City Council Work Session on Utility and Housing Affordability – September 2, 2025
City Council Work Session on Utility and Housing Affordability – September 2, 2025
The City Council held a work session on September 2, 2025, to review progress on the affordability goal, including utility rate studies, housing development strategies, and proposed tenant screening reforms. Staff provided updates on Q2 and Q3 accomplishments, and council discussed upcoming actions and connected affordability priorities to budget development.
Discussion Items
- Staff Recap (Q2/Q3): Public Works Director Peter Pasarelli, Assistant City Manager Joseph Relio, and Finance Director Michael Osborne presented accomplishments. On the utility side: solid waste rate updates in June, fee schedule revisions as part of financial stability strategy, and initiation of a water/wastewater cost‑of‑service rate design study with a consultant. Peter noted that a low‑interest state revolving loan (up to $6 million, with about $3 million forgivable) is available for water treatment work, pending a feasibility study. On housing: the draft affordable housing code was completed and voted on by council two weeks prior. The Sparrow project RFP launched August 15, with a mandatory site visit on September 9; one neighbor attended the initial neighborhood meeting. Interest from developers is higher than expected.
- Council Goal Lead Report: Councillor Costarabati reviewed council accomplishments: completion of the goal action plan aligned with CAV strategic plan; selection of new budget/QuAC committee members; fee schedule adoption; advocacy with Metro and WES on rate transparency and low‑income discounts. He highlighted a meeting with Congresswoman Dexter’s office to discuss federal affordability policies.
- Affordability Priorities from Budget Committee: Councillor Costarabati summarized consensus from the June budget committee: expand existing utility assistance programs before creating new discounts; consider setting maximum reserves for water funds; adopt realistic capital budgeting; expand incentives/disincentives (e.g., conservation discount, tree rebate). Staff noted that only a small fraction of eligible households currently enroll in the low‑income utility assistance program, and barriers (language access, outreach) need to be addressed.
- Tenant Screening Fee Proposal: Councillor (likely Councillor Massey) introduced a proposal to cap screening fees and require landlords to accept portable tenant screening reports. Options presented: require landlords to accept one‑to‑three city‑approved portable reports, or if they opt out, cap fees at $10. Discussion covered enforcement challenges (complaint‑driven model, parallels to unenforced home energy score requirement), potential inclusion in a broader rental registration program, and the need for stakeholder engagement with Multifamily Northwest and tenant advocacy groups. Council agreed to continue the conversation as part of the upcoming housing production strategy work session in October.
- Other Reports: Councillor Massey updated on the state transportation package (passed Oregon House, payroll tax sunset in 2028; TriMet still faces service cuts); the TSP project list is coming to council on September 16. Councillor Staven George reported on the PARP meeting (bylaws adopted, officer elections in September). Councillor Anderson alerted council to the Metro community choice workshop on September 7. The council also discussed the need to sharpen policies regarding meals for elected officials in light of the OGEC ethics opinion; consensus was to adopt a model ordinance from a sister city.
Key Outcomes
- Direction to staff: Explore a rental registration program as part of the business registration code update; coordinate with the public works department on utility billing code cleanup (work session September 16).
- Tenant screening: Further discussion will be folded into the October work session on increasing high‑density housing capacity and the November land‑banking strategy session.
- Affordability outreach: Staff will develop collateral for utility assistance programs and partner with the Milwaukee Community Center, Wichita Center, and school district to boost enrollment.
- Food policy: Council directed staff to bring a draft policy (modeled on other cities) to a future meeting to explicitly address meals as compensation under OGEC rules.
- Sparrow project: Developer selection anticipated by end of 2025; council will receive a recommendation for negotiation approval.
- Rate study: Draft rate recommendations will be presented at the November QuAC and Budget Committee meetings, followed by final CIP adoption in early 2026.
Meeting Transcript
Uh work session for September Sulk of our screen. Thank you, Mayor. Um, so this goal, uh, once of our goals, you know, have one or two staff liaisons. This one, you get the full meal deal. You get uh public works director Peter Pasarelli, assistant city manager Joseph Relio, and finance director Michael Osborne. Um Byrd, um, our development project manager also provides a ton of support um on the housing related items here. Um Michael is out celebrating, I believe it's 20th anniversary. Um, so he's in better places than we are. But uh we are here to give kind of an update. You've now been through several of these, so you'll you'll remember we usually start with the staff uh recap. So what has we have we accomplished over the past quarter, and then a look ahead, and then we will turn it over to the goal, um, the council goal lead who is counselor closer abody, and he will talk about on the council side accomplishments in the last quarter and the path forward. Hi, we just started to turn missed the intro. You can look at these people. I love the shirt. It's a good that was a good design this year. Really, really well. I mean, other years have to also get great. This one really rocked hard block. So looking back um at our accomplishments, we're gonna actually cover a couple quarters here because then this is our third goal. We're kind of at the end of a quarter. Looking at Q2, uh, what did we accomplish? So on the utility side, and I'll kind of speak to utility action. Note that we'll speak to housing action. Peter will correct everything I say working correctly on the utility side. How does that sound? Um so on the utility side, just kind of refreshing your memory. Um, we talked about solid waste rates and uh updated those um in June. Uh, there is another solid waste um discussion coming up this fall. That's going to be more about the future of the franchise agreement. Remember, we have to start a 10-year clock if we want to end that, and we need to do before the end of the year, so that's coming up soon. It's on the forecaster. We also um reviewed and updated our fee schedule a couple times now as part of our financial stability strategy, and we will continue to do that um based on the rate study work that um that Peter can share more about and that you've heard about at previous budget committee meetings. Um and that's kind of the last one you see up there, Peter. Uh, under the leadership of Peter, we've begun work with a consultant on utility cost of service rate design for water and wastewater. That's in process. That's a very iterative process of sharing data, um, sharing sometimes expected as unexpected things that come up on the capital side, um, but they can kind of help us forecast that and also uh taking into account the feedback you all gave about affordability at our budget committee, which we'll we'll summarize later in the presentation. Peter, anything you want to say there? Well, I I would I would say one of the things that has the word delay, like the recommendations is related to capital on the water side specifically. And you know, as we've gone through the evaluation, uh the assumptions that the rate consultant may didn't incorporate some of the some of the funding scenarios that we might be able to use for our sort of two buckets of funding available um the state that we're looking at right now. I think I mentioned it to the safe drinking water revolving loan, which is uh a low interest loan and has opponent, and there's two sort of buckets of that loan. One is safe drinking water, and then one is related to urgent community for the completed feasibility study. My understanding we had a call weeks ago with them uh visiting uh business maybe the work in business business working uh who managed that program for OHA and they said we're eligible for the plain the vanilla one. I'll call it the Crick and War of the Bowl and Fund. Six million dollars with about three million of it being for doable, and then uh and we'll be eligible for a low interest rate. So maybe the zone work can be more and then the other piece we have to wait to complete our feasibility study before working on the console. And it looks like there's about six million dollars there available. Uh that can only be used for like the very narrow treatment focused work. Um that I believe comes from the community that's was like all of the principal can be forgiven. Um interest rate. So we've got to work with the consultant now to put that sort of pitch into the rate, the rates and the booking.
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