of the things I thought, I mean, it's great that you're doing outreach to the neighbors, but is there actually sort of a written good neighbor agreement?

That was sort of where we started.

Thank you.

Uh so we uh it through conversation, uh we're we're we're getting close to finalizing it.

We really recognize that a good neighbor agreement really generally is because you actually have sort of neighbors, you have sort of the community members.

You have sort of the community members.

So we've been working collectively to reframe it as really the good partner framework.

So really this is about how we are all gonna work together and sort of our sort of uh individual and collective uh accountability to the success of this project.

So I'm really hoping at this next meeting.

Uh August has been tough uh just with people being out, but my my hope is that we're landing this to move it through uh signature, you know, starting in September.

Okay.

Um counselor, the council president wasn't on our council at the time, but the rest of us went to Eugene and visited some of the people from the sheriff's office and visited the um center there.

Uh of course, Eugene is much smaller community than all of Plackness County.

So I'm um anticipating that you might be full at times.

And what happens when you're full and how do dispatchers know and those kind of things?

Yeah, so we'll we'll certainly have the protocol um for, you know, again because the average length of stay is 10 to 11 hours.

Um, really the data doesn't bear out that any stabilization center has all in this case, we'll have nine recliners that all nine recliners are full.

Deschutes County is another another good example.

They only have five.

And uh since they've been open in 2020, there's never been a situation in which um they they couldn't accept somebody because you you you're sort of wrapping up maybe the care of individual while you're intaking somebody, and there's a separate room for that.

So we I hope that we're busy, Mary.

That's really my hope, but I don't anticipate certainly we will never turn anybody away.

We will we will figure that out.

We have sort of space for sort of that private interview uh room as well.

And so the um the non-stabilization center side, what do you call it?

Housing and case management stabilization.

Okay.

Um are all of those people that those could come from anywhere.

Correct.

And thank you.

Um that was going to be part of my talking points.

Um, I get so focused on the 23 hour side.

Sorry, Falcon's part.

Um, but the housing and stabilization side really is uh gonna be referral through our coordinated housing access line.

These are not individuals in immediate crisis like the folks who come to the attention of law enforcement, right?

Um, and so there's there will be more thoughtful, and there are I believe 13, 13 uh sort of beds um for lack of better term, there's sort of shared rooms um on that side.

So um that will mirror that may that will be some data collection that we'll have to be monitoring, because that may be that we don't have immediate access there, but we're cueing and wait listing folks uh who might need that.

Okay.

Other questions for folks.

No.

Okay.

I feel like I had one more.

Um so um just to be clear, you said law enforcement brings them.

What happens when they're done?

So we are working, uh, we we have made this commitment to that to you in this community that they will be uh they will be transferred.

Uh we'll have we're we're looking at various ways to get that uh transportation back to their home community and or to it could be that they're actually getting referred um you know to one of our our health uh clinics or our urgent walk-in, um that that they're you know, transition there.

So we there are the you know, the Idaho model, they they have they've also addressed transportation.

Sometimes Frank, sometimes it's uh non-emergencies, uh secure medical transport.

Sometimes we're just gonna have to, you know, we're putting them in, you know, a taxi.

Sometimes we're gonna be looking at a family member being able to um to uh transport them.

And really at the end of the day, um, you know, this is not that location is it it's not it's not gonna be helpful to for somebody just to walk out the door.

Now, absolutely, this is a voluntary service.

It's really important to remind folks of that.

So even when law enforcement is transporting, the the person is voluntarily agreed that they are coming to this location.

If the officer hands them over to Claire Vita, they're doing the intake, and the person says, Adios, I'm out of here, that that will be unfortunate.

And um, there will probably be very little we can do.

But our commitment for uh folks who are who are intake is that we will be working uh to to get them back to their home community.

Okay.

Mayor, it sounds like Counselor Staven Jordan is on Zoom and has her hand raised.

Oh, okay.

Counselor Staven, please.

Thanks, Mayor.

Mary, thank you for being there tonight.

Sorry I can't be there in person.

And thanks for all your work on this.

And thanks to the Milwaukee team that's been moving this forward.

So I have a couple questions about, I mean, the mayor asked some of my questions around transportation.

I just wanted to make sure that that was has dialed in before the opening date.

I know that that's like when families are in crisis and individuals are in crisis, it will be really important to have clear procedures around the transportation, what their options are.

So I just want to reiterate that.

And then my other question has to do with the integration with our behavioral health team.

Hopefully we'll we'll be adding an FTE to that capacity within the city.

And I just want to know what that integration looks like and what other partnerships with other community organizations look like.

So I think I understand the question.

So I'm going to answer it based on what I think you're asking, and then you can clarify.

So certainly when we talk about law enforcement, um behavioral health uh units uh and the mobile crisis team, which is really the Clackamas team, any of those individuals.

So for example, you have Glenn here in the room.

If Glenn is interacting with a community member and and he determines and they that individual agrees that being transported to the 23 hour uh Glenn absolutely has the same access as uh as a police officer would.

And for and frankly, it would be prefer a preferable um because I I think you know, as we all know, um, this is why you added this role uh because it's way less traumatizing than being placed in the back of a police car, right?

Um so that um so that there's that.

And then I'm not really quite sure the question about the the community partnership, other than what I can speak to, is that's part of our provider's role is then to to determine who this individual is already connected with.

There's a large percentage of folks that um that behavior that BHUs and mobile uh interact with who are actually established, they're already established with a provider, and so we need to need to get them sort of reconnected.

And there are plenty that have never sort of walked through the the traditional uh you know, connection to community partners, whether it's the county or other community-based organizations.

But does that answer your question or is there another question to that?

Um, in part, um, I guess so.

I'm wondering when folks that are connected with Milwaukee are um are participating in services.

What type of communication happens with our behavioral health team?

Will they be notified?

Um, will they be looped in so that they can make sure that it's um it's a known part of the care that's being provided for individuals in crisis?

It's that's a really great question.

And we have not talked about that.

We can bring that back to our our our meeting.

It's it's interesting um that you do bring this up though, uh, counselor, because um, we've been having these conversations with the county-based mobile crisis response team where we do respond to other c city jurisdictions who also have BHUs and whether we're notifying law enforcement that we're in their city.

And because we are actually covered under sort of health care and HIPAA, we're very limited on what we can actually say.

That individual's information, including their address is actually protected health information.

So you bring up a really, really important point around what is the what is the communication or coordination in the in the sense that this program is right here in your, you know, in your backyard.

We are gonna have to, we're gonna have to grapple with this.

I also don't want to put undue uh sort of stress and resources on the city of Milwaukee.

That doesn't actually need to be placed there necessarily.

So you bring up a really great point that we will we will bring uh back to our our planning group.

Um and if I might just ask one more question about information sharing, is there potential to be able to uh like you know, I I know early on we were working on an IGA um between the city and the county.

I assume that you know that will be amended to include the the provider now that the provider is in place.

And I wonder if built into that and perhaps on an intake form, there could be an information sharing permission um that's added so that you know when folks opt in to those services, they are approving the ability for um the the key partners to be communicating with each other so that we can streamline the type of care and the quality of care that folks receive while they're there and while they transition back to their own community.

You know, I just I when I think about moments that people are in um acute crisis, they don't always happen in the convenient, you know, Monday through Friday nine to five kind of hours and having some type of follow-up communication with um with local jurisdictions across the county um who are providing some type of active care for individuals when they're when they're just residing you know in the community not necessarily in acute crisis I think some of that might be helpful on the front end.

Thanks, counselor.

And we may have mentioned this before you join the meeting but um we we are very close to finalizing what's it was started as the good neighbor agreement.

It's now kind of a good partner agreement.

And I think at our next coordination call we can talk about both this information sharing element and the follow-up piece.

But it's it's that's that's the document where we're we're sharing we're documenting and sharing our our agreed upon protocols for each agency that is a part of making this a success.

And I I will say you know Glenn is on those calls every two weeks both uh in his Milwaukee capacity and in his loved one father's heart capacity.

So we are so grateful to have Glenn.

And yeah if I could also just add um one of the you actually bring up uh a point that we are working on at the county around a universal release of information because of all the continuum of services we are creating and recognizing that there are referrals back and forth.

So um again it gets a little complicated like healthcare can easily share it's a little more challenging to share unless again that person signs that release of information.

So we are working with our county council to look at a universal release that would be not only applied to this program but like the recovery campus that I'll be talking about in just a moment.

Okay.

Yeah I I think that's definitely worth something um you know worth looking into the the Sun service system um just north of us uses a universal um intake form that provides people an opportunity to opt in and in that process they provide um authorization for information sharing amongst key partners in that network.

So that might be something to work you know into those conversations.

That's great.

Thanks for sharing thanks for the time yeah thank you.

Oh counselor just real quick so I know you mentioned like if someone wants to leave AMA for example against medical advice but what what about peace officer holds I know that there are times where you know I used to work at City Rail's hospitals and some police departments would ask if you know we would take people in crisis that have been placed on police officer holds because they're a danger to themselves or others.

How is that going how does that work with the crisis stabilization center is that something that the officers are going to have a tool to use in those cases they they will um and again um that that that happens even now today where somebody's brought into our urgent walk under walk in center where there's sort of an agreement under that peace officer hold that they're they're gonna be transported to this location and the the person agrees to it and then that goes away once once in this case Claire Vita accepts sort of admission of that person.

So they want them and they haven't figured out all the rules around it.

So that will be actually a clarification point.

And and I will tell you that uh uh Lane County has um just open or they're in process of opening opening their stabilization center and they will be taking voluntary and involuntary so we're gonna probably learn a lot from their lessons learned as well.

Ideally we want the individual to to come willingly yeah of course yeah.

Thank you.

Okay, if no more questions on that we'll let Mary go on to the recovery campus.

Great thank you.

Well as you know um back in 2023 as well um the Board of County Commissioners uh adopted the recovery oriented system of care um model which is really meeting individuals where they're at and uh if we're gonna meet individuals where they're at we actually have to design services uh to help them so as much as the stabilization center uh tends to focus more on folks with who are in a mental health crisis although certainly we recognize that uh those those individuals may also be under the influence it was really important to our board to uh create an actual recovery campus so um the uh as you know back in December of last year uh we purchased my my department actually purchased uh property that had been owned by North Placamas uh parks and recist uh it was the former Clackamas Heights public charter school and it's uh I think six point six acres uh it's a little over six acres um with a current building that is not really uh re not usable um and uh earlier

So the uh as you know, back in December of last year, uh we purchased my my department actually purchased uh property that had been owned by North Clackamas uh Parks and Rec District.

Uh it was the former Clackamas Heights public charter school, and it's uh I think 6.6 acres, uh, it's a little over six acres with a current building that is not really uh re not usable.

Um and uh earlier or last year, also it feels like there was a lot of stuff happening last year into this year.

Uh, we did a notice of funding opportunity and uh fora health, um, which is uh currently uh a provider of uh of treatment services, including everything from withdrawal management, residential, uh outpatient services uh was the um is now the contractor for that.

And so what you actually see uh on this on your screen is uh the initial uh design.

Um so we we've been in contract with them for uh program of design.

Uh the first building, uh, which would be the largest of the two buildings uh would be for withdrawal management and residential treatment, and the second building would be for our outpatient and transitional housing.

And that's something unique uh to our campus that other campuses don't have, will be that transitional recovery uh housing so that folks can really stay stay have more time to stabilize.

Um we're really excited about this design.

We still actually have some acreage that is not yet planned for, as well as green space.

Um we do have about uh an acre of green space that will remain green space, and we're soliciting feedback on how best to use that green space, as we are also soliciting feedback on um sort of what phase two of the project would look like.

And so just a quick update on the timeline.

So uh we've been um in design.

Uh we are continuing to um uh through the summer uh be working with four and their construction team around that design.

Uh we um are in uh sort of the permitting uh this this this use uh needs to to be um it's it's not currently um sort of permitted for this use, so we're in process for that.

And ultimately we expect to break ground um in or really start construction summer pretty much uh a year from from now.

I will say we're still uh my project manager would appreciate if I would say that we're still dialing for dollars.

Um this is about a 40 million dollar project, and we have about half the money uh fundraise, but we also have some promising uh investments.

We're hoping through uh Oregon Health Authority and some through through some other partnerships.

I would also highlight that this um also has an updated web page uh as well on the county um on the county site, um uh and again FAQ, what it is, what it isn't, and it we certainly um expect it to be complementary to the other uh programs that are being designed uh uh by the county and with partners.

If there's I will pause because then there's two more things that I wanted to highlight.

So just so I'm clear, could you go back a slide?

Yeah.

So you said there's one building that is describe what the two buildings are because we can't read that one.

So building one is withdrawal management, are often what people call detox.

So that often is when somebody is an active use and they need to be uh medically withdrawn from the substance and then residential treatment.

So some people might just come straight to residential, some people might start with withdrawal management and transition to residential, some people may never enter that building at all, and they'll go to building two, which is outpatient uh substance use treatment, as well as transitional housing.

And so all of that is being built at once in one phase.

That that is the plan.

Okay, yes, okay.

Certainly being designed as one build.

Okay.

Yeah.

And it doesn't look like it's a closed campus from this diagram.

No, no.

Okay, no.

Okay.

Um so again, people can leave.

Correct.

Yeah, okay, that's correct.

Yeah, they're they're voluntarily here.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Other questions from anyone.

All right.

Okay.

I just want we won't spend any time on this because I actually have a nice little packet to give Emma.

Um, so we've been really working to um to really make sure we have some materials that really talk about what we're we're doing.

So these are just two examples of some of the the really pretty materials uh that our public and government affairs have done.

So this is around uh what the recovery oriented system of care is, and then the other one um is highlighting our priority investments.

Um so, and again, I know you can't really see it, but when I talk about the recovery-oriented system of care, the stabilization center and recovery campus are one of six priority investments.

We also have Clackamas Village, which we just um opened a few months back, uh transitional housing for um some of our homeless uh community members.

Uh we have a caring place that we'll be breaking ground here soon and um is working in partnership with the county and uh Father's Heart as well.

Uh recovery housing.

So we're in process of of um really selling, uh selling uh sort of some of our um, sorry, I'm losing my words.

Um scattered sites.

Exactly, our scattered sites.

You you actually probably know more about it, the mayor, mayor than I do, um, to really focus on some specialty populations.

And then our Lake Road Health Center remodel uh and there they've continued to provide services, but they should be pretty much out of the remodel here uh by the end of summer, early fall, and and at full capacity.

So this is the it's just really important to highlight um just the investments that are being made um with both county dollars, state and federal dollars uh to really support the recovery-oriented system of care.

So that is the end of my slideshow.

Okay.

Um do you know offhand, and maybe you don't.

Um it's maybe not a fair question to expect you to know up hand, but um SHS funding, which of those get funding out of SHS?

Uh so there's been a um uh uh some funding for the recovery campus, caring place, um, and obviously the scattered sites are sort of you know, the the project under uh housing and community development.

Okay.

And the scattered sites, you we had an email exchange about this, but I recently learned that we didn't get the uh state funding that we had hoped for um to create some um home ownership opportunities for people.

Right.

Um you indicated that there's still, you know, you're still using them as residences, there's still some time for another round corrective attempt at the state.

That's correct.

That's correct.

Okay, okay.

Um, anybody else have questions?

No, I'm not seeing any geese.

Okay.

Uh counselor Stavan Jordan.

Well, I can't.

Hey, thanks.

Thanks, Mayor.

I do have a question.

Uh I'm wondering about how um the caring place, the recovery center, and the stabilization center will coordinate.

So that's part of why the universal release of information is really come about, um, is so that we can coordinate.

We certainly uh collectively are talking about our desire to for there to be no wrong door.

And we recognize that um again, the the model of a record recovery-oriented system of care is meeting the individual where they're at.

So there may be somebody who's houseless who comes to the attention of caring place, and through their support recognizes that this person actually, and maybe the individual uh discloses they're ready to to get into active withdrawal management treatment or residential or you know, some type of treatment.

So there will be a pathway, there will be workflows uh identified so that there is really hopefully no barriers uh and that people really move through the system with relative ease.

So thank you.

I think I mean that's I think that's a wonderful goal.

And I also am wondering about some operational pieces, like um what will the what will the communication?

I mean, certainly the universal release will help with the communication, but uh like transportation, um, as you're having the transportation conversations, um are there discussions about like what it looks like when the caring place closes down for the day?

This is just a day center.

So like if someone's in acute trauma or crisis at that point, would they would they already be kind of queued up to go to the stabilization center?

And then let's say that they stay there for the night and they are offered some services.

Would is there like a communication and transportation pathway that takes them to the recovery center?

Um and like what are those conversations look like?

We have not even started those conversations.

So I appreciate you uh helping us think through the design.

And and to be fair to us, the uh caring place and the recovery campus are recovery campus, we're talking 2027, right?

And so right now um there's just so much focus on just getting like getting the funding and getting the buildings built.

Um so there's real opportunity, and we we need to start the conversations.

Um, but uh to be to to just be perfectly frank, we have not started those conversations.

I yeah, I I understand there's a lot of pieces moving and and certainly, you know, this is not um this is not criticism or or like yet another thing to put on your plate.

Um I just think that because of the way that um some individuals or some populations may fluidly use all three of those locations, and the way that we can best set up um a supportive continuum of care for them to be successful as they use those services that um the more that we can talk about how transportation supports them, how service wraparound supports them, how access to you know what they need in the middle of the night is then through case management met at the day center the next day or things along those lines, then we actually I think do a better service to the individuals that we're trying to help.

Agreed.

Thank you.

All that's wrapped up in a big huge thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay.

If nothing else, Emma, nothing from you.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much, Mary, for all the updates.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to see all the work going on.

And yeah, we'll we'll watch for our invitations for November.

And thanks to our our friends from Claire Vita and Father's Heart for also being here.

Okay.

Well, with that, I will move on to community comments.

And so, yeah, Emma has to sit down because this is part of the agenda during which council will hear community comments on city business that is not on the agenda.

Before we begin, is there any follow-up from the August 5th community comments, Ms.

Sager?

Mayor, at the August 5th meeting, no comments were um raised.

So I don't have anything to follow up there.

All the comments that were in your packet um uh are kind of filed under our two hearings for tonight, with the exception of we received one um one comment uh from Mr.

and Mrs.

Elliott um that was filed under uh item RS8B, which is the public safety fee.

But upon reading that comment a little more closely, I think it's it's a handwritten comment.

It's really more about um work that these neighbors are doing to maintain their street, clean leaves off of um ADA ramps and et cetera.

So we're gonna have our public works team reach out to them and discuss their concerns in more detail.

But I just wanted to flag if you read that comment and were like, is this related to the public safety fee?

I think it might be more broadly about um about street maintenance.

So we're following up on that.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I think I'm gonna leave these in here because there's several.

There's many.

It's not just two.

So I want I want a full set whenever.

Okay.

Um, all right.

With that, um for those in person who wish to speak, please submit a yellow comment card.

I have one uh found on the table on the back side.

Uh if you are on Zoom, use the raise hand reaction to alert staff that you wish to speak.

And when instructed to click the microphone button to unmute yourself.

If you are telephoning in through Zoom and would like to make a comment, dial star nine to raise your hand.

You may also submit a comment via email to OCR at Milwaukee, Oregon.gov.

Before you make your comments, please submit your name and city of residence for the record.

As council has other business items on the agenda, speakers will be limited to three minutes each because information provided during community comments may be new.

This is not the time for discussion.

The city manager will respond at the next meeting to comments that require follow-up.

And so in the room, I have Dylan Cruz.

Uh for both this and for the housing item later.

All right, there we go.

Uh all right, Mayor Baity, uh, members of council, my name is Dylan Cruz.

I'm a resident of Milwaukee.

They're gonna do my money's worth coming out here and add a couple comments to the record.

Just a few things for follow-up.

Um, really appreciated the uh town hall you all did uh back in July on the middle housing stuff.

Um, I think there was a lot of good questions, comments, ideas raised as part of that.

And then I know I connected with a number of you afterwards about some ideas and suggestions brought forth on that.

So I look forward to connecting with you all on that and thinking about next steps to follow up on a lot of what was discussed there.

Um beyond that, um, one of the things that I I raised there that I'd be interested to learn more on is related to uh the tree code and violations um and the fees and fines associated um with the tree code there.

Um it wasn't clear to me what the size of those amounts were for those fines, but it seemed pretty nominal at the point of discussion and something that was worth a review.

And I think as we're seeing some developers be pretty aggressive about what they're trying to do.

Let's make sure that we strike that balance and retain the canopy cover that we've worked on as part of this.

I'm not talking about an individual's home and property, and I know we have to have those nuances.

I've got a branch, I gotta do something here.

I'm talking about clear-cutting the lots and just saying I'll just pay five grand and put it in the pot and we're good to go.

Um, I think we need to build an amphitheater down on the waterfront.

I know that's something that council member Anderson had been working on.

Sounds like we got a little bit of a delta and an issue there with the county.

He's a latecomer to this.

Don't give him up.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Dig it up, digging up some old skeletons here.

Some old skeletons.

All right, I like this.

This is good.

A little bit of excitement.

Um, this was your idea.

This was your baby.

We gotta have it.

Like, I don't know, like I was in Bend, like they had the concerts down there, like on the park.

Like it's so awesome.

Like, we've got to have that covered space.

We can have music here, more people are moving here.

It's such a sweet space.

Like we're starting to get there with like some gatherings and things, that it would be so money if like we actually had a space for that and we could actually recruit some more talent and have people down there.

It's such a prime venue in such a unique aspect of the area in the Northwest.

So, like, let's just go make those asks.

Let's get that Christmas tree bill loaded up.

Let's go talk to Rep Gamba and Senator Taylor.

Let's get the money, like whatever we need to do.

Let's make it happen.

Let's get some sponsorships, like I'll call some people, like T Bank, whatever.

Like, let's do it.

Let's call Uncle Phil.

He's throwing some money around, like, let's do it.

And then as part of that, like there's all this awesome development going on downtown, but we've got Freem down there, we've got the food hall going in.

We're starting to see new businesses coming as part of this.

I think it'd be cool if we thought about like what an entertainment district might look like and any incentives as part of that.

Like we need some more restaurants, like if you had a music venue, if you had some more businesses, there's just a lot of like vacancies, absentee landlords, turnover stuff like that.

Bold idea.

People might not love it.

You could look at open container rules.

Hood Rivers got it, Canon Beach has it.

I'm not talking New Orleans, I'm not talking Vegas full party, but like I was in Georgia earlier this year, some like old historic districts.

You get a closed, you know, container beverage, you can kind of you go from the food hall to fream, you kind of check it out, extend it down to decibel.

It's a nice way to out Portland Portland and bring people out.

So I know my time's up, but it's a lot of great ideas, and I'd love to follow up with you all on this at your leisure.

Happy to be a part of it.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you, Dylan.

I'd encourage you to go back and check some.

We've had many meetings on open containers at this point.

Yes, we just discussed it.

Like I also just I love that counselor Anderson takes all the credit for Milwaukee Bay Party.

Yeah.

Happy to build it.

All right.

I don't have any other yellow shards.

Do we have anybody online, Ms.

Mavic?

We do, but I believe that they're gonna be making a comment during one of the public hearings.

Okay.

Okay.

So if no one else for general community comments, we'll move on.

Uh tonight's consent agenda includes minutes of the city council, July 15th, 2025 regular session, and July 16th, 2025 site visit.

That has to be the world's shortest consent agenda.

Um I would entertain a motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Aye, second.

All those who uh it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent to approve the consent agenda as presented.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no.

None heard.

It passes unanimously.

All right.

So on to the public hearings.

We have two public hearings tonight.

And the first one is affordable housing code incentives ordinance.

Uh the public hearing on the proposed affordable housing incentives is called to order.

The purpose of this hearing is to hear the staff report, take public comments, deliberate, and consider approving the proposed code changes.

Does any council member wish to announce actual or potential conflicts of interest?

Seeing none, uh, I will turn it over to planning manager Laura Wingle and senior planner Vera Coleus.

Well, while we're getting ready here, um, I just wanted to say I'm really excited to be here tonight.

We started working on this with you all back in January.

We've had like three public, we had three work sessions with you all, and we went to the planning commission.

So this has been a kind of a long time coming to get to this point.

So we're excited to go through this with you all.

This hopefully this final iteration of it and get this thing adopted tonight.

And with that, okay.

So why are we here tonight?

Um, it goes back to, and you all have heard this before, but I think there's some folks here that don't know that the this code package came straight out of one of our strategies that we developed as part of our housing production strategy um that we are required to do by uh by the state.

And so we've been slowly working on uh rolling out these implementation strategies, and we had about eight different strategies uh in that plan, and we'll continue to bring those ideas and those strategies too.

You'll be working through that over the next couple of years.

And this is the first code package that we've brought to you out of that implementation strategy.

And it is to evaluate incentives for affordable housing development.

So that's what we are here to talk about for the fourth time, I think.

So if with that, I will hand it over to uh Vera.

Evening all, thank you.

Okay, so the purpose or this package of amendments is uh code-based approach to address housing supply and affordability.

And the idea was to consolidate all of our code amendment or code incentives into one code section.

So it's a new code section 19.511.

The affordable housing incentives apply to middle housing, mixed use residential, and multi-unit developments, but it depends on what the incentives are, and I will get to that um when we go through the the list of the incentives themselves.

And again, this code is the result of three work sessions with with you folks starting in January.

We had a work session with the planning commission, um, and then we did have our public hearing with the planning commission a few weeks ago as well, where they did vote to send a recommendation to approve the uh the package.

But I have a detailed slide about they did make a couple of recommendations to council, and we'll go over that when we get there.

Okay.

So all of these code incentives um relate to qualifying development.

So it's not everybody, it's you have to be a qualifying development to be able to take advantage of the code incentive package.

Um, and there is a sort of tiered system for affordability that we talked about with council.

Um, depending on at the level of affordability, then more units need to be affordable.

So, as you can see on the slide, um, if the affordability level is between 60 and 80% of the AMI, then 50% of the units have to hit that affordability target.

Um, and then so on down the tier, so that if you have, for example, uh less than 30% AMI as your targeted goal for income restricted um units, then only 20% of those units need to hit that affordability goal because the affordability is uh that that income restriction is low, you're really targeting very low income individuals.

Um so we're trying to balance out the number of units with the level of affordability within the development.

And if 100% of the of the dwelling units are at 80% or below, um then there are a couple of little additional incentives increasing by 10 percentage points.

Um, so that we what we're trying to try to do is sort of figure out different ways to kind of pull some levers to get more affordable units within these developments as they're using the incentives.

Now, continued affordability.

Um, a couple of slides before we get to the actual incentives themselves.

Um, but the application, and again, this is a package of variances, these are adjustments, um, and so it's structured as a package of uh variances up to 10 individual requests for variances as one variance application.

Um, and as part of all of this, there is a continued affordability requirement for those affordable units that the project has to include within that application the procedures proposed by the developer to maintain that those affordability levels uh for the units and that continued affordability for those.

Um and as um proposed within this code package, uh the income restricted rental units would need to be affordable for a minimum of 99 years and the ownership units at a minimum of 60 years.

Uh, part of this was a discussion that came out of council to try to incentivize more home ownership opportunities, so to kind of lower that um the timeline or that time frame for the continued affordability.

At the July 22nd public uh planning commission hearing, uh the commission recommended that council align that ownership and the rental timelines to the same 60-year time frame.

So that's a recommendation that the commission can you say more about their reasoning about why we wouldn't want to incentivize ownership.

Uh as part of that discussion, they didn't see a need to have two different time frames, and they really thought that they ought to that they ought to be the same.

So yeah.

From all her work in housing, she was saying that it made sense.

Like a lot of people just have that 60-year standard and more than anything to align with that 60 year standard because the 99 felt so kind of separate from what she's seeing on the ground.

But I don't think I think if we want to incentivize homeownership, aside from that extra 100%, 10% bump that we have, we could shorten the timeline of our affordability on homeownership or do other things.

But I think her point more was that 99 years was out of step with what she's seeing.

But that's we heard that number from our assistant city manager.

So okay, anyway.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

So again, the code of incentive package is intended to be a package of variances, up to 10 distinct variances could be asked for as one variance application.

Right now, our code allows for up to three variances.

So the idea was to package 10.

And for example, if someone was asking for a side yard setback variance in a couple of different spots, that's one variance.

It's not three.

So the idea was to be able to provide more opportunities for more variances under one application, reduces the application fee just as another way of packaging up the application piece itself.

So some so here are some of the list of the variances that are in the code package.

Side yard setback variants, it's a 40% reduction.

That's actually our current type two variants right now.

So we actually already have that as an as one of our lists of our type two variances, for example.

And then our front and rear setbacks, 25% reduction.

That gets bumped from middle housing.

So we wanted to increase that as part of a middle housing affordability develop affordable development.

There is a reduction proposed for a common area or landscaping or open space as part of the development of 25%, but the development would still need to meet the tree code.

So there are, you know, um a few, you know, even if the green space is reduced, they still do need to meet the tree code.

So this incentive package does not touch the tree code.

Those requirements are still still need to be met as part of the residential development.

Um and you can see on the list minimum lot area, lot width and depth, maximum lot coverage has it has a bump as well, and then building height of one story or 20 foot increase.

Um, and I know we got some comments about building height as being a concern from folks that were sent into OCR.

Um, I just want to reiterate or make clear that that uh height increase only relates to mixed use developments and multifamily or multi-unit residential developments.

So that would not apply to middle housing.

So it would not apply to cottage cluster, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, or townhouses.

So that building height increase would only be for mixed use developments in our mixed use zones or or in our downtown, and then multi-family res or multi-unit residential developments in our high density residential zones.

So I just wanted to make that clear.

I'm obviously here to answer any questions if that's not clear to folks, but I wanted to make sure that that was something we talked about.

And then in the downtown, um, there's language that talks about the height bonus being in addition to already allowable height bonuses.

So the idea being that we can stack some extra height in our sort of our city center core in our downtown.

So again, trying to incentivize additional units being able to be built over and above what the code would already allow.

Okay.

Continuing on bike parking.

Um, so there is an incentive or um an allowance to reduce the number of bike parking spaces and or the location of where those are.

Um, this was something that I know that came out of there was quite a bit of discussion, I know in the city of Portland about bike parking um and how to accommodate that, particularly in multi-unit residential or mixed-use developments, um, setting aside separate rooms, racks, that sort of thing takes up space of residential units.

Um, so it was something that um we offered up as one of the incentives as part of this package as well.

Again, that maximum building height, um, except for cottage clusters and for um and for middle housing.

There is no maximum density, again, where it's not about the number of units, it's about the box or that you know, that jello mold that we're talking about.

Um, and then there was um there's also some discussion about what can how the development works in the downtown.

So right now in our code, south of Scott Street on Main Street, you are not allowed to have ground floor residential on Main Street.

The package um would allow for ground ground floor residential on Main Street, south of Scott Street, um, as well as the ground floor non-residential support uses, um, amenity spaces and so on, would those would all be allowed um on that first floor.

And then for townhouse development, right now our code allows for four townhouses in a row before you have to have a break and then four more.

Um, the the code package um increase or suggested that we increase that to six.

Um, in that discussion at the planning commission, the recommendation within their vote was rather than have a number of units that it should be a distance, um, and so 200 linear feet.

So that way we're not um we're not talking about how many townhouses, we're just talking about the block length or the amount of space that they take up.

So if someone were building narrower townhouses, you could get more, but it would still take up the same amount of space because townhouses generally can be um as small as 12 to 15 feet wide, or you know, they could be 25 feet wide.

So it's really not about the number of units, it's about the streetscape experience, which is kind of what we were talking about in the code anyway.

So rather that way we're not we're not restricting the number of units we're talking about how much space they take up on a city block.

So that was the recommendation from the planning commission.

And then in the downtown right now since the downtown code was rewritten multi-unit development in the downtown used to be reviewed under the multi-unit design standards.

And then that got switched and now multi-unit developments are uh are reviewed against the downtown design standards this which have some more um more I would say more strict um or more requirements for the design uh the idea with the code package is to pull that back and allow the multi-unit developments in the downtown to be reviewed against the multi-unit design standards rather than the downtown design standards.

I'm sorry yeah that means allow them a lesser review I mean not they don't have the same design standard requirements okay yeah is that in this package yes oh okay that's not new that's been in in the package the the whole consistently okay counselor counseling question yeah I didn't realize we were doing questions can you go back one slide to just clarify this we've gotten a lot of you spoke to the emails that we've gotten about the height increases and how that doesn't apply to neighborhoods necessarily can you I I'm trying to swear because I have said to residents the reduction in open space does not impact our tree code which I believe because I've heard that here but I also kind of want to understand a little bit more about what that means because I know that we're hearing we don't want to lose green space or a tree canopy goals.

I want to make sure that that's we're sure staying true to that.

Well I think you know what our our code is independent of the tree code.

So our code if we didn't have a tree code you you're allowed this 25% reduction.

But we do have a tree code.

So even though we're allowing a 25% reduction in green space you still have to accommodate the required tree plantings.

So you may not be able to reduce the full reduction in open space because you need to be able to accommodate the tree canopy that you're required to plant.

You also have to have the right planting area that compaction zone the tree code is not just about a tree it's about the soil and the compaction during um during construction and the you have to post a bond you know and that tree has to stay alive for several years after so there are a lot of requirements about the tree planting standards that may not allow you to actually reduce your open space as much as this code would allow they have they go together just like all of our codes we allow people to do less but you still have to accommodate this code over here so you may not be able to get that.

So to clarify to understand this better we might see less landscaping that's not trees but we would still see the amount of like treated landscape.

You still have to have that for fit that 40% canopy that's right.

And then an example I'm trying to think of not landscaping that would still have a tree over it.

This would be like you have a parking space with a tree in the middle of it that would be in the aisle you know if you had a parking area and there was a plant you know there was a planted area for in the parking lot might have shade trees in it but they still need to be wide enough to accommodate the size of the tree that they're planting.

So the way canopy is calculated is it's diameter it's it's diameter breast height of a certain maturity of the tree.

So it's you know you're you're shrinking the amount of open space you got to maybe plant a couple Oregon white oaks that are going to be large and meet that in a hundred circumference in a hundred years.

Okay.

Vera I just have one clarification question.

I'm trying to square what you've got on this slide building height the one story 20 feet M U and MFR only.

And if you go to the next slide and it's an error in the chart.

Okay there we go.

Yes sorry about that.

No worries.

So this isn't how many times I've seen this this this presentation and I would have caught that by now but don't worry.

So this is the right point.

Yes that is very clear a one story or 20 foot increase but that only applies in mixed use multiple yeah okay and then the final little list of errands are the design standards um so this would allow for a full adjustment to our facade articulation standards that's both for our that would be for middle housing um as well as the um any of the facade articulation standards that are for mixed use and for in the um and for the multi-unit residential I didn't understand that I had circled that in my print what do you mean by full adjustment that you don't need to meet any of the facade articulation standards.

Yeah because and the reason for and the planning commission had some questions about that as well after the work session the challenge here the challenge is that the articulation standards well they do increase construction costs you know the more you have to kind of do to a building makes it more challenging for a project to pencil out.

The the challenge though is that facade articulation standards aren't math there aren't numbers it's it's things that you have to do you have to have um you know a part of the facade needs to um you need to have a two foot separate you know piece between the front wall and a setback and a step back or something like that.

So it's it's very difficult to create an incentive of, well, you have you get a 10% reduction in the facade articulation standards.

That's not the kind of standard it is.

Um so we try to figure out a way, is there a math way to kind of create that, or you only have to meet one or two?

If that's the the articulation standards tell you here are the ways to meet the standard as opposed to telling you what you have to do.

Um and so to create a any kind of a percentage decrease or something like that really doesn't work for those um for those standards.

I might add um that Senate Bill 1537, the the whole the variance package that came out of the Senate bill.

Um the city was approved for the exemption that we that we requested, but for um those items where we don't or those um areas where we don't have a variance option, which in fact is the downtown the DMU, um we don't have a variance for those standards and and the way that um legislation is written, facade articulation, it's a full adjustment.

That's actually how the Senate bill is written as well, because it's generally not a mathematical kind of standard that you can just reduce by a percentage.

Um so I'm not saying that that's it's I just as a way of kind of clarifying that it's a very difficult standard to try to incentivize without saying you you don't have to you don't have to meet it.

There was a lot of discussion at the planning commission about this in particular as well from a design standpoint, too.

Well, and I have to say, just as a from a linguistic standpoint, full adjustment doesn't mean what you just said to me.

The word exemption means what you just started to meet.

Okay, and we can make the rewriting.

Some adjustment sounds like, yeah, I don't know.

I've been reading the Senate bill for a year and a half now, and so that's just how I talk now.

So I apologize for that.

I agree.

I do, Counselor.

Yes, I do.

Thank you.

I agree.

Um the um another, and we'll make the we'll make the change.

I'll I'll rewrite that to me.

I'm sorry, do you have another question before?

Okay.

Um the three detailed design standards rather than five.

So for middle housing for any of the street facing facades, you have to meet um, you have to choose from a menu and have at least five of the detailed design um items.

Um, the incentive is to only have to meet three, and that there's a whole, I think there are 12 or 15 of those items.

Um, so that the the incentive is to only need to have three of those rather than the full five.

Council.

Okay.

So was there any discussion in the planning commission again back to the facade articulation about just requiring it?

Because it either seems to be you know, uh yes or no.

Yes.

So was there any discussion about keeping the facade articulation so that you'd sort of avoid the the blank ball?

There was.

Um there was discussion at the end.

Um, and there were a couple of commissioners that really wanted to emphasize good design and really wanted to still require that.

Um, at the end of the day, the the vote did allowed for the the package itself, but there was there was quite a bit of discussion about this.

Yes, particularly at the work session was when we really got into the details about that.

Yeah, I just uh, you know, I'm I understand the the goals we're trying to get to here, but at the same time, I think we might be sacrificing something.

Yeah, let's not get into deliberation, but um yeah noted put a put a pin in that and we'll come back to that.

Okay.

Um, and then finally the total window window area, the glazing area, um the variance or the adjustment is up to 30%.

Um, but there's still there would still be a minimum of 12% required uh for the glazing for the for the window area.

Okay.

The approval criteria, again, this is um it's a type two uh review, and the the land use application would still have to meet the findings.

We would still be writing findings.

Um, and so that would need to relate to um the type two approval criteria related to impacts, any mitigation to any identified impacts, um, that there are provisions to guarantee that the dwelling units will remain affordable in the future.

So that's that continued affordability um piece.

Um, and then there is um for a an eligible development that the the income restricted units are to be dispersed throughout the development.

Um, so they would need to show as part of their application package how they are accommodating that, how they are dispersing those units throughout the development itself.

The review process that we are proposing is an expedited type two review, um, which is a which is 100 days um instead of the typical 120 days for a standard type two review, um, but it would still have all of the type two um pieces of public notice um and all of that.

So that's not changing, it's just kind of streamling tightening up that 120-day review down to the 100 review.

And we already have the expedited type 2 review within our code.

Um, so we would be applying that um that process to these applications.

And then as a general understanding that these developments would get priority processing by all of the city departments for permitting and inspections and that's what I'm saying.

Did we end the legislative session without a mandate for a quicker review than a hundred days?

I thought we were we had some shorter review period that did not end up getting passed.

Bill names that was for engineering.

Ah, okay.

Okay, got it.

That was the two.

Yeah.

Council program.

Clarify, you say we already have the expedited type two review in our code.

What else do we apply that to?

So there is state law that talks very specifically about um a certain kind of affordable housing project.

So that's already in state law that gets that expedited review because we're sort of creating our own sort of affordable project.

We're applying that expedite.

We haven't had anyone do it yet.

Um, but there's um, but there's statute that talks about having this expedited review for affordable housing developments, but they are a certain description of what kind of affordable housing development.

So we're just reiterating that this is this would fall under that same category for that expedited review.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Again, the planning commission um at their July 22nd hearing, they voted three to one to recommend approval uh with the two recommended recommendations that I um mentioned earlier.

One that the ownership and rental developments have that same 60-year um affordability, um, and that townhouses be permitted for a linear length of 200 feet rather than that's you know the number of of townhouses at six.

Um so that's a it's actually quite comparable distance, um the 200 feet, but um, it gives a little more flexibility to the number of units.

So um it's actually very good suggestion, I thought we'll move on the commission.

Happy to answer any questions.

So I have a kind of a wonky language question, but in the uh at the bottom of RS30, you talk about our housing developments that are blah, blah, blah.

Low-income households as defined by the Federal Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD as 80% AMI or below.

First of all, 80% AMI is our median income.

So I don't think that actually qualifies as low income.

Um, because it is a per Milwaukee's medium income is about 80% of AMI.

But um up I'm just curious as to why you mentioned HUD here, but you haven't mentioned HUD up front where you've given us the other criteria.

I will make that consistent.

It was it wasn't on purpose.

Okay, it was okay me writing it over many, many days and not turning that over.

So I will make that consistent.

Okay.

Other questions?

Yeah.

Could you just explain again um what the planning commission's thought process was behind the 60-year-old.

Yeah.

So one of our commissioners, Julie Garvey, works in the affordable housing arena as her regular job.

Um, and and as uh council president Anderson spoke, she um she had questions and concerns about the 99 years.

I think that's not a time frame that she had worked with before.

So that was something that kind of alerted her to that.

Uh, but then there was also discussion about um, you know, we explained that you know, council wanted to incentivize homeownership, you know, um, and gave that a the lower the lower number, but at the end of the day, the commission thought that they that they should be the same, that their rental or affordable housing is valuable either way, um, and that there didn't they didn't see a need to kind of shorten that time frame to incentivize um ownership over the rental, so they wanted them to be consistent.

Was there specific reasoning why they didn't go with the higher years?

Again, I think um I think Commissioner Garvey's discussion about 99 years being something that she wasn't very familiar with.

She thought that six years was the much more standard time frame was something that they that they continued with.

So yeah.

And if I so questions, counselor Stavanger, did you have any questions before we go to public comment?

Nope, no questions here.

Thanks, Mayor.

Okay.

Uh have we received any additional correspondence?

So we had some things trickle in today.

I'm not even sure we've seen the last because we were in meetings starting at four.

So can somebody list what uh I'll list the ones you've got on my sheet, Nicole, and you can tell me what I miss.

We had four um items of correspondence.

I'm just gonna read the last names of the folks who submitted these.

Smith Haley, Reynolds, McManus, and Perry.

Are there any others?

There were no others, yeah.

That's all of those have been transmitted to you.

And Cruz, right?

I think we got one from I think McManus is the same as Cruz.

Oh, oh, okay.

Okay.

All right.

Just the four.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, let me I did fit them all.

Okay.

Um we'll do public testimony.

So I don't know if you guys want to stay there or you want to step back.

Um does anyone wish to comment on the affordable housing incentives.

I have at least two.

Um council will now take public testimony on the proposed changes.

I will recognize speakers and any questions you should be addressed through me.

When you begin to speak, state your name and city of residence for the record.

For those in person who wish to speak, please submit a yellow comment card.

If you are on Zoom, please use the raise hand reaction to alert staff that you wish to speak.

And when instructed to begin, click the microphone option to unmute yourself.

If you are calling in through Zoom and would like to make a comment, dial star nine to raise your hand.

You may also submit a comment via email to OCR at Milwaukee Oregon.gov.

Presentation times for all speakers will be limited.

Representatives of groups will be limited to 10 minutes.

Individuals will be limited to three minutes.

Please confine your remarks to the proposed action and package before us.

Avoid repetition and irrelevant information.

So Dylan had submitted first, so I'll call up Dylan Cruz.

All right.

Members of council for the record, my name's Dylan Cruz.

I'm a resident of Milwaukee.

Appreciate your time on this.

Um, it's a lot to digest.

So I appreciate the questions and helping us to walk through it.

So some concerns that I want to express and things to think about.

I mean, we're talking about 10 variances in a single project here, reductions in minimum setbacks, reductions in open space and landscaping, reductions in minimum lot area, width, depth, reductions in required bike parking, maximum lot coverage increased, up to 20 additional feet in certain areas, facade articulation, reduced window area.

Like you all have come by and seen that Harrison Street project next to us, right?

I know that's middle housing.

We're talking about affordable housing, but it still extends to middle housing.

And I've heard comments from people broadly on council electeds, community members, and have just commented on how problematic that project is.

I'm not talking about the developer.

I'm talking about the aesthetics, the visual aspects of it, the spacing on it, and saying this really isn't where we want to be going on this.

My concern is that we're taking what we've seen there as an example and you're inflating it further.

You're doubling down on it, you're expanding it even more.

So you're gonna see more projects like that.

I think that's concerning.

Now I've seen some of the images that have been shared to say, hey, this is what it could look like, but I do think we're kind of cherry-picking those units and what we're looking at.

Again, the concern that I've had about this has been these detached units that we're seeing.

They're a different animal.

We don't understand them, what they sell for, how you lend on them, how you borrow, how many you can squeeze in, how this works when you start pushing all these units closer and closer and against fences and reduce vegetation.

You're just building these blocks with no character and aesthetics at all.

You want quality units, not just affordable, right?

Um, I read the resolution.

There's no details on how the enforcement works.

There's no details on the penalties for violations.

I know we're saying that people will handle this and take care of it.

We should articulate that because to me, this is just like a good faith.

Like this will be fine, don't worry about it, right?

And again, all of the timeline requirements on this can be changed by a resolution from the future city council.

So we're giving a lot up to the future in trust, right?

I'll also say, I mean, you just look at everything that we've done here.

HP 2001 is already the most progressive, you know, legislation in the nation.

We just passed HB 2138 to make middle housing easier, HP 3031, housing infrastructure 2258, SB684, HB 13145.

Like the ink is still wet on those bills and what they do and all the incentives we're increasing, right?

So that's in addition to all the money we're paying for bonding and investments.

And I know that we need more of it, but I guess my ask to you are two things from my perspectives.

I think we need to kind of wait and see what the market looks like on some of these units and what the intervention point is, and then decide kind of what you want to do before you diving in.

We're we're not even seeing the first flush of these projects being developed and sold yet before we know where we're going in.

Lisa made a great point about that.

Like, what is the AMI?

Like, what are these gonna sell for?

Like, what does this look like?

I don't know what we're looking at yet.

And then my specific request for you like I'm imploring you.

We need more explicit language to prohibit the height increases on middle housing.

Um, I know we're saying, don't worry about it.

It's fine.

It's not in your area.

But again, the stuff changes.

Like it's constantly changing here.

I know I'm over here, but I mean we're counting the changes we're making right now, right?

We can't even keep track of what we've done.

We're asking these questions.

You gotta have a degree in planning.

You gotta be up at night reading these bills to kind of understand what's going on here.

So I'm just thinking about those loopholes, those unintended consequences, how they're exploited, how we work them, and just what's saying let's be a little bit more explicit and clear about this before we dive in and start permitting this out today with so many compounding, you know, options in front of us right now.

So I appreciate your consideration on that object talk program.

Thank you.

And Allison Cruise, like Bamus.

Hello and all the cruise normally.

So a lot of you know council meetings, in the neighborhood.

Um, I'll make sure I try to not reiterate a bunch of the same ideas Dylan's already given you.

But um, one thing I want to let you know about myself is I'm actually a data scientist that's responsible for fighting fraud at a large uh financial tech company.

So it's my job every day to look at projects and proposals and think about all the ways that bad actors are going to exploit that.

And that's the thing I'm most concerned about.

Like I know we have a need for affordable housing, but let's just do it the most responsible, safe way possible, that we don't take down the character of the city that we live in already.

Um, so a huge concern of mine are just what are the enforcement mechanisms.

Like we're gonna let the developers come in with the plan on like what what it is that we're gonna keep these affordable for 60 years.

That seems very optimistic.

I am particularly concerned about the ownership type of situations.

So if we took the Harrison development, which we live across the street from, if the developer Alec had decided to make one of each of the four quadplexes affordable, now they apply to every rule.

And those units are set to be sold.

So is he the person who's going to enforce 15 years from now, the person that bought that unit that they sell it to someone who also meets the AMI at 80% and all of that good stuff?

That doesn't make any sense.

So, like what is the true enforcement mechanism and what are the fines for violating those?

If it's $5,000, like the tree code we found out, it's like $4,000.

You can kind of do whatever you want.

That's a big problem.

So, like, what are the what are the repercussions?

Do you go to jail?

Is it a $5,000 fine?

Like what are those things that's not written down anywhere in here?

And that's really concerning because we do need mechanisms to hold people accountable.

And I think we all think about this as like, oh, a nonprofit's gonna come in with a big grant, we're gonna do this, and it's gonna be held by the nonprofit for a long time.

That's just not always going to be the case.

And as we've seen with Harrison Avenue, the developer has done every single thing to code.

And multiple times from many different people in elected positions, I've heard this isn't what we meant.

And I think we just really need to think about like how do we make sure that doesn't happen again.

Um, and the same thing with some of the setbacks and variances.

If we were in a situation where one of each of those four plexes, which are detached has made affordable, we're now looking at each of those detached flexes being three and a half feet away from each other.

Like you can't take out the trash.

So I would also implore maybe looking into different variances for detached versus attached.

Um, so Will, you sent me a nice mock-up of what the townhomes of the street could they could have been bigger if they had you know done this.

And that's where I just think the detached versus detached kind of comes into play.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, that's all the cards I have for people in the room.

Um I think Nicole might have someone online.

We do have someone online with their hand raised.

Okay.

Um, so please unmute yourself.

Uh Nicole will add you to the room to the whatever we call you panelists to make you able to speak.

Yeah, you should be able to go ahead and speak now.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, awesome.

Um, I mean Heather Buchanan.

I don't know if it shows on there.

I'm also I'm right across the street from um Allison and Dylan.

Um, and yeah, I share a lot of similar concerns.

I think the ones that concern me the most are um the potential side yard setbacks.

Um, especially since five feet already isn't a lot and to potentially allow a 55-foot um building to be built three feet away from an existing house.

Um just seems like a lot.

Um, like right up close.

Um, but I do really appreciate the emphasis on affordability.

Um, I really like the um the like prioritization in the permitting process.

Um, just kind of to go along with what um Dylan and Allison have pointed out.

Um I really would urge the city to consider um what someone with the worst intentions might do with this, because I think a lot of the rules and everything um kind of take a rosy view of what people might do, which would be great if people did it, but allowing the codes would allow um someone who only cares about their bottom line to go to the maximum extent allowable without many things that a city could do to um prevent it if it wasn't going necessarily the way that people had envisioned.

Um I just kind of um have some cautions around that, especially around the side yard requirements.

Um and then the height.

I know the height is currently only for um mixed use and I think multi-unit.

Um not to call out uh council president Anderson again, but um, I also agree with him in um really wanting more mixed use development within different neighborhoods and having that be a priority in zoning.

Um so I would be concerned if it was, even if it was just mixed use in that and it wouldn't affect neighborhoods yet.

If there was more mixed use available throughout the city of Milwaukee, it could allow very tall buildings very close to um you know single family homes, kind of dwarfing them and leaving them in the shadows.

Um so that would just be uh my comments that I would like to give.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in.

Um Ms.

Manigan, anyone else?

Uh we have one other person on Zoom, but they are do not have a hand raised.

Hand raised.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm looking around the room.

I guess that's all of the public comment.

Um does staff have any response to the testimony.

Mayor, counsel, Joseph Rulio, assistant city manager.

Um, I'll just want to hit on a few things.

Actually, these are great comments um from both Heather and the Cruise family.

Uh, these are actually also comments of why when we first started, I don't know if you remember, especially the enforcement, the um verification requirements, that was a big part of this discussion.

And when we started, it was it was offering affordable housing incentive to almost anybody that wanted to try to do it.

And we we've now since where we are today, is if you um for rental units, you're essentially gonna have to be a big property.

You're gonna have to be a multifamily or mixed use development.

Those are um to get the incentives.

Those are gonna be managed by a property owner.

And the way that we have it set up right now with the 99 years and 60 years, even for the um those are long-term investments that are usually done by affordable housing developers, particularly.

So I say all this because the way we framed it is actually very specific to people that do this.

I know that probably doesn't give our community enough assurance, but um there's there's that piece.

They do have on the homeownership side, those all have to be under a land a land trust model.

We do not allow just a uh developer to come in and do one unit the way the code is written today.

Um so we've tried to account for these items because we do care about those affordability terms actually meaning something from 60 to 99 years.

So that's the way that that's the reason why we got to where we are today, is because we actually have been talking about those parts.

Um if there's any questions about that more, happy to answer it.

And also would say that um if if the concern comes down to middle housing being a part of this code, then I would just automatically I want to just throw it out there right now and maybe help with the conversation that we are we could also entertain the idea of just being too mixed use and multifamily as well.

And just if you're following along at home or in your packet, it would be uh on RS31.

It's that section D about continued affordability, which speaks to what Joseph just said.

It's uh what we'd be looking for in um in those you know, agreements and legal proof of restriction affordability covenant that the city would require as part of that piece of continued affordability.

Yeah.

So just make sure I understand what you were saying, Joseph.

So I mean, I get we all know, you know, Hillside or or Northwest Housing Alternatives.

There are nonprofits that do this.

But if somebody came in and wanted to build a fourplex and make one affordable, they couldn't uh and they're not one, and they're a private developer.

Yeah, there's no mechanism for them to do the affordability covenants.

There's not a another agency that would take ownership or would do that for them, or there could be.

There could be.

Okay.

There could be.

Okay.

So any kind of any type, in at any moment, in any developer or property owner wants to pursue these incentives, they have to get a deed restriction on those units or the that unit.

And then also assure some kind of regulatory requirement as far as uh the management authority.

So, yes, you could give that unit to another to a nonprofit or to the housing authority per se or um a land trust also.

There are options out there, they don't have to own it and manage it.

Okay.

That answer your question.

And so, yeah, that answered my question.

And then since you're here, the you were the kind of the where we came up with the 99 years.

So that's what I'm saying.

Yes.

Um, so council uh commissioner Garvey is correct that in 60 years is the typical and the standard.

Um what I mentioned in the other meetings is that 99 is kind of the more uh is becoming more commonplace and happening more often throughout the United States.

Um I actually do believe I thought Portland was using it on the 99 year term.

Um that's one of our closest, but I know some other states are also using 99 years, and the federal government was also considering 99 years as part of their low income tax credit.

Okay.

So that's that's where I got that.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council president.

Yeah, I have I really one have to say I've enjoyed the fun thing about middle housing and stuff going wrong is I've got to meet some neighbors and get to know some familiar faces.

So it's fun to see you back again, even under these sad circumstances.

Um the questions that I have here are kind of taking what some of the neighbors have raised.

Let's say there's a developer, maybe they've already developed in Milwaukee and they come in and they say, I'm gonna build affordable units that will be for homeownership.

They build the units with all of our variances and then they change and they try and sell them on the private market.

What happens, or like how do we guarantee that they aren't able to do that?

That's uh real estate law.

I mean, I'd look to our city attorney to also help with this question, but um that deed restriction would be contested in court.

Um You wouldn't, I mean, would you typically I guess the piggyback would you typically get a deed restriction up front before you know at the time of permits, or is that something that happens at occupancy?

Good question.

So typically uh the the confirmation is you ask for it as part of the condition in the land use process, and then they they provide the recorded document prior to the C of O.

That's typically how it works.

So before anyone can move into the home, you have to show the recorded instrument.

And if they hadn't, I guess this is what I don't understand.

Maybe the lawyer can speak to.

If they hadn't they agree to do this affordable project before receipt of occupancy, they change their mind and try and pull back on us.

What is the legal remedy or what does that look like?

They don't meet the conditions of approval for the projects, yeah.

There's uh there are some some levers that we can pull.

Uh I I would probably surmise that would be a rare occurrence, but if somebody were to pull permits to build an affordable housing, a unit allowed under this code, and then they build it, and before they get their certificate of occupancy, they decide they don't want to do the affordability part.

Um, they will have built a project that's not inconsistent with their permitting.

And so it would just resort to our normal enforcement mechanisms.

They won't get their certificate of certificate of occupancy for the property until that is recorded and taken care of.

I'm not sure if that was your question.

I guess what does that imply then if they don't get their certificate of occupancy?

Nobody can live in the units.

They don't get their final approval.

Okay.

And they don't have because they will have received permits that are of a certain color, right?

They they have to do certain things.

They won't have a case to go to court and force us to give them their certificate of occupancy because they haven't met the terms of their deal with the city.

Do this is striking in mind.

This is striking in my mind some similarity to the considerations that led to rep Gamba's bill about SDC deferrals and creating a fund to back fill cities if people stiff them on their SDCs.

Um the truth is if there's a nice you know development out there, and we're not letting someone we are the future council in 15 years are not letting someone move in and occupy given the housing need, that's gonna be a really hard position to be in as the city.

Um to like say, oh yeah, there's some beautiful housing there, but you can't occupy it.

We're gonna keep you from occupying it.

I I mean I just see there being some um some struggle, potential for struggles.

But what developer would do that and want to lose money?

I would they're all about making money.

So I I would think that that would be a rather rare circumstance that somebody were to pull permits and go through this entire process and then just and then build the units all out ready to go, and then fault fault on the last piece to get their certificate of occupancy.

Certainly stranger things have happened, but I think these these code or this code package is specifically tailored to a portable housing developments.

I don't think you're gonna get very many just one off developers who are gonna come in and take advantage of this system.

I think you don't I don't think most affordable developer affordable housing developers are developing affordable housing to make a large profit.

I I do though want to um emphasize what the commenters brought up that there is an ongoing enforcement piece of this, and going back to Joe So Joseph opened up our work session a couple times ago.

We we don't want to hide that that this any time we implement this stuff, we are um we are implementing mechanisms of our follow-up.

I think that the team has done the best we can on, you know, putting in language that would provide that certainty up front.

But I think the council president was actually asking what if you get a certificate of occupancy, people live in it for 10 years, and then they sell it on the private market.

I think we that would take, but I still think it would take some enforcement um capacity for us to follow up on that.

So I just want to I want to be transparent that that is true.

This is why I'm moving code enforcement into community development, because I think this is the future of our code enforcement focus is this kind of follow-up.

And I guess, can I clarify, or maybe just ask this question?

We've heard from community members who are worried that our enforcement doesn't have teeth and people are gonna violate this.

And I've heard from you all today that maybe you don't think that that will happen.

Is it like, do you think that this has sufficient teeth to prevent developers from abusing this code?

I guess my opinion, and I'd welcome my staff to offer theirs is I don't think it's that our code lacks teeth.

I think it's that this takes capacity.

And and the code system is also not um per perfect or snap your fingers and it's done.

There's there's due process, there's notices, there's the court process.

So I I think our process has teeth.

I think I have two code enforcement staff, and we're seeing a lot of development.

Yeah, that this is this is actually less a code enforcement um issue in my my opinion.

This is this is a real estate law issue that it will come down to when it comes to enforcement or someone being um nefarious as you're suggesting, council president.

I I do also I will I will say as the code is written in my ex my experience, and I can be certainly wrong because I'm aging and having my experience is that I don't know that um I don't believe many developers will take up this code package as an incentive that aren't in the business of doing this.

That's that's my projection, my forecast.

But that's if it's of any help.

Yeah.

If it's okay to turn to another topic, Heather mentioned uh the Heather, I love that you're following along to the hair rand ideas that I have.

And I really do like the idea of expanding the amount of SMU designations that we have in the city.

Um at the same time, I think Heather raised an interesting concern where could we see a hype bonus apply to SMU?

My understanding was that SMU was not eligible for hype bonuses.

Is that only our previous hype bonuses that we had?

Would that apply to this one?

Um, because I know that other hype bonuses that we've added to our code are not SMU is not eligible.

Is that the same case here?

Um so the way this so there are not in our base code right now, there are not height bonuses in the SMU, like there is on the general mixed-use zone or the neighborhood mixed use zone.

The way this code is written is that it's in two parts.

Uh the maximum building height applies to multi-unit and mixed-use residential developments.

Um, and it's in the downtown mixed-use zone and the general mixed-use zone.

So in the DMU in the GMU.

Um, so it's that's how it was intended to be written was that it was in the GMU and the DMU zones, not in the neighborhood mixed-use zone and not in the SMU zone.

But I can make that very clear in the code that that was the intent.

That's all everyone's understanding, I guess.

I've heard from other folks who might be sitting in this room that like there is an important, it's important that we treat our downtown and our town center differently than our neighborhoods.

And we only have our GMU in our town center anyways, but making that really clear, I think will be really important because I do think the conditions in our downtown and the type of growth that we want to see in our downtown is very different than out in our neighborhoods.

And I also, as someone who wants to see more SMU designations across the city, I also think that it's important that SMU is still palatable to neighbors when you have mixed use development.

It doesn't have to mean you have a 10-story behemoth next to you.

We're gonna have something that is neighborhood scale.

Um we got a late breaking uh public comment.

So I guess we haven't actually closed public comment, so I guess I'll let him comment.

Um so Bernie, you have three minutes.

Bernie Stout, Mocky resident, prior Clackmas County permit specialists.

And I I think this what I'm bringing is up relevant.

Uh saw over a half a dozen 12 bedroom houses, 14 bathrooms, get built.

And the very next day they went in and put in a change of order, change of use.

And they got it.

And this happened a half a dozen times all over Clackcomers County.

What they were doing was usurping the ADA requirements and fire sprinklers.

You know, to them it was big money.

To me, I wouldn't want my relatives because they were turning them into convalescent centers.

I wouldn't want my relatives in the in those buildings, but it was legal.

So I'm just throwing that out as an example of what you guys are talking about.

There are people that do it, and that's to me is big money.

Thank you.

I think that's a that's a good example of gamesmanship that you know, I think we do worry about.

Okay.

Um other questions for staff before we close public testimony and go to deliberation.

Oh, yes, okay.

I told Robert I wouldn't be a noisy goose, but then we got a lot of public comment.

Um the last thing that I kind of want to understand is how this applies to detached units, and especially what Alison was mentioning around detached quads.

The um setbacks, does that apply internally to the units?

Alison mentioned that you could have a three-foot setback between units.

And my thought was, or my understanding at least, was that it was just from the side.

How does that look?

Or explain to me a little bit more there, because I think that that's an important concern.

Yeah, the um the side yard setbacks are the perimeter or the setbacks are the perimeter setbacks.

Um, it's the relationship of the structure to the property line.

The interior is the spacing, and we're we haven't changed that.

There's there is actually code language for detached units have to be a minimum of six feet apart.

It's actually a building code requirement as well, based on fire separation and so on.

So we haven't changed the interior separation of detached units.

So the setbacks and the variances that that we're talking about here are all about the perimeter, the relationship of the building to the property line.

It's not the interior kind of spacing.

No.

So if we're gonna let create waivers of or reductions, allow reductions in lot coverage or increases in lot coverage and reductions in green space, they would still be subject to that six-foot minimum spacing between okay.

It's a different standard and it's still in the code.

So yes, and it's also a building requirement.

You mean state building code?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, if there are no other questions, I will entertain a motion to close the public comment part of the hearing.

Move to close the public comment part of the hearing.

I second.

Is it move and seconded to close the public comment part of the uh affordable housing code incentives hearing?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye aye.

Opposed say no.

The public comment part of the hearing is closed.

Is there any council discussion?

Who wants to start?

Um, I will just say I appreciated Joseph's uh preemptive uh statement because it is what I've been thinking all day long, which is I'm fine with the changes to the DMU and the GMU, but uh the planning commission had this hearing a week before the middle housing town hall.

I don't know how many planning commissioners watched that, but I don't know if it would have changed their view, but it definitely changed my view.

And I feel like we really need to, I like I'm not willing to give any reductions on green space or give any increases on lot coverage because I think what we're seeing in town is quite a shocker to me as someone who was part of considering the first um, you know, the initial package.

Um I really thought Tottage Clusters had to have more of a usable communal space.

Uh I see a lot of mix in what we're seeing in terms of how far out what the front yard setback is on some of these, um, and allowing even more um uh you know, more permissive, you know, lessening of those setbacks really gives me uh concern.

I think we probably do need to have a conversation about some of our middle housing standards after the town hall.

Um but anyway, that's kind of where I am.

I am um I'm okay with what we say in here about the mixed-use zones, but um I'm there's a lot of the rest of it that gives me heartburn.

So uh just an observation is that uh this is not new.

And um I would uh uh highlight Mozalora and and um Adam were both there when we were considering the the comprehensive plan.

I remember quite well a public hearing in the old historic city hall, um, where there was uh you know uh a group of citizens who were against many of the things that we were talking about in a comprehensive plan.

And I I really remember uh one of the uh uh uh testifiers there, Mr.

Croskin actually had uh a slideshow and some pictures, and one of his pictures was you know, this cute little craftsman house with this five-story apartment building six ways up six feet away from it.

And he says uh this is uh what this is gonna come to.

And I said, no, that's not gonna happen.

And so this is not a new concern because it's been around for a long time.

So I appreciate the um observations from the citizens rate.

Um I I'm also um you know, in this whole uh process that the you know the the city and the state have been going through over the last uh four or five years to try to increase the housing stock.

I've uh I've also had some concerns about the pace of changes.

Um and uh, you know, I was I was really uh upset about all the work that we did had done on the comprehensive plan and the code uh package and everything like that, specifically with regard to parking in the state overnight overturned all of that work, and I was really hot.

I think it created created a number of problems.

So I I share uh you know the concern about all of this rapid fire changes, and we really don't know how things are going to turn out.

And so I don't know if that's a slowdown, a pause, whatever we'll call it.

Uh, because I think there's just a lot of uncertainty here about uh uh where this whole process is going.

And quite frankly, you know, I don't think any of us uh you know foresaw many of the challenges that were raised by the uh quadplex uh you know now in Harrison.

You go ahead.

I just was yeah, I guess I guess just I'm not sure what I understand your bottom line to be that we shouldn't move fast.

Yeah.

Okay.

On any of it, you wouldn't move some parts of it.

Okay.

I'm I'm not ready to pick this and to go ahead and this pick the point.

I think there's a lot of complications in all of them.

Um, I mean, yeah, we've been working on this since January.

So it's surprising here.

A lot of these issues come up now.

Um it's a little disappointing too.

Uh because I I feel like really the state's overreach um where they did nothing for affordable housing in those bills, really put us in a bad spot, and now because of that, we're gonna push off affordable housing incentives.

I mean, that doesn't make sense.

The state screwed this up, not us.

So, because of that, we're gonna wait and kick the can down the road even longer, which is only gonna exacerbate the issue even worse.

So the state's overreach is basically bullying us into reconsidering our affordable housing incentives.

But what do we think is gonna happen if we wait?

Do we think it's gonna get cheaper?

Do we think the state's gonna do the right thing?

No.

So what do we what do we have to do?

Because at the end of the day, we still have a responsibility to do what we can to provide opportunities for the residents who live here.

And for those who are struggling, and for those who at 80% MHI, which is 100% MHI cannot afford a home right now in Milwaukee.

I see this as two separate issues.

There's the middle housing overreach issue, and there's affordability issue.

Right now, market rate developers are punking us out of affordable options, out of affordable opportunities.

Because instead of those eight being built on that site for 450,000, which is not affordable, that's $500 a square foot at 800 square feet, mind you.

That could have gone to something to a developer that actually gives a damn.

And majority of those developers are nonprofits.

We all know developers are out for their bottom line, majority of them.

That's why there's two different ones.

There's market rate developers and there's affordable housing developers.

There's really no market rate developer who's gonna take advantage of these incentives because there's no money in it.

We sat down with a uh a market rate developer in a work session and a study session.

And that developer said straight out, I can't make money off this.

I can't, there's nothing I can do.

That's why I gotta build and sell them at 450 or 475.

This is targeted just the specific nonprofits and individuals that do these things, like Proud Ground, who's building one on Harvey Street that's gonna provide 25 houses, starting at 250,000.

So we're kind of in a predicament because we don't want market rate, but we also don't want to push for affordable.

So what do we want to do?

Because sitting on our hands and waiting is gonna hurt other families that don't have time to sit on our hands and wait, right?

Now I understand the green space issue.

I do.

And I don't want that that example on Harrison to define what affordability is gonna look like, and that be the reason we don't do it because that's a completely separate development.

That's not an affordability developer.

That individual clearly did not care too much about the issues facing Milwaukee and cared more about their bottom line, right?

So I'm not willing to let that development scare us out of this.

Now I do I do understand the green space issue.

Um, because I had some questions, which I talked to council president Anderson earlier today about five feet to three, three and a half feet.

You know, five feet could be somebody's side garden, right?

And does a foot and a half out really make that huge of a difference?

And is that something that we're really gonna get the most pain for?

But we're leaving it at five feet might be better because we have more opportunities to put in trees and green stuff that we need that people are gonna want.

Um, but I understand that it's a give and take because we're at an impasse right now.

We're we're we're at a point where it's green space or living space because we don't have any more space.

So maybe that's something that we need to work out, but but I am not willing to say no to incentives because of the developers who have historically taken advantage of these things to continue to bully us into not doing anything.

I'm not willing to do that.

Council president?

Um, I'll echo some of Counselor Casarati's sentiments.

I think it's really important that we do something here.

I think there's the four meetings that we already had, plus the two planning commission meetings, like there's been a lot of staff time that's gotten into this already.

And there's like we are in a housing crisis right now.

There is an element of like we need to move fast because the system is broken.

It's not moving fast and breaking things.

Things are already at that point.

Um, and so I think it's really important to me that we walk away tonight with an affordable housing package that we can show to our residents that we have going forward.

I think that, like Council Professor Roddy talked about, there's a difference between I think two things need to happen on this.

There are really clear directives that we got from our middle housing town hall about how we can mitigate the impacts of middle housing.

I think that there are real concerns with neighborhoods growing and changing, and the state has not done that the state is not really holding our hands and showing us how to do this.

This is cities having to go forage out on their own and figure out how to do this.

And I think that work is critically important as we talk about this housing production strategy, as we talk about other housing production strategies, and as we just talked about what it looks like to implement state laws.

I don't think, and I don't want that to be the reason why we do not pass an affordable housing code.

Um, I think, and I I might be I I think of this code in two ways.

I spoke with Dev Northwest, they're an affordable housing developer that does a lot of work at the state level.

And I kind of asked them, what would be your dream affordable housing code?

And they said, just allowed an affordable housing buy right.

Let us do whatever we need to.

We're not trying to screw people over.

We're trying to make this work as much as possible.

That would mean no subs.

That would mean no vegetation.

That would mean you can just build.

And I was like, well, that seems like a little bit much of northwest, but I love the sentiment.

I do think the flip side is like we need to make it when people are coming in, trying to make affordable housing as easy as possible for them to be able to configure these units to have a project pencil out.

It is really difficult to get these projects to fiscally work.

And I think allowing those nonprofits to have as much like stability as possible while still maintaining baseline livability standards, we're not allowing to live in all right.

We're still protecting certain elements like setback and education and our tree code that we think are really important to live ability.

I think that that's helping balance to establish.

I think the one area where maybe I differ from you all, and maybe I'm applying this guy idealist, is um at the heart of like how we solve our affordable housing crisis.

We hear that this is a supply problem.

And I fundamentally believe that we have not built enough housing to be able to keep up with the demand.

And so we see market rate housing become increasingly unaffordable.

And you see middle housing that comes online that is $300,000 less than a single family home, but it's still $400,000, which people bulk at as they should, because that is a lot of money.

To fix that, we will have to increase our housing supply.

And I think that that is one part of the as we fix our housing supply.

And this package is what allows us to address those acute needs for people who need income-restricted affordable housing now.

There is a market solution, but then there is also a more heavy-handed government solution that we need to plan on.

And I think that we need income restricted affordable units at a lot of price points.

Mary, you brought up that 80% AMI is Milwaukee's average income.

40% of Milwaukee residents are cost burdening their housing.

There are people who are making 120% AMI who are struggling to afford a house in Milwaukee.

Frankly, I want as many income restricted units as possible because that guarantee over time is a guarantee that that house will stay affordable in perpetuity.

So my foolish dream here is that we will not only see affordable housing nonprofits build this, but we might see those greedy greedy developers say, okay, I'll make one of my units affordable in exchange for these variances.

And maybe that's idealistic.

I've gotten a lot of pushback that that might not be the case.

But I believe there's such a fundamental need for as many of these income restricted units as possible to make it so our city can remain a working class community, that I see these all of these trade-offs that we're willing to make as really important.

I think about the last thing I'll say is like we hear a lot about livability.

Um and at the end of the day, our city cannot be livable if it's not affordable for people to live in.

And if our city has a homeless crisis that expands like Portland's is right now, that to me is not a livable city either.

We talk a lot about what we do.

We heard about some of those programs.

We're going to be talking about them later with our public safety.

We see a lot of the like back end interventions for homelessness.

This to me is a really proactive upstream intervention that will help people stay off of our streets that will help our city maintain its livability.

And there are absolutely trade-offs, but I think those are trade-offs that I wanted to make.

Um so I'm happy to talk about little tweaks that people think that we need to make, but overall, I'm really supportive of this package.

And I think that this is a direction that I'm proud to see the city continue to go in.

Um counselor Savantor.

Uh thanks, Mayor.

I'm gonna try to make my um remarks brief because I appreciate all the thoughtful comments that folks have made tonight.

So thanks to community members that have um come out to testify.

And I am pretty sure one of you was in the Reddit thread talking about this.

And so if you're still in the room, appreciate you um synthesizing all this information for other community members that weren't able to be a part of the town hall or here tonight, or for any number of reasons.

Um I think I I appreciate that this is a really challenging situation.

I think um for me, it kind of comes down to um, you know, I think I think it was Joseph that mentioned that um like even with these types of incentives in place, the likelihood that developers will be able to finance affordable housing projects is sometimes very slim.

Um, and the developers that move into affordable housing.

You're cutting out counselor, we do not hear you.

Looks like your uh audio has been muted accidentally, maybe.

It's still sure Counselor Scavenger on Zoom and not muted.

Okay.

Counselor text her, so she's not she's probably giving such a great maybe Joseph, do you want to try and finish off where she was going I texted her, she's uh she says it's okay, just skip me.

Wow, okay.

Um I do think doing I mean I everything we've heard is that it is the you know, it is the known affordable housing developers who are likely to take us up on this.

And so to me, it is doing something to adopt a code that applies in the NMU, I mean in the DMU and whichever it's not NMU, it's GMU.

Um there's too many MU's.

Um I mean, I think that's still um creating some opportunity, some pretty big opportunity.

And I note that we will be, you know, we have up on our planning to do list the um high density residential zone.

Oh, yep.

That's exactly what we want.

I'm so sorry to interrupt you, Mayor.

Um, but I just wanted to clarify that for mixed use development, it's in this all applies to the GMU and the DMU zones.

But multi-unit residential would be because those are allowed in those mixed use zones as well.

But the RHD, multi-unit development in the RHD zones is part of this code as well.

So it's not just the GMU and the DMU zones.

The high density residential zone, a multi-unit development in the high density residential zone gets to apply to us, including that hypo that extra 20 feet of height.

So I just wanted to make sure that we weren't only thinking things were happening in the two mixed use zones.

The high density residential zone is also in play when it comes to the development.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

Mayor Beattie, uh, counselor Scavenger is back on Zoom.

Okay.

Are you able to hear us?

Uh can you hear me now?

We can hear you now.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

Our Wi-Fi went down.

So um hopefully this connection will work.

Um, and the test will be how long I talk.

So I just all I really wanted to say is that um the developers that are in the field of affordable housing development for the most part, um have been those that um are not in it to make a a ton of money.

It's very hard to finance these projects.

It's really hard to work through all of the different um parameters to get a project to come to fruition.

Um, and it's it's not advantageous for a developer to flirt with the idea of of being denied an occupancy permit, or even worse, having to um go to court with a jurisdiction if they fail to um, you know, if they fail to um meet the the parameters of the deed restriction.

And and I know that there are always bad apples and there are um always going to be some exceptions somewhere to this rule, but um I just really appreciate what Joseph said about um about the folks that will go down the path of trying to make this work.

Um I think that also local jurisdictions are in a really tough spot because we have um we have rules from the state that open up the um the potential to build more affordability.

Um and we have um, you know, in Milwaukee, a council that is and has been willing to lean into that and try and find the right um the right combination of what that looks like for our city.

Um, but it also means changing the built environment, and that is really tough.

It's a lot to work through.

And you know, just by demonstrated by working through all of the details of middle housing alone.

Um, you know, we are willing to put in the time and I really appreciate the planning commission's um and their service to the city and and really struggling with these issues.

So um I think that's I think that one other point that is important is that um when something goes wrong, um it comes down to the capacity of the local jurisdiction to be able to um either litigate or um or have the capacity to do the code enforcement.

Um and that's something that I think a lot of cities are struggling with, and luckily we are also facing that conversation head on um around what funding looks like and being able to support the capacity locally to um you know to stand behind the legislation that we're that we're designing.

So those are my my thoughts and my comments, and I appreciate the remarks of my colleagues this evening as well.

And so you are saying you support the package as written.

I thought we were deliberating and commenting.

I didn't know that we were doing a straw poll.

Oh, well, I mean, I think most people have sort of said where they stand on the package.

Um so I think it would be helpful to know.

I mean, yeah, I think that okay.

Sure.

I can do that.

I support the package as written.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Um, council president.

To your point about should we restrict this to just GMU and DMU?

Um, I don't really think that that is something that we should do for a few reasons.

One, um, Councillor Coser Body mentioned Proud Ground, who is developing something in our RMD zone.

We also have the Sparrow site that I would hope this code package would apply to.

We've got the scattered sites that are exist within our RMD.

Um, and I think that there are a variety of options that we can see that I I think that it is valuable to have affordability be brought into our neighborhoods and accessible in our neighborhoods.

I think that we see examples of cities really concentrating where poverty is located, and that I don't think is an advisable social policy.

And so saying that this code will only apply to small sections of downtown, I don't think is uh uh I just don't think that that's an appropriate path for us to go.

I like the way that this code thoughtfully includes designations outside of just our downtown.

I like that it treats them differently.

I think that that's really important.

We heard that.

Um, but I think it's still important to have this apply to our RHD and RMD zones.

So I don't think anybody was suggesting that we don't do anything in our in our uh RHD and whatever, in our residential zones, medium density and I mean we're going to go into the high density residential zone soon.

That's relatively high on the project list.

And I think we have a conversation to have out of the um middle housing town hall about some of the middle housing rules generally that could be a place to, you know, to sort of um right size the the part of this package that relates to um to the middle density residential zones.

But to me, it is absolutely not right sized at this moment.

Um it is tone-deaf to the things we heard at the um middle housing town hall, which is not staff's fault because um they've been working on this package a long time before that town hall, but um I just think it's we owe uh yeah, there are there are things in it that I think bear more conversation when it comes to uh to the middle middle density housing.

And I think um it would be a shame to rush this through and um get some um problematic things uh as a result before we have sort of those broader conversations.

Plus, it's also much harder to undo, right?

I mean, in fact, I think the new legislation even makes puts a finer point on that as I understand it.

That uh, you know, if you grant something, you can't roll it, it's making it harder to roll it back.

So once we do this, don't worry, that was amended out.

It was yep, so that's not included.

Okay.

Um anyway.

So yeah, I don't, I'm not, I'm certainly not in, I'm not saying let's not do anything in middle housing or middle medium density housing.

I just think we that needs its own conversation in light of the things we heard at the uh middle housing town hall.

If I may, Mayor, but why do you see these as two of the same though?

Because I feel like the town hall was separate, because a lot of the complaints out of the town hall, actually, one of them was that they're not affordable.

Oh, but like how are you seeing these as two in the same and not just No, I'm saying this package, this package would do things.

I I came out of the middle housing town hall with my own sort of checklist in my head of okay, I want to revisit um lot coverage, and I want to revisit um green space and the trees, and you know, and so I had this checklist of things in my head that I wanted to revisit.

And here we are actually doubling down.

If we pass this package, we are doubling down on all those things.

We're we're opening the door to you know, more density, more uh, you know, less lesser setbacks, less green space, less potential for trees.

I think you know, we we say our tree code still applies.

I think we don't know because we're some of these developments I want on Olsen Street where it has space for trees, you're not gonna be able to grow a very big tree.

That tree is not gonna I I I just cannot see how that property ever meets a 40% tree canopy.

Is that an affordable development?

No.

But well, but I mean we're gonna case though.

You're talking about opening the doors.

How many affordable developments have we had compared to market rate?

So if we're gonna open the door to anything, I would say we'd want to open the door to affordable units as opposed to market rate units that are the ones that are really causing the issues.

Uh, middle housing bill is what's causing the issues.

I don't see how the affordability part has anything to really do with that.

Well, except that we're lessening the protections for trees.

We're lessening the protections for green space.

How how if if we have to stick to the code?

I mean, staff made that pretty clear.

No, I mean, we're the code says and I honestly feel like this package is our only ability and opportunity to push back against the massive market rate housing that we're seeing, take up the space that we need for these type of developments.

Common area minimum landscaping or open space reduction up to 25%.

Can you clarify, Vera?

Because you said before that we're not changing the tree code, but it seems like the mayor is implying that we are.

No, the tree code still applies as it is right now.

So you still have to do 40% of the city.

Yes, we still have to meet the 40% canopy.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

We're we're allowing a reduction, but you but that has to be balanced against the requirements of the tree code.

And like you said earlier, the requirements of the tree code are strict enough that they might constrain even the variants that we're getting here for vegetation.

I only say that, and I'm I don't want to be a junior urban forester here.

Um, but the the tree code has requirements for soil volume for um for plant planting requirements for making sure that the soils are going to be able to accommodate the trees.

And there obviously there are many, many different trees that you can choose from to be able to meet that canopy standard.

Some of them are big like a white oak, some are small, but you'd then you'd need to plant more of them.

I all I say is that the just like anything, you know, we tell people at the counter that this property you could you could build a quadplex here, but you have to meet this, this, this, and this, right?

So everything kind of pushes against each other until you work out the math.

So yes, you could reduce the setbacks.

Yes, you could reduce your open space, but you still have to meet your 40% canopy.

So whether or not someone could actually maximize all of these reductions in all of this green space depends on what their tree code requirements it's all needs to fit together as a puzzle.

So someone may be able to maximize all of this and still meet the canopy.

Um I haven't, you know, worked out a bunch of scenarios to see if that could happen.

But um, we are not touching the tree code.

The tree code requirements still remain.

So yes.

Okay, we do have another hearing to have.

And so I guess um if people have said their um said their piece, and it sounds like we have three people who are willing to pass the code as presented.

Uh maybe we can end uh uh deliberation and uh move to a vote.

Council president.

Well, I have one piece of bad news.

What we did not deliberate at all is the planning commission amendments, which we maybe shouldn't turn to.

Yeah, that's a good point.

That's a good point.

So there were two.

Um the 60 versus 99 years.

I'm in, I mean, go with your planning.

Go with your uh go with incentivizing ownership, go with the longer years for um for rental versus ownership.

I mean, if we're being told that that's is a you know growing trend, you know.

Thoughts.

16 I agree uh with the 99.

If it if that's where I mean, because we had the problem with the 30.

That's where the 60 came, right?

Because the 30 clock ran out, and we're like, well, we need to double it, make it 60, but I think 99 is where we need to be.

I think I would agree.

The caveat that I would say is I really do take Julie's experience.

Um, but there is something there.

She's worked in this far more than any of us have.

And so I would say when we read we already committed to revisiting this code and seeing how it works, and I would be very curious to see.

Uh I want to put forward a code that's actually used by affordable housing developers as opposed to just something that sits on paper.

And so if we're seeing like Julie predicted, the 99 years is a barrier, then we should revisit it.

But I think that we have good points.

We want to see more homeownership, and I appreciate that this is something that we could.

But Julie, I'm listening in case you come back.

Okay.

Other views on the 99 versus 60.

Okay.

Uh so I guess we're sticking with the 99.

Um, and then the um townhomes, number versus foot, the length.

Um, the 200 feet of length, no matter how many townhomes that happens to be.

And that is a full downtown block.

Um I mean, I agree with Vera's point that it doesn't make sense to regulate it so much by number.

The length does make more sense, but is 200 too much.

I would say um I I would agree.

We kind of have adopted this principle here that I think applies to housing more broadly.

The box to me is way more important than what's inside of this, and I think this is another good example.

Um, I know the planning commission kind of really deliberated on how they got to that 200 number, and I think that that 200 from that discussion.

I think that that 200 number sounds appropriate to me.

Um so I think that's all I'd say.

Other thoughts?

I trust the planning commission.

Well, no, 2001.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyone else?

Okay.

Sounds like the 200 is the consensus.

Um other things that need resolution before we have a motion.

Okay.

I would entertain a motion.

I move for the first and second readings by title only and adoption of the ordinance amending the regulations of the Milwaukee Municipal Code MMC section 19.511, affordable housing incentives to provide code-based incentives for the development of affordable housing.

File hashtag ZA-2025-003.

I second.

And that's with some amendments that Vera has noted through the evening this evening.

Okay.

Um it's been moved and seconded for the first.

I mean, it's been moved and seconded for the first and second readings by a title only and adoption of the ordinance amending the regulations of Milwaukee Municipal Code Section 19.511, affordable housing incentives to provide code-based incentives for the development of affordable housing.

File number ZA-2025-003.

Is there any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no.

No.

No.

Uh so um it miss Sager does not need to read it since the vote was not unanimous.

The ordinance must be read at two separate meetings.

Uh oh, Ms.

Sager, please read the ordinance one time in full.

Happy to.

An ordinance of the city of Milwaukee, Oregon, amending Milwaukee Municipal Code, Title 19, zoning ordinance for the purpose of providing code-based incentives for the development of affordable housing.

Primary file number ZA 202503.

Okay, the second reading and adoption will be set for the next council meeting on September 2nd, 2025.

All right.

So that ends that item.

We are gonna take a break and come back at 5 after 9 uh for the public hearing on the public safety fee.

Okay, we are back on the record.

And uh the public hearing on the proposed public safety fee adoption is called to work.

The purpose of this hearing is to hear the staff report, take public comments, deliberate, and consider approving the proposed fee adoption.

Does any council member wish to announce an actual or potential conflict of interest?

Seeing and hearing none, I'll turn it over to Ms.

Saber.

Thank you, Mayor and Counselors.

Um, I am here tonight with my esteemed colleagues, Chief Ryan Burdick of the police department and library director Brent Husher, Michael Osborne completes the kind of quartet that has been ushering this through, but he's in Hawaii, so we're us all gonna, you know, spare him some thoughts.

Uh, but thank you again.

Uh, I have a very abridged presentation compared to the one we showed you at our last regular session.

Uh, but for folks watching at home, I did kind of want to recap um how we got to this proposal that is in front of council tonight.

Uh so why uh is there a need for public safety investment?

Um, when we talk about public safety in Milwaukee, I think it's very important that we are not just talking about our police department.

We are talking about what we call our public safety continuum of care, which speaks to the multiple departments in our organization that provide safety services.

And safety for us really is a multifaceted approach.

Yes, it's emergency response, but it's also supporting folks who are in crisis, and it's holding um folks accountable when um when they have done unsafe things or broken laws.

All three of these pieces are critical to the very compassionate human-centered approach the city of Milwaukee takes to public safety.

Uh, that's why you have staff here representing not just the police, but also library, municipal court, and other departments.

Um, I I mentioned in our previous presentation that really this conversation started actually in a budget space in the financial space because we are seeing, um, and we are not alone in this, but we are seeing in Milwaukee that demand for services is outpacing our resources for a variety of reasons.

There's revenue constraints that come from measures five and fifty, um, but there's also pressures on the cost of services.

Staffing, training, and tools, those are all rising at the cost of inflation and other pressures, and we are being asked to do more and more.

So as council directed us to look at uh ways we could stabilize our financial situation.

We also looked across our general fund and said, if we aren't able to do this, what are the services that are most at risk?

And uh I feel uh and my team feels having looked at that data, having looked across the general fund and having looked at really where we can cut that, which is really very little places right now.

Um, we are at the point now where any any uh not identifying new revenue and new resources to support public safety means that these services will be at risk of cuts and reductions.

So without taking action, these services will be impacted.

I just want to briefly capture in our last um regular session, you heard directly from uh Brent and Ryan about uh their experience running their departments and and uh what they're seeing on the ground in terms of these these increased demands and these resource challenges.

But just to recap some highlights again of why uh this keeps me up at night.

Um, since 2020, calls for police response in Milwaukee have increased 21%.

We now have more calls per service per year than we have people in Milwaukee over uh 21,000.

But in that time, staffing has not changed.

And in fact, if you look over a broader time horizon, overall sworn officers are down six since our chief was sworn in in the early 2000s.

Those calls, so as we get more and more volume of calls, they're also getting more complex.

They're getting more complex for a few reasons.

Some are good reasons, good pressures.

We know that Milwaukee is seeing an economic renaissance, which is great, but that does increase public safety demand.

And we've talked a lot about affordable housing tonight.

Um, it's a it's an important goal of the city, but more housing, more people does increase demand for public safety services.

But those I call those good pressures.

The bad pressures, the the trends that we don't like to see, but are undeniably having an impact on our public safety continuum of care are increasing behavioral health crises, increasing instances of substance abuse, and just one sobering statistic.

Milwaukee was number one last year in Clackhamus County for drug overdose-related 911 calls.

Uh we have Glenn, we have the superhero Glenn.

We've talked a little bit about Glenn already tonight in the context of our stabilization center project.

Adding Glenn was probably the best thing that this city did uh in the last uh uh several years.

Um but Glenn works Monday through Thursday.

He's one guy, and that one guy alone made 527 contacts with folks needing behavioral health crisis.

And that is that is not counting the demand that we see on weekends, on um evenings, and so we we just know that it's just a small sliver of what the real demand is.

Our library, um, which serves more than 600 patrons a day, that's about quarter million in a year, um and is open seven days a week.

We are so proud of our library.

It provides exemplary library services.

It also functions frankly as a day center.

Um, it's a free, safe place for people to come and connect to services and uh spend their day.

Um we love that.

We love to keep that friendly open door uh atmosphere, but it also comes with safety challenges.

Since we implemented our PIT system, our patron incident tracking system, we've logged 327 incidents.

35% of those required a Milwaukee police department response.

And this is really the tip of the iceberg.

We only record the ones that get to the level of you know, having an actual real safety concern.

There are so many daily connections and referrals to resources and services.

And then finally, on that kind of accountability piece of the puzzle, we have seen our court dockets return to those COVID pre-COVID levels, around 5,000 citations a year.

Um we we we are proud of our municipal court.

We try to get people in efficiently, uh respectfully and swiftly.

Um, but we have one court staffer.

Uh, we used to have uh more staffing than that.

We reduced it during COVID, the numbers, the demand has increased.

We have not been able to increase the staffing.

So that brings me to, you know, if I, as your city manager, if I'm looking around these different services and thinking to myself, how am I going to sustain the service expectations our community has, this is what I believe I we need.

I believe we need an additional behavioral health specialist.

I believe we need someone at the at the police department who's dedicated to training so that we can really walk our talk on our values.

We do a great job with the resources we have, but I will be honest, um, we kind of have to do the bare minimum because of how uh bleak our staffing is.

We do need more patrol officers.

Um I've I've shared that our current estimates have been based on two additional patrol officers.

Um we need more support for the letting library to make it to ensure that safety for patrons and for staff.

And again, I've shared that our preliminary estimates would be based on two additional staff members there, and we need more support for our municipal court.

My estimates have been based on one staff member there.

If you add all that up, it's about 900,000 to a million dollars annually.

I've been pretty clear in my previous presentations that this is not a budget ask today.

We have a very public and prescribed budgeting process.

So any ask for a new FTE or new resources would come to budget committee and come to council.

But I want to be transparent about what we've used as sort of our target or the assumptions behind what we're trying to do with this revenue stream.

We uh have been talking to council and the budget committee for a while about why we are looking to do this through the utility bill utility bill.

And this is not something Milwaukee invented.

There are many, many cities across Oregon that utilize this method.

I didn't include the slide, but we have kind of a slide showing uh almost 10 different cities who have a public safety or similar fee.

And really, it is this strategic approach to looking at public safety, one of municipal's core services, like a utility.

That means that demand is going to uh fluctuate over time.

You may have times of acute need where you see trends and pressures sending certain signals.

And uh fund uh having a part of the funding stream come through utility bill gives control to you know, turn that lever up and down based on that demand.

The rates would be set by council via the city's consolidated fee schedule, which is reviewed at least annually.

It can be reviewed whenever you ask for it to be reviewed, and it can be changed, increased, or decreased as those needs change.

So this is again starting to treat public safety like we treat our other essential infrastructure.

Uh we had a lot of talk two weeks ago about the rate design.

We showed you several scenarios.

Council um gave us unanimous direction to pursue a rate structure that is $7 for residential customers, $5 for multifamily customers, and a tiered commercial approach that is a minimum of $5 and a maximum of $50.

This is based on uh engineering trip data, the same data that we utilize for the SAFE and SSMP um rates.

We also would exempt anyone uh registered through our low-income utility assistance program.

We have been talking to folks about this for a while, starting back at that May budget committee meeting.

I'm not gonna read all this to you, but we've gone to committees, we've gone to council several times, um, library board, and then we did hold a community QA at City Hall last week.

We had about 16 people in attendance, eight in person, eight online.

Uh really great conversation.

Um, I recommend watching that video if you haven't already.

I really appreciate folks who came to ask their questions and express their concerns.

Um, and then we're here tonight.

So I'm just gonna briefly talk a little bit about um about some themes uh that came out of those community conversations and just a few kind of quick responses to it.

So I think by and large, you know, we know we are in a time when folks are um facing affordability challenges.

It is why this council has adopted the goal of affordability.

And so I hear and deeply feel concerns or questions we get about impacts on folks living on limb low or fixed incomes.

Um, I do feel that uh the re one benefit of proposing this with the utility bill is that ability to exempt low-income customers.

We heard loud and clear from council that we need to be doing as much outreach as possible to ensure folks who can enroll in that utility assistance program are doing so, and we absolutely will be doing that.

Um we also um I think by putting down the utility bill, you also have an opportunity through the affordability goal to look at other strategies that could potentially offset the impact of a $7 or $5 additional charge.

We heard a lot of feedback on opinions about the investment priorities.

So that wish list I showed you.

Some folks said, I think we should do four behavioral health specialists.

I think we should do more to this department, less of this department.

All very valid feedback.

I just want to reiterate again that we'll be bringing this through the budget, the public budgeting process so folks can give that input to you and you can reflect to us what you think those priorities should be.

That was really a starting place to show you right now where I think those gaps are most critical.

We got some questions about rate design.

It is a really complicated thing.

I think I've been transparent that most other cities just do a flat fee because it's complicated.

Um, I appreciate the direction we've got from council to do a rate design that is as equitable as possible.

Um we based it on TRIPS data because that's the best proxy we have right now, actual available data that could tie customers to a sense of public safety demand.

I will happily look for other data sets and we could always adjust this rate design in the future, but for now, this is consistent with how we do SAFE in SSMP.

Um we explained to some folks who asked questions about um the multifamily rate is a little bit lower because again, in the trips data algorithm, um, the the general consensus on a multifamily unit would generate fewer trips than a single family residence.

Transparency of expenditures and data reporting was a big theme, and I just want to back this up with my word.

Um if this is adopted tonight, I commit that we will transparently report on how every dollar that is generated through this gets spent.

We do that you know, through our budget and through our audit process, but I'll go a step a bit beyond that.

This is you taking putting faith in us um to do this.

And so I want to make sure we are reporting often on both how these are being expended and the outcomes it's supporting.

We've thrown a lot of stats at you about patron incident responses, about um overdose calls, about we do our stops data every year.

That will be a commitment.

As long as I'm in this chair, you will always get that data reporting back on this.

And then finally, implementation via the utility bill.

Some folks saying, you know, why isn't this going out through a tax?

We did consider that.

We've talked with you and the budget committee about that.

Um the the short answer about why this method is um we need this money yesterday, and implementing it via the utility bill means that I can have start having these resources to invest in city services the month after.

Uh property tax would take about two, two and a half years for that revenue to actually hit the city's bank accounts.

Um property tax, also you have to gear up for the big public vote, um, which is important.

Um, and I think as we've talked about, that we'll probably need to be looking at property tax sometime in the future as we continue to grapple with some larger financial stability concerns.

But I think with a utility fee and a rate that you control and can turn down or turn up as needs happen, you have a lot of that control and the ability to exempt low-income customers.

So those are some of the reasons behind why this implementation vehicle is what we proposed.

That's it.

So my slides are lagging behind.

My slides are lagging.

I'm sorry.

See, this is what happens when I too too to get too cute with my animations.

Okay.

Uh next steps.

Uh, council to take public comment if we've received any beyond the written correspondence, or if anyone here wants to testify, um, we'd love to hear your thoughts, your your questions.

And then if this is approved tonight, we would incorporate it into the city's consolidated fee schedule, and it would be implemented on the November or December bills.

We would also um when we do that, do a large education um component and insert explaining the bill.

We recognize it is it is awkward that there is a safe fee on your bill already.

That is safe access for everyone.

That is a transportation fee.

Um, we will clarify that before we add a public safety fee and create more confusion on the very similar names.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um we have uh we don't have, I don't have any yellow cards.

Do you have anyone online?

We have nobody on Zoom.

Okay.

Um do we uh I mean we have gotten some correspondence sprinkled in.

Um do you have a list?

Can you tell us who?

Yeah, uh, let's see.

Sure, we've had you want to say think it was three um cheats is on uh scouts and um Elliot and the Elliott one was the one I mentioned during community comment.

I think it I think it's less about this topic specifically and more about some street maintenance, those neighbors are doing and wanting to talk to our public works department about that.

Uh so with that, uh, if I don't have anybody trying to testify, I'm not gonna read that part of the script.

Um any questions for Emma before we go into deliberation.

Uh yes.

Council president.

As a record, Adam was raising excuse first.

Um I just have a quick question.

So in I know David Chitz is on his dove in our budgets far more than most people have.

And can you help me?

He talks about a 17% increase in police budgets.

And I just want to understand is that an accurate number?

How do you kind of justify large increases before continued increases?

And then even understanding like I know this is not the budget process, but what percent of the funds do you anticipate spending on police versus that continuum?

Yeah, it's a great question.

Yeah, Mr.

G.

Tizan is correct.

He took a screenshot shape from our budget.

There was a $2 million increase in the last biennium to the police budget.

Um, that I mean, we it also you can see in there, we did not increase staffing.

This is this is what running an organization in this day and age does.

There are inflationary pressures, there are cost wage increases, um, overtime utilization increases that we've been documenting and reporting transparently the budget committee.

Um, and then the cost of equipment, the cost of our services, the cost of radios, all of that does has gone up.

Um so that is accurate, but I will say that that 2 million was not padding anything.

That was essential investments in maintaining service levels.

You know, you guys um told us to pass a uh a hold the line budget.

We did that wherever we possibly could.

If we were contractually obligated to increase, we we had to do that.

And we went through bargaining both of our unions um the year before, right before that budget was adopted.

So that is what explains that increase.

I I but he's absolutely right.

That is that that is an increase in there.

Um, but it it was not an increase to to add more people or add more upon what we had in the previous biennium.

And to your second question, council president, let me just go back.

So again, not the budget process, but just being transparent today.

What if what I would have asked for um would be an additional behavioral health specialist, a dedicated training officer at the MPD, and two patrol officers.

So you're looking at the four four FTE that would be housed in our public safety department, that that would be um brought to you as a proposal for consideration through the budgeting process.

Okay, that's very helpful.

Thank you.

Counselor Pushabody.

Yeah, I just don't know if this is the right place for this, but I actually just wanted to ask about transparency and accountability.

Um, because that seems to be a thing too that a lot of people and rightfully so.

Um I'm questioning if if we can to help with that and to be accountable for the to the public.

If we can set up some, like if we're gonna at any time we decide to increase the fee that we look at performance metrics, whether that be stops data or you know, encounters with police, just what you know, sure.

Some like something that shows that it's not just an automatic thing, something that shows that we are accountable for this and we are being transparent and sure holding public safety in a high standard as it should be.

Yeah.

Great point, counselor.

Um, I I agree.

Uh the chief and I and Brent and Michael, we are all very committed to data-driven decision making and and transparent reporting.

Um, any change you would make in the future to this would happen through a hearing just like this.

And you have my commitment that any proposal, so A, through the annual rate setting process, but B, if you if you see something in a in a presentation we give and you go, hey, I want to come back, give me some data because I want to look at if that public safety fee needs to be reconsidered, we will report on those on those metrics, both the metrics of how the dollars are being spent, but also the metrics on changes to outcomes that you can you can connect to this.

So I commit to doing that annually at least through the rate setting process, but more often as you request it.

And then the last question is about um metrics in terms of what the result is from this investment, because we made it a point about the overdoses and the end and how high that is.

So having some metrics to be able to say, like, hey, look, after whatever year, two years, this is probably gonna take more of that as a staff.

Um, but this is where we're at.

This is where overdoses are at now.

This is this is what your investment has uh turned out.

Absolutely.

You know, there's a there's a lot of this that's upstream that we can't um sadly fully affect.

But you know, the the data that that Glenn brings you at least once a year talking about both the quantitative but the qualitative impact our behavioral health support has on vulnerable community members, the stops data that Chief brings, um, Brent's monthly library reports where we talk about this.

These are all examples of places where we will can absolutely track this.

And um, and again, I I don't take any kind of ask for a fee increase or addition lightly.

Um I have I think shared with with many of you that you know, I really believe in this and I believe in this because I believe a year from now, six months from now, I can point to very visible uh tangible benefits this is going to lead to.

And my fear is if we don't do this, I could also point to tangible and visceral impacts of service reductions.

Thank you, Counselor Stavanger.

Any questions for you?

Um the only question really I think that I have it has to do a little bit with metrics as well.

I would like to be able to establish baseline for where we're at.

And you know I appreciate that we have some of that data in terms of how we compare to other Clackmas County cities, but honestly there's there's different scale of um like urbanization across Clackamas County as well.

So I'd I'd like to see if we can establish baseline around number of incidents of escalation at the library um utilization as the uh sustain or the the crisis stabilization center um caring place and the um addiction recovery campus um come online so like not just in terms of what it looks like at the person the interpersonal level you know number of people from on on Milwaukee caseload you know going through that system but how we are affecting the system um with additional staff so like when we have two behavioral health specialists or or or three um you know how are we actually making the system better so that we can move upstream so that we can prevent some of these things before they happen for folks that call Milwaukee home.

Sure um and how can we model that for other jurisdictions around the city I mean when we put in our application for um for SHS funding for um for behavioral health specialists we saw that um you know there was a a trend across the county that other jurisdictions were looking at our model seeing the effectiveness of this model and seeing that there's a a usefulness in their own jurisdictions and that's uh that's a huge role that um that we have played that the the police department has played and that individuals in the positions of behavioral health support have played um and I think that that's a really good trajectory to keep on so I'd like to establish baselines and then build on that not only to show the importance to our community members of investing in these assets but then also to show as an example that you can actually prevent something before it occurs.

Excellent point counselor and and very happy to do that.

One thing I'm I'm not sure you all know is every kind of early spring late winter um the police leadership prepare it's a thick binder of uh data on on their whole shop and give um I mean I've had one but gave the previous city manager of a multi-hour briefing this year you did get to see some of that because we started this conversation after that but I would like to make a commitment that we um we'll make that an annual thing after my big binder presentation we'll come here and give you a big binder presentation because again I just I really want you to have my commitment that um that we are doing this in a data driven um and transparent way thank you counselor Stavanger is that's it for you yep that's it thank you okay uh counselor massey um I could you go back to the uh FTE counselor of course so there's some flexibility here and so um it kind of goes along with uh what Adam was talking about earlier is at some point uh um I would just like to see what the real FTE count is sure what the spin rate is and what the performance metrics are I don't know if that's part I'm not sure that fits neatly into a budget meeting category and uh I'm not I'm not interested in you know in looking over your shoulder every week but pick pick a time yes six months twelve months whatever makes sense to come to circle back so that we can in fact you know trace these cost to these investments and these outcomes absolutely counselor I'm I think because otherwise I might get lost in the general fund you know 100% yeah yep and I think you and I share a love of of dashboards and of performance metric tracking so absolutely and you know I um in each of these places each of my departments whether they're a public safety continuum of care department or not that's my expectation and we can absolutely make sure that data is transparently reported consistently to uh council as well okay if there are no further questions I would uh is there any discussion needed among counsel or are we ready to go to a motion I might say there's a saying in the legislature we do you put a marker down um and maybe I've said this here but I take the concerns with this being a flat tax on people and I think that as we look for future if there is something that happens in our general fund in the future as we look at other taxing mechanisms I think it's important that we balance these utility fees that are flat taxes with progressive income like a property tax.

I might say there's a saying in the legislature we do you put a marker down.

Um maybe I've said this here, but I take the concerns with this being a flat tax on people.

And I think that as we look for future, if there is something that happens in our general fund in the future as we look at other taxing mechanisms, I think it's important that we balance these utility fees that are flat taxes with progressive income like a property tax.

Um I appreciate I think you've made a really compelling case that this is a separate utility.

I really appreciate the low income exemption.

Um, and I think that all the other affordability work that we're doing is important.

But I'm putting that marker down.

Another thing I'll say is I'll echo what you're hearing about transparency.

Um we just saw the Portland Central City Task Force put out a release today that basically said here's what we recommend for Portland area jurisdictions as they adopt new taxes.

A sunset five year kind of report back period.

I don't think we need to sunset this necessarily or at least talk about that yet, but I do think that that reporting is gonna be really, really important and good that we model.

So I appreciate all the work you've done here, though.

This is great.

Thank you, Council President.

Okay.

Um with that I will entertain a motion.

By the way, you have put the marker down many times.

Mayor Baby said, be quiet.

Do we should I move to close the public comment part first?

Or did we already do that?

You this it's not quite the same when it's not a land use hearing.

We don't actually have a oh, we do have a thing to close.

Okay, go ahead.

I move to close the public comment part of the proposed public safety fee adoption.

I second.

All those in favor of closing the public comment period say aye.

Aye.

I post say no.

Not heard.

Public comment part of the hearing is closed.

Is there any council discussion?

Is someone ready to read a motion?

They're pointing at you, Councilor Massey.

Uh did you say the council was ready for a vote?

Yes.

Okay.

I'll move to approve the resolution adopting the public safety fee.

I second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the resolution adopting the public safety fee.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no.

It passes unanimously.

Congratulations.

Congratulations, Mala.

Yeah.

All right.

Um, so council reports.

We have a letter to the legislature on the transportation bill.

Then just before the uh just before I left home to come.

Uh just before I left to come home, left home to come here.

We I got a copy of the dash two amendment to the transportation bill.

I don't know what has changed.

And when I talked to counselor to the council president at our break, he didn't really know what had changed either.

That's my understanding is we're not going to see major changes to the framework.

I think there might be some tweaks to title and registration fees or some things around the edges, but the larger But nothing that would change the letter that you drafted.

I don't think so, especially because our the the letter is so vague that we're not commenting on specific parts.

Yeah, yeah.

It's about the general need.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that letter was in everyone's packet.

I hope everyone had a chance to read it.

Um are folks good with signing on to that letter and uh getting it to the legislature before their special session next week.

You said yes?

Yes.

Counselor Stavan Jordan?

Yep.

Okay.

The only thing I might add is we talk, yeah.

Let me go home.

You close it here.

No.

Just to make it explicit, I put co-chairs McLean and Gorsick.

It's not clear that they'll be the co-chairs.

Is everyone okay if I change that?

If the co-chairs change, or we can do that.

I will say the um the MMC address their letter to Governor Kotec, the speaker, and the Senate president, and just bypass the committee.

What do you is do you think that's poor form, or do you think that's the thing?

I was a stickler for that form, but I will we can do whatever we want as long as people are okay with that.

I felt like Robert might want to weigh in and talk a lot about it, but okay.

Okay.

All right.

So we have that letter.

Uh I did have some other things I wanted to do council reports on, but um given the hour, I'm gonna probably save those till next meeting.

Anyone else?

No, I haven't even, yeah.

No.

Um anybody else have a council report.

Oh, well, I will say uh the city manager, the police chief, and counselor Coserbody and I got a little tour of the first building at Hillside yesterday.

And um, it was very it's looking lovely.

Um it is set to uh they will be inviting everybody for a some sort of an opening event in November.

Um they're not gonna have a huge big grand opening public event um until spring when all th or spring or early summer when all three buildings are done, but they will have some kind of an opening event in November before they start um placing residents in the building, but they are already starting to you know talk with the people in the cottages out on the rest of the property about who wants to move in and um the relocation of the people who were moved out in terms of who wants to move in.

So um it's moving, it's moving, it looks nice.

They have a community garden for 50, which is pretty good.

Um anything you guys want to add to that.

Uh they just they they we did bring up you know the uh reliance on emergency services, and you know, we asked them about uh if they've you know talked to the hospital problem Milwaukee about you know just staffing issues and you know the influx of of more people because they're they're probably gonna need those services uh more often um than not.

And then uh we asked about the the public safety aspect in terms of being good stewards and partners with our police department, ensuring that management takes um an active role in ensuring that you know our officers can can actually enforce our laws and and so that's certain things that happened in the past, not not with our department, but things like you know what happened to the Washington County deputy doesn't happen to our officers.

Yeah, and um we and I was very um appreciative of of their willingness to discuss that.

We're gonna have a follow-on meeting between the property management staff and MPD.

Um, and and I I would like to create a whether it's good neighbor agreement or a good partner agreement uh with the county um and all the partners involved on that project, just like we have with the Stabilization Center.

Yeah.

It was encouraging.

Um it's it's amazing how well it's and they they did share with us like yeah, there's there's actually when we first started talking about Hillside, it was two phases, but it's really ending up being three phases.

So this was phase one.

Uh 275 units.

The next phase is three smaller buildings, three or four smaller buildings.

Um D and E.

This is A B and C.

Those are D1 and D2 and E1 and E2, and then the area closest to Balfour Street to the single family homes over there, will be uh pretty exciting.

It's gonna be part of it's gonna be bridge meadows, that uh which I think I've talked to you guys before.

That's the mix of uh seniors with um families with kids in foster care.

And part of it's gonna be Short Stack doing more homeownership uh opportunities.

So um it's it's looking good.

Do you know?

Are they um yeah?

Are those sections funded or are they looking for funding?

This the next section is funded, I believe, and they put in their building permits recently.

So they do expect to uh close the rest of the cottages and move everybody by next summer and start construction next summer on the next phase.

Now that that final phase, I I don't think that all the funding's there for that yet.

All right.

I will say this is a good reminder.

Your planning website, you can't click on the links to planning projects.

We know we're fixing it.

Okay, thank you.

We're fixing it.

Okay, yeah, I give her constantly.

There's some there's some website tweaking that needs to happen though.

Okay.

Um with that, if nobody else has any council reports, uh I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

We're gonna do adjourn the session.

I'll second.

It's been moved and seconded to adjourn.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed, not heard, we're adjourned.

Okay.

Is this short?